Banks – Who needs them? (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are few places in the world more pointless than a bank. There are few compelled to toil more uselessly than bank employees. In every respect, the function of banks is to facilitate a form of exchange in which nothing is produced and much can be lost. A world without banks would be a wholly better place.

Under capitalism banks are temples to the secular god of Money. These temples have no time for obsolete rituals of prayer and worship, the fool’s dances of a bygone age. In the bank capitalism does its business, in much the same way as a dog in the park does its business, and with remarkably similar effects. People in banks spend their time doing bizarre activities which seem to emanate from quasi-religious commandments. They fill in endless pieces of paper. They count pieces of paper and then recount them to be sure. The high priests sit behind unbreakable glass windows and the unclean feed them with more pieces of paper. There are machines built into walls which, upon revelation of secret numbers, pour out more pieces of paper. Upon these papers are written not one word of intelligible prose, less still poetry. These scribes of the bank are not working on writing dissertations, new equations or even their random thoughts. No, they fill in prescribed codes and figures and in return are given other papers, equally without content, which they guard with their lives.

Some enter the bank as wage slaves, there to count, shuffle and recount for a living. It is work so tedious that now they are training computers to do it so that the bank staff can be liberated to the dole queues. Some enter with grand schemes. These usually involve borrowing, a relationship which calls for much paper-filling, nail-biting and human degradation. Others enter with lost hope. They come to claim what they know is not theirs. They ask to have access to that which the bank machine will not give. They are full of excuses, promises and submission without depth to the petty gods of the counter. But they leave more often than not as dejected and poor as when they arrived. Banks are not there to listen to the cries of the needy.

Unlike the wretched churches of yesteryear, banks charge you for using them. The machine charges for pressing its buttons and the clerks now charge to answer questions about what has happened to your money. Of course, they will not answer very profound questions about where your money has been invested, the rate of profit and how it arises. But even a question about how much of your money they’ve got costs money these days. They even charge money to write you a letter telling you that you have no money. If they owned the pavements they would probably charge you for walking past.

Ah, the wonders of the internet! Now we can do our banking by computer. Bank employees can be sent to get jobs as walking puppets in the Dome while you key in your personal details and . . . clickety click: you’re broke, buster.

Of course, it’s not the sewers that are smelly and unclean, it’s the crap. It’s the same with banks. There’s no harm in banks as buildings. Put a snooker table down the middle and turn the counters into bars and they could be quite jolly. Money is what stinks. Banks stink of money and money stinks of property—yours-mine-not yours. And because we live in a yours-mine-not yours society where few things are yours or mine, but most belong to a small minority who own and control the world, the stench of money prevails.

So, we need to abolish money before we can get rid of banks. But to get rid of money we need an end to property. And you can’t abolish property relations until you abolish capitalism. Good idea. Let’s abolish capitalism and live in a moneyless, propertyless world without bloody banks.

Steve Coleman

Reflections on “Reflections on June 18” (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The events in London and in many other places around the world on 18 June 1999 were significant and, in many ways, encouraging. Here we had “an action which attacks capitalism itself”. An action which claimed to attack capitalism itself, rather than a particular aspect of it. What’s more, let’s not forget this was global: actions and demonstrations were undertaken from Bangladesh to Nigeria to Germany to Uruguay. Since then there has been the “Battle in Seattle” accompanying the World Trade Organisation meeting and there’s more to come with events planned for 1 May no less (M1Y2K).

So, plenty of interest for those of us trying to organise for world socialism—and we in the Socialist Party are serious in wanting to talk with anyone who shares our aim of abolishing capitalism, with its destruction and wage slavery, and replacing it with common ownership and a united, classless human society.

One of the interesting things to come out of J18 has been a collection of articles written mainly by people involved in the events, called Reflections on June 18. What is most heartening is that these contributions show a critical and thoughtful attitude. Without exception they are written with a view to progressing from what they see J18 to have been towards a deeper understanding of how capitalism really dominates us, and of how we can get rid of it. They are particularly aware of the dodgier political perspectives of some of those involved. Specifically, they pre-empt what may become a major ruling class tactic to stifle any coming movement against capitalism—i.e. that of presenting “capitalism” purely in terms of finance capital (stock market wheeler dealing) and “multinational corporations”. And in a way, by concentrating in the UK on “the City” J18 has shown the dangers of this. All the Square Mile is is one of those places where the thieving bosses gamble with the wealth they extract from us. The profits and power of the ruling class comes though from the wider capitalist mode and process of production and exploitation. As one article puts it:

“Capitalism is not a place (‘financial centres’) or a thing (‘multinational corporations’), it is a social relationship dependent upon wage labour and commodity exchange where profit is derived from capital’s theft of unpaid labour” (our emphasis).

Concentrating on “nasty” finance capital and multinationals and defining “capitalism” in those terms can only end up as a massive diversion from the goal of abolishing the capitalist system. In fact it is potentially disastrous. As more than one contributor in Reflections on June 18th notes, targeting “finance” and “big business” (or the WTO) is something a lot of disparate groups can agree on—including those of the extreme nationalist right. The idea of “bad” multinationals as the “undemocratic” enemies of government and the nation state is bound to be seized on enthusiastically by both nationalists and smaller, local capitalists. Equally with the notion of “globalisation” being the real problem—as though capitalism as a system hasn’t always been a globalising one. It is the nature of capitalism as a system to seek to expand remorselessly—until, that is, we end the whole system of class ownership of the means of production, of wage labour and of production with a view to profit.

Which sort of leads to the issue of the “activist mentality” raised by one article. This makes an important point about what social revolution is all about:

“[T]he identification of some cause separate from one’s own life . . . is fundamentally mistaken—the real power of capital is right here in our everyday lives—we re-create its power every day because capital is not a thing but a social relation between people (and hence classes) mediated by things.”

Until, of course, we decide as a majority to take the political action necessary to change our lives.

Ben Malcolm

World View: Famine or farce in Ethiopia? (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Sixteen years after television cameras first brought the plight of Ethiopia’s starving millions into our living rooms, sparking the Live Aid rescue mission of 1985, history appears to be repeating itself on the Horn of Africa.

Just as it needed live images of children starving to death to shake Western governments out of their complacency all those years ago, having had prior warning that a famine was on the cards, so too now has the full threat of a famine had to become a reality before the world could sit up and take notice.

This time round, the Ethiopian famine was well predicted. In April of last year, the UN’s early warning system (GIEWS) reported that two years of drought were threatening two million people in Ethiopia with starvation. Nobody listened. Five months later, with further rain failures, the World Food Programme warned that 5.3 million Ethiopians faced starvation. Still, the cries fell on deaf ears. In January of this year, a UN mission in Ethiopia reported that 8 million faced starvation and that 800,000 tonnes of food were urgently needed to avert catastrophe.

At the beginning of April this year, the Ethiopian story finally hit the news headlines, but now with 16 million facing starvation in Ethiopia, as well as Eritrea, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda, and with a further two million expected be added to this figure if the May rains fail to save the June harvest.

Perhaps many Ethiopians will recall the comments made by one key Ethiopian minister back in 1998 and recounted recently in the editorial of one Ethiopian daily.

In Kissingerian* fashion, the minister in question announced that “hunger in Ethiopia is already a thing of the past . . . has already been eliminated” and that Ethiopia would be food self-sufficient within five years and producing a food surplus ( Tamret Bekele in the Addis Tribune, 6 April).

Of course, we cannot criticise this individual for failing to foresee the present tragedy. He after all has no more control over the weather than the Ethiopian economy. But his remarks do point to the misplaced confidence people have in the present system and the inability of capitalist society to avert catastrophe because of its insistence in prioritising profit before need and in failing to implement long-term provisions.

Most of the aid given to Ethiopia in the 1980s was spent on emergency provisions, with little set aside for forward planning and for heading off the problems that made rescue missions so difficult back in ’85. Roads and bridges came low on the list of priorities, as did systems for storing what water did fall on the drought-prone regions. Vulnerable areas, like the Ogaden region were known to offer precarious living conditions but no plans were made for population relocation.

Again, much is hampering the current relief effort. Firstly, as in 1985, there is another war with Eritrea, sparked by an Eritrean invasion over a border dispute and which provides western governments with an excuse to cut aid – the logic being that aid is side-tracked into the military machine. Though not exonerating the likes of Clare Short, Britain’s overseas development minister whose idea it was to penalise Ethiopia for its border dispute nor the Ethiopian government who claim they did not start the conflict in the first place, as socialists we are upset that in an area desperate for concerted human co-operation and a willingness to work together in face of an overwhelming crisis, half a million men are dug into trenches preparing to kill one another over a piece of land none of them will profit from.

As in 1985, food distribution is also proving a logistical nightmare, with poor roads and the threat of inter-clan warfare and banditry halting the relief effort. Moreover, since the conflict with Eritrea, land-locked Ethiopia has since lost the use of two key Eritrean ports And, at present, mid-April, only 50 percent of the food needed has actually been pledged, with only a small percentage of this actually getting through.

Again, the current crisis and the famine of 1984-5 were sparked off by rain failure. But there are major differences now. The Ethiopian population is now 60 million, twice its size in 1985, which means an increasing rural population has had to work, and overwork, smaller parcels of land, which could only ever produce weaker and weaker yields. Added to this has been the shrinking availability of fertilisers. Ethiopia’s use of fertiliser, at 7kg of nutrients per hectare is half the sub-Saharan average and about seven percent the world average (statistics from Addis Tribune, 6 April).

After the 1985 famine the Ethiopian government sought to hold 350,000 tonnes of food in reserve to help avert further crises, but with 50,000 tonnes remaining at the beginning of April, it is evident a massive overseas contribution is needed to help provide the basic 7.2 million tonnes needed to feed the Ethiopian population in the year ahead.

What percentage of pledged food actually gets through remains to be seen, but it’s a fair guess it will fall far short of the 1.2 million tonnes the Ethiopian government estimates is needed urgently. Again, it is too early to predict whether or not the May rains will come and provide a desperately needed source of water to a country in which only 27 percent of the population have access to clean water even in the wet seasons, as well as saving the June harvest.

Only a month ago this journal reported on the natural disaster Mozambique encountered when the skies dumped a year’s rain on the country in a few short weeks, flooding tens of thousands of square miles. It seems something of a sick irony that we now comment on a country a few thousand miles up the same east coast of Africa that has awaited rain for three years.

In the years ahead we can well predict to comment on further natural disasters as the effects of global warming kick in and, more, to continually point to the failure of capitalism to effectively mobilise its vast technological resources to the benefit of those in direst need. As in Ethiopia 15 years ago, so too now will history continue to repeat itself, as tragedy, then as farce.

*At a world food summit in 1973, Henry Kissinger announced that global hunger would be eradicated within 10 years. There were then 400 million chronically malnourished people on the planet (a 75 million increase over the previous ten years). That figure now stands at 800 million.

John Bissett

World View: Target Indonesia (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Is Australia preparing for a possible war with its erstwhile ally Indonesia?

In outback Western Australia, on a road to nowhere (actually a place called Warburton north of the Great Victoria Desert), lies Laverton; and nearby there is a forest of metal towers, military structures, which form part of a new, until recently secret, “Jindalee” over-the-horizon radar network that spies on Indonesia. There are similar radar sites at Longreach in Queensland and at the United States/Australian Joint Defense Space Research facility at Pine Gap, south-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. These link to 16 beacon sites from Ajana, north of Geraldton in Western Australia, through RAAF Leamouth, RAAF Curtin, Broome, Humpty Doo, Horn Island south of the Torres Straits opposite New Guinea, Queensland, and downwards to RAAF Schenger and Lynd River¸ also in Queensland. Importantly, they link to a beacon station on Christmas Island, an Australian possession 250 miles south of Jakarta. The while system connects to RAAF surveillance headquarters in Adelaide.

The network enables radar operators to observe all air and sea traffic up to 2,000 miles beyond the Australian northern coast, and halfway across the Indian Ocean, to link up with the United States base on Diego Garcia, without the need for air or sea patrols.

According to the West Australian (18 March) the Jindalee network underpins “Australian defence planning based on repelling an invader through the Indonesian archipelago”. The Laverton base has twice the range of the Longreach and Alice Springs sites. The new radar system is so accurate that its operators in Australia can see RAAF Hercules C130 troop carriers turning on their final approach Dili Airport. And Jindalee radar can also detect US stealth bombers, which normally remain invisible to ordinary conventional, land-based radar. The cost, however, has not come cheap. Comments the West Australian:

“Jindalee’s losses have contributed to more than $1 billion overspent on botched Australian defence projects. Mismanagement of the original Jindalee project cost prime contractor Telstra a whopping $609 million in cost overruns before the project was rescued in 1997 by Lockheed Martin.”

Another $250 million was required for the first two of Australia’s six new Collins Class submarines; and another $272 million is needed in the current year to top up the original “defence” estimates to refit two former United States Navy ships for the Royal Australian Navy.

At the time of writing, there are about 40,000 Australian troops in East Timor. They are not there to defend Timorese workers, but to defend Australian business interests and investments, the vast oil fields and reserves under the sea between East and West Timor and northern Australia and, if necessary, to take on the Indonesian armed forces in any future dispute. It should not be forgotten that, in 1964, the government of Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, planned to bomb Indonesia and its capital, Jakarta, if it escalated its confrontation with Malaysia. And, in fact, Australia sent troops as well as the SAS into Indonesian Borneo/Kalimantan. Such are the priorities of capitalism.

Peter E. Newell

Irish workers feel the pinch (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

All is not well in the “Celtic tiger”. Just after trade unions, employers and the government were passing the Partnership for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF)—a national agreement on pay and conditions—Dublin bus drivers were taking strike action in support of a 20 percent pay claim with the promise of more to come.

For the employers, government and trade union leaders, the PPF is presented as a genuine attempt to divide up Ireland’s new found wealth equitably between capitalists and workers, but in fact it is an attempt to head off the increasing likelihood of further class struggle as the Irish economy shows signs of slowing down.

The PPF which is set to run for a period of 33 months, allows basic pay to rise by 5.5 percent for each of the first 12-month periods and four percent in the final four-month period. However, linked to pay rises are agreements on productivity increases. This had led to unions such as the Teachers’ Union of Ireland rejecting the deal outright whilst others such as SIPTU (public-sector—including bus drivers) and building workers (BATU) are threatening militant action.

Dubbing Ireland the “world’s fastest growing economy” has almost become a cliché of late. Over recent years a combination of EU membership and subsidy plus massive Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from American multinationals desperate to set up inside the single market has propelled the economy forward. Last year a growth rate of 7.5 percent was recorded and this year, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) a rate of 7.25 percent is expected. However, with six percent being predicted for 2001 the importance of the PPF for the employing class should be obvious. However, many Irish workers do not feel that they are fully participating in this new prosperity. They are certainly working harder—often in low paid employment—but the capitalists have been the main benefits of the boom.

Another problem for the capitalist class is that the Irish economy is facing a potential labour shortage which on its own terms threatens the growth of the economy. This has led to the government actively recruiting skilled labour from overseas (including Irish emigrants) to bridge the gap. Some economists have pointed out that such a policy is likely to put intolerable pressure on public and private housing in terms of provision and surging house prices (especially around Dublin). However, a labour shortage puts the working class in a strong position and clearly the employers wish to counteract this.

The labour shortage problem was foreseen by the government as early as 1995 when it passed immigration legislation deliberately widening the definition of “refugee” in order to recruit skilled labour. This, however, has not prevented anti-asylum seeker outbursts from leading politicians and headlines in Irish newspapers talking of “floods” in much the same way as tabloid newspapers do in Britain. Asylum-seekers have been blamed for the shortage of public housing, but a cursory look at the government’s own figures reveal that this problem already existed. The Labour Party leader Rory Quinn has even suggested that asylum-seekers with skills should be integrated into Irish society for everyone’s benefit, which is reassuring for everyone but especially the capitalists who can smell profit from asylum-seeker labour power.

As boom turns to recession, which under capitalism is as inevitable as night following day, expect to hear more from the Emerald Isle as workers begin to fight for a bigger slice of the pie and the capitalists remind everyone of “social partnership” and the PPF, not to mention the asylum-seekers—the usual scapegoats.

Dave Flynn

Highland Hypocrisy (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare a tear for that hard-up aristocrat John MacLeod of MacLeod. The poor man’s castle is badly in need of repair so he has had to put on the market his beloved Cuillins. This is an area of real estate consisting of 35 square miles of mountain range, bordered by 14 miles of coastline and two salmon rivers. So desperate for the readies is the poor fellow that he is prepared to let it go for a mere £10 million.

 “I regard the Cuillins as priceless”, he said. “They are part of my soul and putting them up for sale is an extremely painful experience. They are my ancestors. Our clan grew out of the history of the Cuillins” (Times, 23 March).

What the fellow doesn’t tell us of course is that, like all Clan Chiefs, his ancestors stole the land in the first place. The ownership of the land was vested in the whole clan until the Chiefs stole it from them. It is a process that is well-documented by Karl Marx in Capital:

“The Highland Celts were organised in clans, each of which was the owner of the land on which it was settled. The representative of the clan, its chief or ‘great man’, was only the titular owner of this property, just as the Queen of England is the titular owner of all the national soil. When the English government succeeded in suppressing the intestine wars of these ‘great men’, and their constant incursions into the Lowland plains, the Chiefs of the clans by no means gave up their time-honoured trade as robbers; they only changed its form. On their authority they transformed their nominal right into a right of private property, and as this brought them into collision with their clansmen, resolved to drive them out by open force” (Volume I, page 681).

The journalist John MacLeod mockingly describes how the title of “MacLeod of MacLeod” is another piece of robbery as the man exulting in that grandiose title was actually born John Wolridge-Gordon. Commenting on the proposed sale of the estate, he digs up some edifying information about how a previous MacLeod “great man” tried to raise money:

“In 1739 The MacLeod kidnapped dozens of his tenancy and attempted to sell them as slaves to Barbados” (Herald, 4 April).

Richard Donnelly

Agitprop (2000)

Book Review from the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘More Agitation: Political Satires and Other Poems’, by Bob Dixon. (Artery Publications: Bromley, 1999)

There are some good little poems in here, and a few I could either take or leave. Bob Dixon has also written some criticism on children’s fiction in his Catching Them Young books, looking at the head-fixing “literature” that has been aimed at children in order to help mould them into good little workers with the required levels of patriotism, fear, and conformity. In this spirit a foreword to this collection states his principled position that he would like these poems to be used in schools, but never “in connection with any examination, test, or competition”. Good stuff. Though it is debatable whether poems called “The Poet, in Capitalist Society, Speaks” or “Fascist Haiku” are ever likely to see the light of day inside the classroom.

In the poem “The General Election” the poet is visited by various politicos who don’t impress him much. Refusing to pledge allegiance to the Labour candidate he asks, “I’m a socialist/so why should I vote for you?”. Too right.

Then, a “Marxist man” sails into view. Who could this be?! I’d like to think this might refer to someone presenting the case for common ownership and self-emancipation, but fear we may be talking the Left Wing of Capital here. However, the poet is going to vote for him—as long as there’s not going to be any backstabbing or “shilly-shallying”. Get those pigs ready to fly! Next up is some fascist knuckledragger. So, it looks like Tweedledum and Tweedledee have been joined by Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber.

Apparently some of these poems have appeared in Socialist Worker. Funny; they don’t really seem them, y’know. Perhaps some eulogy to the massacre at Kronstadt would be more in the SWP line.

Ben Malcolm

Obituary: Len Young (2000)

Obituary from the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Len Young, the longest serving member of Birmingham Branch died of cancer on 5 April at the age of 81. He joined the Socialist Party in 1942. Although his health in recent years prevented him from being active, he was one of the main pillars of the branch for many years, speaking regularly from the outdoor platform in the Bull Ring. He had a loud, deep voice (quite unlike the gentle speech he had in casual conversation) which could gather listeners from far away. And because he was a big man he made an imposing figure on the platform. The post-war years saw outdoor meetings of hundreds of people and it was members like Len who developed into impressive orators to take advantage of the interest and enthusiasm for politics and explain the necessity of removing capitalism before there could be any amelioration in the position of the working class.

Ron Cook

See you, Jimmy (2000)

TV Review from the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Louis Theroux seems to have spent the last few years investigating all manner of weirdness and eccentricity, reporting on his findings for BBC2. Last month, as documented in When Louis Met Jimmy, the object of his investigation was Sir James Savile OBE, former miner, wrestler, disc-jockey, charity campaigner and general celebrity fix-it man. It turned out to be the most compelling viewing on TV for some while.

Theroux spent a week with Sir Jimmy, travelling up and down the country with him and spending time at some of his seven residences. They developed one of those relationships whereby one person (in this case Theroux) is constantly treading on eggshells when in the presence of the other. That this was the case is partly explained by the fact that no room has yet been built large enough to accommodate an ego in addition to Jimmy Savile’s own. It was accentuated further by the actions of Theroux himself, whose prevailing air reflects the type of studied insouciance normally associated with disaffected undergraduates.

Theroux’s line of approach is generally one of seeking out significant and revealing minor details about people that others would tend to miss. In this regard, he can be too clumsy for his own good on occasion and at other times tends to latch on to details that are less instructive than he hopes. In this particular programme, Theroux demonstrated a fixation with Sir Jimmy’s underpants and the revelation that he only seems to use the one pair. It was indeed a revelation of sorts but quite how instructive it was meant to be was less obvious. In this sense Theroux himself was revealed as an interviewer specialising in Hello-magazine type intrusion, but with the cynic’s cutting edge.

More instructive was Theroux’s exposure of how Savile manipulates the media for his own ends, and almost maniacally so at that. When he’d broken a bone in his foot walking near his Highland retreat”I fell off my own mountain”he rang up the local hospital pressurising them to let in the media (including Theroux) so that he could be filmed having his plaster cast put on. By way of reminder, he told hospital staff that he’d bought them “lots of machines”, just in case they were wavering about being invaded by the media circus. When Savile saw his picture in all the tabloids the next day he was as happy as he got throughout the entire week, as if the packaging of his life, and his appearance as a media commodity, was real and tangible evidence that he, as an individual, did actually exist.

Tell us about the money, honey 

But amongst all of Theroux’s snooping, there was plenty that he missed, most of it of more significance than Savile’s y-fronts. We were told, for instance, that Savile has seven homes, many of which look hugely expensive. He wears jewellery that costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, including an extortionately-priced diamond-encrusted Rolex watch. He gets driven around in a limousine (amongst other things). Yet not once did Theroux attempt to comment about how this formerly working-class Yorkshireman could afford all these things. Did he really get them through presenting radio programmes, Top of the Pops and then Jim’ll Fix It? Or does he have other massive sources of income, especially now that the only “work” as such that he does any more is for charity?

Speaking of which, Theroux didn’t bother asking him why he feels charity is quite so important either. The impression Savile likes to give is that the £40 million he claims to have personally raised for charity defines his status and justifies everything he does, meaning that he can deflect impertinent queries with remarks like “well how much have you raised for charity then?”, the same technique habitually employed by Bernard Manning. Though Theroux looked like he was going to tackle Savile about this on one or two occasions, he never did, nor, unfortunately did he ask him why he thought charity was—or should be—so necessary. Did Theroux not see a link between the patronising attitude adopted towards him by Savile which he complained about on occasion, and the whole charity shebang that Savile is immersed in as some sort of benevolent Godfather of Largesse?

That Savile is an intelligent man is without dispute, and it would therefore have been instructive if Theroux had given him the chance to explain why charity is still necessary in a world of plenty and if, for that matter, he ever feels in his charity work like he is performing the labours of Sisyphus. This is a pity for us and Theroux because Savile’s reply may well have been far more revealing of his egomania and tendency towards self-justification than a thousand wry comments about the state of his underwear.

DAP

Blogger's Note:

Obviously a lot of stuff has come out about Savile since his death. He really did pull a fast one over a hell of a lot of people.

50 Years Ago: Misery from Surplus, Profit from Disaster (2000)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

[. . .] One of America’s problems is too many potatoes. The Government pays the farmer the guaranteed price for his potato crop on the farm, then the farmer pays a trifling price to the Government and buys them back again, but only on condition that he does not sell them in the market but uses them as animal feeding stuff. He can if he likes let them rot. Some potatoes are painted with blue dye so that they cannot illicitly be sold to the public for human consumption.

The truth is that capitalism can produce a surplus in terms of the market, the final result of which will be a cutting down of production, but it never has produced enough of all the things human beings need to satisfy their requirements.

The powers of production reached under capitalism could, if fully used and if devoted to human needs instead of being largely wasted on armaments, etc., satisfy all the requirements of the human race. But to allow them to be so used would wreck the complex and delicate marketing and profit-making organisation of the capitalist system.

(From editorial, Socialist Standard, May 1950)

Greasy Pole: The Death and Life of Selsdon Man (2000)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was early in 1970 and Harold Wilson’s government, which less than four years before had been returned with an emphatically increased majority, was sinking deeper and deeper into unpopularity. The Conservative opposition’s leader, Edward Heath, was very different from his predecessors Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home, with their image of long days slaughtering on the grouse moors. In keeping with this, the Tories went out to persuade the voters that they were a party of radical change. Some months were devoted to labouring over policy reviews and draft manifestos and in February 1970 the leaders met at the Selsdon Park Hotel to draw it all together into a programme designed to win them the next election.

The discussions at Selsdon were driven by Heath’s desire to get into Number Ten with a more or less clean sheet, as a leader who was reacting against the past. This meant against the confused and erratic blundering of Wilson’s government, which the prime minister liked to describe as pragmatism but which others might call a triumph of opportunism over principle. In fact, in electoral terms there was something to be said for the “clean sheet” because there had been several examples of stunning victories after the promise to be a purgative change from a dismal, discredited past. This was the case when Labour won in 1945 and again in 1964 and since then it has happened with Thatcher in 1979 and Blair in 1997.

Thatcherism

The decisions taken at Selsdon Park were centred on a concern about tax cuts, a more vigorous programme of law enforcement (both of them voter-attractive) and a more selective access to social services and state benefits (which have become more popular in recent times). “After the 1964 and 1966 defeats,” wrote Margaret Thatcher in her memoirs The Downing Street Years (apparently forgetting that a few other people were also involved), “I joined with Ted Heath in a rethinking of party policy which seemed to foreshadow much of what we later came to call Thatcherism”. Selsdon was treated to an overdose of media interest, partly because of a panicky response when an unprepared Heath was required to face a band of reporters on the Saturday and was advised that it would be most useful to emphasise a tougher policy on law and order. It was thus no surprise when a strident communiqué came out of the conference, promising the electorate an invigorating dose of market-driven economic liberalism as an alternative to Labour’s hopeless blunders.

Heath began to talk about a “new style of government” which would abolish the policies of wage restraint which previous governments (including Conservative) had seen as so essential to the prosperity of British capitalism. “We have always been opposed to compulsory wage control,” he informed us soon after Selsdon, “We opposed it in the House when the Bill was going through, and we are opposed to it and we will not introduce it”. At the same time, there would be no more government investment to rescue failing companies; “lame duck” firms would have to “stand on their own two feet” or expire. The market, left to itself without any interference from the government, would operate to ensure that only the strong and useful—the profitable—would survive, which would be to the benefit of everyone.

Primitive

The first reactions to Selsdon were that it was a boon to the Labour Party and a terrible mistake by the Tories. Wilson made the most of it; he was then at the top of his form as a political con-artist and came up with the name of Selsdon Man for those responsible for spawning such primitive, brutish ideas, as against Labour’s model as a party standing for a modern, civilised, caring society. Selsdon Man, a political cave-dweller, was assumed to have lost the next election for the Tories.

In fact there is some reason to think that Wilson got it wrong, that Selsdon was not so much out of tune with the times. In his biography of Iain Macleod, Robert Shepherd states that the discussions were not as fervent as most people imagined; it was more a matter of sorting out policies which would distinguish them from the Labour Party. Heath described the event as “quite unspectacular” and grumbled about the “fuss” in the press: “I can think of no major new departure which emerged”. Robert Blake, the historian of the Conservative Party, thought that Selsdon did the party more good than harm and John Ramsden, in his history of the party—An Appetite For Power—considered that, in contrast to Labour’s obvious disarray, a co-ordinated policy which looked as if it might endure would be a vote winner.

And so it turned out, as Heath won the election in June 1970 and the voters waited to see whether he would live up to the brave declaration in his preface to the Tory manifesto: “Nothing has done Britain more harm in the world than the endless backing and filling which we have seen in recent years. Once a policy has been established, the prime minister and his colleagues should have the courage to stick with it.”

U-turns

The voters did not have long to wait. In July that year the news came that Rolls Royce was in deep trouble, largely through losing massive amounts of money over the design and production of an aero-engine for Lockheed. This, clearly, was a “lame duck” company which should be left to die because it could not “stand on its own two feet”. But instead of having “the courage to stick with” their declared policy and allowing Rolls Royce to go under the Cabinet, after trying to persuade some banks to put up the necessary money, unanimously decided that the state would have to step in with a virtual nationalisation of the firm. “Ministers had been forced to consider,” Heath excused himself afterwards, “whether we should allow our political reservations about state aid to outweigh considerations of the unemployment effects which would result if we let such a great concern go to the wall.” He did not say so, but the effects on votes was also on their minds. Pragmatism, in other words, ruled OK.

It ruled again, a couple of years later, when the affairs of the long-ailing Upper Clyde Shipbuilders reached crisis point. A 1969 memorandum written by the mad marketeer Nicholas Ridley had advocated a complete government withdrawal from UCS but this kind of ideological approach was, even after Selsdon, in reality unacceptable. Pragmatism—a concern for the effects on employment and therefore on votes—demanded that, first, the Yarrow yard should be separated from UCS, with a sweetener in the form of a large government loan. Then, in February 1972, during a debate on unemployment, the decision was announced to bail out this latest “lame duck” with state aid.

By that time the Selsdon policy of non-intervention in wage bargaining had also gone by the board. In April 1971 Heath was “encouraged” when the secretary of the TUC, Vic Feather, offered to negotiate over an incomes policy, wrongly described as not only “voluntary” but also “new”. If Heath had stuck by the Selsdon policies he would not have been encouraged, but outraged, by Feather’s offer. By the autumn of 1972 we were back with an attempted government freeze on wage rises, through various stages of severity, policed by something called the Wages Board.

Rover

So Selsdon Man did not live long after the election which he had so generously helped the Tories to win. There are still attempts to bring him back to life; the wretched Trade Minister Stephen Byers was once an ardent advocate of the beneficial effectiveness of the market but—like those before him who were confronted with a similar problem—he had to stop his attempts at resuscitation when he met the crisis at Rover cars. Selsdon Man may have seemed to be before his time but he did achieve one thing—to expose how ready are politicians to abandon the plans which, they have solemnly assured us, are the one sure way of dealing with capitalism’s problems.

Ivan.

Editorial: Socialism — the efficient society (1978)

Editorial from the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much of the propaganda work of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is spent, before we are able to talk about the better world of socialism, in debunking the host of fallacies which support capitalism.

One of these is the idea that the profit motive in production makes for efficiency, that profit ensures we make goods which are needed (otherwise no one would buy them) and that those goods are turned out to the highest standards (otherwise they would not sell).

This fallacy sees the profit motive acting as a kind of agent of natural selection, in which anything unable to adapt to the demands of commodity production simply does not survive. And the logical development of this argument is that we are surrounded with the very best of goods, produced in just the quantities we need them and carried to wherever there is a demand for them.

It takes very little thought, or experience, to see that this is not true. To begin at the basis, capitalism produces wealth in the form of commodities — wealth which is turned out with the motive of selling it to realise a profit and to amass further wealth in the form of capital.

The first consequence of this is that, if there is no chance of a profit being realised, there is no production. In this situation it is of absolutely no consequence, that there may be a need for the wealth — people may be starving or homeless, but if the production of food or houses is not profitable they will not be made.

One result of this is unemployment, in which the normal everyday poverty of workers descends into outright destitution. Again, when this happens capitalism takes no account of people’s needs; there may be millions desperate for the little extra income which a job would bring them but if it is not profitable to employ them they will stand — and perhaps starve — on the dole queue.

The drive to produce for profit means that capitalism is always under pressure to turn out goods as cheaply as possible, since the lower a commodity’s cost of production the more scope there is for undercutting a rival’s commodities on the market and, if the market allows, the higher the profit which can be realised.

But producing things cheaply usually means that they are shoddy, sub-standard, jerry-built or even dangerous. It also means that human beings, who may be highly trained and knowledgeable, have used their skills and knowledge in ways which have demanded of them less than they are capable of; they have been forced to prostitute themselves in the cause of commodity production.

There have been many cases of this, which have been spectacular enough in their consequences to make them classic scandals of capitalism — buildings which have collapsed beneath their inhabitants or people needlessly diseased or killed, like the workers in the asbestos industry or the tragic victims of thalidomide.

In a world in which we can solve so many technological problems, and achieve to an extent which would have been regarded as miraculous only a short time ago, there is waste of wealth, restriction of production, unused working capacity and sub-standard production. And this mess is sold to us by what is called an industry — an army of advertising men whose job is to tell lies about things which they need know nothing about. And the whole thing is costed and accounted for by a further army — of accountants, bank clerks, invoice checkers — millions and millions of people simply wasting their lives away doing something which does not produce an ounce of wealth. By no standards of acceptable judgement can capitalism be described, then, as an efficient system of society. But we have not yet mentioned its supreme waste — the poverty to which it condemns its people. Commodity production means the vast majority are deprived of access to the means of producing wealth; left with nothing else, they have to sell their working ability in order to live.

But this labour power is itself a commodity and it is sold, overall, at its value — at what it takes to produce and reproduce the worker in terms of food, clothing, housing, recreation and so on. The effect of this is that the working class always live at the level of subsistence — sometimes, perhaps, rising a little above it while at other times they will fall below. But overall they exist at a level of existence which can only be called poverty.

At the same time, the other class in society — the capitalist class — because of their monopoly ownership of the means of production and distribution are able to live, if they wish, in idle luxury. Beside the poverty — and sometimes destitution — of the workers exists the opulence of the capitalists.

There is, then, a division of interests in society today, a class division which means that every social issue has two sides and that there can be no unity or co-operation. A divided society is not efficient — it is restrictive, hampered, stumbling along at a fraction of its real ability.

Socialists oppose capitalism because it is inefficient. We want a society in which human ability is given full reign, in which people can co-operate to use their abilities and knowledge to the full to produce wealth in abundance and to build a world of freedom and security. That is socialism — the efficient society.

Human energy and capitalist inefficiency (1978)

From the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines efficiency as “the ratio of useful work performed to the total energy expended” meaning the greater the amount of energy input required to produce a given output the less efficient the work. So efficiency is a measure enabling us to compare different ways of achieving something with a view to minimizing energy input (including labour) and maximizing output. Such a comparison can be made between capitalism and socialism which would demonstrate how vastly more efficient would be the latter social system in utilizing the mental and physical energies of people to satisfy social needs.

This however prompts the question: what are social needs? From a human standpoint the answer is obvious: adequate and decent shelter, food, social amenities. What does not appear to be obvious to many outraged and idealistic observers of the appalling toll of human misery is that the worldwide capitalist mode of production is not and cannot be directly geared to the satisfaction of social needs. Under capitalism, wealth is produced as commodities for sale on a market with a view to profit. The fulfilment of human needs is incidental and secondary to this basic motivation. To sell his commodities the capitalist has to find buyers and people can only buy as much as they can afford. Thus the working class are condemned to poverty and to a permanent insufficiency of purchasing power which cannot be redressed by income redistribution (redistribution of poverty) or inflationary policies of printing more money.

Such deprivation is quite unnecessary. For decades the world has technically been capable of producing a superabundance of wealth to satisfy all mankind’s needs. The gap between this accelerating potential and actual output has widened immensely during this time. Experts compute that the world can comfortably support a population many times its present level with existing technology and “known” resource reserves. Patrick Moyniham, ex US Ambassador to the UN, has stated that India alone could feed the world. Historically capitalism has during its brief existence developed the forces of production immensely on the one hand and on the other, has increasingly restrained their application with insurmountable economic barriers.

Since capitalism artificially restricts production we can directly attribute to it the widespread poverty and its effects. One such effect is malnutrition. The magnitude of this problem was illuminated by a UN Food and Agricultural Organisation report in 1974, which revealed that an estimated conservative figure of 460 million people suffered from severe malnutrition prior to 1972 and this number has rapidly increased since then. The consequences are pervasive and profound as Professor Jean Mayer explained:

The child of a malnourished mother is more likely to be born prematurely or small and is at greater risk of death or of permanent neurological and mental dysfunction. Brain development begins in utero and is complete at an early age (under two). Malnutrition during this period when neurons and neural connections are being formed may be the cause of mental retardation that cannot be remedied by later corrective measures. The long term consequences not only for the individual but also for the society and the economy need no elaboration. (Scientific American Sept. 1976).

Moreover, millions are killed or maimed by stress and appalling cost-effective work conditions generated by the commercial rat-race. The resultant wearing and tearing of the fabric of social existence necessitates costly social services. Thus capitalism deliberately vitiates the quality and potential of human labour-power which might otherwise be efficiently expended in the production of wealth. Capitalism is incapable of efficiently applying existing technology to produce even the sort of conditions and requirements favourable to the reproduction and development of efficient labour- power on a satisfactory scale. Instead it creates a vicious circle of poverty and incompetence — as the social scientist, the late Oscar Lewis wrote: “Once the culture of poverty has come into existence it tends to perpetuate itself”.

But not only is capitalism wasteful in stifling its prodigious productive potential: the way in which it organizes manpower within its productive apparatus is itself an inherently inefficient process. This is because it generates priorities which stem directly from the way in which it functions as a mode of production. From the standpoint of actually improving the material wellbeing of society these priorities are socially useless and the rifulfilment engages a considerable and growing proportion of productive effort. Thus capitalism has spawned a gigantic administrative- bureaucratic edifice which has mushroomed in size and complexity in response to the developing economic requirements of the profit machine.

Economists refer to this process as tertiarization. A nation’s occupational structure can be divided into three broad categories: Primary or extractive sector, secondary or manufacturing sector and tertiary or services sector. According to one theory, the Clark-Fisher thesis, tertiary employment increases relative to total employment chiefly at the expense of primary employment in the course of development. The tertiary sector, which is the most advanced economies is the largest, includes a huge proportion of jobs which would be eliminated in socialism such as those in advertising, finance, government and retailing industries. The Clark-Fisher thesis has the qualified support of research findings. The growing proportion of socially useless employment is yet another indictment of capitalism’s obsolescence.

But waste does not end there. In an article in the Economist (30/7/76) it was revealed that office equipment makers predicted that by 1980 annual spending on office machinery will reach $3 billion at 1974 prices or £300 outlay for each of the 10.5 million office workers in Britain . . . who are largely concerned with the mechanics of capitalist finance and commerce. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

World military expenditure at £122,000m in 1976 is equal to the entire income of the poorer half of mankind. Nearly 30 per cent. of worldwide aluminium production is allocated to military usage. Yet war, for which armaments production is a preparation, is merely an inevitable extension of the normal commercial rivalries inherent in capitalism. Such examples represent an enormous drain of human energy and resources in primary and secondary sectors into activities which are socially useless but essential to the maintenance of capitalism—energy and resources which is socialism could be constructively applied to the betterment of society.

Even when workers are available capitalism is incapable, because of its finite markets, of assimilating them into its productive apparatus and yet a considerable amount of energy is expended in their maintenance through the “welfare state” machine (not that this is done out of charitable concern). Millions of even skilled workers with years of costly training invested in them are not permitted to make use of their abilities because they are unemployable or pensioned. This is a grossly inefficient use of available labour power.

Even the wasteful framework of capitalism’s production priorities workers are inefficiently used in relation to the technology at their disposal. Underemployment, as this is called, and unemployment in the so-called third world is flickering between 25 and 30 per cent and still rising according to the New Internationalist May 1974. Another dimension of this problem is the phenomenon of square-pegs-in-round-holes — workers economically compelled to work in particular jobs when their inclinations and skills lie elsewhere. A worker will be industrious and efficient when his interest is in his work. The alienation, drudgery and lack of variety which workers confined within the straitjacket of a “job” experience generally under capitalism must contribute immensly towards inefficient work performance.

What more could be said of capitalism, its planned obsolescence, its status-conscious meretricious trash, its coals-to-Newcastle phenomena, its rotting mountains of unsaleable food? It is a panorama of stupendous waste, of wasted human endeavour. Less obvious examples of waste emerge from a shadowy background of interacting factors congruent with and expressive of property society. Such examples are legion but one will suffice.

In many parts of North West Europe the cultivated land is fragmented into a mass of patches so that one man’s “farm” could consist of a number of plots interspersed among other farmers’ holdings and separated by long distances. As a result the efficiency of movement between plots is seriously impaired. Chisholm in Rural Settlement and Land Use calculated that in Europe “one third or even one half of the agricultural land is fragmented and in need of consolidation” (p. 46). Even without altering land use patterns — although the size and shape of properties can prohibit the use of efficient mechanised techniques for example the subdivision of inherited properties amongst third world peasants into tiny plots — the total transformation of the agrarian landscape on the basis of common ownership is the obvious solution to facilitate the most efficient utilization of the land.

There are many reformist groups who concern themselves with the problem of waste but who in fact employ an extremely narrow definition of waste which they invest with a sense of horror-stricken incredulous alarm as if all this pollution and rape of the land is something new in capitalism. Theirs is a hypothetical world of scarce resources, of exploding populations, of mounting insurmountable pollution levels. Where they circumscribe their notion of waste to what they see as just the excesses of the social system, socialists see waste as something integral to and ineradicable within the framework of commodity production. The destiny of the world has not been pre-programmed. Given the necessary socialist consciousness coupled with the latent productive potentialities imprisoned within the structure of the capitalist economy, the exhilarating vision of an efficient world without waste or want can become a reality.

Robin Cox

This taxation business (1978)

From the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the first issue of this journal The Socialist Party of Great Britain stated that it does not matter to the working class whether taxes are high or low, or whether they are direct, like present day PAYE, or indirect, like the duties on beer and tobacco. Other political parties and the trade unions greeted this with astonishment and unbelief; how, they asked, could anyone be so blind as not to see that workers would be better off with lower taxes? It is the purpose of this article to show that the statement was, and still is, a correct one.

Taxation is always in the news and it got special attention on May 8 last when a collection of opposition parties in Parliament forced the government to reduce Income Tax from 34p to 33p in the pound. The debate was being broadcast on Radio, which accounts for the MPs utterances containing more than the usual amount of humbug. With one exception, all those who spoke, whether for reducing the tax or for not reducing it, said that their sole concern was the wellbeing of “the nation”, but each side had the gravest doubts about the good faith of the others.

Mr. Healey thought the real intention of the Tories was to “grub up a few extra votes”. It seems that in his sheltered life he had never before encountered a political party so depraved as to frame its policy to catch votes. He made much of the Tory and Liberal admission that they favoured reducing direct taxation and increasing indirect taxation, VAT. What shocked him most was the Liberal John Pardoe’s view that there should be an even greater reduction of Income Tax. Did Pardoe not realise that the consequent “enormous ’’increase of taxes on beer and tobacco would raise the cost of living by as much as 3 per cent? (Under Mr. Healey’s guiding hand since February 1974, the cost of living has gone up by nearly 100 per cent).

An argument that did appear in several speeches was that reducing Income Tax would improve the workers’ "incentive to work”.

The one MP who stood aside from the general discussion was Enoch Powell. He made it clear that his group of Ulster Unionist MPs (who usually vote for the Labour Government) were simply using the occasion to bring pressure for the restoration of local government in Northern Ireland. Not one MP mentioned a certain forbidden ten-letter word — the word capitalism; but it is capitalism they were dealing with.

Capitalism is a complicated social arrangement, with many internal conflicts and contradictions. One consequence is that politicians, who need the workers’ support and votes, have perfected the art of presenting capitalist policy as if its real aim was to benefit the workers. It is not safe to accept things at their face value, which is the error made by those who tell the workers that what they need is lower taxes.

At first glance the case they make seems self-evident. If the PAYE deduction from wages goes up or if taxes put prices up surely the workers are worse off? And if PAYE or prices go down surely workers are better off?

The people who use this argument about price increases associated with higher VAT use the same argument about all price increases, whether related to higher taxes or not. (It is not necessary here to go into the question whether taxes on goods actually do simply put up their prices. For the present argument we can accept the belief that they do have this effect).

We can at once concede that at the moment when PAYE goes up or the cost of living goes up the workers are that much worse off: but what we should be concerned with is the longer-term, continuing, situation. And the fact is that, subject to variations due to other, quite different causes, the wages and salaries of the working class as a whole become adjusted to changes of PAYE and changes of the cost of living.

What really matters to workers is their “take-home pay” after deduction of PAYE and Social Security contributions, and what it will buy. It is this purchasing power that continually adjusts itself; not automatically, but through the struggles of workers inside and outside the trade unions, struggles influenced by the varying levels of unemployment. Government “wage restraint” propaganda and policies also play a part.

When purchasing power is reduced by higher tax deductions or price rises, workers react by seeking higher wages. When there are tax deductions or prices fall the workers’ resistance to pressure by the employers weakens. Earlier this year Mr. Healey held out an offer of lower PAYE as an inducement to unions to moderate wage claims.

There is plenty of evidence from past experience to show how take-home pay has adjusted to tax changes, and to changes in the cost of living.

First let us look at Income Tax. In the 19th century hardly any workers came up to the pay level at which tax became payable. During the Crimean War the government considered lowering the tax level so that most workers would pay tax. The idea was dropped for two reasons. First, the high cost of collecting large numbers of small amounts of tax would have been greater than the total amount collected. That is why, with inflation, Chancellors of the Exchequer periodically raise the taxable level to exempt low paid workers from tax. The second reason was that, because unemployment was then very low, it was realised that the workers would be able to get higher wages and thus maintain their purchasing power in spite of tax deductions.

Between 1938 and 1947, Income Tax changes brought far more workers into the pay level at which tax was deducted, and the proportion of pay deducted as tax had greatly increased. (In addition the cost of living had risen sharply). So were the workers worse off? A study of wages in Britain published by the American Department of Labour found that the purchasing power of take home pay had just about kept up with all the changes. A comparison between the purchasing power of present average earnings and that in 1938 shows that this upward adjustment has been more than maintained between 1947 and 1978.

Now for changes directly affecting the cost of living. In 1846 the industrial capitalists secured the abolition of the Corn Laws, thus enabling cheap food to be imported (at the expense of the landowners). It was presented as a boon to workers. Would not their wages now buy more? What the industrial capitalists really aimed at was that cheaper food would enable them to pay lower wages. (Later on when many manufacturers themselves wanted protection to keep out cheap foreign goods they presented it in the guise of “protecting the workers’ jobs”).

Between 1920 and 1926 the cost of living fell by 31 per cent, and PAYE was also reduced. Lucky workers? Not at all. Unemployment was heavy so that, in spite of attempted resistance through strikes, the workers were forced to accept an average reduction of wages of 32 per cent.

A special case of capitalist policy presented as something to help the workers was the introduction of rent restriction in 1915, by a Tory Minister in a coalition government. Because house-building had stopped on the outbreak of war in 1914, rents were rising. Rent restriction was imposed (at the expense of the landlords) in order to dissuade workers from striking for higher wages which would have adversely affected manufacturers as well as interfering with the war effort.

Rent restriction was adopted in many other countries and in the nineteen twenties the International Labour Office conducted enquiries into its effects. A typical finding was that related to Austria. It showed that in Vienna the rent paid by workers had fallen from 20 per cent. of wages in 1914 to barely 1 per cent. in 1923. So were the workers better off?

Most of the workers were in the same position as in Germany; they had practically no liabilities under the heading of rent, but the corresponding amount was not included in their wages. The actual gain was thus nil.

So we are on the solid ground of experience in asserting that taxation is not a working class issue, not forgetting that this presupposes that the workers continue the struggle to maintain and increase wages as far as conditions allow.

For the capitalists the position is quite different. Having exploited the workers to the fullest extent, having got maximum output at the lowest wage they can induce workers to accept they have to pay, out of their profits, the cost of maintaining the State apparatus, the armed forces and so on. The burden of taxation falls on them. It follows that as a class they have very good cause to keep government expenditure as low as possible so that taxation can be correspondingly low. The workers have no such interest.

There is another difference between the two classes. The capitalists have every reason to continue capitalism indefinitely, but workers who give the matter a little thought must conclude, with us, that it is in the interest of the working class to get rid of it.

Edgar Hardcastle

Crime — who loses? (1978)

From the July 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

I suppose you'd say my politics are Tory, really. I believe in getting as much money for myself as quickly as I can, by any method. I'm a free enterprise man. (Bank Robber—Wormwood Scrubs.)

It is a long, long time since the figures for recorded crime indicated any decline in its popularity as a method of getting rich quick, or at least staying a little less poor. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester (of whom more later) recently described it as ". . . possibly the biggest and fastest growing enterprise in the world”, which is how the City columns once talked about the oil industry or the activities of Jim Slater. Yet at the same time the belief persists that crime can be reduced or even wiped out.

For example Horace Cutler, the flamboyant Conservative leader of the Greater London Council, said last April:

Never has London been so dirty, so vandalised, so decaying and dangerous. We must take action now to eliminate the mugger, the vandal and the football hooligan. (Daily Telegraph, 21/4/78).

No half measures for Cutler—he wants to eliminate crime and, as he was speaking just before the local elections, we can assume that he was suggesting the best way of doing this was. to vote for his party. This might have been more convincing were it not for the fact that he is already responsible for running this city he describes as dirty, vandalised and dangerous.

Another popular assumption is that if crime can be eliminated and everyone starts living a quiet, law abiding life everything will be alright. (Although the bank robber quoted at the head of this article would probably disagree—he would be likely to die of boredom.) This assumption is based on the idea that law and order is a matter of morality, that the law sets standards which protect and benefit us all and that criminals are people who behave in an immoral way:

. . . what is serious crime but a lack of consideration for others, a failure to recognise their full reality and rights? (Colin Welch—Daily Telegraph 17/4/78).

(Our bank robber has some views on the way banks in their dealings are notable for a lack of consideration for others but never mind.) But many lawful acts are anything but protective and beneficent—for example the acts of organised violence carried out by the armed forces. Similarly, private property rights—on which capitalist society is based—are inconsiderate of the mass of people in the sense that they deny them free access and clearly work against their interests.

How big, in reality, is the problem of crime? There is such an abundance of statistics that anyone can take their pick. Try these:

In 1900 there were less than 80,000 offences recorded in England and Wales. In 1976 there were over 2 million.

Over the past twenty years the number of indictable offences per 100,000 of the population has quadrupled. Violent crime has doubled since 1969.

Last April the British Insurance Association said that between 1976 and 1977 the value of property taken in burglaries from the home went up from £22.4 million to £30.3 million. The BIA had reason to be pained; during 1977 they paid out a record £64.2 million to cover losses by theft.

It is usual to conclude from information like that that crime is rising like some great noxious wave. Parallels are drawn with the increase in divorce, abortions, venereal disease, to compose a picture of a society about to collapse into a new Dark Age. Retired officers in Bournemouth cower behind their Daily Telegraph and take hope from the politicians— usually Tory — who call for harsher penalties and tougher prisons.

In a sense they have reason to be concerned; so steep a rise in recorded crime is a comparatively recent trend. From 1900 to 1920 crime tended to rise in line with the population; it went up more sharply during the Slump, then levelled off before bursting up in the post war “crime wave”. That, too, was seen as a fundamental threat to social order but it was followed, between 1950 and 1954, by a relative stability in the figures. Since then they have been rising and are now doing so at about 15 per cent each year.

But these figures should not be taken neat and regarded as an accurate measure of social behaviour; there are important qualifications which need to be applied. Firstly, “serious” crime—murder, the more grievous assaults; armed robbery—makes up only about 4 per cent of the total. Much of the rest, apart from motoring offences, consists of theft—and about 65 per cent of that involves property under £25 in value. So if the figures for crime tell us anything, it is not that we are about to be murdered in our beds — statistically we are more likely to be involved in a little shoplifting.

Then there is the matter of the very basis of the statistics—the fact that they measure only recorded crime, or crime known to the police. And of course a lot of offences never come to police notice—minor acts of vandalism or the theft of a small amount of money from an unattended handbag or a black eye after a night on the beer. This means, firstly, that there is a lot more crime than we ever hear about and secondly that the statistics might be completely wrong, especially in recording rises or falls in particular crimes, because there may be reasons which persuade people to report a crime at one time and not at another.

For example, the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders thinks (The Guardian, 25/4/78) that the apparent increase in burglaries, which so worries the British Insurance Association, is due in part to people being readier to report the offence and the reason for this is that there has been an increase in the insurance of household contents, along with insuring the mortgage.

In the same way, the police may in some circumstances arrest someone for an offence when at other times they might let him go. Police activity can be influenced by the policy—which might mean the personal quirks—of their Chief Constable. In Greater Manchester the head policeman, James Anderton, has a reputation for a persecutionary zeal against those who are labelled as sexual deviants. According to The Guardian (11/4/78) Anderton’s policemen are especially active against homosexual clubs and were actually considering bringing a prosecution against one, under a bylaw of 1882, for “licentious or indecent dancing”. But the Greater Manchester force does not display the same enthusiasm to hunt down all law breakers; their policy in the case of motorists is to go soft and to try for persuasion before prosecution. Now the figures for crime in Greater Manchester in 1977 went up by over 10 per cent, while those for motoring fell by 35 per cent. But this does not mean that when in Manchester you can cross the road safely but must watch who you dance with.

Much of the response to crime can only be described as a panic in the face of what have been called folk-devils. In recent years we have seen many examples of this, of the mob reaction to Teddy Boys, Mods and Rockers and now muggers and football hooligans. This panic is open to exploitation by vote-hunting politicians but it also infects eminent members of the judiciary, who seem to allow it to affect the sentences they dish out. Last April at the Old Bailey Melford Stevenson, who has made his name in a number of cases not notable for their lenient treatment of the person in the dock, sent a man to prison for three years for the manslaughter of his baby and made the comment that this offence is

. . . now frighteningly too frequent ... It is a curious thing that about 15 years ago the phrase “baby battering” was not in the ordinary Englishman’s vocabulary.

It was not reported, whether Melford Stevenson is aware that the popularity of a phrase is not a measure of the frequency of an offence, nor whether he realises that any increase in prosecutions for baby battering is more likely due to a higher awareness of the problem, and the more efficient machinery for detecting it, than any proven increase in the offence.

Now if the majority of crime consists of offences against property, is it too simple to conclude that the ending of property rights, by the abolition of capitalism, would have the effect of ending crime? There are many who argue that it is too simple, that crime is a response to an emotional maladjustment. Superficially there is something to be said for this as it is common for offenders to come from broken families or to have a history of living in institutions like orphanages. But this can only be a superficial argument since it takes no account of the fact that our type of family is itself a social organism of capitalism, with defects typical of that social system, and cannot be considered in isolation from that system.

And what, in any event, are emotional maladjustments but reactions to or efforts to defend ourselves from, the stresses of capitalism? The ideal of capitalism is the supremely competitive being, a sort of James Bond of industry or commerce whose ruthlessness is shot through with glamour. In reality, capitalism offers a poor bargain to the docile, law abiding worker who carries his degradation with him wherever he goes. John McVicar, who was one of England’s recently most celebrated (and most hunted) big time criminals put his view on this:

Money has never been, or ever will be, my primary object . . . My life was always exciting and dramatic; wherever I was. I was part of the action. Psychologically, I had the satisfaction of personifying the counter-culture with which I identified myself, and I found this was confirmed by my notoriety and prestige. (McVicar By Himself.)

No bank clerk, no assembler on the endless production line, no conforming worker wearing his mortgage and his HP debts like so many albatrosses, can make any such claim. His prestige is limited to a reputation for keeping the paperwork flowing from In tray to Out, or not falling behind with the payments. He personifies the drabbest and most restrictive of cultures, the culture founded on his own exploitation. Perhaps it is arguable whether McVicar (now a “reformed character”) who ended up with a total of twenty three years prison, really got a bad bargain.

Working class emotional problems cannot be separated from the environment in which they are raised. It is no coincidence that crime is high, and violent, in the great urban concentrations—London, Liverpool, Glasgow—where life is fast and pressured and where one generation of slums follows another. Such places did not arise by accident; they originated in capitalism’s need to crowd workers together near their places of employment and to house them in dwellings built as cheaply as possible. This is not something which died with Charles Dickens; such places are still being constructed and need very little to realise their destiny of slumdom and breeding grounds for discontent and crime. One such is the Hyson Green estate in Nottingham, which recently won much notoriety for an especially nasty affair and where one of the unfortunate inhabitants with an aerosol epitomised the agony of living there—“These flats are the slums of tomorrow”.

There is every reason for people who live in conditions which offer no hope to behave in a hopeless fashion. Consciously or not, they grasp that capitalism offers them nothing and they react in what they see as an anti-social fashion, attacking the property precepts on which capitalism is based. One recent case, which was concerned with squatting, allowed Lord Denning to set out those priorities:

. . . the courts must, for the sake of law and order, take a firm stand. They must refuse to admit the plea of necessity to the hungry and the homeless . . . (Quoted in The Politics of the Judiciary—J. A. G. Griffiths.)

If this statement makes it clear that property rights are all-pervasive, it also sets out the near impossibility of not offending against those rights, if only because they are themselves offensive to human interests.

So the “crime busters” must lose and so must the criminals, who at best can hope to claw their way a little above the rest of the working class and who often end up, like our bank robber, rotting away years of their lives in mind-numbing prisons. For it is the working class, who read their newspapers and watch television and worry, because they are told to, about crime, who are massively the losers. At the same time as they worry, they dream of the equivalent of a Great Train Robbery, to lift them away from their life of indignity heaped on degradation. But although it has its losers—and its winners—capitalism is anything but a game.

Ivan.