Points For Propagandists. (1929)

From the January 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Workers’ Savings

In the early days of Capitalism it was possible for the man with small capital to set up in business with some chance of climbing to the top, and in consequence saving ranked high among the Capitalist virtues. Out of this developed the silly theory that the possession of wealth in the modern world denotes “abstinence" and “self-denial" on the part of the possessing class. It was effectively answered by the late Sir William Ashley, economic adviser to the Conservative Party. In his “Economic Organisation of England” (p. 157) he says :—

Phrases like these have occasioned no little mirth; it is hard to discover self-denial or parsimony as the world understands these words, in the processes by which modern capital is most largely accumulated.

Capitalist savings result mainly, not from self-denial, but from having incomes so large that it is difficult not to save. Knowing this, and overlooking the fact that the position of the workers is essentially different from their own, it is a common error for wealthy bankers and Cabinet Ministers to assume that the accumulation of funds in savings banks indicates prosperity among the workers. Every wage-earner appreciates only too well that the necessity of putting something by, out of wages already inadequate for decent comfort, is the result not of prosperity, but of the insecurity of his existence. It is therefore interesting to see that Major-General J. E. B. Seely, Chairman of the National Savings Committee, has realised this. In a speech at Leeds on December 12th he said that in November, 1928, more Savings Certificates had been sold than in any November since 1921.

  As unemployment and distress grow, savings have increased. The reason is that the British people, when they are up against something, are determined to lay something up against the dangers looming ahead. Households now living on 30s. a week are saving more than they did when they were earning £7 or £8 a week. ("Daily Mail,” 13 December.)

And what a commentary on Capitalism. Here we have one of the wealthiest ruling classes known to history financing a huge national organisation in order to persuade its wage-slaves, starving on 30s. a week that they ought to save!

Statements of Fact.

There are, perhaps, different standards of accuracy and reliability observed by different Governments and newspapers, but during the War every Government and the Press of every belligerent country was engaged in faking and suppressing news, as well as in downright lying. In consequence, most people are inclined to be sceptical about some, if not all, of the "facts” they read, especially if they are "official." 

So much so, that the "Daily News” on November 28th referred to the numerous letters received by all the newspapers, asking if the bulletins about the King’s illness were genuine or whether something was being kept back. The "Daily News,” as usual a little pompous, informed its readers in heavy black type as follows:—

   “The Daily News"—speaking with high authority—feels it a duty to say, and to emphasise, that the bulletins published about the King’s health are statements of fact 'and that nothing has been kept back.

Subsequently we were told of the anxiety which the King’s condition had given rise to in these early weeks, and it appears that what the "Daily News” felt it a duty not only "to say,” but also ”to emphasise,” was one of those "statements of fact ” like the war-time "victories” which were more costly than defeats and were almost invariably followed by "withdrawals”  "according to plan.”

Patriotism and Profit.

The ‘‘Daily Mail,” so solicitous for everything British and so anxious to preserve British industry and provide work and wages for British workers, remarks that—

increasing numbers of British investors and speculators are seeking investment opportunities abroad, and particularly across the Atlantic. ("Daily Mail,” 27 November, 1928.)

Knowing the Britishness and integrity of the "Daily Mail,” you will expect, as a matter of course, that the Editor will denounce this investment of British money in American industries and will particularly express his abhorrence of speculators. On the contrary he announces that— 

each day we shall publish . . . a concise review . . . of the investment situation in New York, with helpful hints as to American and Canadian securities from the British investor’s point of view.

The National Income.

Sir Josiah Stamp and Professor Bowley ("The National Income”) have shown that the total real national income in 1924 was approximately the same as in 1911, or, in other words, the value of the wealth produced (including incomes from abroad) had increased by the same percentage as prices. As population had in the meantime increased slightly, this meant that the total purchasing power per head of the population was slightly less than in 1911.

The national income is now definitely increasing again. Mr. G. D. Rokeling has recently conducted a further enquiry for the "Economist.” It is published under the title, "A British Index of National Prosperity, 1920-1927,” with a commendatory Introduction by Sir Josiah Stamp. (Published by the "Economist.” 2s. 6d.)

In it Mr. Rokeling estimates (page 31) that the real national income has increased between 1920 and 1927 by about 8 per cent. The increase between 1924 and 1927 is 6.7 per cent. After allowing for the increase in population, this gives an increase per head of the population of 5.3 per cent, between 1924 and 1927. The “Economist” (October 6th, 1928) considers that this estimated increase is probably slightly less than the actual increase.

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituary: Pat Kilgallon (2018)

Obituary from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have to report the death of Pat Kilgallon at the age of 91 after a long and debilitating illness. Pat came from a family of political activists and trades unionists, her grandfather was the agent for the first ILP candidate in the North East who also refused to fight in the First World War. Pat joined the Newcastle Branch of the Socialist Party in April 1994, having left the Labour Party earlier in that year.

Pat came into contact with the Party in the early 1980s a time when she was a Labour councillor on North Tyneside Council and when she was also active in arranging food collections and other types of support for the families of striking miners. She was also part of the group of councillors that refused to set a budget in 1985. It was the failure of this and similar actions that began her realisation that capitalism could not be reformed and led to her journey towards joining the Socialist Party.

Her activity in the Party, especially in later years was hampered by her age and ill health, however she never missed an opportunity to put forward the socialist case to any that would listen and she had recently been involved in distributing union application forms to the un-unionised home carers who supported her to live in her own home.

T. K.

What is the Use of Parliament? (1929)

From the January 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lessons of the German Naval Revolt.

Those who have learned by experience and observation that the big political parties, Liberal, Labour and Conservative alike, offer no hope of improved conditions for the workers, often conclude that the failure of these Parliamentary parties is evidence of the uselessness of Parliament and the danger of Parliamentary methods. This is a wrong conclusion. It is not Parliament as a piece of political machinery which has failed; it is the three political parties which have failed. They have failed even to attempt to use Parliament for the purpose of establishing Socialism. No single M.P. of any party in this country has ever been elected to Parliament as a Socialist, for the simple reason that there is no single constituency in which a majority of the workers want Socialism. We say that when the workers are Socialists and are organised in the Socialist Party, they will use their votes to obtain control of Parliament because this will give control of all the machinery of administration and control of the armed forces. While the Capitalist class have control of Parliament and the Army, Navy, Air Force, etc., their position is secure and we are helpless.

Some of our critics question this view. They say that it is unnecessary and useless to obtain control of Parliament. Unnecessary because the workers can themselves gain military dominance by force of arms and by winning over the existing armed forces; and useless because control of Parliament does not give power over the armed forces. The possibility of the working class organising their own military force has often and recently been dealt with in these columns. It is an illusion and a dangerous illusion.

Our attitude on the second question, the power of Parliament, is worth some elaboration. In the modern Capitalist democracies the State has come to control a vast, intricate and continually growing machinery of administration. Not only does it control legislation—the making of laws—but also their administration by hundreds of thousands of civil servants and local government officials, and their enforcement by the courts, the police and, in the last resort, by the armed forces. Every phase of modern life, the ownership and transfer of property, the production of wealth, transport, building, commercial and financial operations, education, hospitals, sanitation, public health, all these activities are carried on under regulations prescribed by the Government and, in the final analysis, under conditions which they determine. The life of modern Capitalist society is organised round Parliament as its centre of power. Parliamentary control carries with it the power, more or less directly and speedily, to promote or suspend activity in any and every branch of social life. By organisation and by use, the electorate—now the vast majority of the adult population—look to Parliament as the depository of the organised power of society, and by law, by organisation and use, the employees, civil and military, of the central and local authorities derive their authority from the Government which, in turn, is dependent on a Parliamentary majority.

Each individual in this great civil and military machine goes on doing his particular job under the authority of the official or officer above him in the scale. Legally, neither a civil servant nor a soldier can plead in defence of an illegal action that he was obeying the orders of his superior, but within the framework of the law each man realises that his position and security are guaranteed so long, and only so long, as he acts with such superior authority. Should occasions arise when instant obedience is required to an order the legality of which is in doubt, the man concerned can only use his own judgment as to whether or not the final authority, the Government, will back him up in the course he chooses. This is simple when the general attitude and intentions of the Government are well known. Each individual is a part of the machine and everything is done to cultivate immediate response to decisions of the central authority. This is why the soldier will normally face almost certain death rather than the penalty, possibly less severe but absolutely certain, which will follow if he takes the very difficult step of acting on his own initiative in defiance of orders.

By its very nature, however, this elaborate machine weakens and fails if there is an obvious weakening or disunity at the centre of things. If a Government fails to act decisively in an emergency, or, having taken a decision, reverses it, or allows subordinate military or civil authorities, or even some of its own members, to act on their own responsibility in defiance of its decisions, if any of these things happen the individuals who make up the Army, and less urgently the civil servants, are put in a state of confusion or are faced with the difficult problem of having to choose between rival authorities, with the possibility of backing the weaker of the two. In the case of a subordinate civil or military official defying the supreme authority, the decision of the soldier or civil servant is not in doubt. He backs the .supreme authority. Where it is the Government itself which is divided or paralysed, his natural course is to take no decision at all if it can be avoided. Hence the failure of authority and decision at the top immediately affects the morale and effectiveness of the whole machine.

It is to obtain this enormous advantage given by possession of the central directing machinery, and the authority resulting from control of Parliament, that Socialists seek to gain a Parliamentary majority.

A useful illustration of the importance of such control is given by the revolt in Germany in 1918, which resulted in a regrouping of the Capitalist governing circles, and the dropping of the Kaiser and. the Monarchy, figureheads which had outgrown their usefulness.

In 1918 it had for a year been increasingly obvious to more and more persons influential in German political and industrial life, that the Allies must win the war. There was as much, and probably much more, war-weariness among the civilian and the fighting population than in the chief Allied countries, but in Germany, as here, the practice of keeping the Government and Parliament in touch with public opinion by means of elections and more or less free speech and a free press, had ceased to operate in the ordinary peace-time fashion. Capitalist opinion on the War was more divided than at any time since 1914, and those who favoured peace at almost any price were able to bring their views to bear directly on the Government. Acute differences of opinion among prominent politicians were openly expressed and debated. The new Government, under the Chancellorship of Prince Max of Baden, had for some time in the autumn of 1918 been negotiating for an armistice.

More than a year earlier, in the summer of 1917, there had been determined efforts to stir up the German sailors to mutiny, and there were, in fact, outbreaks on various ships. At that time, however, the German Government was still fairly representative of the mass of the population, and still united on the determined prosecution of the War. In consequence, the revolt failed to spread and was easily stamped out.

By October, 1918, the situation had vastly changed. Prince Max personally had favoured the opening of negotiations a year before, and his appointment as Chancellor signified the growing influence of the Capitalist interests whose views on the question of peace had the backing of a majority of the population. (At the ‘elections shortly afterwards the German Labour Party alone secured nearly 50 per cent, of votes. and there were other parties as well which had dropped their earlier enthusiasm for the War.) Thus Germany had a Government still carrying on the War, but with members some of whom were known to be lukewarm in their enthusiasm for it. In these circumstances the German admirals, including Von Scheer, the “Victor ’’ of Jutland, who was now Chief of the Admiralty Staff at Berlin, drew up plans for a great naval action by the whole German Fleet. (See obituary notices and articles on Von Scheer in “Manchester Guardian,’’ “Daily News’’ and “Daily Express,’’ November 27th, 1928; “Manchester Guardian,’’ October 30th, 1928; and for a general account see “Die Tragodie der altem deutschen marine,’’ by E. Alboldt, Berlin.) The officers were willing and eager, but many of the crew, as in 1917, were dissatisfied and tired of the War. The order was given on October 29th for the Fleet to put to sea on the following day, and in spite of the desperate nature of this last attempt to smash the Allied naval supremacy, the order would have been obeyed, like innumerable other desperate war-time orders, if the decision had had behind it the unimpaired weight of the supreme authority, the German Government. It became known, however, that the German naval authorities, both the admirals afloat and the naval staff, had acted without the .knowledge and consent of Prince Max and the Government. The minority of active revolutionary and anti-war propagandists among the crew thus had, and seized, a decisive argument which they had lacked in 1917. The thousands of sailors who would passively go to almost certain death on the order of the Government because it was in accordance with political habit and training to do so, would not raise a finger on the unauthorised command of their superior officers or the supreme naval staff. The order was withdrawn on October 31st, but the authority of the whole naval disciplinary system was broken. The news spread, and opposition to the War and to the Kaiser and politicians who still favoured war was openly expressed among the soldiers and the civilian population. Within a fortnight the Armistice had been arranged. The Kaiser abdicated, and new elections in due course gave full power to a Coalition Government including the German Labour Party united and possessing authority which Prince Max's Government lacked. The new Coalition was strong enough to take in hand the crushing of the small minority of Socialists and to reform the German Constitution on the lines desired by the Capitalist interests which had risen to the top in place of those which had been dominant in 1914.

Edgar Hardcastle

Why not the West End? (1996)

From the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member of the Socialist Party asked me recently why my visits were usually to the subsidised theatre and, specifically, to the National and the Barbican complexes? Why, my questioner wanted to know, didn't I go more frequently to the commercial theatre and. since I live not far away from London, to the West End?

Now I have to admit that as a fan my tastes are wide and eclectic. I enjoy the frisson which comes with public performance: that strange interplay between actor and audience which means that every night is a once-for-all occasion. I respond to the immediacy of actors, the sense that one is able, almost voyeuristically, to spectate as private passions fill a public arena. And I would as happily spend an evening watching the great Ken Dodd— who works an audience until it is literally helpless with laughter— as I would attend one of Shakespeare's great plays (especially, perhaps, the last three with their inspiring messages about forgiveness). But go regularly to the commercial theatre? I fear not.

It isn’t that the seats arc dearer—although they are. £25 for good seats in the West End, as against £12-18 for something comparable in the subsidised houses. It isn’t that standards of performance and production are wildly different—although the subsidised theatre with more time to rehearse etc., generally wins hands down. The trouble is that much commercial theatre is either escapist (in the worse sense), trivial or patronising. Sometimes it is all three.

In the past twelve months I’ve seen only four shows in the West End: Beautiful Things (widely praised but, as it turned out. a nauseating "EastEnders" lookalike); Taking Sides (because of a personal interest in music and the life of the conductor William Furtwangler); Hamlet: and Indian Ink (Tom Stoppard's latest which seemed to me much better as a radio play). I hope to have time to see Three Tall Women (still at Wyndhams) and Burning Blue (Ambassadors), but the rest hold little appeal.

Look at what is currently available. Musicals by the bucketful: seventeen currently advertised. of which several have run for more than five years. Many are “technology musicals", in which character and story play second fiddle to large production effects: the helicopter arrival in Miss Saigon; the barricade scene in Les Miserables; the central ten minutes in Phantom of the Opera.

Musicals like this vividly reflect the way in which in capitalist society people are often less important than machines. They also reek with sentiment; inducing feelings spuriously and synthetically, and trivialising human emotions. I remember seeing Les Miserables over then years ago— long before its transfer the to the West End. Having read Victor Hugo’s book and knowing a little about the history of the time I was appalled. And the pseudo-operatic score—all pretence and little substance— added to my sense of woe. Yet all around me were going wild, claiming a definitive masterpiece. It was unnerving. Later I reflected that Chou Chin Chow was greeted in similar fashion nearly a century ago.

What of musicals which engage the heart and mind, that—to use a cliché—illuminate the human condition? I remember a story about the agricultural working class, The Hired Man (book by Melvyn Bragg, music by Howard Goodall) several years ago, and one about the Spanish Civil War which I caught on tour. For the rest it’s compilation musicals (Buddy, Jolson, Roy Orbison, etc.), turgid synthetic confections (like Oliver), and shows by the ubiquitous Andrew Lloyd Webber. If Phantom doesn't please try Starlight Express, Cats or Sunset Boulevard or, my particular nominee. Aspects of Love. This last-named ought properly to be called Aspects of Self-Gratification. In it Webber demonstrates without a touch of satire, irony or self- awareness, the way in which contemporary society has transformed a powerful, generous, often selfless emotion, into a chilling counterfeit of "I’m all right” self-interest.

I would argue that much of the commercial theatre reflects, usually superficially and uncritically, the world in which we live. In doing so it reinforces the messages of the other media. It offers not so much a window on the world as a self-referencing picture of all that is usual, normal (sic) and acceptable in society. From most of the commercial theatre the message is clear: this is the world as it is. The implication is also clear: this is the world as it has to be.

In contrast much that is available in the subsidised theatre questions and challenges. There are currently twelve shows in repertory at the National and the Barbican. At least four of these shows—A Patriot for Me, Skylight, Volpone and The Machine Wreckers—are enthralling, entertaining and edifying. All are worth visiting. I have mentioned several in recent months. In them experience and comment provide the dry tinder for revolutionary feelings and insights. They have few parallels in the West End.

Michael Gill

Blame Game (2018)

Book Review from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass'. By Darren McGarvey. (Luath Press. £7.99)

McGarvey was brought up in the Pollok area of Glasgow. His mother (who had been raped when young) drank heavily, was violent and ran up a massive drug debt, so he had a dysfunctional home life. One consequence was that he felt a deep sense of grievance against anyone he considered well-off and he blamed the ‘middle class’ (the capitalists don’t feature here at all). 

A large part of his book attacks the ‘poverty industry’, where people make a good living from dealing with problems; not solving everything but leaving some sort of ‘legacy’, with enough problems still remaining for the industry to continue growing. Outside organisations that address poverty encourage dependency rather then self-sufficiency, and if you are poor it is best not to offend such organisations and those who work for them. In Scotland, ‘the poverty industry is dominated by a left-leaning, liberal, middle class’. In contrast, the poor, McGarvey says, need to become ‘more active, engaged and resilient’. Identity politics has supposedly replaced class issues, but again is just another means for the socially mobile (which often is equivalent in these pages to middle class) to dominate public discussion. But, considering how unclear his own views on class are, this is not very convincing.

It is odd that he emphasises the importance of taking personal responsibility and not just blaming others while at the same time writing eloquently on the lifelong consequences of childhood poverty and the crucial role played by emotional stress in influencing people’s health and social mobility. Many of those who end up in prison have experienced violence or other forms of abuse while children. Child abuse itself is driven by social deprivation.

As may have been gathered by now, McGarvey’s own views are not at all well explained. He sees Socialism in completely anodyne terms, as ‘about providing a decent quality of life for everyone in society’. He is now the father of a young son and as such is frightened by the thought of a revolution: but he does not say why, or what such a revolution would involve. Moreover, there is nothing at all here on what the underlying causes of poverty might be. So, if his book has an overall message, it is left very unclear. 

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Yes, Read Marx (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an interview with the online magazine 'Truthout' (24 March) the historian Immanuel Wallerstein urged young people to ‘Read Karl Marx!’ He is one of the leading advocates of the theory that capitalism is a single ‘world-system’. His books describe the history of capitalism, as in effect the world market, from its origins in the sixteenth century to today. This theory has an important implication: that capitalism is not a collection of separate, national capitalist economies but a single world system and that there is therefore no national way out of it:

‘The capitalist system is composed of owners who sell for profit. The fact that an owner is a group of individuals rather than a single person makes no essential difference. This has long been recognized for joint-stock companies. It must now be recognized for sovereign states. A state which collectively owns all the means of production is merely a collective capitalist firm as long as it remains—as all such states are, in fact, presently compelled to remain—a participant in the market of the capitalist world-economy’ (The Capitalist World-Economy, pages 68-69).

Good point. When, however, it comes to explaining basic Marxian economics Wallerstein is not so sound. In an interview with the Belgian newspaper Le Soir in 1998 (20 March) he argued:

‘You easily imagine that if one respected the presuppositions of economic textbooks -- an infinity of sellers and an infinity of buyers, all perfectly informed -- capitalists would be incapable of making the least profit: consumers would immediately find the lowest price which would not be a centime above the cost of production!’

The main feature of the textbooks’ ‘perfect competition’ is that, because there are so many of each, buyers and sellers cannot influence the price at which goods sell. This is fixed by the market. But at what level?

Adam Smith called the price that the market would establish in the long run a good’s ‘natural price’. This would be the cost of producing it in terms of the labour expended on it from start to finish. He accepted that this would include an element of profit. Marx developed this theory and explained profit as ‘unpaid labour’, i.e., the labour expended by workers above what they received as their wages.

Wallerstein’s statement implies that profit could only arise if there is not ‘perfect competition,’ if capitalist firms are in a position to influence the price of what they sell due to having a partial monopoly. In other words, profit would be a form of rent. True, some firms are in this position and so do command a higher than normal profit. But this explains only the extra, monopoly profit, not normal profit. It fails as a theory of profit because it does not, and cannot, explain why firms not in this position still make a profit, as under capitalism they must otherwise nobody would invest in them.

The impasse Wallerstein’s statement leads to shows that the origin of profit cannot be explained as arising from the circulation (the buying and selling) of goods. It has to be sought elsewhere. Marx set out to explain it on the basis of goods selling at the price established under competitive conditions and showed that profits originated in the process of production where workers produced goods worth more than what they were paid as wages.

So, to understand profits, read Karl Marx, especially the section of his 1865 talk to English trade unionists, Value, Price and Profit, entitled 'Profit is Made by Selling a Commodity at its Value'.

The Fallacy of Empire Free Trade. (1930)

From the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, who six months ago were waging a fierce ‘‘circulation war” in their rival group of newspapers, have buried the hatchet in order to launch the United Empire Party—the “Party of Prosperity.” The idea underlying the programme of the new party is simple enough. The British Empire is to become one unit for trade purposes against the rest of the world. Any article which can be grown or manufactured inside one or other of the Empire countries is to be grown there and freely imported into other Empire countries. Foreign productions are to be kept out by means of protective tariffs. America is to be the model, and prosperity is to be the result. Viscount Rothermere writing in the Sunday Despatch on February 23rd, tells us that five years after the achievement of Empire Free Trade “Great Britain will be as prosperous as the United States.” The party is described as “not political, but economic. It will include men and women of all political (views. Conservatives, Liberals, and Labourites alike will be welcome to it.” (Viscount Rothermere, in the Daily Mail, 19th February). This “non-political” party is, however, going to run a large number of candidates for Parliament, to secure the application of its programme. Lord Beaverbrook is the leader of the new party, and Viscount Rothermere his right hand man.

“All Sensible Persons.”
The U.E.P. has met with a heavy fire of criticism from the older parties, but almost all of the critics agree in endorsing the notion that “prosperity” would result from improved trade. They condemn the scheme only because they believe it. to be impracticable for the purpose it has in view. As the New Statesman puts it, “all sensible persons wish to see an expansion of trade between Empire countries.” A glance at the last general election programmes of the political parties will show that they all believe in improved trade. Mr. Baldwin backed “safeguarding” as the means of doing this. Mr. Lloyd George preferred the Trade Facilities Act, which gives “the support of the national credit to industrial enterprises.” The Labour Party shared Lloyd George’s view; “A Labour Government will set to work at once by using Export Credits and Trade Facilities Guarantees, to stimulate the depressed export trades.” Finally the Communists urged the development of trade with Russia. Only the Socialist Party dissents from the view of the New Statesman's “all sensible persons.” We do not want “free trade” or “protection” but Socialism, which means “no trade.” Trade, whether local trade, Empire trade or International trade, means the buying and selling of goods which are privately owned by the owners of the means of production. Socialism, which means the production of goods for use and not for sale, will end buying and selling.

That is a question of the organisation of production and distribution on a Socialist basis, and it may be asked what is our attitude to the problem of trade as it exists under capitalism. Our attitude on this too, is essentially different from that of the parties mentioned.

“Prosperity” For Whom?

We deny that improved trade offers any solution for the problems of the working class. Each of the parties of capitalism accepts the view that greater efficiency in British industry would enable British manufacturers to produce more cheaply and thus beat their foreign competitors. The argument is based on a childish fallacy which every elementary student of logic has met in the following little poser. In an examination set to a class of 30 boys, no boy was more than 5 marks from the boy above him on the list. Any boy would therefore be raised one place higher if he had 10 more marks. Is it then true to say that all the boys would be one place higher if they all had 10 more marks? The “improved trade” argument is just as silly. It is doubtless true that if “John Bull’s” manufactures were reduced in price he would capture some markets from “Uncle Sam” or "Old Fritz”—provided that “Uncle Sam” and “Old Fritz” and the rest of the capitalist world consent to stand still. But they don’t consent to stand still. In a competitive world an increase in the efficiency of each competitor leaves all the competitors where they were. A ten per cent. reduction in prices all over the world through the application of similar methods of rationalisation, leaves the least efficient capitalist nation still at the bottom of the class and still desperately trying to outstrip the others.

Viscount Rothermere tells us to copy America and then in five years we shall be “as prosperous” as America is. But how prosperous are the American workers? Has poverty been abolished in the U.S.A.? Viscount Rothermere’s newspaper, the Evening News, told us as recently as December 17th, 1929. that “the world has never been without poverty and that in the U.S.A. to-day, the richest nation in material wealth that the world has ever known, there is plenty of it—not relative poverty merely, but want and destitution.”

The Cause of “Bad Trade.”

Before joining the party of “want and destitution,” stop and consider why “bad trade” and unemployment exist; The newspaper Lords are looking for the cause at the furthest end of the Empire; Mr. J. H. Thomas recently went seeking it in Canada; the Labour Party and the Communists fancy they have found it (or part of it) in the failure to be on good trade relations with Moscow. The real cause lies nearer home, in the organisation of capitalism itself. In the U.S.A. there are over 33,000 people with incomes of 50,000 dollars or more, say upwards of £200 a week. In this country there are more than 9,000 people in the same happy position. They represent the wealthiest section of the capitalist class, but between them and the average worker with his wage of £2 or £3 per week (when he is in work), there are a few million wealthy people who between them get nearly half the total national income. Many of them have so much more than they need that they cannot and do not spend it. It must be as difficult to get through £200 a week as it was for the proverbial rich man in the Bible story to get into heaven, or the camel to get through the eye of a needle. The constant relative over-production of goods, the inability to find buyers, is due to the inequality of wealth which is part and parcel of Capitalism. So great is the wealth of the rich minority that all the stupendous and alluring advertising campaigns fail to induce them to spend up to the limit of their income or anything approaching the limit. The cost of building useless battleships, donations to charity, taxation to provide relief for the destitute, and pensions for the aged, all these forms of voluntary or obligatory expenditure leave the problem hardly touched. The wealth of the rich, their ownership and control of our means of life, this is the cause of poverty and unemployment. None of the “improved trade” parties can solve the problem. Workers who desert the Liberal, Tory, Labour and Communist Parties to join the new party are merely exchanging one illusory hope for another. Socialism will solve the problem of the poverty of the many by abolishing a system of society based upon the ownership of the means of production by the wealthy few; it will solve the problem of unemployment by abolishing the classes of employers and employed; it will solve the problems of competitive trade by abolishing trade.

Edgar Hardcastle

In Response to the Syrian Air Attacks (2018)

From the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the self-appointed guardians of democracy, America, Britain, and France have launched their much-anticipated air attacks upon Syria to punish that state in pursuit of their conviction that it had used chemical weapons.

The Socialist Party sympathises with all our fellow workers who are the victims of this brutal war and many others. When this war ends the final death toll among civilians will be hard to establish, much less to attribute the cause of the killings. The devastation is a testament to the dangers and horrors of modern warfare. The Syrian dictatorship is one of many equally savage regimes in the region: Saudi Arabia, for example, is engaged in a prolonged war with rebels in Yemen that is seeing misery piled upon misery. Israel has snipers shooting down unarmed protestors in Gaza.

The reality is that the horrors of modern war are not to be laid on the shoulders of a religion nor an ideology, nor even on specific individuals. The justification for armed conflict can always be found when military, political and economic needs demand it. The Western capitalist bloc stirred up a civil war in Syria and now they are reaping the whirlwind. It is a continuation of the same battle for control of the Middle East and its oil resources that has gone on ever since the end of the Second World War, with crisis after crisis and war after war.

When hostility breaks into open warfare, each side's ruling class does even more terrible things to the other side, destroying its towns and slaughtering its people. This gives the belligerent countries even more propaganda points to make. Each side claims that it only started fighting in the first place because (in some miraculous way) it could see what barbarous actions its enemies were guilty of in the war. In other words, the propaganda of each hostile country claims that it only went to war because of the atrocities committed during the war on the other side. The truth, however, is exactly the opposite. It is not the atrocities which lead to war; it is the war which leads to the atrocities. What happens, over and over again, is that a government, reacting to the pressures inseparable from private-property societies, treats some of its citizens very badly. Then the government gets into a war against other states; only to realize that its previous ill-treatment of this or that minority has simply provided a ready-made fifth column for the enemy.

When the nuclear-equipped superpowers come up against each other directly, we have every reason to be fearful for the future of humanity. War is competition for profits (either via trade routes, mineral wealth, resources or areas of influence) writ large, and to safeguard its future profits, its control of world resources the world's greatest and largest military power is accumulating an unimaginable array of weaponry.

The Syrian regime may win in the short term through sheer mediaeval brutality, but you can’t run a modern state without a sophisticated infrastructure and a working-class trained to run it. And that inevitably gives capitalism its Achilles heel, and workers their ultimate weapon against war itself. If you want to have done with brutal dictatorships like Syria's, it's a waste of time to go to war: others will spring up everywhere. Get rid of capitalism, the fertile soil which produces endless numbers of dictators and atrocities.

Editorial: Here We Go Again? (2018)

Editorial from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the May 1968 events in France. It all began on 22 March 1968 when, following the arrest of anti-Vietnam War protesters, students at Nanterre University staged a sit-in. Further conflict led the University authorities to close the University on 2 May. Students then occupied the Sorbonne University. The students were unhappy with recent educational reforms that geared French education towards the needs of industrial capitalism and the centralised nature of the Universities' governance and were opposed to the Vietnam War. Police repression and heavy handed action by the University authorities swelled the number of protesters. The French workers joined the students and called a general strike, which resulted in factory occupations. For the more radical workers, their grievances went beyond the issues of better wages and working conditions, and included demands for more workers' control in their workplaces. The unions, the government and the employers negotiated wage increases and more trade union rights in a bid to end the conflict. In the National Assembly elections of June 1968, an increased number of Gaullist MPs were returned. Soon thereafter, the protests and strikes died down.

However, this is just not to revisit these events, for France is witnessing another revolt by students and workers. On 22 March this year, timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary, the unions called a nationwide strike to oppose Emmanuel Macron's labour and welfare reforms. At the forefront of these struggles are the railway workers, who are resisting government attempts to scrap job security, automatic job promotions and early retirement at 52 for new workers, and have responded by arranging two-day strikes for each week for three months. Airline pilots are also striking over pay and public sector workers are taking industrial action in opposition to Government plans to cut 120,000 public sector jobs over five years. Care workers and pensioners are also in revolt. Students are protesting about the proposed introduction of selective University entry requirements, which they say will discriminate against students from poorer backgrounds. The left hope that they can achieve the same unity between the workers' and students' struggles as in May 1968.

Macron is trying to shift the balance of power from the working class to the capitalist class, so as to make French capitalism more competitive. In this respect, he is no different from other French political leaders. Both Jacques Chirac and Nicholas Sarkozy tried to introduce similar reforms, but were defeated by concerted strike action. François Hollande also faced resistance when he attempted to introduce legislation to make it easier for employers to make workers redundant.

Although the circumstances in May 1968 may be different from those at present, the underlying dynamic is the same. This is the struggle between the capitalist class and the working class over the material resources of society.

We have solidarity with the workers and students with their struggles, but we would urge them to take the next step to organise with workers in other countries to take political power so that they can convert private and state property into the common heritage of all human beings.

Cooking the Books: Zollverein (2018)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 19th century, even before Germany became a single state in 1871 and was still divided into kingdoms and duchies large and small, there was nevertheless a considerable degree of economic unity. This was achieved through the ‘Zollverein’, under which the states and statelets who joined committed themselves to two things – a common market, or customs-free trade with other member-states, and imposing the same tariff on imports from outside the union.

Zollverein was translated into English as ‘customs union’. When in 1957 six European states – Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg – established what they called the ‘European Economic Community’ it was popularly known as the ‘Common Market’ after the free trade area established behind the common external tariff. The common external tariff had another consequence. It meant that the EEC was a single trading bloc vis-à-vis other states and trading blocs. In 1973 the UK, Ireland and Denmark joined this common market/ customs union and trading bloc.

Some of the EEC member-states envisaged going further, seeing the common market as a step towards economic and monetary, and eventually, political union. This aim was formalised in 1993 when, under the Treaty of Maastricht, the EEC changed its name to ‘European Union’. This also introduced the aim of removing non-tariff barriers to trade within the area such as differing safety, environmental and technical requirements by establishing common standards and regulations and so a frictionless market called ‘the Single Market’ (as a step beyond a merely tariff free ‘common market’).

In the referendum in Britain in June 2016 a 52-48 majority voted ‘leave’ in answer to the question ‘Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?’ But it wasn’t clear what this meant in practical terms. Did it mean simply leaving the EU and its political institutions but still staying in the customs union (the minimalist interpretation, which would put Britain in the same sort of position as Norway) or leaving the customs union too (the maximalist interpretation)?

Ever since, both the capitalist class and its political representatives have been divided on the issue, with a sizeable majority of actual capitalists in favour of staying in the customs union (they never wanted to leave anyway). Their political representatives are more evenly divided, with ironically the Labour Party being closer to the majority capitalist position than the Tories.

The government itself wants to leave the customs union so that Britain can negotiate trade deals on its own. They believe that they will be able to negotiate better deals for the capitalist class than as part of the EU trading bloc. This remains to be seen as one of the original capitalist reasons for being in the EEC was precisely the calculation that a big trading bloc would have more clout in trade negotiations than going it alone. The first test will be what sort of deal an independent UK will be able to negotiate with a big trading bloc like the 27 remaining EU member-states will still be.

As socialists, who have no concern with what is in the best interest of the capitalist class, we can sit back and watch the show.

Death of an Old Revolutionary Hero by George Bernard Shaw (1905)

Blogger's Note: Yes, I know it could be said that Shaw's short story is a dig against the Impossibilists of his day, but I don't mind; the pages of the Socialist Standard of Shaw's day were always filled with well-aimed kicks against Shaw and his fellow Fabians, and if you can't take it, don't dish it out. 

Though the short story dates from 1905, I found it in a GBS short story collection  which dates from 1934. 

From The Clarion of the 24th March 1905.

So old Joe Budgett of Balwick—Stalwart Joe—is dead at last. The Socialist movement has seldom mourned a more typical thoroughgoer than dear old Joe. We all knew him; for he quarrelled with every one of us at one time or another; and yet is there one who is not sorry to lose him? Those who witnessed that simple funeral at Balwick last Thursday morning, when the remains of a poor workman in a cheap pine coffin were borne through the pelting sleet to their last resting-place on the shoulders of Robert Blatchford and H. M. Hyndman, Sidney Webb and Harold Cox, Jaurès (who had come from Paris expressly to pay this last sad duty to the veteran of the International) and myself, Mr Gerald Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, must have asked themselves what manner of man this was to receive a tribute from persons of such diverse views, and so far removed from him in social position.

Joseph Budgett was a heavily built man; and even at 90—his age when he died—he was no light weight. My heart was heavy as I helped to shoulder the coffin; but I confess that poor Joe seemed heavier still by the time we reached the grave; for we were not trained to the work; and there was a good deal of sugaring among the bearers: Harold, for instance, did nothing but shelter from the sleet under the pall after the first ten yards; Jaurès and Hyndman argued in French instead of attending to their work; Blatchford, after the manner of highly sympathetic literary geniuses with a strong susceptibility to incongruous humor, was so convulsed with suppressed laughter that his quiverings rattled Joe’s bones over the stones without contributing anything to their support; and if it had not been for Webb and myself (Fabians doing the practical work as usual), Joe Budgett would never have got to his grave; for Gerald Balfour and Lord Lansdowne were too far forward to get their shoulders properly under the coffin.

Lord Lansdowne was evidently taken aback to find that there was to be no religious service (Joe having been an uncompromising atheist); but he spoke very feelingly at the graveside. “It was part of the tragedy of this man’s career,” he said, “that in all the seventy years of active political life during which he agitated ceaselessly on behalf of his own class, he never found either in the Liberal party or in the irregular groups which pretended to represent Labor and Socialism, that incorruptible spirit, that stainless purity of principle, that absolute integrity, aloof from all compromising alliances, which his honest character demanded as the sole and sufficient claim to his support. He regarded the Conservative party as an open enemy; but he rightly preferred an open enemy to a false or half-hearted friend; and so, if we never gained his theoretic approval, we at least always had what we valued far more: his practical support.”

It was at this point that the accident of which so much has been made befell Blatchford. The account of it in the evening papers was much exaggerated. It is true that the editor of The Clarion broke down and covered his face with his handkerchief. It is also true that in an attempt to hurry away from the graveside with his eyes full of tears he tripped over the sexton’s spade; but he did not fell into the grave, nor was an impression of the name-plate found on his person afterwards. The capitalist press naturally strives to belittle and make ridiculous the obsequies of a political opponent; but I cannot help thinking that it might have shewn better taste than to choose a funeral for a display of its cockney facetiousness.

The rest of the speaking has been so fully reported in all the Labor papers that I need not give any account of it here, except that Webb’s advice to the Progressive Municipalities to make Free Funerals a plank in the program of Municipal Socialism was quite practical and sincere, and was not, as The Deptford Times asserted, a thinly veiled threat of wholesale political assassination.

A good deal of misunderstanding has been caused by the report that the reason I did not speak was that Mrs Budgett said it would be a mockery for a man who had done his best to kill her husband to make a speech over his grave, and that Joe would turn in his coffin at the sound of my voice. Now it is quite true that Mrs Budgett actually did say this, and that I took no part in the speaking in deference to her wishes. But the three Labor papers who have rebuked Mrs Budgett for making her husband’s funeral the occasion of an attack on the Fabian Society are quite wrong in their interpretation of her remarks. She was not thinking of the Fabian Society at all. The truth is, I once did actually try to kill Joe; and as it happened a good many years ago, and he forgave me handsomely—though Mrs Budgett could never forget it—I may as well do penance now by describing the affair exactly as it happened.

I was quite a young Socialist then; and when I heard one day in spring that old Budgett was passing away whilst the earth was germinating all around, a lump came into my throat: the only one I have ever had. I got used to the news later on, because Joe began dying when he was 75, and never got out of his bed from that time forth except to address a meeting or attend a Socialist Congress. But, as I have just said, I was a young hand then; and an intense desire to see the old revolutionary hero before he returned to dust took hold of me. The end of it was that I found myself a couple of days later at his cottage at Balwick, asking Mrs Budgett whether he was strong enough to see me. She said he was not, as his heart was in such a state that the least excitement or any sudden noise might be fetal. But when she saw how disappointed I was, she added that he was so mortal dull that a little company would perhaps do him good; and so, if I would promise not to talk to him, and be careful not to make any noise, she would let me up for a while. I promised eagerly; and we went up together, she warning me not to trip over the high sills or dash my head against the low lintels of the sturdy old oakframed cottage, and I doing the one at every door in my anxiety to avoid doing the other.

This is perhaps the best place for me to say that Mrs Budgett struck me even then as being extraordinarily devoted to Joe. In fact, I dont think she ventured to regard him as anything so familiar as a husband. She had known both toil and sorrow; for she had had to keep Joe and bring up a family of five by her own exertions. As a boy, Joe had been apprenticed to a bigginwainer, and had served his time and learnt the trade; but when a little thumbed and blackened volume containing Shelley’s Queen Mab and Men of England, and Tom Paine’s Age of Reason, came in his way, and he heard a speech from Orator Hunt, the famous Man in the White Hat, he threw up his bigginwaining and devoted his life to the cause of the people, entrusting all his business affairs to his faithful wife, who never let him know want. In course of time he almost forgot his trade; for I remember on one occasion, when William Morris, in his abrupt way, said to him “And what the devil is a bigginwainer?” Joe was quite at a loss, and could describe it only as a branch of the coopering. The consequence was that Mrs Budgett had to work pretty hard as a laundress; but she did not mind hard work: what weighed on her was the curious fatality that the five children all turned against Joe. They became strong chapelgoers and moneymakers, and made their quarrel with Joe an excuse for doing very little for her, because, they said, they did not want their earnings wasted in encouraging him. So there had been sorrow and strife enough even in that little household.

Joe was sitting up in bed when we entered; and I was struck at once by the lion-like mane of white hair, the firmly closed mouth with its muscles developed by half a century of public speaking, the serene brow, clear ruddy complexion, and keen bold eyes of the veteran. He gave my hand a strong hearty grip, and said, in tones that were still resonant (for he had not then acquired the senile whistling utterance that pierced the ears and hearts of the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam), “Do I at last see before me that old and tried friend of the working classes, George Bernard Shaw? How are you, George?”

Although I was not then old, and had no other feeling for the working classes than an intense desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible people, Joe’s cordial manner encouraged and set me at ease. He invited me to sit down; and before my trousers had pressed the chair he was deep in a flood of reminiscences.

“I served my apprenticeship to the revolution,” he said, “in the struggle against the Reform Bill of 1832.”

“Against it!” I cried.

“Aye, against it,” he said. '“Old as I am, my blood still boils when I think of the way in which a capitalist tailor named Place— one of the half-hearted Radical vermin—worked that infamous conspiracy to enfranchise the middle classes and deny the vote to the working men. I spoke against it on every platform in England. The Duke of Wellington himself said to me that he disapproved of revolutionists in general, but that he wished there were a few more in the country of my kidney. Then came Chartism with its five points to fool the people and keep them from going to the real root of the matter by abolishing kings, priests, and private property. I shewed up its leaders, and had the satisfaction of seeing them all go to prison and come out without a single follower left to them. Then there was Bright and Cobden trailing the red herring of Free Trade across the trail of the emancipation of the working classes. I exposed them and their silly lies about cheap bread; and if I’d been listened to, no Englishman need ever have wanted bread again. Next came those black blots on our statute book, the Factory Acts, which recognized and regulated and legalized the accursed exploitation of the wives and children of the poor in the factory hells. Why, when I took the field against them, the very employers themselves said I was right and bid me God-speed in that campaign. Then came a worse swindle than the Reform Bill of 1832—the ’67 Bill, that gave just a handful of votes to a few workmen to bolster up the lie that Parliament represents the people instead of the vampires that live by plundering them. Didnt I get this scar over my eye from a stone that hit me while I was speaking against that Bill? But it became law for all that; and it emboldened the capitalists so much that they brought in the Education Act to drive all our children into their prisons of schools, and drill them into submission, and teach them to be more efficient slaves to make profits for their bloodsuckers. I spoke against it until I lost my voice for a whole month; and the people were with me too, heart and soul. It ended, as all double-facedness ends, in the Compromise. But thank God—not that I believe in God, but I use the word in a manner of speaking—I never compromised; and I never will. I left the International because it would not support me against the school Bastilles. And it was high time I did; for the International was a rotten compromise itself—half mere Trade- Unionism, and the other half a little private game of a rare old dodger named Marx—not Harry Marks, you know, but Karl— a compromise between a German and a Jew, he was: neither one thing nor the other. Then came the Commune of Paris, that did nothing but get the people of Paris slaughtered like mad dogs, because, as I pointed out at the time, it was too local, and stood for a city instead of for all the world. That put an end to everything for ten years; and then Socialism came up again with all the old mistakes and compromises: the half-hearted Chartist palliatives, the stooping to use the votes that the capitalists had bribed the people with, the pushing middle class men and autocratic swells at the head of it. I soon saw through Hyndman, and went with Morris into the Socialist League. But Morris was just as bad: all he wanted was our pennies to publish his poems—John Bull’s Earthly Paradise and such tosh as that—in The Commonweal. I turned the League against him at last and took The Commonweal from him; and then he shewed his true nature by leaving us without means to pay the rent or publish the paper. Nothing came of it but another Reform Bill in 1885. I said, ‘Does it abolish the registration laws and establish Universal Suffrage?’ ‘No,’ they said. ‘Then have nothing to do with it,' I said; and I spoke against it and agitated against it as I never agitated before. But the spirit of the workers was broken: they submitted to it like sheep. I took to my bed then, and never came out of it until the Dock Strike of 1889.”

“That roused you, did it?” I said, ambiguously; for I was now alive to the danger of jumping to any conclusions as to which side Joe might have taken.

“Could I lie here and see the people led away by a renegade like John Burns?” he exclaimed. “Oh what a degradation that was! what a spectacle of crawling slavery! to see freeborn men begging for sixpence an hour instead of insisting in a voice of thunder on the full product of their labor! That was what Burns’s pretended Socialism came to when he was put to the test. Sixpence an hour! But I expected no more. I saw through him from the first, just as I saw through Francis Place, and Fergus O’Connor, and Bronterre O’Brien, and the hypocritical Christian Socialists, and George Odger and Charles Bradlaugh and Hyndman and Morris and Champion and the German wirepullers, Bebel and Liebknecht. Self-seeking humbugs, talkers and compromisers all of them. None of them thorough, none of them genuine right through. The Dock Strike was nothing but a conspiracy between Cardinal Manning and John Burns to get Manning made Pope and to get Bums into the County Council. From that day I resolved that Burns should be driven from the cause of the people if my tongue and pen could do it. I’m organizing the Socialist opposition to him at Battersea—the genuine real Socialist opposition—and we’ll have him out at the next election, when the Albert Palace is replaced by flats full of Conservative voters.”

“You are working for the Conservatives, then?”

“Young man: I have opposed the Tories all my life; but theres one thing I hate more than a Tory; and thats a traitor.”

“Are all the Labor and Socialist leaders traitors?”

“Traitors! What puts such a thought into your mind? There are hundreds of true men who ought to be leaders, and will be when the people come to their senses. But the men that put themselves forward as leaders—that organize strikes and tout for votes and win elections are all traitors and self-seekers, every man of them. It’s the so-called unsuccessful men—the martyrs of the movement—the men that stand up for the people against everybody—mark that, against everybody: those are the real men, the salt of the people’s cause, the glory of the revolution."

He paused to take a sip of Liebig from a cup his wife had brought him when we came in. He did it just as a speaker who is getting hoarse takes a sip of water on the platform. As his historical reminiscences had by this time come pretty well up to date, I thought he was done; but he suddenly switched off from history to moral exhortation.

“Look at me!” he said, “going on for eighty, and as sound as a bell, except for this complaint in my heart, brought on by its bleeding for the people and by overwork on the platform. Thats because I am a teetotaler, young man. And why am I a teetotaler? Because the cause of the people has been drink to me and stimulant to me and courage and warmth to me. Have I ever taken money for my principles? Never. The exploiting classes have offered over and over again to finance me. But I have never accepted a penny.”

“Except from your wife,” I remarked, thoughtlessly.

For a moment he was completely taken aback. Then he said, with indescribable majesty, “Never. It is a foul lie; and whoever told it to you lies in his black throat. Prove to me that my wife has ever accepted a farthing from any oppressor of the people— that she has ever possessed a coin that was not earned by her own honest toil—and I will never look on her face again.”

“Thats not precisely what I mean,” I said, rather lamely; for I perceived that he had missed my point; and I rather doubted whether an explanation would mend matters. But he went on impetuously, being constitutionally a bad listener.

“My wife is a crown of rubies to me,” he said, with feeling. “But I have always kept her out of the rough and tumble of political strife. It has broken me up; but at least I have shielded her from it.” Here he wiped away a tear. “And when I think,” he went on, “that there are men who are at this present moment plotting to give the vote to middle class women and deny it to my wife, I feel that I could rise from my bed like a young man and fight with my last breath against it as I did against the abomination of 1832.”

“All or nothing is your principle," I said.

“Thats it,” he responded in a ringing voice, aglow with enthusiasm. “All or nothing.”

“Well,” I said, “as it is quite certain that you wont get All, you are practically the propagandist of Nothing: a Nihilist, in fact.”

“I am not ashamed of the word Nihilist,” he said. “The Nihilists are my brothers.”

“To change the subject,” I said: “is it really true that your heart is so bad that a sudden noise would kill you?”

“It is,” he said proudly. “You could snuff me out like a candle by knocking that cup of Liebig’s Extract over on to the floor.” 

I looked round. A grandfather’s clock ticked peacefully in the silence; for Joe, having reminded himself of the Liebig, was now drinking it; and even he could not talk and drink at the same time.

“Mr Budgett,” I said, rising, “I am not a Nihilist; and it is perfectly clear to me that nothing will ever be done as long as you are about. So here goes!” And I pulled the grandfather’s clock right over.

It fell with an appalling crash, striking as it fell until its weights thundered on the boards. Terrified at my own deed, I looked fearfully at the dying man. But Joe did not die. Instead, he sprang out of bed and said, “What the — — are you doing?”

I thought it best, on the whole, to drop from the window and make for the railway station. Next day I sent him £2—all I could spare—to pay for repairing the clock. But he sent it back to me with a letter of some thirty pages to say that he could do without a clock, but not without his self-respect.

That was why Mrs Budgett objected to my speaking at the funeral.

I confess, now that advancing years have mellowed my character, that I was wrong in trying to kill Joe. One must live and let live. He bore no malice whatever for the incident, and used to refer to it with the utmost good humor, always ending up with the assurance that he did not take me seriously, and knew that my real object was simply to give him a hearty laugh.

His end was undoubtedly hastened by his efforts to turn the Labor movement against the new Bill for the Enfranchisement of Women; and he was proud to number a Countess among his converts. He almost lost his temper with me because I said that I should support any Bill that would make a start by giving a parliamentary vote or seat to even one woman, though the property qualification were a million sterling. “All or nothing!" he said, with a fervor worthy of Ibsen's Brand.

The governing classes keep the mass of people enslaved by taking advantage of their sloth, their stupidity, their ignorance, their poverty, their narrowness, their superstition, and their vices. They could not enslave Joe by such means. He was energetic and clever; he was as well read as most cabinet ministers; he was sufficiently fed, clothed and housed (by his wife); he was a universalist in his breadth of view; he was an atheist; and he had practically no vices. And yet the governing classes tied Joe up with the principles of absolute morality tighter than they could tie a hooligan with a set of handcuffs.

After all, the principles of absolute morality were made for this very purpose; so Joe was hardly to be blamed.

George Bernard Shaw

50 Years Ago: Machinery (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Machinery, says the Liberal, has deepened the working man's chest and increased his stature by shortening the hours of work. When he says ‘shortened hours' we promptly ask ‘compared with when?’ and as promptly comes the answer: 'In comparison with the hours worked in the hungry forties’, or ‘when my grandfather was a lad’.

To compare present hours of work with the length of the working day in that transitional period when capitalism was in its birth throes (with the aim of extolling the difference), is an inane procedure.

Thorold Rogers has shown the comparative leisure of the workers under the system of ‘small production'—with that we need not deal. If we take our case at its worst and compare hours of work today with the hours toiled in the early years of capitalism, we find justification for our case. We find that side by side with the shorter working day has come a quicker pace, a more rapid rate of production, a faster consumption of working-class brain, nerve and muscle. Whether it be in the sphere of production—at lathe or loom, or in distribution on train, tram, or taxi, the working pace is fierce.

Even if we examine types of work where steam-power cannot be applied —office executive and the like—we find mechanical appliances such as calculating machines, typewriters, dictating appliances, etc., adding to the intensity of the workers grind.

From the Socialist Standard, January 1912.

Editorial: Crisis in the aircraft industry (1965)

Editorial from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The aircraft industry is giving British capitalism perhaps its biggest headache for a long time. Once was when it enjoyed a leading reputation, both in the civil and military spheres, but over the past few years it has been hit by a series of crises. In a severely competitive market the gap has been rapidly narrowed until today it faces the threat of almost total eclipse by its American rivals.

This fact, accepted by government and opposition alike, stood out starkly in the Commons debate on February 9th. It was matched in its starkness only by the government’s avowed intention to cut its already heavy losses, pare the industry down by several thousand workers, and divert skilled manpower to other and more profitable ventures, particularly in the export field. "We are determined not to leave skilled labour lying idle,” said Aviation Minister Jenkins during the debate, although only time will tell just how far this intention is realised.

The present structure of the aircraft industry is something which was largely imposed on it by the capitalist class as a whole. Large amalgamations were pushed through at the behest of previous governments in return for a guarantee of a certain amount of support and protection. Whatever the intentions were, however, it seems they did not prevent the industry floundering, and the days are gone when our rulers are prepared to throw more large sums of good money after bad. There will be a link-up with France, Holland and U.S.A. in the development of future projects, obviously a cost-saving move among other things. 

As usual in any upheaval of this kind, workers are the ones to suffer, and already thousands of redundancies have been declared. Men who entered the industry as youngsters, when it was the up-and-coming thing, are having to face the prospect of retraining for other employment, with the possibility of lower wages and conditions. Most of them have been engaged on military aircraft of one sort or another, and it is one of the bitter ironies of the situation to see them demonstrating in favour of these instruments of death and destruction in a quite understandable attempt to save their jobs. Clearly, one worker’s livelihood is another one’s obliteration—one more example how capitalism pits workers remorselessly against their brothers elsewhere.

But protest as they may, there was no sign that the government would relent. After all, the capitalist class is not in business for the benefit of its workers, and if better value for money can be had by pulling out of one industry and investing in another, then this is what will be done, unemployment or no unemployment. "Value for money,” was a battle cry of the Labour Party for some time before their recent return to power, and there is every sign that they will be just as ruthless as anyone else in their effort to attain it. Already they have said that the firm of Short Bros, must go, and future contracts with other companies may carry much stiffer "fixed price” provisions—something which will give employers an added incentive to resist wage claims.

An interesting comment on the essential similarity in the ideas of all capitalist parties was given on February 10th by the Hawker Siddeley chairman Sir Roy Dobson. In a slashing attack on the Tory party, he said they “would have liked to have done” what the Labour government was now doing, but instead “just waffled” when they were in power. But apart from this anyway, the Commons debate was notable for the closeness of views on both sides. And not one whisper of dissent was heard when Mr. Jenkins uttered a cardinal fact of capitalist life:—“We can afford to make products only if others buy them.” This is what is really behind the wrangles over the aircraft industry today, the textiles industry yesterday, and who knows what tomorrow. And workers will always get hurt in the process, for capitalism is a very hurtful system.

Greasy Pole: Rising Star? Do We Need Another One? (2018)

The Greasy Pole column from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The relationship between Ministers of the Crown and the civil servants who are employed to carry out their wishes has often been a matter of agonising delicacy. For example there was a minister in a Blair government who was faced with a crisis in the NHS while one of his top officials had been hiding about a thousand unanswered parliamentary questions while coming into the office at weekends to falsify the figures on the matter. As one minister put it: ‘Everyone thinks they are white knights and that we are the villains whereas the truth, which we all know, is that many officials are useless’. But then there was the Labour minister who was more concerned about the size and temperature of his morning coffee than about any of the vital matters preoccupying his office. Distinct from this, at present there is the Home Office, absorbed in such sensitive issues as crime and immigration, which manages to work in a more relaxed and considerate style. In charge there is the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, who comes from a family of wealthy financiers, which did not prevent her in 2008 winning a poetry prize in her constituency local paper which included the lines: ‘Loving you is so exciting. But why dear heart, did you not mention, What we’ll do for contraception?’ Rudd was recently said to be in a relationship with Kwasi Kwarteng, the Tory MP for Spelthorne and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but this was not officially assessed as damaging in the same way as the recent cases of what became known as ‘inappropriate behaviour’ among politicians.

Quiz

So far there is no record of any poetry being written about Kwarteng. His parents were students who came from Ghana in the 1960s and he was born in London. When he was eight he was placed in an expensive private boarding school – which he said he ‘loved’– and from which he blossomed into a King’s Scholar at that emphatically costly breeding place for the aristocracy, Eton College. A fellow student there described the place as ‘a competitive intellectual hothouse…but everyone said that probably the greatest brain of the lot was the guy with that extraordinary name’. It became something of their history at Eton that when Kwarteng was later being interviewed for a place at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was so graciously confident of the outcome that he could reassure the nervous young tutor not to worry about his clumsy handling of the matter because ‘you did fine sir…’A memory which must have endured for him – for example when he was a member of the Trinity College team in the TV programme University Challenge and he was broadcast referring to a memory lapse by blurting out ‘Oh fuck, I’ve forgotten!’. Which provoked a flood of complaints, typically in a piece called Rudiversity Challenge in, of all places, Page Three of The Sun. The entire episode took on a rather different reputation when the Trinity College team ended up as National Quiz Champions which contributed to Kwarteng sprouting a reputation as an exceedingly brainy performer but also as an extremely charming one. He began to work as what is known as a financial analyst which, as the various crises typical of capitalism flooded around and across the world, provided hopefuls such as Kwarteng with opportunities to venture into journalism and authorship.

Dry

A succession of books and other material were published in his name or as a contributor. This was all very satisfying for him except that his views on what was happening, and why, did not reveal any original thinking about remedies or even original versions of the problems. In Thatcher’s Trial: Six Months That Defined A Leader he varies between denouncing her government’s 1981 Budget as designed 'to produce three million unemployed’ and lauding her as a leader who ‘. . . fought passionately for absolute values in a world which seemed diffident and uncertain of purpose’. One of the sour fruits of his co-authorship was a diagnosis that ‘Once they enter the workplace, the British are among the worst idlers in the world’. As an enthusiastic economic ‘dry’ in his tome Gridlock Britain he defines himself (as a member of the Transport Select Committee) with a belief in the effects of working markets, and demands road pricing as against tax-funded free roads which he rejects as part of his version of a moribund ‘socialism’.

Spelthorne

So it was that Kwarteng came to explore the possibilities of using his talents in party politics, by offering himself as an electable representative of some parliamentary constituency. The first of these was Brent East. This was an ethnically diverse, busy area of London which was held stolidly from 1974 to 1987 by Labour’s Reg Freeson and then, when Freeson died, by the unsettling Ken Livingstone. The next Member in Brent – Paul Daisley – died in 2003 which resulted in a by-election from which there emerged as winner the Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, who was able to benefit from the stress and anger of the reaction to the attack on Iraq, which continues to roll on. Kwarteng was third at the bottom of the poll, which did not deter him from turning his attention elsewhere, to the constituency of Spelthorne which lies near the airport at Heathrow. Additionally attractive to him was the fact that in the 2016 Referendum Spelthorne was emphatically in favour of Brexit.

Obama

He was selected to stand for the Conservative Party and won with a majority of 10,019, which was increased with each successive election until it reached 13,425 in 2017. By then it seemed appropriate to the Tories that they might recognise the talents of this persistent wrangler and Kwarteng was made the PPS for the nationally prominent (but, unlike Kwarteng, anti-Brexit) Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, where his practised skills in trying to ignore the inhuman ravages of capitalism were busily engaged. Meanwhile the Tories seem to be relieved that his relationship with Amber Rudd should be accepted as ‘workplace’ – which at least distinguishes it from those previous embarrassments among their parliamentary colleagues. Although what the burdened Honourable Home Secretary thinks about him being known as the ‘British Obama’ has not been revealed. The government of capitalism comes in many shapes and sizes but with the unvarying object of protecting the interests of their ruling class through imposing and managing the repression and exploitation of the subject class. 

Ivan

Editorial: Trade War (2018)

Editorial from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Donald Trump fought the Presidential campaign pledging to put ‘America First’. Soon after taking office, he pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP) trade deal and plans to cancel the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a trade deal between Europe and the US.

On 8 March, Donald Trump appeared to fulfil an election promise to steel workers by slapping a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminium. Canada and Mexico are, for the time being, exempt. However, if during the renegotiation of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), they fail to make the concessions that Trump wants, then they will also be hit with these tariffs. Trump justified these measures on the grounds of national security and so-called ‘unfair’ trading by America's competitors. Other countries have threatened to retaliate.

These measures also face opposition within the US Republican Party and some US capitalist interests, such as the aviation sector and car manufacturers, which risk having their profits squeezed by the increased cost of steel. Trump's economic adviser, Gary Cohn, an opponent of these measures, has quit.

The general view seems to be that a maverick president has defied the natural order of free trade that has taken place between nations for decades. However, trade protectionism is nothing new in the history of capitalism. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the new American nation state used tariffs to protect its nascent industries from foreign competition. In 1930 the US government introduced the Smoot-Hawley bill, which raised tariffs over a wide range of imports. After the Second World War, when the US emerged as the dominant global power, it supported a liberal trading regime which opened up global markets to US capitalists. However, since the 1980s, its enthusiasm for free trade waned as its economic supremacy was challenged by emerging powers like Japan. Both Ronald Reagan and George W Bush attempted to raise tariffs.

Britain and the European Union have also employed trade protectionist measures, such as subsidising their export industries. Britain, like the US, was in favour of free trade when it was the top economic power in the nineteenth century. However, in the early twentieth century, when facing increasing competition from rivals such as Germany and the US, it sought a more protectionist trade policy.

Donald Trump's move has to be seen against the backdrop of a global overproduction of steel and the more difficult world trading conditions since the 2008 financial crisis. He is attempting to reassert US capitalism's dominance over world markets and check the rise of Chinese capitalism and keep the European Union in its place. It has little to do with the wellbeing of the American working class. Trade wars are usually cloaked in the language of protecting workers' jobs. Workers should not be fooled by this.

Despite the attempts by global organisations like the World Trading Organisation to regulate world trade, capitalist nations will invariably use their economic clout to gain advantage over their rivals, and on many occasions, back this up with the threat and even use of military force. In this light, to talk of ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ trading practices is a nonsense.