Whether or not the firing has ceased . . . (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again war rages in the Middle East. Once again men and women, deluded by the nationalist and religious slogans of their rulers, kill and wound each other. Once again wealth is destroyed and resources wasted. The sight of our fellow workers serving as tank fodder in this way sickens Socialists and our sympathies go to them and their families. We hope for an immediate end to this latest slaughter of our fellow workers in a cause which is not theirs, and re-affirm that only the establishment of world Socialism will abolish war for ever.

October 1973

The Significance of Sakharov (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Russia today appears a very different country to the confident country of Cold War confrontation. Now we see a Russia which welcomes and invites USA investment and foreign exploitation of hitherto untapped resources.

Russia is not now negotiating from a position of economic strength. The whole world now knows how catastrophically inefficient is Russian agriculture. In spite of tremendous and sustained capital investment, in spite of ruthless elimination of smallholdings and development of giant-scale mechanized agricultural units, in spite of all this Russian agriculture has not been able to deliver the goods. Frequently famine is a feature and there are few years without cause for concern.

It is against this background of inefficient agriculture and inability to exploit the vast resources of Siberia that we examine recent political developments.

Since last winter the KGB have been making a large number of arrests. Their aim was to suppress the Chronicle of Current Events by rounding up all concerned with writing and distributing this underground journal. The Chronicle, first published in 1968 (Human Rights Year), provided information on arrests and persecution of Soviet dissidents. Its publishers also ensured its republication in the West.

We now know something of these courageous people. Most were concerned only with individual rights and freedom of speech. They were mostly patriotic and generally supporters of state capitalism. But now it is not a lone struggle of novelists and poets for personal freedom from the censor. Now the civil rights movement in Russia has acquired a new and powerful impetus from scientists and engineers who have joined forces with the artistic dissidents.

Sakharov, a distinguished nuclear physicist and the father of Russia’s H-bomb, is symbolic of this new tendency. Index, in its list of people sacked from jobs, arrested or sentenced, cites in recent issues many Soviet scientists: cyberneticians, physicists, astronomers, engineers, psychologists, biologists and mathematicians.

Times have changed in Russia. While the struggle for freedom of expression is still fought by poets, novelists and artists generally, it is noteworthy that this struggle is now also being undertaken by those whose former practice it was to “carry their chains with decency”: men who designed Russia’s power stations and nuclear weaponry, for example.

Unfortunately for the Kremlin clique the demand for freedom by this indispensable section of Soviet society is likely to grow. The Russians, for all their determination, have lagged behind the West in technology ― cybernetics in particular. Scientists in Russia need to have access to Western specialist publications, they demand to attend international conferences in order to keep up with Western advances.

Rosa Luxemburg’s comment has been proved correct:

  Lenin and Trotsky have replaced the representative bodies set up by general popular elections by the Soviets as the sole true representation of the whole toiling masses. But with the suppression of political life throughout the whole country, the vitality of the Soviets themselves is bound to be gradually paralysed. Without general elections, unlimited freedom of the Press and of association, and free struggle of opinions, life in every public institution slowly dies, it becomes a fiction of life, where only bureaucracy remains the active element. That is a law nobody can avoid.
  Public life gradually goes to sleep; a few dozen party leaders with inexhaustible energy and limitless idealism direct and rule; amongst them, in fact, a dozen remarkable brains are leading, and an elite of the working class is summoned from time to time to applaud the speeches of the leaders, to vote unanimously the resolutions submitted to them, in the last resort a clique government ― a dictatorship it is true, but not the dictatorship of the proletariat: the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, i.e., a dictatorship in the bourgeois meaning of the word, in the Jacobin sense.”
(Quoted by Daniel Norman in “Marx and Soviet Reality” from Luxemburg’s pamphlet “The Russian Revolution”.)

Not only does the Russian worker bear the burden of a top-heavy bureaucracy, but also he is terrorised by the KGB, direct descendant of the dreaded Tsarist Okhrana, of which Lenin wrote in 1903: “the shameful Russian inquisition . . . will not disappear until freedom of assembly, of speech and of the press is introduced” (quoted by Daniel Norman, op. cit.). History shows him to have been right: for just a few months in 1917 Russia lived without a secret police and had freedom of speech and assembly. The Bolsheviks soon put paid to all that. The Cheka was launched on its bloody career by Lenin and Trotsky in December of that year, a mere month after the Revolution. Bolshevism begat the Cheka, the Cheka begat GPU, the GPU begat NKVD, the NKVD begat KGB ― what a vile brood !

Most of the dissidents seek reforms within the system. We do not share their viewpoint but we welcome the prospect of the Russian working class seeking conditions of political democracy. We do not however delude ourselves into regarding this as an end in itself: rather, it is the necessary means, the soil in which the seed will germinate.

With every failed grain harvest, with every new Western computer advance, the glaring shortcomings of Russian state capitalism are becoming more obvious. The ruling clique even have become aware of its inefficiency. This situation is one which may well lead to Russians coming towards the world Socialist movement. Capitalism’s grave is being marked out, in Russia as elsewhere.

For a Socialist analysis of Russia get our pamphlet Russia 1917-67. Send 8p to: The Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

Marx: the Man and his Work - Part 2 (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

Marx and the 1st International

Marx associated himself with working-class organizations although they were not Socialist in character. In his day as today, very few workers had a Socialist policy.

The International Workingmen’s Association (the First International) was founded at a meeting in St. Martin’s Hall, London, on 28th September 1864. It was not the work of one individual, and it was not “a small body with a large head”. It was neither “an insignificant shadow” nor “a terrible menace”, as it was described by various sections of the press of the period. The First International was a transitional form of the working-class struggle for better conditions, and it was as necessary as it was transitional.

In the capitalist mode of production, an embodied contradiction both produces and destroys modern states. It intensifies all national antagonisms to the utmost and at the same time it creates all nations in its own image. So long as the capitalist mode of production exists these contradictions are insoluble, and therefore the brotherhood of man about which we have heard from the apologists for capitalism has had no existence. While large-scale industry preaches freedom and peace between nations, it also has turned the world into an armed camp as never before in history. However, with the disappearance of capitalist production its contradiction will vanish also.

Early in the history of the working-class movement a tendency towards internationalism made itself felt. This is a vital condition for the very existence of the workers’ struggle for emancipation. The workers possess no magic wand in this respect any more than in any other — there is no level and easy path. The modern working class has to fight its battles under conditions created by historical development. It cannot overcome these conditions by any short cut but can triumph over them only by understanding, in the sense that to understand is to overcome.

This understanding was made more difficult owing to the circumstances of Marx’s time. The beginnings of the working-class movement coincided with, crossed and recrossed, the beginnings of a number of national states which were founded as a result of the capitalist mode of production. By drawing lessons from the struggles of the different sections of the International with their capitalist governments, Marx hoped to win various groups to his point of view and mould them into an international Socialist party. On the General Council of the International, and at its international conferences, he worked hard to realize his hopes.

Marx’s chief rôle in the First International began after it was organized. He soon became the guiding spirit of it. To him fell the task of presenting the inaugural address. It must be admitted that this address contained many compromises and concessions. Marx himself in a letter to Engels, dated 4th November 1864, in which he deals with the formation of the International, states:

  I was obliged to insert two phrases about “duty” and “right” into the Preamble to the Statutes, ditto “truth, morality and justice”, but these are placed in such a way that they can do no harm.

The address opens by recording the fact that in the years from 1848 to 1864 the poverty of the working class did not diminish, although this period had been one of unparalleled industrial development and commercial growth. It proves its point by comparing the statistics published in the official Blue Book concerning the poverty of the English working class with the official figures used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Gladstone, in a Budget speech to show “the intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power” which had taken place in the same period but had been “entirely confined to the classes of property”. The address exposed this contradiction of English conditions because England was the leading country of European trade and industry, but it pointed out that similar conditions existed on a somewhat smaller scale in, making allowances for local differences, all the continental countries where large-scale industry was beginning to develop.

All over the world this “intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power” was “entirely confined to the classes of property”, with the one exception perhaps that a small section of the workers as in England were receiving somewhat higher wages, though even this improvement was cancelled out by the general increase in prices.

   Everywhere the great mass of the working class sank into ever deeper misery to the same extent as the upper class rose in the social scale. In all the countries of Europe it is now an irrefutable fact, undeniable for every unprejudiced enquirer and denied only by those who have an interest in awakening deceptive hopes in others, that neither the perfection of machinery nor the application of science to industry and agriculture, neither the resources and artifices of communication, neither the conquests of new markets nor free trade, or all these things combined can succeed in abolishing the misery of the working class, and that on the contrary, every new development of the creative power of labour is calculated on the false bases of existing conditions to intensify the social antagonisms and aggravate the social conflict. During this intoxicating period economic progress, starvation raised itself almost to the level of a social institution in the capital of the British Empire. The period is characterised in the annals of history by accelerated return, the extended compass and the deadly effects of the social pest known as industrial and commercial crises.

The address then went on to look at the defeat of the working-class movement in 1850, and came to the conclusion that this period had its compensating characteristics. Two facts were stressed, first of all the legal enactment of the ten-hour day with its effects on the English working class. The struggle for the legal limitation of the working day had been a direct intervention in the conflict between the blind forces of the law of supply and demand, which summed up capitalist-class political economy, and production regulated by social welfare as represented by the working class.

  And therefore the Ten-Hour Bill was not only a great practical success, but also a victory of a principle; for the first time the political economy of the bourgeoisie was defeated by the political economy of the working class.

After a reference to the co-operative movement of the period, and the revival of the working-class movements in England, France, Germany and Italy and their efforts to reorganize politically, the address continues:

  They possess an element of success — numbers. But numbers are weighty in the scales only when they are united in an organization and led towards a conscious aim.

Past experience had shown that to ignore the fraternity which should exist between the workers of different countries and spur them on to stand together in all the struggles for their emancipation, always resulted in a general failure of all their unrelated efforts. This consideration had moved the meeting in St. Martin’s Hall to found the International Workingmen’s Association. The address concluded with the words: “Workers of the world, unite!”

The provisional rules, for which Marx was responsible, may be summed up as follows. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. The struggle for the emancipation of the working class is not a struggle for the establishment of new class privileges, but the abolition of class rule altogether. The economic subjection of the worker to those who have appropriated the tools of labour, i.e. the source of life, results in servitude in all its forms: social misery, intellectual atrophy and political dependence. The economic emancipation of the working class is therefore the great aim for which all political movement must serve as a means.

The conference of the International held at The Hague in 1872 concluded with a public meeting at which Marx in the course of his speech said:

  One day the working class must hold political power in its hands in order to establish a new organization of labour. It must overthrow the old political system which maintains the old institutions in being, unless it wishes, like the old Christians, who despised and neglected such action, to renounce “the Kingdom of the World”.

We now know that the First International was bound to collapse, due to the conditions which gave rise to it and the conflicts which arose within it. Marx from this period concentrated on his literary work. He suffered several personal losses. In December 1881 his wife died, and this was followed by the death of his eldest daughter. Engels tells us he never recovered from these losses, and they aggravated a condition of poor health from which he suffered for some time. On the fourteenth of March 1883 he died quietly in his chair.

Bob Ambridge

So They Say: Good God, said God (1973)

The So They Say Column from the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good God, said God

If ideas were worn like garments, most upholders of capitalism would make their speeches in the nude. As soon as the Arab-Israeli war began, both sides claimed heavenly justification and support. The Times (8th October) reported that Dr. Abdel Halim Mahmoud, the leader of Egypt’s biggest Muslim religious institution, called the conflict a holy war and said:

  The enemies of God have committed aggression on Muslim lands and desecrated our sanctuaries. It has become the duty of every Muslim to make every sacrifice to liberate Muslim territories from Zionist aggressors.

In Tel Aviv Brigadier-General Mordechai Piron, chaplain to the Israel armed forces, said “Snap”:

  Israel is fighting a sacred war against a cruel foe . . . The whole House of Israel has its eyes on you with heavy prayers and blessings for your success in repelling the enemy. The Lord will give you strength.

Perhaps God would appreciate a gift of Pelican psychiatry books, to find out what you do about schizophrenia.

Percentage from Peking

Those who believed in China’s march towards Socialism are still reeling from the news of China’s application for membership of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund: in order to be able to raise big loans abroad. In The Observer on 30th September, John Davis made the dose more bitter still by advising investors to go for Chinese government bonds. These have been in default (i.e. paying no interest) for many years, and so can — or could before 30th September — be bought cheaply. However, the IMF and the World Bank would almost certainly make a condition that the debts on the bonds be settled. Says Davis:

  The sum needed to wipe the slate clean for the Chinese is peanuts in the context of the sort of money China will want to raise in the future. In fact, it need not be more than the price of a few Concordes.

A nice “killing” for those who can afford it. Where will the money come from, and the interest on the loans China hopes to raise? From the surplus-value created by exploited workers in this “new utopia”.

A Roof over your Head

Architects and town planners from the Comecon countries recently had a conference in Bratislava about “one of the worst headaches of all East European leaderships — the problems of housing in towns” (Guardian, 26th September). The plight of workers in these countries generally is no different from that of those elsewhere. The promises are just as familiar:

  Poland, with a housing situation reckoned to be among the worst in Europe, now has a programme introduced by Mr. Gierek’s regime to provide every family with its own accommodation by 1990.

In Bulgaria, almost 50 per cent, of households share their accommodation with others.

What is interesting is that attempts to solve the problem revolve round finance as much as buildings: subsidies, schemes in which flats revert to the State at the end of the "owners’ ” lifetimes. So the housing problem in “Communist” countries is that of all the capitalist world — simply an aspect of working-class poverty.

My Dad can Fight Yours, too

A prize for the funniest item of the month should go to Norman Atkinson MP. On 26th September he wrote to The Times protesting against an apparent slight on the Labour Party’s Marxism. His letter said:

  For these reasons the Labour Party became — and still remains — a Marxist party . . .  all the leading Labour Party names you mention from Harold Wilson to Roy Jenkins accept the Labour Party’s Marxist constitution — and I assume are proud to do so. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the SDF, the ILP, GDH and Margaret Cole, the Fabians, and Arthur Henderson . . .  all would have agreed that it was their own Marxist scholarship which had the greatest influence during the early formative years of the Labour Party.

In the nineteen-fifties Morgan Phillips, the Labour Party secretary, claimed its derivation to be not from Marx but from Methodism. In fact, what almost all those Atkinson mentions have in common is their denial of the class struggle to which, as he says, “Marxist understanding is geared”. But has he “Marxist understanding”? He says "classless society is not possible without the common ownership of the means of production and exchange”. How do people exchange what they own in common? Marx would have writhed.

Achievements of Reform

Norman Atkinson’s letter also asks: “How two families can enjoy equal rights when one has an income 100 times greater than the other.” A sensible question, but the wrong one. It should be: How can one family have an income 100 times greater than another after government by the "Marxists” he names ?

On 27th September the Guardian had a review by Michael Meacher of new books on income distribution. Citing Wealth, Income and Inequality (ed. A. B. Atkinson, Penguin Education) the reviewer says:

  Historically, from 1801 when paupers and vagrants, the bottom 23 per cent of the population, had each a mere £20 per year income, while peers, the top 0.01 per cent, had annual incomes 400 times as great, the picture scarcely changed till the mid-twentieth century. Even since the Second World War, though the share of post-tax incomes held by the highest paid 1 per cent fell from 6½ per cent to 5 per cent between 1949-67, the share of the lowest-paid 30 per cent . . . also fell from 14½ per cent to 12 per cent.

It would be interesting to hear Atkinson explain how “a Marxist party” dedicated to “the founding of classless society” — and in power up to 1970 — let this happen. Certainly, how can families “enjoy equal rights” ?

Life in the Old Dog

The main problem for the Polish manager Kazimierz Gorski is whether to bring Marx into the side following his recent recovery from a leg injury.

(Guardian sports page, 10th October)

Perhaps that is what Harold Wilson and Norman Atkinson are worried over too.

Robert Barltrop

Muddled Ideas about Inflation (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The chief reason why inflation is so widely misunderstood is that it is hidden in a fog of erroneous ideas put forward partly in ignorance and partly because the employers and the Government have an interest in obscuring it. A recent addition to confusion is an article “Why Money is Shrinking” by John Palmer, business editor of the Guardian, which appeared in Socialist Worker (4th August 1973), the journal of the “International Socialists.”

It dismissed the real explanation in a single paragraph which contained the following:

  But Enoch Powell says it is all the fault of the government printing too much money. This is an illusion even shared by some on the left.

No attempt was made to examine and refute the case carefully argued by Marx to show that if an inconvertible paper currency is issued in excess it will have the effect of correspondingly sending up prices. (Capital Vol. I. Allen & Unwin edition: Chapter on Money, or the Circulation of Commodities, particularly pages 108-9.) Indeed, the writer appears not to have heard of Marx and what Marx wrote on this and other questions dealt with in the article.

Marx was not alone in recognizing the direct relationship between an excess note issue and the price level, though he differed from other economists in basing his exposition on a logical application of his labour theory of value. When it was a question of explaining the price rise in, for example, the great German inflation of the nineteen-twenties, most economists had no difficulty in relating cause and effect, the cause being that the German government met its expenditure by printing notes; but faced with a situation in which an indirect method is employed, many of them cannot see the connection.

F. W. Paish in Benham’s Economics (Pitman 1967, p. 465) is one economist who sees that it is a difference of method with no real difference as to results.

  In some circumstances it [the Government] might simply print more notes and use them to pay for its expenditure. Nowadays, in a country such as Great Britain, the Government would borrow from the banks, printing more notes to enable the banks to maintain their cash reserves.

When the banks have lent to the government by buying government securities and thus have run down their cash they replenish it by calling in short-term loans, and the Bank of England in effect makes good the deficiency in the money market by printing more notes against government securities presented to it.

The article in the Socialist Worker (presented in the form of question and answer) deals with such topical matters as whether wage increases cause price increases, and whether wages should be related to the retail price index — all of it marked by contradiction and confusion. It' rejects the myth “spread by the Tories” that “inflation is caused by wages”, then lets it in again by a back door:

  But surely wages must have some effect on prices? Of course they do. Quite simply, business raises its prices when increases in costs threaten its profit margins.

(No mention of the fact that the myth of wage increases causing price increases is not a Tory monopoly but has been shared by the Labour Party, the party IS tells the workers to vote for.)

Here again the writer of the article makes no attempt to meet the case argued by Marx in Value, Price and Profit: that since the capitalist always puts his prices up to as much as the market will bear, he cannot at will put them still higher because his costs (including wages) have gone up. We are asked by John Palmer to accept a mythical capitalist who works to a kind of “ideal” or “reasonable” profit margin which he will try to maintain but not exceed—promptly contradicted elsewhere in the article where we are told that “the banks, for instance, are reporting 60, 75 and even 90 per cent increases in profit and some property sharks’ profits . . . up 300 per cent”.

We are also told that prices go up because the bosses push them up, but “no one likes that, not even the ruling class”. Are we to suppose that the bosses and the ruling class are different people?

The writer discusses whether the workers ought to go for so-called “threshold agreements” which would relate wages to the rise of the retail price index. Instead of giving the simple answer, that the workers should always try to get wages as high as circumstances permit, he gives as a reason that the retail price index underestimates the real rise of prices — implying that if it were statistically accurate the workers should accept such agreements. His reason for believing the index to be faulty is that it “includes the cost of Ted Heath’s yacht, Lord Lambton’s champagne”. If it did, this would surely be a reason for supposing that the index overstated the rise of the workers’ costs. Actually of course it doesn’t include the cost of Heath’s yacht and Lambton’s champagne. It isn’t based on “costs” at all but simply on percentage variations of prices. As the Department of Employment insists, it isn’t what is meant by a cost-of-living index at all: that is to say, it is not based on the total cost of a given standard of living.

If John Palmer does not understand the retail price index he also is not very good at arithmetic. He tells us that a 50 per cent. rise of prices is the same as a 50 per cent. fall in the purchasing power of money. On this faulty arithmetic the 100 per cent, rise of prices in the past few years would mean a 100 per cent fall in the value of money, meaning that money has no purchasing power at all. The correct figure for a 50 per cent. rise of prices is a 33⅓ per cent fall in the value of money.

Edgar Hardcastle

Not Sociology — SOCIALISM! (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nineteen sixty-seven, the year of the centenary of the publication of the first volume of Capital, was in some ways an embarrassing time. Suddenly, the derided minority who had struggled to win recognition for this work as the only effective analysis of capitalism were overwhelmed with friends of a doubtful kind. There was the Marx exhibition at the British Museum; the press treatment which, with the predictable exception of the Daily Telegraph, was reasoned and fair; there was the accolade of publication bestowed upon him by profit-conscious Penguin Books. Socialists welcomed this publicity but we were uneasy about the abrupt change of attitude. What did it all mean?

To appreciate the size of the change it is necessary to look back a little, at the ignoring of Marx, at the rejection and the deliberate distortion of his ideas and what he stood for. Greatest of these was the association of him with the Russian revolution and what came out of it. When the Cold War was at its most intense, it was almost impossible to find any assessment of Marx which read as if the writer had got past the first sentence of any of his works. Whatever exploit the Russian ruling class were involved in — their secret police, their show trials, the Berlin Wall — all were tagged with the name Marxist, implying that Marx would have approved and even supplied the theoretical justification for such crimes.

Then there was the misrepresentation of his ideas, the selective quotes which made him the discredited prophet of doom who foresaw the working class progressively dying of hunger and exposure while capitalism got on with cosseting them with cars, washing machines, televisions. Economists who daily ground out their narcoleptic commentaries on the futile gyrations of capitalism’s commercial machine busily put about the notion that Marx was a dull writer, a guaranteed cure for insomnia. There was a market for books which were a sort of compendium of this rubbish, books which purported to examine the Marx family life and which wrote him down as a demanding, irascible, petulant boor of a man. A Tory Cabinet Minister explained it all to an adoring audience by telling them that Marx suffered from boils on his bottom.

Socialists had grown wearily familiar with the need to hack away the undergrowth of this nonsense before we could begin to get over the idea that Marx’s works are essential to anyone who wants to understand society — how it came to be as it is and how it must be in the future. That is why we were uneasy at all those new friends and when we saw how acceptable he had suddenly become.

In fact, it had never been possible for Marx’s opponents to ignore him. The difficulty had been to persuade them to criticize what he wrote rather than what somebody else wrote that somebody else wrote that Lenin wrote that Marx wrote. It was rather like the party game when a phrase is whispered into an ear at one end of the line and comes out completely different at the other end. Now, it seemed, Marx’s critics had suddenly decided that as they couldn’t beat him he would have to join them. But on what terms, and what contribution were they asking from Marx?

Part of the explanation is in the post-war upheaval in education, which is responsible for more members of the working class being subjected to the hothouse treatment in universities. Students are paid to learn and to think — even about Marx. At the same time capitalism has seen the need to invest more resources into what can only be called people management. Industrial psychologists are a vital part of any intensive production unit. No company of any size can operate without its trouble-shooting personnel men. None would dream of trying to sell its goods without the help of advertizing agencies. Outside the workplace, the harsher effects of working class poverty are supposed to be deadened by the Social Work departments of local authorities.

These are all fields of operation for the sociologist, which has meant that the study of sociology has had its share of the great education boom. Sociologists might end up earning their living helping to compose ads for baked beans, but to do that they need to spend some years studying rather wider concepts of social affairs. This is where they run up against Marx, whose analyses uncovered the laws of motion of society and laid bare the workings of capitalism.

But at the same time as Marx became more acceptable there is an attempt to make him more respectable, to emasculate him, to shear off the revolutionary conclusions of his analyses and to treat him as just another contributor to the theories of sociology. Prominent among those who attempt this is T. B. Bottomore, whose book Karl Marx — Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy was first published in 1956 and came out as a Pelican in 1967. Bottomore appears to be fascinated by Marx:

  In fact Capital is, among other things, one of the earliest, and still one of the most valuable, works of social history conceived in a sociological manner, i.e. as the history of social institutions.

but elsewhere (Sociology — a Guide to Problems and Literature — 1962) it is clear that he goes along with the vulgar misinterpretation which associates Marx with the overthrow of almost any government:

  . . . in China and Cuba, the whole social structure is being refashioned under the influence of Marxist thought . . .

So it is unsurprising, that he can put Marx on a par with men more properly described as sociologists, with the more limited scope and application to capitalism’s needs which the description implies.

To expand on this point, let us look at the uses which Bottomore thinks a sociologist can put his knowledge to:

  . . . dealing successfully and humanely with the complex problems arising from revolutionary advances in technology and sustaining an elaborate network of social services.

Or perhaps they will be attracted by the current advertisements for sociology graduates to become lecturers at the Civil Service College, where they will have to teach subjects with the chilling names of Human Resources Management and Organizational Behaviour.

These are the very stuff of sociology. A politician looking for more votes may well employ them to work out a more winning — in other words a more deceptive — line for the voters. A government looking into the resiting of industry or the development of communications will use them, to plot and to manipulate the movement of working-class population. In the advertising world the sociologists work upon strange gradations of workers, into herds which they tag with letters and numbers to denote their wage level, or describe confusingly as upper middle class, lower middle class, upper-lower middle class . . . Bottomore quotes one reviewer’s opinion of sociology (which even then has to be in sociological language): “. . . slick, bureaucratized, establishment-supported, computer-supported, computer-based, and status-quo orientated.” The reviewer meant to say that sociology fits in perfectly with, and is indeed a necessary part of, the capitalist machinery of exploitation.

The same cannot be said for Marxism. The analysis of society which it supplies is not there for its own sake; neither is it there to deal with the trivia of capitalism nor to make the wheels of exploitation run more smoothly. Marx did not examine history only to discover how and why human society works and changes as it does. He did not examine capitalism only to conclude that it is here. He followed it all through to the unavoidable end and emerged as a committed and active socialist, working for the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a social system based upon common ownership. What could be more explicit than this, one of countless similar passages in his works:

  The essential condition for the emancipation of the working class is the abolition of all classes . . . The working class in the course of its development will substitute for the old order of civil society an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will no longer be political power, properly speaking, since political power is simply the official form of the antagonism in civil society. (The Poverty of Philosophy).

And what could more clearly label Marx as a man who saw the need for political action to end capitalism than this, the final words of the Communist Manifesto:

  Let the ruling class tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite!

The works of Marx are an essential tool to a revolutionary party, to be used for the overthrow of the social system whose exploitation and ugliness Marx examined so effectively. A small part of that ugliness can be seen in the discipline of sociology — the study of human environment, reaction and movement in order to manipulate it for the benefit of the ruling class, to tighten the chains about the workers. Marx simply cannot be associated with that. We should not be deceived by our new friends; they have not been able to beat Marx but neither can they pretend that he has joined them.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Out-of-work Graduates (1973)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like the mass of the working class the products of the higher education must come into the labour market and compete in the merciless struggle that our present social system begets.

  “During the next few months some thousands of young men from Oxford and Cambridge will be looking for work in an inhospitable world. ‘The truth is that there is less and less room in modern life for a liberal education’, said a former undergraduate (who had somehow found a job since coming down last summer) sadly to a Daily News representative yesterday. The most fortunate of these young men — that is, those who have not absolutely got to earn a living at once — will drift to the Bar, with comparatively little prospect of briefs. The less fortunate will become schoolmasters, most of them with neither aptitude nor enthusiasm for their work. And there will still be a lot left over.”

(Daily News 28.6.73)

Perhaps, and more than likely, some unlucky ones will join the ever-growing army of the workers. The capitalists themselves will see that the quantity and quality of so-called educated workers is forthcoming for the purpose of their own profit, and, like the rest of the working class, their supply exceeding the masters’ requirements, their price upon the labour market (salary or wages) consequently falls.

We, too, seek to educate the workers, not as trained machines, producing and distributing wealth for the enjoyment and leisure of others, but to understand their usefulness and importance, using that knowledge to establish society upon a basis that will allow them to enjoy the results of their usefulness in increasing physical and mental comfort.

(From an article by Mac in the Socialist Standard, November 1923)

50 Years Ago: Beeching’s Cuts (2012)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The axe man cometh.

This year’s report from the British Transport Commission indicated where the proposed cuts in rail services are likely to fall.

The Newport to Brecon line, for instance, in South Wales. Here, said Transport Minister Marples, a statistical half-man is being carried for one hundred and seven miles by a 160 ton train — about equal to a five-ton crane lifting a bottle of beer.

“It would pay us,” he said, “to give that man a car and close the line.”

That is the yardstick which the Beeching inquiry has had to use. Not: Is it useful? but: Does it pay? Some of the Commission’s undertakings can answer yes to this question. London Transport pays. British Road Services and the docks have increased their receipts.

Only the railways — and only some parts of them at that — fail utterly to conform to capitalism’s law of existence: Does it pay?

Mr. Marples is not alone in his recognition of this law. Labour Party spokesman George Strauss said, when the House of Commons were debating the Transport Commission’s report, that the railway losses gave people the impression that what he called “publicly owned” transport was a failure.

Mr. Strauss has his definition of a failure, and of a success. The report showed, he said, that the reverse was true because all the services except the railways and the inland waterways had made a profit.

Both Tories and Labour are united in the opinion that to succeed nationalised industry must make a profit. Which means they agree that basically nationalised industries are as much a part of capitalism’s economy as any private industry is.

One fact seems to have escaped notice. Removing the rail services from many parts of the country means that those areas are being left to depend upon road transport. This means that the government are virtually creating transport monopolies all over the country.

This is hardly consistent with the Conservative doctrine of what they like to call “healthy” competition. But really capitalism is impatient of all doctrine — except one.

Does it pay?

(from The News in Review”, Socialist Standard, August 1962)

Science facts and science fiction (2012)

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

Several news stories compete for our attention this month. The Higgs boson discovery, the revelation by religious scholars in Louisiana that the Loch Ness Monster is real and therefore proof that the Theory of Evolution is wrong (The Herald, Scotland, 24 June) and, of course, the BIG story: the marriage break-up of world famous Scientologist, Tom Cruise.

Which to choose? It’s a toss-up between the Higgs boson and Tom Cruise. (Unfortunately we can’t offer marriage guidance on this column, so we’ll have to stick to the Scientology aspect of the story.)

Can these phenomenal stories be explained in simply? Our thanks are due to the Guardian’s G2 ‘Shortcuts’ column for the following: “The Higgs Boson is an elementary scalar particle first posited in 1962, as a potential by-product of the mechanism by which a hypothetical, ubiquitous quantum field – the so-called Higgs field – gives mass to elementary particles. More specifically, in the standard model of particle physics, the existence of the Higgs Boson explains how spontaneous breaking of electroweak symmetry takes place in nature”.

Got that? Good. That should get you through even the most challenging pub discussion on the subject. Now we can move on to the advanced stuff, the minefield of theology and metaphysics that must be overcome before attempting to understand Scientology (or Tom Cruise, for that matter).

First let www.scientology.org explain why man is a spirit: “Ask someone to close their eyes and get a picture of a cat, and they will get a mental image picture of a cat. Ask them who is looking at the picture of the cat and they will respond ‘I am’. That which is looking at the cat is you, a spirit. One is a spirit, who has a mind and occupies a body. You are you in a body”.

All clear so far? Now here’s a quote attributed to sci-fi writer and founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard: “You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, start a religion”. Yes, it’s all beginning to fall into place.

Having got that sorted we’re ready to consider Scientology’s theory of human origins. We’ve learnt from the born-again brigade that evolution is only a theory. But according to Scientology even the stuff about Adam and Eve and the talking serpent is a bit dubious too.

What really happened is that 75 million years ago an intergalactic ruler called Xenu herded the populations of 76 planets together, dropped them into volcanoes, and vaporised them with nuclear bombs. The souls of the victims were then forced to watch a 3D movie for 36 days which implanted all sorts of misleading data into their memories. We are descended from them.

There’s a bit more to it than that, but we only get 500 words in this column. It’s covered in great detail on the internet though.

It’s almost as bizarre as believing in a virgin birth, the raising of the dead and the turning of water into wine. You couldn’t make it up, could you? Unless you were a sci-fi writer. Who needs facts when you’ve got faith and unquestioning belief?

NW

Socialism v. Imperialism. (1923)

From the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is the Socialist view of the Empire? What attitude would a revolutionary administration assume towards the "subject races"? These questions are prompted by the perusal of a recently issued book by Noel Buxton and Conwil Evans, entitled “Oppressed Peoples and the League of Nations” (J. M. Dent & Sons, 6s.); and the following article is an attempt to answer them.

Imperialism, like a good many other things, charity included, begins at home. The exploitation of the workers of other lands and their political subjugation is the outcome of the system of slavery imposed upon the workers of the Imperialist countries themselves, by the capitalist ownership of the means of life. Empires to-day arise out of the necessity for our rulers to find ever new markets for the commodities produced by associated labour, and also fresh sources from which to draw increased supplies of raw material. The workers of this country forge the weapons and supply the rank and file of the forces by which the coloured races of India and Africa are induced to remain loyal to the British flag; while it is only their political support which places Imperialist parties in control of those forces.

With the development of a working class conscious of its own interest and its consequent assumption of political power, capitalist Empires will follow all other forms of exploitation to the limbo of forgotten things. In their place will arise an association of the workers of the world for the purpose of co-operating to satisfy their common needs and to establish the opportunity for the highest possible development of every human being, irrespective of race or sex.

The realisation of such a system implies, without a doubt, a lengthy process of self-education of the working class the world over. Even with the overthrow of capitalist authority in Europe and America, that process might be far from complete. But such an overthrow would enormously accelerate its pace. The emancipated workers of the West would be able to utilise all the technical and literary resources of their late masters in the task of spreading among the workers of the East the knowledge necessary to achieve the social mastery of the economic forces of the world. They would be driven to do so, not by any imaginary "humanitarian” or "philanthropic” motive, but by the same forces which had impelled them to emancipate themselves, their class interest. For the fullest satisfaction of human wants to-day the world is necessary. Therefore, Socialism cannot be otherwise than international.

The authors of the above-mentioned book are far from taking up the Socialist position. Their attitude may be gauged by statements such as the following: “The immediate application of ideals may not be possible even if a British Government inspired by good-will is placed in power. In all probability it will prove able to lay its plans for an efficient League of Nations, and for a general reform of tropical administration, but it cannot hold its hand until ‘capitalism’ has been abolished at home, much less abroad. The urgencies of the moment will occupy much of its energy” (p. 71). From the context and several other passages in the book, we are left to assume that the Labour Party is to supply the “government inspired by good-will,” while “ the urgencies of the moment ” would appear to consist chiefly of the “emancipation” of the Armenian peasants from the control of the Turks, and of the Koreans from that of the Japanese !

Details concerning the atrocities committed by these two Imperial powers occupy quite a considerable portion of the book, yet one looks in vain for any similarly frank attitude towards the methods adopted by British, American, and the late Russian administrations. Such incidents as that at Amritsar are very briefly referred to, while British policy in Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, and India generally is whitewashed on the ground of the economic backwardness of the natives’ social order.

The nationalist movements in these various countries are criticised for their alleged extravagance of demands, yet the economic explanation of these movements is left as vague as that of Imperialism. Nowhere do the authors clearly put forward the simple fact that capitalist interests dominate in the political sphere. According to them, it is the “needs of the world” which impose limitations upon the “national right of independence,” while the nation in turn is regarded as a uniform entity, though they admit that the very “conception of nationality” eludes definition (p. 11). The class division in society is ignored.

As a remedy and preventive for the “too obvious evils of Imperialism” on the one hand, and the inconvenient “extremism” of Oriental Nationalists on the other hand, the authors advance the Mandation system of the League of Nations, with such reforms as would give greater direct power to the Council of the League. What appears to be lost sight of is the fact that no capitalist power can be obliged to “accept a mandate.” It will naturally do so only when its interests dictate such a step, and the methods of its administration will conform to those interests according to the conditions obtaining in the mandated territory. A case in point is Tanganyika Territory (late German East Africa), where the system remains practically unchanged except for the fact that British, instead of German, capital reaps its advantages.

The fullest development of the League of Nations, in accordance with the authors’ ideas, could only amount to the collective (and possibly more efficient) exploitation of the coloured workers by the larger capitalist groups. Inasmuch as competition would be restricted, the political power of these groups would be strengthened as against the rising bourgeoisie of the East, with a consequent throttling, to a further extent, of the ever-expanding forces of production. From this policy the workers of Europe and America have nothing to gain and everything to lose. The elimination of-competition among their capitalist masters means increased competition among the workers themselves. Their interests demand co-operation with the object of satisfying social needs rather than the production of luxury in idleness for a few.

If the Labour Party stands for the more efficient organisation of capitalist exploitation, nationally and internationally, that is one more argument in favour of our ceaseless opposition to that body. The above book simply provides additional evidence that this is the case. It is a good illustration of the extent to which “Liberal” capitalist principles are in the ascendant in the intellectual outlook of the up-to-date “Labour Leaders.” From first to last, working class interests are away in the background, effectually obscured by the shibboleths of Gladstonian “democracy.” In the view of the authors, it is the diplomats and not the workers who are the agents of “progress" (pp. 72,73).

To the Socialist the practical problem pressing for solution is not national or racial, but economic and social, cutting across all ethnical and geographical distinctions. The class struggle over the possession of the means of production and the products of labour is to us the supreme issue.

In opposition to all this distracting talk about this, that, or the other local “question,” what better answer can be given than that contained in the manifesto issued by the Socialist Party of this country on the outbreak of the Great War, in the September issue of this paper :—

  “Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow-workers of all lands the expression of our good-will and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalist and the triumph of Socialism.”

Eric Boden

Rent and Houses. (1923)

From the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

House and tenement owners in Scotland are squealing because the Government, which represents property owners generally, have not taken steps to save them from the results of their own ignorance and neglect. According to the Rent Act passed by the late Government, house owners should give notice to vacate premises when increasing rent. Many of them did not do so, hence numerous summonses for return of rent illegally charged, and a withholding of rent until the debt is paid off.

The Government is on the horns of a dilemma because relief has been promised to the owners, which shall be made retrospective. To break such a promise would, of course, be beneath the dignity of the "Mother of Parliaments”; while to make the tenants pay up would constitute a precedent and look too much like class legislation.. But a virtue can be made of necessity. The Government could subsidise the owners or tell them to pocket their losses. Whichever course they take, the claim will be made that it was the tenants who were considered, because they were poor workers who could not afford to pay.

Obviously, while the Act is in force, it is up to those who own houses to observe it. If they neglect to do so, with all the advantages on their side of better acquaintance with legal forms, they should submit to the penalty without squealing.

Of course, all sorts of unpleasant results are predicted if the no-rent strike is persisted in. One is that house building will cease because no-one will build unless rents are assured.

High rents and shortage of houses are undoubtedly a real hardship for the workers. Though it is nothing new for them to be herded in jerry-built drums with little or no convenience. Hutches that let in the wind, wet, and fog, but keep out the sunlight. Back-to-back tenements and flats, damp cellars and ramshackle attics are quite commonplace as "Englishmen’s homes.” There is nothing new in the fact that families of eight or ten live in a single room and take in lodgers. Pre-war newspapers often cited such instances. Why the outcry ?

The two things, shortage of houses and high rents, generally coincide. Given the first, the second follows. The capitalists who are interested in the production of any commodity always prefer to see the supply short of the demand, because it enables them to raise prices. The commodity in the present case is the use of a house for a period of weeks or months. The house owner realises his cost of production by drawing rents while the house remains habitable. He sells, and the tenant buys house accommodation or shelter, on the same basis and according to the same laws that govern the buying and selling of other commodities. Supply and demand are responsible for fluctuations in rent, while cost of production is the main level between the two extremes. When rents fluctuate upwards, either the workers must have increased wages to enable them to pay, or they must go short of other necessaries. Removals by night are far less common when there is a real shortage of houses, and private landlords as well as local councils invariably give preference to tenants who have a regular job with well-established firms, where they can be got at if pressure to pay becomes necessary.

The two alternatives before the wage workers are, therefore, to pay the landlord and go short of other necessaries, or struggle for a higher wage. But this is as much the concern of capitalists generally as it is of the workers. If capitalists require a certain standard of efficiency in their wage-slaves, the latter must be fed and clothed up to that standard. The whole question, consequently, resolves itself into a tug-of-war between one section of the capitalist class and all the rest, the workers’ standard of living taking the strain. At the moment the housing interests have the pull.

This explains somewhat the deep concern of writers in the capitalist Press about the shortage of houses and high rents. Until rents are reduced, capitalists generally cannot enforce the wage reductions they so earnestly desire without seriously impairing the efficiency of their wage-slaves. The agitation is on a par with the Free Trade movement of Cobden and Bright. The free importation of foreign corn was immediately followed by wholesale reductions in wages, because the workers could live more cheaply.

The capitalist system never did and never can insure to the bulk of the workers decent and convenient houses in which to live without overcrowding. The "council houses" are no better and no cheaper than those of the jerry-builder. House owners to-day know quite well that overcrowding suits their pockets far better than overbuilding, hence the demand that house building shall be left to private enterprise.

What is wrong is capitalism: private or class ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution for profit. The workers do not live on profits; why, then, should they produce for profits? They should organise politically for control of the State machinery in order to establish a system of society based on production for use. Under such a system, where the people controlled production and distribution through democratic administrations set up by themselves, houses would be built when and where they were needed. The wants of the people would determine the nature and extent of all production instead of, as to-day, the profits of a ruling class.

F. Foan

Letter: Commodities and Quids. (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrade,

Regarding your reply to Mr. Archer, you say definitely that a sovereign is not a commodity, and you give as your reason that it can only act as currency inside the country of issue. Does that mean that a product of labour has to act as currency before it becomes a commodity, and if not, where does it fall short of being a commodity? In other words, could you clearly explain to me how to distinguish a commodity from other things?

W. W.

Answer to W. W.
A commodity is an article, or service, that is produced for the purpose of exchange or sale. Under modern conditions that means produced for the purpose of realising profit through a sale.

A product of labour falls short of being a commodity when it is produced for the producer’s personal use and not for exchange or sale. Whether a product of labour reaches the position of currency or not has no bearing on this question. Of the thousands of commodities produced today, only one acts as currency.

With the changes and developments of society, the currencies in use change their forms, and, often, some of their characteristics. In the early stages a commodity in general use may act as currency, while still remaining an ordinary commodity. Later, when the exchanges have grown far more numerous and complicated, a particular commodity is set aside to act specially as currency and will receive some social stamp or mark, to guarantee its genuineness. When it has reached this position, and only then, it ceases to be a commodity, as it is no longer produced for profit, but as an official instrument set apart for currency purposes.

Jack Fitzgerald

The Ruhr and the Workers. (1923)

Editorial from the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since 1918 those sections of the capitalist class which have dominated the Governments of France and Great Britain have been at grips behind a screen of apparently friendly discussion. While each group thought there was still a possibility of attaining its end through the ordinary diplomatic channels they avoided an open breach. The French Government finally appealed to armed force, the ultimate and deciding weapon of the ruling class everywhere, both in home and foreign matters, and occupied the important German industrial area in the Ruhr Valley. Some attempt is still made to keep up the pretence, and Mr. Ronald McNeill, Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, states that “the whole disagreement is simply one as to the best method of obtaining our common end,” and that while

  “Our French friends believe they can make Germany pay at once by seizing control of some of her principal industries . . . we are convinced . . . that such action will produce almost nothing in the shape of immediate payment, and will delay for a long time the prospect of getting money out of Germany, and possibly may destroy it altogether.” (‘‘Observer,” 14th Jan., 1923.)

An assumption is here made which it will be useful to examine. It is that the aims of the French Government are identical with those of the British Government. Also no reference is made to the conflict of interests which exists within the two countries.

Let us deal with the first point.

Up to 1914, next to cotton in order of importance among British exports, were iron and steel (including machinery), and not far behind was coal. France, on the other hand, lacked coal of a kind suitable for her iron industry, and had to import about one-third of the required supply; but she possessed big deposits of iron ore, much of which was exported. The war has altered that position because France has obtained in Alsace-Lorraine 

  “by far the biggest ore field in Europe, and the second biggest in the world, . . .  according to Eckel (Coal, Iron, and War). In 1913, the Lorraine output had reached the colossal figure of 40,000,000 tons. The whole of that field, along with some of Germany’s most modern and scientifically equipped steelworks, is now entirely in French possession. The addition of so much iron ore alone would have been little help to France, for what she needed above all was coal. That, however, was not overlooked, and the Saar mines, with an output in 1913 of 17½ million tons, were also handed to France; and, in addition, Germany was compelled to send France some 20,000,000 tons per annum for a considerable number of years as part of the reparations." J. P. M. Millar, Plebs., Jan., 1923.)

Saar coal is, however, unsuitable for coking, and therefore “the Lorraine iron and steel industry is being kept alive on the coke coming from the Ruhr under the provision of the Peace Treaty.”

Naturally, the French capitalists want the Ruhr Valley permanently, “especially as it produces not merely coal, but iron, steel, and dye-stuffs and manure.”

This explains the policy of the French Government clearly enough, but where does Great Britain stand? The British capitalists went to war because Germany was rapidly overtaking them in the scramble for markets. Germany was already producing nearly two-thirds as much coal and more than twice the quantity of steel. Did Great Britain go to war to crush one rival only to raise up another just beyond the Channel? Did they (with the assistance of the Labour leaders) murder a million workers for nothing? The “Referee” is quoted by Millar as follows:—

  "If the French plan were adopted, and France allowed to seize and exploit the rich coal and iron fields of Germany . . . she would become the dominant industrial power on the Continent.  . . . We would be up against a powerful aggressive force in the international markets and be closed out of French spheres by high tariffs  . . . but we would oppose a new industrial concentration which would be distinctly hostile and detrimental to our industrial interests.”

No, the interests of the French and English capitalists are not identical.

Now let us return to the second point, the relations between the working class and the capitalist class. The capitalist class consists of those who own the means of wealth production and the workers are those who, owning nothing but their power to labour, must sell this if and when they can find a purchaser. Having done so, that is having obtained employment, they produce commodities, the whole of which belong to their employer, who seeks to sell them and to get the proceeds in a convenient form as money. The workers receive as wages an amount less than the wealth they have produced, and the difference forms the surplus value of the capitalist class. Because of the growing productivity which comes with machine development, and because the workers cannot buy the whole of the wealth produced, and the master class cannot themselves consume the surplus, unemployment exists as a permanent feature of modern society. Because the world is becoming more and more developed on capitalist lines and purchasers for the products of advanced manufacturing countries cannot be found, competition between national groups arises, which is expressed in commercial and military wars for the capture of supplies of raw materials and for the monopoly of the relatively shrinking world markets.

What should the workers do when the capitalist governments go to war? What should be their attitude towards the French invasion of the 'Ruhr?

The Labour Party in an official statement :—

  “repudiates . . . all responsibility for approving the policy now being pursued by the French Government towards Germany. It regards this policy as an invasion of a neighbouring State in time of peace . . . and consequently as an act of war. This invasion constitutes an attack on the self-determination of the German people, as well as an attack on the rights of the working class, who are treated as mere pawns or chattels.” (“Observer,” 14th Jan., 1923.)

This interesting declaration bears striking resemblance to the statements of the Labour Party’s leaders in 1914. Under the guise of the same spurious internationalism they seek again to further the interests of the British capitalist class.

The French workers do not own France nor the German workers Germany, a condition they share with the working class everywhere. What, then, does it matter to them that France invades the Ruhr? They are wage-slaves all, doomed to toil in poverty and insecurity producing profits for their masters so long as capitalism remains. Does it matter to them whether their masters are French or German, Atheists or Protestants, whether their pay is in francs or marks? If the French capitalists plunder their German rivals, by way of reparations or otherwise, that is their business.

But the British Government does not want France to have the Ruhr, and the Labour Party, as usual, follows its masters; even after many Liberals have advocated entire remission of reparation payments the Labour Party still advocates making Germany pay (“Daily Herald” Editorial, 4th Jan., 1923), and fears that this invasion will “diminish her capacity to make reparation payments” (15th Jan.).

They talk of a “time of peace.” The class struggle goes on unceasingly East and West of the Rhine, and where is the Government which can boast that it does not depend for its stability on armed force, and where is the Government (including the Australian “Labour” Government) which does not when need arises use that armed force against the workers? Is this peace?

In 1914 Mr. Arthur Henderson ‘‘appealed to every young man . . .  to come forward and serve his country . . . to avoid coming under that iron heel of Prussian Militarism ” (“Daily Citizen,” 16/9/14), and now because the direction of British Capitalist policy has changed, this Labour Party, of which Arthur Henderson is secretary, wants the Germans who are “under that iron heel, etc.,” to be saved from coming under the “iron heel” of France, our allies in the fight for freedom.

The German workers had no “self-determination” to lose. They were and are wage-slaves, and slaves are not in a position to select their masters, nor would it be worth while if they could. They can but accept the change.

As Mr. Phillips Price has pointed out repeatedly in the “Daily Herald” (e.g., 8th Jan.), the powerful group represented by Stinnes which—and not the German workers —really governed Germany, has long done its utmost to get the French to occupy the Ruhr, and only opposed it at the last moment because a satisfactory agreement was not reached with the negotiating French syndicate. As for treating the workers like “pawns,” does the Labour Party not remember voting for conscription during the war, and has Mr. Henderson forgotten his advice to the Government in 1917 to deport the ringleaders among the Clyde strikers?

As for us, we stand where we did in 1914—for Socialism. We declared at the outbreak of the Great War “that no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood. ” It was true then, and it is true now, that the 

  “armed forces . . . will only be set in motion to further the interests of the class who control them—the master class—and as the workers’ interests are not bound up in the struggle for markets wherein their masters may dispose of the wealth they have stolen from them (the workers), but in the struggle to end the system under which they are robbed; they are not concerned with the present European struggle . . .  for it is their masters’ interests which are involved, and not their own.”

Letter: International Exchange. (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

Re answer to Mr. Hart concerning rate of exchange in, I think, the November issue, would you be good enough to make it clear how the total figures are arrived at of the prices of goods exchanged between two countries; also to whom is the gold settlement made, to balance any difference there may be? The principal difficulty to me is the fact that it is individuals who trade and not countries. Also, would your explanation cover the fall of the mark in Germany?

Yours fraternally, 

Enquirer.

Answer to Enquirer.

When using the terms “two countries enter into commercial relations,” we were using the terms in common use. Actually, of course, it is the private merchants, or firms, who enter into these relations and carry through the exchange of goods.

The difference between what is bought and what is sold is shown by the demand for Bills of Exchange in the market of the country under consideration. If the demand in England for Bills on French mediants was greater than the demand in France for Bills on English merchants, this would show, under normal conditions, that more goods had been sold to English merchants, than had been bought from them. From this it is easy to see that the total figures are not of prime importance. It is the difference between the two sets of accounts that matters.

The gold balances are paid, usually, through the Banks holding the Bills mentioned. If the Bills have been bought by the Banks, the gold is placed to their own reserves. If the Bills are 'merely held for customers the amount of the gold is credited to those customers' accounts.

The goods passing into or out of two countries have to pass through the customs departments of those countries. The quantities, weights, and values, of the articles have to be declared on forms drawn up for that purpose. These “returns” give the total figures of the trade between those countries.

All these factors apply to trade under normal conditions. At present Germany is not under such conditions. The fall of the paper mark is due to loss of credit of Germany.

So long as people believe that the paper will be “honoured”—that is, exchanged for gold upon demand, or at a specific date —the paper will circulate at approximately its face value. If this belief begins to decline, the exchange value of the paper will begin to fall at a similar rate. This process may continue until, as in Austria, the paper falls to its value as actual paper, or waste paper. The German mark is nearing the same position, owing to the great uncertainty of the future.

It must, of course, be understood that we have only dealt with the main points of the question. To cover the details of the matter, particularly in the present exceedingly complicated circumstances, would take a huge volume. If, however, Enquirer wishes to raise any other detail question we shall be pleased to deal with it.

Editorial Committee

Letter: The Ostrich Policy. (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gentlemen,

Your issue of December, 1922, contains a vituperative article by J. Fitzgerald, attacking the attitude of "Plebs" on the question of currency inflation. (How it is ever hoped to attain the noble ideal of a Socialist state of society by the use of abuse will to me forever be a mystery. Lack of solidity within the Christian Church has led many people to regard Christianity as false; a smaller number who have pursued the matter further have found that the lack of solidity is in all verity due to the falseness of Christianity. Lack of solidity amongst parties who vouch for the desirability of supplanting a capitalistic state of society by a socialistic one must lead many people to doubt the desirability; only a few take the trouble to probe the matter further and find out for themselves that dissension in this case is due to superficialities only, and not to fundamentals, as in Christianity.)

I write, however, to point out that your contributor has, in the instance I quote above, let his love of abuse over-ride his adherence to facts.

I am not an economic expert ; but my reason declines to accept his contention that the total of prices of commodities governs the amount of currency required at any given time. In page 246 (first column), he states that a sudden increase in prices necessities an increase of currency. Not at all; it is the increase in the quantity of currency, or the prospect of such increase, which causes the increase of prices. That is, the wily capitalist knows that (when war is declared), through an increase in non-productive work, and work on production of articles not for sale to the general public, the quantity of currency available to purchase articles on sale to the public is much greater in proportion than in normal times. He has a natural desire to become possessor of as large a share of this increased currency as possible, hence high prices.

What your contributor contends—that prices sometimes go up before the currency is available—is correct; but the prices only go up because there is every prospect of the currency being available My reason declines to accept the argument that any shopkeeper or vendor of commodities places a price on his goods higher than, so far as he can judge, the quantity or immediately prospective higher quantity of currency available justifies. To keep within this maximum is his sole chance of doing business. If an increase of prices causes an increase of currency, we can safely presume, speaking generally, that the amount of currency in circulation will be gauged so as to just meet the situation. How, then, does your contributor account for people (during the late war) being in possession of currency with which they desired to purchase, say, potatoes, butter, etc., when no such commodities were available, and there was no prospect of their becoming available? In other words, how does his theory account for the increased quantity of currency being there when there was no price to have caused such increase? The logicality of the reverse theory is, I contend, obvious.

Before closing, as a further instance of your contributor’s regrettable lack of adherence to facts, I would point to his quotation from “Plebs” in column 2 of page 246, and his misquotation (from that quotation) lower down the column contained in the sentence, “And where in England, may one ask, can more than 20 shillings be obtained for the  £1 Treasury Note?” (The “Plebs” writer says distinctly “gold £1." Incidentally, I have never handled a copy of the “Plebs.”

Yours sincerely,

J. Hutchinson.

Reply:

Mr. Hutchinson open his letter with an entirely unsupported charge—that the article on “Plebs and Pounds” was vituperative—and follows by ignoring the facts presented in that article, claiming that his “reason” is superior to those facts, and therefore he wall not accept them.

A similar policy was ascribed to the ostrich, but it always ended in failure—for the ostrich.

Mr. Hutchinson’s question as to how the “theory” put forward in the Socialist Standard can “account for the increased quantity of currency being there when there was no price to have caused such increase” contradicts his own contention that an increase of currency is the cause of the rise in prices. Our answer is that we do not pretend to explain non-existences. At no period of the war was the total level of prices below the amount of currency. The rationing of certain articles of food and the fixing of certain prices did not make the slightest difference to this particular point.

When Mr. Hutchinson is prepared to collect and examine the facts before applying what he calls his “reason,” he may reach some glimmering of the truth. While he holds to his present method his quest will be hopeless.

The printer’s error that Mr. Hutchinson calls a "misquotation" (though it was easily seen to be an error by the most casual reader of the article) was overlooked until the issue was printed. The necessary correction was given in the January issue of the Socialist Standard.

Jack Fitzgerald