Blatchford, Jingo & Patriot. (1909)

From the May 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where He may lead I'll follow,

       My trust in Him repose,

And every hour in perfect peace

        I'll sing, He knows, He knows.

When Pope Blatchford issues his encyclical he obtains explicit obedience from his followers. No matter what fad Blatchford for the moment may patronise, he is humbly supported by Messrs. Suthers, Thompson, Dawson and Beswick. When father says turn they all turn. Blatchford is a great one. He is the Hero as prophet. Clarionettes claim that he has made more Socialists than any other living Socialist, that he has effectually smothered Christianity, and of course is the editor of a Socialist (!) weekly “possessing a larger circulation than any other Labour or Socialist newspaper." Blatchford preaches “Socialism" without having studied Marx and Engels; he teaches Determinism without having read Mill and Bain; he initiates a campaign against Germany with remarkably finite assets in the way of facts. “Since God is responsible for man's existence he is responsible for all his acts.” (Bottom Dog.) Poor God! To be held answerable for R. B.’s mental twists! Socialism learnt from Thoreau, Dickens and Emerson! Tactics learnt at the feet of Hyndman and Grayson! But our business in this article is to examine briefly Blatchford’s latest—the supposed coming German invasion.

He claims that over four years ago he drew attention to the "German Peril" and our unsatisfactory defences on the East Coast. And Hyndman, Quelch and other S.D.Peers have ever since been asserting it with a great weariness of repetition. Let us examine the quality of Blatchford’s "evidence." On one occasion after a sinister reference to miles of quays and wonderful harbours capable of holding 200 torpedo boats, he made the reader's hair stand on end by a yarn that 200,000 soldiers had practised embarking at Emden. Obviously the preliminary steps of a mighty invasion: history was to repeat itself with a great German Armada. But the Liberal Manchester Guardian took upon itself the task of abolishing this legend. It traced the story back beautifully to its source—the National Review and Toby of Punch. What had actually occurred was a single regiment practising embarkation. Four days Jater Blatchford humbly apologised, admitted that he had been duped, “had felt at the time all the difficulties," but “had confidence in his informant," and so on ad nauseam.

But what an experience for a Socialist! To see a Liberal organ with dearly a larger knowledge of the subject calmly, and with much real dignity, rebuking a popular “Socialist leader” for his commonplace jingoism. I say jingoism. Take this as typical: “In the old days, when war threatened our fathers, it was the custom to light beacon fires upon the hills. I light my fire to-day, and it shall not go out if I can keep it burning." When Blatchford, the creator of that outburst, was at Burnley a few months ago, he was raucously cheered for five minutes by six thousand Social Democrats, I.L. Peers., and the like. And this man is referred to as the actual potentate of Socialism in this England of ours. Last week's circulation—81,000. Eighty~one thousand what? Jingoes, sentimentalists, altruists, cyclists.

Blatchford speaks of “ this hour of national peril" Mark, national peril, not class peril. Anyone who was the proprietor of a universal store in Liverpool, and there was a danger of the precious pile being shelled by the German fleet, could rationally be rhetorical about national peril and beacon fires. But from the worker's point of view the capitalists who exploit “this little isle in the silver sea" are of the same calibre as the capitalists who extract surplus-value in the Fatherland. Hasn't Hyndman always been a defender of German working-class conditions against the charges of the Liberal Free Traders? The British Board of Trade, after an elaborate investigation into the condition of the German working class, concluded that it was equal to three-fourths of the English standard. And if the Germans had made an examination into English working-class conditions it is probable that they would have issued a like bulky report with the opposite as a conclusion. Why, then, this Clarion hysteria ? Surely we have evolved past the stage where it is believed that Kaiser William or Edward Rex govern their respective domains? They occupy the position so long as their respective ideas are in harmony with capitalist interests.

Then let Blatchford spout and rave and declaim. Let us not be gulled with passionate sentiment about national sentiment and defensive wars. Hervé has well shown that where capitalist interest are concerned it is impossible for the workers to know which country is the aggressor in case of war. Germany as a rapacious nation may be all that Blatchford makes her out to be. So the British lion is rapacious, the American eagle, the Russian bear, and all the other atavistic symbols of birds and beasts of prey. The attitude of the worker should be one of deliberate detachment from all national perils and quarrels. The ties and attachments we will defend are those created for us by economic development and the class struggle, namely: unity and solidarity among the oppressed toilers of all lands. The Hyndmans and Blatchfords must not be allowed to lead us into the arms of the workers’ common enemy, the international capitalist class. Divide and rule has ever been the oppressor's motto, and when the S.D.P. and Clarion crowd seek to set British and German workers against each other they play the oppressors’ game, and thereby become our enemies, for they are misleaders of the working class.

John A. Dawson

Letter: The Tragic comedians (1966)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sir,

I should like to comment on one or two points raised by your reviewer (June, Socialist Standard):—

(1) He gives the impression that I write as a Communist sympathiser. What 1 said in my Introduction was “I have approached it (the CPGB in the twenties) from the point of view of an informed British socialist of the nineteen twenties, accepting the principles of Marxism, sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party, but aware of its shortcomings" (p. 11).

(2) Any reader who believes that 1 have made "an uncritical acceptance of the grandiloquent claims made by the Communist Party" should read the book itself (especially the sections on "the New Line" 1928-1929) or Palme Dutt’s review in the Daily Worker (7th April, 1966).

(3) Your reviewer may have been convinced by reading The Communist that the Council of Action set up in August, 1920, "had no perceptible effect on the actions and policy of the British Government," but this was not the view of the Government itself or of the whole Labour Movement. The Cabinet Minutes for 9th August. 1920, refer as follows: "In the subsequent discussion great stress was laid on the very strong public opinion against intervention in the Russo-Polish War, and during the meeting information was received to the effect that several Parliamentary Labour organisations were meeting, and it was apprehended that Labour might endeavour to prevent the intervention of Great Britain by declaring a general strike." A visit to the Public Record Office is recommended.

(4) Mr. H. by insisting that as far as I am concerned "we are all socialists" seems to imply that I see no essential differences between the Labour Party, ILP, Guilds Movement, and the Unemployed Workers’ Movement and is good enough to inform me that most of them were not really revolutionary bodies. Again space requires me to refer your readers to my book itself. It is worth mentioning that I pointed out how events led the Communists in the Unemployed Movement "to present the organisation more as a movement of social protest and less as an instrument of revolution" (p. 129). This should please your reviewer.

(5) Mr. H. complains that I do not criticise Lenin’s estimate of revolutionary prospects in 1919. If he will refer to p. 278 he will find the criticism he is looking for.

(6) While it may surprise H. that I do not refer to the internal conflicts in the Communist Party on the issue of religion, it will not surprise those who were active in or knowledgeable about the activities of the CPGB in this period. Religion was not an issue which confronted either the working class or any but a small minority of the Party’s membership.

(7) I did not refer to the establishment of the SPGB in 1904 because the history of that Party is irrelevant to my theme which was the British Communist Party. I was not unaware of the birth of the SPGB—it appeared as a footnote in my original doctoral thesis!

(8) I should be happy in future editions of my work to amend the "extraordinary statement" which offends your reviewer to read "Was it surprising that the overwhelming majority of Marxists and socialists everywhere should turn to the leaders of the revolution (of October. 1917) for inspiration and guidance."

L. J. Macfarlane, 

Ruskin College, Oxford.

P.S.—I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the SPGB for the loan of certain pamphlets while I was carrying out my researches.

Reply:

The most important issue raised in Dr. Macfarlane’s attempt to answer our criticisms is his statement in paragraph (7) that the history of the SPGB "is irrelevant to my theme which was the British Communist Party."

Dr. Macfarlane claims that he accepts the broad principles of Marxism, that the Communist Party is Marxist and that he is sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party. Those aims included the suppression of Parliament by Workers Councils, direct action, the general strike and armed uprising to get power, a spurious "dictatorship of the proletariat" and urging workers to vole for the Labour Party and other perpetuators of capitalism. If he wished to treat his theme seriously he was under obligation to justify this travesty of Marxism and meet the Marxist case against it. In the years covered by the book the one solid body of opposition to Communist Party theory was the SPGB (sufficiently successful for the Communist Party to issue a directive telling their members not to get involved in arguments with the SPGB). What Dr. Macfarlane did was to make a brief reference to “some Marxists” who pointed out that according to Marx and Engels a socialist revolution was impossible in Russia (see p. 12). Here was his opportunity to seek to justify his and the Communist Party’s claims about being Marxists, but that, of course, would have required meeting openly the SPGB case. All he did in his book to meet this case was to refer to the answer to it by the Russian Communist leaders, which was that they relied on extending the revolution to Europe, where, according to Dr. Macfarlane, "this call to arms was eagerly taken up by revolutionary Marxist groups.” Now he comes back (see his para. 5) with the statement that he thinks the Russians were wrong and that “there was no possibility of working class revolution in Britain at this time” (p. 278). All the more reason therefore why he was under obligation to meet the SPGB case as part of his theme.

In reply to (4) he did in his book (pp. 12 and 123) describe all of the organisations he names as being socialist, including the unemployed movement

In (3), dealing with the failure of the 1920 Council of Action, he offers us a couple of red herrings. The claim he made in his book (p. 24) was that the Council was “to arrange for the whole industrial power of the industrial workers to be mobilised . . . " He tells us that some members of the Cabinet took note of strong public opinion against intervention in tho Russo-Polish War. Of course large numbers of people, wearied of four years of war, hated the thought of another; but what has this to do with industrial action to stop munitions going to Poland? The second point is farcical. Some Labour MP's were giving off hot-air about calling a general strike but did not even attempt to do so! The munitions went to Poland in a flood. The Russian armies were driven back and the Russian government was forced to accept peace on terms which allowed Poland to annex great areas of Russian territory. When the Communist journal admitted in October, 1920, that “the National Council of Action has failed" they were right.

Pressure of space prevents going into other questions, but if the SPGB had been mentioned in Dr. Macfarlane’s book a number of other statements made by him would have been shown to be incorrect, only sustainable by treating the SPGB as if it did not exist.

One small point, probably not known to Dr. Macfarlane, is that a small number of members of the SPGB left and joined the Communist Party at or soon after its formation.

Editorial Committee

We wrote this fifty years ago! (1974)

From the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE GREAT SHAM FIGHT AT THE POLLS 

The election, in spite of its heat, was a sham fight, not in the sense that any of the party machines was worked at less than full pressure, but in the sense that there was no issue in dispute worth fighting about. The Conservatives said it was a fight against Socialism, but they left Socialism alone and concentrated their energies on mudslinging and appeals to the most brutal and ignorant prejudices. The Liberals had no time to spare from their task of preventing a stampede among their own sheep. They raised the dear-bread cry to hedge the right wing off from the Conservatives, and the Bolshevik bogey to hold in the Liberal left wing. The result was heavy losses in both directions. The Labour Party was only too willing to take up every trivial challenge its opponents chose to throw down, and avoid not only the question of Socialism, but also what it says are its own principles . . . Socialism itself, even if the word may have crept in now and again to satisfy the left-wingers, was not treated as practical politics.

How often are we told by ‘Socialists’ who join the Labour Party of the magnificent opportunities they will have of carrying on Socialist propaganda. Usually their ‘Socialist propaganda’ consists in helping some place-hunter into the House of Commons by defending a sickening mixture of the platitudes of degenerate Christianity and the exploded nostrums of the trashy Liberal economists of the late nineteenth century, which is all the typical Labour election address contains.

The Communists made themselves ridiculous, as usual. Communists at Deptford were delirious with joy because Bowerman, supporter of a Bill to make Communist propaganda illegal, was returned again. If they received orders from Moscow to do so they would hang themselves.

Only when the workers become Socialists will the great sham fights at the polls give place to a real political struggle between capital and the working class.

From an editorial in the SOCIALIST STANDARD, November 1924. This was the election that ended the first Labour Government in Britain.

Letter: Socialism and Insurance. (1925)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reply to a Correspondent.

Miss Hilda Brock (Leyton) writes asking us to explain a passage which occurred in a recent article on ”Socialism and the Middle Class.” The passage is: “What need of insurance clerks in a world where risks are borne by society instead of by a special section with a view to making a profit.”

Miss Brock is of the opinion that under Socialism insurance and bank clerks will simply be transferred to the service of the State, which will take over these institutions, and that there will consequently be no labour set free for productive work.

It is evident first of all that Miss Brock falls into the common error of supposing that Socialism is merely an extension of State ownership. In fact, State Capitalism and Socialism are irreconcilable, and the Socialist Party accordingly opposes parties which advocate the former, such as the Labour Party.

Capitalism is continually producing insecurity for individuals, both capitalists and workers. Insurance companies make profit for their shareholders by insuring these individuals against some of the effects of that insecurity. Where profit cannot be made, the State (that is, the capitalists as a whole) is compelled to step in, and must in the last resort, maintain destitute workers to prevent mass starvation.

When private ownership, which is the cause of the workers’ poverty, is abolished, there will be no need to protect them against insecurity which will no longer exist. There will be no room for any kind of profit-making, and therefore no private banks, insurance companies or other capitalist concerns.

Society will organise the production of goods and their distribution to those places where the members of society want to consume them. Clerks will be needed to keep records and make estimates of wealth production, but they will not be needed to waste their labour, making private profit for insurance shareholders out of the misfortunes of individuals arising from the disorganisation of the social system.

Ed. Comm.

The Terror-Torn Capitalist (1911)

From the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

As thinkers we Socialists are pitifully shallow. We don't seem to get to the root cause of things, like the panders of the capitalist Press.

Not, for instance, like Lady McLaren, who has recently illumined the World (both this terraqueous globe and the newspaper of that name) on the subject of race suicide. The decline of the birthrate, it would appear, is causing consternation in our Upper Circles. So her ladyship, instead of wasting time in absurd condemnation of an economic system which slaughters wholesale the children of the very poor, dives below the mere surface and makes the problem plain.

In a tense drama the comedian need not be excruciatingly funny to excite amusement; amid the tragedy of penal courts the magistrate calls forth laughter without being inordinately witty. But to arrest public attention on the peril of the race, writers in our prostitute Press must be beyond exception profound, persuasive, gushing. Lady Mac squares the circumference to a nice-T.

Admire her penetration. She maintains that the marked tendency of the birthrate to decline is due more to the unwillingness of husbands to support children than to the unwillingness of wives to become mothers. When you walk along our dirty proletarian streets and watch our ill-clad, half fed kids, meditate on the meanness of workingmen, who, although blessed with 24s. 9d. s week and acquiescent helpmates, refuse to bring into this happy land families of more than seven, nine, eleven, or thirteen potential wage slaves.

But, behind the obdurate father, someone else is primarily to blame. Who? Unthinking Socialists, you would never guess. The modern politician!

Yes. “The child is no longer an asset; it is a financial burden," our titled sociologist discovers. Formerly “the man depended for comfort upon the extra earnings of his children, and both parents regarded sons and daughters as an insurance against starvation in their old age. Modern politicians have changed that condition of things." So now you know.

We Socialists pass nasty strictures upon old-age pensions, exposing their fraudulent pretence, insulting insufficiency, and rate saving reality. As usual, we only skim the surface, and it has been reserved for the McLaren genius to explore their true hideousness. Listen and perspire.

“The granting of Old Age Tensions is merciful. But the effect on population will be marked. As certainly as old age is sheltered from want without the aid of children, so certainly will families be smaller."

Shade of Malthus, painfully invoked from deserved oblivion! 'What a monstrous shape is taken by this demoniac gift of five bob a week at the long last of life! In the affluent independence of a secured future, tho workingman will override his wife's willingness, capitalism's claims, and nature's dictates. He will set at naught the laws of God and the exigencies of the labour-market. We see him, selfishly unproletaneous, march onward to his septuagenary, careless as to what becomes of the industrial reserve army, unmindful as to who will bear arms, do the dirty work, and create surplus-value. Rosebery's “end of all" is on the horizon. The cloud of the weekly dollar, albeit not so large as one's palm, portends a cataclysmal storm. 

A. Hoskyns

Summer School (1993)

From the September 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

A non-member’s personal report on the Summer School on Mental and Social Power at Fircroft College, 9-11 July 1993.

"This was a place and a time to talk, and talk we did. In meetings, in the dining room, in the bar, strolling on the lawn or through the orchard, or sitting beneath the huge copper beeches. It was a place and time for thought, and I find myself even now going back there in my mind and continuing our discussions.

We discussed personal therapies as a money-spinning racket, as enabling only adjustment to the inhuman demands of capitalism, or as a means of enforcing that adjustment if you include the electrodes and drugs of psychiatry.

On the other hand we considered more person-centred analysis or counselling as politically neutral but effective tools for unravelling the knots of personal distress.

There again, it was argued, can personal anxiety not be a spur to Socialist awareness? Equally, might it not be an obstacle? Why should personal awareness and growth be considered antithetical to the same process on the social level?

We debated alienation-from our work, the products of our work, from our fellows and from our own lives. Television was subjected to a close examination in this context. I think we were fairly unanimous that it is a powerful agent in capitalism's need to split us from social and personal reality. There was creative use of video material exposing television and the whole money culture.

Personally. I found this Summer School hugely rewarding and inspiring. There was talk of holding future ones at a less expensive and more spartan venue, but for myself I fell the surroundings of the old. slightly unkempt grounds quiet, civilised and very amenable to the atmosphere of serious, rational and respectful inquiry. At the same time there was humour and warmth. I identified with people talking about how difficult it is to go home after spending time with people who know what you mean. I for one am back in a world of lonely alienation. I think money should be abolished, but even more insanely, I WALK places. Here I am, walking by the wheat field, this is my food. I wish I could have a hand in growing it, harvesting it, milling it and baking the bread. But at least I can touch the rough heads of the grass that gives me life. Meanwhile perfectly healthy young men whizz by, sitting down in sort of slick, multi-aerialled spacecraft on wheels. These fields might just as well be on television as far as they were concerned. 

Finally, it was the subject matter of this Summer School which obliged me to get there. Income Support or no, the whole question of the relationship between the personal and public dimensions of our understanding is one which I feel to be crucial. Many Socialists are uncomfortable with any focus on this area, and even thoughtful psychotherapists are reluctant to look at social issues. I would welcome a closer understanding between these disciplines, and I am heartened to see evidence of this happening, not least at the Summer School, which exceeded my best expectations.

After all, in this society, we live, eat, work and consume, all for some purpose outside ourselves. So are we not brought up to serve goals outside ourselves, and do we not bring up our children in the same way? That there are hard questions goes a long way to explaining their absence from Socialist literature, but they are questions nonetheless which we are all called upon to address." 

Peter Rigg

Whitewash and be damned (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no more certain a betrayer of the truth about the condition of the working class under capitalism than the political journalist. And nowhere is this more true than of those writing for the ‘quality’ newspapers: The Guardian, The Observer; the Daily and Sunday Telegraph.

This is not to suggest that journalists (or any others) who support the capitalist system should be denied a hearing. What is at issue is the exclusive nature of ‘editorial discretion’ and, consequently, the whole tone and content of the ‘serious’ newspapers — as contrasted with their loudly-trumpeted, clearly hypocritical posture as defenders of free speech.

The ‘heavies’, far from being the instruments of unfettered free speech their proprietors and editors would have us believe, are in no way different in their main aims and purposes from their bedfellows, the tabloids — blowzy tarts though they are. As with those publications, they must produce a profit; promote as assiduously as they can the political and economic interests of their owners; and fight off their increasingly carnivorous competitors. And to help readers swallow their capitalistic medicine, they must ensure that is is well sweetened. Hence the liberal supply of advertisements and features tailored to their ‘up-market’ requirements. (To go through The Observer's colour supplement is — for this ‘down-market’ contributor at least — a bit like window-shopping around Harrod’s with empty pockets on a wet Sunday afternoon.)

Long-standing familiarity with some of the ‘heavies’ has confirmed an unshakeable conviction that, considered as an exercise in democratic open-handedness, their political and economic ingredient constitutes a pitiful sham. It is the inevitable result of editorial policies as prohibitive as anything offered us by that other tightly controlled and highly effective filter of news and views, the BBC.

MERCENARY ART

To take just one well-known political columnist (who can serve as a typical example of all practitioners of that mercenary art): Peter Jenkins, of The Guardian. What he consistently offers us, however elaborately, is a hollow apology for all the crass inefficiencies of an outdated and corrupt system in decline, coupled with an ill-concealed attack on millions of ordinary wage-earners who are struggling to maintain a falling standard of living. In short, Jenkins’ efforts over the years have proved to be no more than a dismal and manifestly bankrupt attempt to convince us that the symptoms of capitalism can be cured while ignoring the disease the capitalist system itself.

Then we have capitalist politics as expressed through editorials. An amusing example was provided by The Observer during the recent general election campaign. Condescending to present us all with a breakdown on any and every issue relating to the struggle of British capitalism to survive its own inadequacies, The Observer had earlier pretended to coyness as to what it intended to exhort us to do at the polling booths. (We were expected, no doubt, to hold our breaths.) As if it made a scrap of difference to the working class what The Observer thought; or, come to that, which of capitalism's would-be executives formed the next government. As the election has once again demonstrated, capitalist politics has reduced itself to the level of a Whitehall farce in which the participants share the same bed.

VOYEURISTIC INCLINATIONS

Should you - knowing your place - consider yourself a member of the self-styled middle classes (you are a grocer’s daughter, perhaps), you will probably prefer to slum it with Peregrine Worsthorne and the Daily Telegraph. That organ’s correspondence columns can read like a page out of Mary Whitehouse’s diary. And should you feel like indulging your more voyeuristic inclinations, then its super gossip columnist, who displays his shoddy merchandise over the pseudonym of Peterborough, is very definitely your man. Never a one to deny himself an opportunity for sycophantic name-dropping or sly innuendo, this urban scribe will happily conduct you around the world of the well-heeled: the current ‘in’ people, the power-holders and seekers, Belgravian socialites, senior churchmen, royal personages, and other parasites having no visible means of support. (It is instructive to note how few of Peterborough’s subjects are without that instantly recognisable imprimatur of the capitalists and their hangers-on: the ability to live high-off-the-hog without the need to resort to so sordid and time-wasting an activity as work.)

From the foregoing it may correctly be deduced that we cast a jaundiced eye over the ‘serious’ press. This is born of many years of critical observation, years during which ‘responsible’ journalists have consistently demonstrated, through wordy outpourings, their servile conformity to the requirements of their owners and the capitalist system in which they operate. And all this in the name of democracy and free speech.

Of course, such dogged loyalty must not be allowed to go unrewarded. This can be achieved in a variety of ways. One of them springs immediately to mind. By the time this article appears in print the recent general election campaign will have become history. Capitalism’s executive committee will have settled into its pile carpets and its chauffered limousines — all ready to dispense the inevitable patronage in one form or another to its more effective and obliging friends. We may be confident that among the earliest recipients will figure not a few of the most diligent of them all: those drawn from the upper echelons of Fleet Street.

Richard Cooper

The tragic comedians (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Communist Party: Its Origins and Development until 1929 by Dr. L. J. Macfarlane Macgibbon & Kee, 63s.

In his book Dr. L. J. Macfarlane painstakingly traces the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in all its muddled and conflicting reformism, syndicalism, and anti-parliamentarianism in 1920, through its chequered career of alternately supporting and opposing the Labour Party, sometimes both supporting it and opposing it at the same time, with its playing at armed revolt, splitting the trade unions, marching the unemployed up and down, fancying itself leading the 1926 General Strike on to revolution—down to 1929 when “the Party was in a bad state, its membership was falling away and those who remained were engaged in bitter dissension and dispute.”

The CPGB started as a mixture of antagonistic elements; the resolution to seek affiliation to the Labour Party was carried by only 100 votes to 85, and the minority believed that they would have won if some of their supporters had not kept away from the founding congress. It has remained divided ever since, united only in one thing, the pathetic belief that victory for Socialism had been achieved in Russia.

Sometimes one faction gained the leadership and sometimes another. So its opposition to Labour Party candidates at Parliamentary elections in 1921 was followed in 1922 by a call to the workers to vote Labour. This was continued in 1924 but in 1929, when they coined the phrase “the third capitalist party” the Communists were telling the workers to vote for Labour Party candidates in some constituencies but elsewhere to abstain from voting.

The author, who describes himself as “sympathetic to the aims of the Communist Party,” admits that “there was little enough to show for nearly 10 years of devoted work by thousands of ordinary party members,” and he can claim for the Communist Party nothing more than that “for all its faults” it had “helped to keep alive a spirit of resistance to the meek acceptance of hardship and poverty as economic facts of life.” He should have remembered also the thousands of workers who, having been caught up by the emotional prospect of an impossible “revolution round the corner,” ended in apathy and cynicism after experience of Communist Party political trickery and deception.

The chief value of this book is that it brings together in chronological order a mass of detailed information, with references to sources, which will be useful to anyone wanting to follow up particular developments, but beyond that there is little to commend it. The major fault is the author's uncritical acceptance of grandiloquent claims made by the Communist Party and others without any attempt to examine them against the evidence. A case in point is the myth about the Jolly George and the campaign to stop the British Government intervening against Russia in the Polish-Russian war.

Dr. Macfarlane reports anti-war demonstrations, the formation of a Council of Action, the calling of a 24-hour strike in which “it was claimed that thousands of South Wales miners answered the call” and that the dockers of East London “refused to load the Jolly George with munitions.”

He concludes: “It now appeared that all these efforts had been effective—direct action to save the revolution had been taken at last”.

In fact it all had no perceptible effect on the actions and policy of the British Government, and this was admitted by the Communists in their journal. The Communist (7 October 1920):

Frankly, the National Council of Action has failed, and its failure is all the more disappointing when one remembers the unanimity and enthusiasm of the great Central Hall conference held at the beginning of August last. It was formed to prevent the supplies and munitions being sent in support of the attack on Soviet Russia, which it is quite obviously not doing. Somehow and from somewhere in this country, those supplies are being sent—a Moscow report alleges that England has sent seven steamers of munitions, three tanks and twelve small steamers with provisions in aid of Poland and that these have been unloaded at Danzig.

Dr. Macfarlane is uncritical in his approach because he obviously has no clear idea of what is the nature of the problem of replacing the capitalist social system by Socialism. To him “we are all Socialists”: Marxist and anti-Marxist, Labour Party, ILP, the defunct National Guilds movement, the Unemployed Workers Committee Movement of the Nineteen twenties; etc., etc. The fact that these bodies were fighting each other most of the time and that most of their aims were no more revolutionary than those of the present Labour Party passes him by.

He is able to report without comment that “as a revolutionary socialist party the British Socialist Party welcomed the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia” and that the Leeds Convention in 1917, with “rousing speeches from Phillip Snowden and Ramsay MacDonald” was “amazingly successful”—what exactly did it succeed in achieving?

He tells us that Tom Quelch went away from the Convention convinced that “the hour of the Social Revolution is close up on us”—why no criticism of that piece of silliness, or of Lenin's statement in March 1919 that “The victory of the proletarian revolution all over the world is assured”?

What was going on in those years was that the Communist Party of Great Britain, lacking any real understanding either of the strength of British and American capitalism and the capitalist outlook of the majority of workers, was dreaming of a non-existent Socialist victory in Russia, while Lenin and others in Russia were dreaming of a non-existent revolutionary working class in Britain, America, France, Germany and elsewhere about to come to the aid of the Bolsheviks.

Dr. Macfarlane has some surprising omissions. He does not tell us about the curious attitude and internal conflicts of the Communist Party, torn between its nominal acceptance of Marx's “Religion is the opium of the People” and the desire to get the votes of the workers who had a religious outlook. He briefly mentions Francis Meynell, who was editor of the Communist, but not that he was a Catholic!

Another omission is that he is able to describe the breakaway of the Socialist Labour Party from the Social Democratic Federation in 1903 but he does not mention the breakaway of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in 1904. Perhaps this is not surprising. Had he thought fit to state the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain he would have had to justify his extraordinary statement: “Was it surprising that Marxists and socialists everywhere should turn to the leaders of the revolution for inspiration and guidance?”

He tells us on the same page that “to socialists everywhere the Russian Revolution of October 1917, came as a revelation”.

The reader of the book will look in vain to find out what it was that was revealed except confirmation of what Socialists knew already, the impossibility of Socialism without Socialists, and of imposing Socialism from above.

Edgar Hardcastle

ID Cards and Social Control (1995)

From the January 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain first had identity cards in September 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War. They were subsequently abolished in 1952, seven years after the war ended.

The official reason for their use after the war was for the easier running of the ration system and the NHS. The same personal number being used for both. Cards also had to be produced at the Post Office for certain transactions.

According to Personal Identity by C. H. Rolph:

"The police, who had by now got used to the exhilarating new belief that they could get anyone’s name and address for the asking, went on calling for their production with increasing frequency. If you picked up a fountain pen in the street and handed it to a constable, he would ask to see your identity card in order that he might record your name as that of an honest citizen. You seldom carried it, and this meant he had to give a little pencilled slip requiring you to produce it at a police station within two days.
"The system was finally abolished in 1952 after the test case of Wilcock v. Muckle (1951 49 LGR 584). This arose from the refusal of a motorist either to show his identity card to a policeman or to accept the note requiring its later production at a police station in the next two days."

The High Court accepted that the constable was within the law, but Lord Chief Justice Goddard remarked: 

"Because the police may have powers, it does not follow that they ought to exercise them on all occasions. It is obvious that the police now, as a matter of routine, demand the production of national registration cards whenever they stop and interrogate a motorist for whatever cause. Such action tends to make people resentful of the acts of the police instead of assisting them."

The powers which were available then are very similar to the ones now being asked for by some MPs and police.

Identity cards are about social control. The experience of some European countries points to the danger of minorities and dissident groups being harassed by the police. The use of card checks to identify anti-government demonstrators means that such people can be monitored and discriminated against in various ways. There is also evidence that in Britain certain groups are subject to "Stop and Search" procedures.

In this computer age the dangers are self-evident. How much information will be stored on this card? How many people will have access to it? You will never know.

The argument is that identity cards will be effective against crime. This has not been proven. The professional criminal will always find a way round it. Dr Michael Levi, Director of Criminological Studies at the University of Wales and an expert on fraud, speaking to an audience composed of police, civil liberties groups, building societies and bankers, twenty-four hours after the Home Secretary announced at this year's Tory Party Conference a further step towards the introduction of identity cards said that "in ordinary policing terms, the value of ID cards is hard to discern". He went on:

"While an ID card would have a modest effect in helping to stop some types of fraud, whether even at a pragmatic rather then a rights-based level their benefits outweigh the cost to civil liberties is an open question."

The government is testing the water at the moment to see what public reaction there is. 

Gerry Geraghty

Between the Lines: Windsor soap (1989)

The Between The Lines Column from the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Windsor soap

Dynasty is the name of a tacky American soap opera. Windsor is the name of a curious British dynasty. Of course, in one sense they both serve the same purpose: an escapist show with classy costumes to distract the proles from the woes of life. For socialists, the monarchy really does not matter: it is the class of parasitical loafers which it represents that gets up our noses. Monarchy: The Enchanted Glass (3 December, C4) was an intelligent attempt to get to the root of what the monarchy does. What function does it serve — and whose interests?

The presenter, Christopher Hitchens, argued that monarchy is "a strange folk culture imposed from above” by a state seeking to hypnotise the working-class majority into believing that "we're all in it together”. It was suggested that monarchy, in its present form as a circus of social cementation, is of relatively recent development. “By the time the Napoleonic wars were over the English had succeeded in inventing British nationalism, a Royal-based nationalism with the Crown at the centre." This is a rather arbitrary approach to history: one could just as well suggest that the English state was most successful at achieving this by the mid-Sixteenth century. (This was not the only historically weak offering in the programme: the suggestion that George III was completely mad is a discredited caricature — plenty of British monarchs have been totally crazy, to be sure, but George III was one of the brighter of them.) The important point being made was that Monarchy as a cultural performance was invented as a means of consolidating the British national illusion. On that point the programme was quite right. For example, the investiture of the Prince of Wales, which many readers will remember as a major TV event starring Prince Charles, was invented in 1911 by Lloyd George who thought that such a phoney ‘‘ancient ceremony" would boost national morale at a time of fierce class struggle. Most of the so-called ancient rituals of the monarchy go back to the last two decades of the last century: and are, therefore. newer than many of the customs associated with the American Presidency. They were invoked to unite the nation's population — and how better to do that than by having us all cheer together?

On Sunday 11 December (ITV) Brian Walden interviewed the Queen's daughter. He was as obsequious as Alistair Burnett on a bad day, evidently reasoning that if Sir Robin can get one then so should he. Princess Anne is a woman filled to the brim with unscientific prejudices about human nature. She spoke about how in some countries people do not want to work, but prefer to go out robbing Does she not know that were it not for such a dishonourable British tradition she would not be a Princess, her old man would not have inherited his sausage empire, and her family would have no ruling class to symbolise?

History and irony

The great thing about Dennis Potter's four-part dramatisation, Christabel, was that it was about Nazis, not people who were self-evidently monsters. Utterly sick as the entire Nazi enterprise was. the illusion should not be entertained that it was all carried out by manifestly disturbed people. The workers who supported Nazism were deluded, but not sub-human.

The story, based on the biography of an English woman who married a German and found herself caught in the nightmare of fascist life, was about characters who could play in the garden with children and also shout "Heil Hitler" and support the persecution of Jews. Christabel herself begins by not caring about politics. She is bored by it all, and the rise of the Nazis is a matter of indifference to her, much as the ruthlessness of the Thatcher mob is currently of little interest to certain workers who think they can afford to ignore such matters. Christabel is astonished to discover that her Jewish doctor was found dead in his surgery after Kristal nacht. It is not until her lawyer husband is incarcerated in a concentration camp that the full horror of totalitarianism becomes clear to her. By then it is much too late. Too late for her: too late for all of the jolly ordinary, rather decent little Nazi supporters whose homes were being bombed. Potter showed both the sickness of Nazism and the irony of workers, not very different from those who supported Churchill, falling for it.

Potter's sense of irony was supplemented on the night of the final episode of Christabel (Saturday 10 December) by a remarkably sensitive film, made by a Palestinian director, called Wedding in Galilee. It was about a Palestinian family living in the Israeli-occupied territory: the father planned a wedding for his daughter, but the local, unelected Israeli military governor would only allow the ceremony to take place at night (after the curfew) if he was invited as guest of honour. The father concedes and this leads to family and village conflict, with some attacking him as a collaborator with the Israeli occupiers. It was not an aggressive or typically nationalistic film: the Palestinian director showed considerable sensitivity towards the arrogant Israeli militarists, trying to portray them as real people. Just like the Nazis in Christabel. Israelis. Just like the Nazis. Guns. Military uniforms. Ghettos for the Arab underclass. Curfews. Israelis just like the Nazis. This is what nationalism does to decent people.

Steve Coleman

Famine in Russia (1921)

Editorial from the October 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

To most of-those who know the history of India under English rule, and of China during the nineteenth century, the huge advertisement of the Russian Famine by the Capitalist Press of this country must seem singularly strange.

In 1918 there were 6,000,000 people carried off by the results of famine—camouflaged as Spanish “ ’flu ”—in India. Yet not one-tenth of the space was devoted to this appalling catastrophe that there has been to the Russian Famine, though the former was immensely more disastrous than the latter up to the present. Huge numbers of people have died of hunger in China during the latter portion of the nineteenth century without receiving more than a few lines notice in the Capitalist Press.

Why this sudden solicitude for starving people on the part of our masters? Have they become tender-hearted overnight, and full of desire to ease suffering wherever it may be found? One need go no further than the nearest street to find the answer.

There will be found “heroes” from the trenches often without a limb or an eye, “patriots” from the munition works, and women from the shell factories, each and all proclaiming their want and misery due to lack of employment or support. The Executive Committee of the ruling class, known as the Government, stops the Housing Schemes, thus adding a large number to the already immense army of unemployed, and then reduces the unemployed insurance pay, and so decreases the purchasing power—poor as it was—of those drawing such pay. Those in work have suffered reductions of wages in far greater proportion than the small fall in prices, and further reductions are threatened in all directions.

The class responsible for the forcing down of the standard of living of the workers, that looks on callously at the want and misery existing here among the masses out of work, and which rules an Empire where millions die of starvation in less than a year, cannot be accused of either sympathy or tender-heartedness towards the Russians. An explanation must be looked for elsewhere.

The various notices in the Capitalist Press are marked by a unanimity in charging the Bolshevik Government with being the cause of the Russian Famine. This statement is such a stupid lie that only the befuddled mentality of’ those who blindly follow that press and its teachings would accept it. The simple fact is that the extraordinarily dry spring and summer has affected Russia more than the rest of Europe because of her primitive methods of agriculture. This is aggravated by her lack of means of transport, though the Russian Government has made strenuous endeavours to improve this service during their control of power. The canting hypocrisy of this lie is shown by the fact that not one of the papers spreading it have attributed the famine in India to English rule, though there is a vast array of evidence to support such a contention.

Another point on which some of the Capitalist Press are openly, and others more guardedly, giving voice is the suggestion that the Russian Government is playing false over the matter of relief measures. Hence the demand for “committees of inquiry,” “full control of supplies,” etc. These demands only thinly veil the intentions of these capitalist ghouls. Under cover of these claims they would sort out the claimants for relief, and take care that only those opposed—really or apparently—to the Bolshevik rule would be assisted. A more sinister object that lies behind these moves is the attempt to use the famine as a means of entering Russia, , and, under the claim of “full control of relief,” seize positions of power for the purpose of overthrowing the Russian Government.

Here, then, is the explanation of the beating of the big drum about Russia. Not charity, nor humanity, nor fellow-feeling for suffering millions in Russia, but the slimy endeavours of the foul capitalists of Europe to use the disaster there as a means of seizing control of Russia, with its vast natural resources—not for the wellbeing of the Russian workers, but for the profit of those engaged in the burglary.

While the capitalists are haggling over the sending of relief to the starving people in the Volga basin, they are supplying huge quantities of munitions to Poland and Rumania for the purpose of military operations against Russia (see Daily Telegraph, September 13th, 1921). If these operations were to turn out successfully for the capitalists, the Russian workers might starve even to the extent that happens in India, but the Jackal Press would not then be able to find room to report so ordinary an occurrence.

It is another lesson for the working class, showing that only when they control the means of life will they be able to make provision against famines or floods. As soon as they learn the lesson they will set to work to establish that ownership by inaugurating Socialism.

Letter From Europe: Allah under the bed (1983)

The Letter From Europe column from the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January a number of strikes broke out in the French motor industry resulting in a shortfall, for Renault, of some 42,000 vehicles. This worried the government, both because of the loss of production and as it was clear that the dispute would be settled only by a wage increase above the 8 per cent norm they had laid down for 1983.

In other circumstances the government would have blamed “communists” (as Harold Wilson did when confronted with the seamen’s strike in 1966) but this propaganda ploy was not open to the French government since it included four ministers from the Communist Party. But another scapegoat was to hand. It so happens that the majority of shopfloor workers in Renault’s two factories in the Paris area are immigrants, mainly Moroccans and Algerians from North Africa. At Flins, the centre of the strike, 53 per cent of the 17,000 shopfloor workers are immigrants while at Billancourt the figure is 55 per cent of 12,000.

The campaign was opened by the Minister of the Interior, Gaston Deferre, who declared in a television debate on 26 January that there was a “special phenomenon" in the conflicts in the car industry: “Fundamentalists, Shiites are involved". The next day the Prime Minister himself, Pierre Mauroy, joined in. claiming that immigrant workers were “being stirred up by religious and political groups which decide their policies by criteria which have little to do with French social realities”.

After the strike at Renault was over (resulting in provision for an 11 per cent wage increase, without productivity strings, for three-quarters of the workforce in 1983) and after a conflict has broken out at a Citroen factory near Paris, the Minister of Labour, Jean Auroux, returned to the charge, alleging that the strikes were not purely industrial and that workers had sworn on the Koran to be loyal to their union (in the event the “communist”-led CGT!). He went even further:

Some people have an interest in the political or social destabilisation of our country. . . Certain forces in France and in the world are seeking to make us fail but we are vigilant.

A newspaper comment, probably inspired by the Ministry of Labour, added: 

The underlying fear of the Minister is that fundamentalist agitators are using Islam to manipulate immigrant workers, destabilise the French car industry and disturb social peace in the country (Républicain Lorrain, 11 February 1983).

Who are these Muslim fundamentalists who want to stir up social trouble in France for the benefit of some foreign power? The mind boggles at the possibilities. Deferre spoke of “Shiites”, the Muslim sect whose spiritual leader is the Ayatollah Khomeini. The Iranian government might well have reason to want to destabilise France since France has committed itself wholeheartedly in favour of Iraq (supplying arms, buying petrol) in the Gulf War. However, the trouble is that the Shiite sect is unknown in North Africa and there is probably not a single Shiite employed in any car factory in the whole of France!

Then there is Colonel Gaddafi whose expansionist ambitions have brought him into conflict with French imperialist interests in Africa, just as stoutly defended by Mitterand as previously by Giscard. Another possibility might be Ben Bella, one of the leaders of the FLN during the Algerian war and first President of Algeria from 1962 until he was overthrown and imprisoned in an Army coup in 1965. He emerged from prison in 1980 a Muslim fundamentalist. As if to point the finger at him. in the middle of the strikes the police raided the house he uses when he visits France, found some armed guards, arrested one of them for a bank robbery and expelled the others to Italy.

But there is not the slightest shred of evidence to back up the government’s smears. Despite Mauroy’s claim, the strikes clearly had their origin in “French social realities”: in the atrocious working conditions, lack of promotion prospects, and low wages (aggravated by the recent wage freeze) which workers in car factories have to suffer under capitalism.

Perhaps some workers did swear loyalty to the CGT on the Koran (for doing the equivalent of which six farm labourers at Tolpuddle were sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia in . . . 1834). But this would merely be a way of strengthening solidarity among workers with little experience of trade unionism and strikes. As to the suggestion of an international Muslim plot against France involving Khomeini, Gaddafi and Ben Bella, it would be hard to invent a sillier story. The government dearly made this all up as a way of setting public opinion against the strikes.

Inventing stories and spreading lies has always formed part of the arsenal governments of capitalism have used to try to discredit and defeat strikes. In employing such techniques the PS/PC government in France has shown once again that it is running capitalism in the only way it can be — against the interests of the wage and salary-earning majority.

Adam Buick (Luxemburg)

Trade Unions in China (1972)

From the November 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some of those most vocal in their opposition to the Tory Government’s Industrial Relations Act have been the various Maoist groups in Britain. One wonders, however, how many of them have bothered to examine the situation of trade unions in their “own” country.

The Chinese Communist Party’s concept of the role to be played by the trade unions was derived from Lenin: the unions were to be “transmission belts”, one of a number of organisations through which the vanguard exercised the alleged dictatorship of the proletariat. But at the same time, since the transmission belts were supposed to work in both directions, the Party was to learn from the masses via the unions. In practice, the first of these concepts meant a close relationship between Party and unions, with the latter’s role reduced to one of helping to maintain labour discipline and to increase production. At various times since 1949, what one might call “traditional union functions” have reasserted themselves, and the unions have found themselves accused of “economism”, i.e. concentrating on the immediate interests and material welfare of the workers rather than on furthering the interests of the State as a whole.

Two instances will suffice to demonstrate the legal position regarding trade unions and the general spirit of labour laws in China:

After a dispute has broken out, both parties, during the period of consultation, mediation or arbitration, shall maintain the status quo in production. The management should not resort to a lockout, suspend payment of wages, cease providing meals or take any other measures which lower the workers’ living conditions. Labour shall also maintain production and observe labour discipline. After arbitration by the Labour Bureau [a government organ], even if one party disagrees and calls for settlement by the court, the two parties shall nevertheless abide by the arbitration award pending the verdict of the court. [1]

In other words, from the start in 1950 (despite some measures designed to protect the workers’ interests), arbitration was to be compulsory, and strikes and go-slows were outlawed. Then in 1958:

The distribution of income shall be based on the principle of ensuring high speed in expanded reproduction. With the development of production, wages shall be increased every year, but the rate of increase must be slower than the rate of increase in production. When the average wages (including grain supply) of members of the commune rise to a level that guarantees a living standard equivalent to that of the well-to-do middle peasant, the rate of increase in wages should be reduced to ensure the rapid growth of industry, the mechanisation of farming and electrification of the rural areas in the shortest possible time. [2]  

Comment would be superflous.

Detailed information as to the exact way in which trade unions carried out their functions is rather harder to come by. Some interesting sidelights are shed by Edgar Snow’s report of his interview with Li Chi-po, Vice-Chairman of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (Chinese equivalent of the TUC), in 1960. Snow asked what would happen if a union of shoemakers wanted to strike for higher wages; as answer, he was told that the unions’ main task was educational, with auxiliary tasks being the maintenance of labour morale and the improvement of the workers’ living conditions. Eventually Li replied to the question as follows:

Strikes for higher wages cannot occur if workers have been properly educated to understand that wages are based on fair standards of values of production set by the state, which makes no profit for itself but merely acts for “the whole people” to reinvest national savings for the future enrichment of all.

(“The Other Side of the River, Red China Today”, 1963) 

During the Cultural Revolution, however, the unions were found to have been under the influence of Liu Shao-ch’i and his particular faction of the Communist Party. Liu was accused of attempting to emasculate the revolutionary nature of the trade unions and so pave the way for the restoration of capitalism (Peking Review, June 28, 1968). By October 1970, it seems, trade unions had ceased to exist in China. A British union official who visited China in that month was told by a Peking factory worker:

Before the Cultural Revolution . . . instead of carrying forward revolution the unions concerned themselves with welfare and material incentives to the neglect of politics and state affairs.

Among the organisations set up to replace the unions were Workers’ Representative Conferences “under the direct guidance of the Party”:

Their main activity at the moment is organising the study of Chairman Mao’s philosophical works. (“China Policy Study Group Broadsheet”, June 1971.)

In short, the attitude taken by those who control the means of production in China towards so-called workers’ organisations has been to use them as a means of raising production and thereby increasing the amount of surplus value available for reinvestment. Any attempts by the trade unions to gain a larger part of this increased production for their members have eventually met with determined resistance from these same rulers. Which, to say the least, makes the Maoists’ protests about the situation in Britain a little hypocritical!

Paul Bennett

Notes.

[1] Provisional Rules of Procedure for Settling Labour Disputes (1950), Article 11. In Albert P. Blaustein (ed.): "Fundamental Legal Documents of Communist China”, New Jersey 1962, p. 505.

[2] Tentative Regulations (Draft) of the Weihsing (Sputnik) People’s Commune (1958), Article 22. In Blaustein, pp. 464-5. Emphasis added.

A fair day's wage? (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

How often have you heard the term "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work?" To the defenders of the wages system this slogan exemplifies the essentially "honest and fair" relationship between employer and employee within capitalism. But is it "fair"?

Marx understood that this relationship is based on the exploitation of employees as members of the working class by the capitalist (employer) class. Marx offered an explanation of how this exploitation takes place in his Labour Theory of Surplus Value. In the pamphlet Wages, Price and Profit, Marx demonstrated the fallacy of "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work".

Marx explains that all commodities produced have an exchange value. For instance in present day conditions 1lb of coffee beans may have the same approximate value as 5lb of sugar. To arrive at this comparison we compare both the coffee and the sugar against a third measure that is common to both. Marx identifies this common measure as labour - the "social substance" common to all commodities. In other words, commodities require different amounts of labour in production. The more labour required, the more exchange value the commodity has.

Marx explains that the price of a commodity is the monetary expression of its value. Here he is careful to point out that we are talking of market prices representing the average amount of social labour necessary across the whole production process. (Marx talks of social labour to differentiate it from the labour of the individual isolated from society who may produce things for his own use. In this case the product is not a commodity since it will not be sold or exchanged). Furthermore the price is an average because although the price will be the same for each commodity of the same type, the conditions of production will differ between each manufacturer. These prices will “gravitate" towards the actual value but in reality shifts in supply and demand will cause prices to fluctuate around value. Marx showed in Capital that some commodities sell above, and others below, value at a price that is derived from value and that we must be aware that in developed capitalism commodities do not sell at value. In Wages. Price and Profit the important point is made that the capitalists make profit while buying the workers' commodity, labour power, at its value.

Since on average price tends to equate with value over a given period of time, then it is clear that profit is not derived by selling commodities at a price consistently above value. In fact a profit is made by selling commodities at a price that is derived from value. How can this be?

To answer this Marx starts by looking at the value of labour power. We have established that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labour invested in its production. This can be applied to labour power as well because it is another commodity on the market, the one owned by the worker which has a price tag called wages.

The value in this case is fixed by the value of the necessities of life needed to maintain the worker's ability to continue and maintain the "production" of labour power.

A capitalist buys the right to use a worker's labour power for the whole of the working week, but the crucial point is that the value of that labour power is covered by the worker's production before the end of the working week. For the rest of the time the worker is producing what Marx termed "surplus value" - that is, value over and above the amount needed to cover the value of the worker's labour power. It is here, in the production of surplus value, that a profit is realised for the capitalist despite the fact that the commodities are sold at their value. The factory owning capitalist does not keep all the surplus value. Apart from the profits which they take the land owning capitalist takes rent on the land involved in the production process and the money lending capitalist takes interest on loans advanced to set up, maintain and expand the production process. The important point Marx makes is that the value of labour power is covered by the amount of work necessary to maintain and perpetuate that labour power but the use of the labour power is only limited by the physical endurance of the labourer: "The daily or weekly value of the labouring power is quite distinct from the daily or weekly exercise of that power..." Thus, although the worker performs unpaid labour for the capitalist it appears as though the worker is paid for that labour in full in the form of wages.

Before capitalism the exploited classes produced wealth for the ruling class in more obvious forms. Slaves produced wealth for their owners and feudal serfs handed over a portion of the wealth they produced to the land owning aristocracy. Under a different guise this production process continues under capitalism, but it is obscured by the method of extracting of surplus value.

Since Marx formulated his Labour Theory of Value during the 1860s the fundamental structure of capitalism has remained unchanged although some features have altered. For instance, when Marx was developing these ideas he could not have forseen the growth and influence of trade unions as an important factor in influencing the level of wages. Instead Marx concentrated on environmental factors that could influence the supply of, and demand for, labour power.

The Labour Theory of Value remains as crucial an element to the socialist case today as it did during the nineteenth century and the proclamation made by Marx towards the end of Wages, Price and Profit demands as much attention from the working class now as it did then:

Instead of the conservative motto "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" (Workers) ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword. "Abolition of the wages system!".

Tony Dobson

The reform fallacy (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

“It’s not the narrowness of the Bowl, but the smallness of their spoons.”                                                               — Marx, Value, Price and Profit.

Whilst it is frequently said that the concept of Socialism is quite easy—simple, in fact—the analysis of capitalism is by no means so. Any active Socialist propagandist will confirm that even after opponents confirm the desirability, or even necessity, of a new social order, their main argument for supporting reforms is the “practical” evidence.

Comparisons with the harrowing past, or the starving millions in the Third World, or the situation in Russia, are advanced as arguments for the great "progress” made by social reform meriting continued support. Yet it cannot be denied that the greater the “progress” the more acute the problems. And so we get the paradoxical result that the more reforms, the more sophisticated and elaborate the Welfare State— the more dissatisfaction and protest.

We are regularly reminded that ordinary workers now have colour television, motor cars, telephones, central-heated homes and more leisure. They have holidays abroad, medical treatment and pensions, all things which their forebears never enjoyed. Judged by superficial appearances, discontent should be allayed, strife assuaged, replaced by harmonious content. But it is not so!

To understand the reasons for this requires rather more than a fervent wish for a new society. It is a complicated problem based on relative proportions. If, in spite of the fact that the worker’s productivity has increased greatly by technical progress, the worker’s share or portion of the increased total wealth is relatively less than that of the capitalist, the worker is poorer compared with the values he now produces.

“Peter only establishes his own identity by comparing himself with Paul”, says Marx in Capital: i.e., his needs are what society can now provide. If the Company is able, by new machinery, to turn out twice as much wealth, the worker is producing the same values in half the time. If he goes on strike and gets a 25 per cent, increase in wages he is still 25 per cent, behind his employer, who has replaced a 50-50 division of necessary and surplus labour with a 75-25 one. “By the reduction of the necessary labour-time from 6 to 4 hours with a 12-hour working day, the rate of surplus-value has risen from 100 to 200 per cent., it had doubled.” (Kautsky, Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx.)

Marx gave some explanation of this relative position by the simple analogy of the happy man in his little house, contented enough until there arises

next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks into a hut . . . however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighbouring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

(Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital.) 

The more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him.

(Ibid.)

A recent TV interview with Kevin Keegan, the ex-Liverpool footballer, provided a similar analogy. He described his boyhood: dedicated to football, he was quite small compared with other boys. He said he was put in goal. With the small junior goalposts he could just about reach the top. But as he grew, so did the goalposts until they were so high that he was hopeless as a goalie!

The worker is the goalie and the posts are the system. However much the worker grows (his output) the goalposts always grow beyond his reach. “If, therefore, the income of the worker increases with the rapid growth of capital, there is at the same time a widening of the social chasm that divides the worker from the capitalist, an increase in the power of capital over labour, a greater dependence of labour upon capital.” (Wage-Labour and Capital.)

Horatio.