Between the Lines: Passing of a Texan Idiot (1985)

The Between the Lines Column from the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Passing of a Texan Idiot

Wipe away those tears, fellow workers: mourning will not bring him back. Those of us who watched the BBC's final screening of Dallas (BBC1, 17 July) saw how Bobby Ewing, the not very bright Texan oil millionaire, planned to marry two rich women in one episode and, just as he'd decided which one to leave on the shelf, along comes another woman in a fast car and . . . bash! Next scene: Bobby lies dying in a posh Texan hospital surrounded by the whole cast and not a single doctor or nurse. After mumbling some soppy sentiments — "Don't let them sell you to the ITV, Pam" and "Don't forget the number of the Swiss bank account, J.R." — his eyes close and the contract runs out. The other characters stand around and weep, presumably because this is the last episode to be shown in Britain. If I was J.R. I'd sue the hospital for negligence, leaving the poor man unattended in his final moments, with nothing but a second-hand script of a death scene to keep him going. 

Millions of workers watched this sentimental garbage, pushing it into the top programmes in that week's ratings. While wage slaves mourn the fictitious of a privileged parasite there are millions of the wealth-producing class living in squalor — as shown on the very good portrait of the declining british welfare services, From The Cradle To The Grave (ITV, Mondays, 29 July-19 August). The choice is clear: do we treat into the fantasy worlds of Dallas and Dynasty or look at the less glamorous, less jolly, less simplistic world of social reality for the working-class majority? We know which choice the programme-controllers would like us to make.

News?

Talking of utter triviality, have you noticed how TV news often repots as issues of importance matters which inform us of nothing but the empty-headedness of the news editors? The recent story about Labour MPs dangling a topless woman over the River Thames (BBC News, 29 July) was about as important a contribution to human knowledge as the lengthy reports a few weeks earlier about a manifestly deranged ex-SAS man who spent several weeks living in a small rock — a British rock of course — somewhere to the north of Scotland. When one considers all the important happenings in the world which workers should be hearing about — the oppressive activities of governments, the mass murders and mutilations in wars, the millions dying of starvation in a world of food surpluses, the uncontrollable fluctuations of world trade — why is it that the important news is all too often left out to make room for insignificant trivia? Could it be that, like the producers of Dallas, the news editors prefer a good bit of diversionary escapism to a healthy dose of useful knowledge?

Socialists and Censorship

In the same week that the BBC listed its twenty-year ban on The War Game it obeyed government wishes and banned the Real Lives documentary which included an interview with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein. Socialists aim to build a majority movement in favour of a totally democratic society; we have always emphasised that such an end can only be obtained by democratic means. Socialists are against government censorship whether it is by law, as in Russia and South Africa (where the recent emergency powers have seriously media censorship), or by hints and the use of political pressure, as in allegedly democratic Britain.

In this column last month we pointed out that, much as we deplore the anti-working-class aims and policies of Sinn Fein, we favour all opportunities for workers to be exposed to all political points of view. If the defenders of the IRA have a case to state we are in favour of it being heard, not censored, just as we want our own ideas to be given media exposure. The BBC has a long record of denying the Socialist Party of Great Britain TV time and it is worthy of note that the major capitalist parties, which do have access to TV, have not found such censorship in conflict with their professed democratic principles. In calling for the Real Lives documentary to be banned, the Home Secretary admitted that he had not even seen a recording of it. Perhaps he well urge the BBC to show it in twenty years' time.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: Sinn Fein, Game Shows and Live Aid (1985)

The Between the Lines Column from the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinn Feigners

Beatrix Campbell, in Diverse Reports (C4, 3 July), sought to portray Sinn Fein as a progressive, caring, reforming party—an image it seeks to put across to electors. It should not be surprising that a programme showed Sinn Fein's policies without constant reference to the party's support for nationalist murderers; after all, the Tory and Labour parties support national armies committed to obscene acts of violence, but this is not mentioned every time there is a programme about their policies.

And having seen the uncensored picture, what are we to conclude? Quite simply, that Sinn Fein is just another party of reformist politicians who want to run capitalism. As the party's leader Gerry Adams, said, "All we can do is  . . . achieve those very small gains by working along with the people within the system". So much for Assembly member, Danny Morrison's throwaway comment that Sinn Fein is "a revolutionary party". From Adams we heard the usual vague claims of a reformist leader: first the nationalist movement must be built up to oppose British rule, and then after the British have withdrawn and Ireland is independent there will be "the beginnings of a socialist society". What does this mean? Uncensored Adams neglected to tell us. Campbell, who is a feminist, asked Adams what the position of women would be once Ireland had achieved Home/Rome Rule; she stated that "for women this happens to be one of the most repressive cultures you can think of." But Gerry told her that her question was based on "cultural imperialism" and she, being English, should learn that Irish people are different.

At the end of the programme one was left with the clear impression of a political party based on the twin confusions of nationalist illusion and reformist promise. If there ever is a united Ireland, presided over by Sinn Fein, it will be another capitalist state and the workers living under it will detest Adams and his fellow would-be rulers as much as they do their present representatives.

Even without the terrorist violence, which socialist unequivocally condemn, there was plenty shown about Sinn Fein to justify the unreserved hostility of socialists towards them.

Money sickness

It was D. H. Lawrence who referred to "the collective money-madness of mankind",  and where better to  observe that madness than in the gambling establishments of Las Vegas. Showdown at Glitter Gulch was a documentary about the world poker championship (BBC1, 3 July)  - an event where the winner gets a million dollars. It was an obscene spectacle, all these idlers throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars on to a table while millions of workers go without a decent supper and millions more die for lack of money for food. It was not "human nature" which led these men to indulge in an insane monetary ritual — it was a social system which elevates money into the god of life and trains those with more of it than sense to invest their energies in acquiring more. A mad system drives men mad and this programme was a peep through the window of one of the top-class asylums.

The price is indignity

The same "collective money-madness", but at a cheaper rate for the proles, is The Price is Right (don't know or care when it's on). The programme succeeds in being the ultimate in tasteless money fetishism. Crowds of impoverished workers scream and throw dignity to the wind as the prospect of guessing the price of an electric carving knife turns them into human cash registers. The aim of the game is to guess how much commodities are worth and if the guess is near enough to the price you win. Game shows generally portray capitalism as its most grotesque, and the trouble with watching them is that we are supposed to applaud contestants for doing well.

Live aid

Live Aid for Africa (BBC, 13 July) demonstrated several things that it did not intend, The purpose of the concert was to raise money to stop people starving to death in Africa. Yet its effect will be minimal, negligible, crumbs thrown into an ocean of despair. What then did the event show? First of all, that workers, even when motivated by immense goodwill and collective concern, cannot solve capitalism's problems. During the course of the sixteen-hour concert British workers donated a mere £4 million in telephone pledges, less than the British Government spends on the military machine every three hours every day; less than the richest woman in Britain (the Queen( receives as interest on her personal investments in one week. Workers were 'phoning up and saying that they would sell their cars and donate their precious savings to the worthy cause — but asking the impoverished in Britain to feed the starving of Africa solves precisely nothing.

Secondly, the show demonstrated just how superficial is the moralising self-righteousness of those who do not understand the capitalist system. Periodically we would be urged — by millionaires who became rich by dressing up in fancy costumes and singing about love through sore throats — to "feed the world". But why is food dumped while people starve? Why do some people have banquets while others do not? In short, the whole event was an invitation to weep at the symptoms, and to hell with any concern about the disease. Indeed, Bob Geldof (who may be sincere, but it certainly naive to a dangerous degree) was seen repeatedly throwing his arms in the air, like a man who feels something but does not know what, and declaring that governments should "do something". In fact, governments are doing something: running capitalism and feeding the capitalists' hunger for profits.

Thirdly, the show proved just how musicians have become incapable of performing without record producers to twiddle knobs and make them sound any good. Some of the sets from Wembley and Philadelphia, presented without the benefit of studio treatment, ranged from not very good to pathetic. Demonstrated above all, however, was the power of communication technology: fourteen international satellites beamed the show to 50 million TV sets, reaching an estimated audience of 1.5 billion people. But just as this technology can unite millions of workers for a lofty, if ultimately futile, moral cause, so too can it bind them together for more sinister propaganda messages, such as those demanded for example in the build-up to war. Left in the hands of the capitalist minority the means of mass communication are a potent weapon. But used for socialist purposes, think of how the worldwide unity forged by Live Aid could be turned into an instrument for making democracy work within the global village.

Watching the show until the final performance by Bob Dylan (not an occasion worthy of the wait, as it turned out), I was struck by an overwhelming sense of depression — not just at the thought that fellow human beings are starving to death, although that is good enough reason for a sleepless night, but because all the goodwill, energy, determination and technological know-how put into "doing something about it" will not feed the world. Despite Geldof's moral crusade the obscenity of mass human misery will go on and on and on until Elvis Costello stops singing "all you need is love" and the workers realise that the world os ours for the taking. And finally the national anthem came on, and by the time it got to "Long To Reign Over Us" I was fast asleep.

Steve Coleman 

Between the Lines: News from Oceania (1989)

The Between the Lines Column from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

News from Oceania

George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eight Four, is about the most miserable social vision ever constructed. In 1984 there was much debate about how far society had gone down the road to Orwell's fascistic nightmare world. While "intellectuals" were weighing civil liberties on the Orwellian scales, picketing miners were feeling the truncheons of workers in uniform who were sent to break their resistance. What happened to the miners — the state brutality, government callousness and media vilification — was a stronger answer to the question of what kind of society 1984 was than any of the 19.50 hardback academics ever came up with.

Before 1984 there was much debate about quite what Orwell was attacking in his novel. Some said it was a critique of post-war England, bowed in spirit by the rationing and regimentation of the war years — that 1984 was really 1948 reversed and writ larger. Others suggested that Orwell was trying to attack socialism. Orwell was specific about the fact that his novel was not intended as an attack on the genuine principles of socialism (as he understood them). Writing to Francis Henson of the United Automobile Workers union in the USA, he explained that "My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on socialism  . . . but as a show up of the perversions to which a centralised economy is liable and which have already been partly realised in Communism and Fascism." In short, the novel was aimed at the drift towards the corporate state which so-called radicals of both the Left and Right had celebrated as liberation from capitalism in the years that Orwell lived and wrote.

Last month Channel Four showed the recent film version of the novel. It is open to criticism in that its depiction of a mass society of submissive ideological slaves presented the deluded victims as caricatures of conformity. They looked too much like extras in a film, told to look like conditioned subjects. In reality, conditioned subjects are less caricatured; it is precisely that humans are not robots, and yet can be made to think like programmed machines, that is sinister and frightening about totalitarianism. The "masses" in this film looked and sounded like robotic machines, and this diminished the horror of what had been done to them. It is the whistling Nazi and the Stalinist who loves his wife and children who are the really frightening characters. That said, it was important that the film was made and shown because within it is a reminder of the dangers inherent in dogmatic belief.

Nineteen Eighty Four is essentially about the power to make people believe that is not true. O'Brien tells Winston Smith, while he is torturing him, that thinking is all bout learning to discipline your mind to accept reality. And "reality" is what those above you — Big Brother, The State, The Party, conventional opinion — dictates it to be. Smith attempted to resist the social reality of the ruling elite. Like the Romantics of the last century, who sought to be true to their own feelings before they would defer to the abstract Facts of the Industrial Order, Smith believed that his duty was to obey his own feelings, not those of his dogmatic rulers with  their ideology of Ingsoc. Smith tells his lover, Julia, that it is not survival which is most important, but remaining human. He pleads with her not to betray her humanity. She thinks that by betrayal he means she should never confess to the state — never get caught. But betrayal means more than that: it means acquiescence to dogma, to ideas which are unrelated to experience. In the end Smith is forced to betray himself in both senses. Not only does he confess to thought crimes — that is easy — but he also succumbs to the dogma. He is afraid to have doubts. He learns to say and do what is expected of submissive subjects.

The novel, and now the film are not about 1948 or 1984 or the merits of socialism of the demerits of Stalinism; they are about the power of dogma to extinguish the sense of doubt which is the basis of all reason and the necessary accompaniment of all intelligent political conviction. When you stop doubting you are politically dead. Regardless of what orwell meant by his novel, and regardless of the demerits of the film as a depiction of the ideologically conditioned crowd, there is still importance in the message which tells us that minds can be controlled, resistance nullified by the very forces against whom we need to resist, and that dogma, in whatever form, is a fearful enemy. To pre-empt critics, we would add that this applies no less to socialist dogma. As Orwell said of his own vision, "The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you."

Our enemies are our friends

News At Ten (6 April) urged us to welcome our new-found friend, Mikhail Gorbachev. He is a communist, you see. A communist with whom Mrs. Thatcher is very pleased to do business. A communist who is proud to invite the Queen to come over and tread on a few of his subjects. The cult of Gorby is very big right now. It was the Newspeak writers on The Sun who christened him Gorby. Over in Washington the CIA tried to put a damper on the visit by leaking the information about Russian sales of fighter planes to Libya. All part of the propaganda war. This is the dogmatic assault upon us today: when our rulers want us to believe that Russia is "the Evil Empire" and we must prepare to die destroying it, then the newsreaders will tell us what a despicable police state the dictator Gorbachev presides over (as he does); when commerce and international militarism require closer relations between the two old superpowers — so that perhaps they can prepare to make war on the new, up and coming superpowers — then Gorby is our man and pictures of Raisa being shown the Tower of London are the order of the day. It all depends what they want us to think. To accept what the servants of capitalist propaganda tell us is to fall into the trap which leads to the kind of world Orwell was writing about. That millions have fallen into the trap cannot be denied, but it is not too late to climb out. In an essay written in 1940, called Inside The Whale, Orwell made a comment which is worth keeping in front of you while watching News At Ten: "To say 'I accept' in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine-guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murders."

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: Next Fraud (1989)

The Between the Lines Column from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Next Fraud

Next Left (C4, 8 pm, Fridays) offered four programmes packed to the edge of the screen with undiluted nonsense. Purporting to be about the failure of socialism in years past and the need for socialists to adapt to the new age, the series offered the most facile account of current world politics and not even an attempt at explaining what socialism actually means. It seems to be the case that when documentary-makers produce films about socialism they feel quite free to accept the fallacy that anyone who calls himself a socialist is one. Neil Kinnock, Bryan Gould, François Mitterrand, Brandt, Rocard  . . . all of them advocates of state-run capitalism, and all of them called upon to discuss why the failure of their state-capitalist policies means that socialism has been tried and failed. The working class, we are told, is disappearing; the market is becoming more accountable to people's needs; planning has failed and "freedom" is the new buzz word. "Socialists" must adapt to these new conditions or become irrelevant. Instead of talking about social transformation socialists should be attending to more modest changes, we are informed, such as establishing workers' co-operatives and providing welfare services through the trade unions. The new "socialist" model is Sweden; "socialism" works there — even though Sweden is a capitalist country. No contradiction. No need to explain anything. The frauds who make these programmes are like the character in Alice in Wonderland who insists that words shall mean what they want them to mean. Channel Four's attempt to advise socialists to throw away our revolutionary principles and attend to making capitalism work was intellectually shallow, dishonest drivel.

Laughing all the way to the bank

Another bloody charity telethon. It is hard to switch on the telly these days without seeing either Kylie Minogue or a begging bowl. This time it was Comic Relief (BBC1, all evening, Friday, 10 March). No doubt there was plenty of sincerity there. So what? Since when has plenty of sincerity made the profit system run in our interest? This time we were treated to comedians making jokes to encourage workers to send in a few quid. In one night's nationwide collecting Comic Relief brought in about £10 million. About enough to buy a cheapish military fighter plane. The same night's Newsnight (BBC2, 10.30 pm) had a very brief report on the annual profit made by the clothing company, Viyella: £135 million — down on last year's figure. That's a year's profit for one medium-sized capitalist company. So, who is giving more to charity — the workers who collected ten million quid after a day of wearing silly plastic noses and bathing in custard for sponsorship, or the wage slaves at Viyella who donated all that profit to the capitalists in the biggest charity of all: The Wages System? The capitalist class are kept in the luxury to which they are accustomed because a majority of workers acquiesce to a system which puts the profits of the rich before the unmet needs of those crying out for help.

Free to beg

World In Action (ITV, 8 pm, Monday, 6 March) was a documentary depicting the miserable lives of kids who, having left home and come to London in search of work, find themselves in cardboard boxes on the Embankment by the River Thames. These youngsters — many of them under eighteen — are compelled to beg in order to live. Young girls are under great financial pressure to find a pimp and work for him. The programmes showed that the young beggars of London are a fast-growing population, products of a system geared not to encouraging the creativity of people, but to making them exploitable workers. If they are too young to be put to work and too poor to find shelter, then they are ignored as if they did not exist. This is the living reality of the great revival of Victorian values: the sight of homeless kids forced to beg for the price of some food — and probably for drugs once the culture of street frustration has finished with them. And these well-paid TV tricksters on Channel Four tells us that the socialist revolution from production for profit to production for human need is no longer relevant.

Steve Coleman

Debates. The S.P.G.B. versus the I.L.P. (1933)

Party News from the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A debate was held between the S.P.G.B. and the I.L.P. at Bethnal Green Town Hall on Friday, December 2nd. The I.L.P. speaker, N. Dunbar, claimed that the revolutionary ferment among the workers since the Bolshevik seizure of power has completely changed the problem of overthrowing capitalism. The workers have made inroads into capitalism by such achievements as unemployment insurance, and that the I.L.P. policy of Workers' Councils is the road by which the workers will achieve Socialism. The present I.L.P., since the Bradford Conference early this year, is a fundamentally different body from the old I.L.P., and must not be held responsible for its predecessor's actions.

Comrade Hardy, for the S.P.G.B., denied that the problem is essentially different from what it was before the war.

To get Socialism, the workers must gain control of the political machinery, yet the General Election last year showed the workers, employed and unemployed, prepared to vote the capitalists into power. Russia is not an instance of Socialism but of state capitalism, and in any event the I.L.P. cannot claim any credit for what the Bolsheviks did. In 1917, when Kerensky was in power and oppressing the Bolsheviks, the leaders of the I.L.P. sent this capitalist government a telegram of congratulation, urging the Russians, subject to certain conditions, to continue the war. (See Labour Leader, May 3rd, 1917.)

Social reforms like unemployment insurance, are methods by which the capitalists buy off working class discontent, with the result that unemployed riots are far less formidable than they were before the War.

The I.L.P., right from it formation, entered into electoral arrangements with the Liberal Party and had never fought elections on the simple demand for Socialism. The new I.L.P. is just like the old, a reformist body. The claim that the I.L.P. stands for any definite policy, cannot be maintained. The New Leader, for weeks past, has been publishing letters from influential I.L.P. members disputing with each other as to what the I.L.P.'s policy is?

The debate was well attended and both speakers obtained a good hearing from the audience, many of whom appeared to have Communist sympathies.

*     *     *     *

The S.P.G.B. versus the Co-operative Guild

A debate was held on Tuesday, November 15th, at Sutton, Surrey, between Comrade Ginsberg, representing the S.P.G.B., and Mr. Atkins, representing the Sutton Branch of the National Guild of Co-operators. The audience was small but interested and attentive.

A.F.

Notes on Economic History (12) (1961)

From the October 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Malthus on Poverty

From his law of population, Malthus infers that Governments should, on the one hand, remove all obstacles to the cultivation of the soil and, on the other, favour preventative checks, especially the postponement of marriage. The following passage from the 1803 edition is interesting: "A man born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and in fact has no right to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast, there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to begone and will quickly execute her own orders if he does not work upon the compassion of her guests."

Malthus therefore recommends the reduction of paupers' relief to a minimum. Money used to support the poor or destitute, he argues, us taken from the other classes in society, and especially from that section of the working class that is only just outside of destitution. For this poor relief, says Malthus, increases demand, and thus raises the price of food, clothing and shelter.

Malthus' main demand is for "moral restraint." He writes: "It is clearly the duty of each individual not to marry till he has the prospect of supporting his children: but it is at the same time to be wished that he should retain undiminished his desire of marriage, in order that he may exert himself to realise this prospect, and be stimulated to make provision for the support of greater numbers."

Arising from this, it was proposed to put legal difficulties in the way of marriage. The poor who had no prospects of being able to support a family were to be forbidden to marry.

The Malthusian doctrine attracted widespread attention, and was accepted almost without qualification by many scientists. It also made a strong impression on governments, and its effects were seen in the increased stringency of the marriage laws. Down to 1918 vestiges of this persisted in Bavaria and the Austrian Tyrol, where marriage could not be entered into without the permission of the commune.

The astonishing fact about the Malthusian theory is its persistence in face of evidence that confutes it. To go to the core of the question, we can say there is no evidence to warrant the assumption that there is any tendency in population to increase faster than subsistence. The facts stated by Malthus to show this tendency, simply show that where, owing to a small population in a new country. or where, owing to the unequal distribution of wealth, as among the working class in the old country, human life is occupied with physical necessity of existence, the tendency to reproduce is at a rate which, if unchecked, would at some time exceed subsistence. But it is not correct to infer from this that the tendency to reproduce would show itself to the same extent where population was sufficiently dense, and where wealth was distributed in such a way as to lift the whole community above the necessity of devoting their energies to a struggle for mere existence. Nor can it be assumed that the tendency to reproduce, by causing poverty, must prevent the existence of such a community: for this obviously would be assuming the very point at issue and be reasoning in a circle. And even if it be admitted that the tendency to multiply must ultimately cause poverty, it cannot be stated of existing that it is due to this cause until it is shown that there are no other causes which can account for it.

The Malthus theory has persisted, and will persist, because it does not in any way oppose or antagonise any powerful interest. It is soothing and reassuring to the class who, wielding the power of wealth, largely dominate thought. Indeed, at a time when men were beginning to question an examine society, it came to the aid of the ruling class. The Essay on Population was written as an answer to William Godwin's Inquiry concerning Political Justice, a book which dealt with the principle of human equality, and the effect of Malthus' book was to justify the existing inequality by shifting responsibility for it from the laws of society to some kind of God-given laws.

The Socialist of today still has to contend with Malthusian ideas, in a modern form. They become more prevalent in times of large-scale unemployment, and are also use as an excuse to justify poverty in such places as India, Africa, the Latin countries of America. The answer to Malthus, and the modern exponents of his teachings, is to be found in the method of ownership of the means of producing wealth.

Poverty, as dealt with by Malthus, is not in fact the result  of excessive breeding. It is the chaotic nature of the capitalist system which must be blamed. Its solution is obvious—remove the cause which the Socialist claims is the private property relation in the means of production. Make this property common property, and the common access to wealth which follows such a change will provide the answer to poverty, present or future.

Bob Ambridge

News From India (2015)

From the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter sent to the Calcutta paper The Statesman.

In the evening of August 23 in the Sunday Discussion Meeting of our party, the World Socialist Party (India), we read with interest the Saturday Statesman, August 22, article ‘Relevance of Marx’ written by Professor Gargi Sengupta (see here). It is really heartening to note that a nineteenth century communist revolutionary, Karl Marx, is being revisited by the 21st century mainstream press to find answers to the present-day woes and worries. Hopefully, this signals the beginning of Marx’s media-ride in India too.

This happens because, as Marx and Engels themselves observed, ‘consciousness can sometimes appear further advanced than the contemporary empirical conditions, so that in the struggles of a later epoch one can refer to earlier theoreticians as authorities’ (The German Ideology). ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’ wrote Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

In her appreciation in defence of Marx, Gargi Sengupta has rightly claimed that ‘Marxism enables us to understand the nature of the capitalist crisis,’ and also that ‘Marx believed that human development requires a cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production.’

She has excellently pronounced, ‘The overall significance of religion may have declined, but the family, the schools, and the capitalist controlled mass media continue to brainwash the working class and prevent them from realizing their true destiny’.

Her observation: ‘From a global perspective, a class-based analysis is still relevant,’ holds up one of the basic principles of Marxism. She defends Marx for ‘making a very fundamental contribution’ whereby ‘He placed human beings and their conscious, purposive activity – human labour – at the centre of his analysis’ and also for a ‘unique contribution’ – the role of ‘class struggle’ in ‘human historical development’. She is right in pointing out that ‘Marx’s writings still evoke interest across the world. … Marx’s writings can throw light on the problems of our age’. Simply because, as Marx viewed, ‘The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped form’; and ‘Production of surplus value is the absolute law of this mode of production’(Capital, Volume I).

Actually, Marx is more relevant today than ever before.

This said, I would like to comment on a couple of inaccuracies in Professor Sengupta's article. She says, ’Marx visualized the remedy in violent revolution followed by decades of civil and international warfare.’ This is a half-truth. True, in his early years Marx held a ’violent revolution’ view. However, eventually and finally he arrived at the following conclusion: ‘Proletariat – organized in a separate political party. That such organization must be pursued by all the means which the proletariat has at its disposal, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from the instrument of trickery, which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation’ (written on about May 10, 1880, printed according to L'Egalité, no. 24, June 30, 1880, checked with the text of Le Précurseur).

Secondly, in portraying capitalism as only a ‘private enterprise’ system she has missed the yardstick of defining state capitalism – the defining characteristic of which is state ownership and control of the means of production and articles for distribution. As a result she is mistaken in recognizing the erstwhile so-called ‘communist’ dictatorial and despotic state capitalist regimes of Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. How could there be ‘the eclipse of communism’ when communism (socialism the same) has nowhere and never been attempted at all? Just what happened in these countries was appropriately described in 1918 by Fitzgerald of the Socialist Party of Great Britain: ‘What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists’ (Socialist Standard, August 1918).

Binay Sarkar

Notes on Economic History (11) (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Theory of Population

As Adam Smith's doctrine spread, it was elaborated and modified. Attempts to develop his ideas led to endeavours to explain the poverty and misery of the working class and all the defects that had become apparent during the rapid development of Capitalism, from the time of publication of his Wealth of Nations.

Two contrasted attitudes appeared. One was a condemnation and a criticism of conditions—this led to ideas about Socialism. The other was a pessimistic resignation, accepting the conditions and declaring them to be the result of the working of natural laws. This was the views held by Malthus. Malthus was responsible for two important works; in 1820 his Principles of Political Economy was published preceding by some 22 years his Essay on the Principle of Population, first published in 1798, and for ever associated with his name.

Malthus begins his statement on population with an account of the "tendency of all life to increase beyond the amount of nourishment available to it." In illustration he quotes Benjamin Franklin—"It is observed by Dr. Franklin that there is no bounds to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only, as, for instance, with fennel; and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might, in a few ages, be replenished from one nation only as, for instance, with Englishmen." It follows from this, he says, that population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence.

Studying the increase of population in America, where there was an ample supply of good fertile and virgin land, and where there were few natural checks to growth of numbers. Malthus arrived at the conclusion that during about one hundred and fifty years the population had doubled itself every 25 years. The natural increase of population therefore took place like the increase in a series of numbers—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. In short, population, when its growth is unhindered, tends to increase in geometrical progression.

On the other hand, says Malthus, it is impossible to increase the produce of the soil in such a ratio. Under favourable conditions we may suppose that by improving the land already under cultivation, and by utilising the comparatively poor and neglected land, it would be possible to increase yields considerably. But the increase in twenty-five year periods (those in which population can double) could not be expected to be more rapid than is represented by the series of numbers—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. "It may be fairly pronounced . . .  that, considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio." To sum up, whereas population can increase in geometrical progression, the means of subsistence can increase only in arithmetical progression.

Population for Malthus, therefore, is limited by the means of subsistence. As a result of the tension inherent in the contrast between these two rates of increase, there is a tendency for population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. The result is that population increases in any country when the means of subsistence increase, whether as a result of more intensive agriculture, the import of food, or changes in the distribution of national wealth. Insufficiency of the means of subsistence, on the other hand, makes itself felt in the form of checks. These checks are of two kind—positive and preventive.

The positive checks are those which set by destroying existing population: the most obvious are wars, diseases, and famines, but they include every cause, whether arising from ignorance, vice or misery, which in any way helps to shorten the natural span of life. Preventive checks are those which are deliberately undertaken, such as refusal to marry and what Malthus calls the postponement of marriage, moral restraint. "By moral restraint I  . . .  mean a restraint of marriage from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of restraint."

The fact that the produce of land is uncertain and irregular was embodied in the "Law of Diminishing Returns." In the cultivation of land, assuming that the technique remains unchanged, Malthus argued that each successive addition of capital and labour applied to it beyond a certain amount (the optimum expenditure upon a particular technique) produces a smaller increment of yield. Accordingly, beyond the optimum expenditure further increments of capital and labour no longer produce equal additions of yield, but progressively diminishing ones. To put the matter in more general terms—the conditions remaining unchanged, additions of expenditure prove less profitable. If, for instance, the expenditure of 1,000 of additional capital produces an additional product of 500, the expenditure of a second 1,000 will produce an additional product of only 300: that of a third 1,000 will produce no more than 200, and so on.

This "law" has in fact been shown to be fallacious. It assumes that the productive technique remains unchanged, an assumption which is contrary to all evidence. In fact, Malthus himself says that this "law" is valid only so long as agricultural techniques remain unchanged. It would be difficult to find a period since Malthus wrote the essay, during which advanced countries' techniques of production has not been continuously changing and must, as man's knowledge increases, continue to change.

Bob Ambridge

Notes on Economic History (10) (1961)

From the August 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Value of Labour-power

Adam Smith wavers in his analysis of commodities and there is confusion regarding the determination of exchange value. He determines the value of a commodity by the labour time contained in it, but then relegates the principle to older or more simpler times. What seems to him to be true about a simple commodity does not apply to the more complex forms of capital—wage labour, and rent. The value of commodities, he says, used to be measured by labour time.

There is also confusion in his analysis of commodities about which he varies regarding the determination of exchange value. He makes the exchange value of labour, wages, the measure of the value of commodities. Thus, wages are equal to the amount of commodities purchased by a stated amount of living labour, or to the quantity of labour which can be bought by a given quantity of commodities. The value of labour, or rather labour power, varies, like all other commodities, and in this respect does not differ in kind from the value of other commodities. And so value itself becomes both the measure and the explanation of value and we go round in a circle.

Marx has demonstrated the fallacy of this reasoning. He also said, very appropriately, "It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and in particular of their value, in discovering that form under which value becomes exchange-value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of this school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but it is also the most universal form taken by bourgeois production, and stamps that production as a particular species of social production and thereby gives it its historical character."

Adam Smith also saw that profit sprang from the exploitation of labour, for he says: "The value which the workmen add to the materials therefore resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advances." But he also confused surplus value and profit.

Smith was the product of the early manufacturing period in this country. He made a valuable contribution to political economy, and was one of the most painstaking and critical of the small band who tried before Marx to find out what makes society tick.

Bob Ambridge

Notes on Economic History (9) (1961)

From the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is Economic Life? 

Adam Smith's ideas on the development of economic life led him to make a clean sweep of all feudal ties and servitudes. The abolition of serfdom, the introduction of freedom of occupation and industry, freedom of movement, political autonomy; these were the inevitable corollaries of the new doctrine.

A demand heavy with consequences, the demand for free trade, formed a logical and essential part of the demand for the abolition of all restrictions upon production and distribution. Smith's theory of free trade was as follows:—

If trade be freed from all restraints, through the working of competition, it will come to pass in the long run that every country will produce those commodities which its natural facilities enable it to produce most cheaply. Thus there will arise a natural international division of labour, which will rebound to the maximum benefit of each nations, for each will be able to buy all it wants in the world market at the lowest possible prices: while selling there to the greatest advantage those things which it is exceptionally fitted to produce. It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. (Wealth of Nations.)

In regard to the applying of these free trade principles, Smith was prepared to compromise. He agreed to the need of excise duties as a source of revenue, as also to the expediency of retaliatory duties imposed upon imports from countries whose policy was protectionist, and for duties for special purposes, for instance where an industry was judged to be essential for the safety of a country and was in need of protection. Smith, not being the dogmatist, as those who subsequently opposed his doctrines declared, was very cautious in practical matters.

Much of present day opinion of Smith's views is based upon the modifications his teachings underwent at the hands of Ricardo, and later still in the eighteen-thirties by the Manchester School of Free-traders. It is necessary to point out that Smith was not hostile to the landowning class. On the contrary, he considered that the interest of those who lived by rent was "strictly and inseparably connected with the general interest of Society" for their income increased proportionately to an increase in the general welfare.

Of the capitalist class he wrote that its interest had not the same connection with the general interest of Society as that of the landowners and wage-earners. For, he said, the rate of does not, like rent and wages, rise and fall with the booms and slumps that affect society. On the contrary, it is low in times of boom, and high in times of slump. Smith says it is always highest in countries that are going to ruin. To him, the interest of the second order, that of those who live by wages, is as strictly connected with the interest of the society as that of the landowning class. He advocated high wages and freedom of combination, but he deprecated State interference in wage contracts.

Smith's teaching brought about an entirely different way of looking at political economy. It did this, first of all, by showing investigators that the source of wealth is not a simple matter. He regarded labour as the primary source of wealth, but the conditions under which labour had to operate were of vital importance, and especially the increase of productiveness by the division of labour. Smith regarded everything from the outlook of exchange in the market, he conceived of economic phenomena as centering in exchange in the processes of "trade", and his explanation of the motive force of economics was derived from this conception.

Smith's chief contribution to economic doctrines was his neatly rounded and bold notion that economic life was a series of processes of exchange linked to each other. Herein lay such originality as he possessed. He finalised the physiocratic idea of the natural order, that is the harmonious encounter of numberless individual self-seeking economic activities. In his doctrine, exchange, the trading intercourse of separate economic agents, became the central manifestation of economic life. His system was not a theory of production, but a theory of price and value which he considered determined production just as much as distribution.

Like all economists worth considering, Smith endorsed the physiocratic concept of the average wage, termed by him the natural price of labour: "a man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more: otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation". The fact that the development of the productive powers of labour brought no benefit to the worker is stressed by Adam Smith. Smith notes that the productive power of labour underwent no really important development until labour was transformed into wage labour, and until the means of production had taken the form of private ownership, either of land or of capital. Thus, labour's productive powers did not begin to develop until the worker was no longer able to take for himself the results of development.

Bob Ambridge

William Morris’s Red House in Bexleyheath (2012)

From the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

“My work is the embodiment of dreams” - William Morris

After a train journey from London to Bexleyheath, you walk through roads of 1930’s semi-detached private housing to arrive at William Morris’s Red House. When Morris lived here this area was an open Kentish landscape of orchards and oast houses above the Cray valley near the hamlet of Upton. Morris commissioned architect Philip Webb to build the Red House. It was the need to furnish the interior of the house that led Morris to establish his textile firm and today you can now relish the aesthetic of his ‘Strawberry Thief’.

Inside the Red House Morris, Webb and Burne-Jones created a medievalist environment of furniture, stained glass, wall hangings, wall paintings, panels, embroidered panels, the impressive Drawing Room settle with miniature minstrels gallery, and murals featuring Chaucer, Malory, Froissart and Dante themes.

Ted Hollamby lived at the Red House and founded the William Morris Society but was also an important architect of post-war housing. Hollamby was Senior Architect at London County Council where it was said the department was infused with the ideas of Morris and the formalism of Le Courbusier. Later he was Director of Architecture at Lambeth Council. There was massive council house building inspired by Bevan’s  socialist” vision of new estates within capitalism where “the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will live in close proximity to each other”. The LCC and Lambeth were responsible for the design and construction of affordable, high quality housing projects such as Lambeth Towers, the Alton, Thamesmead, Pepys and Brandon Estates.

This reformist dream came to an ignominious end when capitalism went into crisis in the 1970’s. Ironically, Hollamby ended his career in the 1980’s working for the London Docklands Development Corporation where redevelopment of the Isle of Dogs was now private sector in creating homes for the corporate wealthy.

In the Studio you can find Hollamby’s book collection and Pevsner’s, but also works including Dialectical Materialism and Science by Maurice Cornforth (theorist of the Communist Party of Great Britain), Stalin’s Leninism, and Lenin articles for Iskra. The Red House used to host “impromptu CP meetings”. The CPGB adopted a reformist policy towards capitalism which was little different from the reformist Labour programme of 1945 and Bevan’s “egalitarian” vision for housing inside capitalism. Reforms to capitalism do not work in the long term. The house building of successive reformist Labour and Tory governments was eventually undone.

William Morris explicitly dismissed the whole idea of reformism in the manifesto he drafted for the Socialist League in 1885. Morris had originally been in Social Democratic Federation (SDF) but this organisation did not have the blessing of Engels, and its authoritarianism and increasing reformism led Morris and Eleanor Marx to leave and form the Socialist League. Morris died in 1896. In 1904 members left the SDF to establish the Socialist Party of Great Britain whose avowed policy is the  abolition of capitalism and the introduction of socialism not reforms to capitalism.

Steve Clayton

Notes on Economic History (8) (1961)

From the June 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Adam Smith's theories of Income

Adam Smith establishes an elaborate theory of the formation of value and of price, arguing that under primitive conditions, when there is little capital and when rent has not yet come into existence, the value of goods is determined solely by the amount of labour embodied in them. Things, like water, which a have a great use-value, have no exchange-value; and conversely, things with very little use-value, like diamonds, have a very high exchange-value. It follows that as the measure of the exchange-value of goods it is their "natural price" that matters. Not the utility of an article, but the amount of labour that has been expended in producing it.

In accordance with the fluctuations of supply and demand this market price swings to one side or the other of the labour expenditure price. The various items out of which the actual or market price is made up are the outcome of private property and the existing legal order, consisting of (a) wages, (b) the share payable to capital, and (c) rent, which may be regarded as interest paid for the use of land (equivalent to the difference between the price of the produce of the land, on the one hand and, on the other, the expenditure of the farmer upon wages, plus profit on his farming capital).

From this is deduced a theory of distribution, or of the formation of income (Smith uses the term "revenue"), for inasmuch as production is carried on with an eye to the market on the basis of the division of labour, the product is distributed in accordance with the laws of the formation of prices in the market. The distribution of wealth is effected in accordance with the constituents of every price; the worker receives the equivalent for his labour, and the capitalist and the landlord receive equivalent for the co-operation of capital and land.

Thus all the commodities which compose the whole annual produce of the labour of every country must resolve themselves into the same three parts, and be distributed among the different inhabitants of the country, either as wages, profit on capital, or rent for land. "Wages, profits and rent are the three original sources of all revenues as well as of all exchange-value. All other revenue is ultimately derivable from one or the other of these." Wealth of Nations (Book 1, Ch. VI).

Smith's theories on the laws of distribution may be briefly phrased as follows. rates of wages are determined, like market prices in general, by supply and demand, due to whose operation they vary to one side or the other of a subsistence wage:

The more capital there is in a country, the greater is the demand for labour, and the higher therefore are wages. The profit of capital has the opposite trend. The more capital there is, the lower is its rate of profit; the more capitalists there are, the greater is the tendency to underbid one another. Consequently, the more labour there is in a country, and the richer it therefore is, the lower in general is the profit of capital. (Book 1. Ch. IX.)

In the matter of land rent, a more complicated machinery is at work:

Increase in the productiveness of labour the division of labour and the expansion of manufacture leads to a fall in the prices of the products of industry. To the extent to which this happens, the products of agriculture automatically exchange for larger quantities of industrial products; that is, the former become dearer. This rise in agriculture prices is attended or followed by a rise in rent. (Book 1. Ch. XI.)

Rent also rises concurrently with an increase in capital, for since more capital and labour are applied to land, and land is therefore used more effectively, the income from land necessarily increases.

According to Smith economic life develops best when it is left alone. The main business of the State is to keep order. Economic activities when perfectly free develop harmoniously, and free competition must be left to do its work. Competition forces everyone to follow his own economic aims, to develop all his forces, and to produce as cheaply as possible. Consumers are supplied with goods at the lowest prices, capitalists can devote their energies to their tasks unhindered, and workers can seek employment wherever wages are highest. In this way a condition of social harmony is attained. At the same time, it results that everyone engages in the occupation which comes most natural to him. Division of labour takes place along the lines that are most economical.

By virtue of its own mechanism, society can get the better of that selfish outlook which is (primarily) hostile to society. Everyone becomes enabled, by the pursuit of his own advantage, to enjoy his natural rights.

Bob Ambridge

Notes on Economic History (7) (1961)

From the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wealth of Nations

Since England was the first country in which modern large-scale industry developed, it was only to be expected that capitalist political economy would appear and flourish here. The introduction of spinning machinery (Wyatt 1783, Lewis Paul 1741, Arkwright 1769); the steam engine (Watt 1765 and 1770); and later of the power loom (Cartwright 1785, Jacquard 1802); and similar transformations in the methods of industrial production, indiced changes that led to an enormously accelerated growth of large scale industry.

Adam Smith was the man, who, under these conditions, established a new system of economic doctrine. Smith spent three years in France, where he became known personally to the physiocrats, and was greatly influenced by them. For ten years after his return from France, he devoted himself to economic study and to writing his book Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations published in 1776.

Adam Smith defines the wealth of a nation in the opening of his inquiry.

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessities and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

To this he makes an important reservation. Labour which is not devoted to the production of useful things, which have an exchange value is to Smith unproductive. Thus, services of all kinds are unproductive. The wealth of a nation is greater accordingly as a larger proportion of its inhabitants are engaged in useful labour. This in turn depends upon the amount of capital devoted to the employment of workers (the wage fund), but above all, upon the productiveness of labour.

According to Smith the productiveness of labour is increased mainly by the division of labour. Consequently, the division of labour is the chief cause of prosperity. He illustrates this thesis by the many processes required for the manufacture of such a simple thing as a pin. The further the division of labour is carried, the more is production carried on with a view to marketing.

Now for the purpose of the market there must develop an acceptable means of exchange, or instrument of trade—in other words, money. Money, as explained by Smith, arises out of indirect exchange. Commodities are exchanged in the market by means of money as the medium of exchange, and thus originates an exchange-value or price of goods, as distinct from their use-value. We see, then, that the division of labour is the starting point of the economic process and its development; it is the cause of the exchange of goods, for no one can live upon the product of his own activity. But exchange is effected in accordance with exchange-value (price) and the exchange value is therefore decisive (a) for the distribution of the goods, since it settles the question who can buy them; and (b) for their production inasmuch as this is guided by the expectation of the price to be realised.

Upon this premise Adam Smith builds up his economic system, and so do all the capitalist schools that follow him. The laws that regulate the formation of exchange-value are held to be also laws in accordance with which the wealth of nations comes into being; they are, according to Smith, the primary laws of economic motion.

By formulating this conception of the nature of political economy, Smith made an important step forward in capitalist theory. He gave a new turn to economic thought. Whereas both the Mercantilists and the Physiocrats had made productive circulation the basis of their reasoning, now for the first time a study of the laws of exchange-value was undertaken. Thenceforward the theory of value and the theory of prices became the basis of economic theory in general. For since prices are the determinants of the production of goods, the law of prices decides what goods shall be produced; and since prices decide which would-be purchaser has sufficient purchasing power, the laws of prices are also the laws of distribution. In a word, the laws of price are also the laws of distribution. As a result, therefore, the theory of distribution is developed as a theory of particular prices (wages, rent, etc).

Bob Ambridge

Notes on Economic History (6) (1961)

From the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Physiocratic School

No examination of the ideas of physiocracy would be complete without a reference to those who took up and developed Quesnay's teachings. They called themselves "economites". This school acquired great influence in France. Turgot, one of the members of this group and author of an important work on on the subject of physiocracy (Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth) was appointed Controller-General of the Finances in 1774. Another of Quesnay's pupils who became political chief of the physiocratic school, was Marquis Victor de Mirabeau, generally known as Mirabeau the elder. Others were quick to espouse physiocracy in the land of its birth.

The physiocratic doctrine soon spread from France to other countries, but mage little impression in England. It had immense in Germany, where Karl Friedrich Margrave of Baden, aided by Schlettween, the most distinguished among the German physiocrats, made an unsuccessful attempt to put in practice the physiocratic principles of taxation. Leopold I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, endeavoured to introduce a "land tax" in his duchy. Joseph II, Catherine, and most of the other monarchs of the period, were affected and influenced by physiocratic ideas. The doctrine found adherents also in Italy, Poland, Sweden and elsewhere.

After Quesnay's death in 1774, dissensions broke out among the French physiocrats, chiefly because of Condillac, who insisted that commerce and industry were "fruitful" as well as agriculture, which was unorthodox to other physiocrats. The disputes that followed paved the way for the collapse of the movement. The dismissal of Turgot from office as a result of the poor condition of the State treasury, the bad harvest of 1775, the rise in the price of bread, and the bread riots all over the country, all helped this collapse.

Finally, the French revolution, bringing the birth of Modern Capitalism to France, relegated the idea of physiocracy to the realm of the past.

The ideas of the Physiocrats did not escape criticism, even in the country of its origin. Of particular interest are the works of Linquet, (Legislation on Trade, 1769) and Necker, (Grain Legislation and Trade, 1775 and the Administration of the Finances of France, 1785).

Linquet, who wrote ironically about conditions of the period, appears to defend chattel slavery against wage slavery, and ridicules all the physiocratic ideas of property. The following quotes from his writing of 1767 illustrate this. The first quotation is the answer to the physiocrats.

It is the impossibility of gaining a livelihood in any other way which forces our day labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will never eat, and our masons to raise buildings in which they will never dwell. It os poverty which drives them to market to dance attendance upon the masters who might wish to buy them. It is this which compels them to kneel before the rich, and to beg of them permission to enrich them.

And on freedom—a boast of the physiocrats:

What is this apparent liberty with which you have invested them? They can live only by renting their hands. They must find someone to rent them or die.

To the economists of his time he said this about the workers.

Do you not see that the obedience, the abjection—let us say it—of this numerous flock, is the wealth of the shepherds? If the sheep who comprise it were ever to lower their heads to the dog who herds them, would they not be dispersed and destroyed, and their masters ruined? Believe me, for his interest, and for your own, and even for theirs, leave them in the persuasion where they now are, that this cur which bays at them has more power itself alone than all they together. Let them flee at the mere sight of his shadow. Every one will be the gainer. You will find them easier to round up for the fleecing. They are more easily kept from being devoured by the wolves. It is true that this is only so they can be eaten by men. But then, that is their lot from the first moment they enter the fold. Before talking of releasing them, overturn their fold, society.

Necker in his work shows that the development of the productive forces if the workers merely permits the worker to devote less time to the reproduction of his own wages and more to the enrichment of his employer. The importance of this is that Necker derives profit and rent, the wealth of the capitalist class, from surplus labour. But he sees it only as relative surplus value, produced not by the prolongation of the working day but by a reduction of the necessary labour time. The following quote from his Administration of French Finances shows the class position of his time.

That class in society whose fate seems as though fixed by social laws is composed of all those who, living by the labour of their hands, receive the imperious law of the proprietors and are forced to content themselves with the simplest necessities of life. Their mutual competition and the urgency of their wants constitutes their dependency; and these circumstances can in no way change.

In assessing the value and place of physiocracy in any history of political economy, we must take into account the economic development of France and other countries where the doctrine was accepted. Physiocracy is first and foremost the ideas of an agricultural economy; it is the philosophy of Feudalism gradually transforming into Capitalism. Its importance fades with the French Revolution.

For us today, physiocracy can be seen as a link in the chain that leads up to, and influences, later economists. Adam Smith was influenced by it, as were several others after him. The Henry George School of modern times is also a reflection of the old physiocrats. The liberal ideas of laissez-faire, freedom of competition, likewise flow from this source.

Finally, its weakness has been shown by Marx in Volume 2 of Capital, as already mentioned in these notes.

Bob Ambridge

What about human nature? (2002)

From the September 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The human nature objections to socialism take several forms, but it is almost always other people, and not the objector, who are said to make socialism impossible by being incurably acquisitive or aggressive or whatever. Rarely is the objector himself or herself included among those who have these nasty characteristics.

It is claimed that it will be impossible to get people as a whole to work together to their mutual advantage because humans are by nature acquisitive. Each, it is said, will always want to get the better of the other, to grab the lion's share of whatever is going. True this does sometimes happen in capitalism, although there are many examples of people behave differently, even risking their own lives to help others.

In socialism there will be much more scope for us to help each other, and no reason for us to act acquisitively. Each will be free to take what they need from the common store, so there will be no point in anyone trying to get more of anything than their neighbour. Such behaviour would not only be unnecessary but also a nuisance. Air is free to all and nobody is stupid enough to try to store any up. the same would apply to things generally in socialism, to which access will be free, each determining their own needs. Anyone storing up much more than they need would be treated sympathetically, perhaps indulged a bit as an eccentric.

Then there is the question of whether the alleged aggressive propensity of human nature would make socialism impossible. In his book The Brighter Side of Human Nature Alfie Kohn effectively rebuts the claim that aggressive behaviour is part of human nature:

• The frequency with which national leaders have to draft their citizens into combat is powerful evidence against the idea that wars reflect natural human aggressiveness
• There is no evidence from animal behaviour or human psychology to suggest that individuals of any species fight because of spontaneous internal stimulation
• Assumptions about aggression owe much to images presented by the mass media, controlled by interests who benefit from just such assumptions
• No circle is more vicious than the one set up by the fallacious assumption that we are unable to control an essentially violent nature

Another human nature objection to socialism is that men and women are naturally lazy and will only work if they are forced to by economic or other means. Certainly the profit system encourages workers to get the best price they can for their skills, and to withhold it if the pay is too low or the working conditions too bad. But all the evidence is that healthy human beings are normally active and creative and don't relish sitting around doing nothing for any length of time. In fact studies show that people do their best work when they find it fun or enjoy doing it in the company of others, not when they are in it for the money.

Encouraging pro-social behaviour by the use of incentives or other appeals to financial self-interest doesn't work very well or works only in the short run. Capitalism tries to put a price, and to make a market, out of everything, but it also relies heavily on a tacit appeal to people being to helpful to others. The system couldn't operate without a substantial amount of “free” labour given by unpaid carers, volunteers and “good citizens”. In socialism all activities will be undertaken because someone or the community needs the product, service or experience that results. An outbreak of mass laziness is far less likely than a temporary shortage of things to do.

Then there is the “stupid” objection to socialism. The mass of people are said to be too ignorant and unteachable to enable any system that doesn't rely on compulsion of some kind to work. It is claimed that either most men and women are incapable of understanding socialism or they would never be able to run society in their own interest. Propagandists for capitalism never tell us that we are too stupid to understand the tortuous arguments that are used, for instance, to prove that the way to preserve peace is to prepare for war. The point is that the will to learn is only actively discouraged when its threat to the continuation to the continuation of the present system becomes apparent.

If most people are stupid then they must have leaders. Thus it is said to be human nature for some people to be leaders and others to be followers. The existence of leaders and the led means that only the former have the power to make decisions. But in co-operative enterprises in capitalism, and in socialism generally, the concept of leadership is foreign, since all participants have a common purpose. When you know what you want to do collectively, you may appoint or elect organisers, but you don't need somebody else to lead you to do it.

Human nature is strictly what is common to the biological nature of all human beings. It has nothing to do with possession or non-possession of knowledge. The varying capacity to acquire knowledge means nothing more than that some people learn things quicker than others. It does not prove that some are incapable of learning. Socialism will entail a world in which everyone will be encouraged to learn what they wish, for their own interest and pleasure and for the sake of the co-operative community and society in which they live.

Stan Parker