New Pamphlet Out Soon (1968)

Party News from the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Government or Socialism (1s. 3d (post free) Details below)

Labour fails again

Why are so many Labour voters disappointed? Why is there a swing to the other parties at by-elections? Why do more and more people not trouble to vote?

Why do so many people become cynical about politics and say that nothing makes any difference? Why have some trade unions that are affiliated to the Labour Party threatened to withhold contributions and to form an independent ‘trade union party'?

This new 36-page Socialist Party pamphlet, out soon, answers these questions and exposes the uselessness of this and previous Labour governments. It shows too how Labour’s avowed aim of ‘making capitalism work' leads them to support wage restraint, unemployment and profit-making.

"Experience proves beyond question", says the pamphlet, “that the position of wage and salary earners is the same whether capitalism is administered by a Conservative or by a Labour government. Some workers believe that this need not have happened if the Labour government had chosen to follow a different course. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not take that view. What we have experienced has been the inevitable consequence of perpetuating capitalism. Within capitalism there is no escape from its economic laws".

You can order copies of this topical pamphlet by writing to the Socialist Party (Dept. SLG), 52 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

Who Gains Through Devaluation? (1968)

From the January 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Devaluation, as its name implies, is the act of lowering the value represented by the currency of a country in relation to gold. It is a particular form of currency depreciation. Keynes in his Tract on Monetary Reform, published in 1923, suggested as a distinction between the two terms that devaluation is currency depreciation which has been “fixed and confirmed by law”.

Its importance to capitalism lies in the fact that contracts and loans are drawn up in terms of pounds, dollars, marks and so on, but the values represented by them may be changed, sometimes drastically. If someone lent ￡100 twenty years ago and received it back to-day it would buy only half what it would have bought when it was lent. A textbook case is that of a British bank which in June 1914 lent 750,000 roubles (worth 78,000) to a Russian bank. Years later when the loan was repaid in the form of 750,000 roubles the rouble had been so devalued that all the British bank received was ￡5, and the courts upheld this. (It will be noted that the document under which the British Government recently borrowed a large sum through the International Monetary Fund contains a clause that the money has to be repaid, not in pounds, but in the currencies of the lending countries. This is to prevent the lenders being caught by another devaluation of the pound).

In order to guarantee a large measure of stability to the value of the pound, British law for a century before 1914 gave the holder of Bank of England notes the right, on demand, to convert them into a fixed amount of gold, or to convert gold into notes – the rate being approximately a quarter of an ounce of gold to the pound. Under that guarantee the pound was “as good as gold” and was accepted as such in other countries. Now the note in inconvertible, and owing to over-issue, has depreciated so much that at the new rate of $2.4 its equivalent in gold has fallen to less than one fourteenth of an ounce instead of the original quarter of an ounce.

If a currency is fixed in terms of a certain weight of gold, devaluation would take the form of fixing it at a smaller weight of gold. The American dollar, under an act of 1900, was fixed at about one twenty-first part of an ounce (one ounce was equivalent to $20.67). In January 1934 it was devalued to one thirty-fifth of an ounce (one ounce is $35).

For many years the British pound has been held at a specified rate against the dollar; at $4.03 from 1940 to 1949, then at $2.8 and now $2.4. Through the dollar the pound is thus indirectly related to gold.

Devaluation, both in our own times and historically, has been a common practice. Pick’s Currency Year Book 1966 recorded that in a period of twelve months 22 countries had devalued their currencies, six of them more than once. Keynes observed that “there is no record of a prolonged war or a great social upheaval which has not been accompanied by a change in the legal tender”. He held that this historical process was no accident but was the outcome of two factors; the desire of governments to reduce the burden of national debts by repaying them in depreciated currency and the political pull of money borrowers who have a like interest against money lenders.

English history has the example of kings, notably Henry the Eighth, who depreciated the currency (and pushed up prices) by issuing coins whose real metallic value was below their face value. The seller of an article would insist on being paid a larger number of the debased coins.

Though changes of value are usually downwards they are not invariably so. The German Government upvalued the Mark in 1961 and has recently contemplated a further upward revaluation.

It is mistrust of the stability of most of the world’s currencies that has produced massive private hoarding of gold, wherever this is legal and often where it is not.

Generally speaking, while each government can make its own currency legal tender within its own boundaries, payments to other countries must be in the currencies of these countries or in gold – among the exceptions were the pound when it was convertible into gold, and the dollar. If exports from a country are sold abroad in large enough quantities the foreign money received for the exports will be sufficient to pay for imports. American exports have for years been large enough to produce a big surplus, but the size of American investments abroad and of overseas military expenditure including that on the Vietnam war, has been so great that there have had to be large payments abroad in gold. Although American gold holdings are still very large the belief has been encouraged that the American Government may in due course devalue the dollar again.

The situation of British capitalism has been much more precarious. There has not been a large export surplus, and at times there has been a deficit, and foreign holders of balances in London (estimated at about ￡4,000 Million) fearing devaluation have been in a position to create “a run on the pound” by pulling out their balances. The British gold and dollar reserve has been much too small to withstand the pressure, even with the help of foreign loans.

Foreign bankers and others with balances in London lacked confidence in the pound because they could observe the adverse trade figures, and also the depreciation of the pound internally, as measured by the continued rise of the price level, a much faster rise than in the USA. They have observed the policy of successive British governments of pushing up the issue of currency notes without any regard to the additions really called for by the growth of production and trade. (One of the conditions attached to the latest foreign loan obtained by the British Government through the International Monetary Fund is that “the growth of money supply will be less in 1968 than the present estimate for 1967”).

In accordance with the Marxian law of value, commodities express their value in the universal equivalent, gold, the money commodity, because gold, like the rest of commodities, represents a given amount of socially necessary labour.

If day to day buying and selling transactions were carried out in gold coin a certain total amount of gold would be required, representing a certain total value. If the gold is replaced by inconvertible notes the total value represented by the notes remains as before.

If the note issue is doubled the effect is merely that two notes are now functioning in place of the one unit of gold, and the outcome is that prices are doubled. If an article had been priced at ￡1 when the pound was ¼ of an ounce of gold, the doubling of an inconvertible note issue raises the price to ￡2. A larger increase of the note issue would correspondingly raise the price level still more.

At one time many economists, though rejecting the labour theory of value, nevertheless arrived at the same practical conclusion. Now the fashion is largely to disregard it.

The British currency note is more than five times what it was before the war, although total production has not even doubled. There are other factors affecting prices one way or the other but this is the main one in recent decades.

This policy of depreciating the pound has produced soaring prices – which all the post-war governments said they did not intend, and has produced the ceaseless race between wages and prices.

Their excuse for the policy of depreciation has usually been that it stimulates the growth of total production, but there is little evidence that it has done so.

But higher prices exact a penalty by increasing the difficulty of selling exports profitably. The Board of Trade reported recently that British exports were less well placed to compete in markets abroad in respect of price than they were twelve years ago – this in spite of big investments of capital to cheapen costs.

The Financial Times (21 November) stated that many firms fail to press exports because they are not sufficiently profitable.

Devaluation is a measure designed to counteract in export markets the higher prices resulting from the depreciation of the pound.

An example will show how the 14.3 per cent devaluation affects the prices of articles bought or sold in a country which has not devalued. Before the devaluation of the pound a $1000 article bought in USA for import to Britain cost ￡357. After devaluation it costs ￡417, an increase of 16.67 per cent. Conversely a British export selling in USA for $ brought in ￡357 before devaluation and ￡417 after, again an increase of 16.7 per cent.

The broad result is that devaluation helps British export companies but hits companies dependent on imported raw materials. Within a few days of devaluation it was being said that the better prospects for exports would put up profits by ￡250 million (Daily Mail 22 November). It was also forecast that the internal price level would rise by perhaps 5 per cent or 6 per cent.

The effects of devaluation cannot be isolated from other factors and it is not safe to read into the future what happened in the past. However, for what it is worth, after the 1949 devaluation of 30 per cent prices rose rather faster than they had been rising in the years before, profits rose sharply for two years and then dropped equally sharply, and the balance of payments moved in somewhat the same pattern. Unemployment rose a little then fell, but was back again at a fairly high level within three years.

The Wilson Government’s antics over devaluation followed the same humbugging course as in 1949―first the protestations that the government would not devalue because that would be bad for the workers, then the deed, then the pretence that it was a good thing after all.

Just before the Attlee Government devalued the pound on 18 September 1949 the Labour Party monthly journal Fact published an article explaining why the government would not devalue:

  If the pound were devalued to three dollars… up would go the price of bread. A similar rise would be unavoidable in the price of every commodity in which raw materials imported from outside the Sterling Area are a part of the cost. Thus, if devaluation succeeded in closing the gap (which is doubtful) it would do so by lowering our standard of living. The pound would buy less in Tooting and Bradford, as well as in New York and Winnipeg. Devaluation is therefore an alternative to wage-slashing as a device for cutting our prices at the expense of the mass of the people. (Fact, August 1949)

In 1967 it was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Callaghan (now Home Secretary) who himself emphasised what a shocking thing devaluation would be; and then devalued.

The following are extracts from a speech by Mr. Callaghan in the House of Commons on 24 July 1967 (Hansard Cols 99 and 100.)

  Let there be no dodging about this. Those who advocate devaluation are calling for a reduction in the wage levels and the real wage standards of every member of the working class of this country. They are doing this, and the economists know it… This is a nostrum among economists who are quite clear-sighted and cold-hearted about its purpose. Un¬  fortunately it has been picked up by a number of people who clamour for devaluation because they believe that it is a way of avoiding other harsh measures. The logical purpose of devaluation is a reduction in the standard of life at home. If it does not mean that, it does not mean anything.

In 1949 after devaluation the Labour government insisted that wages should not go up because prices had gone up. In 1967 one of the “intentions” notified to the International Monetary Fund in connection with the loan reads: “There is no criterion for pay increases related to changes in the cost of living”.

Capitalism is not changed by devaluation: it has not become better or worse for the workers. “Strong” currencies or “weak” currencies do not alter the position of the workers.

British capitalism has been running an adverse balance of payments, has devalued its currency, and has about 600,000 unemployed.

German capitalism has been running a favourable balance of payments for years, altered the exchange rate of its currency upwards in 1961 not downwards, and early in 1967 had 655,000 unemployed !

There are no ways of making capitalism operate in the interests of the workers.

Edgar Hardcastle

Voice From The Back: The Day To Day Struggle (2013)

The Voice From The Back column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Day To Day Struggle
Politicians are always claiming that because of their endeavours we are all better off financially than we have ever been, but the facts disprove this fantasy. ‘More than half of UK adults are struggling to keep up with bills and debt repayments, a major survey of people’s finances has suggested. Some 52% of the 5,000 people questioned said they were struggling, compared with just 35% in a similar study in 2006, the Money Advice Service said. In Northern Ireland, some 66% said they were struggling’ (BBC News, 2 August).


No Old Bangers Here
The present economic crisis in the UK has been so severe that many workers face unemployment, wage freezes and in some severe cases repossession of their houses. No such problems exist for the owning class. ‘Wealthy Britons have spent £91 million buying new Ferraris this year, making Great Britain the biggest European market for the Italian car company. According to Ferrari’s global sales figures for the first six months, 415 models have been sold in the UK, an increase of 6 percent, with the average purchase price standing at £220,000’ (Times, 2 August).


If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It
At a time when many workers are desperately trying to get together enough money for the deposit on a house the owning class are continuing in their usual spendthrift fashion. ‘Britain’s most expensive parking place has gone on the market for £300,000, almost twice the price of the average home. The open-air spot is 11ft by 21ft and is in Hyde Park Gardens, London, where many houses cost millions of pounds’ (Times, 8 August). If you think that was unusually expensive the same report mentions an underground parking space near Harrods that was priced at £200,000 in 2011.


Politics And Poverty
Despite the Coalition government’s claim to be a family-orientated organisation families are suffering at their hands. Food banks across Britain are being inundated with requests for emergency meals as families struggle to feed their children through the school holidays. The Trussell Trust, which runs the country’s largest network of food banks, says this is the busiest summer it has ever experienced, with some of its branches seeing double the number of requests for emergency parcels since the start of the holidays. ‘Parents whose children ordinarily receive free school lunches are among those struggling the most, as they now have to find an extra meal every day. The trust says the situation is worse than last summer because of rising food prices – which despite falling slightly in the latest Government figures are more than 4 per cent higher than last year – and the impact of the Coalition’s welfare changes that were launched in April’ (Independent, 9 August).


Morality And Money
The British government likes to portray itself as an organisation of the highest moral principles and absolutely opposed to brutality. Except of course when it threatens their master’s profits. ‘Britain is in talks to sell 12 Typhoon fighter jets to Bahrain, despite the Gulf state’s controversial human rights record. The proposed deal with the Gulf monarchy rocked by protests in 2011 is thought to be worth more than £1 billion and is part of a concerted effort by Gulf countries to strengthen military ties with Britain. ……….. Amnesty International claimed the arms negotiations showed human rights worries were once again playing second fiddle to British business deals’ (Daily Telegraph, 10 August). The deal was one of the main agenda items in a recent Downing Street meeting between David Cameron and King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa. Bahrain’s government faced condemnation and accusations of brutality for its repression of protests led by the island’s Shia majority in early 2011.


Misplaced Loyalty
The ideas of nationalism are repugnant to socialists. Which country you are born in is an accident, in fact your birth itself was probably an accident. Despite this many workers sing national anthems, wave flags and identify themselves with ‘their country’. Britain like every other country is owned by a tiny handful of the population and recent figures have shown the British working class are becoming even poorer. ‘British workers have suffered one of the biggest falls in real wages among European countries over the past three years, with only crisis-hit Greece, Portugal and the Netherlands doing worse. New figures collated by the House of Commons Library show a 5.5 per cent drop in wages after inflation since 2010’ (Independent, 11 August).

Pathfinders: Birthday Wishes (2013)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Birthday Wishes

The UK and other governments have been stepping up efforts to block access to file-sharing torrent sites – those sites which allegedly are responsible for all the evil in the world – but like the game Whac-a-Mole, the legal mallet can’t keep up with the elusive pop-up heads, and many of these sites have now been around so long they are starting to look like permanent fixtures. Two of them, Isohunt and Pirate Bay, have been celebrating 10th birthdays recently, and have things to say which socialists will find particularly interesting. First, Isohunt:  ‘Ideals of the Free Software movement and Creative Commons will face new challenges with 3D printed copies of physical objects, replicated from copyrightable digital designs. We are moving into the world of science fiction. Will copyright or even money be relics like in Star Trek, where all material scarcity and wants are gone, replicators can make anything needed, and holodecks can create any world imaginable?’ (Isohunt.com).

Utopian? The writer thinks so, but adds ‘if someone from 100 years ago is to look at technologies we have now, a lot of it may be construed as magic too.’

Tobias Andersson, co-founder of Pirate Bay, is clearly reading the same book, if not on the same page: ‘The 3D-printing revolution hits us any minute – and the sharing of things.  Suddenly, not only music and movie industries will feel threatened, but clothing, weapon and car industries as well – along with nations that depend on them. Everything will change and it’ll be fast.’

Overrating the capacity of 3D printers, perhaps, but the principle of the thing is what counts: ‘Future copy-fights will no longer be about sharing a tune or a movie, but ultimately about defining who will have the right to produce and if ideas are to be owned and sold or commonly shared. Everyone will be affected by these fights and too much will be at stake’ (‘The Pirate Bay: BitTorrent site sails to its 10th birthday’, BBC News Online, 9 August).

Of course the industry defenders retort that, call it what you like, theft is theft, but the fact that they keep asserting this shows that it is really the point in question. Is theft always theft? To understand the question, consider how people regard ‘fair’ ownership in capitalism. I own something, I sell it to you, so now you own it and I don’t. That’s fair exchange, people think. But in the world of computers, I own something, I sell it to you, I still own it and you don’t. There has been no exchange. Is this fair? Yes, say software manufacturers, we are selling you a licence to use our product. No, say software users, you are granting yourself a licence to print money. Ownership creates bottlenecks, and piracy is the result. If it’s wrong to own, it can’t be wrong to steal.

Socialists are not keen on moral arguments, because morality is a game anyone can play. Our best bet as a species is to treat the ownership question as a scientific problem. We are on stronger ground trying to show that ownership is socially unnecessary, rather than that it is wrong.

But the digerati’s challenge to ownership is more than just moral, they’ve democratised the information systems in a physical sense. Traditional computer networks, known as client-server systems, can be thought of as planets orbiting a sun. All the information, the energy, derives from a single central source. Control the source and you control the network. Napster, the first file-sharing site, used a central server which in time the authorities were able to locate and shut down. But it wasn’t long before a new system was devised in which the planets could all exchange packets of ‘energy’ directly between each other, simultaneously and at great speed, without the need for a sun. In this system, peer-to-peer or P2P, there is no central server for the authorities to control or shut down. Packets of information stream in torrents from anywhere, to anywhere. It’s efficient, fast, and non-hierarchical, in fact a revolutionary socialist model of data transfer. Surely the thought can’t be far away, if you can run a network like this, why not a society?

************************************************************

Not all nodes are equal

Computer networks are often represented by symmetrical physical objects such as chicken wire, with each junction or node of equal size and equidistant from its neighbours. While this may be true of molecular lattice structures, it’s not generally the case in ‘organic’ networks, whether digital, social or neurological. There are minor nodes with few connections, like reclusive people with few friends, while there are grand central stations, equivalent to busy socialites. This organic composition of networks implies that the human ‘sociability’ gradient is not merely some transient product of unequal social relations in a property-bound society, like distortions in a power grid. This leads to a further speculation about socialism.

It may be that some people are just more sociable than others. This may be worth noting, because a new study has shown that Facebook may actually be bad for you (‘Facebook use ‘makes people feel worse about themselves’’, BBC News Online, 15 August). The problem, it seems, is the FOMO factor – the Fear of Missing Out, a feeling that you ought to try harder to be sociable even if you don’t really want to, because of all the fun everyone else seems to be having.

If human sociability lies along a natural genetic gradient, then in socialism we would see a similar asymmetric gradient in social grouping, some people being highly gregarious and connected, some people introverted and troglodytic. Would this affect the functioning of socialism? Yes, because the connected individuals would tend to exert more influence. Their words would carry more weight with more people. Would this necessarily matter? Yes, to people who don’t understand socialism, and who would call this a form of ‘power’. To see influential people in socialism as somehow problematical, as if they embody a contradiction to the principle of egalitarianism, is to look at socialism through capitalist eyes. They may influence more people but so what? They also listen to and are influenced by more people, making them more reliable sources of the prevailing consensus.

These questions matter because they affect how we represent egalitarian social relations. Just as our opposition to leadership can be misunderstood as an absurd objection to anyone ever taking the initiative, so our conception of equality can be mistaken for a grey mediocrity in which nobody really shines at anything.

This misunderstanding gives rise to the caricature of socialism as perpetual meetings and votings, where everything is discussed and nothing is done. The likely reality can be guessed, once again, by looking at how science operates. Science doesn’t and couldn’t work like this. There is simply too much information. Scientists have areas of expertise, and for the rest, rely on the word of others. The system is not invulnerable, but it is robust and self-correcting. Occasionally a fraud is perpetrated, but the scientific method always uncovers it sooner or later. If anything, without capitalist inducements to ‘game’ the system, socialism will be even more robust than present-day science.

Paddy Shannon

Actually existing capitalism (2013)

Book Review from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Disassembly Required. A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism. By Geoff Mann. AK Press. £9.95

This book succeeds well enough as a description of the way capitalism has functioned in recent years, except that the author subscribes to the view that a bank does not have to have the funds it lends, not even in digital form. This is unfortunate as he gives as one of the defining features of capitalism ‘a monetary system based on the production of bank-credit money.’

Banks are certainly central to capitalism in practice but for collecting unused funds and savings and channelling them to capitalist enterprises as money-capital. Revealingly, when it comes to describing the events that led to the sub-prime mortgage bubble, he does not appeal to the theory that banks create money out of nothing to explain the source of funding for this. He says it came from savers in East Asia. In other words, from previously existing funds.

In the final chapter on what to do about capitalism he reveals that ‘for a long time I was convinced that we could never get beyond capitalism without getting rid of money’ but that ‘I am no longer so sure.’ He still knows, though, that there is no way out under capitalism, not even if a left-wing government comes to power in Greece or Spain and takes the country out of the EU. But even though he knows this won’t improve things (and says it may even make them worse) he still supports this, on the grounds that it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. Perhaps, but why not try something that has some chance of succeeding rather than setting yourself up to fail?

Mann ends up advocating that what anti-capitalists can best do today is trying to encourage non-money relations between people (which he says does not include LETS or local currencies). So he doesn’t seem to have entirely abandoned his previous view.

Adam Buick

Mixed Media: The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution (2013)

The Mixed Media Column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution by Caryl Churchill

Earlier this year the Finborough Theatre in London staged the world première of Caryl Churchill's 1972 play The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution.

Churchill's play is partly based on the chapter, Colonial War and Mental Disorders in Frantz Fanon's study of the Algerian war of independence, The Wretched of the Earth, described by Sartre as 'the Third World finds itself and speaks to itself' '. Fanon's title is taken from the opening lyrics of The Internationale. Fanon was a Martinique-born psychiatrist, philosopher, self-styled Marxist, revolutionary and writer who was head of the Psychiatric Department at Blida-Joinville Hospital, Algiers in French Algeria. He resigned to work with the FLN, Algerian National Liberation Front in their guerrilla war for independence.

Churchill's play portrays Fanon treating the schizophrenic teenage daughter of a French civil servant (involved in 'interrogations' of Algerian rebels), and a French police inspector hearing screams in his head who has been beating his wife and children as a result of his 'work' torturing captured Algerian rebels. We also see three Algerian 'patients' in the hospital who are paranoid, delusional, suicidal, or catatonic as a result of the colonial war in Algeria. The bloody conflict for Algerian independence claimed the lives of 100,000 French soldiers and 'colons' and probably 1 million Algerians. The war is vividly brought to life in the 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo film The Battle of Algiers.

Churchill uses ideas from RD Laing's Sanity, Madness and the Family in her portrayal of the French couple and the schizophrenic daughter where a child is subject to the 'double bind' of contradictory commands that places a child in an existential checkmate of an 'untenable position' in the closed family nexus thereby causing madness.

Churchill wrote this year about the play; 'unfortunately it feels more relevant now than for a long time' which is true considering the American use of 'extraordinary rendition' of 'terror suspects' to countries that use torture, not forgetting the torture of 'terror suspects' by the USA at Guantanamo Bay, torture and abuse of Iraqis by the US military at Abu Ghraib prison and the British Army torture and abuse of Iraqis in Basra.

Churchill has explored issues of power since Owners, her critique of capitalism through to the sexual politics and colonialism of Cloud Nine to her 1987 attack on financial capitalism in Serious Money. From The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution to her 2009 Seven Jewish Children, a charity piece for the Palestinian people of Gaza, Churchill is evidently sympathetic to the struggles of oppressed peoples under colonialism.

Steve Clayton

Marxian economics (2013)

Book Review from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Value of Radical Theory. An Anarchist Introduction to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy. By Wayne Price. AK Press. 190 pages. £8.95.

We often joke that anarchists know very little about economics and that what little they do know they got from Marx. US class-struggle communist anarchist Wayne Price seems to agree and has written  a short book to explain Marxian economics to his fellow anarchists.

He does an excellent job in explaining the labour theory of value in chapter 1 and state capitalism in chapter 6. The views he expresses in the other chapters, while certainly held by some in the Marxist tradition, are controversial. For instance, that crises are caused by the fall in the rate of profit due to a rise in the organic composition of capital and that this will eventually lead to capitalism’s demise; and that capitalism has been in a state of decline and decay since 1900 and has only been kept going by arms spending, wars and reconstruction after them, and the creation of fictitious capital (a couple of ICC pamphlets figure in the bibliography).

There is a peculiar attempt to include the 17th and 18th century witch-hunts as part of the primitive accumulation of capital; and also a passage (p. 122) which seems to suggest that ‘supervisors’ are not part of the working class (which would exclude a large chunk of those forced by economic necessity to work for a wage or salary).

On the other hand, Price recognises that Marx regarded the terms ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ as referring to the same society and that he stood (like Price and us) for a classless, stateless, moneyless society of common ownership and democratic and production for use not profit.  His discussion of the differences between Marx and anarchism is intelligent and fair: that Marx tried to ignore morality in presenting the case for socialism; that he envisaged a higher degree of centralisation than anarchists; and that he was not opposed to elections either under capitalism or in socialism.

So, a book that can be useful both for socialists and anarchists.

Adam Buick

Proper Gander: Smoking Woodbines In The Outside Lav (2013)

The Proper Gander column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class politics are all over the TV schedules like a rash, from news updates on the economic downturn to Downton Abbey. But like an embarrassing rash, the concept of ‘class’ is usually kept covered up by programme-makers. Would Paul O’Grady’s Working Britain (BBC1) be a much-needed exception? Probably not, considering that the title was changed from ‘Paul O’Grady’s Working Class’ by executives nervous about using the c-word. The show gives us a history of the British working class, told through the jobs held by presenter Paul O’Grady’s Birkenhead family. He adds that his onetime alter-ego Lily Savage was working class because ‘she’s had an outside lav’.

Unfortunately, it’s too much to ask for the programme to give an economic definition of class. Instead, the 20th century working class is described patronisingly and stereotypically as being proud, hard-working, woodbine-smoking racists who went to work for the camaraderie. The show often refers to ‘working class pride’, but without any economic analysis the question of why someone should feel proud to be exploited isn’t raised.

There’s some insight in the discussions of the Jarrow march, 1963 Bristol bus boycott and 1984 miners’ strike, rightly shown as examples of people taking action against the powers-that-be. But mostly, this is social history as a pick-n-mix of roles to act out. So, we see O’Grady playing at being a domestic servant and a clippie, and then going down a coal mine. As many of the trades mentioned have dwindled, he then visits a Glasgow call centre as a modern-day equivalent. After being shown the brightly bland office, he speaks to some of its employees about class. As the show has described the working class in the context of tin baths and mangles, it’s not surprising that these call centre staff don’t regard themselves as working class. For them, class is in the eye of the beholder – you’re not working class if you don’t define yourself as such, which is a bit like saying the Earth is flat if you believe it is. In lieu of class consciousness, there are some vague misconceptions about everyone being treated equally these days.

The show’s final disappointment comes after the end credits, when we learn that this is an Open University production. Two academics involved in research withdrew their names from the credits, understandably unhappy with the result. As a useful primer for students, this programme definitely lacks class.

Mike Foster

Cooking the Books: A Reply to the New Economics Foundation (2013)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reply sent to a letter from the Green-leaning think-tank asking for a financial donation.

Thank you for your letter of 18 July addressing me ‘as an owner of the Royal Bank of Scotland …’  I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding. I don’t own any shares in RBS.

I expect you have addressed me in this way because at the moment RBS is majority-owned by the government and because you have been taken in by media propaganda that, as the government is financed by taxes and as we are all ‘taxpayers’ even if only nominally, what is owned by the government belongs to us all. It does not take much thought to see through this fallacy. Or will your begging letter next year begin ‘As an owner of the British war fleet …’?

The basis of the fallacy that what belongs to the government belongs to everybody is the illusion that the government represents all the people, when this is clearly not the case. Governments represent the interest of some ‘taxpayers,’ only, of those on whom the burden of taxation ultimately falls – the owners of property and the employers of labour. The taxes nominally paid by most ‘taxpayers’ are passed on to their employers in the form of higher than otherwise wages and salaries. So most of us are not really ‘the taxpayers’ in any meaningful sense.

This is recognised by an article on, of all places, the UKIP website (LINK). Discussing ‘income tax (and NI) extracted from wages through the PAYE system’, the anonymous author says:

  Like VAT there is a general failure to distinguish the mechanics of the tax’s calculation from its incidence (who actually bears it).  Tax under PAYE is calculated by reference to a purely notional figure called ‘gross pay’, which no employed person in history has ever seen, let alone touched or spent.  The employee’s real income is of course the net pay; and that amount of tax which has been ‘deducted’ is always the employer’s liability, to be remitted by the employer to HMRC in full, every month.  As with VAT, the employers are the de facto tax-collectors.  In this case they are also the tax-payers!

And it explains how this comes about:

  This phenomenon was clearly set out 220 years ago in Adam Smith’s illustration of an employee earning £100.  If the state imposes a tax of 20% his pay must rise by 25% in order to re-instate the employee’s former purchasing power (£100).  He must now be paid £125 so that the 20% tax leaves him with disposable earnings of £100.  In practice there may be a time-lag over which purchasing power (or the basic standard of living) is restored …

He ends up proposing that, instead, corporations should be directly taxed on a part of their profits on the grounds that ‘taxable capacity is a corporate, not an individual, concept.  The employed individual has no taxable capacity.’

It seems that not all UKIP members are the know-nothings they present themselves as. At least one has a better understanding of taxation than those you call your ‘brilliant banking team.’

I am not advocating that the tax system should be reformed so that only corporations pay taxes (how the rich and powerful distribute the burden of taxation amongst themselves is a problem for them to settle). But at least this would make the situation clearer and in future you ought to address your ‘as an owner of the RBS’ letters to capitalist corporations. Because it is they who are the ultimate ‘taxpayers’ and the collective owners of what the government owns, not people like me.

Film Review: Searching for Sugar Man (2013)

Film Review from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Searching for Sugar Man (2012). Directed by Malik Bendjelloul.

The American Dream is that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough. That didn’t happen for Sixto Rodriguez, a 1970s Detroit singer-songwriter combining the voice of James Taylor with the lyrical ability of Bob Dylan. Firmly in the American folk-music revival counterculture, his songs spoke of working class struggles, hardship and inner city poverty. Maybe it was his Hispanic name, maybe (and unlike Dylan) it was the humility so uncommon for a performer of extraordinary talent.

A mere six sales of two albums meant he was dropped from his label two weeks before Christmas 1971. As Rodriguez returned to poverty working various construction and labouring jobs, his albums took off in South Africa. There he was bigger than the Rolling Stones and his song’s anti-establishment sentiments helped provide the soundtrack for the end of apartheid.

The music industry cheated him of royalties for a reputed half a million sales in South Africa. Unaware of his success abroad, and still living in poverty, Rodriguez made an unsuccessful attempt to become Detroit city mayor, his name was even spelt wrongly on the ballot. Rumours of his on-stage suicide prompted two South African fans to investigate what happened to him. This Academy award winning and Sundance festival winning documentary doesn’t tell the whole story, but it is beautifully presented and what a story.

DJW

Religion for Fun and Amusement (2013)

The Halo Halo! Column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taunting those born-again bible-bashers who infest out town centres and High Streets by firing awkward questions at them is probably not as anti-social as bear-baiting or cock-fighting and, if you have the time to spare, can provide hours of harmless fun. Supporters of fox-hunting claim that the fox actually enjoys being tortured, and the same is probably true of those who devote their lives to telling us about Jesus; at least they come back every week for more.

One of the problems the amateur evangelists have is that they tend to make it up as they go along and often end up arguing amongst themselves as they attempt to answer questions such as – why, if this all-knowing god who, we assume, had at least a rough idea of what he was doing wanted us to be good, did he insist that we are all born in sin? Why did he go to the trouble of creating Lucifer, a fallen angel, when he knew perfectly well that he was going to turn into the devil and lead us astray? Why, when he knew that Eve was going to be tempted by that bloody serpent, didn’t he create her with a bit more will-power? And why, if he’s all-knowing and therefore fully aware of just how wicked we were all going to be, didn’t he make us as he wanted us?

‘Ah’ the bible-thumper smirks triumphantly, ‘He didn’t want us to be like robots, so he gave us free will, and one day he is going to judge us’.

A slight lack of logic there surely. If this god, who is all-knowing, knows that I am going to be evil next Wednesday, for example, can I, then, exercise my free will and be good instead – and thereby prove him wrong? Watch the bible-thumpers faces as they wrestle with that one. As I said, hours of fun and amusement and unlike other blood sports, there are no laws against it.

It’s not just the amateur Holy Joes who struggle with the idea of an all-knowing and unchanging god though. After centuries of institutionalised sexism and homophobia it’s just beginning to dawn on the Roman Catholic Church that these ideas are no longer acceptable in the modern world, and God’s previous views, therefore, need to be drastically amended.

‘If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge him’ asked Pope Francis recently, trying to get to grips with this about-turn in God’s thinking, and conveniently forgetting the Church’s previous position. Not wishing to alienate those who prefer God’s original plan though, he then insisted that homosexual acts are still sinful, but homosexual orientation was not.

Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town and anti-apartheid and gay rights supporter, had no such difficulties with God’s new politically correct image.

‘I would not worship a god who is homophobic’ he insisted. ‘I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place’.

He’s certainly sticking his neck out there. See you in hell, Desmond.

NW

Mixed Media: Ice Age Art (2013)

The Mixed Media Column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent exhibition Ice Age Art at the British Museum demonstrates what Marx called 'the vitality of primitive communities' in the Upper Palaeolithic era 12,000 to 50,000 years ago. It is widely believed that human beings in this period lived in 'primitive communism' where women were held in high esteem, sexual relationships were unregulated, and society was based on the maternal clan. Upper Palaeolithic Art includes carving, engraving, and sculpture in baked clay, bone, stone, reindeer antler, and mammoth ivory.

There are many depictions of the female form which as Evelyn Reed describes in Woman's Evolution: From Matriarchal Clan to Patriarchal Family, in the matrilineal clan system of hunter gatherer communistic households there was a belief in women having superior magic, demonstrated by their ability to produce children, men were kept well away from child birth and may not even have known where babies came from. Bertell Ollman wrote 'for the greater part of human history the link between sexual intercourse and paternity was not even known'.

Woman of Willendorf is a 24,000 years old limestone statuette tinted with red ochre with large breasts and abdomen and a detailed vulva. Woman of Dolni Vestonice is a 30,000 years old baked clay (ceramic) statuette with large pendulous breasts, large abdomen and wide hips. Woman of Hohle Fels known as the 'Schwabian Eve' is made of mammoth tusk ivory and because of a perforated protrusion was probably an amulet. At 40,000 years old it is arguably the oldest discovered piece of figurative art.

Hohle Fels Flute is a 35,000 years old musical instrument perforated with five holes and made from the wing-bone of a griffon vulture. Lion Human of the Hohlenstein Stadel is a mammoth ivory lion-headed figurine 40,000 years old and in a modern experiment using the stone tools available then it took 400 hours to create this highly skilled carving. Swimming Reindeer, 13,000 years old, is carved from the tip of a mammoth tusk and depicts two reindeer swimming nose to tail probably on their way to mating grounds or winter pastures. Head of a Musk Ox is a rare limestone three dimensional sculpture 18,000 years old. Hooked Spear Throwers are 13,000 years old hunting implements to increase speed and the force of the throw, carved from reindeer antler in the form of a mammoth.

Ice Age Art is a fascinating glimpse into a period of early human history which ended with what Engels called 'the overthrow of mother-right [and] the world historical defeat of the female sex' and the rise of the patriarchal family, private property and the state.

Steve Clayton

Action Replay: Street Football (2013)

The Action Replay column from the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The protests in Brazil began at the start of June, with objections to some fairly small increases in public transport fares in São Paulo. By the middle of the month perhaps a quarter of a million people were protesting in towns and cities across the country. The themes of the protests widened to include a clamp-down on government corruption, as the police and military responded with violence and yet more people assembled on the streets – over two million on some accounts.

In contrast to recent events in Turkey, one focus of the protests was specific to Brazil: the building and refurbishing of sports stadiums for football’s Confederations Cup (held this year during the protests) and World Cup (to be held in June and July next year) and the 2016 Olympic Games. The cost of these projects so far has been enormous, way more than what South Africa spent for the 2010 World Cup, even though half the stadiums are still to be finished.

The corruption allegations extend beyond the government to the Brazilian Football Confederation and to FIFA (football’s international governing body, responsible for organising the World Cup). Fans wonder where the money for the stadiums has really gone, and complain about the likely prices for World Cup tickets: these will be cheaper for Brazilians than for international visitors, but still beyond the means of many local supporters. Moreover, while the stadiums have been (partly) built, the government has not been so generous in providing resources for hospitals and schools.

Brazil is part of the BRICS group of nations (with Russia, India, China and South Africa), who are flexing their economic and political muscles as upcoming powers, possessors of raw materials and large potential markets. This has been reflected in the hosting of sports tournaments, such as the South African World Cup and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But, like its BRICS fellows, Brazil’s economy has not been in good shape lately, with growth in GDP over the last three years being slower than forecast and its currency, the real, being generally seen as overvalued. There is massive inequality, and the favelas on the fringes of major cities are some of the worst slums on the planet.

Brazil is often described as the most football-mad country on Earth. So perhaps it’s not surprising that football has played a part in these mass protests and in sparking demands for greater transparency and better access to services.

Paul Bennett

Capitalism or Socialism? (2013)

From the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is the economic system which exists today all over the world. In capitalism the production and distribution of goods are owned by a small minority of people – the  capitalist class. The majority of people, the working class must sell their ability to work in return for a wage or salary. The working class are paid to produce goods and services which are then sold for a profit which is taken by the capitalist class. This is exploitation of the working class for their surplus value. The capitalists live off these profits and also reinvest some profits for the further accumulation of wealth.

Socialism is the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community. Common ownership will mean the end of ownership, it will be shared ownership, the earth’s resources a common treasury for all to take from what they need to live.

Democratic control is essential to the meaning of socialism. Everybody will have the right to participate in decisions on how resources will be used. Socialism has never existed, those countries that claimed to be socialist were in reality state capitalist and still had money, buying, selling, wage slavery, exploitation and production for the market.

Production in socialism would be solely for use not for profit. With the natural and technical resources of the world the common heritage of all, the object of production would be to meet human needs. There would be the end to buying, selling, profit and money. Instead, we would take freely what we had communally produced. It will be “from each according to ability, to each according to needs”. In socialism, everybody would have free access to these goods and services. There will be no system of payment for work, all work would be voluntary and would have a direct usefulness bringing about a new attitude to work. Socialism cannot be based on planning from a single centre, this is opposite to local decision-making and would be unresponsive to changing needs. The operational basis for this system would be calculation directly in resources combined with a responsive system of stock control instead of monetary calculation.

Capitalism will not collapse of its own accord, but will continue from crisis to crisis until the working class consciously organises to establish socialism. Socialism will then be a sharp break with capitalism with no ‘transition period’ or gradual implementation. Social productivity has long since reached a point where free access can be established, the  economic conditions are ripe and ready for the next stage in human social development, this will be end of the pre-history of humanity and the real beginning of human history. Socialism will be a dynamic, changing society and we will have the free development of each person as the condition for the free development of all people.

Propaganda Power . . . in Your Pocket (2013)

From the September 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hooray for People Power! Faced with a petition of some 35,000 signatories, the Bank of England has caved in and will keep a female face on ‘our’ banknotes. Elizabeth Fry, currently on the fiver, will still be replaced by Winston Churchill, however, the new face of the ten pound note is to be Jane Austen. The leader of the campaign, Caroline Criado-Perez, said ‘This is a brilliant day for women’, whilst Zoe Williams in the Guardian celebrated the victory of the ‘determined and lethal . . . new generation of feminists’.

Will this do anything to stem the world tide of rape, torture and oppression of women? Will it do anything to alter the vast blanket of everyday sex objectification, the portrayal of women as mere products for use, which lies heavy upon us all? Will it do anything for the single mothers, who above all others have been targeted by the current round of cuts of this especially vicious regime? Will it heck. Is this the sort of tokenistic gesture which does nothing but tickle the pleasure centres of the privileged female few? You tell me.

The government-owned Bank of England has promoted national figures on paper currency for some forty years. Since that time the following have appeared:

Unlike America, which has long celebrated its national heroes on paper currency, such crass displays of personalised patriotism were a bit of a departure for Britain, which has mostly relied on the monarchy and its trappings as the symbol of national unity. Generally speaking, however, the individuals portrayed were fairly uncontroversial figures of notable personal achievement. As such the clear purpose was to show the state in a positive light as the guardian of the arts and promoter of science by means of association. The inclusion of reformers is particularly noteworthy, reflecting the ‘progressive’ colouring of the post-war settlement.

The current F Series marks an interesting turn. Reformers, scientists and engineers are out. Adam Smith, arch-apostle of capitalism, is in. As is Conservatism, in the form of self-publicist and outstanding military strategist (responsible for such strokes of genius as the Gallipoli Campaign) Winston S Churchill. The founders of the modern Mint, representing the banking interest, occupy pride of place on the £50 (not in general use as any poor sucker who has the misfortune to be lumbered with one soon finds out). As a double sop for culture vultures and the ladies is the mildly critical observer of upper class manners, Jane Austen. The odd (wo)man out, perhaps, but still well within the confines of the privileged elite. So the face of Britain today, as its money reveals, appears to be a nakedly capitalist one with no pretence of utility, boasting of its class domination, proud of its warlike heritage.

In addition to its main function (for the capitalist class as a means of rationing its slaves), money has long been a bearer of messages (see here). The issuing of money being, by and large, a state prerogative, the ideas transmitted are those the state wishes to transmit. The design of money shows the state as it wishes itself to be seen – an embodiment of common values, promoter of gallantry, endeavour, culture and learning – rather than as it really is – the bastion of unmerited privilege for the few, oppressor of the many.

One of the most prevalent state myths is the myth of national unity – that we are ‘all in it together’. As such, in the modern situation, it must be all inclusive. The modern British banknotes have usually included a female figure. Doubtless a gentleman of colour would also be an asset, but unfortunately there are very few suitable candidates, with most historical figures of African or Asian ancestry, such as the Chartist William Cuffay or the brave ultra-Radical William Davidson, being decidedly unrespectable.

By means of a counter to the state’s propaganda, individuals and groups have struck back by vandalising money. Defacing banknotes is illegal (traditionally French notes bore hair-raising threats of punishment for ‘contrefacteur’) and, more importantly, they can be refused as payment if vandalised. Despite this, the Iranian Green Movement has a substantial campaign writing anti-regime slogans on notes. In Canada anti-NDP slogans have been inscribed on banknotes. Many other examples are suspected fakes or have been produced as ‘art’. Politically motivated defacement is largely confined to coins. A recent example shows the Spanish King Juan Carlos, whose remoteness from the harsh realities of modern life on the peninsula has generated considerable hatred, rendered as the buffoon Homer Simpson.

In Northern Ireland in the 1970s rival claimants to state power struck their initials on coinage. It is a pity in a sense that the IRA, which defaced UK coins, and the Loyalists, defacing coins of the ROI, could not just have confined their activities to a coin war. The Second World War also had a coinage counterpart with the Free French countermarking Vichy coins with the cross of Lorraine and the Azad Hind counter-stamped British India coins (see here).

Before the First World War the Suffragettes also carried out a coin campaign, stamping pennies with the slogan ‘Votes for Women’. They may have been inspired by the keepsakes brought back by soldiers who served in the Boer War, a decade or so earlier. British soldiers engraved a top hat and meerschaum pipe on coins depicting ‘Oom Pol’ Kruger to illustrate their contempt for the leader and icon of the ZAR.

Although American Abolitionists associated with the Free Soil movement are known to have inscribed coins, the origins of the practice seem to lie with the Radical Thomas Spence (1750-1813). Spence famously issued politically motivated tokens. He and his followers also vandalised coins for propaganda purposes. Spence is particularly interesting as he was arguably the first in the modern era to recognise the need for the radical reorganisation of the economic structure of society, not merely political reform or regime change. Although we may criticise the overly formulaic approach, Spence, his plan and methods of propaganda are worthy of a place in the socialist pantheon.

Kaz