Cooking the Books: Use value and exchange value (2019)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

In June the media discovered an interview John McDonnell had given last September. It was immediately seized on by the campaign to depict him, Corbyn and even the Labour Party as ‘Marxist’. Interviewed by Aaron Bastani and Ash Sarkar, according to the Times (24 June), ‘the shadow chancellor discussed how Karl Marx’s work could help people to alter their priorities, and how the “use value” rather than “exchange value” of goods should dominate the way people think.’

Marx did distinguish between ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’ and McDonnell is correct to say that ‘what we have is a society dominated by exchange value’ (novaramedia.com/2018/09/27).

However, Marx was not the first to make this distinction. The two terms were introduced by Adam Smith who wrote:

  ‘The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called “value in use,” the other “value in exchange”’(The Wealth of Nations¸ Book 1, chapter IV).

Marx pointed out, on the first page of Capital, that to have exchange value a product had to satisfy ‘human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.’ So, a ‘use value’ is something that at least some people consider useful. This was, wrote Marx, socially determined but ‘to discover the various uses of things is the work of history,’ ie, not of economics.

Both he and Smith were interested in what determined a product’s ‘exchangeable value’. Both concluded that it was related to the amount of labour-time required to produce it from start to finish. What gave a product of labour exchange value was that it had been produced with a view to being sold. The word both used to describe such a product was ‘commodity.’

Marx’s Capital opens: ‘The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities”.’ Capitalism was a society in which the products of labour, including the capacity to work of the producers, took the form of commodities. But Marx was not interested simply in what determined the exchange value of commodities but above all in how ‘a society dominated by exchange value’ worked.

He first noted that, where the producers’ capacity to work was also a commodity, this resulted in them producing other commodities with a greater exchange value than that of the one they had sold to their employer for a wage, the difference being ‘surplus value’, the source of profits. His conclusion was that capitalism was a society dominated by the imperative to accumulate more and more exchange value, derived from profits and embodied as use values in buildings and instruments for producing more wealth and surplus value, at the expense of producing use values to satisfy people’s needs. Exchange value was more important than use value.

McDonnell, who clearly is acquainted with Marx, is right to want to encourage people to think about this. But it is unclear what he thinks should be done. Marx saw the only way out as a society in which there was no exchange value because use values were not produced as commodities, as items for sale, but for people to take and use. McDonnell seems to want a society in which commodities are still produced but in which use value prevails over exchange value. A laudable aim but, as Marx showed and experience has confirmed, unachievable. Where there is production for sale with a view to profit, the making and accumulation of profits will always come first.

Pathfinders: Blackout in Sudan (2019)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blackout in Sudan

Last month’s BBC Panorama shock exposé of anti-semitism in the Labour Party created quite a stir, but also left a lot of people wondering why the BBC has not chosen to do an equivalent exposé of the rampant and well-documented islamophobia in the Tory Party. Balanced unbiased news reporting, in line with the BBC’s own charter? Corbynistas will be fuming about a stitch-up, and not without reason.

The BBC is probably more balanced when reporting overseas conflicts in which the UK government has no direct interest. BBC’s Africa Eye has provided some decent coverage of the Sudan uprising, including a fascinating video report which, in another kind of stitching, put together a patchwork of over 300 phone videos of the June 3 slaughter in Khartoum, when the military junta’s special forces opened fire on peaceful protesters (‘Sudan’s Livestream Massacre’, BBC News, 12 July ).

The report made the point that, while phones can’t stop bullets, the near-ubiquity of mobile phones means that the world has eyes everywhere, and no junta can keep its massacres a secret anymore. Not that public exposure will necessarily deter a ruthless regime, however in the globalised trading era it’s bad advertising which makes a country look weak and unstable, and will deter foreign investment.

If the military rulers in Sudan expected a massacre to clear the streets and stop the protests, they were right, but not for long. Within a fortnight the protests were back, and bigger than ever. The junta responded by shutting down the internet, forcing protest organisers to rely on text SMS or land-line telephone, a fiddly and expensive business which could reach only a fraction of its target audience. But while the blackout impeded the protesters, it was catastrophic for the Sudanese economy, costing hundreds of millions in lost trade. Was this nevertheless a pyrrhic victory for the junta, the BBC wondered later that month (‘Has an internet blackout killed Sudan’s revolution?’, BBC News, 21 June ). No, as it turned out. In July the military rulers climbed down and acceded to partial civilian rule. The point to take from this is that while modern communications technology is a wonderful force for democratisation, it can always be censored or shut down, and so should not be relied upon. But none of that matters if the courage and determination of workers is strong enough, as in Sudan.

This is your capitalist brain on drugs

Drug firm Pfizer has discovered that its own arthritis treatment drug Enbrel also seems to cut the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by up to 64 percent (New Scientist, 15 June, p7). Great, you might think. Over to Pfizer to start cranking out Enbrel by the container load.

Oh but wait, says Pfizer. Actually, our patent on this is due to expire soon, so we won’t be proceeding with this.

What, you say, you mean you’re not going to make any?

Pfizer shakes its head.

But a 64 percent risk reduction – are you kidding? That blows every other Alzheimer drug out of the water!

Sorry, says Pfizer, no can do. If we don’t make the profit, we don’t make the drug.

But surely you can get your patent extended, you insist. Old drug, new use, it’s been done before.

Yeah well, says Pfizer, we don’t really believe our own data anyway.

Alright, you argue, run proper clinical trials then.

Pfizer bites its lip. Thing is, trials cost, and we’ve all lost a packet on failed clinical trials before. All previous Alzheimer’s trials have failed, which is why all the major drug firms have closed their Alzheimer’s research units. Basically it’s a huge money sink.

Well, you ask in increasing desperation, can’t you get government funding to cover this?

Pfizer smiles. Yeah, good luck with that. Voters want low taxes more than happy granddads.

Well, can’t you release the patent and let another firm make the stuff then?

Pfizer looks shocked. But that wouldn’t be fair – it’s our drug!

Alzheimer’s affects 37 million people worldwide. But capitalism says no.

Why not make a cystic fibrosis drug instead? Drug firm Vertex charges £100,000 a year for the treatment Orkambi, which the NHS won’t pay for, so kids die (New Scientist, 15 June, p9). But because Vertex doesn’t have a valid patent in Argentina, a local firm is producing the drug at the bargain rate of £23,000 pa. Vertex is furious, of course, claiming that their sale price is a fair reflection of the billions they sank into R&D. Meanwhile the parents of kids with cystic fibrosis have been forced to create a ‘buyers club’ in order to buy wholesale and get the cost down further, a move clinicians describe as ‘a desperate act’.

Patents in capitalism are intended to reward and defend intellectual effort and financial investment. But the flip side is that patents also kill people either by setting unaffordable prices or stopping production at source. In socialism you might get the kudos for an invention, but you wouldn’t get a patent.

This is your capitalist brain on dregs

Two bumper harvests in Brazil have flooded the international market with so much coffee that the price farmers can get has plummeted to below $1 a pound (BBC News, 11 July ). Since coffee is a cash crop that farmers sell instead of growing food they could actually eat, when the price hits the floor farmers will turn to other cash crops or else subsistence. Add in the number of farmers also going bust or abandoning farming, and you’re looking at a massive scaling back of future coffee production. Enjoy that cappuccino while you may, because in a few years’ time you might only be able to afford re-boiled dregs. How can a good harvest turn into a disaster? That’s capitalist ‘logic’ for you.

Paddy Shannon

The Destruction of Nature: by Anton Pannekoek (2019)

Anton Pannekoek, 1908

From the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

We publish this translation of a recently uncovered article written by Anton Pannekoek in 1909, not only for its contemporary relevance but also to show that Marx and Engels were not the only socialists to be concerned that capitalism was upsetting the basis of humanity’s participation in the Earth’s ecosystem.

There are numerous complaints in the scientific literature about the increasing destruction of forests. But it is not only the joy that every nature-lover feels for forests that should be taken into account. There are also important material interests, indeed the vital interests of humanity. With the disappearance of abundant forests, countries known in Antiquity for their fertility, which were densely populated and famous as granaries for the great cities, have become stony deserts. Rain seldom falls there except as devastating diluvian downpours that carry away the layers of humus which the rain should fertilise. Where the mountain forests have been destroyed, torrents fed by summer rains cause enormous masses of stones and sand to roll down, which clog up Alpine valleys, clearing away forests and devastating villages whose inhabitants are innocent, ‘due to the fact that personal interest and ignorance have destroyed the forest and headwaters in the high valley’.

The authors strongly insist on personal interest and ignorance in their eloquent description of this miserable situation but they do not look into its causes. They probably think that emphasising the consequences is enough to replace ignorance by a better understanding and to undo the effects. They do not see that this is only a part of the phenomenon, one of numerous similar effects that capitalism, this mode of production which is the highest stage of profit-hunting, has on nature.

Why is France a country poor in forests which has to import every year hundreds of millions of francs worth of wood from abroad and spend much more to repair through reforestation the disastrous consequences of the deforestation of the Alps? Under the Ancien Regime there were many state forests. But the bourgeoisie, who took the helm of the French Revolution, saw in these only an instrument for private enrichment. Speculators cleared 3 million hectares to change wood into gold. They did not think of the future, only of the immediate profit.

For capitalism all natural resources are nothing but gold. The more quickly it exploits them, the more the flow of gold accelerates. The private economy results in each individual trying to make the most profit possible without even thinking for a single moment of the general interest, that of humanity. As a result, every wild animal having a monetary value and every wild plant giving rise to profit is immediately the object of a race to extermination. The elephants of Africa have almost disappeared, victims of systematic hunting for their ivory. It is similar for rubber trees, which are the victim of a predatory economy in which everyone only destroys them without planting new ones. In Siberia, it has been noted that furred animals are becoming rarer due to intensive hunting and that the most valuable species could soon disappear. In Canada, vast virgin forests have been reduced to cinders, not only by settlers who want to cultivate the soil, but also by “prospectors” looking for mineral deposits who transform mountain slopes into bare rock so as to have a better overview of the ground. In New Guinea, a massacre of birds of paradise was organised to satisfy the expensive whim of an American woman billionaire. Fashion craziness, typical of a capitalism wasting surplus value, has already led to the extermination of rare species; sea birds on the east coast of America only owe their survival to the strict intervention of the state. Such examples could be multiplied at will.

But are not plants and animals there to be used by humans for their own purposes? Here, we completely leave aside the question of the preservation of nature as it would be without human intervention. We know that humans are the masters of the Earth and that they completely transform nature to meet their needs. To live, we are completely dependent on the forces of nature and on natural resources; we have to use and consume them. That is not the question here, only the way capitalism makes use of them.

A rational social order will have to use the available natural resources in such a way that what is consumed is replaced at the same time, so that society does not impoverish itself and can become wealthier. A closed economy which consumes part of its seed corn impoverishes itself more and more and must inevitably fail. But that is the way capitalism acts. This is an economy which does not think of the future but lives only in the immediate present. In today’s economic order, nature does not serve humanity, but capital. It is not the clothing, food or cultural needs of humanity that govern production, but capital’s appetite for profit, for gold.

Natural resources are exploited as if reserves were infinite and inexhaustible. The harmful consequences of deforestation for agriculture and the destruction of useful animals and plants expose the finite character of available reserves and the failure of this type of economy. Roosevelt recognises this failure when he wants to call an international conference to review the state of still available natural resources and to take measures to stop them being wasted.

Of course the plan itself is humbug. The state could do much to stop the pitiless extermination of rare species. But the capitalist state is in the end a poor representative of the good of humanity. It must halt in face of the essential interests of capital.

Capitalism is a headless economy which cannot regulate its acts by an understanding of their consequences. But its devastating character does not derive from this fact alone. Over the centuries humans have also exploited nature in a foolish way, without thinking of the future of humanity as a whole. But their power was limited. Nature was so vast and so powerful that with their feeble technical means humans could only exceptionally damage it. Capitalism, by contrast, has replaced local needs with world needs, and created modern techniques for exploiting nature. So it is now a question of enormous masses of matter being subjected to colossal means of destruction and removed by powerful means of transportation. Society under capitalism can be compared to a gigantic unintelligent body; while capitalism develops its power without limit, it is at the same time senselessly devastating more and more the environment from which it lives. Only socialism, which can give this body consciousness and reasoned action, will at the same time replace the devastation of nature by a rational economy.

Zeitungskorrespondenz N° 75, 10 July 1909,

Original German, and a French translation, can be found here:

http://pantopolis.over-blog.com/2019/07/anton-pannekoek-la-destruction-de-la-nature-1909.html

Fyah Inna Babylon – A Marxist in the Media (2012)

From the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

I woke up one morning with a three-hour weekly radio show. The show was to be in the evening ‘specialist’ slot on Fridays and was called ‘Roots, Rock, Reggae’. I’ve always loved Jamaican music and for a Socialist ‘Roots Reggae’ is a perfect genre with its 100 percent political lyrics. Made in the ghettos of Kingston, these are songs of liberation: as I used to say, ‘the conscious thunder of righteous rhythms’. On the death of Bob Marley there was a slow drift back to ‘gangster ragga’, as Jamaican music lost its way in the eighties. After joining a reggae collective in 2000 I was relieved to find that not only ‘old school’ roots was back in favour, but a whole new generation of conscious musicians were rocking to the sound of liberation once again. I had not really expected to get the job as I had explicitly stated that my show would have to have a high political content. I was not interested in the usual ‘pick and mix’ entertainment genre.

Don’t get me wrong – I had a lot of respect for some of the other DJ’s with their in-depth knowledge of specific music genres. I just wanted to discuss the ideas that the lyrics and rhythms of roots reggae provoke – liberation, righteousness, Zion and the Babylon System, etc. Truth be told, it was a great opportunity to air some socialist ideas on live radio (a rare thing these days).

Everything started pretty well and I even got away with not playing ’The News’ in the middle of my show on the grounds that Murdochian propaganda would not go down well with my ‘audience’. My idea was to pick a theme or two from the lyrics and discuss the political implications. There’s something called ‘dub reggae’ (an enhanced instrumental track) that would keep the rhythm going as I pontificated. One such deliberation concerned the vexed subject of the reactionary and progressive elements within Rastafarianism. I have been called a hypocrite by some Rastas because I play the Roots but reject the spiritual part of its message. I attempted to point out that, as in most religions, because of its absence on earth, the need for justice is projected into another supernatural or spiritual realm. The yearning for righteousness is a very human ideal born of the suffering endemic within the exploitation of Capitalism (the Babylon System) and is shared by Socialists. Once you relegate political action to the mystical caprice of a deity (Jah) you inevitably produce an authoritarian social structure, with God and his prophets on top and the rest of us somewhere below – always anti-democratic and reactionary. Such was the polemical nature of my broadcasts. When I started, the ‘boss’ had taken me to one side and said: ’make the show you would want to listen to’ – and this is precisely what I did.

Before finding myself on the other side of the microphone I had nursed a contempt for local radio. The blandness, let’s be honest, is mind numbing. The mindless repetition of ‘petit bourgeois’ propaganda masquerading as community radio is politically laughable. And yet, as I learned, the people involved are normal human beings, totally oblivious to their role in perpetuating the values of the capitalist obscenity. They are obsessed with something they call ‘professionalism’. Any minor technical mistake or, much to my amusement, the use of inappropriate language is anathema. Turf wars with other radio stations is another obsession that feeds the fragile egos of those who are terrified by the endless ‘rules and regulations’ of broadcasting. It is this atmosphere that produces the blandness which so disfigures local radio and renders it politically impotent – and is, of course, the very intention of this kind of broadcasting censorship. To many broadcasters and consumers alike, music has become just another commodity with beautiful people singing beautiful songs with beautiful voices 24/7. Perfect nonsense fills the airwaves to feed the sick romance of lifestyle consumerism. And yet a show like mine found its way through the cracks for a while. What it so obviously lacked in ‘professionalism’ it made up for in ‘novelty’. I tried, as the rastas say, to ‘keep it real’ and forbad any political cynicism for three hours a week. So, I hear you ask, what could possibly go wrong and why is this great gift to radio no longer broadcasting?

The cost of running even a modest local radio station, even staffed with volunteers like me is prohibitive, and without advertising revenue it became impossible for the individuals involved to continue financing it themselves. Licences for FM, DAB and online broadcasting are astronomical and serve the dual purpose of financing the treasury and keeping those without money off the airwaves. Just for a while there, I was able to indulge two of my great passions in life, reggae music and socialism. The Devil doesn’t have all the best tunes and I’m sure conscious reggae roots will once again provoke revolutionary vibes on local radio somewhere. I’m just relieved my comrades didn’t hear me utter the phrase ‘Jah Rastafari’ at the conclusion of one of my more emotionally intense broadcasts – love is a funny thing.

Wez

What Joe Orton saw (2012)

Theatre Review from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Joe Orton’s 1969 play, What the Butler Saw, was recently performed at the Vaudeville Theatre in London and starred Omad Djalli and Tim McInnerny. This farce by “the Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility” attacks petty bourgeois morality, sexual prudery, marriage, hypocrisy, conservative values, authority (“Accept your condition without tears and without abusing those placed in authority”), religion (“reject all paranormal phenomena. It’s the only way to remain sane”), psychiatry, and the police. Orton, influenced by Artaud, celebrates anarchy, the Dionysian pleasures of poly-sexual gratification and nymphomania, and delights in sadism, transvestism, ‘madness’, incest, gender identity confusion, and the base human appetites of lust for money and power.

What the Butler Saw has echoes of Sophocles’ tale of Oedipus and his mother/wife Jocasta, the ‘madness’ of Caligula, and the Carry On films. Orton wrote critically of the film, The Marat/Sade: “Let’s look at mad people. At queer people.” Interestingly, in his play there are no ‘lunatics’ just doctors, and he parodies the traditional Freudian psychologist. Freud was the bourgeois psychiatrist and defender of capitalism who went from an emphasis on Eros to Thanatos. It is only with Reich do we get psychoanalysis with Marxism and the development of psycho-sexual health for the working class. The 1960s saw a radical shift in psychiatry with the use of LSD therapy and the RD Laing ‘anti-psychiatry’ school. Fromm in The Sane Society identified the contradictions in capitalism between ‘having’ and ‘being’, and the need for a sane socialist society. Orton writes: “You can’t be a rationalist in an irrational world. It isn’t rational”.

Orton had no time for the ‘work ethic’ (“I resented having to go to work in the morning”), adopted a Nietzschean outlook (“reject all the values of society”), and disliked bourgeois capitalist society, writing with echoes of Reich that “sex is the only way to smash the wretched civilization, the only way to infuriate them, much more fucking and they’ll be screaming hysterics in next to no time”. He pungently added: “the old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul”. Orton also perceived the contradictions of bourgeois liberalism noting: “I don’t like the sort of liberal that is reactionary underneath”.

Orton satirises Britain’s ‘popular’ wartime leader Churchill who died in 1965. In 1967, Hochhuth’s play Soldiers implicated Churchill in the 1943 Sikorski crash. This member of the capitalist class is also responsible for miners killed in Tonypandy, anarchists burned to death in Sidney Street, 150,000 war deaths in Gallipoli, millions of deaths in the Bengal Famine of 1943, half a million deaths in Allied bombing of German cities, threats to machine gun strikers in the 1926 General Strike and the gassing of Kurdish rebels in Iraq in 1920.

In the 1960s the Lord Chamberlain would not allow Churchill’s phallus at the end of the play, so it was replaced with his cigar.

Steve Clayton

Cooking the Books: From Lame Ducks to Zombies (2012)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apologists for capitalism are quite cruel to firms that don’t make a profit or not enough profit. In the 1970s they were called ‘lame ducks’. In the harsher climate of today they are called ‘zombies’. Lame ducks can be left to die, but zombies have to be killed.

“HELP,” read the headline of an article by the Times Business Editor, David Wighton, on 19 September, “ZOMBIES ARE ATTACKING THE RECOVERY” He was discussing a theory put forward by some economists as to why “employment is strong but output is weak and investment sluggish”. According to them, given that “output is still more than 4 per cent down on its peak in 2008”, unemployment ought to be higher than it actually is. That it isn’t, they suggest, is because not enough firms have gone bankrupt when they should have done:

“These corporate zombies are so weighed down with debts to banks and their own pension funds that they are barely alive. But, as in the movies, they are hard to kill.”

… zombie businesses may have enough cash coming through the door to stay alive but not enough to thrive. They simply don’t have the money to invest in long-term growth.

In other words, these are firms that are still making a profit but not enough. Normally, says Wighton, they would go under:

In normal downturns these companies would be subject to the forces of ‘creative destruction’ that drive market capitalism. The undead would be restructured, with debt written off, or broken up with their assets sold to other businesses that could afford to make better use of them. Many would die and be reborn as much healthier businesses.

This is indeed one of the things that happen in a slump to create the conditions for a recovery. Unprofitable firms go bankrupt and their assets pass cheaply to others. In Marxist terms, this is capital getting devalued, which means that with the same income the rate of profit is raised, which is a must for a recovery. Insofar as government action prevents this – and Wighton mentions that the current very low interest rates have allowed firms to keep up with their interest payments even though they have no chance of repaying the loan – it would delay any recovery.

Wighton’s economists want the zombie firms to be killed off but are afraid that the politicians won’t be ruthless enough and will allow these firms to stagger on, leading to what happened in Japan in the 1990s, its so-called ‘lost decade’ of stagnation.

Could they be right? The argument is plausible in terms of the way the capitalist economy works. If not so much capital is devalued in a slump then restoring the rate of profit risks taking that much longer. If they are right, the choice capitalism has to offer in the immediate future is either more closures, more redundancies and more unemployment or a prolonged period of stagnation. Some prospect! And further proof that capitalism has nothing to offer the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants.

Brief Reports (2012)

From the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nick Clegg has urged the Liberal Democrats to show “courage and vision” by not sacking him. The call comes after his apology for failing to fulfil his pre-election promise to fight any increase in university tuition fees. Mr Clegg also said there could be “no question” of further lowering the top income tax rate of 45%, which will come into force next April, “and you can take my word for it”. A spokesman for the CBI, the bosses’ union, reported that his members were ‘jubilant’ at the news, and many were already splashing out on extra yachts in anticipation of the further tax cuts.

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Ministers need to choose their special advisers carefully or they may end up in situations worthy of the BBC satire The Thick of It, MPs have said. The TV series, which is basically Yes Minister! with swearing, highlights the role of dodgy special advisors or Spads, temporary government employees who are not bound by the same rules of impartiality as civil servants and who may be following their own agenda. Recent scandals have shown spads to be deceitful, venal, corrupt and incompetent. Labour leader Ed Miliband and Prime Minister David Cameron are both former special advisers.

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In the wake of the Lance Armstrong drug scandal, the company Peddle-It.com has launched a new performance enhancer called Placebonite, which it says is guaranteed to be a top seller: ‘The industry dilemma is that none of the legal products work, while all the ones that do work are illegal. In fact, for a product to work would necessarily make it illegal. You can’t stop athletes pumping themselves with something, so we’re giving them the perfect product. It’s legal, and they think it works, so it does!’ Economics analysts are studying sales, with a view to applying the rationale to other areas, like economics.

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Unemployment fell by 50,000 to 2.53 million between June and August, official figures show, as more people died, left the country or went off benefit to become burglars. “It’s proof that the government’s policy is working’, said a spokesman for the DWP, “People would rather turn to crime than endure the abuse we dish out in the Work Programme.’ The figures follow the announcement of a new government scheme to employ disabled people as motorway bollards.

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The “worst may still be ahead” for the banking system, the Bank of England’s deputy governor has told a gathering of leading bankers. Paul Tucker said reserves held by banks were still not calibrated for the “end-of-the-world risks” that remained a possibility: ‘If you’re buying that yacht, now might be a good moment to fit it out for a long sea voyage. There are lots of islands going cheap in the Caribbean.’

What the Butler Saw (2012)

The Halo Halo! column from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The laws of God, the laws of man,
He may keep that will and can;
Not I: let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
And if my ways are not as theirs
Let them mind their own affairs.
Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
Yet when did I make laws for them?

So wrote A E Housman and he makes a fair point, particularly in relation to the ‘laws of God’. While ‘the laws of man’, at least in a country with an element of democracy, can be debated and repealed ‘The laws of God’ are absolute, imposed directly from heaven. And when they’re broken the authority for passing sentence and punishment is entrusted to whichever Holy Joe is looking after God’s interests in that corner of the world.

Paolo Gabriele, the Pope’s butler, who says he was “inspired by the Holy Spirit to root out evil and corruption” in the Vatican by leaking a stash of embarrassing facts to a journalist, was given an 18-month prison sentence for his trouble. He really should have ignored the Holy Spirit’s inspiration here. The Vatican has its own police force, the Vatican Gendarmerie, its own court and its own judges to keep the servants in order and prevent embarrassing secrets being leaked. What the butler actually saw and how much is still under wraps we’ll probably never know. The judges refused to admit some of the key evidence in the trial.

But it’s not only Paolo Gabriele who’s been spilling the beans about dodgy doings in the Vatican. A prominent catholic theologian, Hans Kung, has been calling for a ‘revolution from below’ to unseat the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy which he says is corrupt and lacking credibility.

He has described the church as an “authoritarian system” with parallels to Germany’s Nazi dictatorship. “He has developed a peculiar pomposity” he says of the Pope. “He’s frequently to be seen wrapped in golden splendour and swank”. “He wears the crown of a nineteenth-century pope and has even had the garments of the Medici pope Leo X remade for him”. “The Vatican is no different from the Kremlin,” he said. “Just as Putin as a secret service agent became the head of Russia, so Ratzinger, as head of the Catholic Church’s secret services, became head of the Vatican”.

Kung is no stranger to controversy in the wacky world of Catholicism. In 1979 he was stripped of the authority to teach Catholic theology by Pope John Paul II for questioning the concept of papal infallibility (Guardian, 5 October).

Things can certainly turn ugly when these religious drama queens fall out. The Pope’s butler though can be thankful that it was not the Taliban’s version of God’s laws in Pakistan that he broke.

On 9 October Malala Yousafzai, a 14 year-old schoolgirl in the town of Mingora in Pakistan where since 2009 the Tehrik-i-Taliban regime has been trying to ban girls from attending school, was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt. Her crime was writing a blog promoting her views on education for girls and detailing her life under the Taliban. A Taliban spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, confirmed that she had been the target and called her crusade for education rights an “obscenity”. 

NW

Original approach (1979)

Book Review from the April 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Understanding Marxism: An approach through Dialogue. Harry Eddy. Blackwell 1979 (£2.95 paper)

This little book is certainly original. It takes the Socratic form of a three-cornered discussion on Marxist Philosophy, Historical Materialism, the Class Struggle, the State, Ideology. Religion, Scientific Socialism, Capitalism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Whether the text is an actual record of what took place is not stated, but the discussions were sent to all the study groups of the Workers’ Educational Association in Sydney, Australia, as material for a study course, and are well worth application by branches of the SPGB.

The speakers consist of a self-styled “Marxist”, an anti-Marxist, and a novice who interjects every now and again ‘‘what does that mean?” The book has the merit of extremely simplified, direct language and the interruptions (“I don't get that point") enable the speakers to reiterate their arguments.

The text is remarkable for its complete omission of any mention of Marx’s economics, the corner-stone of his system. Most of the latter half deals with Lenin’s aberrations from, and distortions of, Marxism, particularly with reference to the ‘‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’’, quoting one of the best books on the subject. Lucien Laurat's Marxism and Demoncracy.

The book is not without other defects; the Marxist speaker (Allen) holds that Marxism cannot prove objectivity, because Lenin said so. As is well known, Marx wrote that "the point is to change the world, not interpret it.” He never proclaimed that capitalism would collapse, neither for that matter did Lenin. Socialism is not the common ownership of “means of exchange", which it will abolish. It is not right that all the "Marxists” (meaning people calling themselves that) told Lenin that Socialism could not be established in Russia in 1917. The British Socialist Party went overboard for Leninism, forming the Communist Party.

The Socialist Labour Party said in The Socialist that the Russian Soviets represented De Leonism (SLP) applied to Russia. At least half the ILP supported the Bolsheviks. A huge congress was held in Leeds, attended by Ramsay Macdonald. Sydney Webb, national trade union leaders, writers and politicians, which passed resolutions calling for "Soviets in Britain”. There was one group in Britain which did not support the idea of Socialism in Russia in 1917. It was The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Horatio.

Material World: Nobody should own the Earth (2019)

The Material World Column from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Euroelection leaflet came to the attention of Lesley Docksey who referred to it in an article on ‘Why Do We Think We Own the World?’:

  ‘Most political parties (barring the alt-right) will claim some desire to help protect the environment, by which they mean ‘manage’. Take this example from a Socialist Party’s leaflet, with the headline ‘There is only one world’: “… the world’s natural and industrial resources must become the common heritage of all humanity so that they can be used to directly meet the needs of the world’s population…” How did ancient man arrive at this attitude, this arrogance that became the rule so precisely displayed in Genesis?’ (London Progressive Journal, 8 June ).

Is the Socialist Party as guilty as accused in that we share the same beliefs as Old Testament fundamentalists that God gave the Earth to humans to dominate?

If Docksey looked deeper into our case she would have found that we advocate common ownership, which can be defined as a situation in which no person or group has the right to exclusively control productive resources. The word ‘ownership’ can be misleading in that when we transfer to all members of the society the power to control the production of wealth, where no one is excluded from the opportunity of controlling and benefiting from the access and use of the means of production, then the very concept of property is redundant, the sense of exclusive possession has become meaningless.

This is exactly what she seeks when she later says in her article ‘…Is it too late to ditch our rigid world view, our superiority, our belief in our ‘right’ to own and control our world?’ She then asserts ‘…There is only one thing that makes humanity truly exceptional; our desire to own and control everything, partnered by our horrible ability to destroy what we try to control…’

We don’t share her pessimism. The species homo sapiens, unlike other animals, possesses the ability to change its needs, technologies and social relations. Culture allows humans to adapt to a new or changing environment much, much more rapidly than any evolutionary biological adaptation through natural selection ever could. The behavior of other animals cannot develop in the same way that humans can. This cultural change is one of the distinguishing features of our humankind.

However, there is another aspect to her article when she declares that ‘… For far too long, humanity has regarded itself as ‘outside’ Nature…’  She certainly never learned that belief from socialists. Here are the views of a couple of nineteenth-century socialists.

Marx pointed out that capitalist farming is unsustainable because it inevitably starves the soil of nutrients. It is nothing less than ‘an art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil’ (Capital, Vol 1, chapter 15). And he wrote bitterly that: ‘In London they can find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense’ (Capital, Vol 3, chapter 5).

Engels issued this ecological warning: ‘Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first.’

He added: ‘At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature.’ And went on to explain, ‘…but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws’ (Dialectics of Nature, chapter 9).

Yes, humans can manage – be stewards of – our environment’s ecosystem just as well as some of our antecedents did. We have the knowledge to do that. It is the profit system, not some trait of human nature, that prevents us doing this.

Marx recognised too that humans are part of nature: ‘Man lives from nature, ie, nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.’ He said that socialism would bring ‘the unity of being of man with nature’ (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).

So, no, socialists do not see communal property as conferring any right to rape the land and ravage natural resources. Here’s Marx again:

  ‘…Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, [good heads of the household] they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition’ (Capital, Vol.3, chapter 46).

ALJO

Eye Witnesses (2019)

Book Review from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peterloo: Witnesses to a Massacre, Polyp, Eva Schlunke and Robert Poole:  New Internationalist £11.99.

On 16 August 1819, around 60,000 workers gathered in St Peter’s Fields in Manchester to demand an extension of the franchise. They came, men, women and children, from all over Manchester and surrounding areas. Many joined up in contingents of local people who then marched together several miles to the centre of the city. Part of a much wider reform movement, they had come to hear ‘Orator’ Henry Hunt give a speech, but primarily to support a wider franchise and to have an enjoyable day out with their friends and neighbours.

The ruling class, who resisted any reforms, had of course made preparations for the meeting. The local yeomanry, a private militia of the wealthy, were there, also the 15th Hussars. Under instructions from the magistrates, the police attempted to arrest Hunt, but when they were unsuccessful, the mounted yeomanry were sent to help. Not properly trained, in many cases drunk, and with freshly-sharpened sabres, they rode into the crowd, attacking people at will. The Hussars then arrived, in some cases restraining the yeomanry but in others adding to the confusion and crushing. At least fifteen people were killed, perhaps eighteen, and over seven hundred injured. The authorities arrested many of the organisers, including Hunt, who was sentenced to sixteen months in prison.

This book, with illustrations by Polyp, was edited by Schlunke on the basis of evidence and information assembled by Poole. There are some narrative captions by the authors, but the majority of the text is taken verbatim from reports by direct witnesses, whether reformers, journalists or establishment figures. This lends the story a vividness that is added to by the graphics; not everyone likes graphic novels or histories, but here the format does provide an impression of a continuing series of events that brings home to the reader the violence and desperation of the day. A major of the Hussars is quoted as saying, ‘I was very much amused to see the way in which the volunteer cavalry knocked the people about’, while a reporter stated, ‘There were individuals in the yeomanry whose political rancour approached absolute insanity.’ Shortly before he died as a result of being beaten, one ex-soldier said, ‘At Waterloo there was man to man, but at Manchester it was downright murder.’

The authorities reacted not just by prison sentences but also by terming the events a ‘riot’ and blaming the crowd for what happened, as they had supposedly attacked the yeomanry. Yet journalists such as John Tyas of The Times, who was no supporter of reform, agreed that no stones or whatever were thrown at the yeomanry, so there was no justification or provocation for their violence. The Six Acts passed later in 1819 were intended to clamp down on further mass protest. The propaganda war continues today, such as in arguments that not enough people were killed for it to really constitute a massacre. An appalling article by Dominic Sandbrook (Mail Online 24 August 2018) played down Peterloo’s significance and claimed that, compared to the violence of the French Revolution, it ‘was not even a sideshow’. Moreover, it was ‘almost certainly an accident’. But, while it is arguable to what extent there was an advance government plan to attack the demonstrators, the events of 16 August have to be seen in the context of both previous and subsequent state repression aimed at keeping workers in their place.

The bicentenary of Peterloo is being marked by a number of events and exhibitions in Manchester (see peterloo1819.co.uk). This book provides an excellent account of what happened and why it remains important.

Paul Bennett

Same Difference? (2019)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the less used items from within the dialectical toolbox is the sameness/difference duality. Its paradoxical nature is highlighted in the much used retort: ‘but that’s like comparing apples with oranges’; a phrase often used to emphasize the inappropriateness of a particular analogy. This kind of critique always insists on difference rather than similarity, a familiar feature of contemporary ideology, but sometimes what is important about apples and oranges is that they are both fruits.

During a discussion about narrative structures within literature and films I found myself more interested in the idea of the ‘meta-structure’ of the quest storyline. From The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey through The Morte D’Arthur to The Big Lebowski , Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter stories we see many similarities. Indeed the rise of ‘genre’ entertainment has led to an expectation of formulaic similarities within the modern audience. An objection to this approach to understanding narratives is that it can overwhelm the subtle aesthetic differences that make the telling of the tale meaningful to a contemporary audience. So a balance is needed to produce an insightful and relevant critique of any art form; or, for that matter, of just about any experience.

Consumer capitalism attempts to surround us with novelty; it continually proclaims to have reinvented the wheel. On the supermarket shelves we see what appears to be an endless variety when in fact beneath the bright packaging we find much the same ingredients. The ability to see hidden realities beneath superficial facades has always been celebrated as one of the highest human intellectual achievements – with the scientific adventure being the supreme example. 

A great danger of being surrounded by hyperbole is that the truly new and important can be overlooked. This is where a dialectical approach can be a powerful help. Political ideologies come and go with great rapidity: ‘monetarism’, ‘neo-liberalism’, ‘the third way’, ‘Leninism’, ‘Trotskyism’, ‘populism’ etc, all proclaim to be something new and different but for a socialist they are just a tired repackaging of capitalism.

Hence we emphasize the sameness of such ideologies and not whatever subtle differences may or may not exist. Our perspective is purely pragmatic – will these ‘new’ ideologies substantially change the lives of working people? Upon consideration, using the methods explained above, we have reached the conclusion that such minor variations of the capitalist system cannot and will not change the lives of the majority for the better – and, thus far, we have been proven correct in our conclusions.

It might be surprising to some that, given the bitter and destructive nature of the class struggle, we do not emphasize any substantial difference between the vast majority and the tiny parasitic minority in terms of their humanity. The Left love to demonize the individual capitalist as evil and greedy – which he or she might be – but what is important here is to emphasize that they are trapped in their role just as the working class are trapped into making the lives of the rich possible. Obviously the economic concerns of the rich are very different from those of us who have to sell our labour power to them in order to exist but as human beings they also share many of our anxieties albeit in a different form. Life and death, physical and psychological well-being and human relationships dominate their lives as much as they do ours.

Given the social nature of our species the rich can suffer loneliness (the continual doubt about the possible monetary motivation of friends and loved ones) and the alienation born of privileged social exclusion and the continual quest for more wealth and power that provides status within their peer group. With this in mind we focus our critique on capitalism and not on individual capitalists. We stress the difference in economic and political terms and emphasize sameness in relation to our shared humanity and its deepest needs – a dialectical insight and balance is achieved.

The decision whether or not to emphasize one or other of these elements present in all political ideas is wholly dependent on historical development; for instance given the dominant mode of production in Russia in 1917 (agrarian and feudal) the sameness of the political and economic interests of the minority bourgeoisie (immanent) and the working class (future) at that moment in history made it imperative that both these minority classes worked together to overthrow the autocracy of the Czarist regime.

Had the Mensheviks the wisdom to reject participation in the then raging First World War the Bolshevik coup d’état would most likely never have happened and Russia would probably have progressed to a more traditional form of capitalism. The Bolshevik insistence that their regime was a form of socialism, and the acceptance of this by many intellectuals, is testament to the dangers inherent in wrongly emphasizing the difference of the social origins of a new elite and their confused statist economic experiment rather than insisting on the sameness of authoritarian structures inherent in all forms of capitalism from the perspective of the overwhelming majority.

Wez

Not what it used to be (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rich are always sensitive about the sufferings of the poor; not, of course, to the point of being willing to get off their backs, but at least to the point of being glad to be told from time to time that the poor are not as poor as they used to be and that if any are it is their own fault. Such assurance is a great comfort to the rich. It carried them safely through the miseries of a dozen slumps and made them (and still makes them) genuinely indignant whenever the workers come out on strike, because, as the newspapers always inform them, strikes were justified in the bad old days but not now when everything is so nearly perfect. How are they to know that the newspapers were saying exactly the same in the “bad old days," twenty, forty, a hundred years ago?

About a hundred years ago Marx and others were commenting on the great inequality of income and property between the workers and the property owners. Already the defenders of capitalism were at work suggesting that it used to be even more unequal and that things were improving daily. Ever since then there has been a continuous stream of that kind of propaganda. It was flowing strongly in the depression between the wars, as the following samples show:

  It appears safe to say that the distribution of capital is less unequal than it was before the war. (Manchester Guardian, 12 March 1936). 

  . . . the great re-distribution of wealth and income that has happened in this country since the war. . . . (Times Literary Supplement, 7 March 1936. 

  The gap between rich and poor in this country shows every sign of continuing to grow smaller. (Star, 9 April 1936).

The line has changed since then; not that it has been given up, but the dates have been altered and the great improvement is now supposed to have taken place since 1936. not before. In truth, apart from the continued post-war conditions of very low unemployment (which does not look so secure now) the main features of ownership of capital and division and of national income appear to have altered very little over a long period. Which explains why the stream of propaganda about alleged growing equality gets interrupted from time to time by statistical inquiries showing how little, if any, change there actually has been.

We have just had such an inquiry in Professor Titmuss’ Income Distribution and Social Change (Allen and Unwin, 25s.). He refers to the widespread opinion among politicians and economists that this country had become more a much more equal society than it was before the war and sets out to examine again the statistical material on which this opinion has rested. He makes many criticisms of the material on national income distribution and the way it has been interpreted (and also some criticisms of statistics of ownership of wealth). He holds that the earlier studies may have reached wrong conclusions: there is, he claims, need for a re-examination because the belief in greater equality of income distribution may be seriously in error.

But no matter what Professor Titmuss writes about it, the propaganda claiming that things are better than they were will persist.

Among other reasons, it always suits the political party in power to argue that its policies have had or will have a beneficial effect in the direction of diminishing poverty and it can be taken as certain that there will be an almost universal agreement in the Press and elsewhere not to consider doing anything that matters about the fundamental social issue of the means of production and distribution, land, factories, etc., being owned by a small minority of the population. A case in point is the review of Titmuss' book by Samuel Brittan in the Observer (Sept, 30th, 1962). He recognises, as does Titmuss, that distribution of income cannot be considered apart from the ownership of wealth, and actually remarks that "the whole subject of inequality is largely discussed without hypocrisy. The basic question is the ownership of personal wealth.” Yet this promising opening leads on to the pettifogging and irrelevant proposal that there should be “a moderate and graduated annual tax on personal wealth in the upper incomes.”

Just how this is supposed to alter the basic situation is not explained.

Edgar Hardcastle

What is value? (1962)

From the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private property, commodities and value are a troublesome trinity unless we understand them. There are three important aspects of value. The first is its purely social character which shows itself in buying and selling. The second is abstract human labour as the social substance of value. The third is the quantity of social labour which determines the magnitude of value. Buying and selling is the mode of exchanging wealth today. It involves careful weighing, measuring and counting against price to ensure that equal amounts of values change hands.

Exchange is a social act in which value is measured. In order to do this, a commodity must be related to some other commodity, different in kind, in which it can express its value. The value of the article, is, at all times, the chief concern of its owner. But it must be a use value to people other than its owner. In all equations, the article on the relative side expresses its value in the one on the equivalent side.

As an imaginary example of the elementary form of relative value we can equate a coat to a pair of shoes. In this case, the coat, occupying the relative side, is expressing its value in the material form of shoes. If we invert the equation we then express the value of the shoes. However, provided that each person sees, in the other’s useful article, a value content equal to that of his own, exchange takes place. Equal amounts of value are realised in the useful form of each other’s goods. As property owners both are satisfied.

In such equations it appears, on the surface, that value is an inherent, an intrinsic or material part of the commodities. This is an illusion. All value equations are social relations between men in society in which the legal transfer of ownership of property is determined on the basis of equal amounts of value being exchanged. It should be obvious that such acts can only take place in private property based societies.

The question now is—how is the ratio of exchange accurately determined? All useful articles differ greatly. Take coats and shoes, for example; they differ in material, form and purpose. The concrete (or producers’) labour in them is also very different. We have spinning, weaving, tailoring, tanning and shoemaking. It is productive labour which creates use values; both the labour and the articles are material in character and are different in quantity and quality. They cannot be measured in these forms.

If we disregard the specific type of the work (engineers, bakers, etc.) we reduce it all to the expenditure of human skill and energy in wealth production. The common denominator is therefore, abstract human labour. This is common to all commodities and is our measuring rod. Concrete labour produces use value whereas abstract labour creates values. It is important to note that value-creating labour must be useful, socially necessary, and of average skill and intensity. Irrespective of all differences in their material form or usefulness, all commodities are embodiments of the social substance abstract human labour. Social labour measures, in time, from the smallest fractions upwards simple or complex labour.

The magnitude of the value of any commodity is easily determined. In making this abstraction we are merely following the general practice in science. For example, we have steam, petrol, gas and diesel engines, etc.; all different forms of energy. In abstraction we reduce all of them to power and express it in units of horse power. If we now look at our equation (one coat equals one pair of shoes) we see that as embodiments of human labour the coat and the shoes are similar in quality and, as units containing x hours of social labour, they are equal in quantity. Equal amounts of labour time will always produce equal amounts of value.

Commodity production and exchange extended and developed from the elementary form of value, through expanded relative forms and general forms, to the present money form. This latter is its fully developed form and it works efficiently in expressing value. As Marx said, gold is not by nature money, though money is by nature gold. Gold functions socially, as a universal equivalent, as a measure of value, a standard of price, means of payment and al medium of exchange and circulation. In this capacity it functions as money and becomes the social form of value.

In this, its social function, it assumes an independent form of value because it measures value in its own bodily form and is socially accepted as the material form of value. It stands on one side of the relationship, the equivalent side, as value, opposed to all other commodities on the relative side. In this dazzling role gold appears as a sort of king amongst commodities. However, as a humble commodity, gold is no different from salt, oil or coal. Its value is determined in precisely the same way as all other merchandise. One coat equals one pair of shoes, or one ton of coal, or ten pounds sterling—all of these are different forms of the products of social labour and contain equal amounts of it, are in quality and quantity equal as values.

The exalted position which gold in its money capacity occupies is due primarily to its being a commodity and secondly to its nature as a metal, which renders it eminently suitable for its job. It contains great value in small bulk, is readily coinable and measures value from the smallest fraction upwards. In addition, it enables large quantities of accumulated wealth to be easily stored. As money it is the universally accepted social form of value. It represents the incarnation of abstract human labour and is the materialised form of value. It crosses all international frontiers and encounters no barriers. As a consequence of all this it also serves as universal social use value. The owners of money have immediate access to anything in the world of commodities, in proportion to the amount they have. The owners of all other articles for sale are constantly striving to attract money from the pockets of its owners.

While value is not a physical or material property of any article it is nevertheless a social reality of great importance. It finds its fully developed form in capitalism, in general commodity production. Men, women and children are converted into buyers and sellers whose major social relationships are value relationships. We socialists have abolished the spiritual trinity and impatiently await the workers organising to abolish the social trinities of private property commodities and value, and, with them rent, profit and interest.

John Higgins

The Passing Show: Details (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Details

The system which exists today in Russia is clearly capitalism. All the classic features of capitalism are there — commodity production, wage-labour, employment (which couldn't exist without employers and employed), currency, the coercive forces of the state, and so on. Naturally, the historical background of the development of capitalism in Russia, and the immediate circumstances in which capitalism came into being there, meant that some minor details of capitalism in Russia differ from details in those countries where capitalism had a longer and slower development. In particular, the very speed with which the old system collapsed, and the new one was introduced, demanded that the state itself, the central committee of the capitalist class, should play a much larger part in the establishment of the new order than it had done in western Europe and North America. Of course, since that time state capitalism has been more and more introduced into the older-established capitalist states; but it has not yet, and one does not know if it ever will, come to play such a part in Western capitalism as it does in the capitalist systems established in Russia, China, India, the African states, and so on.

Proposals

However, even in these comparatively minor details, there is coming to be less and less difference between Russian and Western capitalism. Not only are state planning and control playing a larger part in western capitalism; other changes are being mooted in Russia itself. As The Times said on October 3rd, “Proposals are at present under discussion in Russia to link the remuneration of workers to the profits made by their enterprises in relation to the investments made in them.” Since these and other proposals have aroused controversy, Pravda has recently printed what it calls "a previously unpublished version of a document dictated by Lenin in 1918.”

Raising labour productivity

“Lenin argued that political victory over the capitalists had been won and the struggle was passing to the economic sphere. Those who had formerly sought to sabotage the Bolshevik cause were now (in 1918) offering their services to the new state. It was of the utmost importance to take advantage of these offers and harness to the communist cause the best methods and systems of capitalism. “He proposed that highly paid experts be hired from the United States and elsewhere as consultants and managers. Bourgeois staff and also their methods of labour organization could be used if they helped to raise production. The old world had created systems of labour organization which were diabolical methods for exploiting the worker. At the same time these systems are ‘the last word in the scientific organization of production' and should be copied in the Soviet Union where they would lose their noxious character.

“An example was the system of Mr. Mr. F. W. Taylor, the American engineer who perfected “scientific management”—on which present day time-and-motion studies and “work study” are to a large extent based. “We must apply Taylor’s system and American scientific methods of raising labour productivity throughout Russia,” Lenin wrote, for under Soviet conditions it would lead to a shortening of working hours and an improvement in conditions of work.” The Times 3/10/62

Latest methods

All Lenin was calling for was what could have been expected from any leader of a new capitalist revolution: the application of the latest and best methods (best, that is, from the capitalists’ point of view) which had been evolved in the older capitalist states. As might have been foreseen, when Lenin attempted to square all this with his own statements that the Bolsheviks were really introducing Socialism in Russia, common sense was thrown overboard. Pravda even quotes him as saying that “Socialism has to be learnt to a great extent from the leaders of the trusts, Socialism has to be learnt from the major organizers of capitalism.”

As to that, one can only say that all you can learn from the major organizers of capitalism is how to organize capitalism; and all you can learn from the leaders of trusts is how to lead trusts.

These statements, quoted by Pravda from the greatest figure of the Russian revolution, must surely go far to convince anyone who is still open to reason that Russia is capitalist.

Contrast

On the back of The Times recently there were some photographs of scenes in Peru, and the text beside them read “Peru is a land of contrast and anomaly. It is a rich country where there are also austerity and poverty.”

No wonder there is a saying that the onlooker sees most of the game. The writer of the text saw clearly the social position in Peru. Perhaps if he lived in Peru, he would see just as clearly the “contrast and anomaly,” the riches and poverty side by side, which exist in Britain.

Hard work

Not long ago there was an advert in the daily press from a man who claimed he had amassed £300,000 “through hard work.” As it stands, no one could take exception to the statement. It would be impossible for anyone to amass three hundred thousand pounds without a great deal of hard work.

In fact, only one question remains unanswered.

Whose hard work was it?

Alwyn Edgar