Running Commentary: Cause for alarm (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the January 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cause for alarm

A recent report by the Greater London Council makes quite clear that those who control London’s fire brigade have more than one eye upon their balance sheets!

  The cost of running the Brigade has risen considerably in recent years — from the net revenue estimate of £53.2 million in 1978-9 to nearly £65.3 million in 1979-80. Of the £65.3 million estimate for 1979-80 staff costs account for almost £54.2 million, emphasising the labour-intensive nature of the Brigade. (The Future Development of the London Fire Brigade -Discussion Document).

The GLC has responded to the government’s concern to cut public expenditure by reducing the number of operational appliances, reducing the level of manning (from that settled between the FBU and the GLC in 1974) and proposing to shut down the River Station at Greenwich. All this is bound to result in inferior fire services. The reduced number of firemen and fire appliances will affect the speed with which emergency calls can be dealt with. And emergency fire calls in London are increasing: in 1965 there were 39,566, by 1974 the figure had increased to 87,307, it was 111,520 in the drought year of 1976 and the London Fire Brigade Management Study Group have projected that by 1985 the number of emergency calls per year will reach 168,000. Is this the time to start cutting services?

Lord Denning, speaking in the Court of Appeal in 1971, stated that: “The snatching of a fellow human’s life from a terrifying death may easily turn on a quarter of a minute—a matter of seconds”.

In the same case, Joseph Milner, then Chief Fire Officer of London, pointed out that: “It is well known in the Fire Service that the speed of attack is crucial to the control and extinguishment of a fire, and that the driver of a fire appliance knows that the risk to life and property is increased by any delay in getting to a fire.”

Workers in the fire service will freely tell you that cuts spell delays. In London there are extra reasons why services will be deficient. Firstly, the fire cover for the new Docklands Industrial complex has been reduced, meaning that less money has been allocated to protecting the massive industrial area than was advised by fire experts. Secondly, the expanding tourist industry involves the existence of thousands of hotels and these are notoriously prone to catch fire. Faced with the need to send fire appliances to a burning warehouse containing millions of pounds worth of commodities and to attend a small fire in a council flat, if there are reduced services, priorities will have to be made.

If readers are in any doubt about the callousness of the capitalist administrators towards human life they need only think back to the 1977 Firemen’s strike. Remember how they brought in inexperienced blacklegs from the army to break the strike? Remember how the Labour Home Secretary, Merlyn Rees, refused to meet the wishes of the FBU? Remember how the media tried to portray striking firemen —who only the week before were shown as dedicated, brave men-as irresponsible, anti-social militants? It is quite possible that declining conditions in the fire brigade will cause the FBU to call another strike. If they do, and if lives are lost as a result, workers should not condemn the firemen for their necessary participation in the class struggle. They should blame the social system which leads to strikes and other events which result in public suffering.

What next in Poland

Socialists welcome the heroic efforts of the working class in Poland to achieve trade union and other rights. Freedom of speech and freedom to organise politically are essential for the existence of a socialist party. But the chief essential must be a working class which understands and wants socialism. Sadly, that is not yet present in Poland (any more than in Britain).

In an interview in the Guardian (3.11.80) “Eva, a leading dissident intellectual, was asked what sort of society does Solidarity really want?” Eva hesitated. “I suppose people differ, but very few of us could be called socialists at all. We would even welcome multi-nationals and big combines. In theory we would not mind having capitalism back —not on the American pattern but like Sweden or Denmark.”

It has to be admitted that while people like Eva imagine that they could have capitalism “back” —as though Poland has ever had anything other than a society of wage slaves producing goods not for use but for sale on a market —the idea of socialism hasn’t yet got off the ground.

Jesus Napoleon Brezhnev

Those readers old enough to remember the days of Stalin will readily recall the sycophancy which surrounded the Great Leader. After his death, the Bolshevik gang went through the motions of deploring the Cult of Personality — of which they had all been the leading exponents. They are now building, at a place called Malaya Zemlya —the scene of a battle which nobody has heard of — a vast monument which will show the great martial deeds of the present Stalin, Brezhnev, who indeed has been created a Marshall.

The battle was of minor consequence but is now being upgraded to the rank of a Stalingrad as a turning point in the war. Brezhnev’s part was unknown at the time but his heroism is now the subject of a book which won the top literary prize in Russia. Real authentic stuff, that was. Brezhnev wrote it himself.

A song about the battle is now frequently played on Moscow Radio. It is not made clear if Brezhnev also wrote the words and music and performs it at the Bolshoi in person. According to a newspaper called Babinsky Rabochy (which no doubt exists even if you’ve never heard of it), Brezhnev is “the outstanding Marxist-Leninist political figure and statesman of the modern age”. No, he didn’t write that himself, there being no shortage of Communist hacks (this one was called Geidar Alieyv) to do the jobs for this latter day Stalin.

Inflation again

One charge that cannot be laid against Enoch Powell, with regard to his views on inflation, is that he is not ruthlessly logical. Despite being no supporter of trade unions, he is quite prepared to admit, even proclaim from the rooftops, that you cannot blame inflation on workers’ demanding higher wages. Speaking at a conference in London on 14 November he denounced the new 6 per cent limit on pay rises in the local government sector as “folly”. After saying that governments alone cause inflation by increasing the money supply (a view the present Tory government is supposed to accept), he went on:

  On that view, pay rises generally, like other price increases generally, are not the cause but the inevitable consequence of inflation, and you might as well try to stop the rain by screaming at people not to get wet as to try to combat inflation by telling pay and prices not to respond to it. (The Times, 15 November)

If the rate of price rises has been falling in recent months, this is partly because the government has been inflating the currency less (for the government is, despite what it says, still inflating the currency) but also partly because in a slump such as capitalism is now going through the general price level tends to fall.

Political Notes: Shirley Williams agony (1981)

The Political Notes column from the January 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shirley Williams agony

One thing which has always been clear about Shirley Williams is that she has never had any ambitions to be famous as the Best Dressed Woman of the Year, nor as the Hairdressers’ Best Friend. Passionate devotion to principle, she suggests, is more important than fussy appearance. Workers who are irritated by Thatcher’s steely perfection of grooming might have been deceived.

But Shirley’s passion seems recently to have run amok. Since May 1979, when she lost her Parliamentary seat at Hertford and Stevenage (when the voters showed what they thought of her principles by converting a Labour majority of over 9,000 into a Tory one of nearly 1,300) she has been absorbed in a game of political poker in which she deceives herself that holding a pair of twos justifies her continually raising the stakes.

This has now persuaded her into a commitment that she will not stand again as a Labour candidate if the party persists in disagreeing with her over the EEC, defence, the leadership and other issues. If she carries this through, Williams has probably seen the last of Parliament and her fans are desolate; “Please Shirley”, wailed one in the Guardian, “What do you want your supporters to do?”

Well perhaps Shirley doesn’t care, which brings us to the question—should anyone care? Her career as a member of former Labour governments read almost like a crusade to disprove the feminist fallacy that women would run capitalism a whit more kindly, tolerantly or compassionately than men. But Shirley is tough; she emerged from this experience as a politician intact enough for her defeat to be a shattering blow to those who had spoken of her as a future Prime Minister.

No worker, with an inkling of how their class interests are best protected will mourn the end of those governments, nor the political demise of any member of them. Capitalism was not changed —it was not ameliorated, humanised, tempered — by Shirley Williams’ rise and it will not be changed by her fall. For beneath those shapeless dresses and scarecrow hair is a being thoroughly devoted to the dirty work of perpetuating the social system which represses, degrades and slaughters millions of people.

Tory troubles

Poor Denis Thatcher, bearing the brunt of the Prime Minister’s frustrations that British capitalism will not work as she thinks it should and her wrath at her supporters’ dismay over the deepening slump. His only outlet is a fortnightly letter to his friend Bill and even that gets leaked to Private Eye.

With each upward twist of the unemployment figures, Tory hearts beat yet fainter. Official statistics on price levels, public spending, the notes issue, indicate that Thatcher’s government is not fulfilling its promise to control these things — although all their plans about greater prosperity for British workers were based on an assumed ability to.

Daily, Keith Joseph looks more distraught, like a man troubled with fundamental doubts. Geoffrey Howe has committed the cardinal sin of putting up an incompetent performance in the House of Commons, where they will accept almost any deceit provided it is articulated with elegance and confidence and bolstered with some mannered humour. Ted Heath glowers smugly and, forgetting the chaos and misery of his own time of the Three Day Week crisis, waits for the call to overthrow the Iron Lady.

Even worse, the traditional political heartland of the Tory Party — the small business people (or rather those of them who are still able to evade the Bankruptcy Court) is in revolt. “What disappoints our group most”, whines an open letter from the Merseyside Builders Action Group in the Guardian (3.12.80) “is that we are all small/medium sized businesses who supported your party at the last election . . .” This is a familiar experience to anyone whose memory extends beyond last week’s newspapers. During times of Labour governments similar agonies are expressed by trade unionists. Every new government arrives in office in a flush of enthusiasm, declares that there is much to do to sort out the mess left by its predecessors and gets down to work.

For a time its supporters bask in rosy optimism. Then doubts creep in, as reality exposes the empty pledges, hardened into disillusionment and panic. At times the very party seems to be on the point of disintegration. There is no reason why a Conservative government should not suffer this. Any party trying to run capitalism will quickly find that it is attempting the impossible and that its crisis-ridden fumbling promotes dismay and cynicism.

The Tories, as Denis might put it, are deep in the rough without the clubs to get out of it.

Godless Foot!

Those who are worried about Doing Things In the Proper Way will not have welcomed the election of Michael Foot to the Labour leadership. There must be anxiety in such circles that, if Foot ever gets to be Prime Minister, he will go to Buckingham Palace and try to kiss the Queen’s hands dressed in one of his donkey jackets.

Even more threatening is the fact that he would be the first avowedly atheist in Number Ten. How, to begin with, would he fill in those bits of the speeches all Prime Ministers make when they are  appealing for greater sacrifices from the workers in the interests of British capitalism — those bits which up to now have been reserved for a prayer that god should be on “Our” side? And what would happen to the nation’s moral fibre, if atheist Foot refused to appoint bishops when the posts became vacant? Would there be nobody to preach to the workers on their duties to uphold the exploitation and the parasitic privileges of the capitalist system?

Well the British Humanist Association which might have been expected to rejoice over Foot’s election, got it right: “. . . In the sense of day-to-day issues such as inflation and unemployment, it is perhaps not very relevant. We are still going to have inflation and unemployment . . .” Because it doesn’t matter whether the leaders of capitalism are religious or not, or which religion they preach, or whether they drink or gamble or smoke or lead promiscuous sex lives. What is important is that they hold their positions at the behest of the working class who support capitalism.

If he ever becomes Prime Minister Foot will oversee this social system in basically the same way as his predecessors. And if that is anything to go by, perhaps the workers had better start praying without further delay. It may soon be all that’s left for them.

Women walk in fear (1981)

From the January 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everyone, whatever their political views, will have been disturbed by press reports of the brutal killings performed by the man the media have labelled “The Yorkshire Ripper”. Since the murder of student, Jacqueline Hill on 18 November “the 4,000 women students at Leeds University were coming to terms with the fact that they must not walk alone at night”, (the Guardian 21.11.80.) The police warn that the killer’s “record of street attacks shows that the main danger comes anywhere within dragging distance of a dark and secluded place —open land beyond the range of street lighting, a dark alleyway, backyards, a patch of wasteland. Those are the places to avoid, and there are far too many of them for a woman to walk safely by herself at night”. This restriction on the liberty of women to walk in safety after dark has been a feature of life in West Yorkshire since October 1975 when the “Ripper” first struck. For some working class women in the Leeds-Bradford area this has meant an almost total dependence upon male protection during the conventional leisure period of the day.

What has this insecurity got to do with socialists? Is it not simply an inevitable result of an inherent mile urge to have their way with women? Should we not leave such cases to the police and confine ourselves to discussion of political economy? And aren’t attacks on women an issue for feminists rather than socialists? We are obliged to respond to these questions and the only answer we can give is that the problems facing approximately one half of the working class are very much the concern of the only party which stands solely for the interest of the working class as a whole. The insecurity which women face cannot be solved within capitalism.

Capitalism has historically created a role for working class women as the attendants to male wage slaves. Not all working class women conform to this role, but most still do. This position has been sanctified by religion (it is the woman’s holy duty to be a wife and mother); by morality (the unmarried woman is seen to be either promiscuous or incomplete); by the education system (girls are still segregated in terms of what they learn at school and what opportunities they have when they leave school); and by law.

The conditioning of male and female attitudes to womanhood goes on all the time. The adverts state what the ideal woman should look like; the fashion and cosmetic industry tell her what to wear; the cinema helps influence her speech and her style; women’s magazines trivialise her experience; problem page hacks inform her as to whether or not she is a “proper” woman. Men’s attitudes to women are similarly conditioned. Young boys soon learn to talk about females as sources of satisfaction. Notions of virility traditionally imply dominance, aggressiveness and ruthlessness—the very characteristics which, if frustrated in conventional social contact, can produce the brutality of a vicious attacker. Porn magazines and sex movies teach men to idealise a submissive, consumable womanhood. Women are to be won, bought or coerced: married, hired or raped. In a society where pleasure is a commodity to be bought, and sold what else can be expected than what Marx rightly called “a system of prostitution both public and private”? (The Communist Manifesto). The private prostitution referred to was discussed in an article in the January 1908 Socialist Standard entitled, “No More Family Life”:

  The present social system is based upon the ownership of private property, and the marriage contract is in essence a property contract. The single sentence from the Marriage Service, “with all my worldly goods I thee endow” is indicative. of this, especially as the recipient of this cornucopean shower immediately surrenders all control over it by promising to “love, honour and obey” the benevolent “bestower”.

The Guardian, reporting the recent murder of Jacqueline Hill, who was a religious Sunday School teacher, made an indicative comment:

  The killing points to a worrying change in the Ripper’s victims. He first murdered a Leeds prostitute in October 1975, but the last time he murdered a known prostitute was two and a half years ago. His last two victims . . . were both respectable girls (20.11.80).

The assumption here is that if women are not “respectable” it is less “worrying” for them to be murdered. Respectability through the editorial eyes of the Guardian, which supported two world wars in which millions of people were killed, is not the best criterion for the right to be free from sexual assault.

We would do better to think about the kind of sick society which produces men like the “Ripper”. He has been driven to his perversely anti-social behaviour by a system of living which on the one hand treats sexual activity as a social taboo and on the other trivialises and sensationalises the sexual act, so producing neuroses in those who do not conform to the image. If you have a social order which glorifies war there is no point in crying out in indignation at the violence of modern youth; if you have a society which turns sex into a commodity, don’t be surprised if some take without paying.

Feminists are mistaken if they believe that the need for social change is a women’s issue. Not all women are in a position of social inferiority: capitalist women who travel about in chauffeur-driven cars have no need to go on marches to “reclaim the night”. The problems facing working class women are rooted in their class position. The basis of their insecurity is their alienation from the means of wealth production and distribution. Wage slavery is not in the interest of either male or female workers, although admittedly, for some women being the slave of a wage slave amounts to even greater insecurity and powerlessness than that faced by working class men.

To demand that male and female workers stand in equality as wage slaves is an impoverished and futile reform because wage slaves can never attain real social dignity, even if men and women workers are treated the same by their employers. It may be utopian to want a society in which people never offend against one another, but it is not utopian for socialists to want a society which does not give rise to the brutal behaviour which is an everyday feature of capitalism. In a society where all men and women stand in equal relationship to the means of life, where norms will not be dictated from above, where there will be sexual freedom and diversity, such cases as the Yorkshire Ripper will be a nightmarish reminder of an uncivilised past.

Steve Coleman

The Super-Opportunists: A Criticism of Bolshevist Policy (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Fatuous Policy
The Bolshevik leaders are opportunists. They start out with a definite programme and policy but change it completely when they find the world’s workers do not support them. Lenin, Trotsky, Radek, and the other officials denounced Kautsky, Henderson, Longuet, and others for their reformist policy, but we now have Lenin and Zinoviev advising the Socialist workers of England to take parliamentary action and join the Labour Party.

The report of the Executive of the Communist Party of Russia to the 1920 congress of the Third International lays down the position that we should get inside the Parliamentary Labour parties. This advice is anti-Socialist, as anybody with a knowledge of the history and composition of the Labour parties know.

The Bolshevik leaders told us that the workers of the world were ripe for revolution and their support of Bolshevism was expected and depended upon. Now that it is plain that workers do not understand socialism and fight for it, Lenin is pandering to the ignorance of the world’s workers. In defence he says that by supporting the pro-capitalist Labour Party and helping to establish a Labour Party government, the workers will learn the uselessness of the Labour parties.

The Logical Conclusion
If that policy is to be adopted, then it is necessary for the workers to follow every false road, to support every reactionary measure, and to join every movement and learn from their mistakes—in other words, exhaust every possible evil before they try the right road. If this policy is right why did not Lenin support Kerensky’s policy of capitalism for Russia and let the workers painfully learn its uselessness? Such nonsense as supporting parties and Governments to gain power to learn their misdeeds is not the road to Socialism, it is the path to apathy and despair, and lengthens capitalism’s life.

The Coat Turned
After spending much ink and eloquence in denouncing parliamentary action Lenin tells us in his interview in the Manchester Guardian that it is necessary in modern capitalist countries.

In his telegram to the British Socialist Party Lenin calls upon them to support parliamentary action by means of a Labour party. After all the attempts of Lenin to show that Marx and Engels believed in smashing the State power, Trotsky tells us in A Paradise for the Workers that we have to get control of the State power and use it instead of abolishing it. Radek, in his Communism—From Science to Action, denounced parliamentary action and majority rule, but in a recent letter to a German Communist he completely changes round and advises parliamentary action.

The Opportunist Weathercocks
Lenin, in his letter to the German party, supports Parliamentary Action and the winning of the masses in defiance of all his previous advice and previous praise of the Spartacan minority action. The Amsterdam Bureau of the Third International was abolished because it told the English Socialists not to engage in Parliamentary Action or to support the Labour Party. All this demonstrates the absence of any principle and simply to veer with the changing winds.

We have been denounced for our attitude of insisting upon the need of Socialists making a revolutionary use of parliaments. Our position, however, was based upon Socialist principles and a recognition of the facts of history, not a desire to pander to popular prejudices such as support of a dangerous and fraudulent Labour party.

We have opposed Kautsky’s reformism and opportunism because it is not Socialism and is against the principle of the Class Struggle. We are equally opposed to dangerous teachings if they come from Lenin, Radek, or any other man who sets himself up as a teacher of socialism. Our position is that taken up by Marx and Engels and made plain by them in their writings. Engels says in his last (1890) preface to the Communist Manifesto that we must gain the minds of the masses. Bolshevism, however, has depended for its triumph upon the minority, who ignored the majority of workers. So true is this that Radek in his pamphlet ridicules anything else in minority action for Socialism.

Bertrand Russell, who accompanied the Labour delegation to Russia in June, records his interview with Lenin in the Nation (July 10th and 17th), and Lenin there admits the opposition of the peasantry. Lenin in reply to Kautsky (The Dictatorship and the Betrayer Kautsky) does not attempt to deny Kautsky’s charge that the Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary delegates to the Soviets were suppressed in order to maintain Bolshevik majorities. Russell states the Soviets are moribund and that any other delegates than Bolshevik ones are denied railway passes and so cannot attend the Soviet meetings. He also says that the All Russian Soviet meets seldom, that the recall is exercised for minor offences, such as drunkenness, and that the delegates continually ignore their constituents. We do not accept Russell as an authority, but much of his report agrees with Bolshevik writings.

We have always contended that the Bolsheviks could only maintain power by resorting to capitalist devices. History has shown us to be correct. The January 1920 Congress of the Executive Communists in Russia abolished the power of workers control in factories and installed officials instructed by Moscow and given controlling influence. Their resolutions printed in most of the Labour papers and the Manchester Guardian here show how economic backwardness has produced industrial conscription with heavy penalties for unpunctuality, etc. The abolition of democracy in the army was decreed long ago, but now that the army is being converted into a labour army it means rule from the top with an iron hand.

Russia has agreed to repay foreign property-owners their losses and allied Governments their “debts.” This means continued exploitation of Russian workers to pay foreign exploiters.

With all the enthusiasm of the Communists they find themselves faced with the actual conditions in Russia and the ignorance of the greater part of its population.

There is no easier road to Socialism than the education of the workers in Socialism and their organisation to establish it by democratic methods. Russia has to learn that.

Adolph Kohn

Romford Division Branch. (1908)

Party News from the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Previous to the present season we were not permitted by the stamp-licking brigade to hold a quiet and orderly meeting in Ilford. All through last year we endeavoured to wear down the turbulent opposition which greeted us night after night. It was impossible to sell literature or take collections. The fight would have discouraged some, but did not have that effect upon us. We renewed the contest this season, and although the earlier meetings were somewhat lively we soon wore down that kind of opposition. We started the season with a heavy debt, but not only has this been paid, but a large quantity of literature has been purchased from Head Office and paid for. Sales and collections have been good and at the end of September quarter we were enabled to donate £3 to the Head Office. Outgrowing our Club Room we have taken a house at 27, York Road, Ilford, on a three years' agreement, on the ground floor of which lectures will be given. Several pounds have been spent in furnishing and any comrade or friend or opponent who cares to look us up will be welcomed. The Club is open every evening at 7.45.

J.

Snap Shots. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speaking at the Manchester Coal Exchange, the Rev. Conrad Noel said there were times when it would be perfectly right for Socialists to be Tariff Reformers. Socialism was an international movement and a tariff would be quite justifiable if a nation put up a barrier against the importation of sweated goods manufactured in another country.

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An international movement! And yet the producers in one part of the world are to put up tariffs to protect themselves against the producers in another part. Try again, Mr. Noel.

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“I ask them (the Labour Party) where would they have been but for free trade, education, Chinese labour, etc. Many of them were elected by Radical enthusiasm. Liberal votes and trade union funds.”

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Thus spake John Burns at Leeds on December 9th. Does he fear the Labour members will prove ungrateful to their Liberal allies?

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“The problem of Socialism is what to do with the unemployed rich.” That may be the problem from the Rev. Conrad Noel’s point of view, but as under Socialism there will be neither unemployed nor rich, all being employed and well- to-do, it is no problem for us.

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One more of Mr. Noel: "I think that possibly spending my time trying to urge stupid people to reorganise Society on a just foundation is productive work ; at any rate it is the very bed-rock of the work of a priest of the Church of England.

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The stupidity and cupidity of people are the parson’s opportunity, of which he takes full advantage.

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Politicians here, writes the London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, are greatly interested in the prospect held out by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald of the union between the two Labour parties in Parliament. But not much alarm has been caused by the announcement.

—++—

Why should there be any alarm? One Labour party will be quite as harmless to the master class and quite as useless to the working class as two or two hundred.

—++—

As to the Labour Party, they had every reason to be proud of those who had been sent to Parliament. They had done their work loyally and fairly, and he did not regard the Labour members as by any means the most dangerous section in the House of Commons. Colonel Kenyon-Slaney M.P.. at Liverpool. Sept. 24th, 1907.

—++—

Mr. W Crooks. M.P, who has signed the L.R.C. declaration, was present last month at a dinner at the National Liberal Club to mark the revival of "Progressive" activity in London affairs. Other Liberals present included Lord Carrington, Dr. Macnamara, etc.

—++—

Messrs. T. Glover and W. T. Wilson, both L.R.C. M P.’s, supported the National Liberal Federation at a meeting held on December 14th at the Memorial Hall, Manchester, to explain the provisions of the Small Holdings Act.

J. B.

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West Hull Election Notes. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Jas. Holmes, the “Labour” candidate, did his best to let folks know he was not a Socialist. He had never disguised the fact, he said.

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And yet he was supported, not only by the I.L.P., which openly advocates such a course of action, but also by the S.D.F., which claims to be “uncompromisingly revolutionary.”

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At the candidate’s meeting at the Beverley Road Baths on November 23rd, the chair was taken by Dr. J. Nelson, S.D.F.

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Mr. Holmes’ election address was like any other Radical’s. He believes that the national ownership of our rail ways, the taxing of unearned increment, the abolition of royalties on our mineral wealth, the re-assessment of the land tax, the freeing of the land from monopoly together with leasehold enfranchisement, are “ the real remedies against poverty and unemployment."

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“What Labour Leaders really think of the Liberal Party” was the frontispiece of a card issued by the Liberals. It contained the following five pars.

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1. Mr. Keir Hardie, M. P., says: (Labour Leader, Jan. 1907.) I have a profound distrust of party newspapers eulogies of Ministers on coming men, but in common fairness I must say that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has earned and fully deserves all the praise which is being heaped upon him.
2. Mr. David Shackleton M.P. says (Oldham. Oct. 1st., 1907.) The Labour Party has had experience of two Governments and I must say that the atmosphere of the House of Commons has changed. To-day we find ourselves, with very rare exceptions, supporting the measures brought in by the Government which are in the right direction.
3. Mr. A. Henderson, M.P. says : (July, 1907.) In spite of the House of Lords there remains to the credit of the Government an output of legislation benefitting the condition of the millions they represent, greater than ever had been accomplished by any session of parliament.
4.  If these things are true, why should Mr. Holmes split the Progressive vote? Don't be the catspaw of the Tory party.
5. Mr. A. H. Gill, M.P., President of the Trade Union Congress, in his Presidential Address, on September 3rd. 1907, made allusion to the legislative output. He said that the Act safeguarding Trade Union Funds and the Workmen's Compensation Act, were thorough and splendid pieces of constructive legislation. He thought the thanks of the workers were due to the Government for this valuable legislation.

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As Mr. Holmes, in some of his literature, even dropped "Labour” and asked the electors to "Vote for Holmes, the real Progressive," Mr. Wilson’s reference to the splitting of the Progressive vote was not out of place.

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Sir George Bartley, the Tory candidate, issued a poster upon which he stated that from 1898 to 1906 the Navvies’ Union paid John Ward and other officials £5.267 16s. 9d. in salaries and expenses and £6,180 3s. 0d. in benefits to members. Also that during 1892-3-4 the salaries of the officials of the Eastern Counties Labourers’ Federation amounted to £2,805 1s. 9d. and the members' benefits to £657 10s. 14d.

Blogger's Note:

1907 Kingston upon Hull West by-election wiki page

The elections in Iraq (2005)

From the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The indications of a  new social order, or re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as Iraq slides ever deeper into civil war?

Since the end of the Second World War, when the US forced the Italian government to discharge its Communist Party cabinet members as a prerequisite for aid, to its support for the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2003, the US has been regularly subverting elections around the globe for the benefit of its own corporate elite.

Ever fearful that foreign governments might, among other things, introduce labour and environmental legislation detrimental to US investments, Washington has opposed the principle of democracy on almost every continent, even helping to overthrow democratically elected governments whenever it felt its interests threatened (e.g. Iran in 1953, Guatemala 1954, Congo 1960, Ecuador 1961, Bolivia 1964. Greece 1967, Fiji 1987).

Nor have its methods been peaceable. Indeed its agents in the CIA have carried out assassination of prominent individuals with as much indifference as its embassies have supported right-wing death squads and bloody coup attempts throughout Central and South America. Across the world, the US has backed dictators of every hue, turning a blind eye to their horrendous affronts to the democratic process.

We are now to believe that the US, presently occupying “sovereign Iraq” (for President Bush has declared Iraq is now “sovereign”), a country with sizeable oil reserves, and which has lost 100,000 of its people since the US-UK invasion, will see  that free and democratic elections take place on 30 January. Bush has since informed the people of Iraq – the same Iraq in which the CIA helped Saddam Hussein pull off the military coup that originally brought him to power: “We will help you build a peaceful and representative government that protects the rights of all citizens. And then our military forces will leave.”

John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Iraq, has been adamant that the US will not allow a delay in the 30 January vote. Speaking to reporters he stated that the elections would go ahead and that the security situation would be improved by then, and went so far as to say that conditions in 15 of Iraq’s 18 provinces were already safe enough for elections to be held.

He said: “I think once they realize that the elections will go forward as planned, then they [Sunni opponents of the election] are going to have to deal with that reality” (Washington Post, 1 December). However the Sunni resistance looks set to spiral, his comments coming  just after it was reported that US deaths in Iraq in November matched the post-invasion record set in April – 135 troops dead.

In Washington and London,  the claim is that the ongoing attacks by insurgents are an all-out attempt to disrupt the coming elections, when in truth the overriding fact is that many Iraqis still see the US as an army of occupation whose presence they have a right to oppose. An opinion poll carried out in September by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority confirmed that opposition to the US presence was widespread. It revealed that just 2 percent of Iraqi Arabs – that is, minus the Kurdish population – agreed wholeheartedly with the occupation. If anything, this shows that in spite of the age-old hostilities between Sunnis and Shiites, one thing that could unite them is their hostility to an occupying army of 138,000 – a figure set to increase before the election.

Securing the peace in Iraq in time for the elections has so far meant installing a pliable puppet regime, and implementing Order 39, which the Economist (25 September 2003) described as “a capitalist’s dream” and which opened up the Iraqi economy to complete foreign takeover. It has meant the deliberate bombing of homes, hospitals and religious buildings by squadrons of bombers and helicopter gun-ships, turning cities into rubble (Fallujah was napalmed), cutting off water, electricity and medical supplies and spreading hunger and disease.

A comprehensive new study by the British-based charity organisation Medact, which looks at the impact of war on health, reveals that acute malnutrition among Iraqi children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years has increased from 4 percent prior to the invasion to 7.7 percent since the invasion and that about 400,000 Iraqi children are suffering from ‘wasting’ and ‘emaciation’ conditions of chronic diarrhoea and protein deficiency.

Despite such facts as these, Washington would have it that people in Iraq are being irrational in not supporting US-organised elections.

As we go to press, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish politicians are at odds over whether elections can take place on 30 January as planned. Iraq’s 60 percent Shia majority, who clearly suffered worst under Saddam’s reign, are keen for the elections to go ahead on time, knowing they are likely to consolidate the increased power they have enjoyed since overthrow of the essentially Sunni president Saddam. However, as rebels have continued their assaults on other towns since the fall of Fallujah, a campaign led by Sunni politicians has gathered momentum, with Shia leaders claiming that a postponement of the election date would only play into the hands of the insurgents.

The head of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has insisted that the elections go ahead. He has been backed by 42 mainly Shia and Turkmen parties who have issued a statement to say moves to delay the elections were illegal.

Conversely, Adnan Pachachi, a former Sunni minister, is heading a group of 17 political parties asking that the 30 January vote be delayed by six months because of the violence, fearing the insurgency in Sunni towns will discourage people from voting, thus disenfranchising them. Significantly, the two major Kurdish parties have also signed up to the delay

Alawi, the interim leader appointed by Washington to run Iraq, has said that in centres of resistance like Fallujah elections could be “delayed” until stability existed there, without the vote being invalidated, or in other words Washington-style democracy would will be available in the first instance only to those who did not resist the occupation by US forces.

Alawi, it seems, has no real control over the situation, and though it is said he has the power to cancel the election if he wished, there still exists the US hand-picked seven-member commission set up to run the elections, which can bar any candidate or party from standing and which will be deciding who is and who is not eligible to stand as a candidate.

Under the rules, the Iraqi electorate will vote for a 275-member Transitional National Assembly. Political parties will submit a list of candidates and every third name has to be a woman’s. Those Parties with alleged connections to militias are disqualified from taking part, along with former leading members of the Baath Party.

The US hopes to have 150,000 troops in place in time for the election, evidence if ever it was needed that the crisis in Iraq is escalating. It was not so long ago that Bush was boasting how US troops had been greeted as liberators and projected that the country could be policed with 50,000 troops by the end of 2003. Now military analysts are cautioning that the Iraq army and police force will not be in a position to police the country for another ten years. So much, then for Bush’s claim that once a legitimate Iraqi government is up and running the troops will be on their way home.

And as for the post-election situation, make no mistake, any government elected in Iraq will be permitted to function only so long as it kowtows to the dictates of Washington. Whatever, government is elected to ‘rule’ Iraq on 30 January it will only be allowed to do so with the endorsement of the White House.

Here in Britain, Bush’s sidekick, Tony Blair, is likewise looking forward to a post-election regime in Iraq that has no real say on foreign investment. Moreover, Blair is desperate for elections to take place in Iraq for the simple reason that he needs something resembling a foreign policy success to present to voters in the run up to the election. Indeed any good news at all at the moment would be welcomed by New Labour.

The essential goal of the Bush regime in the Middle East remains the same as that of preceding administrations going back to WWII, and that is to reinforce control of the region’s oil reserves and the profits that arise from them. Furthermore, Washington is well aware that control of Middle East oil gives the US enormous leverage over its economic rivals, Europe, Japan and China, all of whom are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than the US. China in particular is expected to have the same oil demands as the US within 25 years.

That Iraq has huge oils supplies is the sole reason the US cannot allow a government –  freely elected by its people and one advocating a US departure – to exist.

John Bissett

Devastating competition (2005)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol on the emission of greenhouse gases in October there was some rejoicing in environmentalist circles as this meant that the treaty now became binding on all the governments that had signed up to it. The environmentalists were well aware that the agreement was quite inadequate to achieve its stated purpose, but took the view that something was better than nothing.

In a socialist world, once a problem like this had been identified, the necessary remedial action could be taken rapidly. If scientists advised that greenhouse gas emissions had to be cut to avoid global overwarming and its consequences, then they would be, with the methods of energy production being changed to achieve this. It would essentially be a question of organisation, or rather of reorganisation. Everybody would have an interest in this being done, and it would be done.

But, under capitalism, while in the abstract everybody including those in charge of capitalist corporations has an interest in tackling the problem, the vested interests of capitalist corporations and governments get in the way.

Most of the excessive emissions of greenhouse gases come from burning oil and coal, but some countries depend more on this than others. They stood to be penalised vis-à-vis their competitors using other sources of energy in that their costs would rise more. So, supported by their governments, they fought against the treaty. This was the reason America refused to sign. Its government was not prepared to see its corporations rendered less competitive on the world market. And still isn’t.

But even in countries which have signed, the arguments about competitiveness still go on. At the end of October, the British government announced that it was raising the amount of carbon dioxide that factories, oil refineries and power stations in Britain could emit by 6.6 million tonnes a year for the next three years. Hardly a contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Referring to “the need to protect the competitive position of UK industry”, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett explained: “projections suggested that if we stuck with the original formula, it would have had a devastating effect on our industry” (Guardian, Times, 28 October). In other words, capitalist firms in other countries would be able to outcompete British ones through being able to keep their costs lower as a result of not having to spent so much on equipment to cut emissions.

Competition is said by supporters of capitalism to bring all sorts of benefits. Socialists can’t see any. The sad story of attempts to limit greenhouse gases shows that having production organised by separate enterprises all competing to make a profit has “devastating effects” both on the environment and on those working for them.

Party News (2005)

Party News from the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party will be standing a candidate in Vauxhall, in the coming general election. This is the constituency covering our Head Office in Clapham High Street and the campaign will be run by the South London, Central London and West London branches.

A programme of monthly activities (literature stalls, leaflet distribution, public meetings) is planned between now and the elections.

For details of how you can join in these activities, write to: London Election Committee, Socialist Party, 52  Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

Obituary: Paddy Boylan (2005)

Obituary from the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Paddy Boylan, Socialist, died aged 86 in Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, on Sunday 24 October.

Paddy had been a member of the Socialist Party of Ireland in Dublin before emigrating to England in 1958 to work, like many others from Ireland, in the then booming car industry in Coventry. He was secretary of the Coventry Socialist Group in the early 1960s, made up largely of other Socialists who had also been forced to leave Ireland to find work.

In Paddy, Socialism has lost a lifelong advocate here in Coventry and in his native Dublin. We who had the pleasure of knowing him will miss him.

PS

Editorial: Blunkett is guilty (2005)

Editorial from the January 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Blunkett is unquestionably guilty. We are not referring to all the inconsequential fuss about the ex-lover, her nanny, a visa and free rail tickets. No. The important position that Blunkett has abused is his own professed core belief in self-help which he has summed up by saying “Old Labour is the idea that you did things to people, New Labour is about enabling people to do things for themselves.”

Despite his experience of working class poverty, suffering and injustice in childhood, the political course he has followed, and is now transforming into government policies with his cabinet colleagues, in no way enables people to “do things for themselves”.

Blunkett has participated in fast-tracking British capitalism towards as much profit as possible, and because of this, New Labour has continued to “do things to people” which the minister declares he deplores. New Labour helps coerce people to work for employers who extract surplus value which is pocketed by parasitical shareholders. It restricts people from accessing goods and services with laws and enforcement, unless they’re capable of paying. It compels children to be conditioned (“educated”) into becoming the next generation of wage and salary slaves for employers to prey on. It assists in forcing upon us pollution, inequality, deprivation, stress, prostitution, drug abuse, gambling, inferior food, warfare, increased levels of cancer, corporate patenting of plant, animal and human genes and inevitable periodic economic downturns. It seeks to comprehensively pry and spy on us. It insists on imposing ID cards (or “entitlement cards” which reveals their true purpose). It makes a human being from one part of the world (the Philippines) who wants to work as a nanny in this part obtain a  permanent residency visa, or face being deported

All this is still done to us, despite Blunkett’s claim to want people free “to do things for themselves”, because his government, like any other, has no option but to put business profits before voters’ needs. As Home Secretary he has fiercely condemned the “scourge of drugs” and traffickers “making multi-million pound profits out of the misery of others”, yet he ignores the scourge of approved capitalists doing exactly the same thing. Bogus Blunkett, who said of his appointment: “As new Home Secretary I will be looking to listen and learn”, certainly won’t be listening to criticism of minority class ownership of the means of production and distribution, nor learning from history that governments don’t control capitalism — it is capitalism that controls governments.

Blunkett’s philosophy of “hand up rather than hand-out” welfarism, self-help, giving everyone an opportunity to succeed, and “participatory democracy” is worthless within capitalism where, at any stage, only a tiny few will prosper and hold sway at the expense of everyone else.

In a recent Observer (6 October) interview, the Home Secretary said “I do look back with a smile that many of the people who were in socialist societies [at Sheffield University during the 60s] ended up as being chief executive of some of our major companies. Like me I suppose”. Yes David, just like you. Corporate chiefs running the business side of British capitalism while you’re administering its political side. Still, when your cut from its profits is around £250,000 per annum with all manner of lucrative perks, grinning must be irresistible for an electoral hoodwinker working hand in glove with the boss class.

Our Message For 1944 (1944)

From the January 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there is one undisputed truth it is this: that the workers do not make wars, though they bear the main part of the burden of them, both in the fighting and in the miseries that flow from wars. When wars are being projected or are being fought, one of the principal aims of the rulers on both sides is to convince their working class that they have an overwhelming interest in success and the defeat of the "enemy," otherwise they might not know. They have to be told! The reason the workers have to be convinced is that no modern war is possible without the active participation of the workers. When the international working class understands the real cause of wars, the private property basis of modern society, wars will be abolished.

We are now entering upon a new year with a prophecy by Mr. Bevin ringing in our ears. Speaking in the House of Commons on December 10, he said:

  "For fifty years after the peace the nation will not be able to afford wasted manpower. If people are lost to industry through sickness or injury, be warned, 'you will have lost the war in spite of all the victories in the field.' "

(Daily Mail, 11/12/43.)

The "Mail" published it under the heading "50 Years' Labour Shortage."

If this is what so many have lost homes and lives for one could legitimately ask if the end were worth the means. But Mr. Bevin's prophecy will not fare any  better than Mr. Clynes' more modest estimate just after the last war. We were then told that it would take over 12 years to repair the wastage of the war, but in less than 18 months production had overtaken effective demand, and there were more than 2,000,000 unemployed. And it will be the same this time.

This insistence on working hard after the war, however, is becoming more and more general, and it has a very significant reason behind it. It is the same reason that lies behind the allegation that workers are getting high wages now. Capitalism is proceeding true to type. After the last war the employers forced wage reductions and Labour Leaders pleaded with the workers to work harder on the grounds that industry had been so badly hit by the war that it could not afford to pay even the relatively poor wages for which the workers asked. The wage standards of miners, railwaymen, builders and others were rapidly attacked and reduced. The miners' lock-out, leading to the “General Strike" of 1926, which left the workers almost defenceless at the mercy of the employers, was the final outcome and an example of what the workers gained from their sacrifices during the war. The employers, on the other hand, were able to accumulate enough wealth to build up large fortunes—and engage in another world war.

The same process is again foreshadowed. As soon as the war is over we will be faced with similar appeals to work harder to repair the damage of war. We will be told that workers are lazy and dirty. That it is no use giving them decent houses with bathrooms because they will keep the coal in the bath—and so forth. In fact, flimsy as present-day houses are, we are promised flimsier ones in future by a committee of the Lambeth Council who suggest that "future dwellings should be of less 'permanent' construction than those of to-day. . . . The reason they give, in their report, is that this would save money and prevent houses becoming obsolete by modern standards, although remaining structurally sound." (“Evening News," 18/12/43.)

The workers are quite obviously not lazy. When they are not working they are chasing jobs. When they are working they are ministering to the wealth of the employers. As the employers, as a class, do not work they must draw their incomes from the work of the workers. The workers are not only not dirty but it is amazing how so many can keep clean and have tidy homes when one considers their working conditions and the difficulty they have in making ends meet—even when the whole of the family are working. One of the tragedies of modern times is the spectacle of young people getting nice clothes and homes out of meagre wages and at considerable sacrifice. A society worth living in should be able to satisfy the dreams of youth without compelling them to suffer pains and penalties that embitter their later years. At the moment of writing there is an appeal coming over the wireless for contributions to a fund to aid crippled children. In savage societies the crippled were taken care of by the tribe. In modern society they depend upon the voluntary subscriptions of the poor. What a pointed condemnation of the society of our day.

The war has had far-reaching effects in many directions; much more so than the last great war. The national line-up will be vastly different from what it has been during the past century. Smuts has recently given a clear indication of this. The British Empire as an imperial unit is quite plainly a thing of the past. Although they may still form part of the same group, the Dominions are coming into their own as economic and political units. The struggle for sources of supply, spheres of influence, and markets will he profoundly affected by the new forces that the war has released; not only technical forces, but also the growth of new national units as well as the disintegration of the old.

Much more potent with meaning from the Socialist point of view is the effect the war has had upon workers. Thousands of young men and women have had an intensive scientific training in many directions associated with aircraft, wireless, chemistry and engineering. While on the one hand this education raises their intellectual standard and makes them better able to help lay the basis of a reasonable social system; on the other hand it will make them an extremely difficult problem for the capitalist when industry changes over to peace-time production and a large proportion of them becomes redundant. They will swell the resentful section of the workers who have to be placated, yet whose problems are insoluble under Capitalism. Wrestle how they will, the solutions offered by Capitalism will meet a bolder and colder reception as the worker's knowledge grows, and eventually, in spite of Beveridge plans, Education plans, and many more plans yet to be born, the workers will come to the conclusion that they must take control of their own destinies.

Capitalism has made possible an abundant production of the things we need, but its insatiable greed for profit has converted the producers into little more than beasts of burden, disease ridden and with twisted minds and bodies. It is rotten at the root and has soiled, the lives of people wherever it has raised its ugly head. But it has one merit. By bringing each section of the earth into a unified system, producing a wealth of articles for the world at large, it has prepared the ground for a new social system—Socialism—under which the means of production will be owned in common.

The future is promising for the spread of socialist ideas. The restrictions that at present hamper propaganda will have to be lifted, whatever may be the desires or intentions of our social rulers, because a pot that is left on the fire indefinitely will inevitably burst. The new year which we hare just entered should witness considerable progress towards our socialist objective, and it behoves all who sympathise with our outlook to do what they can to “shorten and lessen the birth pangs" of the new social system.

Gilmac.

An Economist Misses Her Marx (1944)

Book Review from the January 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

“An Essay on Marxian Economics," Joan Robinson (McMillan, 7s. 6d)

Those who have read Robert Tressell’s sketch of working-class existence, "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists," will remember the chapter entitled “The Oblong,” in which Owen, the house painter, tried to explain to his mates the division of wealth among the classes in modern society. Although nicknamed "the Professor,” Owen would hardly have passed first-class in an examination in Marxian economics. None the less, he expressed the gist of the matter fairly clearly in the remark, "As the money they get in wages is not equal in value to the things they produce, they find that they are only able to buy back a very-small part.” (P. 177.)

It is noteworthy that he used the idea of value. Though his two dozen fellow-workers made no pretence of culture, they were not so simple as to imagine that they were reconditioning and re-decorating that most desirable residence, "The Cave,” for the accommodation of any working-class family. So many ceilings sloshed with whitewash, so many walls stripped of old paper, so many rotten floorboards replaced by new ones, new fire-grates for old—all these things had to be brought into relation to the items of subsistence of those who could hardly aspire to a council house in the days of which Tressell wrote. In spite of their obvious differences push-bikes have something in common with Rolls-Royces. Shoddy is akin to broadcloth and black-puddings can be expressed in the same terms as the best grills at the Savoy, i.e., coin of the realm; for all have value. All have occupied a certain portion of the labour-time of society. In this respect they differ only in the quantity of value, in the amount of time which is necessary to produce them. The workers spend more time in producing for their masters than they spend in producing for themselves. This simple fact is hidden by wage-contracts. Like Owen's mates, the majority of the workers think that they are paid for their labour. The "great money trick,” as Owen called it, has to be analysed before the fallacy of their ideas can be grasped.

Any student of Marx knows that he based his analysis of Capitalism upon his analysis of value. Incredible though it may seem, an economist has "discovered" that “none of the important ideas which he [Marx] expresses in terms of the concept of value cannot be better expressed without it.” “An Essay on Marxian Economics," Joan Robinson (McMillan, 7s. 6d.; page 24). 'Again, "No point of substance in Marx's argument depends upon the labour theory of value” (p. 27). Once more, "The concept of value has no more application in the economics of Socialism than it has in the economics of the capitalist system” (p. 33). Readers of Marx may well wonder why such an insult is offered to them, .loan Robinson offers the following explanation: "The chief difficulty in learning from him [Marx] arises from the peculiar language and the crabbed method of argument which he used, and my purpose is to explain what I understand Marx to have been saying in language intelligible to the academic economist” (pp. v and vi), "Foreword.” The result is that, in spite of 114 references to "Capital” (Vols. I, II and III). "as a gauge of good faith” (p. vii), she manages to falsify Marx's meaning on his most fundamental points. Marx, of course, did not write specifically for academic economists. He merely presupposed "a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself” (p. xvi. Author's Preface, "Capital,” Vol. I, Sonnenschein Edition). He had therefore no use for the slick professional jargon current among the above-mentioned gentry, but preferred to express his meaning in terms which he was careful to define. Joan Robinson is equally careful not to define the terms which she coolly substitutes for those of Marx. One can only infer the sense in which she uses a term from the conclusions at which she arrives. Thus she persists in using the term "capital” to refer to what Marx defines as "constant capital," i.e., the money invested in the factors of production (other than human labour-power); such as machinery, raw material, etc.; and has the cool impudence to put forward the following travesty of Marx’s views: "Land and capital produce no value, for value is the product of labour-time” (p. 20). Marx sub-entitled his first volume "A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production.” The second chapter of volume II is entitled "The Rotation of Productive Capital.” Lastly, in volume I (p. 383), he wrote: ”Machinery, like every other component of constant capital, creates no new value, but yields up its own value to the product that it serves to beget.”

Marx went to considerable pains to make it clear that before the worker can indulge in labour-time he must sell his labour-power to the capitalist; whereupon it becomes just as much a part of productive capital as the machinery, raw materials, etc. Under Capitalism, therefore, production, that is, the labour-process, is a function of capital. It is capital's means of self-expansion.

Money makes money only because labour-power, fraught and sold for money, creates a value greater than its own. It does this by transforming the raw materials, by means of the machinery provided, into articles of consumption; thus preserving their value and adding further value to them at the same time. The process does not end with the bare re-production of their wages by the workers. It goes on in order that they may produce profit. Hence, the struggle between the workers (who are not interested in the production of profit) and their masters (who are) arises from the conditions of production under Capitalism.

Joan Robinson misconceives capital as a material thing. On p. 22 she attempts to distinguish between "capital” and “ownership of capital”; but: what is capital if not a particular form of ownership?

Machinery is not, in itself, capital, any more than is labour-power. Both productive factors have to be purchased by the capitalist and set in motion with a view to the production of profit. We may readily agree that "capital is necessary to make labour productive ” (p. 21) beyond a certain point; but only in the sense that the whip is necessary in order to make the chattel-slave produce. When the means of production have been converted into the common property of society they will have lost their capitalistic character. They will be used for the common good instead of being instruments of exploitation.

A glaring example of Joan Robinson's failure to present Marx's views correctly occurs on p. 27. Quoting two sentences from Vol. III, p. 221, she omits a most important bracket and thus manages to make Marx appear to suggest that "the exchange, or sale, of commodities” will continue under Socialism in spite of the fact that the plain meaning of the first sentence is contrary to any such assumption. When society establishes "a direct relation between the quantity of social labour-time employed in the production of definite articles and the quantity of demand of society for them," it will by that very act abolish the production and exchange of commodities, i.e., of articles of sale. Exchange is manifestly an indirect way of regulating the relationship between the labour-time spent and social demand.

.
On this flimsy basis our. authoress proceeds to juggle with alleged "problems of Socialism." These have been neatly exposed by Mr. T. A. Jackson in his criticism of her work (see “Plebs," May, 1943),, though it is to be regretted that even he lapses, however momentarily,' into her jargon when he refers to " increases in capital" in a socialist community,

To the present writer it appears that Joan Robinson's crowning audacity consists of her assertion on p. 42 that “Marx can only demonstrate a falling tendency in profits" (she means rate of profit) “by abandoning his argument that real wages tend to be constant."

This is on the strength of Marx's “assumption" of a constant rate of exploitation in his illustration on p. 247 of vol. III. An examination of this page shows clearly that Marx's purpose here is simply to demonstrate that a given rate of surplus value will express itself in different rates of profit according to the different volumes of constant capital.

As one goes through the chapter one finds that Marx gives illustrations which completely refute Joan Robinson's contention. On p. 253 Marx devotes half the page to showing that a higher rate of exploitation is consistent with a lower rate of profit. Instead of analysing Marx's figures and showing wherein they are wrong, our academic guide trots out some hotch-potch of her own from which her bugbear, the concept of value, has been completely eliminated. This prevents her from showing even what the rate of profit actually is, but she is not to be deterred by mere trifles like that. She proceeds to assert that if (as a result of an increase in productivity) a 10 per cent. increase in constant capital leads to an equal increase in the mass of profit (in terms of “product" as distinct from value) then "the rate of profit on capital would be constant" (p. 44).

A consideration of the following figures should show the falsity of this remark. It will be observed that a principle which applies to a 10 per cent. increase applies equally to an increase of 200 per cent. in capital and profit in terms of “ product," to avoid awkward fractions.

1. Constant Capital £100. Variable Capital £50. Surplus value £50.
2. Constant Capital £300. Variable Capital £25.  Surplus value £75.

In (1) the rate of exploitation is 100 per cent., that of profit 33-1/3 per cent.
In (2) the rate of exploitation is 300 per cent., that of profit 23-1/13 per cent.

In (2) productivity is assumed to have doubled, while real wages (in terms of "product") have remained constant, falling in value by half. The capitalist's share (whether expressed in terms of "product" or value) is now three times us large as that of the worker's, just as the constant capital is three times as large as in the first instance. None the less the rate of profit (as distinct from its mass) has fallen by 10 per cent.

This illustration is not intended to do anything more than to show the unreliability of "the more precise and refined methods of modern analysis " (Joan Robinson's “ Foreword." p. vi), and to point the suggestion that even academic economists might do worse than to read Marx for themselves.

This brief review does not profess to have dealt exhaustively with Joan Robinson's misconceptions. It may be noted, however, that her unreliability is not confined to purely theoretical points. On p. 38 she says, “Marx's argument requires modification if it is to be brought into line with the rise in real wages which has actually occurred in modern times." Here is a magnificent opportunity for her to produce some practical evidence in support of a statement. One looks for it in vain, as we are merely referred to certain unnamed "conservative trade-anion leaders, who look back to their own ragged and barefoot childhood and count up the blessings which Capitalism has brought to the workers." (Footnote to p. 39.)

In his small volume, “The Worker's Share” (Allen A Unwin), Mr. A. W. Humphrey showed in 1930 that, " accepting the estimate of Dr. Bowley and Sir Josiah Stamp, we may say that a problematical 5 per cent. was the only improvement in the average income of working-class households between 1914 and 1929 " (p. 80). Has Joan Robinson forgotten the posters on the hoardings in the winter of 1928-9: " A million of your fellow countrymen are in need of food and clothing"? This referred, moreover, only to the miners, at one time among the highest-paid workers. The fact that some of the lower-paid workers have risen towards the average level in living memory by no means offsets the lot which has overtaken others who were above the average; particularly noticeable being those in the export trades (such as the textiles), shipbuilding, etc. Increases in wage-rates by no means guarantees employment at those rates.

In spite of her academic outlook it must be conceded that Joan Robinson admits the exploitation of the workers, and here and there hints at expropriation of the capitalists as the remedy. She even credits Marx with penetrating insight. Her attempts to criticise his theories, however, fail just as effectively as those of her predecessors.

Eric Boden

Working-Class Wives (1944)

From the January 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent Court of Appeal decided that housekeeping savings belong to the husband.. This decision aroused indignation amongst many women; but why? The judge was right. A worker's wife is little better than a chattel-slave, though it is perhaps true that love enters into marriage more to-day than it did in the past.. Yet the economic bondage of women remains fundamentally the same.

We live under a system of society known as Capitalism, which is made up of property relationships, one of which is marriage. In order to live, a working-class woman must either sell her labour-power to an employer, secure a husband or resort to prostitution. If she chooses marriage, as nearly all women do, she will receive in return for her services food, clothing and shelter according to her husband's means.

As the majority of men are propertyless, they are compelled to .sell their labour-power to the capitalist class, who in return provide them with the means to keep themselves in a state of efficiency and also to maintain a wife and family. Most work is regarded as unskilled, therefore the means which the majority of men receive are simply for the necessities of life.

So women who marry these men are forced to live in poverty, and the very idea of saving any of their housekeeping money is ludicrous. In view of this we can conclude that for these women to enjoy equality in this state of poverty is impossible, for they are dependent on the goodwill of their husbands. The end of the exploitation of women will only come when they unite with men to abolish capitalism, which enslaves them both, and substitute it by socialism,, under which no one will be economically dependent on another and all will enjoy complete freedom and equality.

D. M.