Debate. The S.P.G.B. versus The Tory Party. (1933)

Party News from the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Debate organised by West Ham Branch was held at Stratford Town Hall on Sunday, November 27th, 1932, between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Conservative Party. 

Comrade E. Hardy—for Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Mrs. E. Tennant—for the Conservative Party.

Comrade E. Hardy commenced his case for Socialism by stating two points on which the two parties would probably be in agreement—firstly, the imperative need for a solution to the problems of poverty, unemployment, preventive illness and death, war, and industrial strife; and secondly, that individual action was inadequate, the needs of the present situation requiring that the working class shall take organised political action by means of the vote to secure their emancipation from these evils.

He pointed out that the Socialist case is based on the principle that human beings are dependent on the material conditions which surround them, and that the programmes of other political parties proved that they also recognised that favourable economic conditions are necessary to a happy and satisfactory life.

He then defined the two classes which make up capitalist society: —

The working class, which comprises all those who, not having property incomes, have to sell their services—their mental and physical energies—their labour power, in order to live, the alternative being charity, robbery or dependence on the State; emphasising at the same "time that these are the wealth producers; and

The capitalist class, made up of those who live on property incomes—rent, interest and profit—who own the means of production and to whom the wealth produced by the workers belongs.

He showed that, arising out of these conditions, the capitalist is able to get a return over and above the sum of money he invests for the simple reason that out of the wealth that the working class produce but do not own they only receive in the shape of salaries or wages a fraction. And further, that this fraction, speaking generally, is based on the cost of living of the worker according to the particular trade, industry and country, and under the conditions prevailing at any given time.

The speaker then proceeded to lay stress on the need for the establishment of Socialism. He said that a Socialist understood the evolution of society and the necessary place that capitalism occupies in that evolution. In its early days it had enabled society to develop to an enormous extent its productive powers. It had broken down national barriers and exclusiveness, it had modernised the backward nations, it had destroyed the isolation of rural life and freed the subject class from being tied to land and locality. It had developed the money system of exchange, and facilitated the division of labour. Now, however, capitalism prevents the workers from gaining the benefit of the development of the productive forces.

The Socialist’s solution to present-day problems was not therefore utopian, nor based on class hatred, but on the need to solve the social problem by instituting common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It was on these grounds alone that the Socialist Party of Great Britain invited the support of the working class.

Mrs. Tennant (a Conservative Parliamentary candidate), speaking on behalf of the Conservative Party, made it clear during her first remarks that she was under the impression that she was opposing a party which supports the Labour Party, and therefore made little serious attempt to state a case against Socialism and the S.P.G.B.

After saying that it was always easy to legislate and make a perfect plan on paper, Mrs. Tennant stated that the Conservative Party were the first people to become alive to the industrial horrors of the 18th and 19th Centuries, and went on to mention in detail the various reforms for which the Conservative Party were responsible, for example:—

The placing of the first Factory Act on the Statute Book in 1802; the Combination Law in 1824, giving rise to the Trade Union Movement; the Ten Hours Act, 1847; the first Act for Compulsory Education, 1876.; Workmen’s Compensation Acts; Pensions Acts, etc.

She also gave the Conservative Party credit for having reduced unemployment during the years 1924-1929, for improving this country’s trade balance by £63,000,000, and for having built a record number of new houses.

And just when “things were looking a little brighter" the country returned a Labour Government, because, she stated, they promised a new heaven and a new earth. They promised to clear the slums and cure unemployment (then about one million) in three weeks. But they did none of these things. The “Socialist" M.P.s agreed to nine-tenths of the cuts adopted by the National Government, and unemployment increased. She was now afraid that the “Socialists'" new programme of nationalisation for the banks, industry, agriculture and transit would be dangerous to the workers because it would stampede capital and order. It would cause increased unemployment, higher food prices and greater taxation.

She said that Karl Marx had inaugurated the Class Struggle, and cited Russia as an example of the low standard of life to which this country would sink if the “Socialists” had their way.

Comrade Hardy, replying, regretted in the first place that his opponent had mistaken the Socialist Party of Great Britain for a party supporting the Labour Party. He pointed out the consistent opposition of the Socialist Party to the Labour Party ever since that party’s formation in 1906 (two years later than the formation of the Socialist Party of Great Britain), and denied emphatically that the Socialist Party gave the slightest support to nationalisation.

He pointed out that it is absurd to say that the Conservative Party were the first people to realise the horrors of industrial capitalism. The working class had, of course, been well aware of them for years, and the Conservative Party's factory legislation, for what it was worth, was generations late. He pointed out that some of the reforms claimed by the Tories were also claimed by the Liberal Party. He was prepared, however, for the sake of argument to give the Tories credit for them all. The very need for reforms was the condemnation of capitalism. The Tories have to “protect the workers”—against capitalism. The only remedy was the abolition of the wages system.

It is not true that Karl Marx had “initiated the 'Class Struggle.” He had merely pointed out that it existed, and that it arose out of the basic contradictions of capitalist society.

Speaking of housing, Comrade Hardy said this problem, after having been “solved” in turn by Tories, Liberals and the Labour Party, was still with us. According to Sir E. Simon, in a letter to The Times, February 12th, 1931, “ the position of the slum dwellers is worse than it was ten years ago.” There was, properly speaking, no housing problem for the working class. What did exist was a poverty problem which could not be solved within capitalism. The Tories said they gave the workers the vote in 1867. Why 1867? Fifty years earlier, in 1819, the workers demonstrated peacefully at Peterloo to ask for the vote. A Tory Government killed and wounded numbers of them.

Proceeding to deal with the historical case against capitalism, he pointed out in some detail that capitalism after first developing the power of production was now making frantic efforts to restrict it again, and having brought the rural population to the towns, capitalist reformers talked of solving unemployment by sending them back again to the country. There was even an attempt to return to barter in a large number of countries at the present time.

Capitalism was unable to use its resources to the full, and had outlived its usefulness to mankind.

Mrs. Tennant’s final remarks were to the effect that it was easy for the Socialist Party of Great Britain to sneer at 95 years of Government experience, and she submitted that when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was in power there would be many disillusionments. Karl Marx had never governed so much as a puppy-dog, “so it was all paper legislation.” She again referred to Russia as an example of Socialism. Russia had failed to feed her people, which was a very serious accusation to bring against a country. She was afraid this beautiful system of Socialism would not materialise until human beings were perfect.

In reply, Comrade Hardy stated that Russia was not a Socialist country, but one in which industry was run through the medium of private and State Capitalism. It was still a backward country, suffering from the legacy of inefficient Czarism. Why not look at the spectacle of poverty in rich U.S.A. The Daily Telegraph had recently quoted the American Federation of Labor that 60 millions, one-half the population, will be on the verge of starvation this coming winter. America, he pointed out, was not a backward country, but one of the most highly developed capitalist countries in the world.

He said his opponent had put the only case possible for the Conservative Party, that of social reforms. These had been tried and found wanting. He reiterated that there was only one solution to the problems confronting the working class, and that was to establish the common ownership of the means of production and distribution by the method advocated by the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The debate was well attended. There were about 800 present and many were turned away owing to lack of room. A collection was taken of £5 10s. and about 27s. worth of literature was sold.

Blogger's Note:

In all probability the Conservative Party representative, Mrs E. Tennant, was Eleonora Tennant. 

Eleonora Tennant was a Tory parliamentary candidate in the East End of London (Silvertown) at the 1931 and 1935 General Elections and, let's be honest, women being so under-represented in politics in the 1930s, what are the chances of there being two Mrs E. Tennants' in the Tory Party active in the East End of London at this time? If you click on her wiki page you'll go down a rabbit hole of far right and anti-semitic politics which covers both Britain and Australia.

Donations Received. (1933)

From the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1933)

Party News from the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voice From The Back: The Futility Of Reformism (2009)

The Voice From The Back Column from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Futility Of Reformism

“One result of Ethiopia’s dreadful famine in 1984, when at least 1m starved to death, was the invention of celebrity activism on behalf of the world’s most miserable. Band Aid, then Live Aid, then even more sophisticated networking and the airing of starving children on television helped persuade rich countries’ governments to double aid to Africa as part of a wider set of promises to meet the UN’s eight Millennium Development Goals laid out in 2000, the first of which is to ‘eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’ by 2018. Despite progress in setting up early-warning systems, better procurement methods and the rapid delivery of nutrition in the form of foil packets of plumpy nuts, the Horn of Africa has remained a hunger zone. The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) says the present drought is the worst there since 1984. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is usually slow to press the panic button, says it may be the tragedy of the decade. At least 17.5m people, the agencies reckon, may face starvation.” (Economist, 30 October) This is typical of the futility of a policy of reformism, many well-intentioned people spend an enormous amount of energy and time in trying to patch up capitalism only to find that instead of a million starving to death they now have over 17 million threatened with the same fate. The only way to solve this awful problem is to abolish the system that produces it and bring about world socialism.

The Cost Of War (1)

Many workers in the USA believe that with the election of a new president all their troubles are over, but the realities of capitalism will soon shatter that illusion. The US must compete in the world-wide struggle for markets and raw materials and to do so they need an immense military budget. How immense was recently revealed. “As President-elect Obama plans for his first budget early next year, the Pentagon is asking for a record amount, according to a senior Pentagon official. The official said the Pentagon’s baseline request being sent to the White House will be $524 billion for fiscal 2010, $9 billion more than last year’s $515 billion baseline request.” (CNN.com, 19 November)

The Cost Of War (2)

When governments count the cost of war they use dollars and pounds and figure what strategic gains or losses have been made, but workers have a much more brutal and realistic way of accounting. Here it is. “As of Monday, Nov. 17, 2008, at least 4,200 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,392 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers. The AP count is the same as the Defense Department’s tally, last updated Monday at 10 a.m. EDT. The British military has reported 176 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.” (Associated Press, 17 November)

Dole Queue Dictionary

Everyday you can read about the mounting figures of unemployment. This used to be called “getting the sack”, “getting the bullet” or in Scotland getting “your jotters”, but we live in more sophisticated times so they sugarcoat it with terms like “being surplus to requirements” or some such business-speak. We think that Nokia must take the prize though. “Is your firm experiencing a ‘synergy-related headcount restructuring‘? This, probably the most ghastly euphemism yet encountered for mass sacking, has been invented by Nokia. Indeed, so proud of it are they that they repeat it, or different versions of it, nine times in a comparatively short announcement.” (Times, 22 November) As a worker I have been sacked, screwed and sent down the road but “headcount restructuring” sounds even more painful.

A Dog’s Life

Two recent news items illustrate how distorted human values have become inside capitalism. “A wealthy female surgeon has commissioned a £1.4 million kennel for her two Great Danes, next to her second home on the exclusive Lower Mill Estate, near Cirencester. The kennel has a Jacuzzi, a plasma screen TV, thermostatically controlled beds, a £150,000 music system and a security gate with retinal scanner.” (Times, 26 November) “Fears are being raised there could be a jump in the winter death toll. An Age Concern poll of 2,300 people found many over 60s were worried about being able to heat their homes because of soaring energy prices. And with a one of the coldest winters for some years predicted, the charity said the death toll could rise. It comes after figures for England and Wales suggested there was a 7% jump in extra deaths last year despite a relatively mild winter.” (BBC News, 27 November) A pampered life for dogs but no thermostatically controlled beds for shivering old workers, that is how capitalism operates.

Letter: Taxing Problem (2009)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taxing Problem

Dear Editors

In “My Cupboard is Bare” (Letters, Socialist Standard, November) the letter writer states many inaccuracies – “he doubled the income-tax burden on the poorest earners in society.” – “The working-poor, whose income-tax he doubled, do not bother to vote, (as he knows) for we, the low-paid, realise that there is no-one worth voting for.” – “Middle-England, on middle incomes, voted Labour into power, and for that voting-base income-tax was reduced in an attempt to retain support for the Labour.” – “If the British government makes yet another “mistake” of having ordinary hard-working British citizens bail-out British banks and the greedy millionaires who helped cause the problem…”. This might be worthy of comment.

Glasgow Branch

Reply:

We published the letter as an expression of opinion by a discontented worker. We agree that it is inaccurate to imply that income tax is a burden on the working class and that it is workers who are bailing out the banks.

Workers are exploited at the point of production but are paid more or less the value of the working skills they sell, i.e., enough to buy what they need to reproduce and replace them. If the government imposes a tax on wages, this will eventually, after a struggle, be passed on to employers as the cost of reproducing the workers’ skills will have gone up.

In any event, in Britain, most workers don’t even personally pay income tax as they do other taxes by going to the post office or writing a cheque as this is deducted at source by the employer and paid by them to the government. In this case what is important is take-home pay. This said, when the government does change income tax the take-home pay of some individual workers can go up or down for a time, and did go down in the case the letter writer mentioned.

Although the money to bail out the banks will have ultimately come out of the surplus value extracted from the working class, it has not done so directly – the capitalist employer extracts the surplus value, part of which is paid to the government as taxes, some of which was used to bail out the banks.

Editors.

In place of capitalism (2009)

From the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently the word ‘capitalism’ seems to be on everyone’s lips. The main reason for this is probably that capitalism – also known as ‘the economy’ or ‘the market system’ is going through a bad patch. The Labour government’s claim to have ended the cycle of boom and bust has been proved disastrously wrong. The last boom, during which food, energy, house and stock market prices rose at unsustainably high rates, has given way to bust.

As usual, workers are the main victims. Many of us have lost our jobs, can’t get new ones or can’t enter the labour force for the first time. We have seen our outgoings soar, our incomes squeezed, even our homes repossessed. Even if we have so far personally avoided the worst of these fates, the worry that we may not continue to do so can be very stressful.

Who or what is to blame for this sorry state of affairs? More constructively, how can it be put right? Only the pitifully small socialist media insist that we need to replace capitalism with socialism. All the other media, which shout so much louder than we can, say things like “We’ve got the wrong kind of capitalism” or “Some people (bankers) have been too greedy.”

There is a widespread and heavily promoted belief that ‘capitalism is the only game in town.’ Anyone who disputes this, for example by advocating that all goods and services should be available on the basis of need, not ability to pay, is dismissed as idealistic or utopian. It is a classic case of self-fulfilling prophecy: support (or at least acquiesce in) the way things are organised today and tomorrow will be more or less the same. But it doesn’t have to be.

Socialists urge that it is futile to try to reform capitalism – the whole system needs to be scraped and replaced by something better. As we explain in our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative, this means being as constructive as possible, not destructive. For example, such bodies as the World Health Organisation and the Universal Postal Union can be adapted for socialist purposes.

We have as our object the establishment of socialism. In a sense this is true, but we also talk about a socialist movement in the here and now. Every month we say in this journal ‘we are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism.’  We distribute paper and electronic publications, give talks, take part in debates, run educational events, make films, and much more.

With more members – and particularly active members – we could do things and on a scale we are prevented from doing for lack of human and other resources. For example, we could set up socialist publishing houses producing, promoting and distributing paper and electronic literature. We could organise socialist educational networks at different levels: schools, colleges, universities, distance learning – for potential socialist citizenship, not capitalist employment. Other activities will no doubt be suggested, tried out and perhaps become widespread – who knows?

The point is that more of us will come to realise that we all live in the real world, not with submission to endure it but with imagination to revolutionise it.

Stan Parker

Education, politics and language (2009)

From the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today’s education system is presented as preparation for a ‘career’ ignoring the political conditioning it also involves.

Our species is unique in terms of the length of our childhood. Most believe this to be so because of the advantages of learning which can be passed on culturally. In the natural environment as opposed to the cultural human one, we would not progress very far if we had to learn through personal experience how to create the technological world in which we live.

Vital in this process is an efficient way in which to communicate the lessons of the past – language. As a child grows it exhibits a skill for language that still amazes those who study and analyse the process. Capitalism depends on an authoritarian social structure that seeks to justify and protect the minority who currently have social power. It is not surprising to socialists, then, that these values are also communicated within the process of the ‘education’ of the young. Together with the more obvious forms of coercion: continual testing to destroy communal feelings by presenting others as competition; enforcement of uniformity in appearance to suppress individuality; living by the clock to impose the illusion of the normality of life as a wage slave; the presentation of ‘careers’ such as in the military or banking as being acceptable rather than lives celebrating murder or the exploitation of their fellow man – there is also a far more powerful and subversive use of language that this article will seek to illustrate.

Before continuing this analysis we must mention the other type of education that exists within capitalist societies – what, in this country are called public schools. They possess, unsurprisingly, a very different ethos than that described above. For the children of the elite who are not taught at home, these institutions exist to prepare their pupils for university where they learn the techniques needed for the City, Westminster, Inns of Court or any of the other institutions dedicated to the suppression and exploitation of the majority class. That this is self-evident to socialists but is seen as an expression of envy and class ‘hatred’ by the Establishment and even by many members of the working class itself is testament to the power of education and its social values (on both sides).

To the powerful, of course, a socialist education is political manipulation based on propaganda. That to many the education system is seen as preparation for a ‘career’ rather than political conditioning is evidence of the subversion of the very language used to describe the world. In an effort to present the current social structure the language used presents it as the only possible world and any alternative as either naïve or dangerous fantasy. Why else would it be considered reasonable to debate the existence of a supernatural entity that created the universe (God) but ridiculous to explore the possibility of a stateless and moneyless rational society?

Speaking of money – a great way to start an analysis of the subversion of language in this society. How many times have we heard that money can give us ‘independence’ and ‘choice’? For instance it is said that it gives us the ability to travel. Apparently we don’t need the labour and talent that produces cars, boats, trains and planes. What need do we have of shoes, food, clothes and maps to get to our destination? The idea that money can create these things is one of the great illusions implicit within our language.

All the coloured paper and shiny coins in the world will not get you across water unless someone builds you a boat – and not just someone but hundreds and even thousands are involved in producing the possibility of travel. Money represents an involuntary contract that involves an interdependence of, sometimes, global labour – the complete opposite of ‘independence’. And how many times have you heard it said that King Henry built this castle and Lord Muck built that stately home? No designers, masons, architects or carpenters were apparently involved. For many it is money that creates our world and not the interdependent labour of us all. What is this if not a political subversion of language?

Perhaps the ultimate triumph of this kind of linguistic perversion is the contemporary view of what constitutes ‘politics’ itself. We are told that we live in a ‘democracy’ in which we are free to choose what kind of society we live in. But the most important of all political decisions – what the community produces – is never subjected to any kind of democratic process. Instead the city brokers merely decide which commodities will deliver the greatest or most reliable profits. In other words these decisions are made by a tiny elite minority in the interests of an even smaller minority. In capitalist society the only ‘choice’ voters have is who will decide how taxes are distributed to create and maintain the state infrastructure – armies, police, road, rail, law, health and social security system and, of course, the education system.

Even this choice is only ‘given’ to the people once every five years between two political parties with no important differences in ideology. And this is political democracy? Apart from its obvious farcical and unjust nature it makes politics so boring. It’s not just cynicism that turns people off from this ‘media politics’ it is that it’s been sucked dry of meaning and now only represents platitudes and repetitious clichés. But this is the way our rulers like it. Their media continues to produce meaningless garbage about political celebrities (leaders) and evil foreigners or unions, knowing that while their readers are obsessed with such trivia nothing will ever change. This is the primary aim of our education system – the inculcation of language without political meaning.

 

For over one hundred years the task of the socialist party has been to counter the propaganda of the status quo. Not just in ideological terms but in trying to restore meaning to political language. Even our opponents have to admit that the meaning they give to words like socialism, democracy, human nature, economics, history and politics itself is very different from ours.

Although socialists grow weary of redefining the very language of politics for every individual new to our perspective it is quite possible that when we find we do not have to do so, then change is close. For although the ruling class seek to own the language as they own everything else, the needs of a highly technical means of production necessitate a higher and more flexible education system. Their wealth may give them power but it cannot give them intelligence or talent – for that they need us.

It may be that the days of a narrow education to fit the needs of a narrow division of labour are past. More of us are not able to tolerate the public school, university ‘experts’ pontificating on politics any more. They must take responsibility for the dire state of the world. The majority are taking possession of knowledge and do not need politicians, priests, doctors, scientists, prime ministers or any other type of ‘leader’ to make political decisions on our behalf.

Wez.

Making a Decision (2009)

From the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past”

This was the slogan of the dreaded Thought Police in George Orwell’s book 1984. It is today’s rulers’ slogan too, for the ruling class want to perpetuate their dominance. This is why their ideologues and media have redefined “socialism”; to maintain a class-divided society; this is why there are many career politicians claiming “socialism” to gain power. It is a pity that many follow them who have a genuine sympathy with suffering and seek to remedy the disease of capitalism. But, as Oscar Wilde said, “the remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it, Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease” (Soul of Man under Socialism).

Technology, science and human goodwill can solve the problems confronting humanity but only after removing the restrictions of the absurd market system.

The minority capitalist class promote the market system as it maintains private property, by which they gain ownership of wealth produced by the working class who actually run industry from top to bottom. The ownership of this monopoly must be taken from the capitalist class. How? We suggest that the socialist majority of society impose the democratically-expressed will for common ownership on the minority class. Then, with common ownership established, the whole edifice of the market, private property, wage labour, money, rent, capital, interest, for they are all interdependent, is abolished. It is replaced by a rational, classless, society with free access for all to the common wealth of society; and real human progress begins.

Conscious democratic control and application of shared available knowledge will allow the opportunity

of real true freedom. The evidence that everyone has equal power and an equal vote in every decision taken will be obvious within this future, stateless society by the removal of hunger – used as a subtle form of control under capitalism. Within this society of freely associating equal individuals, every woman, man and child will take what goods they need from a communal store. This free access, this freedom, is what will maintain real democracy and it will be possible because money will be non-existent and unnecessary. Our common sense will tell us not to waste what could be shared with others; this is what the early socialists expected.

As socialists we want to participate in a progression of the global community to free humankind’s real human potential. “Give us our world,” you will say. It will not be given; you must make it. Socialists are equal but are each different. We don’t accept leaders, Thought Police or career politicians, which is why we invite you to ignore leaders and Thought Police too. Begin to free yourself, be confident, be disobedient; think for yourself, ask questions and inquire after the case we suggest. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world to win.

CB

Pieces Together: Another “Expert” Speaks (2009)

The Pieces Together column from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another “Expert” Speaks

“This week Citigroup’s already depressed shares have lost half their value, and shares of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are down 30 percent. Those declines have come despite reassuring comments from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who told National Public Radio a week ago that people were no longer worried about the possibility of a major bank failure. ‘I’ve got to tell you,’  he said. “I think our major institutions have been stabilized. I believe that very strongly.” The Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks fell by more than 6 percent on two consecutive days, Wednesday and Thursday, something that had not happened since July 20 and 21, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, when panic was brought on by collapsing commodity prices. Such prices have fallen rapidly this week as well, as evidence mounted of a world recession.” (New York Times, 20 November)

Another “Expert” Recants

“Alistair Darling will be forced to admit tomorrow that the credit crunch has plunged Britain into a deep recession, and the economy will contract for a full year in 2009, for the first time since the early Nineties. As the credit crisis ravaged the world’s financial markets earlier this year, the Chancellor insisted repeatedly that Britain’s `economic fundamentals` were sound. In the budget six months ago, he pencilled in a strong recovery for 2009.” (Observer, 23 November)

Good Business Practice

“The European Union accused drug companies on Friday of adding billions of dollars to health care costs by delaying or blocking the sale of less expensive generic medicines. One common tactic, said Neelie Kroes, the European competition commissioner, was for drug companies to amass patents to protect active ingredients in the medicines — in one case, 1,300 patents for a single drug. Another tactic, she said, was for pharmaceutical companies to sue the makers of generic drugs for ostensible patent violations, which tended to delay the availability of the lower-cost products for years. Ms. Kroes made her comments Friday while presenting the preliminary findings of a broad investigation into accusations of anticompetitive practices in the drug sector. She also turned her sights on the generics companies, which she said had received $200 million from pharmaceutical companies over seven years in exchange for holding their products off the market.” (New York Times, 28 November)

World Hunger Grows

“It is the new face of hunger. A perfect storm of food scarcity, global warming, rocketing oil prices and the world population explosion is plunging humanity into the biggest crisis of the 21st century by pushing up food prices and spreading hunger and poverty from rural areas into cities. Millions more of the world’s most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages loom and crop prices spiral ever upwards. And for the first time in history, say experts, the impact is spreading from the developing to the developed world. More than 73 million people in 78 countries that depend on food handouts from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) are facing reduced rations this year. The increasing scarcity of food is the biggest crisis looming for the world”, according to WFP officials.” (Sunday Herald, 30 November)

Money (2009)

Book Review from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx’s Theory of the Genesis of Money. By Samezō Kuruma, translated with an introduction by Michael Schauerte, Outskirts Press, 2008

Money can function as a means of exchange, a measure of value, a general equivalent, a standard of price, a store of value. Samezō Kuruma takes a close look at some of the key theoretical issues related to Marx’s concept of money. Kuruma (1893-1982) was a Japanese Marxist economist and the text here is translated by a member of our American companion party. He also provides an introduction which seeks to outline the answers to how, why and through what is a commodity money. Karuma’s text, however, is purely analytical in its approach and is devoid of historical context, a common failing amongst many Japanese writers on Marxian economics.

Lew Higgins

SPGB Meetings (2009)

Party News from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• Zeitgeist Addendum was reviewed the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• A video recording of the debate between Adam Buick and Hillel Ticktin is available on YouTube. (A warning: it's in 10 parts.)

50 Years Ago: Memorable happenings in 1958 (2009)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The falling off of production and decline of sales have hit privately owned textiles just as hard as the State-owned railways and mines, and the textile industry presents us with a harsh example of another illusion that ran parallel with the nationalisation campaign and was held by the same people. This was the illusion, prominent after World War II, that things were not going to be as they had been in the depressed ‘thirties. No more would there be unemployment and the dole queue; for those “in the know” had learned how to plan for full employment.

( . . .)

Unemployment for all industries is now on the way to 600,000, a figure that does not take account of the many who have lost their jobs but do not register as unemployed, and though the government professes to be sure that things will get better “in the Spring” they have yet to explain the whys and wherefores of what has already happened. What has happened to their supposed control of the employment situation and their readiness to step in at short notice to head off depression?

The Labour Party and the Tory Party, the latter with its belief in managing “full employment” and the former believing as well in nationalisation, can look back at 1958 as a year in which their theories were demonstrated to be unsound and useless to the workers. The S.P.G.B. alone can justifiably claim that it predicted both failures.

[From editorial, Socialist Standard, January 1959]

Greasy Pole: Post Offices – Open or Shut? (2009)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

“By all of capitalism’s standards of logic the Post Office must be under threat of disappearing”

Postman Pat, delighting children by zooming around Greendale with his observant cat Jess, became a TV success by cashing in on the romance which lingered around the workers who, in all weathers and at all places, delivered the mail. How would Pat survive now, with Greendales’s post brought by a tee-shirted trolley-pusher jigging along to loud calypso music from his radio, who is liable to stuff as much junk advertising material through the letter box as proper mail? It was not always like this; well within living memory postmen (they were always male) wore thick, dark uniforms topped by a hard helmet resembling the pickelhauber of the German Army at the start of the 1914/18 war (the peaked caps, just as obligatory, came later). No trolleys then; postmen had to carry the mail in a large, rough sack slung across their shoulder held by coarse string. And they came several times a day; before the age of the telephone it was common for people to tell their family or friends that they would visit them on the following day by writing them a post card – relying on the post to get the message there on time. No wonder the posties had so exhaustive a knowledge of their round – who lived where and with whom, how well, or how sick, they were, who had a birthday when. It was this sense of human contact that brought many postmen to be addicted to the job. Like Postman Pat.

Closure

Along with your friendly neighbourhood postman, as part of the same deal, is – or in some cases was – the local post office – also friendly, in fact at times so much so that it resembled a kind of minor, casual branch of the Samaritans. Because it was here that local people came, not just to buy their stamps and postal orders or draw their pension but to unload their anxieties or celebrate their successes. They were more small shops than post offices, selling newspapers, food and the like. It is a general assumption that they existed only in rural areas, in small sleepy villages but in fact they survive, supplying their locality, in many a town and city. One example was given by Keith Hill, the MP for Streatham, in a House of Commons adjournment debate on 13 March 2008. He described the Abbeville Road post office in Clapham, a part of London where roses do not grow sweetly around the doors of quaint cottages and no ploughman homeward plods his weary way. This post office was under threat of closure (it has now closed); in its defence Hill praised the services on offer there, making it “a focal point in the community” and “a lifeline of human contact for its many elderly customers”; a petition with over 2000 signatures testifies to this.

Loss

In that same debate Pat McFadden, the Minister for Employment Returns, after the customary emollients about what a brilliantly eloquent speaker and industrious MP Hill is, gently reminded him of the real facts of capitalism’s life, the sense of which is that it is all very well talking about how valued a service may be but what counts is whether it makes a profit or a loss. And by those standards the Post Office network does not show up well; according to McFadden last year it lost £174m, with the cost of some operations high enough to make any accountant with an eye to a balance sheet choke. The postal system as we know it, including pre-payment through adhesive stamps (the famous Penny Black), arose from the demands of 19th century industry and commerce. In the same way, many of the Post Office’s present problems are due to it falling behind changes in technology, which have led, for example, to eight out of 10 pensions being paid electronically into a bank instead of being drawn over the Post office counter, after a chat with the staff about their family. Car tax can now be paid online, which is quicker and easier than queuing up with people wanting a book of stamps. While people may get some relief, enjoyment even, in being able to drop into their local branch but that is not how commodity society operates. By all of capitalism’s standards of logic the Post Office must be under threat of disappearing as an unvarying, ubiquitous feature of social life.

Reprieve

Chosen to make this happen was Adam Crozier, a man who, even before he got to work on shredding the Post Office network, might have been described as controversial. For example after closing some 4600 offices, cutting the work force by 45,000, in 2007 he collected a 26 per cent increase in his basic pay; with his bonus and pension his total came to £1.250.000. However perhaps he will not be so busy in future. In November the government, anxious to placate back benchers being lobbied by irate Post Office customers and to persuade the electorate that they have the recession under control, decided that the Post Office would keep the contract to run the Card Account, which had seemed about to be passed to a private company. This surprising move is expected to prevent some 3000 closures. When it came to explaining so abrupt and emphatic a change of policy the government were able to call on Minister of Work and Pensions James Purnell, who has shown himself well capable of shamelessly defending any policy – or change of it. Taking time off from harassing the sick and unemployed he told MPs that the Post Office “…is seen as safe, secure and reliable as a provider of financial services. I believe that now cannot be the time for the government to do anything that would put that network at risk” and on BBC Radio that the Post Office is “…a social service which people look forward to visiting. It is often at the heart of local communities”. We should not be surprised at this hi-jacking of the case put by the government’s opponents for it is just another example of the blatant smoke-screening of the reality of capitalism’s chaotic nature. There is no need to watch this space because we can all guess what will happen next…  

Ivan

Cooking the Books: Nothing to offer (2011)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

“People in general have lost faith in the free-market, Western, democratic order,” lamented Daily Telegraph columnist Charles Moore (22 July). “They have not yet, thank God, transferred their faith, as they did in the 1930s, to totalitarianism. They merely feel gloomy and suspicious. But they ask the simple question, ‘What’s in it for me?’, and they do not hear a good answer.”

They certainly don’t. The mad-marketeers who ruled the roost at the time of Thatcher and Reagan didn’t have anything to offer, but at the time many people thought they did. Thatcher openly proclaimed that she intended to destroy “socialism”, by which she meant everything associated with the post-war Labour government (nationalisations, NHS, council housing) and her government went a long way towards doing so, even if she was only doing what the economic circumstances of British capitalism required her to do.

Then, in 1991, the USSR collapsed. The partisans of “the free-market, Western, democratic order” were elated. They proclaimed the “end of history” and that “socialism is dead”. But what had died was state-monopoly capitalism not socialism (which had never existed in Russia). A “peace dividend” was promised. It never materialised. Instead, there was the First Gulf War, to be followed by the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the Western capitalist countries. In 2007 the biggest slump since the 1930s broke out. We’re still in it.

Wars, slumps, capitalism as usual. No wonder the likes of Charles Moore are disoriented and disillusioned. He even entitled his column “I’m starting to think that the Left might actually be right”, explaining:

“One of the great arguments of the Left is that what the Right calls ‘the free market’ is actually a set-up. The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder, in conditions that grow ever more insecure, to enrich the few. Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything.”

What Moore was lamenting was that the Right (to accept his term) has no answer to this criticism (only slightly caricatural) of the private corporation capitalism they uphold and promote. And they haven’t. Capitalism is now more intellectually bankrupt than ever. It has no inspiring vision to rally people, not even “freeing” people from state capitalism. As a result of the way it inevitably works, capitalism has become a dirty word again.

But what is the answer? By “the Left” Moore probably means the supporters of state capitalism (he explicitly states that “the Right” includes “the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown”), but the above is a criticism of capitalism which we in the Socialist Party could broadly share, even though we don’t consider ourselves a part of the Left precisely because they stand for state capitalism.

We are opposed to private corporate capitalism and to state capitalism, both of which have failed. The answer is a classless society without rich or poor where productive resources have become the common heritage of all so that the production and distribution of the things we need to live and enjoy life can be carried out in accordance with the principle “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. It’s the original meaning of socialism before the experience of Russia and Labour governments made it a dirty word. It’s high time it became respectable again.

Cooking the Books: Fictitious capital (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present crisis has led journalists to look for quotes from Marx. Here’s another example, this time from John Plender of the Financial Times (18 October):

“Karl Marx was wrong about many things, but in 1893 he provided as good an account of today’s financial implosion as any living commentator. “To the possessor of money capital, the process of production appears merely as an unavoidable intermediate link, as a necessary evil for the sake of money-making. All nations with a capitalist mode of production are therefore seized periodically by a feverish attempt to make money without the intervention of the process of production.” (Link.)

Plender was wrong about many things. First, Marx died in 1883 so he could not have written anything in 1893. This was the date that Engels published the second German edition of  Volume II of Capital. Second, it is not even an accurate quote. The first six words are not part of the quote, but something the person Plender was quoting from added in square brackets to introduce the context. Third, the last sentence about “all nations” was added by Engels, as he explained in a footnote (in section 4 of chapter 1).

This said, the passage brings out well that the aim of production under capitalism is not really to make things – that is only incidental – but to make money, more money than those with or controlling money-capital set out with. The source of the added money is the unpaid labour of those who actually produce wealth, the class of wage and salary workers, but this is obscured in financial dealings.

Marx dealt with the illusion that money can give rise to more money without production in Volume III of Capital. Here (chapter 29) he introduced the concept of “fictitious capital”. There is nothing dodgy about such capital. It’s something insurance companies have been doing for years. As Marx explained:

“The formation of a fictitious capital is called capitalization. Every periodic income is capitalized by calculating it on the basis of the average rate of interest, as an income which would be realized by a capital loaned at this rate of interest. For example, if the annual income is £100 and the rate of interest 5%, then the £100 would represent the annual interest on £2,000, and the £2,000 is regarded as the capital-value of the legal title of ownership on the £100 annually. For the person who buys this title of ownership, the annual income of £100 represents indeed the interest on his capital invested at 5%. All connection with the actual expansion process of capital is thus completely lost, and the conception of capital as something with automatic self-expansion properties is thereby strengthened.”.

Examples of this are government bonds, the price of land, and stocks and shares. Marx called these “fictitious” capital because the capital sum did not really exist, only the estimated future income stream did and that depended in the end on future production. In the case of shares, the real capital is in the fixed assets (factories, equipment, machines) and working capital (to buy materials, pay for energy, the wages fund) of the capitalist firm; this capital does not exist a second time in the prices of the shares.

One thing that banks had been doing in recent years was to increase the amount of such fictitious capital by turning mortgage repayments into bonds, “securitising” them in the jargon. If, however, the future income stream is threatened or fails to materialise – as has happened – the fictitious capital so created is depreciated or ceases to exist. But this does not mean that the real capital to which it corresponds has ceased to exist, only that its paper duplicate has gone to money heaven. A reminder that “the conception of capital as something with automatic self-expansion properties” is an illusion.