Obituary: Charley Clarke (1962)

Obituary from the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was with deep regret that Nottingham members heard of the death of our comrade Charley Clarke, of Burton-on-Trent, in his 87th year. Charley was the eldest of the three Clarke brothers, well known no doubt to many of the older party members, their membership of The Party having extended over many years, and anyone who came in contact with them must have been impressed by their utter and sincere dedication to the cause of Socialism.

As Socialists, their way of life did not run along orthodox lines and they were regarded as rather queer fish by the people in Burton. All three for instance were bachelors, vegetarians, and among other interests were students of natural history, astronomy, and other aspects of science. Joe the younger brother aged 70 years, has had his daily swim in the river Trent, winter and summer, for many years. Living as close to "nature" as conditions would permit, it is not surprising that the locals did believe that they were not quite "with it".

There was always great consternation when this trio attended political meetings, where they carried out devastating attacks on all non-socialists, and proceeded to mutilate the policies of the Labour and Communist Parties, much to the confusion of some speakers and audiences alike. This of course did not help their popularity among the local politicians.

Because of their opposition to the first World War, they were recipients of the honour of "The White Feather", at the hands of the local "patriots", and all three went to prison as conscientious objectors, much to the delight of the jingoists. Although their life must have been very hard, they never gave up the struggle, and indeed, by their sincerity made many friends among those who understood what they were striving for.

In their work for Socialism they have travelled many miles to political meetings, to sell literature, and ask questions. This work will be carried on by Fred and Joe. A last gesture from Charley, while he lay on his death bed, attended by his brother Joe, was to urge Joe to leave him to attend a meeting at Nottingham to carry on the work for Socialism. The most noble work that mankind can perform. That is what Charley used to say.

J. Cuthbertson

The Stagnant Society (1961)

Book Review from the October 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Stagnant Society, by Michael Shanks, by Michael Shanks. Penguin Books, 3s. 6d.

In case you should think from the title that this is a radical attack on the very basis of modern society, let us disillusion you right away. This is a sort of "Wake up Britain" book.

Mr. Shanks is very much concerned that Britain in the 1960s' is losing the productivity race with other countries and is failing to compete successfully in world markets. A large chunk of the book is taken up with criticising the trade unions and urging them to mend their ways. Why don't they co-operate with employers and government? Why don't they put an end to wildcat strikes? Why don't they tighten up on organisation, etc? Look at the following extract from page 102, for example:—

. . . I want to see it [the T.U. Movement] play a much more forceful and positive role in helping to make Britain more dynamic and more efficient . . . They [the Trade Unions] have got to find a new dynamic to replace the old fading appeal to working-class solidarity and negative opposition to the 'bosses'.

In 236 pages, the author sweeps across the post-war industrial field and skims blithely over one problem after another. Labour relations, financial policy, government planning, export drives, labour mobility—they are all here, and many more besides. And having waded through to the bitter end, what does it all amount to but a plan for the smoother operation of British Capitalism? "If we are in competition with manufacturers overseas," he says, "the solution is not to move out of their way but to make ourselves more efficient and competitive than they are . . . Planning should be aimed at promoting expansion and not avoiding competition."

Do not be misled either by the short publisher's note on the back cover, with its vague references to "class divisions." This book is not an attack on a class-divided society. It is really only an appeal for co-operation between the classes "in the national interest" which Mr. Shanks fondly labels as a "breaking down of class barriers." Capitalist ownership of the means of life — the barrier — he does not question. We have, of course, heard it all many times before.

Perhaps you should read The Stagnant Society. It will possibly give you an insight into current misconceptions about the Capitalist World—that's if you don't die of boredom halfway through it. We understand this is Michael Shanks' first book. We regret we cannot recommend it for an honoured place on a Socialist bookshelf. 

E. T. C.

The Cash Nexus (1960)

Theatre Review from the August 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

The people of a small German town foregather to welcome the return of Claire Zachanassian, a now fabulously wealthy women who had left her home as a girl of seventeen, many years before. The town is by no means well off, and has high hopes that she will offer them a not considerable part of her vast riches. This she does, but upon one condition: that Anton Schill, a leading member of the community—her former love who had disowned her, pregnant and poverty stricken, and had her driven from the town as a whore—forfeits his life.

Outraged, the people protest in the name of humanity and refuse her extreme terms. But since she had been so brutally treated, Claire Zachanassian has planned retribution on those responsible. After the refusal, she proposes to gather the people, slowly and unsuspectingly, into her power, by inducing them to incur an immense debt through extravagant living on credit which she knows they will never be able to meet. Which in turn forces them to abandon Anton Schill and condemn him to die. This briefly is the story of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play "The Visit" produced at the new Royalty Theatre. The play's improbability is unimportant beside the sinister reality of its meaning: the power of money over the lives of men.

The progress of the play presents a remarkable study of a change in human behaviour. At the beginning, the people of the small town of Gullen, simple and easy-going folk although poor, have learned since the decline of their industry to be content with little and not to expect much more. The change in their way of life as a result of the intrigues of Claire Zachanassian, in whom they see the obvious virtuous of a rich woman, brings with it also a complete change in their attitudes and values.

Their lives now rest on a precarious system of credit, weighed down by a fake prosperity  that they naively regard as real wealth. But with this goes fear; for what they now they are afraid to lose. A fear that rots the fabric of their relationships with one another, for they now fear one another; afraid of treachery in the name of the humanity they one professed. Dire economic necessity can no longer sustain their one once outraged principles and in the new found values they now see every justification for the death of Anton Schill. For Schill, their once respected future Burgomaster, they have nothing but hatred; they brand him as an enemy of the people who stands between them and their dreams of wealth, and they demand his life. The people, and their once despised outcast, who ironically is the anonymous owner of their decaying industry, are united, but it is the uneasy union of slave and master. By playing on their greed, Claire Zachanassian has made them bring down her revenge on their own hands, and create their own bondage.

In one of his poems, D. H. Lawrence has written that the "Work-Cash-Want circle is the viciousest circle that ever turned men into fiends." The cynical disregard for humanity that capitalism inculcates makes us its playthings; its cat-paws, as Dürrenmatt's millionairess makes the people of Gullen. We destroy ourselves in the cash race. "This," wrote Lawrence in the same poem, "is called universal freedom."

Ian Jones 

Marx's economics (1989)

Book Review from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx's Capital. By Ben Fine, Macmillan, Third Edition, 1988.

Harold Wilson's comment that he couldn't get past the footnote on the first page of Marx's Capital echoes a concern felt by some newcomers to Marx that they really do find this work daunting.

This is probably in part due to some of the genuinely difficult economic analysis involved, but no doubt also to the sheer bulk of the thousands of pages which comprise the three volumes. However, this problem should be seen in a proper perspective. If you think Marxian economics is difficult, you should see what orthodox economics is like. Replete with its own technical jargon and mathematical formulae, bewildering to all but the initiated, orthodox economics tries desperately to pass itself off as a science. But it isn't; it's an ideology in which economists ("hired prize-fighters" Marx called them) defend the claims of capital against the claims of Capital.

There are easier ways into Marx. For instance, his own Value, Price and Profit is fairly clear and concise. But for those who want to know what he is saying in Capital itself there is this book by Ben Fine. In a substantially revised and expanded edition of a work first published in 1973, Fine sets out to give an introductory account of Capital in a remarkably short space (102 pages).

Overall he succeeds in this attempt although the sheer brevity in itself causes some problems. With only a few pages devoted to each, there are chapters on Marx's method, commodity production, the labour theory of value, capital accumulation, exploitation, the transition to capitalism, crises, and more besides. For this new edition there are new chapters on controversial issues such as the transformation problem and the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. These, in addition to the new and longer chapters on interest-bearing capital and rent theory, will, as Fine admits, require careful reading.

Marx's theory of inflation is not mentioned at all. There is also a passing reference (on page 4) to Marx holding that in a socialist society "classes would eventually disappear". Eventually? Surely socialism is the abolition of class society. Despite these, Fine's treatment of Marxian economics is true to Marx. It should help many to prepare for tackling the real thing.

Lew Higgins

Ecology and the abolition of the market (1988)

Book Review from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ecology and Socialism by Martin Ryle, Radius, £5.95

This short book—it is only 100 pages—is written by a member of the "ecosocialist" wing of the Green Party. The Green Party's official position is that it is neither of the Right nor the Left but, like the SDP and Liberals, appeals to the so-called classless centre. This means that in practice it accepts capitalism and seeks to obtain reforms aimed at protecting or repairing the damage it does to the environment (what might be called "Green reforms", hence our description of them as Green reformists").

Ecosocialists, sats Martin Ryle, are Greens who recognise that capitalism, with its built-in mechanism of seeking profits to accumulate as more and more capital, is the cause of environmental problems and that therefore no solution can be found to these problems within it. Ryle criticises, in the same terms as us, the Green Party's much vaunted Basic Income Scheme as merely an attempt to redistribute income within capitalism: profits are to be taxed to provide cash handouts for everybody, but this assumes the continuation of a "profitable market sector" that "would remain the source of all money"; the continuation, in other words, of the economic mechanism that is capitalism. This scheme, says Ryle, is both "useless even as a transitional tactic" and "untenable as a long-term strategy". Such criticism is all the more devastating coming from someone who played a prominent part in drawing up the Green Party's manifesto for the 1987 elections in which this scheme was given pride of place.

So far, so good, but what does Ryle mean by "ecosocialism"? He speaks of a "non-market society" and of breaking with "the law of value". Even better, but unfortunately when he goes on to flesh out the sort of non-market economy he would like to see replace capitalism one of its features is to be . . . the market! Needs are met, either directly on a free basis (water, sewage, energy, transport) or indirectly through allocating everyone a monetary "social income" (a basic income?):

Beyond this, and again evolving out of what we have, a 'market-type' sector would produce a range of commodities and services between which people would choose according to preferences . . . here the feedback of market-type mechanisms is an effective means of allocating social labour to meet demand, and of encouraging the necessary expansion and contraction of the productive and retailing enterprises concerned. This is the rationale for the pseudo-market and the use of money. The monetary form, moreover, as opposed to some utopian visions in which the citizenry simply help themselves from a cornucopian socialist abundance, implies the possibility, which in ecological terms is a necessity, of exerting collective control over levels of overall individual consumption.

Such a society (were it viable) might not be capitalism, but it wouldn't be socialism either. Socialism is a non-market society in the strictly literal sense of the term: a society without markets, buying and selling and money. The reason for this is that buying and selling presupposes separate owners of the goods that are exchanged, while in socialism both the productive resources and the products are commonly owned and so directly available for people to take rather than buy.

The sort of society advocated by Ryle would not, as he believes, destroy "the law of value". On the contrary, it would still involve commodity-production and so the creation of wealth as exchange value. Indeed, the free basic services he envisages would have to be financed, just like the cash handouts in the Green Party's Basic Income Scheme, by syphoning off some of the exchange value created in the commodity-producing sector which would thus remain the key sector of the economy.

Production for sale without profit or capital accumulation, which is what Ryle (and many other Greens) seems to be advocating, is something similar to the "simple commodity-production" which Marx analysed as the logical starting point for the development of capitalism. Were it possible to establish such a society today (which it isn't), then it would inevitably tend to develop into capitalism a system of commodity-production where the aim of exchange on markets was not simply to obtain money to buy useful things but to obtain money as profits to be re-invested and accumulated as capital.

Ryle and the "ecosocialists" can perhaps be allowed to describe themselves as anti-capitalist but not as socialist. They want to go back to pre-capitalist market forms instead of forward to the abolition of the whole market on the basis of common ownership and democratic control and its replacement by production directly for use and free access to goods and services according to need.

Adam Buick 

Gels in pearls and all that (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

What have Jenny Greene, Marcus Binney, Michael Clayton, Deirdre McSharn and Sally O'Sullivan in common? You probably have never heard of any of them. They are rivals of the ten million pound advertising revenue on offer for the increasing number of "Country" magazines on sale. Interest in the countryside is booming and 500,000 copies are sold each month.

Of course, the type of country life featured is selective. Small farmers, working hard to feed their families as well as paying off their mortgages and various hire purchase commitments don't feature much on their pages. Although occasional genuflections are made in the direction of conservation, the main preoccupation of the well established Country Homes, Horse and Hound and Country Life, as well as the newcomers Country Living and Landscape is the homes and lifestyles of the affluent owners of country mansions. 

"You have to be be of a certain class to get in [the magazine]" says Jenny Greene of Country Life. "There's always been a joke that no-one who lives at a numbered house is ever featured." Of course, mistakes do happen. Once the magazine printed an engagement portrait of "the lovely Honora Lineham of Mendip House, Woodberry Down". It just so happened that the lady's name was Noreen, her mother did household cleaning and Mendip House is a council block of flats in North London. Still, Noreen was wearing pearls.

Who are the 500,000 purchasers of these magazines? They certainly are not members of the executive country set—there aren't half a million of them around! Then who are they, apart from patients reading back numbers in doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms? Again, Greene " . . . would think the magazine is a great badge for people in the suburbs. It's got the tremendous glamour of top people about it". Your "point to point" may be negotiating a trolley round the local supermarket but for £1.20 an issue you can impress your friends and let your imagination go into overdrive.

Of course, this type of vicarious living is not confined to visions of how others live "graciously" in the country. Women buy glossy magazines which may carry less romantic fiction than some years ago but instead talk of dresses costing hundreds of pounds, "beauty" improvements costing thousands and recipes calling for the use of game, fresh river trout and smoked salmon. Magazines for men peddle a dream world which is different in substance but not degree. The owner of a second-hand Vespa reads about motorbikes of thousands cc, costing the related thousands of pounds, while the often unhealthy under-exercised office worker reads about body-building contests. The sex situation is so frequently covered elsewhere that it does not need more than a mention.

Why are those purveyors of fantasies so successful? Soap operas like EastEnders and Coronation Street present a world in which "ordinary" people are supposed to be able to see a reflection of their own lives. These glossies want the same people to imagine they could inhabit the world of the wealthy minority.

Eva Goodman

The wasted years (2002)

From the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ten years ago at the Rio Earth Summit a 12-year old schoolgirl from Vancouver, Severn Cullis-Suzuki, made a speech to delegates that astonished them. It is worth repeating part of that address :

“I am only a child, yet I know that if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this would be. In school you teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? You grownups say you love us, but I challenge you, please, to make your actions reflect your words.”

That speech had such an impact that she became a frequent invitee to UN conferences. She is now 22, with a BSc in biology from Yale University and she attended the recent conference in Johannesburg as a member of Kofi Annan's World Summit advisory panel. So what does she make of the progress in the last 10 years?

“I spoke for six minutes and received a standing ovation. Some of the delegates even cried. I thought that maybe I had reached some of them, that my speech might actually spur action. Now, a decade from Rio, after I've sat through many more conferences, I'm not sure what has been accomplished. My confidence in the people in power and the power of an individual's voice to reach them has been deeply shaken” (Time, 2 September).

Cullis-Suzuki's pessimism is well founded when you compare some of the figures over the last 10 years:

• Then 17 million refugees, now 20 million refugees.
• Then 5,000 species threatened, now 11,000 species.
• Then rainforests being depleted at 17,000 sq.km a year,now speeding up to 1 percent depletion per year.
• Then carbon dioxide omissions 356 parts per million in the atmosphere, now 370 parts per million.

The list is long and horrifying, for instance the Antarctic ozone hole is now three times the size of the United States. Cullis-Suzuki has now retreated from her schoolgirl world view into organising locally to get people to cut down on household garbage, consuming less and using their car less frequently. What a dreadful commentary on this awful society of capitalism that it turns youthful zeal and enthusiasm into pathetic and petty reformism.

Socialists don't make the mistake of appealing to the governments of the world to stop polluting our world, because we know that is futile. Instead we call on our fellow workers to join us in the struggle to rid the world for ever of the cause of these problems, world capitalism. Only then will we be able to attain that 12 year old's beautiful vision . “What a wonderful place this would be”.

Richard Donnelly

Divide and rule (1986)

From the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Divide and rule is a classic political tactic of a ruling class fearful of a threat to its power from discontented workers. Give certain sections of the working class enough material comfort to feel that they are getting something out of the system — that they are "middle class" — and they will make sure that there is no working class revolution.

This is a strategy that the present government is pursuing vigorously. Make sure that workers who have skills that capitalism needs at present get reasonable wages and salaries. Give them mortgages and tax relief. so that they can "buy" their own homes. Let them take out private medical insurance and buy shares in British Telecom or TSB. In short convince them they are part of the "property and share owning democracy".

By contrast give the unemployed and others who are marginal to the needs of capital as hard a time as possible. Cut their benefits, subject them to intrusive investigations and means testing. Force them to love on what is left of the council housing estates — usually high rise slums that councils sell off because no one wants to buy them. Give them second-rate health care after waiting months for NHS treatment.

In addition make sure that those who are comfortably off have little sympathy with the plight of those less fortunate by spewing out a steady stream of propaganda that blames the obvious ills of capitalism on selected vulnerable groups. Unemployment is high because the unemployed don't want to work; greedy workers are pricing themselves and others out of jobs by asking for too much pay. Claimants aren't poor they're just "bad managers" and therefore deserve to have their electricity cut off when they can't afford to pay their bills. Young people are undisciplined, promiscuous and degenerate so no wonder AIDS is spreading and drug abuse is rising. Violent crime is on the increase in inner city areas because that's where blacks live. Blacks should therefore be sent home or not allowed into the country at all.

Throw in a few appeals to the "national interest", some references to the threat of international terrorism, "enemies within", or political subversives and then use all of this as a justification for increased expenditure on the police and security forces (at the same time claiming that there is no money for homes, health care, welfare benefits . . . ). Then give the police increased powers to harass people and prevent demonstrations or other expressions of political discontent or opposition. Finally curtail the legal rights of trade unions so that they find it more and more difficult to defend the pay and conditions of work of their members.

The government can get away with this kind of coercion of selected groups within the working class because such groups within the working class because such workers, since they are marginal to the needs of capital, have no political or industrial muscle. Without the support of other workers the feeble protests of those at the sharp end of government policy will continue to go unnoticed. What is so depressing is the fact that this divide and rule strategy has been so successful. Many workers who are relatively well off don't believe that any of these attacks on the working class and civil liberties have anything very much to do with them. They don't have to worry about homelessness because they've bought their own house. They don't have to worry about waiting lists for medical treatment because they can go private. They don't have to worry about increased police powers because they don't commit crimes or go on demonstrations or take strike action.

Those with "good" jobs and a decent standard of living can continue to delude themselves that they are  middle class and have a stake in the capitalist system and don't have to worry until it's their teenage children who can't get jobs; until they themselves are made redundant because their particular skill is no longer needed by the capitalist class and are forced to try to subsist on state handouts; until they get chronically ill and then discover that their health insurance doesn't cover them for serious, long-term illness; until they get harassed by the police because they stepped out of line.

All workers, white-collar and blue-collar, skilled or unskilled, manual or non-manual, wage earning or salary earning, lead insecure lives in capitalist society. Robbed not only of the fruits of our labour we also have little control over our own lives irrespective of whether we have a few shares in BT or live in a house that we've "bought". Poverty, insecurity and lack of control, as well as state coercion and harassment of the most vulnerable workers or those who refuse to accept the status quo, will continue so long as we allow ourselves to be divided politically by petty distinctions engineered by the ruling class for their own political ends.

Janie Percy-Smith   

Twilight world (1985)

Book Review from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Tyranny of the Status Quo. Milton and Rose Friedman. Pelican Books, 1985, 2.95.

In all developed capitalist countries the same basic pattern has been followed. A take off in government spending, mostly accounted for by reformist welfare schemes, with a relative shift towards central government, away from local levels. In Britain and other European countries this trend started earlier. This leads us to the topic of inflation. The Friedmans are in no doubt that the main cause of inflation over the centuries of money economies has been deliberate acts by governments. This assertion is conclusively backed up by the statistics the authors offer. Noting that inflation in America took off not long after government spending, they show how the large and unpopular tax increases (unpopular to many workers as capitalists in general, although this feeling is based on a misunderstanding of how wages are determined) necessary to finance these programmes can be partially staved off by "deficit financing". Often a government will resort to borrowing as an alternative but problems generally arise about the repaying of loans with interest which increases the temptation to resort to the printing press.

As total supporters of capitalism the Friedmans understandably omit to mention an important advantage of inflation from a ruling class viewpoint. Between one wage settlement and another the workers' purchasing power is steadily eroded, leaving it to them to take the initiative in an attempt to rectify the situation. The mere fact that if deflation rather than inflation were to obtain all this would be reversed is a powerful disincentive restraining most capitalists from pressing for more than reduction in the inflation rate.

In dealing with proposals to bail out "lame ducks" (another allegedly progressive cause), the authors examine the case of the Chrysler Corporation, an example viewed with favour by many leftists. They point out that no change in the car market resulted from this action by the state. Instead of going out of business Chrysler continued to sell cars so there must have been a reduction in sales so there must have been a reduction in sales by their competitors. The jobs "saved" at Chrysler were lost elsewhere. Those who lost were diffused and largely unaware of the connection but wherever they live there was no net gain of jobs. That the Friedmans can see this so clearly puts into a pretty poor light those lefties who are endlessly calling for "job creation".

The authors raise an objection to capitalism being described as the "profit system". They say it is a profit and loss system, and identify the loss component as the more important as it is this, or the fear of it, which they believe enhances the efficiency of the system. Whatever merit there is in this observation, it puts the Friedman's out on a limb even among the open defenders of the present system. Capitalism would still be ugly and inefficient from any sane standpoint even if regular profits could be guaranteed. However, it is the loss factor and the reaction it forces on individual firms that activates the most objectionable features. It is fair to say that most reforms, whether initiated by capitalists themselves or forced from them under pressure, have been designed to mitigate these loss-induced features. From this as we have already seen arises a significant part of the big government and its big spending against which the Friedmans have been railing for so long. The efforts of "entrenched trade unions" (sic) to protect themselves by establishing minimum wages and some form of job security also earn a blast from the authors. Generally speaking the unions have no alternative, although care is required to see that action does not "save" one man's job by taking another's away.

Even with our somewhat charitable interpretation this exhausts the digestible parts of the book. Big government is the enemy and the answer is to reduce it, the authors say ad nauseum here and elsewhere. Exactly how far they wish to go along that road is not made clear, but at least they don't pretend to be advocating "socialism" or even to be benefitting all workers. Clearly they regard socialism (as we use the term( as pure fantasy, while liberally applying the word to other forms of capitalism. Some absurdly simplistic "solutions" are put forward. Crime, for instance, could be cut by from a third to a half by simply legalising the trade of narcotic drugs. Incidentally we are told that crime cannot be related to social conditions because if it were the rate in Bombay and Calcutta would be much higher than in American cities instead of the reverse being the case. The Friedmans' notion of who pays taxes is almost the complete inverse of reality. They deny that the capitalists pay any taxes, because they think they can pass the cost on to the customer, and see the whole tax burden as falling on individuals, mainly workers.

The Friedmans' arguments, given in more detail in their earlier works, are only a contribution to the continuous debate on how best capitalist can be run, a subject in which we have no interest. Unlike many others of their ilk, they have stuck to their views with some consistency which is why they occasionally make telling points which escape or are ignored by their rivals. If for instance a government increases tariffs on certain imported goods, it may well be, as the Friedmans imply, that in the long term more harm than good may come to the local capitalists as a whole. But those immediately threatened may well have gone out of business before the longer term effects are noticed and they will therefore press for all they are worth for a protectionist policy. When any harmful side effects manifest themselves other short-term crises will have arisen to divert attention from the cause. Not that sectional interests are not sacrificed, indeed even this oversimplified example shows that not all capitalists can be accommodated at once. It is this continuous cut and thrust from which the authors stand apart, seeing attempts by governments to follow a consensus line as weakness and lack of principle. The Friedmans point out that the Reagan and Thatcher governments were elected promising apparently sweeping changes of which they (for once) approved. However after a honeymoon period these administrators lost momentum. They are correct in thinking that this is a common occurrence, and the basic cause is as illustrated by the tariffs' example but multiplied to cover all capitalist interest who feel threatened. Usually the government is forced to pay attention to this clamour and modify many of its policies, although there have been some exceptional cases. What cheek it is to describe this process as a tyranny! Being forced to sell our labour power to an employer as the only way to make any kind of living, now that is a tyranny.

E. C. Edge 

Mixed Media: Steel City (2015)

The Mixed Media Column from the September 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield displays the industrial history of Sheffield, once known as the 'Steel City.' 

The painting The Wealth of England: The Bessemer Process of Making Steel (1895) by William Holt Yates Titcomb is on display to complement the impressive Bessemer Steel Converter (iron into steel), by Henry Bessemer which was licensed to Brown and Cammell, Sheffield steel makers in 1858. The Bessemer process involved the converter tilting down to pour molten pig iron in through the top, then swung back to a vertical position and a blast of air was blown through the base of the converter, flames and fountains shot out of the top of the converter, the converter was tilted again and the newly made steel was poured out. The first converters could make seven tons of steel in half an hour. The Bessemer steel was used for railways, ships, and bridges. This Bessemer Converter is one of only three converters left in the world. It was used by the British Steel Corporation in Workington until 1974 and produced the last Bessemer Steel made in Britain.

The 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park showcased Britain as the 'workshop of the world', and the triumph of capitalism. At the Great Exhibition, 158 Sheffield companies displayed their wares. Annual steel production grew from 49,000 tons in 1850 to 5 million tons in 1900. The alloy was given pride of place at the Crystal Palace, in the shape of an ingot of Sheffield steel, weighing over a ton.

The most impressive exhibit in the Museum is the River Don Engine, built in 1905, which worked in Sheffield until 1978, first at Cammell's mill then the British Steel Corporation River Don plant. This 12,000 horsepower engine powered a huge rolling mill, made armour plate for the first Dreadnought battleships, and rolled steel reactor shields for nuclear power stations towards the end of its working life. It is the most powerful surviving steam engine in Britain. The Bessemer Converter and the River Don Engine are testament to the Marx and Engels observation that 'the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production... it has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals' (Manifesto of the Communist Party).

The main occupation of working class women in South Yorkshire was in segregated areas doing tedious, monotonous, dirty and dangerous jobs such as feeding spoon blanks through rollers at Mappin and Webb's steel works. In 1911 4.8 million women were working in industry in South Yorkshire, and by 1931 this had risen to 5.6 million. Working class women have always had to work in capitalism. 'Buffing' was a main occupation for women in the steel industry. Mary Dyson was a 'buffer girl' in the 1930s, and later in 1971 as Lady Mayoress of Sheffield, she visited her old workplace, Viners Ltd. She was asked 'Did you enjoy working for us?' and replied  'No! The work was too hard and you didn't pay us enough!'

Sheffield, as a working class Labour city, was fully behind the Labour Party's 'Nationalisation' Clause IV 'to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry.'  The Labour Government's 1949 Iron and Steel Act established the Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain which was effective in February 1951; the Corporation becoming the sole shareholder in 80 principal iron and steel companies. After 1952 it was returned to the private sector by the Tory Government. With Harold Wilson's 1963 speech on 'the Britain that is going to be forged in the White Heat of Technology' and the election in 1964 of a Labour Government, Sheffield steel workers looked forward to 'nationalisation'. The 1967 Iron and Steel Act established the British Steel Corporation which comprised 90 percent of the UK's steel making capacity, employing 268,500 workers, one of the world's largest steel making organisations.

Nationalisation promised the workers that industry would be 'managed on behalf of the people' but it was state capitalism, the wages system under new management. There was no industrial democracy or workers' self-management. British Steel was a public corporation to manage the industry on a commercial basis, as a profit-seeking business, not as a public service.

With changing market conditions, 'the anarchy of production' (Engels Anti-Duhring) in capitalism makes nonsense of all attempts to plan production, and nationalised industries have to earn a return on capital while competing in the market place. With crisis and recession in capitalism after 1973, and the election of Thatcher in 1979 capitalist re-structuring and de-industrialisation began which involved the closure of steel works, loss of steel jobs, and a rapid contraction of the steel industry. A national steel strike called by the British Iron and Steel Trades Confederation lasted 13 weeks from January to April 1980 but did not halt de-industrialisation. Between 1979-82, 20,000 steel jobs were lost in Sheffield and eventually the British Steel Corporation was 'privatised' in 1988.

Steve Clayton

Suffer little children (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Children, some as young as nine years old, clothed in war suits with distinctive red arm bands and brandishing plastic keys are a familiar sight in many Iranian cities. The red arm bands signify a willingness to die a martyr's death. The plastic key is to open the gates of paradise. Attracted from the more poverty stricken areas of Iran, these children are indoctrinated to a high pitch of religious madness, given a few weeks' military training and then moved up to the front line. Once they are in the thick of it, the children are used in suicide attacks, sent blindly and unarmed into the minefields to act as human mine-flails. They are sent on mindless mass attacks towards the Iraqi defence, to draw fire sp that the regular Iranian soldiers can pinpoint Iraqi firing positions. It has been estimated that well over 50,000 Iranian children have been slaughtered in this war since this war began. At a United Nations meeting an Iranian statement in their defence seemed based on the fact that the children are "volunteers" and that the Iranian leadership could not and would not deny children the right to be martyrs.

Child labour is supposed to have gone out with the last century. The sad reality is that the labour of millions of children throughout the world is still abused. This is the modern world of nine-year-old coal miners and eight-year-old prostitutes, of little girls who work twelve-hour shifts in factories and of small children abandoned to live by their wits on city streets. Employers all over the world see children as a source of cheap, obedient and profitable labour power.

Over 40,000 children under five die each day of hunger and disease. UNICEF estimate that between fifteen and seventeen million children under five die every year. This is before war, drought and other factors have taken their toll. In South Africa 90 per cent of people in the rural areas of Ciskei get their water from open sources shared with livestock. In one village in the Venda Bantustan, ten out of thirty babies born died because of contaminated water and 62 per cent of schoolchildren from the Ciskei Bantustan do not meet the World Health Organisation's nutritional standards, although "the money required to provide adequate food, water, health and housing for everyone in the world has been estimated at $17 billion a year . . . . About as much as the world spends on arms every two weeks" (Campaign Against the Arms Trade).

The future of children all over the world depends on us, the entire working class. Either they continue to suffer or we take steps to ensure a safer and more humane way of life for all of us.

J. Trainer

Sideline cynic (1983)

Book Review from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Go Fourth and Multiply — The British Left in 1983 (Dialogue of the Deaf, 60p).

This thirty-page pamphlet is a review of the various factions of the Left. In its descriptions of the pretensions and self-delusions of the would-be vanguards the pamphlet is historically accurate and frequently witty. Indeed, as a piece of light reading it is to be recommended, especially to sneering, politically inactive, non-aligned radicals who think they are cynics because they rejected the fallacies in their 'A' level sociology syllabus. Anyone who likes the "humour" of Private Eye will wet themselves reading this.

The section on the Socialist Party of Great Britain is to be found on pages 21-2. The first sentence gives a clue to the accuracy of the piece: "The SPGB, in some ways the most extreme of all left organisations, is the exclusive brethren of the labour movement". What is this supposed to mean? Within what spectrum are we extreme; what is a "left organisation"; in what sense are we exclusive? The fact is that the Socialist Party is neither "extreme" nor "moderate" (according to the third paragraph, "the SPGB can be seen as moderate") because we present a case which is opposed totally to capitalism and committed unequivocally to socialism. We are not part of the Left, which is merely a statist tendency within capitalism; we are not "exclusive" because we make clear that until the overwhelming majority of workers are included in the socialist movement there can be no revolution. How can the only party standing for democracy be called exclusive?

The superficial references to our history are reasonably accurate and the summary of the Socialist Party's political position is as good as one could expect from a writer who has clearly received her ideas as part of a journalistic exercise rather than as a serious political inquiry. As a result, she stresses points about the Party which can be picked up from anecdotes and omits those which need to be emphasised in order to distinguish the Socialist Party from the Leftist factions described on the other pages.

The political pundit or opinionated scribe on the sidelines is always a distasteful character in politics. It is very easy to giggle at those motivated to try to change society; do nothing and you will never be criticised.

Steve Coleman 

Who are "we"? (2002)

From the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Somebody once remarked that the most important word in the political vocabulary is “we”. It was a shrewd observation, since to get someone to use “we” in relation to some group of people is to get them to identify their interest as the interest of that group.

In the battle for “we”, socialists are trying to get all those excluded from ownership and control of means of production to recognise the fact of their common interest as one class within capitalist society, to regard themselves as “we” and to use “our” and “us” only in relation to that class and its interests.

Those who control one or other of the two hundred or so armed states into which the world is divided have to try to prevent this practice emerging, and deliberately seek to undermine it, in the interest of the other main class in capitalist society – those who do own and control means of production and who derive a privileged income from this. They seek to convince the people they rule over that the “we” they should identify with is “the nation” as the nation part of what they call the “nation-state” they rule.

It is in this light that should be seen David Blunkett's White Paper last month on immigration and nationality, which proposes that people seeking British nationality should be required not just to have a knowledge of “the British way of life” but also to publicly swear allegiance to the queen. It is part of the ideological battle waged by the British ruling class to appropriate the word “we”.

Immigration causes a problem for them since immigrants, having been brought up under some other state, have not gone through the same process of brainwashing and conditioning as have the “native” population. Those born and brought up in Britain have been taught, through what's been drummed into them in school and through what they continuously read in the papers or hear on the radio or television, to regard themselves as British. In school they are taught the history of the kings and queens of England, and of the wars in which the British ruling class has been involved in over the centuries, and of the evolution of the British state. The media reinforce this by reporting news from an almost exclusively British angle and encourage identification with “the nation” via identification with “our” sports teams and performers.

It therefore comes almost as a reflex action for people born and brought up in Britain to use “we” in relation to the British state and to regard themselves as part of a British “nation”. So people spontaneously say such things as “we beat the French at Waterloo” or “we won the second world war” or “we got five gold medals at the olympics”. Even opponents of particular policies pursued by the British state, yesterday as well as today, fall into the same trap and say such things as “we should never have conquered India” or “we shouldn't join the euro”.

Such usage is music to the ears of the ruling class as they know it means they are on top in the battle for “we”. They have succeeded in getting their subjects to identify with them and their interests. Wage and salary workers, instead of seeing “we” as their class, have come to see it as “the nation”.

Nation-building

It wasn't always so easy. Historians such as Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm have demonstrated that a nation is not a natural community that existed before the state, but that it's the other way round: the state existed first and then proceeded to impose on those it ruled over the idea that they formed a “nation”. The longest-standing states of Western Europe – England, France and Spain – emerged at the end of the feudal era and then had to create a national feeling amongst the population living within their frontiers. These frontiers were accidental and had been determined by a number of key battles amongst dynastic rulers in feudal times. Had the outcome of these battles been different, then southern Britain might have been part of the same state as northern France, while northern Britain might have been part of a state with Scandinavia and southern France part of a state with Catalonia and northern Italy. That's not how things turned out, but the point is that they could have done. States pre-existed and in a very real sense created nations. Nations are groups of people ruled by a state or a would-be state.

States that have been formed more recently – and most of the world's states today were only formed in the last 80 or so years, i. e., have only been going for two or three generations – have had, and some still have, a serious problem in convincing all those they rule over that they form part of a single nation with a common interest. It is why their nationalism tends to be more shrill and authoritarian. It has to be, to overcome the tendency of some of their subjects, especially those speaking a minority language within their state, to identify themselves with some other nationalism particularly that of a neighbouring state.

Even a long-established state such as Britain has not solved this problem entirely, as witness Northern Ireland where a considerable proportion of the population use “we” not in relation to Britain but in relation to the Irish State and the “nation” it fosters. On the mainland the British state's problem in this respect has been amongst the immigrants from its former Empire, many of whom, notoriously to Norman Tebbitt's annoyance, refuse to support the English cricket team and continue to support that of their country of origin or that of their parents. More seriously, the ruling class were shocked by the number of immigrants from Pakistan and their descendants who supported the Taliban in the most recent Afghan War.

Until recently the dominant opinion amongst those in charge of the British state about how to deal with this was to make a virtue of necessity and pursue a policy of “multiculturalism”. It didn't work. In fact, it has encouraged division, by getting people to identify with their “culture” rather than with the British “nation”. (Socialists, too, see “multiculturalism” as divisive but for the different reason that it gets workers to identify with some other group over and above their class.) Now a change of policy is under way, as announced in Blunkett's White Paper, a swing to “assimilationism”.

Queen Capital

The first to experience this change of policy are to be applicants for British nationality. Blunkett wants them to be able to show some knowledge of the British state, its institutions and the history of its rulers, before being accepted into the British “nation”. The expectation is that they will say “we beat the French at Waterloo” and “we should/should not join the euro” as readily as any true-born Briton. Perhaps too they will support England in test matches.

There are also to be required to publicly pledge allegiance to the queen in ceremonies akin to the patriotic flag-worshipping that applicants for US citizenship have to go through. Such a ceremony would be a farcical revival of feudal times, but it brings out the importance of the royal family to the British ruling class. The royal family's role is to act as a focus for loyalty to the British state. The 19th Tory Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, is credited with first having thought this up. The royal family may be a relic from feudalism but it is easier to get people to identify with it than with some abstraction like the constitution. Nor is any superannuated politician dubbed “the president” ever going to be able to act as such a focus.

It is also less hypocritical, because members of the British “nation” are called what they really are –”subjects”, people subjected to the rule of a ruling class. Tony Benn, old-fashioned radical liberal still fighting 19th century battles against Disraeli that he is, finds this abhorrent. He wants us to be called “citizens” not “subjects”, as people are in France. But the people of France are no less subjects of the French ruling class and its state for being called citizens. Let a spade continue to be called a spade. What we should object to is not to being called subjects, but to being subjects.

Benn is a dissident member of the ruling class who hasn't understood their interests properly (though republicanism and “citizenship” could become a useful alternative way of ensuring loyalty to the British capitalist state if ever the royal family becomes too unpopular). But even though royalty is much less popular than it was even 25 years ago, as the media is noting as the queen's golden jubilee celebrations falter, it is still an asset that the British ruling class want to hold on to and use to the full. It serves to get wage and salary workers to be loyal to the British state and to use “we” in relation to the interests of its ruling class. A revealing demonstration of its effectiveness in duping workers can be seen elsewhere in this issue, in the Fifty Years Ago column, where we recall that the print workers – not the printing firm – refused to typeset an article in our March 1952 issue on the death of King George VI which pointed this out.

Perhaps we should have gone to a firm of printers that only employed immigrant workers who had not yet been broken in to considering themselves loyal subjects of the crowned head of the British capitalist state.

Adam Buick

A weak brew (1982)

From the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Beveridge Report, Social Insurance and Allied Services, was published in December 1942; 70,000 copies were sold within hours and in a short time there were few adults who did not know of, and generally approve, its main recommendations. Produced in the depths of wartime, the Report promised to abolish want by solving the peacetime problems of poverty and unemployment, a prospect that was to inspire workers to improve their contribution to the war effort.

Sir William Beveridge was Chairman of an Interdepartmental Committee set up in June 1941 by Arthur Greenwood, a Labour Party Minister in the coalition government, to undertake a survey of "the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen's compensation, and to make recommendations". State run insurance schemes for the elderly and unemployed were not new: pensions for some old people were first paid in 1909 and were non-contributory until their scope was extended in 1925. A National Insurance Act in 1911 had introduced (for workers below a certain income) a restricted system of insurance for sickness and unemployment, with employees, employers and the state all contributing. There were also voluntary associations and schemes run by individual employers.

Most of the Beveridge Report was concerned with the reorganisation of social insurance into a more economic and comprehensive national scheme. Its specific proposals covered every aspect of life but did not include the practical details of how a comprehensive health service should be organised. 

Beveridge considered that practically all the acute poverty in Britain had two causes — the "interruption or loss of earning power and failure to relate family income to family needs". It was considered that, because so many wage earners were "far above want", poverty could be abolished by "a redistribution of income within the working classes at all". His solution was a "double redistribution of income" through social insurance and children's allowance.

The enthusiastic reception given to his Plan was, according to Beveridge (The Times, 9 November 1953) due to "the subsistence principle, the guaranteeing to every citizen, in virtue of contributions and irrespective of need or means, of an income in unemployment, sickness, accidental injury, old age, or other vicissitudes, sufficient without further resources, to provide for his basic needs and those of his dependants". (Quoted by J. C. Kincaid, Poverty and Equality in Britain.) This central idea, the subsistence principle, was what had made his Report more than just a rationalisation of existing services. Flat-rate benefits were to be linked to flat-rate contributions; the obligation to contribute would be the same for everyone regardless of income and adequate financial support, at a minimum subsistence level, obtained as of right and without the hated means test.

Beveridge was obliged by the Treasury Chiefs to give figures for subsistence incomes. His estimate of the minimum necessary for families to live on was based on calculations made by Seebohm Rowntree, for his research into poverty in York in 1936. Using contemporary knowledge of dietary requirements Rowntree had worked out a minimum budget for a family of 5 — the equivalent of £2.90 at 1938 prices. He was concerned to show that families on a lower income, no matter how efficiently it was managed or how restrained their behaviour, were unable to provide for their barest physiological needs. Seven per cent of working class families in York were suffering "primary poverty" — dreadful deprivation for which the sternest moralists could not say they were to blame. "Secondary" poverty included families whose income was so little above Rowntree's poverty line that "inefficient" budgeting put them in the same condition as those in primary poverty.

The benefit rates recommended by Beveridge ) for a family of five — £2.65 at 1938 prices) were at a lower level than Rowntree's "human needs" minimum budget, mainly because he did not allow for personal sundries like a newspaper, haircuts or birthday presents. He did allow a tiny margin (of one sixth) for "inefficiency in purchasing, and also for the certainty that people in receipt of the minimum income required for subsistence will in fact spend some of it on things not absolutely necessary". The rate for old people was even lower than for working adults. Beveridge thought if "dangerous to be in any way lavish to old age" until adequate provision had been made for the health of the young. The proportion of old people in the population was increasing and the aim should be to discourage retirement and the claiming of pension. The benefit paid widows and blind persons should be limited by the assumption that they could find work.

The low level of benefits was claimed as a merit of the scheme since it would not interfere with the freedom and responsibility of individuals to make their own provision above that level; it would not discourage "thrift". If the scheme were financed by contributions it would be convenient to administrate and the Social Insurance Fund could be self contained. People preferred to pay and, mindful of their moral welfare, citizens should realise that benefits linked to contributions provided a motive for supporting measures for prudent administration. They "should not be taught to regard the State as the dispenser of gifts for which no one needs to pay". However if employees had security and were properly maintained during inevitable intervals of unemployment or sickness, this would help to make them efficient producers.

The acceptance of the Report, by capitalists and politicians, as a basis for post-war planning was influenced by the belief that healthy, contented workers would make a more efficient labour force, and by the fear that without social reform there might be social disorder. It was widely thought that there would be unemployment in the post-war period — Beveridge assumed up to 1,500, 000 — and those fighting and working to win the war needed to know that "their" country would have something better to offer in the future than the pre-war means-tested poverty. Another merit from the capitalist point of view was that the proposals were "moderate enough to disarm any charge of indulgence" (The Times, 2 December 1942), though some criticism was still made on that ground.

The National Health and National Insurance Acts passed by the post-war Labour Government were along the lines recommended in the Beveridge Report. The scope of schemes already in existence was enlarged and extended, and made national in operation. The Bill for the one new measure, allowances for children, was presented in Parliament during the closing weeks of the coalition government and became law during the short Conservative Ministry of May-July 1945. Family allowances were paid at a lower rate that Beveridge had wanted but the school meals and milk service were counted as payment in kind.

Before the Report was published negotiations took place between Beveridge and Treasury Chiefs, including Keynes, who agreed to a scheme which limited the Treasury contribution to £100 million a year or 20 per cent  of the total costs of benefits paid out. In the interests of "financial soundness" the needs of poor people were to be measured according to an amount of money fixed by prior agreement. To satisfy Keynes' condition for support, and because he worked on insurance principles, Beveridge had planned for pensions to be paid at the full rate only after the scheme had been in operation for twenty years. (Those already near pensionable age could be covered by assistance pensions subject to a means test.) The Labour government decided to pay the full amount when the national insurance scheme began to operate in 1948, and also reduced the qualifying time to ten years. (Years of contributions made to earlier schemes were counted.) This intention had also been outlined in the 1944 White Paper.

When the National Insurance Act was passed in 1946 the figures for benefit rates and allowances were based on 1938 minimum needs with some allowance for the increase in prices between 1938 and 1946. James Griffiths, Minister of National Insurance, justified the rates as being "broadly in relation to the cost of living". The "subsistence" basis, so important to Beveridge, became a broad subsistence basis. By 1948 prices had risen still further and the actual purchasing power of insurance benefits paid to adults was 25 per cent lower than even the Beveridge minimum. The cost of living continued to rise and with only a small increase in National Insurance benefits the gap widened, so that means-tested national assistance benefits were actually higher than social insurance benefits. In 1953 Beveridge was calling on the Conservative government to raise the benefit rates to adequacy for subsistence, or to say "that they have formally abandoned security against want without a means test, and declare that they drop the Beveridge Report and the policy of 1946." (J. C. Kincaid.)

An important difference between the recommendations in the report and the policy accepted by both the Coalition and Attlee governments concerned unemployment. Benefit was made payable for only 30 weeks, with the possibility of a further limited period based on an exemplary employment record. Beveridge had wanted those out of work to receive benefit for the full term of their unemployment. After a certain period they might be obliged to attend a training centre, nor should those in receipt of unemployment benefit be allowed to hold out indefinitely "for work of the type to which they are used or in their present places of residence, or if there is work which they could do available at the standard rate for that work".

Compiled by a supporter of free enterprise capitalism, the Beveridge Plan for ending poverty by social insurance was a moralistic scheme whereby workers whose employment was interrupted or ended would be given support by the state at a minimum subsistence level, and as cheaply as possible. Cheese-paring social reform was used in the post-war years in support of argument for wage restraint. It is difficult to reconcile the extravagant claims made about the Welfare State with either the aims of Beveridge or the legislation passed in the years since the war. Poverty today is not the result of a decline in once effective services, the social security system never having been intended to give more than the minimum of support to members of the working class not provided for by employment. Trying to get means-tested benefits adds to the problems of the poor; but even if insurance benefits had been increased to take recipients above some poverty line, it would have made little difference.

Forty years after Beveridge high unemployment, not to mention the plight of single parents, means so many people needing supplementary benefit that in some areas queues form outside DHSS offices before they open and the staff are unable to cope with the pressure of work. Many thousands of families live in deep poverty despite the father being in full time work, and are entitled to Family Income Supplement and other benefits. According to EEC official statistics 6.3 per cent of British households live below the poverty line, when poverty is defined as living on less than half the average income in this country (Guardian, 12 October 1982). Some conditions may be better now than forty years ago, but this can be of little comfort to the mother who in 1982 has to decide whether to get shoes for her child with the money from supplementary benefit meant for her own food. The patience—if that is the word—of reformers is such that an increase in child benefit is being out forward as the way to end family poverty.

Poverty is a working class problem. The vast majority, the working class, who do all of the work of society do not own the means of production. Working class lives are restricted by this fact even without the additional burdens borne in times of unemployment, old age and sickness.

Pat Deutz

Cooking the Books: Responsible Capitalism? No Such Thing (2012)

The Cooking the Book Column from the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May we were interviewed to contribute to a short film on ‘responsible capitalism’ to be shown at a meeting of ‘investor relations’ professionals. Here are the answers we prepared to their set questions.

Why do you think capitalism is in crisis?

Capitalism is in the middle of an economic crisis because it goes through repeated cycles of boom and slump. It’s just that the present economic downturn is bigger and longer-lasting than the others since the 1930s. Despite what Keynes taught and what Gordon Brown claimed to have done, the boom/sump cycle cannot be eradicated. It is built-in to capitalism. There is another sense that capitalism is in crisis. The word ‘capitalism’ has become a dirty word. It has no inspiring vision of the future to offer. Its defenders no longer have the self-confidence they had 20-30 years ago. This is a good thing as capitalism really does have nothing to offer.

Are wealth creation and the good of society mutually exclusive concepts?

That depends on what you mean by ‘wealth creation’. Wealth is not created by entrepreneurs but by people working with their hands and brains to make things and provide services and, yes, profit-seeking and the pursuance of the good of society are mutually exclusive.

What's your opinion on banker bonuses and executive pay?

That some bankers and top executives are ripping off shareholders. But, as Socialists, we’re not worried about that. It’s for them to fight out amongst themselves. It’s of no concern to those who work for a wage or a salary.

What should be the role of corporates and business in wider society?

It’s not a question of what should be but of what, given capitalism, has to be. Legally as well as economically, corporations are obliged to try to maximise profits. If one corporation didn’t it wouldn’t generate enough funds to invest in innovations to keep up with the competition. It would go under. The role of corporations and business in a capitalist society is to make and accumulate profits. That’s actually reflected and enshrined in company law, so that if the executives of a business decided to pursue some philanthropic or charitable aim at the expense of profits they could be sued by the shareholders.

Can capitalism really have a core social purpose? (Capitalism is nature-prone to create divisions and social strata)

No, capitalism cannot have any other purpose than the economic one of making and accumulating profits. It cannot serve any other social purpose and cannot be made to. It is based on a division of society into those who own and control the places where wealth is produced and those who don’t. This may not be the 1 percent/99 percent division popularised by the Occupy Movement but it will be something near to that, maybe 5 percent/95 percent. Yes, capitalism is nature-prone to perpetuate this class divide. Profits and riches accumulate for the few while the rest of us are rationed by the size of our pay cheque. The rich always get richer even if the rest of us don’t always get poorer (as we are in the present economic downturn).

Next steps, how do you see things developing?

We know how we’d like to see things develop: a growing worldwide anti-capitalist movement that will eventually end capitalism and replace class ownership by common ownership and democratic control and production for profit by production directly to satisfy people’s needs. If this doesn’t happen then capitalism will just stagger on from crisis to crisis while social needs and the good of society continue to be neglected.