What is Poverty? (2000)

From the June 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The state has an interest in defining poverty in such a way that only a minority are classified as poor.

It was hardly surprising, after the depredations of war and the austerity of rationing, that the early post-war years should have been a period of rising expectations. This increasing optimism was fuelled by rapid growth. The huge task of social reconstruction soaked up labour like water in a sponge. Low unemployment pushed up wages and that, together with the introduction of the "welfare state", meant that the scourge of poverty seemed to be inexorably receding. Technological advances made affordable household items that were once the province of privilege. The mass market had at last truly arrived: a veritable cornucopia disgorging its superfluity of refrigerators, TV sets and automobiles. And it was against this backdrop of rising consumption that the first green shoots of a new kind of social protest would soon emerge—from budding environmentalists to the hippies of the "flower-power" generation-fulminating against the crass materialism and extravagant excesses of the "throwaway society".

It was in these years that a spate of books appeared which seemed to capture the mood of the time. One such was one written by the economist, J.K. Galbraith, called The Affluent Society (1958). Galbraith's thesis was that we live in an age of unprecedented affluence yet our habits of thought are still rooted in the past. This was a past traumatised by the experience of "grim scarcity". We need, he argued, to radically adjust our economic thinking if we are to fully capitalise on the new prospects opening up and avoid jeopardising what had hitherto been achieved.

It was just as well that Galbraith saw fit to prudently qualify his observations, restricting their scope to what he called a "comparatively small corner of the world populated by Europeans". Yet, it must be remembered that, at the time, even among the developing countries, there was a widespread expectation that the benefits of modernisation would soon "trickle down" to everyone, heralding the end of global poverty. They had only to keep to the same trajectory of economic development that had so unerringly guided their ex-colonial masters towards the sweet pastures of capitalist paradise. Little did they know what awaited them around the corner. The 1970s' oil crisis, mounting Third World debts and the crushing, hope-extinguishing cutbacks imposed by IMF structural adjustment programmes soon put paid to such wishful thinking.

Relative poverty

But, to be fair to Galbraith, he did not suppose that the disappearance of "grim scarcity" in the so-called First World signalled the eradication of poverty altogether. There remained a more intangible, indeed intractable, kind of poverty—the "elegant torture of the spirit which comes from contemplating another man's more spacious possessions". "People," declared Galbraith, "are poverty-stricken when their income, even if it is adequate for survival, falls markedly below that of the community. Then they cannot have what the larger community regards as the minimum necessary for decency; and they cannot wholly escape, therefore, the judgement of the larger community that they are indecent."

This is "relative poverty". It is often contrasted to what is called "absolute poverty"—the kind of poverty where one has barely enough to survive on—but, in a sense, that can be quite misleading. Indeed, it can lend itself to the complacent conclusion we having nothing really to grumble about; at least compared to others less fortunate. Like a child, admonished for not eating all their peas, we are told to remember "the starving millions in the Third World". So we should. Not the inference that we should be eternally grateful for living in a society that manages to put food on our plate—providing we can afford it—is, frankly, one that sticks in the gullet. For this is a society the vast majority have good reason to get rid of and, perhaps, none more so than those it lets starve in the very shadow of the food mountains it has wilfully created.

Rather than see "relative poverty" as something to be contrasted to, and separate from, "absolute poverty", it can be better understood as encompassing the latter. As the anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins, perceptively observed:

"The world's most primitive people have few possessions but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all, it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such, it is the invention of civilization" (Stone Age Economics, 1974, p.37).

In short, poverty presupposes affluence just as affluence presupposes poverty. Each only acquires meaning in and through its relation to the other. And, paradoxically, what underpins their mutual dependence is what enables us to analytically separate one from the other: our experience of material inequality. In other words, we would not be aware that we were poor unless we had reason to believe others were better off then ourselves.

It is conventionally assumed that it is the duty of government to look after the "less fortunate". But if poverty is essentially relative, how does one differentiate between those who supposedly warrant this support and those who do not? In other words, on what grounds are we to classify one person as "poor" and another, "affluent"? After all, a millionaire might conceivably be considered "poor" by the standards of a billionaire.

One approach might be to calculate the average income—or arithmetic mean—for society as a whole such that all who fell below it are deemed "poor" and all above it, "affluent". By this token, given the highly skewed distribution of wealth in society today, a clear majority of the population would fall into the former category, and a small minority, the latter. However, while this pattern of distribution remained the same, any increase in overall living standards which the state may rely upon to improve the welfare of its citizens would, by definition, have no impact on the extent of poverty among them. This is because the proportion of "poor" would itself remain unaltered. For a government committed to the alleviation of poverty, this would pre-empt any possibility of success on those terms and, so, may prove politically damaging.

It could, of course, decide to significantly alter this pattern of wealth distribution. Even so, short of everyone getting exactly the same, the optimum outcome it could thereby hope to achieve—which, in statistical terms, means eliminating any "skewness" around the "mean"—would be to reduce the ratio of poor to only half the population by this reckoning.

There are, in any case, clear limits to a policy of redistribution that a government cannot ignore in a competitive environment without hindering the process of capital accumulation. In this regard, there is undoubtedly some truth in the neo-liberal critique of the welfare state: "excessive" redistribution, involving massive increases in sate welfare, would impose an unacceptably high tax burden on capitalist enterprises which would substantially reduce their profits. That, in turn, would diminish their capacity to mobilise capital for future investment and, hence, their ability to compete in an increasingly globalised market.

Redefining the poor

Clearly, then, from the state's point of view, some other approach to the identification of poverty is needed to circumvent these difficulties. Ideally, this would allow it to conclude that the problem of poverty was, by no means, widespread. An appropriate formula could then be devised to yield just such a conclusion. By such means, a state could, if not altogether define it out of existence, at least enable this problem to "assume" manageable proportions. There are several reasons why such an approach might be officially favoured.

Firstly, the "poor" could thus be portrayed as a minority, small enough not to appear as a serious political threat and not too large as to overwhelm the state's efforts to render them some token "assistance". Secondly, by defining poverty in this arbitrary fashion, this draws attention away from a structural explanation of poverty, allowing it to be blamed, say, on personal "defects". Thirdly, by effectively splitting the working population into those officially classified as "poor" and those who are not, this facilitates the state's ideological objective of securing their support through a process of "divide and rule".

Since Elizabethan times, poverty was equated with destitution. Initially, parishes were responsible for supporting the poor but, after the 1834 Poor Law, this task was taken over by boards of "guardians", each comprising several parishes, which were overseen by a government commission. As David Donnison points out, paupers "had to pass a crude kind of means test-calculated in loaves of bread—and the relief they were given kept them alive at a standard which was intended to be worse then the lot of the lowest-paid labourers . . ." (The Politics of Poverty, 1982, p.10).

According to Donnison, one of the main purposes of the 1834 poor law was to "impose the labour disciplines required for an industrial economy". Another was to mitigate the risk of social unrest. However, the "lowest-paid labourers" were themselves not given any assistance, and this effectively remained the case right until 1971 when the family income supplement was first introduced.

Then, in the early 20th century, the meaning of poverty underwent a subtle shift, in part instigated by Seebohm Rowntree's classic surveys of poverty in York. Rowntree's notion of poverty involved the formulation of a minimum income needed to ensure the reproduction of labour power at a level of physical efficiency increasingly demanded by industry. To that end, a simple diet sheet was prepared with help from the British Medical Association which would ensure adequate nutrition at minimum cost to the state. "Subsistence poverty" was held to be a standard of living that fell below this tolerable minimum; as such, it was distinguishable from "destitution poverty"—or what we usually mean by "absolute poverty"—which was simply concerned with physical survival.

From the standpoint of the state, the advantage of setting a fixed threshold is that it enabled it to look to a gradual rise in living standards to lift growing numbers of the poor above a condition of poverty without having to seriously address the vexed question of unequal distribution. In short, it could thus hope to progressively reap the political benefits of a society that was becoming increasingly "affluent". However, at around about the time that The Affluent Society was first published, an increasing number of social scientists, led by Peter Townsend, began to question the validity of this approach.

Townsend and his colleagues, argued that, far from disappearing since the war, poverty had increased. They pointed out that the "poverty line" adopted by the then National Assistance Board (set up in 1948) was actually lower than even that recommended by Rowntree himself. Further, it was unrealistic to expect the poor to confirm exactly to such a stringent spending pattern paternalistically laid down by the state; what the state regarded as a "necessary expenditure" was not something that could be absolutely fixed for all time but constantly changed along with society itself. This called for a definition of poverty that was essentially relative and thus sensitive to the distribution of social wealth.

Their approach was one that had been anticipated, not only by Marx, but also, Adam Smith. In The Wealth of Nations Smith wrote that "by necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary to support life but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without". Such a sentiment was, as we saw, echoed by Galbraith himself.

In due course, the notion of a fixed "poverty line" was abandoned and replaced by more relativistic measures of poverty. One current example is what is known as "Households Below Average Income" (HBAI) which identifies "the poor" as those living below 50 percent of average income. But, crucially, from the standpoint of the dominant ideology, this still retains the assumption that the poor constitute only a minority and, consequently, that the majority have reason to be grateful for not being included amongst their number.

But, in truth, that majority is impoverished. It is impoverished insofar as it has no other option than to sell its working abilities to those who monopolise the means of living and whose conspicuous wealth must irresistibly provide the very yardstick by which that poverty will be starkly exposed.

This may not be the poverty of material destitution. But if the measure of a human being consists in the accumulation of material possessions to which he or she may claim the, by that token, we are demeaned. And, ultimately, it is in this devaluation of our human worth—not simply in the fact of material inequality but in the meaning this society attaches to it—that we may glimpse the very essence of this poverty.

Robin Cox

Blue Streak (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the Government has decided to write off its new missile Blue Streak! It was so new that it was out of date before the project got under way. They never even had the chance to fire one.

Of course, it was said to be accurate and reliable. The only thing was, it was so heavy and cumbersome that the Russians could have dropped one of their missiles on every one before we could have counted down to forty minutes, let alone four.

When it first appeared in the Government Estimates they provided £6 million for it. By the time they came to scrap it the cost had risen to £120 million. And hardly anybody said a word. £120 million just like that—on nothing.

Yet only a few short days before we had seen the spectacle of a Chancellor of the Exchequer going into tortuous details to explain why he had been forced to put an extra 2d. tax on cigarettes to prevent the economy of the country going haywire.

Socialists talk about the absurdities of capitalism so much that the new ones, and they come along every day, fail to register. The mind ceases to take them in any more. But we have a suggestion to help you remember at least one. Every time you take a puff at that fag, swearing to give them up because you’re only paying for smoke, think of all the smoke that never came out of Blue Streak!

Come to that, looking at it another way, perhaps its just as well.

Stan Hampson

Mr. Macmillan's Worries (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Having floored them at the polls last October, the Tory Party, like any good wrestler, has managed to sit on Labour's head and twist its arms. The Brighouse by-election was a good victory for the Government. Can Mr. Macmillan, then, do nothing wrong? Must he go on winning elections, until everybody else gives up? It must be very irritating for the Labour Party, who can be expected to grasp at every straw that swirls past them in the waters of defeat.

What are these straws? Mr. Amory’s Budget revealed some dissension in the Tory ranks, for whilst Labour members were cheering the Chancellor, Lord Hinchingbrooke, Gerald Nabarro and others sat in glum disapproval. More, Mr. Nabarro forced a division in the Commons. This was probably considered to be a bit thick in the clubs. Hinchingbrooke could be excused, perhaps, but that chap Nabarro, with his big moustache and loud voice and his L.C.C. education—really, it is too much. Labour, of course, gloried in it, forgetting the days when their own critics of, for example, Bevin’s foreign policy, were so unpopular. These men—Zilliacus, Platts-Mills and the rest—were called not cads, but stabbers-in-the-back, fellow travellers, and so on, and were eventually expelled from the Party. Of course, any government dislikes a split amongst its parliamentary supporters, because unity makes it so much easier to push through the measures necessary to organise British capitalism. That is why Nabarro is considered such a bounder and why Labour’s Russophiles were dealt with so sharply.

The tragedy is that workers are often taken in by these squabbles. The points at issue—whether Britain should have been more friendly to Russia after the war, whether Mr. Amory’s Budget should include such high expenditure- are unimportant to workers' lives. The cause of our poverty—the class ownership of wealth—goes on, whether one year we pay twopence less for our beer and the next twopence more for our cigarettes.

Other worries

In any case, Mr. Macmillian has other things to worry about. This month, he must see through the conference of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers and later he must attend the Summit meeting. Although the recent bloodletting in South Africa seems, in human interests, to demand some frank speaking, the statement which will come at the end of the Commonwealth conference will probably be as platitudinous as ever. Doubtless, it will touch on what is called the value of the Commonwealth. In fact, the real value of this organisation lies in the commercial ties between its members. These ties are judged on strictly economic terms. Australia, for example, found in recent years that post war inflation had decreased the value of some of the duty preferences which Great Britain allowed her. Letting the so-called Commonwealth spirit go by the board, she agitated for—and got—some alterations.

Mr. Iain Macleod, the Colonial Secretary, was near the mark when he addressed the recent annual meeting of the Glasgow Unionist Association. The Guardian's report of his speech said :

Mr. Macleod said that we did not go abroad to govern: we went abroad to trade. It wasn't really true that trade followed the flag. It would be more true to say that the flag followed trade. So, if we were wise we could stay in countries we once ruled as traders, farmers, planters, shippers, business men and engineers. (22/3/60.)

Naturally, Mr. Macleod was trying to put it in the most attractive nutshell he could find, but the fact is there—empires are built upon the capitalist need for trade and expansion, which makes the deaths of the Sharpeville Africans—and of the millions of others who have been killed in defence of their master’s empires—especially bitter.

Summit

At long last, having sorted out whether it is better for the premiers to decide what their foreign secretaries shall discuss, or vice versa, the Summit meeting is at hand. It is a depressing fact that these conferences do little to ensure the future peace of the world. Perhaps the most propitious time for a Summit conference was in the war-weary year of 1945. Then, if ever, the politicians could have talked peace. Instead, as usual, they got down to carving up the world between the victors, conceiving the disputes from which a future war could be born. They divided Berlin. They divided Korea. Either of these, during the last twelve years, might have caused a third world war. There is no point in moaning over this. These conferences are arranged so that the various capitalist powers can discuss the issues of economic advantage and military power which are so important to them. Nobody can reasonably expect a peaceful conclusion. Yet workers put their faith in them, hoping that the representative of their government, like a champion boxer, will come out on top.

Which brings us back to Mr. Macmillan. Can he crush the rebellion behind him? Ride out the criticism of his neutrality on Sharpeville, captivate the Summit talks? If he can, and if that boom keeps going, working class support for his Party will probably increase. But this could have a serious effect. In 1950, a survey of the Greenwich constituency pointed to the conclusion that, if electors there had voted in accordance with their opinions (on steel nationalisation, and so on) the Tories, and not—as actually happened—Labour would have won the seat. This conclusion was repealed by a similar survey in 1951 in North-east Bristol. How ironical—and how galling for Mr. Macmillan—if he was so successful that all his supporters voted Labour!

This is no joke. In this country and all over the world, political parties are grappling for the power to organise the affairs of their capitalist class. It is working class ignorance and indifference that votes for the slick leader and the dazzling promises. Ignorance and indifference give capitalism each new lease of life, to continue its vicious contradictions.

Ivan

Life and Laughter. (1930)

From the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and so does humour. For instance: Magistrate (at Willesden, of course) :

"What is your occupation?"

Prisoner: "Unemployment!"

This was selected by the newspapers as a police court joke. So it is, but there is more humour than meets the eye. Another magistrate: "What is your occupation?"

Prisoner (or should we say defendant here): "I am a gentleman.” No! there is no laughter here, not even a smile.

Here is a Labour Government in the seats of the mighty, pledged to abolish unemployment. They are not a sad-eyed, melancholy party. Jollity oozes from their joints and mirth gushes from their mouths. How they laughed when the Liberals said they would reduce unemployment to normal (whatever that is) in a twelvemonth. How the unemployed must laugh at this date, to think what the Labour' Party has done for them. Mr. Thomas has been to Canada and several dinners, Mr. MacDonald has been to America and several luncheons, Mr. Snowden has been to Paris and several tea-fights, and Mr. Henderson has been to the Hague. And they all wear optimistic tall hats.

After all, life is very jolly, isn't it? Look at jolly old George Lansbury. He is papering the parlour with photographs from the papers, showing him at school treats, and looking at sites for Lidos, and sites for tarpaulin doss-houses, and considering other solutions of the poverty problem- There is no need for gloom, or despondency. Sir Oliver Lodge is helping. He has withdrawn his gaze from the interstellar spaces, and comes down to earth with jovial George. We believe this is the first occasion when a learned man of stifling profundity has collaborated with a real, red, one hundred per cent., out-and-out, raging, tearing revolutionary.

Such a jolly idea, too. The proposal is that those of our fellows who cannot find a master, and in consequence have no home, shall be allowed to pass the hours of darkness in the public parks. The possibility of rain is provided for by the intervention of a tarpaulin sheet between the homeless and heaven. You see how practical they are. Something now, that is the idea. None of your waiting until everybody votes for socialism. Free dosshouses in our time or in our parks, everyone can appreciate that.

But really, if it wasn't for humour, where should we be? Someone suggested the other day that if we all wore our shirt tails six inches longer, we should abolish depressions in Lancashire. Of course, as usual, people thought it was a joke. You wait till George, the practical revolutionary, sees the idea. He and Sir Oliver ought to do something between them.

While we are on the subject of humour, it may be news to you that the recent great war was one long side-splitting joke. Books like "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Undertones of War," "Goodbye to all That," and so on, filled as they were with blood, brains and mangled bodies, lice, filth, disease, and death, were calculated to give the impression that modern war was no joke. That would never do. What about a crop of heroes for the next little quarrel? So out comes the Evening News with a daily page of Cockney stories of the war. One huge joke, from start to finish. The only wounded were those whose heads protruded above the trench through laughing so much. There may have been a bit of blood about in some parts of the battlefield, and one or two nasty accidents, but bless you, the Cockneys did not mind. They just laughed and carried on.

And that suggests an idea. Perhaps it will strike Mr. Lansbury too. Could not the new lotus-eaters of Lansbury Lidos (tarpaulin section) be supplied with a copy of the Evening News each evening? Before they closed their eyes in slumber they could read of the lovely times the "boys" had in France, and sigh for the next orgy of humorous slaughter. They could mitigate the rain blowing in at the sides by reading the reports of company meetings, and gathering that industry is not doing very badly after all. And possibly, they might discover a picture on the back page of Mr. Lansbury having a swing. It is a great world.

W. T. Hopley

Socialism and Art. (1930)

From the January 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “The whole way along, Capitalism has stifled Art and tortured the artist. For Art there has been a cramped and narrowed existence; for the artist starvation during his best years, and fame when he was too old to enjoy it. There never was a system which was so noxious to Art as this of Capitalism. All the accusations that it hurls at Socialism will rebound with redoubled vigour against its own lying head. The most inconceivably unrefined Socialistic state could not do worse than degrade Art and starve the artist. What will the ordinary Socialist State of our dreams do?    

  “Firstly, with regard to your genuises. Well, the bureau idea is a rotten one. We have the rudiments of it now in the various scholarships to Schools of Painting and Schools of Music, although they have not tried it yet in respect to Literature. You may discover and encourage technical talent like this—but the “chances are that genius will go unnoticed, if nothing more. In such schemes you are bound to have examiners and selectors of a sort, and anything novel (as all works of genius are bound to appear until you get used to them) may give them the impression that it is only bad or eccentric. Genius takes some little time to be appreciated, and then a whole people, is always a safer judge than an individual who is asked to give an immediate opinion. But. frankly, is there any reason why you should thus keep the artists as a breed apart, a sort of Levites? A poet eats, sleeps, and drinks, and (if he is a sensible man) plays billiards. There seems to me to be no valid reason why he should not spend three or four hours a day in some socially necessary labour, mental or physical— always giving him a choice of occupation, of course. Our error at present is not in forcing artists to take up other work in order to earn their living, but in giving them so much of this other work, or such distasteful work, that their energies are sapped and their thought deadened."    

   “And as for the community at large, it seems as clear as daylight to me that better material conditions and a freer life will bring out again all those instincts which in many men are suppressed under Capitalism. Art will give pleasure to work and beauty to the world. And beauty breeds like every other living thing—except the upper classes. The more beautiful the world becomes, the more men’s efforts will be centred on making it beautiful. On what lines these efforts will run it were a little rash to attempt to forecast. Men will attempt to abolish ugliness wherever possible; ugliness in social conditions of all sorts, in their dwellings, in their clothes, in their habits, in every single article they use. One can scarcely agree with Ruskin that the destruction of all machinery is desirable. But still, it is highly probable that in a Communist society, men, as regards certain articles of everyday use, would rather go without machinery, and do a little more work, in order to get the beauty that only handicraft can give. Many ugly things, too, that we see around us to-day. would disappear of their own accord, because they are only in existence to satisfy an artificial need created by the Capitalists in order to find an investment for a portion of their surplus capital. . . . Every man who is working for human happiness is, whether he knows it or not, following in the footsteps of the great artists of the past and clearing the road for the great artists of the future."   J. C. Squire

The above is taken from a pamphlet published by the Social Democratic Federation in 1907. It is interesting as an artist’s viewpoint, for Squire was a very fine poet, as most modern anthologies bear witness. It is also interesting from another point of view. Squire became a leading writer for one of the most influential Capitalist papers, the Sunday Times, and eventually stood as Liberal candidate for a London division. As he points out, the artist, like every other human being, must eat and drink in order to live—and the hand of Capital is heavy!

Gilmac.

How To Study Socialism (1930)

From the December 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers of the Socialist Standard and listeners at our meetings will have realised that we attach great importance to the workers having a knowledge of certain basic principles and being able to apply them to the questions of the day. That is how Socialists are made, and it is the only way. The worker who wishes to save himself from taking in and acting upon the theories and policies of the various capitalist parties must himself get to understand the economic and political problems which face him. This requires a certain amount of study, but it is well within the reach of the average worker. It is less difficult than many of the technical studies which workers have to pursue in order to get and keep their jobs in the employers' factories, workshops and offices. The study of economics and politics from the working class viewpoint is not only interesting in itself—something which can be said of all systematic expansion of our knowledge of the world we live in—but it has the additional attraction that it touches at every point the actual conditions of the life of the working class. That is to say, it is a study which, so far from being divorced from action, leads directly to the adoption of policies in line with our own economic interests. Knowledge of Socialism colours the everyday thoughts and actions of the Socialist, enables him to understand and appreciate at their true value the social forces with which he has to deal, and gives him that confidence which is indispensable for the organisation of the working class, the conquest of the powers of government, and the building up of Socialism.

How is such a study to be undertaken? What books should be read, and how are the students’ difficulties to be dealt with? These questions are in the minds of all who approach the task for the first time. To the limit of our present resources we hold, meetings, and arrange study classes and discussions at Head Office and in the branches. The student should attend these meetings and classes.

He should read the books advertised in these columns. They are works which we can recommend, and we shall be pleased to advise as to the works which a beginner should tackle first.

But above all there is The Socialist Standard itself. From month to month, over a period of 26 years, Socialist principles have been applied to current problems, every aspect of capitalism has been examined and explained, every policy presented to the workers has been criticised and its value assessed, every anti-working-class party has been exposed. Hundreds of well-informed articles have made accessible useful knowledge from almost every field of study, and hundreds of students' difficulties have been answered.

The Socialist Standard is not like a “news" journal, out of date almost as soon as it is published. It is a record of the past history of working-class movements, packed with invaluable information on their failures and on the false theories and policies which made failure inevitable. It is no exaggeration to say that there is no other comparable source to which the worker with his limited leisure and means can go for reliable guidance in the study of social problems. It is to meet this need that we offer bound volumes for sale. They are well bound and are sold at a price which leaves only a small margin over the actual cost of binding and postage. We cannot too strongly urge members and sympathisers to order one or more volumes and get down to study during the winter months. An announcement as to prices is printed elsewhere in this issue.

Behind the Test Ban Treaty (1963)

From the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

One swallow, said Lord Home, does not make a summer, but without any swallows there will be no summer (or words to that effect). He was talking, of course, about the Test Ban Treaty which was signed last month amid so much flourish and back-slapping in Moscow.

Lord Home was not the only statesman to offer a somewhat muted welcome for the Treaty. On the other side, there were plenty of commentators to assure us that this was something to sing about, and that the agreement was a step towards a better, safer, more peaceful world.

Now we have heard this song before and we have come to accept it for what it is worth. So it is fair to ask one or two questions about this latest venture into the field of agreements which are supposed to be going to make the world a fit place for humans to live in.

The first thing about the Treaty to give us a qualm is the suspicious ease with which it was discussed and signed. Talks on banning bomb tests have been going on for years, each one getting bogged down in apparently futile arguments over the details of administering a ban. Only a simple soul, of course, could have believed that these were genuine difficulties. The reason for the succession of breakdowns was that the talks were not serious. No nuclear power has ever really intended to give up the right to test its weapons.

Then suddenly, in contrast to the years of shilly-shallying, the new talks opened and the diplomats went willingly to Moscow (no bargaining, for a change, over where the talks were to be held) all in the assumption that this time they would bring it off. And they did. The experts at dipping their pens in the ink without signing, as Moscow radio called them, all at once made their marks on the paper and the deed was done. Why the sudden change of heart?

We can gorge ourselves on any amount of speculation. A popular theory was that the great powers gave themselves an awful fright over Cuba and that, stricken by a ruinous vision of the consequences of what might have been last October, they will now go to any lengths rather than to the brink again. This theory fits in with the widespread conception of international politicians as men who can apply everyday, humane standards of judgment to their work.

But the obvious question here is, why did they not apply these standards before Cuba? That affair was, after all, something of a calculated gamble by the Soviet Union. Is it possible that last year's belligerent Mr. Khrushchev, the man who only a few months ago secreted nuclear rockets onto the United State's doorstep, can change into this year's paragon of peace and virtue? This is the sort of unanswerable question which the theory about the influence of peaceful or bellicose leaders has to satisfy.

Another explanation for the Treaty was that the nuclear powers are finding the cost of their weapons too high and now think it sensible to call a halt. There is some evidence to support this point of view. Hydrogen bombs are expensive and so is the associated hardware—the rockets and the guiding systems and the race for space—which is so essential a part of them. Probably even more expensive—and this is something which the last series of big American and Russian tests may have uncovered — is the chain of anti-missile defences which must be almost the next step in the nuclear arms race.

Perhaps, then, the nuclear powers need a breathing space to sort out the delivery problems, so that they can develop a production method for missiles as smooth and as cheap as that for conventional bombers. The big fault with this argument is that it ignores the fact that, if the interests of a capitalist power demand it, that power will produce its weapons regardless of the cost. In the last war, this country was spending £14 million each day on the war effort. For a long time the British capitalist class have had their doubts about the economy of keeping up their own nuclear weaponry. Yet they have kept it up. Armaments do not provide the best ground for a logical, orderly assessment of priorities.

And when we have considered all these arguments—and perhaps given them their due—we are still left with our original question.

Why the sudden change of heart?

One of the most striking—and potentially the most frightening-aspects of the Treaty is that it divides the world into those countries which have the Bomb and those which, with the exception of France, have not got it. (There will now probably be pressure upon de Gaulle—perhaps an American promise of nuclear know-how—to get him into the new alliance.)

What is more, the nuclear powers are now sworn to try to prevent the spread of the weapons; in other words, to maintain their own supremacy. This is what de Gaulle meant when he referred to the " . . . terrible threat which the nuclear armaments of the two rivals hold over the world and, above all, over the peoples that have not got them.” And it is what the chairman of the China Peace Committee meant when he promised a Chinese nuclear bomb in these words:

It will not be long now before the attempt to control the destiny of peoples made by a small number of countries with their monopoly of nuclear weapons will be thwarted.

It is when we consider that the breach between Moscow and Peking, which has been opening up for the past few years, has now burst wide open that the Test Ban Treaty takes on what could be its true significance. The breakdown of the recent talks between the Russian and the Chinese leaders could indicate that recent Russian policy towards China is openly a failure and that henceforth the clashing economic and strategic interests of these two countries can no longer be papered over by a mutual hostility towards the USA. This in turn would mean that the Russian government will be as anxious as any other to stop the Chinese having the Bomb— or that, if they have got it, to deter them from flaunting it by a massive display of nuclear counter-strength.

If this is so, we may be sure that the effect of the Treaty will be to make the nuclear have-nots intensify their efforts to get the Bomb. From this it may follow that the nuclear haves will try to do a deal, as we have seen they may try with France, to restrict or to control the spread of nuclear knowledge. Or, perhaps, on this issue, they will find themselves fighting a war.

Are we, then, witnessing a new alignment in the disputes and the opposing forces of world capitalism? Do we stand now at the threshold of another great division? Said The Economist on August 3rd:

Moscow’s split with Peking . . .  may perhaps stand out bold and clear as an event that forced us to . . .  think up a fresh set of rules of action to face a new outlook in world politics.

Which would be nothing new. It is the basic nature of capitalism which causes modern war and so gives rise to the weapons with which wars are fought. This same basic nature throws up a mass of complex interests and counter interests which at one time coincide and at another clash. Capitalism's allies are never, can never, be permanent. Its treaties and agreements can never be worth more than the paper they are written on.

The Moscow agreement is not excluded from this. It has the customary gaping loophole through which, on a plea of “national interests,” any of its signatories can forget that they ever signed it. It excludes the currently awkward powers—China and France—and this is no coincidence because the present interests of these countries put them outside the Treaty. No pact, after all, has ever been able to get over the conflicting interests of capitalism’s disputing nations.

None of this, as we might have guessed, prevented the politicians from taking credit for the Treaty. With the ink on the signatures hardly dry, they were anxiously identifying themselves with the Test Ban and pointing out what clever, humane men they are to stop doing something which, by any humane reasoning, they should never have started. They told us how good it is for us, now that the tests have stopped. When Lord Home could take time off from musing on the swallows he said:

Don’t let us run away with the idea that this test ban, if it is signed by the United States, Russia, and ourselves, is of no value. It stops fall-out, which greatly concerns the medical profession and every parent in every western country.

We may be sure that Lord Home has not forgotten that he is a member of a government which, as long as they wanted to test their bomb, blandly assured us that the danger from fall-out was negligible. A government which told us that the best medical brains were on their side in this matter and that only a morbid, hypochondriacal parent would worry about fall-out. Do the facts change, now that a treaty has been signed? Is Strontium-90 dangerous, after all? Did all those children really die of leukaemia?

The cynicism of capitalism is one of its worst features. Yet cynicism is the quality—if that is the right word—which the politicians and the diplomats must develop if they are to run the system. They must all learn to sign on the dotted line with their tongues in their cheeks and a ready smile for the cameramen. And how much, do you think, does that make their signature worth?

And will the Test Ban Treaty, do you think, really work? 

The fact is that it is very much on the cards that the nuclear powers will one day start their tests again. And if the Moscow Treaty does go into the waste paper basket it will find itself nestling alongside any number of equally ballyhooed predecessors.

Ivan

The Test Ban Treaty (1963)

Editorial from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the recently signed Test Ban Treaty there hangs a massive, inevitable question. Elsewhere in this issue of the Socialist Standard we discuss some of the implications of the Treaty and the possible reasons for it. Briefly, the big nuclear powers have come to an agreement to stop atmospheric testing because of a recent shift in the balance of power in the world.

The Soviet Union, which has tried for so long to control the potential might of China, has now apparently given up and in some ways has thrown in its lot with the Western bloc. China must now step up its efforts to master the secrets of nuclear weapons which the Soviet Union has refused to give them.

If the present situation develops much further we may see a massively powerful, nuclear armed China on the one hand, gathering as many allies among the new Eastern and African states as it can, and on the other—almost the whole of the rest of the world. By no means is this an attractive prospect.

The result of the Test Ban Treaty can only be, then, another big power line-up in the world and a continuation of the old, ruthless struggle. The only difference will be that the sides will have changed and perhaps the areas of dispute. The basic conflict of capitalist interest will remain unaltered. For the majority of people in the world—for the working class—this will bring further insecurity, further tension, perhaps in the end the unimaginable terror of a mighty conflagration.

And the question is: What will they do about it? The Test Bun Treaty is typical of all the pacts and agreements which capitalist powers make between themselves. All these pacts, at best, only shuffle the cards into different, no less menacing combinations. This does not, of course, prevent the politicians presenting each treaty as a step towards peace, as a cause for rejoicing among the working class.

And the big question is: Will the working class believe them? Will they reflect upon the history of all the treaties 'which have been solemnly and ceremoniously signed only to be broken when the very time came for them to be kept? Upon the many pacts of non-aggression which have preceded the signatories making war upon each other? Upon the fruitless discussions which have taken place with none of the participants seriously intending to settle anything?

Will the working class take the trouble to think into the facts about the big power divisions in the world? Will they ask themselves why the powers' interests are opposed, so often and so frighteningly? Why, indeed, there are powers, separate nations big and small? These are the sort of questions which the Test Ban Treaty should bring to mind, once again.

Capitalism is now a futile social system. It cannot unite the human race — it can only divide it catastrophically. It cannot serve human interests; it can only deny and damage them. It cannot solve its problems, such as war, but only continue to produce them in one form or another.

The only way out of this insane maze is to get rid of capitalism and replace it with Socialism. Will the working class realise this? Before the desperate conflicts of capitalism make it, for many of them, too late?

The Opening (1957)

A Short Story from the March 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing peculiar about Cwm Glo. It is a mining village, one of hundreds to be found in the valleys of South Wales, owing its origin and continuing to draw its sustenance from the colliery that casts the shadow of its slag pyramids over the rows of houses that line the valley floor. Were it not that some months ago the “Legion” Club had moved into its new premises, Cwm Glo would not have warranted a single sentence in a Socialist journal. Don’t get us wrong; no revolution has occurred; no National newspaper has shown the least interest in the place; nothing has happened that has occasioned as much as a question in Parliament. Yet the incident of “the opening” is not without its interest to anyone with a finger on the pulse of society and a Socialist is of necessity, such a person.

As we were saying, the “Legion” Club was to be re-opened in new and shiny premises. Short of having the Bishop and local M.P. present, everyone else of note was invited, including the local councillors, the vicar, and, to uphold the military tradition associated with the movement Col. Hughes (ret.), together with a company of territorials, was to attend.

The highlight of the ceremony was to be the unveiling of the “Roll of Honour” now cemented into its new place in the imposing “foyer” with the addition of two names—local lads killed in Malaya. The Committee, despite the necessity of having to have the “big guns” present decided to ask old Phill Davies, their oldest member, to unveil the plaque and say a few appropriate words in conjunction with the vicar. Phill had been reluctant at the offset, but worse was to follow. A week before the big event, old Phill died. We will never know whether the occasion was too great, or whether a heart weakened by years of straining in a body rent by 1916 gas and 40 years coal dust was the cause or not, but there it was—he died.

Anyhow, after considerable discussion and much running around, it was decided to ask old “Price Committee” to stand in his place. Even though he was not a member, Price was the obvious choice, being their spokesman at any discussion or negotiations with the management at the “pit” or the N.C.B.

Price agreed. The proceedings went according to plan; the councillors had their say, the vicar said his piece and the Col. and his men put up a brave show. By this time the members’ eyes were beginning to stray in the direction of the gleaming beer pumps standing like a row of inviting virgins as yet unsullied but full of the promise of future delights . . . 

Price stepped forward to speak as the last strains of “Land of Hope and Glory” died away. “Friends and fellow workers,” he began “Not being a member of your Club, I thank you for allowing me to act on your behalf. I bear in mind the two purposes for which I am here—to honour the memory of those dead, including our latest loss, old Phill, and to launch this Club on its new career. I am at one with you all as regards the former even though I am not in the least interested in the latter. I am old enough to remember most of the boys whose names adorn this plaque” (Price turned for a moment towards the tablet). “I certainly can speak for old Phill. He was my ‘butty.' We disagreed over many things, including his attitude to the 'British Legion,’ and his views on religion.” Price looked straight at the Vicar, who appeared to be most uncomfortable. The two reporters began to take some interest in the proceedings. The worthy gentlemen on the platform began to sense that something had gone wrong; one or two of the committee members looked at their colleagues with a “I told you so \” attitude on their faces. Price continued quietly and deliberately, "These boys were ours, Phill was one of us, both were torn from us and were sacrificed on behalf of those who live by the sweat and life blood of the working class. Those whose names are on this plaque died young and are acknowledged as patriots. Phill's death was more protracted. He always 'did his best’ as he put it A 'best' which nevertheless only succeeded in keeping him poor after years of sacrifice on behalf of Capitalism in peace and war.” There were now distinct murmers all round, the worthies on the platform shuffled uncomfortably, the Vicar flushed and Hughes Col. reddened appreciably. Price carried on: “I knew them all and I pay my tribute. To conclude, let me but add: Old Phill symbolises all of our kind. After a life of toil in the pits; after a life serving in peace and war, a vast Empire on which the sun never sets Brother Phill Davies has gone with the others—to that vast insatiable graveyard that is the end of the road for those who have served. His share of the Empire has been duly earned—6ft. of clay. He came by his own in the end.”

Price walked down from the dais and out of the hall in complete silence. In the general hubbub that followed, the “dignitaries” walked off the platform; the excitement flowed along with the members into the bar. The beer pumps began their work.

The occasion was, to the credit of the Valley Voice, given a deal of prominence. Discussions continued in the Club and elsewhere, for weeks; letters were sent to the Press for and against Price’s speech. In time it all died away. All, did we say? Well nearly all, except that Price finds it easier to get a hearing these days. He also finds it easier to get his mates to read the Socialist Standard.

There you see, there has certainly been no revolution in Cwm Glo, no questions have been asked in Parliament. But some few workers in a little mining community have begun to think and to a Socialist that is something.

W. Brain

Joking Aside (2016)

From the October 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 9 September North Korea carried out yet another nuclear test. The further spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable while capitalism lasts.

It is now ten years ago that North Korea joined an exclusive octet of the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, Pakistan, India and Israel when it detonated a nuclear device which its neighbour South Korea recorded at 3.6 on the Richter scale. The group’s leader, a serial hypocrite and liar, responded immediately, with the White House braying: ‘an explosion would constitute a provocative act in defiance of the will of the international community’. The ‘international community’, being the name of the group, is very protective of their instruments, and the music they play, and new players can expect a discordant welcome. Thus the White House expected one its groupies, the UN Security Council, to ‘take immediate actions to respond to this unprovoked act’ (Guardian, 9 October 2006). Exclusion from the group meant North Korea was now a soloist intent on further developing its instrument. The leader of the group though felt reasonably secure as North Korea didn’t possess a nuclear warhead small enough to be mounted on a long range rocket, and thus capable of devastating targets as far away as the United States.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and by association the country he rules over are often depicted as comical, something we can safely laugh at, and thus swiftly dismiss. Two years after Kim Jong-un assumed supreme leadership of his country the 2014 film ‘The Interview’ was Hollywood’s shot at lampooning him that ends happily with a rescue for the movie's hero, a US talk show host, by an American Seals unit and a de-nuclearised North Korea advancing towards the American model of democracy. The trio of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao whose state policies were directly responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people were also early targets for satirists. Charlie Chaplin, who lampooned Hitler in the 1940 movie ‘The Great Dictator’ said later: ‘that had he known the true extent of Nazi atrocities, he could not have made fun of their homicidal insanity’.

Is it insanity – or just normality?  Killing people is big business. Developing and manufacturing weapons to kill is an everyday activity under capitalism.  Using them likewise. Whether it’s the evil dictator or the conventional elected leader neither has had any qualms about unleashing ‘blitzkrieg’ or ‘shock and awe’ or any of its deadly ilk when the circumstances demand it. Mass murder is ingrained in the social system as is the means to deliver it. North Korea’s own key arms dealer is the innocuously named Korea Mining and Development Agency (KOMID), and their military has its own little weapons enterprise called Hap Heng known to have provided missiles and nuclear technology to Pakistan and Iran. Syria has bought North Korean anti-tank guided missiles and KOMID has also been responsible for the sale of equipment, including missile technologies, gunboats, and multiple rocket artilleries, worth a total of over $100 million, to Africa, South America, and the Middle East’ (wikipedia).   North Korea doesn’t make it into the Top Twenty of arms dealing countries, but it probably rates highly in the Top Ten of international smugglers of nuclear and ballistic missile technology. Business as usual – just by other means.

The hydrogen bomb is the biggy. You can do a whole lot of killing with just one of these. Consequently all leaders desire one. Kim Jong-un is no exception. On 6 January, following on from three previous smaller nuclear tests, his dream may have become a reality. At the underground Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site a detonation was carried out that the United States Geological Service measured as a 5.1 magnitude earthquake. The  South Korean government  played down North Korea’s declaration that it was a hydrogen bomb –unsurprisingly –because a back of an envelope estimate was that the ‘impact of such a weapon ‘detonated 1,000 meters over downtown Seoul would produce 78,000 fatalities and somewhere around 270,000 estimated injuries’. US ‘experts’ including those in the White House agreed with the South Korean scepticism.  However John Carlson, ‘a member of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission and former head of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office declared that previous North Korean tests were purely a primary stage, that is, a nuclear explosion, 'and fairly low yield at that'. However, in the case of this test, he added that 'if it’s true, it means they have made something  smaller scale, capable of being put on to a missile' and that North Korea would be aiming to develop a weapon 'small enough and light enough to put on to a missile, and the usual parameters are something less than one meter in diameter, and less than a tonne in weight’ (wikipedia).

On 24 August Reuters ran the headline ‘North Korea fires submarine-launched ballistic missile towards Japan’.  The Daily Telegraph reported that ‘the launch of the missile, which the US Strategic Command believes was a nuclear-capable KN-11 Nodong-D, came less than 48 hours after Pyongyang threatened to carry out a 'pre-emptive nuclear strike ' unless South Korea and the US cancelled joint military exercises’. The Japanese response to the launch came from the its Prime Minister Abe: ‘It is the first time that an SLBM (submarine-launched ballistic missile) has fallen inside Japan's air defence identification zone. . . It is a grave threat to Japan's security and an unforgivable threat to regional stability and peace’.  It’s believed that this successful test firing followed two recent failed ones.

A South Korean military official told Reuters: ‘North Korea's SLBM technology appears to have progressed' and ‘South Korea believes the North has a fleet of more than 70 ageing, limited-range submarines. . . Acquiring a fleet of submarines large and quiet enough and with a longer range would be a next step for the North’. Moon Keun-sik, a retired South Korean navy officer and an expert in submarine warfare added: ‘they keep conducting nuclear tests and SLBMs together which means they are showing they can arm SLBMs with miniaturised nuclear warheads.'  The Telegraph also printed a quote from those that wield the biggest stick: ‘The US Strategic Command issued a statement in which it said the launch posed no threat to North America, but added that US forces remain vigilant in the face of North Korean provocations’.

As yet the US mainland isn’t under threat. But the empire’s tentacles encompass the planet and ten years of North Korean weapons development is reaching a crescendo. We have lived under the threat of nuclear war since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Pundits who tell us a nuclear attack will never happen forget that it already has. Other experts tell us it’s just around the corner. An insider, Robert McNamara, who worked as Defense Secretary for capitalism’s pin up boy, President Kennedy, during the Cuban missile crisis revealed how close we came to nuclear war when he ‘wondered aloud whether he 'would live to see another Saturday night,' and later recognised that 'we lucked out' – barely’(tomdispatch.com).

Art Buchwald reflected that ‘you can’t make anything up any more. The world itself is a satire’. Henry Kissinger, Yasser Arafat, and Barrack Obama winning Nobel Peace prizes wasn’t a comic invention unlike Kim Jong-un’s treatment in The Interview. Nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them aren’t a joke. Neither are Kim Jong-un and the elite that rule North Korea.  

Andy Matthews

Grains of Truth (2017)

Book Review from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'The Great Climate Robbery'. New Internationalist, £9.99.

This volume has been produced by GRAIN, ‘a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems’ (grain.org). It consists primarily of excerpts from or summaries of reports issued by them, focussing on how global warming is in part caused by current methods of food production, but also dealing with a number of other topics.

It is claimed that ‘the industrial food system is a major driver of climate change’, with around half of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the food system. This covers deforestation, food waste, refrigeration, transport, processing and packaging. Farming practices contribute as well, in the form of petrol to run machinery and the use of chemical fertilisers. A small number of giant fertiliser companies are the major users of shale gas from fracking, and, once applied to the soil, fertilisers result in large amounts of nitrous oxide, which is far more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Cutting out the use of chemical fertilisers could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to ten percent, it is argued, and would allow farmers to rebuild organic matter in the soil and so increase fertility. Of course profit is the force behind these industrial farming methods.

Different kinds of food make different contributions to climate change. The worst are red meat, cheese, fish and poultry, with lentils, fruit, milk and vegetables having the least impact. Processed foods, which use soybeans and palm oil among other products, are big greenhouse gas emitters and are being consumed more and more. Cutting down on meat and dairy production – which does not imply everyone becoming vegan – could make a major change in emissions.

If industrial agriculture is the main enemy, small farmers are seen as very much part of the solution. Peasants occupy only a quarter of the world’s agricultural land but, it is claimed, produce most of the world’s food. A brief discussion is given of what counts as a family farm, since some large industrial farms are ‘family-owned’, but there is no consistent definition of what is a small farm (it varies from one country to another), and it is not even clear from the text whether a small farmer is the same as a peasant. About half of all small farms are in China and India, but small farms have in general been getting smaller. Small farms are more productive than really large ones, and contribute much less to climate change.

The reader is told that ‘global food production could be doubled within a decade’ if better policies towards small farmers were adopted. But also, ‘the world produces plenty of food to feed everyone, year after year’, with hunger being caused by poverty and exclusion, not a lack of food. Some further discussion of these points would have been a very good idea.

A couple of chapters contain some interesting material that does not relate very directly to the book’s main theme. One deals with restrictions on the use of seeds, which further penalise, and indeed criminalise, small farmers. Another covers aspects of the control of the global food system; for instance, the Gates Foundation has spent $3bn in agricultural grants, but little of this money actually goes to farmers.

It is not possible now to say definitively how food production will be organised in socialism, but considerations such as those raised here will certainly be central. 

Paul Bennett

World at work (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private property utilises every aid in upholding its rights. Armies in the field, policemen in the streets and detectives in the stories, each armed with the marvels of modern technology, are obvious examples of this. All this is necessary in a society in conflict where every man's interests seem to be in opposition. The struggle is world wide and is carried into every sphere of human activity — even London Underground, where one of the latest technical innovations, automation, is being used to protect the property rights of London Transport against the encroachment of an army of fare-dodging passengers.

The exact amount of income which London Transport loses through this phenomenon is unknown although they put the figure for buses and Underground combined at around 1 per cent of receipts, which were £112 million in 1969. So by their own reckoning it is costing them over £1 million yearly, and since it is harder to dodge paying on the buses, especially with the introduction of pay-as-you-enter, then it can be safely assumed that most of this is lost on the Underground. London Transport have tried to fight back as convictions for dishonest travelling on the Underground show — an average of 6,000 yearly, but still the cash is lost and they must continue the fight.

The answer as London Transport sees it is to ensure that correct fares are paid. Today, thousands simply buy no ticket at all and just hand the collector a shilling at the exit. This disinclination to pay full fare was best seen during the 1965 strike of booking clerks when “honesty buckets” were placed inside stations for passengers to put the cost of their journey into. The response prompted a London Transport official at Victoria to complain that “so far as I can gather over the weekend thousands of people must have moved to within a sixpenny travelling distance of Victoria". (The Times, 16 March 1965). Therefore, a way has been devised whereby passengers must have paid full fare before being allowed to leave the station. The solution is automated ticket issuing and collecting.

This entails selling chemically coated tickets on which the details of the journey are magnetically encoded. To gain access to the trains the passenger feeds the ticket into the entrance gate which scans it before letting him through. The ticket is again electronically read by the exit gate which opens only if the code is correct. If not, the passenger is “attended” to by one of the station staff. This system is already in wide use on the new Victoria Line and double the normal excess fares have been collected at some stations during the first year. The signs are that London Transport’s figure of £1 million lost due to fare-dodging will be shown to be hopelessly under estimated.

How much of society’s resources will it cost to introduce automated ticketing throughout London Underground? Anthony Bull, London Transport’s Vice-Chairman, stated in 1966 that it would cost, at a very rough estimate, £10 million at 1966 prices. Obviously the final figure will be much higher, but Bull sugared the pill by adding that the capital expenditure of designing and installing the system was of a once-and-for-all character. (Modern Railways, June 1966). We shall return to this.

Of course fare-dodging isn't the only reason for installing automation. London Transport expects to save £1 million a year by dispensing with surplus staff who, as we have seen, are liable to take costly strike action. This saving, together with the money at present being lost, would go a long way towards solving London Transport’s financial plight. It is currently losing £10 million a year—£7½ million on interest on loans and the rest on running losses. Accordingly, vast amounts of highly skilled human time and energy are to be wasted in order to prevent workers freely utilising the transportation which their brain and muscle power alone created . . . but which they do not own. And this is something which is happening all over the world. The growth of private motoring is forcing authorities in countries like America, Germany, Japan, Holland, to turn to Rapid Transit Systems as a means of maintaining communications in large cities and automated ticket issuing and collecting is being almost universally adopted.

But there is even more waste involved than meets the eye, because London Transport’s Mr. Bull was reckoning without human ingenuity when he made his “once-and-for-all” claim. When Milan’s Underground opened in 1964 it used an admittedly simple automated ticket system. A few minutes after the Archbishop and Mayor had cut the riband and the Milanese discovered that a holy picture cut to the correct size would operate the electronic turnstiles very well. So it was back to the drawing-board in order to produce an even more sophisticated machine. And in America change-giving machines, which are a “must” in the new systems, were withdrawn for modification a few years ago because workers were getting the change by inserting copies of banknotes run-off on office photocopy equipment. Obviously today’s ticket machines will cope with these simple ruses and no effort is being spared in ironing out the snags. In two American cities passengers have been invited to try and beat the system any way they can without retribution —for a trial — period — and if successful to confess their secret afterwards. No one can say with certainty that new methods of beating the machines won’t be developed. For example, if currency notes can be forged or stolen then why not special extended-travel tickets valued at, say, £5?

Reporting the Milan episode the Guardian correspondent cited it as proof of “man's answer to the tyranny of machines” (4 November 1964). The fallacy is that it is machines which dominate men when what actually happens is that some men, through their ownership of capital, use machines in the production and realisation of surplus value from other men — the workers, who sometimes hit back in whatever way they can, usually at the machines.

Nor is the situation any different in “communist” Russia. Moscow Metro is considering introducing automated ticketing and change-giving machines in the hope of dispensing with 300 booking clerks. Already Leningrad Metro employs a simple light-ray device which is placed just behind the coin-slot on the gate. If the intending passengers breaks the ray without first inserting the required coin then, just as in avowedly capitalist Britain or America, the gate remains closed. The Russian government claims that all public transport will eventually be free of charge as a social service (Modern Railways, April 1967). We have heard promises like this before, but even if it is realised it has nothing to do with Socialism when carried out within the context of an exchange relationship society such as Russia. The Expo 67 railway in Montreal was free “because of its importance in distributing visitors”. Substitute “workers” for “visitors” in state capitalist Russia and you have another reason why free transport can be such an attractive proposition to exploiters the world over.

Capitalism can easily provide us with better examples of its wastefulness and divisiveness and the contest between London Transport and the fare-dodgers is really only a sideshow. But it is part of the overall picture of how capitalism, in attempting to solve its problems, not only increases the productive forces and technical know-how but also glaringly exposes itself as the cause of the accompanying social conflict. In a society where all the goods and services man needs, including transport, were freely available themselves with brilliant thoughts of how to cancel out each other’s inventiveness would be impossible.

Vic Vanni

High on Tressell (1970)

Book Review from the October 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Tressell and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, by Jack Mitchell: Lawrence & Wishart, 45s.

Interest in the scope and background of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has grown steadily since the publications, in 1951 and 1955 respectively, of F.C. Ball’s biography Tressell of Mugsborough and the full version of the book as Tressell—Robert Noonan -wrote it. Previously, little or nothing had been known about this most widely read of all books about working men since its appearance in 1914. Now, a further book on Tressell by Ball is promised: in 1967 The Times revealed that Tressell’s daughter Kathleen, thought to have been killed in an accident in 1919, was still alive: in August this year, The Guardian published details of surviving examples of Tressell’s decorative painting.

Mitchell’s book is an attempt at detailed critical analysis of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It has an astonishingly patronising foreword by Raymond Williams, and its endeavour is to place the Philanthropists among the great works of literature. Mitchell takes a classification suggested by Arnold Kettle, in an article called "Dickens and the Popular Tradition”, in which the classical nineteenth-century novelists are divided as belonging to "bourgeois critical realism” or “popular critical realism”. The difference is in “sensibility”, or the writer’s class awareness. The height of popular critical realism is "proletarian humanism”, and Mitchell sees this as reaching its peak in Dickens in the nineteenth century and Tressell in the twentieth.

In developing this theme, there are some interesting references to nineteenth-century working-class novels which are little known today. Mitchell says they failed because working-class sensibility was insufficiently developed before the last years of the century. Between 1889 and 1906, however: "The advent of imperialism revolutionised the situation.” The foundation of the Labour Party was a cultural as well as a political landmark: "It is not by chance that it precedes the break-through of the British working class in the narrower field of literary culture”— that is, the writing of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists—“by only five years”. The working class was about to wage fierce war. Mitchell writes: “By 1914 it was touch and go which would come first, world war or social revolution.’’ In this light, Tressell’s book is a vital self-criticism of the working class as it prepared for the struggle.

This is all dreadful nonsense. It throws into relief the weakness of Mitchell’s study of Tressell—that it is anything but critical. Starting thus from the belief that The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was the expression of “a realisation that in the long run they (the working class) were destined to take over the cultural heritage and with it the human leadership of the nation”, Mitchell praises it on every count and in the highest terms. The comparisons in which it is eulogised are themselves breathtakingly uncritical at times. For example "The two greatest anti-capitalist writers in Britain at that time, Shaw and Tressell”—though later Mitchell speaks of Tressell’s implicit exposure of the Fabian propaganda whose popular exponent, in fact, was Shaw. And what of Dickens, to whom Mitchell continually returns as the genius of popular humanism before Tressell? George Orwell has pointed out that Dickens never penned a decent picture of a working man or woman; the case is strong that Dickens radicalism was rooted in fear of the mob.

All the same, there is a good deal which is interesting in Mitchell’s examination of the structure of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. As he says, its central situation is the labour process. The characters are carefully arranged to show all the stages of a manual worker’s life, from the apprentice to the discarded old man. Attitudes to labour are crucial points in the book’s criticism of capitalism. The boss-figures are Anti-Man, in Mitchell’s phrase, precisely because they are destructive of men’s attachment to and satisfaction from labour. Influenced by William Morris, Tressell made art part of labour: and in this sense Owen’s decoration of the drawing-room in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a symbolic victory.

One of Mitchell’s more telling comparisons is between Tressell’s work and that of the “Naturalist” writers of the late nineteenth century. At first glance, the insistent accumulation of detail—the minute descriptions of rooms, buildings. clothes—reminds one of, say, Zola. But Zola’s picture was always of a slice of life whereas Tressell, as Mitchell points out, aims to show life itself under capitalism. While Zola lifts stones to reveal the horrors under them, Tressell’s mass of detail points to “the abnormality of the normal”: the horror of the stones themselves. Mitchell draws attention too to the exclusion by Tressell of any human personal element which might admit the possibility of bridge-building between the classes. Tressell’s insistence always is on the capitalist system as the culprit; grotesque as his boss-characters are, they remain the system’s creations.

Those who are interested in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists will, and ought to, read this book. Despite the parallels it draws with Fielding, Bunyan. Swift, Gorky, Hardy and others—besides Dickens—it does not succeed in its intention of giving the Philanthropists an exalted place in literature. Nor is there any reason really for seeking to do so. Tressell’s work is a gem in its field. If it were a literary masterpiece, perhaps we should not lay claim, as we all do, to innumerable copies given away and lent to people at work. Mitchell lays on his claims thickly, apparently high on enthusiasm for Tressell. One sees, however, the political malpositions from which the claims arise - and wonders whether such a structure of illusion would have been tolerable to Tressell himself.

Robert Barltrop

The Age of Discontent. (1923)

From the March 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an age such as ours, in an age, that is, which is the necessary preliminary (long or short) of a drastic social change, there must inevitably be a distinct and increasing tendency for people to adopt a critical, to a large extent a negative, attitude towards all social institutions and activities. No matter in what sphere of life one may move, it will be found that the evils of Capitalism, no longer hidden, but becoming more and more glaringly insistent, are the theme for attack even amongst the most superficially-minded people. Among members of the working-class, of all descriptions, whether they be manual workers, on managerial and clerical staffs, civil and domestic servants, housewives, writers, artists, and scientists, is to be found a sense of dissatisfaction, more or less articulate, with things as they are. To-day, the commercial manager, himself usually as much a member of the working-class as his youngest errand-boy, has lost the sense of security he had a comparatively few years ago, when his position was almost considered a sinecure, and now looks with something like terror towards the results that will be shown on his prospective yearly balance-sheet. The clerks under him murmur in their usual semi-fearful way at the high cost of living and their decreasing salaries. Domestic servants are beginning to see something degrading in their flunkeyism. Every grade of manual worker is seething with discontent. Writers, from the hack-journalist to the novelist and poet, artists, scientific men, are beginning to realise that the work they are allowed to do in the world is branded by its usefulness to their capitalist employers; and some of them, at any rate, see nothing in their expression of their art and scientific knowledge except a prostitution to the necessity for earning a livelihood. In the most unlikely quarters and from the most unusual sources, arises a cry of discontent, of bitterness, of despair. Most of the plays worth taking into consideration nowadays voice a feeling of rebellion against existing institutions. The lighter entertainments are satires on the vices and foibles of certain sections of society. Novelists and poets in their writings portray characters and characteristics nauseating to the ordinary normal man and woman, contending, with a good deal of truth, that in so doing they are only expressing the tendencies of the age. In scientific papers, scientific men can be found deploring the bodily, mental, and what they call "moral” degeneration of the people both in the upper and lower strata of society, and advocating in a half-hearted and unconvincing manner reforms for the betterment of the race. Publishers and theatrical managers nowadays find that the books and plays that pay best are those that attack some phase or other of modern society. With their usual opportunism and eye to business, they give the public what it seems to want, and what it seems to want at the present time is an articulate expression of its inarticulate acute discontent. There is, say, a reaction against war, and you have staged a play such as the “Trojan Women”; or a reaction against the tyranny and brutality of power or riches, and you get a play such as "The Cenci,” or a novel such as Beresford’s “Prisoners of Hartling”; or the orgies of a certain section of high society become a little too notorious, and you get the novels of a Stephen McKenna or a Compton Mackenzie.

What, it may be asked, has this to do with Socialism. It seems that these people are, in a feeble and unscientific way, following the lead of the Socialist when he criticises and condemns, scientifically and in the light of his Socialist knowledge, Capitalism and all its numerous and intricate ramifications. Unlike the non-Socialist, the Socialist has looked below the surface, has probed deep into the very entrails of modern capitalist society, and has found that the evils, which have now become too glaring to be ignored by anyone possessing the least grain of intelligence, are the outcome of our present social system. The degeneracy of mind and body, the misery of striving to keep up appearances without adequate means to support such appearances, the vicious and abnormal tendencies prevalent amongst all sections of people, the excessive amount of unemployment, and its consequences of poverty and degradation, the prostitution of a man’s knowledge and ability and of a woman’s body, have their present source in the capitalist system of production for profit, or production of wealth to benefit a small minority, leaving out of account the vast majority of the populace.

As the ills and misfortunes from which the working-class suffer become less possible, and at last impossible, of being hidden away, as they grow less susceptible to the “dope” and narcotics emanating from the Press, the pulpit and the platform, the expressions of discontent and rebellion— always lying dormant in a social system such as the present one—increase in volume and intensity. But, apart from the Socialist, none of these people, whether writer or artist, scientist or “ man-in-the- street,” however loudly he may voice his dissatisfaction with things as they are, has either the courage or the ability to put forward a constructive policy to take effect when Capitalism falls.

The non-Socialists see certain evils in the world, evils which grow more glaring as the years pass, and all they can do is to say in effect, “Let us destroy these abominable evils, and if, in doing so, we, at the same time destroy associations of peoples, even if we thereby wipe out mankind itself; better chaos or annihilation, than the degradation and prostitution of life as it is to-day." The Socialist, however, has no desire for social chaos or atavism, or total annihilation; these visions of despair would drift into nothingness if people could only be brought to understand—to understand themselves and the social system under which they live and which makes them the unhappy beings that they are. We are endeavouring to give to our non-Socialist fellow-workers an exposition of life as it now is, as it might soon be, and as eventually it will be. What we. desire is a sane and healthy system of society, to be erected on the dead ashes of the system which is passing, wherein no man shall be called upon to sacrifice his ability and no woman her body in order to obtain the wherewithal to live; wherein the workman, the artist, the scientist (possibly a trinity in one person) may unite with, and dovetail into, one another, in the production of wealth, which would be the property of an appreciative and enlightened humanity; not, as now, the property of a few unworthy and unappreciative parasites.

F. J. Webb.