The Labour Theory of Value Before Karl Marx (1934)

From the July 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

The labour theory of value is the view that the value of an article is determined by its cost of production in human labour power—according to the conditions of the time. In its fully developed form it was analysed and explained in detail by Karl Marx in “Capital.” We are not concerned at the moment with the theory as it was finally worked out. We are only concerned with the forerunners of Marx, who contributed something to the view. Owing to limits of space we can only consider briefly the most outstanding of these forerunners.

Value presented an insoluble problem for over two thousand years. The first glimmerings of a solution did not appear until the middle of the seventeenth century, when a society mainly concerned with the buying and selling of goods began to take definite shape in this country and was in process of taking shape on the Continent.

As far back as the time of Aristotle—two thousand three hundred years ago—the problem was in the air. Aristotle himself, in his “Politics,” and in his “Ethics,” had something to say about it. He knew that there must be some property common to objects as unlike as bread and shoes that made it possible to measure them against each other. He knew that the common property was not their usefulness, but he was unable to find out what it really was. He ends his examination rather lamely with the remark that people have agreed to estimate value in money. And this after he had already pointed out that exchange existed before money. He makes the illuminating remark, however, that profit-making originated with coin.

For hundreds of years this formed the limit of knowledge on the subject.

As commerce spread over society and accumulating money became increasingly the aim in social dealings, the question of the value of money came more and more to the front, particularly when succeeding representatives of the royal treasury sought to build up waning funds by debasing the coinage. Consequently, during the later middle ages, a considerable literature grew up around monetary matters. With the dawn of capitalist society, in the 17th century, the question became acute. The problem before the writers was: How did wealth originate? Or, as we would put, it: What was the source of surplus-value?

Out of these discussions two main schools of thought developed. The Mercantilists and the Physiocrats, one English and the other French. The Mercantilists claimed that wealth accumulated by means of trade, through buying from the foreigner cheap and selling to him dear. In other words, by having a favourable balance of trade,” an idea that still persists, as witness the nature of the discussions during the recent financial crisis. The Mercantilists, consequently, propagated the view that the traders were the most important group in the nation and were the builders of the nation’s wealth. An idea quite in harmony with conditions that were raising the trader to the most influential position in society.

Thomas Mun, a leading merchant of the time and a director of the East India Company, wrote a book that was published in 1664 entitled “England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade,” which puts forward the Mercantilist view very clearly and vigorously.

The Physiocrats, a group that originated nearly a hundred years later in France, a country whose main prop at the time was agriculture, held an entirely different view. According to them, wealth originated solely in agricultural production, as it was only by farming that a man received back for his work more than it cost to keep him, and, out of the surplus, the trader and the rest of the population lived. Turgot, a prominent Physiocratic writer, who appeared towards the end of their influence, puts their outlook very clearly in his book, “Reflections on the Formation and the Distribution of Riches,” published in 1766.. The Physiocratic doctrines were an expression of the interests and outlook of the capitalist farmer, and Mirabeau, one of their leading political representatives, took a prominent part in the French Revolution.

Turgot was a very clear thinker. He had a considerable knowledge of history and had travelled far enough intellectually to point out that the labourer’s wage was determined by his cost of subsistence.

Sir William Petty, an important member of the Mercantilist school of thought, was the first to make a real contribution to the labour theory of value. In a book he wrote that was published in 1662 and entitled “A Treatise on Taxes,” he states quite plainly that it is labour that gives value to things, but, under the influence of his trading outlook, he defines exchange-value as money, and the particular labour employed in the production of gold and silver as the value-producing labour. Hence he was led into confusion.

He wrote a series of essays in "Political Arithmetic,” which represents the first form in which economics is treated as a separate department of knowledge. These essays are remarkable for brevity and clarity. In one of them he explains in a paragraph the significance of the division of labour as illustrated by a watch, and he does it in a manner that showed he had a clearer grasp of the point than Adam Smith, although, writing a hundred years earlier. Adam Smith confused the social division of labour with the division of labour inside a single workshop, but Petty made no such mistake.

In 1733, Richard Cantillon, another merchant, wrote his book “On the Nature of Commerce in General." In it he stated that the value of a thing was nothing more than the measure of the land and the labour which enters into its production. He was influenced by the Physiocratic idea of the importance of agriculture, as also to some extent was Adam Smith. Cantillon held the view that the daily work of the humblest slave corresponded in value to twice the produce of the land on which he subsisted.

After Petty there was another thinker, probably the clearest thinker of his age, who put forward the labour theory of value in a broad form. This man was Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1729, when barely twenty-three years of age, wrote an essay entitled “A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency." In this essay he argues that the value of articles is measured by the time taken to produce them, but he considers that money has an extra value on account of the way in which it facilitates exchanges. In spite of his clearness of thought he, like his predecessors, was lost in the mystery of money. In fact, all those who preceded Marx got into difficulties when they came to treat of money. In their efforts to analyse money they frequently contradicted the sound views they had previously put forward on value in general.

Another youthful writer, an Italian named Ferdinando Galiani, published a book, in 1750, entitled, “Dell Moneta." He was only twenty-two years old when he wrote it. In this book he pointed out that labour was the sole source of value, but he confused the wages of the worker with the value of the article produced. For instance, he contended that the value of a woollen article was equal to the cost of the raw wool plus the cost of supporting the men who produced the woollen article.

In 1777, Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations" appeared. In it he attributed the accumulation of wealth to the division of labour. He made a considerable advance in the analysis of questions concerning economics, but he was still far from understanding the real nature of value. He held that the determination of the value of an article by the labour-time taken to produce it was true of earlier times, but not of the developed capitalism of his day. He also fell into the same error as Galiani, confusing the value of what a man produces with the value of what he gets—his wages. If this view were accepted, then the value of all the articles produced would only be equal to the total wages paid to the workers who produced them.. This was the state of affairs the later Utopians yearned for and what they would have called “fair exchanges." Adam Smith also failed to see that the labour of an engineer and the labour of a bootmaker could not be compared as such—they had both to be reduced to a common basis, the simple expenditure of human energy.

How weak Adam Smith’s grasp of the problem was may be gathered from the fact that he put “labouring cattle" under the heading of productive labourers, and also attributed value-creating properties to “profits of stock” and to the forces of nature.

The progress in knowledge of the labour theory before Marx really ended with David Ricardo, a stockbroker, who made the final contribution in his book, "On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” published in 1817. His fundamental proposition is that the values of all articles, including the value of labour-power, is determined by the labour required to produce them with the prevailing skill and methods. But, as Frederick Engels has pointed out, Ricardo did not see that it was labour-power and not labour that was the value-producing quality, and hence, that the transformation of money into capital was based upon the buying and selling of labour-power. It was the discovery of this fact that gave Marx the key to the problem, and it was Ricardo’s failure to see it that landed him into difficulties when he came to treat of the more complex forms of money.

As a capitalist himself, and one who made a fortune on the stock exchange, Ricardo was quite clear, in fact brutally clear, about the basis of the present social system and its aim, which, he pointed out, was production for profit. He was against State interference in industry, and contended that wages should be left to free competition. He also held the view that the prevailing economic tendency was for wages and rent mutually to increase until they swallowed profit, and he foresaw a time when all property would belong to owners of land and receivers of tithes and taxes. He was quite clear, however, about the fact that neither wages nor profit, nor rent, entered into the determination of the value of an article. Surplus-value, he showed, was the portion of value left after deducting the wages of the producer from the value he added, but he was inclined to confound surplus-value with profit.

As already mentioned, the analysis of value really ended with Ricardo. Nobody after him added anything of importance to his work. The so-called “Ricardian Socialists” who followed him accepted his view that labour was the source of value, and, on the basis of it, demanded that all products should belong to the labourer.

The first of these writers was William Thompson, an Irish landlord, who, in 1824, wrote a book entitled “An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most conducive to human Happiness.” As the title of his book suggests, the ideas of the “Utilitarian” philosopher, Bentham, had an influence on his outlook. He defined the existing social system as one of force and fraud, and he proposed a new system on Owenite principles. He was very much interested in the Owenite co-operative experiments and visited the Owenite colony at Ralahine, in Ireland.

He took as his basis the view that all wealth is the product of labour. He contended that all men are equal, or nearly so, and therefore capable of producing equal quantities of wealth. Wealth is unequally divided, therefore the few possessors must abstract it from the many producers.

Neither he nor those of the same group who followed him really understood the nature of value. They thought the seller arbitrarily raised the value of articles above the wages paid to the producers, which they took to be the real value. He held that labour was not, at present, an accurate measure of value, on the ground that desires are apt to vary, but he contended that in a future social system such as he proposed, commodities would exchange at the “ value of real use." He assumed that the future system would also be a system of commodity production, but “fair" exchange would be the social principle.

Thompson's confused views of value are illustrated by the fact that he believed machinery added additional value to products beyond the value as mere instruments of production, and also that, in certain instances where labour is saved in the production of an article, value is added to it by this saving of labour.

In 1825, a year after Thompson's book, appeared, Thomas Hodgskin wrote his “Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital," and, in 1827, “Popular Political Economy." Hodgskin, a retired naval officer, was a friend of ] Francis Place and a member of the radical circle that gathered round Jeremy Bentham.

He also argued that the labourer should receive the whole of his product, but he included in the term "labourer" the master and the buyer and seller. He accepted commodity-production as the basis of a future society, but wanted to rule out profit. On the question of value, he was not clear. He confused the value of goods with the quantity, and asserted that the more goods there were the greater was the total value, in spite of a proportional decrease in the quantity of labour required to produce them. He also appeared to think that profit and rent were amounts added on to the value of articles.

Although his outlook on this fundamental question was confused, Hodgskin’s destructive criticism of existing society provided the Chartists with useful weapons in their struggle. He did a considerable amount of lecturing, founded with Robertson the “Mechanics' Magazine," in 1823, and was instrumental in the founding of the Mechanics' Institute, where he lectured. He later joined the staff of the Economist and the Morning Chronicle, dropped out of the active propaganda movement, and lived to a ripe old age.

 

After Hodgskin comes John Gray, a successful business man, who delivered a series of lectures on "The Nature and Use of Money," which were published in book form in 1831 and again later in 1848. In these lectures he claimed to have discovered the real source of social troubles, which he attributed to a flaw in the monetary system. He urged that demand should be based upon production, instead of production being based upon demand, which, he claimed, was the basis of the existing system. He proposed to rectify matters by establishing standard banks which would issue credit in the form of transferable vouchers based upon the stock, etc., or, in other words, based upon the powers of production.

So convinced was Gray of the soundness and the magnitude of his discovery that he had his book widely distributed, particularly to economists and universities, and he offered a hundred guineas to anyone who could refute his views. In recent times the Douglas Credit Theory has had a certain popularity, but there is little in the fallacious theories of the Douglas scheme that was not anticipated by Gray a hundred years ago.

Gray's views on value were quite erroneous. He believed that gold was no true measure of value and that there was none. He contended that the scarcity of gold prevented its value from being determined by labour. He, again, took for granted the continuation of commodity-production, but proposed that, in future, labour should be the measure of value. This was to be accomplished by the producer fixing his own price for his product and the competition of producers determining whether this price was right or not!

Gray was, at one time, considerably influenced by the views of Robert Owen, and, in 1815, he managed an Owenite colony at Orbiston.

The last writer we will refer to is J. F. Bray, a journeyman printer and the author of "Labour’s Wrongs and Labour's Remedy," published in 1839. His book is long and very wordy and full of conceptions of justice and equal rights, inspired by the economic analysis of Ricardo. His fundamental proposition is that as the earth is common to all, and labour is the sole source of wealth, each human being has a right to the fruits of his own labour. He claimed that as wealth was produced by labour, the capitalist, who did not work, lived by the legalised robbery of the producer. He claimed further that the problem was the same in all countries, whatever their form of government, and that, therefore, the solution applied internationally. A strain of anarchism runs through his writings, but he made some very apt criticisms of existing arrangements and had very clear conceptions on particular points.

His fundamental ideas, however, clouded his analysis of the present economic framework. He believed that the capitalist made his profit through unequal exchanges—buying goods at their values and selling them for more than their values. For instance, he saw that the capitalist paid the worker for a day’s labour a wage that was only equivalent in value to the product of half a day’s labour, but he did not see that what the worker was paid was the value of his labour-power. He did not realise the implication of his view. He fell into the same error as many before him and believed that value was equivalent to the wages paid to the producer.

Like the rest of the Utopians, Bray believed that the world had been searching for thousands of years for a just form of society and it was now discovered. To him the correct society was the result of knowledge based upon first principles which were true for all time, and could have been established as easily two thousand years ago as to-day.

It will, therefore, be seen that he had no fresh contribution to make to the labour theory of value. On one point, however, he was quite clear and emphatic—that mere governmental changes would not alter the worker’s position. Hence he advocated a complete change in the social basis—but it was not really so complete as he imagined.

To sum up, it may be said that the analysis of value from the point of view of the labour theory begins in 1662 with Petty, and ends in 1817 with Ricardo. Although the Utopians did not further this analysis, they did excellent service in pushing forward the worker’s case, in the course of which they made valuable and biting criticisms of capitalist society. As Marx has pointed out, the kernel of the matter was contained in their outlook, and their attitude logically led to Socialist ideas.

Gilmac.

Grim Warning (1969)

Book Review from the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Life by Sir Oswald Mosley Nelson 70s.

For a few years during the '30s the Blackshirts were familiar figures on the streets of London and other big cities. In their all-black uniforms with high necked shirts and broad, heavy-buckled belts, they were a new and disturbing feature of the British political scene—the nearest, in fact, that modern Britain had ever got to a private army.

The membership of the British Union of Fascists was never all that large, but they cast a long shadow. In their early days they had the support of powerful sections of the Right, with a vast amount of newspaper coverage exceeding that of any other group.

In one respect the early '30s resembled today, in the amount of half-baked violence that came from so-called revolutionaries. Meetings were broken up and speakers shouted down, in the name of democracy, but as in the '60s with a footling ineptitude. The hecklers struck menacing attitudes and made bellicose noises, threatening action they had no power to carry out, in the pathetic belief that capitalism was on the point of collapse, and that the working class was behind them.

This gave the Fascists an excellent excuse for forming strong-arm squads. Fascist propagandists always claimed, when taxed with brutality, that they were only defending themselves. As a semi-military organisation, well trained and disciplined, the Blackshirts were able to make short work, both of their violent assailants and of perfectly peaceful and orderly opponents.

The founder and leader of the BUF was Sir Oswald Mosley. Flamboyant, good-looking, athletic, and a war hero. Mosley resembled the 'ideal man.' as portrayed in Edwardian boys' magazines—a tradition that survived well into the '20s and ’30s. This fact, combined with political ability and an outstanding platform manner, appealed to the type of mind that sought by quick dramatic means to cut the Gordian knot of unemployment, poverty, and disillusionment.

In this autobiography—a rather pompous but informative book—Mosley describes the twists and turns, of his political life. Born into the aristocracy at the turn of the century, he did all the expected things: went to Winchester and Sandhurst, served in the Royal Flying Corps during the first world war. was wounded and invalided out in 1916, and entered parliament in 1918 as a Tory MP. His marriage to a daughter of Lord Curzon, a former Viceroy of India and Foreign Secretary, was attended by royalty.

It was after entering parliament that Mosley began to emerge as a controversial figure. Bitterly opposing British action in Ireland, he left the Conservative party to become an independent. Later he joined the I.LP. and the Labour Party. Here he once again became controversial, embracing Keynesian theories that were unpopular at the time. He was regarded by many as the Labour Party's great white hope. He became a member of the 1929 Labour government, [only] to resign over its handling of unemployment. This marked the end of Mosley's career as an orthodox politician.

It was during the next decade that Mosley rose to prominence, hitting the headlines more than any other politician out of office. In the confusion that followed the collapse of the Labour government, and the crushing defeat suffered by the Labour party, new leftist organisations sprang up like mushrooms. One of these, the New Party, had Mosley as one of its founders. It was this party that slowly emerged as the British Union of Fascists.

The fascist movement in Britain reached its peak in the late '30s Just what would have happened to fascism in Britain, had it been left alone by events, is difficult to say. But like fascist parties elsewhere it slowly became overshadowed by Nazi Germany, and the drift into war. From about 1937 on, as the line-up became clearer, the B.U.F. found itself more and more unpopular.

The great irony of the second world war was that nationalists like Mosley found themselves in opposition to the war, while the Communist Party became its most ardent supporter. The war led to the suppression of the B.U.F, and the detention without trial of Mosley and other prominent fascists. After the war Mosley was to emerge into politics again as leader of the Union Movement, but never again to be prominent

Fascism was a product of its age. Slumps and unemployment, memories of the hideous losses of the first world war, and an exaggerated fear of Russia produced the climate in which it flourished. Fascism is for all time a grim warning to workers of the perils of short-cuts to salvation.

Les Dale

A Centenary: Isambard Brunel (1959)

Brunel in 1857.

From the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an obscure position on Platform One at London's Paddington Station the traveller may notice, with fleeting interest, a plaque which commemorates Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In early Victorian attire, he gazes across at the Gothic-like structure of wrought and cast iron, where his name once meant so much. One hundred years ago, this versatile engineer died, but there is still plenty of evidence of the part which he played in the days when British capitalism established its dominant position in the world.

Mechanical Environment

Brunei came from a well-to-do family. His father—Marc Brunel—was born in the Vexin area of France, where he studied for the priesthood. He left the church for the French Navy and, when the Revolution came, fled to America. Here, as American industry began to develop, he established himself as a successful surveyor and architect. He came to England, where he set up a factory for the mass production of pulleys, of which, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British Navy was using 70,000 a year. He later turned his attention to the cutting and shaping of shipbuilding logs (an early form of pre-fabbing) and the mass production of boots for the army, using 16 different processes to turn out some 400 pairs a day. In 1821, Marc Brunel fell on hard times and was imprisoned for debt.

So it was that Isambard Kingdom Brunei grew up in an environment of mechanical exploration and adventure. Not only in his own family, but all around, could be seen the physical manifestations of industrialism. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the output of coal and iron and the products of the manufactories and the reformed agriculture produced an insistent need for faster and bulkier land transport. In the Cornish tin mine areas and the Durham coalfields the Trevethicks and Stevensons were answering the demand by building the new railways. It is in this field that Brunei is best remembered.

Great Western Railway

After working with his father on the Rotherhithe Tunnel in the 1820's, Brunel designed and constructed several bridges and docks, notably at Plymouth, Brentford and Milford Haven. In 1833 he was appointed engineer to the Great Western Railway and for this company he did some of his greatest work. He was responsible for the first line to Bristol, with all the bridges and tunnels. (Part of his work consisted of negotiating with obstructive landowners). He designed the Wharncliffe Viaduct at Hanwell and the great iron bridge which crosses the river at Saltash in Cornwall. Later he turned to building ocean-going steamships larger than any previously known. In 1838 his Great Western started the first regular steamships service between Great Britain and America, making the voyage in the unheard of time of 15 days. This was followed in 1845 by the Great Britain, the first large vessel to use the screw propellor, which plied between Liverpool and New York.

Brunel also had his failures. His championing of the 7 foot gauge, which started the famous "Battle of the Gauges,” broke down in 1892, when the Great Western Railway adopted the standard gauge. On the South Devon Railway he experimented with a system of atmospheric propulsion, which proved a failure. Perhaps his most spectacular flop was the paddle steamer Great Eastern, a huge folly launched in 1858. The story of the Great Eastern is one of delays and casualties—it was never a financial success and ended as a submarine cable layer. The strain of building her broke Brunei's health. He had a stroke on the day he was watching her engines being tested—5th September, 1859—and ten days later he was dead.

Kings and Servers

Typical of his time, Brunei was impatient of restrictions on invention and careless of public opinion of his work. He reached his fame when the designers and builders of early industrial capitalism were raising their structures to the glory of Utility, Profit and Speed. Those were the days when the glass- vaulted roofs of Paddington and St. Pancras Stations had replaced the cathedrals and churches into which the wealthy landowner and merchant had once poured their surplus. When the railway viaducts and the Stock Markets took the place of the Cloth Halls—and King Coal sat in state on the High Throne, with child labour for his server.

Brunel's railways carried the products of the appalling working conditions of the time, when coal miners seemed scarcely human and children were lucky to work no more than a twelve hour day in the textile mills. For the workers the new capitalism meant hard work, low pay and indifferent food eaten in gaunt, soulless tenements scowling down on the Main Line. It meant squalid back-to-back houses crouching around the pit head and the viciousness of dockland. No gift of science or brilliance of design was directed that way. Here lived the beasts of burden, gin soaked and humble in their misery. In its exciting day of expansion, capitalism spurned the very people who made it possible.

No blame to Brunel for this. He was an inventive master whose abilities were used by a vicious and inhuman social system. Remember that, if you ever take a look at that plaque.

Jack Law

Education For What? (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

When it became clear that Industrial Capitalism was to be the road along which Britain was to travel in the future it became equally necessary that it should lay down plans for the education of its citizens. So we had the Education Act of 1870 where for the first time education for the working class was to be provided free and was to be compulsory. And so whilst the ruling class continued to be educated for leadership in industry, government, the Church and the armed forces, a basic education was visualized for those whose future lay as machine operators in the factories. This was the first stage in the evolution of our modern educational system under capitalism.

Karl Mannheim’s view of traditional education is “Education is rightly understood if we consider it as one of the techniques of influencing human behaviour and as a means of social control.” This is true in general of education throughout the history of class societies, but mass education comes about in co-relation with mass production of commodities and the act of 1870 brought in the era of “mass education”. In his work Diagnosis of our Time Mannheim, again, says:

I think it was the great merit of the Marxist approach as compared with the Idealistic one, that it realized once and for all that the life of culture and the sphere of valuations within it depend on the existence of certain social conditions among which . . . the class structure is of primary importance.

Despite advances in teaching techniques, the introduction of new subjects and the growing attention towards aestheticism (freedom of expression in art etc.) one agrees that Mannheim’s statement, i.e. social control, is still the underlying motive. Unwittingly he foreshadowed the advent and intention of the latest innovation—the Comprehensive School—when he advocated the introduction of an educational system which would mean “. . . the improvement of opportunities for the people to train themselves for leadership . . . and the selection of the best in the various fields of social life”. This, we may look upon as the second stage; one that has been forced upon the capitalist class by means of the rapid growth of technological science.

The capitalist world in general and perhaps the USA in particular has hardly yet got over the shock of the USSR being the first in the race to send a man up into space. Such was the blow to America’s educationists that when a book What Ivan Knows that Janie Doesn't was printed and distributed to American schools, a complete revision of American educational techniques was implemented. Russia’s success was of course the result of her implementing the Khrushchev Thesis of 1955 wherein he advocated the emergence of “the new man” who was to be educated to the fundamentals of technology and production. This new-type education (the Polytechnic school) is being hastily copied in Britain and elsewhere outside the Soviet Union. Russia’s educational system then like all others is geared among other things to provide a new meritocracy of scientists, technologists, artists and athletes etc. who will compete and if possible surpass those of the West.

Capitalism cannot allow talent to slip through the net. It is a far cry from 1871 when, at the passing of Forster’s Education Act, a sum of money was allocated which was roughly the amount spent on the annual upkeep of the Royal stables, to the present-day figure which comprises the biggest public expenditure next to that of the armed forces. As Michael Young says, we are witnessing a meritocracy of talent (which is nothing more than saying that clever working-class children are looked upon more than ever as being vital for the furtherance of capitalist technology and the maintenance of its ideology.)

Lord Butler, former politician and an academic, is clear on the role of education. He stated (in relation to students) “. . . the type of capital investment that will accrue with every year . . . and which has enormous value.” The American educationist Gardener states clearly the advantage accruing from education based on “contest mobility” when he says: - “A society like ours has no choice but to seek the development of human potentialities at all levels. It takes more than an educated élite to run a complex technological system”.

Education and élitism in general has hitherto looked to the “genius” as the summit of our culture. Modem capitalism has been forced to abandon this view. Future Socialist society will come about and will be sustained —as present-day capitalism is sustained—by “ordinary” men and women. The only difference will be that their education will be fitting for a free people in a free world.

Education is looked upon as a means of integrating the young into the logic of the prevailing system and the means of bringing about conformity to it. Socialist society will see to it that all will discover how to participate in the transformation of the world for the benefit of all.

John Berger, art critic, stated at a recent lecture sponsored by the Schools Council:

As soon as the young are encouraged to look and to analyse what they see, the inhumanity in our society is clear. The visual evidence of what is wrong is overwhelming . . . and I’m not here thinking of badly designed teapots or vulgar linoleum.

Berger was obviously concerned with the deplorable standards of aestheticism and the shoddy artifacts produced by capitalism, and he is right of course. Socialists are concerned with these, naturally, but are more concerned with the shoddy lives that the vast majority of the world’s people are forced to lead.

Socialists have a great regard for education knowing that it is only an educated working class that can bring about Socialism. Despite the state education afforded to children and adults today, despite the mass of capitalist propaganda, Socialists strive to educate and propagate the knowledge that will finally oust that which in the past and up to the present has helped to subjugate and exploit the world’s workers.

W. Brain

Blogger's Note:

Correction from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The article "Education For What?" (Socialist Standard, September page 160) contains an inaccuracy. It states that expenditure on education "comprises the biggest public expenditure next to that of the armed forces." In fact education expenditure exceeded defence spending in 1969 and has continued to do so since then as the following table shows: -

Nature as Ideology (2016)

From the February 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

As humanity’s relationship with nature has changed so has the meaning of the concept.

Now that the reactionary ideology of Christianity has been banished to the history books most of us believe that our origin as a species was in nature. It is very ironic, then, that in some ways nature has replaced religion in its use as an ideological component within the values of those who oppose human progress.

The worshipers at this altar look to nature as a realm of unchanging certainty and romance. It is conceived as an entity that transcends human culture; a bastion of reality where human, as well as every other nature, is frozen forever in an ideological dogma of despair. The Green movement see a return to Mother Earth as their saviour and the right wing revel in their concept of nature as an exterminator of weakness and compassion. How often is the metaphor of animal behaviour used to illustrate their contempt for the human struggle for reason and social justice? Perhaps a brief historical survey can illustrate how the concept of nature has been used to confront and deny cultural progress.

Unchanging

‘The Romantic Movement’ can be understood as a reaction to the realities of France’s bourgeois revolution of 1789/1793, which many believed to be the product of Europe’s ‘Enlightenment’ and its belief in reason as humanity’s guiding principle. This antithetical ideology centred on the emotions and the sublime within the natural world. Nature was conceived of as transcending human reason and the culture it had produced. It was also used as a metaphor for the passions, which represented nature within humanity. It is still retained by many as the principle of life that transcends the creations of technology and the social institutions, including politics, of cultural evolution. Despite this assertion, or more probably because of it, nature has become a continuing motif of ideology; from nationalism to fascism, liberalism to environmentalism and from human rights to animal rights. It is, therefore, not surprising that these ideals appeal mainly to the emotions and not the intellect.

Rather than transcending politics nature has, ironically, become one of the main ideological ideas within both right and left wing propaganda. The transformation of the ideologies of the free market and the nation state into the natural ‘deities’ of the liberals and fascists respectively, evolved from the same romantic emotional approach to politics. Both point to ‘human nature’ as the origin of their values; individualism for liberals and collectivism for fascists. What unites both these ‘wings’ of reactionary ideology is their disbelief in, and fear of, social change.

Once an ideology is identified with nature it, much the same as religion, becomes fossilised and unchanging. The owners of wealth and power in this capitalistic culture of ours obviously prefer an ideology that seeks to deny the concept of profound social change. It is therefore unsurprising that their media continues to relentlessly pump out this kind of propaganda. Let us take a rest from their sound track to our lives and consider another version of what it is to be human:

Being human

The first hominids made their appearance about 3 million years ago. The subsequent success of the naked ape has led some to claim that Homo sapiens is now the dominant species on the planet. This is contestable in the light of the innumerable viruses and insects but it would be illogical to deny our impact on the world for good and ill. Many have conjectured that it is our long learning childhood that gives us the ability to override any ‘natural instincts’ and so adapt quickly which is responsible for this success. Other creatures possess nominal cultural characteristics (occasional tool making, language etc.) but none have become as completely dependent on their technological creations as has our species. This technological development changed not just our environment but it transformed our humanity. In doing so it also gave us the capacity to understand how and why it was doing so both culturally and politically.

Political consciousness (towards socialism) is a direct consequence of social relationships inherent within the mode of production which is itself contingent upon technological evolution. That this (capitalist) mode of production creates alienation between the producers of wealth and what they produce can be seen as a reason for the ‘nostalgia’ of a ‘return to nature’ which is exemplified by the ideologies referred to earlier. But it is not technology itself that is the cause of so much suffering and despair but the use to which it is put – production for profit and capital accumulation.

Of recent times this old debate has been transformed by global warming and its probable dire results on the environment that even the capitalist class will not be able to escape. As long as pollution was only exterminating other species and those who lived in the ‘third world’, few ‘first world’ intellectuals were very interested. We now have two camps, both fiercely committed to their respective positions, one of which promotes the ideology of global catastrophe and the other who sees it merely as a liberal conspiracy with which to criticise some aspects of the market system.

Positive Development

That the ‘natural’ status of consumer capitalism is now under general debate can only be a positive development from a socialist point of view. Even without this catastrophic ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging over the world, socialists were - and still are - just as concerned about the impact everyday pollution is having on our environment. What we do not invest in, ideologically, is the moral superiority so manifest by the liberal participants in this debate because we know that any variation of capitalism would not, and could not, prevent global warming. In what is surely an expression of a most staggeringly complacent smugness some claim to be delighted that the planet is somehow ‘fighting back’ and that without the ‘plague’ of mankind it will return to some ‘natural’ balance. You can be sure that when these people’s houses are under threat from forest fires or flooding that their voices will be the loudest and shrillest in apportioning blame and calling for help.

Whenever ‘nature’ is used as a concept in debate you can be sure that there lurks beneath it a reactionary ideology (of either left or right). Socialists use the concept neither to support genetic determinism (unchanging human nature) nor in terms of a rose tinted romantic return to a utopian paradise. To be human is, primarily, to produce; to transform nature socially. That this can be done without the waste and pollution of capitalism is central to our cause.

A friend said recently that his boss had gone to China to clinch a deal for the manufacture of new computer hardware that they had developed. When I asked if his boss would concern himself with the working conditions and possible levels of pollution when making his decision my friend turned to me with a look of surprise at my seeming naivety, saying: ‘Oh no, he just wants to confirm the lowest price of production’. Then upon anticipating my next question he said: ‘If we didn’t compete by getting the lowest price for labour we would go bankrupt quickly.’ So there we have it, without ideological bias, a bald statement of the reality that without pollution there could be no capitalism and vice-versa. 

Wez.

Chess and Politics (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

One can find connections between almost any kind of sport or game and politics. Sometimes these things have profound international repercussions, as for example the “body line bowling” episode of the professional cricketers some years ago which nearly led to the breaking off of diplomatic relations between England and Australia.

Chess has been the game that has been played by revolutionists of various kinds for a century, and its enthusiasts claim it as the only really international game.

Many of the earlier Socialists were chess players; sometimes their chess was better than their Socialism. Marx played chess, and so did Engels. William Liebknecht was quite an accomplished player, and so frequently did he beat Marx, that the latter lost much interest in the game. Lenin, Trotsky, and their circle were all keen chess players and Lenin was constantly warning the Bolsheviks of his early days not to take too much interest in chess, as the revolution was “round the corner.”

A century ago the English and French aristocrats were the world’s best chess players, producing many brilliant masters; then the centre of the arena changed to America and Germany. Those who were able to devote the thousands of hours of study to the game that it needed were, needless to say, men of the leisured class.

When chess drifted to Russia it found many active participants in the Russian upper-class circles. When the first World War broke out, there was a masters’ tournament actually in progress at Mannheim. The participants (mostly Russians) were all interned for four years with nothing else to do than play chess till the war finished.

Meanwhile Soviet Russia has developed its chess talent, and given State support to chess in a way unheard of before. Enormous halls are used for tournaments with their walls covered by gigantic chess boards for recording the moves of the master games in progress. Chess players sit for hours and listen to a medley of Soviet propaganda mixed with chess. Chess talks are broadcast with all the enthusiasm of our football commentaries.

In the past chess could never command a “gate” and all efforts to commercialise it were frustrated; but Russia has not only commercialised it, but made chess a vehicle for political propaganda.

Four years ago a team of Russian players visited London and played in Holborn Town Hall. As soon as play was over each day, the Russian masters were quickly bundled into a number of gigantic Daimler cars (probably belonging to the Embassy), and hurried off without the possibility of anyone being able to have a word to say to them. Accepting the many invitations from chess clubs and private players who wanted an opportunity of making friends with them, was out of the question. The Russians were shepherded in and out very much like prisoners who were permitted to have a day off to go straight to church, and then immediately it was over, to return to their cells.

Now that Germany is divided into two zones, players in Eastern Germany are not permitted to visit players in the Western zone (in case they don’t come back—once a chess player’s moved, he’s moved, is the rule in chess). Consequently Western Germans visit the Soviet zone, after a nightmare of pass controls and form filling. But before play can start they are treated to lengthy speeches on freedom, peace, and the abolition of the atomic bomb. Before they depart they are pressed to sign numerous peace pledges against the aggressions of American Imperialism.

In recent numbers of “Schach Express,” a chess magazine published in the Soviet zone of Berlin, we find reports of speeches made by Stalin and his German comrades against the use of the atomic bomb. In “Schach Express” (August. 1950) the Editorial is headed “Chess masters outlaw the atomic bomb.” The June issue contains several pages of reports of mass political demonstrations with pictures of marching youths with flags and banners—all demonstrating against the atomic bomb. The main article is headed “German youths support the Front of Fighters of Peace.” In a tournament book, “Sommerda Thuringer 1950” pictures show famous chess players queueing up to sign protests against war, or declarations of freedom, and is headed “Chess players fight for peace.” On another page the main political article (of this chess book) concludes with slogans in extra large type:

“ Sportsmen; you are not cannon fodder for the Imperialists but fighters for democratic unity and the national independence of Germany.”

In the “nineteen-twenties” Cuba commercialised chess in a peculiar way by making Capablanca (then world champion) “Ambassador Extraordinaire”! If there was an international chess tournament in Moscow or Mexico; or Cape Town or Camden Town, he was sent along by the Government to look after the interests of Cuban nationals who might need him. It is reputed that he was paid £10,000 a year for this, and is probably the only one who has ever made any real money out of chess. The Cuban Government sponsored it to put them "on the map”!

While on this subject the question is always being asked—does chess develop one’s brains? If so it might have a therapeutic value, for those who are deficient in this highly prized quality. In reply to this question which the writer once asked Capablanca, the latter replied, "Most certainly, playing chess develops one’s brains for playing chess.” We therefore doubt if it could be used for developing the "latent brains” of the working class, so that they might more readily understand the social factors which are responsible for the continued existence of Capitalism.

H. Jarvis

Capitalism Means Conflict (1997)

Editorial from the September 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the genuine euphoria over the peace processes in the Middle East and Northern Ireland in recent years the killing continues and the conflicts remain. Socialists have always maintained that the idea of a peaceful capitalism can never amount to much more than a hollow promise and little that has happened since the Downing Street Declaration or the Oslo Accords of 1993 has changed this fundamental truth.

Behind all their talk about peaceful negotiations and settlements nobody should be fooled about the real characteristics of organisations like the IRA or PLO. These terrorist groups who have waged merciless war on the working class will stop at little or nothing to achieve their aims—the creation of new nation-states with themselves at the helm.

In the Middle East, the PLO and other Arab nationalist groups have been severely weakened since the break-up of the Soviet Union (their major benefactor). With the parallel re-emergence of Israeli "hawks’' in Tel Aviv this has contributed to the break-down of the Oslo settlement when Israel ceded some powers to Palestine in the occupied territories in the "land-for-peacc” deal. In turn, this has fuelled the development of more militant Islamic groups like Hezbollah and Hamas whose predilection for using violence to achieve their ends—as in July's brutal bombing in Jerusalem—has even eclipsed that of the PLO itself, now for the moment posing as a "respectable" organisation dedicated to peace and democracy.

The situation in Northern Ireland is not dissimilar.The ending of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996 occurred because the peace process was going nowhere. As in the Middle East, the antagonists have aims which are mutually exclusive and almost every pose they strike is a tactical (rather than principled) one. If this is doubted does anyone, for instance, really believe that the IRA bombers and Loyalist gunmen are going to throw in the political towel without any progress towards achieving their wholly divergent aims? And, for that matter, just as the PLO's financial crisis focused its attempts to achieve some breathing space for itself, does anybody seriously think that the restoration of the IRA ceasefire and Clinton's decision to allow open Sinn Fein fund-raising in the US are not linked?

"Fudge” or compromise deals in Northern Ireland, just like in the Israel/Palestine situation, are only able to provide such momentary breathing space for the antagonists or else possibly “buy off” one or both side’s leaders in an attempt to mobilise them behind constitutional politics and capitalist democracy. When this happens—again like in the Middle East—it only serves to increase the power and significance of those even more hardline groups who openly deride constitutional politics.

It is for this reason among others that such “peace processes” usually emerge as the basis for future conflict (as peace settlements invariably have in capitalist history). Peace in Ireland and the Middle East is not impossible, but so long as capitalism remains, with its divisions, aggression and competition over artificially scarce resources, then nationalism and its bedfellow of international terrorism will not be far behind any peace deal. Socialists can therefore say without any hesitation that there can be only one way to achieve lasting peace across this planet and that means an organised retreat from nationalism in all its forms and an escalation of the struggle for global working class emancipation.

A Glastonbury Tale (1997)

Party News from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Camping is not really meant to be enjoyable, but rather more like horror films, a sort of cathartic process from which you only really derive benefit at the end. Camping explains why you work the rest of the year to keep a bloody roof over your head. It’s to remind you of what it was really like to live in an Iron Age village and thank god you don't have to. It's the townie’s quick fix, paganism for a weekend, nature-loving all the way to Monday. And it enables every camper to think themselves rugged and outdoorsy, before returning to the ruddy indoors again. And during this ritual self-denial the last thing you expect to do is argue politics.

Glastonbury in a sea of mud is a funny place to be putting the socialist case. For one thing, everyone looks stoned on something, even the coppers. No-one has slept or washed in days and the toilets hum louder than the stage PA system. The myriad colourful stalls are selling, selling, selling at a furious rate while the punters are drinking, drinking, being sick and drinking at no less a pace. But over in the "Green Fields" a different, more sober air obtains. There is a healing field, for the "cosmic" set, and a Green Futures field for the more down-to-earth groups with ecologically-oriented proposals to make about the future, or else nostalgia-oriented proposals dredged up out of the past.

In this latter camp we find the Green Anarchists. Clearly a camping enthusiast, their representative informs us that they are opposed to all modern technology and factory production methods, and looks forward to a society of small self-sufficient farming groups whose every article is handmade by the community. This is interesting, for we note that the gentleman is wearing not only machine-made clothing from head-to-toe. but also spectacles. To the suggestion that he is condemning himself to a life of walking around bollock-naked and banging into trees he is impervious, and responds that he hopes to rely on his friends to guide him from place-to-place. Later they eat baked beans for tea. out of a tin. Using a machine-made tin-opener, naturally.

Another stall reminds us that This Land is Our Land, as in the Woody Guthrie song, but turns out to be a co-op land-reform venture whose most rebellious suggestion appears to be that you hire a good solicitor when buying your acreage. There are lifestylists galore in this most hip of hippy nests, and many too hip to have an opinion.

But not a sign of the Leninists, or the left in general. This inexplicable delight is due apparently to the anarchist leanings of the organisers, who have little sympathy for the authoritarian and leadership ideas which are an almost universal feature of such groups.

Over four days people stream past our stall, and turn, caught in the eddies of others who have stopped at a signboard, paused to write graffiti on our blackboard. We might have fifteen or twenty people in front of the stall, talking, arguing, swapping jokes or experiences, some puzzled and some intrigued by what they seem to see as a controversial statement. Abolish the money and property system? Think what you like, but no-one else is doing or saying that, either in this field or any other. What does it mean? Is it barter-systems they're after? Surely not. but what then? How would it work? What about lazy people? What about the rich? It can’t be serious.They can’t be for real.

And yet we were there, with a site at the biggest party in the world. They had to take us seriously, and many of them were smiling as they talked, and many were nodding agreement. We may have stood there with wet feet at times, craving the home comforts, but the conversations we had were heart-warming, and that gave us comfort aplenty.

Someone said in a tent: Just imagine if these 150.000 people decided they wanted to stay here for ever, well, they could do it, couldn't they? People smiled. We are suggesting something similar, but on a larger scale. Festivals may be a form of escapism, but sometimes when people escape it is when they are able to look around themselves and see a little further than usual. And when that happens, some funny ideas are bound to come out. We were lucky to be there. We made an impact. And this is just the beginning.

P. J. Shannon

IS ART THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE? (1980)

Book Review from the December 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Art, An Enemy of the People by Roger L. Taylor (Harvester Press 1978)

Last month the professors of fantasy returned to their State-funded studies in universities throughout the country. The scholars of literature and art; the men and women whose wisdom is based upon an intimate awareness of the motives of non-existent characters in unimportant novels, poems and plays. One’s reputation is based upon a detailed understanding of paintings that have no meaning to the ordinary person; another is respected for his analysis of an ancient Icelandic epic poem; yet another has written the definitive work on the meaning of the pauses in Pinter’s plays.

What have these “experts” got to offer the majority of people? Very little indeed. Literary scholarship and appreciation under capitalism has always been the preserve of an élite. Those who have no compulsion to enter the process of producing wealth spend their time engaging in superior social pursuits which they choose to call Art. The working class is generally excluded from artistic fulfilment because we lack the time, money, education and experience. The ruling class control social culture by owning the production of Art—and by controlling social culture they do much to maintain the workers in a position of political ignorance.

In an age when the mass of humanity commonly faces so many socially produced evils can we afford to divert our mental energies towards such considerations as currently dominate the world of artistic scholarship? In a badly written, but interestingly argued, book called Art, An Enemy Of The People (published in the Harvester Philosophy Now series), Roger L. Taylor has argued that the function of art is one of class domination and aesthetic scholars are responsible for illusions about art which give ordinary people an unjustified sense of inferiority. The book costs £3.50 and should be compulsory reading for trainee editors; if you make your way through the muddled exposition you will find much that is worth considering:

The bourgeoisie as a whole is not fulfilled by Capitalist society. The growth of applied science, the increase in mechanisation, the objective of production being the accumulation of profits, the fragmentation and dehumanising aspects of the production process . . .  all add up, within the bourgeoisie itself, to an impulse to deny, escape from, or compensate for the economic base upon which bourgeois, material security is dependent . . . the social need to make something out of the “cultural life” is not some mythical quality of human-ness expressing itself in the midst of bourgeois dehumanisation, but rather the expression of culturally conditioned expectations. Art, as we know it now, is the result of these various processes working themselves out (pp. 46-7).

You will also find much that is confused and confusing:

In the Third World Marxism is a number of things. It is terrorism, bombs, sporadic violence, guerrilla warfare, as well as being infiltration by the larger Communist powers, involving, as it does, things like liaisons between local capitalists and Moscow so as to expel the influence of American capital. Marxism is, also, and this is the main thing that it is, the history of the various societies referred to as Communist both by themselves and by Western, capitalist societies. The reality of Marxism in the modern world is, then, many sided.

The nonsense which finds its way into Taylor’s book need not prevent us from answering the question which the book seriously poses: Is Art an enemy of the people or can we envisage a society in which art will perform a healthy function for the majority of people?

Taylor says that art can only flourish where human existence is not socially harmonious. This view can be compared with William Morris’s contention that true art can only exist when it is social, and that socialism

. . . will give an opportunity for the new birth of art, which is now being crushed to death by the moneybags of competitive commerce (Art, Labour and Socialism).

Taylor certainly has a point if he is saying that the study of, and participation in, social art on the part of members of the working class is likely to inhibit political consciousness. By fantasising about unreal characters in unreal situations workers are less likely to perceive genuine social contradictions. When you are at school it is considered “cultured” and “classy” to talk at length about the rather dull plays of the sixteenth century court lackey, Shakespeare; to talk at length about Z Cars is considered “uncultured”; to talk about why the majority of kids don’t have enough money to spend is not only “uncultured” but “ill-mannered”. Anyone who has been to the theatre will have witnessed crowds of usually well-paid workers (those who imagine themselves to be middle class) talking in phoney accents about matters of characterisation and plot that are of no consequence to anybody. Can we afford to be complacent that, people’s minds are so diverted in a society which is so in need of change? The plays that they are watching and discussing usually have little social significance. We are entitled to criticise those who make such effort to blend in with the culture of capitalism for not using their energies to a more positive end. Taylor is probably right that the illusions, fantasies, prejudices and pretentiousness of Art is an enemy of the mass of the people in capitalist society. This reviewer takes with much seriousness Taylor’s advice that “Art is a value the masses should resist, not just ignore” (p. 155).

But Taylor’s arguments become unstuck when he claims that art will have no role when the ruling class no longer exists. Taylor’s failure to understand the need for socialised art must result from the fact that he clearly understands little about social history and less about socialism. The socialist, William Morris — whom Taylor strangely does not refer to in his book — did understand the meaning of socialism and thus recognised that in socialist society creative labour would be the highest form of art. When all members of society own and control the means of producing art there will be a synthesis of social productive activity and art which presently stand in antithesis to one another.

It is because Taylor fails to see the possibility of such a synthesis — a failure shared by all non-socialist critics of capitalist culture — that he cannot understand that art, like all other social features, is subject to historical development. The weakness of Morris is that he too occasionally succumbed to a romanticised perception of culture which led him to believe that true art, arising from a socialised environment, could be found in pre-capitalist forms of property society.

The only relevant role for art in modern capitalism is as the voice of social revolutionaries. Considerations of art in separation from the historical study of society is what professional literary scholars exist for. They have no ideas to offer to society which are relevant beyond the works of art that they spend their time studying; the class war rarely intrudes into the lives of the fictional “characters” with whom they are concerned just as the majority of the world’s population rarely intrudes into the exclusive confines in which they dwell. Masters of the values of fantasy, they are blind to the objective laws of society: are we too bold to predict that such “scholarship” will one day be behind us?

Steve Coleman

Miracles Made to Order (2016)

The Halo Halo! column from the February 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Second miracle puts Mother Teresa on path to sainthood’ said the article in the Guardian (18 December). Well, that was lucky wasn’t it? They’ve been keeping their fingers crossed hoping for that second miracle, needed for her to become a saint, ever since she died and the first one took place.

But she did have a few critics. The article noted that a 2013 report carried out by researchers at the Universities of Montreal and Ottawa criticised her ‘rather dubious way of caring for the sick, her questionable political contacts, her suspicious management of the enormous sums of money she received, and her dogmatic views regarding, in particular, abortion, contraception, and divorce’. It also noted that ‘the vast majority of patients who visited Mother Teresa’s mission for the dying had hoped to find doctors to treat them, but instead found unhygienic conditions, a shortage of care and no painkillers’.

So what did these miracles entail? Well, the Vatican isn’t giving too many details of the second one. All they’re telling us is that an unnamed Brazilian man was unexpectedly cured from brain tumours after his priest prayed for Mother Teresa’s intervention with God. And they surely wouldn’t lie about a thing like that, would they?

We do have a few more details of the first miracle, although the late journalist Christopher Hitchens, who looked into it, was not entirely convinced. ‘A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of Mother Teresa, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumour. Her physician, Dr Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn’t have a cancerous tumour in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine’, he wrote in 2003.

‘Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery’ he added.

What, then, are the requirements of a genuine, kosher, Catholic approved miracle? Fortunately we can consult the online Catholic Encyclopedia for an explanation of such arcane theological matters.

‘In analysing the difference between the extraordinary character of the miracle and the ordinary course of nature, the Fathers of the Church and theologians employ the terms above, contrary to,and outside nature’ they inform us. ‘Every miracle is not of necessity contrary to nature for there are miracles above or outside nature’. And they helpfully point out ‘The term contrary to nature does not mean ‘unnatural’ in the sense of producing discord and confusion. The forces of nature differ in power and are in constant interaction. This produces interferences and counteractions of forces’.

Well, they can’t be accused of trying to baffle us with science. You couldn’t imagine a more unscientific load of claptrap. This is like being baffled with pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Cicero, the ancient Roman lawyer who had looked into this hogwash, even before Christianity came along, explained it much more simply – ‘There are no miracles. What was incapable of happening never happened, and what was capable of happening is not a miracle’.

NW

Malthus, Ricardo & Marx (1972)

Book Reviews from the January 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, by Ricardo with introduction by R. M. Hartwell. 40p.

An Essay on The Principles of Population, by Malthus with introduction by Antony Flew. 36p.

The introductions to both these books claim that there has been a revival of interest in these early works. Both of them quote Keynes, but from opposite points of view. Flew quotes Keynes’ observation that the “almost total obliteration of Malthus’ line of approach and the complete domination of Ricardo’s for a period of a hundred years has been a disaster to the progress of economics”, while Hartwell points out that Keynes was writing against the background of the heavy unemployment of the nineteen thirties, and that since then economists have become increasingly interested in problems of “growth analysis” and this has led to a revival of interest in Ricardo’s analysis and especially in his attempt “to integrate the theory of distribution into a model of long-term change”.

So the wheel has turned a full cycle, and Ricardo’s stocks are high once again, and comment on his work frequent and complimentary.

So the conflict between Malthus and Ricardo in their lifetime is to be fought all over again by their respective backers.

Marx made many criticisms of Ricardo but regarded him (and Adam Smith) as the best exponents of "classical economy”. In particular Marx showed the inadequacy of Ricardo’s treatment of value and surplus value. On the theory of value Ricardo got into a dead end through failure to distinguish between labour and labour power. Engels summarised this in his introduction to Capital Volume II. (This and earlier formulations of a theory of value were dealt with in the Socialist Standard July 1934).

Marx and Engels were much less impressed by Malthus—Flew calls their reaction “apoplectic” (A very useful collection of their views will be found in R. L. Meek’s Marx and Engels on Malthus) Flew attacks Meek on the ground that he “speaks throughout in his Moscow’s Voice”. The criticism is valid to this extent, that Meek treats state-capitalist Russia as if it were socialist and argues that what Marx wrote about the laws of population under capitalism do not apply there.

Flew’s attack on Meek and Russia as if he were attacking Marx and Engels is therefore misdirected. Meek quotes the letter Engels wrote to Kautsky in 1881 about possible population problems in a socialist society, which contained the following:

There is, of course, the abstract possibility that the number of people will become so great that limits will have to be set to their increase. But if at some stage communist society finds itself obliged to regulate the production of human beings, just as it has already come to regulate the production of things, it will be precisely this society, and this society alone, which can carry this out without difficulty. It does not seem to me that it would be at all difficult in such a society to achieve by planning a result which has already been produced spontaneously, without planning, in France and lower Austria. At any rate, it is for the people in the communist society themselves to decide whether, when, and how this is to be done, and what means they wish to employ for the purpose. I do not feel called upon to make proposals or give them advice about it. These people in any case, will surely not be any less intelligent than we are.

It should be noted in the reproduction of Ricardo that in Hartwell’s introduction Professor Cannan and Professor Wicksteed are repeatedly referred to as Cannon and Wickstead. 

Edgar Hardcastle

The Party in Wales (1964)

From the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The story of political and industrial activity in South Wales is bound up with the twin products of iron and coal on which, until quite recently, practically the whole population depended. Hence the pattern of life has revolved around, and reflected, these two industries.

Although iron-smelting came first, it was largely conducted in small, isolated pockets. The advent of the Steam Age and the coming of the steamship and the railways gave a terrific impetus to coal-mining. The coalfields became the battleground and graveyard for future generations of the working class. As the army of proletarians marched in, and the verdant green of the Rhondda began to bleed with the wounds of countless coal drifts, a new epoch commenced. It set the stage for the novelist , playwright, and poet; an eloquent élite who dramatized to the world the lot of the S. Wales miner. Time, and the harsh reality of expanding capitalism, was to weld this army into one of common suffering-battalions with “immediate demands,” but with no knowledge of the only course which could end their problems.

And so these workers, who figuratively still carried the clay of their peasant ancestry on their boots, argued, pleaded— and fought—for elementary existence. With passionate doggedness they built their chapels and trade union lodges. Just as they discussed theology and poetry in the one, so they wrestled with politics and economics in the other. The vision of the ‘‘Sweet By and By” was an exciting prospect.

In those early “Frontier Days" charlatanism and sincerity jostled each other in the valleys teeming with a population density higher than anywhere else in the British Isles. Marxism vied with Methodism, hymns were sung at the coalface, and Darwinism was studied by the light of midnight oil. Christ and The Miners' Charter stalked the narrow townships. Even today, men talk of the Red Rhondda. “Not a penny off the pay. Not a minute on the day” floated out on the lodge banners—and men were locked out, speeded up and sacked. “Our Jimmy” became champion of the world —and workers lined up for bread and marg. Great novels and hymns were written, choirs sung on the lawns of Royalty and in the homes of the rich up and down the land—and women wailed in unison at the pitheads for their entombed men-folk.

Such conditions provided well-fertilized soil for the growth of leaders—not your college-bred variety either (not at first, anyhow), though later on the little railways stations that stretched like beads on a string along the valley bottoms were choked with the “Singing Welsh”— “Sending our boy off to the London Labour College.” “Then watch out! ” They were a motley crowd, these leaders and would-be leaders. Some were confessed Atheists, like Aneurin Bevan, whilst others were the respectable, God-fearing type like Mabon, who later became a saint to be remembered by future generations. And through it all, nothing really changed.

And so the years passed, years of feverish political and industrial agitation, years of courtship from all sides and from numerous factions, both “spiritual” and earthy. ILP, Syndicalist, “Communist ” and “ Latter-Day ” Nationalists and Religious Revivalists. Men like Evan Roberts preached tolerance and forgiveness all round between the miner and his boss—thousands followed his advice and the mineowners slept better at nights.

“Then “To Wales—the gift of a son.’ This saviour came into the valley like a fiery prophet, became Member of Parliament with an army of coal and steel workers at his back. He stormed the citadel of Westminster, proclaiming that his “Socialism” was taken from the bible. His chief argument for nationalization was that it would guarantee a supply of coal for the British Navy in time of war. And through it all, nothing really changed. Two great wars came and went, which brought only more exploitation—and death—for the sons of the valleys. At the present time, labour leaders in S. Wales assure us in their writings and public utterances that private enterprise will exist under the next Labour Government! Nothing is going to change. They're telling us!

So much for the background brief as it is—of industrial Wales, a story of skirmishes and day to day struggle. What of today? We have said that nothing has really changed. By that we mean, nothing has changed the fundamental position of the working class as wage-slaves. The coal mines have had a face lift and the motor car is a common possession. Pretty houses have, here and there, replaced the dingy rows of miners’ cottages and there is running water on tap.

The workers of S. Wales and the valleys are living in a state of near ecstatic illusion; an illusion broken from time to time by the same old troubles—speeding up, strikes and closures. Industry has now spread along the Glamorganshire coast-line where we have the biggest steel-producing mills in Europe. Recently, after a month's strike, Port Talbot was changed from a Welsh Klondyke to a ghost town where Salvation Army vans dished out “Christian Aid.” When things are going well our children get scooters and enough food. They also drink large quantities of milk contaminated with a higher degree of Strontium 90 than anywhere else in Britain, the present level being three times as high as it was in 1958.

It is against such a background that the Socialist Party in S. Wales has to work. The material to hand is no better, no worse, than anywhere else. At the moment there is a branch of the Party operating in the Swansea area. Recently local elections were in full swing and members were approached regarding our non-participation. We were asked whether we were really interested in standing; whether we were “practical politically conscious.” The answer to both questions is “yes.” Our aim is to let people know the principles for which we stand. To do this means building-up a strong core of Socialists. We can then challenge and defeat the ignorance and apathy which is rife. We can go forward as a whole, pushing out and up into those battle-scarred valleys bearing the one message that counts “Y Bobl yn Union—y Byd yn Un! ’’—One World, One People!

W. Brain

Sixty years on (1964)

Editorial from the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was on June 12th, 1904, that a hundred odd men and women, at a meeting in London, formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

We do not intend to let the sixtieth anniversary of our foundation pass unnoticed—but neither shall we celebrate in the manner so popular with other political parties. We shall not arrange any great banquets (they would be a flop if we did) or balls (dancing has never been one of our strong points) or any of the other events which are notable only for their false glitter and pompous self- congratulation.

We regard our sixtieth birthday as an occasion for reviewing the work we have done, and the contributions we have made to the international Socialist movement; for intensifying our propaganda both written and spoken; and for planning more work to occupy the busy years ahead.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain came into existence without premises, a journal, literature or funds. Its founder members were derided on all sides as “Impossibilists” who would soon go out of existence. In some way the new party was a very feeble infant but it had a powerful heart—Socialist principles and understanding—the like of which no other organisation possessed.

It was that heart which brought our party through its first, anxious months. It conceived and nurtured the Socialist Standard and it built and expanded the Socialist Party into what it is today—an established revolutionary organisation with its own permanent headquarters in London, its own monthly journal, companion parties in a number of other countries and a library of pamphlets the consistency and correctness of which we feel entitled to take pleasure in.

That strong heart brought the idea of Socialism through the persecution of the First World War, through the black days of the rise of Fascism in Europe and through the battering of 1939/45. It has always been a heart which has beaten true. The members who make up the Socialist Party today have exactly the same principles and understanding as did the gallant few who set out on their seemingly impossible task so long ago.

In September this year the Socialist Standard too will be sixty years old. We shall mark the event with a special issue, which will review in some detail the history of our party.

For the moment, let it be enough to put on record our admiration for the comrades who took on unflinchingly the hardest job the Socialist movement will probably ever have to face—its own foundation. And let us declare that we who are the Socialist Party in the nineteen sixties will carry on the work.

We shall uphold the principles which were formulated, for the first time as a consistent whole, sixty years ago. We shall continue to be an independent, democratic, political party which maintains that Socialism can only come as a result of majority understanding. A party which has no leaders, which opposes all capitalist wars and is hostile to all other political organisations.

And lastly, a party which stands for Socialism; a social system in which the things which man uses to make and to distribute his wealth are owned by the whole of mankind, in which the barriers of race and colour are recognised for the falsities which they are and in which man is truly free.