Russia 'State Capitalist' — Another Voice (1973)

From the March 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January we published a translation of a Russian leaflet distributed to Western correspondents in June 1972 which referred to Russian society as "state capitalism". A French translation of another Russian underground publication shows that this view is held by other oppositionists in Russia as well.

Cahiers du Samizdat, published in Brussels, carries in its December 1972 issue a translation of the first issue of a journal called Seyatel (“The Sower”) dated September 1971. This is mainly a call to establish a “social democratic party" in Russia and a criticism of those opportunists there who see the struggle merely as one to establish legal civil rights. According to Seyatel this overlooks the fact that the present ruling class in Russia bases its power precisely on the denial of democracy and dictatorial control of the State apparatus; so that the struggle for democracy in Russia must necessarily be a struggle against them. It must be, in other words, a struggle to overthrow Russia’s “bureaucratic class”.

Says Seyatel :

  “The facts have proved to us that the rise of private capitalism was not followed by a Socialism freeing the human personality, but by a bureaucratic state capitalism. Our country is the most pure and most developed example of state capitalism.
  "The ruling force in such a regime is the bureaucratic class, made up of the leaders of the State, the Party and industry, of the activists in the trade unions, youth movements and propaganda services, of the top ranks of the army, of the secret police, of all types of presidents, secretaries, directors, divisional chiefs, etc. The bureaucratic class is organised as an apparatus, i.e. in a strictly hierarchical structure". (From the French translation).

Russia is said to have been state- capitalist ever since the revolution.

This is a deeper analysis than that of the leaflet we published in January. On the other hand, unlike the leaflet which was addressed to Russian workers, Seyatel is still addressed to the intelligentsia. But again, though they claim to stand for a "scientific and democratic socialism”, the author(s) cannot be regarded as Socialists in the proper sense of the word. Nevertheless it is encouraging to see that more and more people inside as well as outside Russia are coming to recognise that the system there is state capitalism.

Copies of "Cahiers du Samizdat” can he obtained from 108 Drève du Duc, 1170 Brussels, Belgium and of the January Socialist Standard from Dept. R, 52 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

Russia: An Underground Document (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Esteemed Citizens!

On June 1st, 1972, it will be ten years since the date of the raising of the prices of products of greatest necessity. Ten years ago, in the decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR, it was announced:

  "The raising of prices of meat and meat products, and also of butter, is a temporary measure. The implementation of the measures laid down by the March (1962) Plenum of the Central Committee will make it possible, in the not-distant future, to lower the prices of agricultural produce. It will undoubtedly be possible in the immediate future to lower retail prices."

It is now clear to the people that this was the usual “promise” — the usual barefaced lie of the Kremlin bosses.

According to the newspaper reports, during these ten years our people has already successfully accomplished the resolutions of ten Plenums and two Five-Year Plans. But prices not only do not come down: they continue to rise. The concealed price rises in food products and in manufactured goods goes on by means of new packs, lowered quality, sticking on new labels and so on.

Remember the fuss over the resolution of the 22nd Congress in 1961 on The Programme of the Construction of Communism! The authors of that fantastic pseudo-programme promised us: "In the first decade (i.e. toward 1970) all strata of Soviet people will be able to enjoy affluence and will be provided for materially . . . there will be an end to the housing shortage". There was a plethora of statistics, from which it followed that nowadays we should surely be standing on the threshold of paradise of material affluence.

But instead of that deceitfully promised prosperity, life in our country gets more costly all the time. During the last ten years prices have gone up on nearly all goods by 20-30 per cent, house construction has been cut back by nearly 20 per cent and the co-operatives are made to bear an ever-increasing load.

Esteemed citizens! Our country has the richest resources in the world, and is the second greatest industrial power. But as for their living standards, the workers of the USSR occupy only the 26th place in the world and among developed countries they are at the bottom of the scale. Our worker can buy with his pay packet 7-12 times less than can the American, English or West German worker. The average size of a flat for our worker is 2-5 times less than for the workers of those countries. Cars are owned by 80 per cent of American families, 60 per cent of British families and 50 per cent of German families — but in the USSR less than 0.1 per cent of families have a car. In the USSR the scales of pensions, sickness benefit, disablement benefit and maternity benefit are negligible in comparison with Western countries. And of all these countries the workers of the USSR get the shortest paid holidays.

The unemployed Western worker can buy with his unemployment benefit 2-4 times more goods than our industrial or white-collar worker can get with his pay-packet. Yes, and what’s more the number of unemployed in the West does not exceed 2-4 per cent of the workers. Not for nothing do the Kremlin bosses completely jam all foreign radio transmissions. Even Hitler didn’t do that in peacetime!

Esteemed citizens! It’s not too well known that in our country the overwhelming majority of goods sold are sold at a price 2-4 times dearer than it costs the State to produce and market them (including the profits of the enterprises). Our economists have calculated that the take-home pay of the Soviet industrial worker is about one-third of his real earnings. And besides these secret withholdings and deductions our worker still pays taxes.

Where then do they go — these enormous secret revenues from our and your labour?

These enormous secret revenues are appropriated for themselves, stealthily and openly, by the Kremlin bosses and their servants — the big and middle bosses of the Partocracy, the apparatchiki. etc. These revenues go on their life of luxury, their dachas, villas in the resorts, limousines, or their huge salaries and bonuses, on their share-outs — concealed from the people, on their special resorts, clinics and nursing homes . . . The Kremlin bosses and their hangers-on live better and richer than many Tsarist noblemen did before the Revolution — and yet they call themselves "the vanguard of the Soviet people”, its servants!

Lucky servants! They fleece their "master", the worker, three times over . . . while the "master and missus" of the country — the labourers and workers — can hardly make ends meet.

The second way the people’s wealth leaks away is overseas. The Kremlin bosses carry on trade not in the interests of the people but in their own political-adventurist interests, in the interests of attaining their own world domination. In return for their aid "without strings attached’’, given at the cost of a burden laid on the backs of their own people, they rush on to introduce into other countries exactly the same sort of cabal as in their own country.

The Kremlinites plunder their own people so as to export abroad huge quantities of top-quality goods: meat, fats, fish, caviar, grain, wool cloths, skins, expensive raw materials and other goods in short supply. At the same time we are obliged to spend from our already scanty gold reserves to buy grain from Canada. Huge resources are squandered by the Kremlinites on arms deliveries to so-called "freedom fighters”, on propping up dictators who provide military bases for the USSR (Egypt, Syria, Cuba, etc.), on maintaining an enormous overseas spy network and on bribing foreigners who might be "useful” to our rulers. Billions of roubles were spent on the Mao Tse-Tung régime: now this regime is our dreaded enemy. Helping to arm the DRV in its attempt to occupy South Vietnam costs 3 million roubles a day, Ouba gets 1 million a day and the Arabs get 1.5 million a day.

The Kremlinites spare nothing. The wealth in Russia is to keep them in clover till the year dot.

Esteemed citizens! There is no socialism in our country! It isn’t socialism when each and every parasite and boss in the country has got 20 times more than he would have in Tsarist Russia! It isn’t socialism when the average pay of a workers is 100 roubles, while the income of a big boss is several thousand roubles monthly! It isn’t socialism when the people are in fact deprived of the most elementary rights: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to strike and so on! It is precisely the absence of these rights which in fact gives the Kremlin bosses the opportunity to rob and oppress our people pitilessly, both secretly and openly.

And it is not towards communism that we are heading: all that is idle talk. Our system is state capitalism — the very worst, the most wretched political system possible which enables the rulers to adjust all the prices and incomes of the country without control and to perpetrate unbridled acts of arbitrariness and force. In Germany with Hitler’s “socialism” there was a similar form of unbridled and ruthlessly rapacious administration.

Esteemed citizens! Our rulers are ruining the country. They are destroying its economy and agriculture. They are creating dangerous international tension.

Dear citizens! The workers of Western countries attained their high standards of living and wide political freedom by struggle. The proven weapons of the struggle are the strike and demonstration. In December 1970, when price rises were announced in Poland, the workers in the towns of Gdansk, Gdynia, Szczecin, etc. set up liaison committees, called a strike and came out in street demonstrations. As a result Gomulka was dismissed, and the Central Committee and the government were replaced almost in their entirety. The new secretary of the Central Committee, Gierek, revoked the price rises, raised wages and pensions, and relaxed the censorship.

Already the people of our country are rising to the struggle. During the last ten years there have been strikes, demonstrations and other uprisings in a number of cities: there have been strikes in factories in Novocherkassk, Temir-Tau, Chirchik, Leningrad and Moscow. And recently there have been numerous uprisings of the workers of Kaunas. Ever more frequently there are protest demonstrations by many of our writers, distinguished scientists, government employees and workers. They demand freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the unions, the improvement of people’s living conditions and they demand that an account be rendered to the people. They are persecuted, declared “apostates” and thrown into prison. They are locked up because they demonstrate almost singlehanded.

Esteemed citizens! Fight for your rights and for an improvement of your life. Defend one another: one for all and all for one. It is only by means of struggle that we can get a change for the better. If we are not going to struggle, then we will more and more be reduced to mere slaves of the bosses of the CPSU — mere working cattle. So long live freedom and democracy!

Citizens’ Committee. 

Spread the word with a leaflet to as many people as possible.

(Translated for the Socialist Standard by Charmian Skelton.)

“Wealth is in effect the property of an individual or group if that individual or that group has a right in fact against the other members of society to use it or to control its use. A class is made up of people who are in the same position with regard to the ownership and use of the means of wealth-production and distribution. One class has a monopoly over these means if the rest of society are allowed access to them only on terms imposed by the group in control. This monopoly does not have to be legally recognised though in fact, as in Britain, this is generally so. Here the privileged minority, the capitalist class, have titles backed by law to the wealth they own. In Russia the ownership of the privileged minority is generally not given formal legal backing, but, as in Britain, they maintain their monopoly through control over the machinery of government. They occupy the top posts in the party, government, industry and the armed forces. Their ownership of the means of production is not individual but collective: they own as a class. Historically this is not a new development as is shown by the position of the Catholic church in feudal times. The privileged class in Russia draw their 'property income’ in the form of bloated salaries, bonuses, large monetary prizes’ awarded by the government, and other perks attaching to the top posts.”

—from Russia 1917-1967 A Socialist Analysis, an exploration of how state capitalism came to Russia. Send 10p to Dept. R., The Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4.

Russia: An Underground Protest (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

We publish on our centre pages a translation of one of three leaflets distributed to Western correspondents in Moscow in June last year. That it was distributed to Western correspondents is indeed all we know for a fact about the leaflet. We do not know who wrote it or who distributed it: whether a real opposition called “The Citizens’ Committee” or just an individual oppositionist or even the Russian secret police, the KGB, in order to frame some oppositionist or even, for that matter, some Western intelligence agency in order to discredit the Russian government. We don’t even know if it was distributed to Russian workers as well as to Western correspondents. Such are the problems of assessing anti-government documents from a police state.

Nevertheless, we feel that the text is worth publishing since, assuming it to be genuine, it would reflect an advance in the general thinking of members of the small underground oppositionist groups in Russia, specifically an appeal for “working class” action. Particularly interesting is the emphatic rejection of the claim that Russia is socialist and the accurate description of Russia as “state capitalism”.

It is not entirely clear, however, whether the authors would regard themselves (or are supposed to be regarded) as “socialists”. Their comparatively favourable, and somewhat idealized, comments on Western society could mean that they are critics of state capitalism because they favour private capitalism. On the other hand, their appeal to workers to struggle and strike would suggest a pro- working class ideology.

But whatever they would call themselves they are certainly not Socialists as we understand the term. Part of the leaflet — the criticism of so-called foreign aid — betrays a nationalist approach; the Russian ruling class, for instance, is accused of “ruining the country”.

Apart from its description of Russia as state capitalist, the leaflet is interesting also for identifying the political dictatorship exercised by the CPSU in a State-owned economy as the source of the power of the “Partocracy’’ to constitute a privileged and exploiting class. And equally for its appeal to workers to struggle to win improvements in their living standards and some basic political rights.

The leaflet mentions various towns where there have been strikes and demonstrations. Apart from Moscow and Leningrad (and to some extent Novocherkassk) the others are in non-Russian speaking parts of the Soviet Union: Temir-Tau is in Kazakhstan, Chirchuk in Uzbekistan and Kaunas in Lithuania. Which suggests that the protests there might have a nationalist rather than a trade-unionist or democratic content.

As far as we know this is the first full English translation of this document. The Russian text we used was published in “Posev”, a Russian emigré journal, in its August 1972 issue.

Editorial Committeee

Facing the Facts in Russia (1975)

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Facing the Facts in Russia 
There's an old saying that “the daughter of Time is Truth”. In Russia at last we have indications that people are beginning to discover the truth that capitalism exists in that country as much as in the rest of the world.

Granted it’s a rather different form of capitalism, without Stock Exchanges. State capitalism is the term often used for the type of capitalism existing in Russia and in most other “developing nations”. In the Socialist Standard and the Western Socialist we have recorded in recent years several instances of Russian dissenters whose conclusion is that Russia is a state-capitalist country.

"Our system is state capitalism . . ."
Two underground leaflets from Moscow were reproduced in the Socialist Standard in January and March 1973.

Both said that not Socialism but state capitalism was the system in Russia (though the solution was said to be the establishment of a “social democratic” party). The present ruling class in Russia maintains dictatorial control of the State apparatus and thus the struggle for democratic “rights” is bound to be the form which protests take. What should be understood is that the appearance of a reform or opposition party, failing to have Socialism as its objective, would only further the interests of some new or rising capitalist group.

We are hardly surprised to find that Solzhenitsyn, the darling of the Liberal establishment, takes the Kremlin line (Western Socialist, No. 5, 1974). That is to say, he takes the line that Russia is a socialist country. An awful abuse of what Socialism really means. By labelling Russia’s tyrants “socialists”, he joins the Tories and their like who see the whole world as a Wild-West all-action movie, goodies versus baddies, with “socialism” cast in the role of villain.

After Solzhenitsyn’s superficial prejudice, it is refreshing to read Sakharov’s view (Time, Aug. 4, ’75). Sakharov is active as a champion of the civil rights movement and a liberal, not a revolutionary. He describes himself as “a confirmed evolutionist and a reformist”, from which we may infer that he sees the struggle for Socialism as not important at the present time. In the meantime there are lots of things to put right, like putting Sellotape on the ceiling when the problem is caused by slates falling off the roof and letting the weather in.

But he does start out with something which is worth noting:

 Contemporary Soviet society is based on state capitalism, a total party-government monopoly over economy, culture, ideology and the other basic spheres of life. In periods of crisis, such a system engenders rule by terror; in quieter periods, it engenders the dominance of bungling bureaucracy, mediocrity, apathy and dissipation among the people, and the permanent militarization of our economy . . . Much of our financial resources provide a high standard of living for the privileged strata of society that Djilas called the “new class”. Every day radio loudspeakers tell the ordinary Soviet citizen that he is the master of his country, but he knows perfectly well that the real masters are “the bosses” who, morning and evening, are whisked along quiet, closed-off streets in their armoured limousines.

The Dog-Meat Society
For decades now Socialists have been declaring that Russia is a capitalist (or “state”-capitalist) country, with wage-workers exploited just as much as those in this country. Indeed, if the evidence of my own eyes is anything to go by, the Russian workers are worse off than those here. A view which Sakharov appears to share:

  You (in the West) do not have your backs to the wall; even if you reduced your standard of living to one-fifth of what it is, you would still be better off than people in the world’s wealthiest socialist country. Workers in the Soviet Union have the right neither to strike nor to appeal to higher authorities.
  The average apartment building in this country resembles a low-income housing project in America, though ours has fewer conveniences and is more crowded. In most parts of the country one has to stand in line for hours to get meat, and even then it is sometimes not fit for a dog.

I seem to have heard that bit about dog-meat somewhere else. A Roman Catholic Community Services worker in Los Angeles was quoted in the Western Socialist (No. 3, 1975) as saying: “Our people have so little, they don’t have the money to buy dog-food. Dog-food would be a luxury.”

So the dictators of the Kremlin cause workers to queue for offal, and the world’s wealthiest and best- fed state, a so-called democracy, reduces some of its workers to the degraded and half-starved state where even dog-food would be a luxury. And they actually expect these same workers to rise up patriotically to defend their way of life. To fight a war to defend dog-meat — ye gods!

At last we have evidence lasting over a period of years that some people in Russia have begun to realize that they are not in a socialist society, only in a state capitalist one, and at the same time they are realizing increasingly the very real drawbacks to state capitalism. Some of these are mentioned by Sakharov, such as corruption and inefficiency among managers, indifference, apathy and appalling conditions for workers, and wasteful military expenditure. He did not mention, although others have done so, the lack of flexibility in responding to market demands.

The Need for Change
Increasingly the Russian government has had to allow foreign trade to take a key rôle in the economy. Russia exports and imports on a very large scale now, and not only wheat. The result is that the Russian economy must become adapted to the ups and downs of world trade cycles. The Iron Curtain is in tatters: détente has taken over.

With economic change there will have to be political change. Mostly the dissenters see this in terms of progressing forward to private enterprise capitalism: after all, if Western free enterprise is so good at turning out cars, freezers and the tellypop, it can’t be as bad as Lenin thought, can it? There have been indications and rumours of demands for a multi-party system, for more press freedom, the right to strike, shorter hours, the right to demonstrate, and many other civil rights, all of which indicate the development of resentment against the regime.

At present most of the demands seem to be for reform as an end in itself. In time we are confident that Socialist understanding will develop, as it has done elsewhere. Why are we so confident, you ask? After all, the Socialist movement even in Britain and America is still very small and many workers reject our message.

Our answer is that socialist understanding derives from the experienced, known facts of capitalist life; from the fact that you are living in that certain sort of society where everything you make belongs to “them”, where all the housing is controlled by “them”, where food and all other necessities can only be bought from “them”, where you struggle to hold down your jobs — tedious, mindless, monotonous, maddening, boring chores, but at least still receive your meal-tickets — where you see the youngsters drift to the cities — who wants to hoe turnips on Cold Comfort Kolkhoz anyway?, where you queue wearily while you know that “they” live comfortably and what’s more are regarded with awe and respect, or perhaps fear, by all their subordinates.

“They” are the surplus-value eaters. Although they have no legal title to ownership of factories, farms or mines, nevertheless they control everything produced by you and your like.

Worm's Eye View

For the worker the state-capitalist system works very like private-enterprise capitalism. The working class are “free”: we own no land and no tools, so we are free to sell our labour-power or put it another way, we absolutely have to sell our labour-power if we want to go on living. Those who control the factories also control what we produce while working at the boss-class’s machinery with the boss-class’s raw materials. In modern conditions, with the high productivity achieved by having large numbers of people working together and by the use of power-driven machinery, we are capable of producing the value of our pay-packets many times over in the course of the week. The difference between what we produce and what we get paid (surplus-value) is used by the boss-class for their own purposes — more capital, profits including puffed-up directors’ salaries, distribution costs including advertizing and market research, limousines, law ’n' order and defence estimates, to name but a few

This system operates all over the world. It is nothing but exploitation. The quest for profits has turned the world into such a dreadful place that the very word civilization stinks. “Where there’s muck there’s brass” can be turned on its head to make better sense: "where there’s brass there’s muck”. In other words, profits pollute. We say this system only lasts because most people are contented with it and continue to go on voting for the likes of “them” to run our lives.

We say democracy can be used in our interests, to get rid of the whole profits and prices system, West or East. We say, the dog-meat system stinks and the only way out is the Socialist way.

Charmian Skelton

The Last Word: Moving statues (1997)

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

The Last Word column from the July 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The proposal of the boorish old drunk, Boris "the booze" Yeltsin, to remove the embalmed body of Lenin from its tomb in Red Square and give him a "decent Christian funeral" (as opposed to what would presumably be an indecent one) has set me thinking. Old Lenin has been lying in state for over seventy years: a mummified memorial to his years of unblushing lying as head of state: a veritable dictator in a fraudulently described “workers’ government".

The plan is to hold a referendum in St. Petersburg to decide what shall be done with Lenin. Has it occurred to the commerce-hungry Russian leaders that there is a market out there for Lenin relics? To be sure, they would not fetch much in St. Petersburg if forced to compete with fresh sausages, but think of the profits which could be accrued if Lenin cuttings were flogged off to sections of the dwindling world Trotskyist movement? The British SWP, which these days resembles a walk-in mausoleum for the praise of long-dead Bolsheviks, would surely pay a handsome price for a bit of prime Lenin anatomy. (Think of the jealousy it would inspire amongst the others Leninist cults: one can see now the RCP forging its very own fake Lenin testicles.) Lenin's left big toenail would be worth at least the price of Paul Foot’s salary for one month. Why not call in Camelot to ensure that the spoils are divided fairly?

Of course,Yeltsin did not invent the idea of kicking men when they’re dead. As ever, the English state was the pioneer in the field of brutality to the disinterred bodies of its enemies. For the sake of children and the nervously-inclined, we shall not describe what they did to Oliver Cromwell for having the audacity to temp as a monarch.

Historical revenge is not sweet.The sight of the crowds booing Ceaușescu, the hideous Rumanian dictator (Sir Nikolai, to you, for he was knighted by the Queen for services to British trade) was a joy to watch, but why did they have to spoil it all my executing him? It is so much pleasanter to rout ones enemies and then leave them to rot in bitterness. (Lenin’s successor, Stalin, never quite grasped this point — as Trotsky was to discover.) Only the weak need to murder and torture to assert their strength.

The problem of what to do with offensive monuments is a real one. When they pulled down the statues of Lenin all over central and eastern Europe in 1989/90 they were actively destroying the symbol of a lie which had imprisoned them. There are some statues in Britain which cry out for such justice. The vast metal-wasting edifice of the parasite, Victoria, which stands close to Buckingham Palace: the offensive statue of the gratuitous aerial murderer, Bomber Harris: the statue at the end of Camden High Street, London to the callous free-marketeer, Cobden; these and numerous others across the land will surely be candidates for the sledgehammer of the people once the streets are truly reclaimed.

The case for vandalism, though seductive, is weak. The disfigurements and destructions encouraged by the Cultural Revolution in China were a futile attempt to dislodge the minds of the millions from the past by knocking down its superstructural architecture. For this socialist (though not necessarily for all) there will be a safe place for buildings of genuine beauty in a society of equality. Why on earth deny to future socialist generations the splendours of Westminster Abbey or Christ’s College chapel in Oxford or the Hindu Temple in historical Neasden simply because they emerged out of unearthly folly? William Morris’s dream of turning parliament into a storage place for manure was a teasing fantasy, but missed the point: surely, the objective must be to get the shits out and use the place productively. Why pour more manure on to centuries of past deposits?

There may well be a role for Buckingham Palace in a sane society. The sight of the ex-Queen and her old man serving tea and sandwiches to visitors to London would cheer us all on many a rainy day.

As it is, the profit system has its own way of disposing of exclusive assets. In France there is a huge row over the sale, for £30 million, of Voltaire’s old estate at Ferney. The fear that some philistine Yank might drift in and insert a pinball machine at the place of the desk where the great man once wrote his brilliantly funny novel, Candide, has caused locals to protest in the vain sort of way that people without £30 million tend to protest. Even Buck House has been opened to the vulgar hordes. Surely it can only be time before Camelot will sell tickets for a night out with Andy—or Edward, if one is so inclined. An alternative might be to offer the Lenin mausoleum as a new home for the dwindling Windsor family and open their palace to the kids who are sleeping on the streets within a mile of it. Now, that really is a foolish idea—isn’t it?

Steve Coleman

Socialism and Planning: What Can Work (2019)

From the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The impossibility of ‘One Big Plan’

In any kind of society, people need to plan. Even in the most gung-ho, ruggedly individualist laissez faire society imaginable, there would be plenty of planning. Entrepreneurs would have to plan what and how much to produce, along with the requisite quantities of material and labour inputs needed, in the face of market uncertainty. No large-scale system of organised production can function without planning.

Obviously, this would be true also of a future socialist society though, according to some commentators, what distinguishes socialism from capitalism is not the need to plan but, rather, the number of plans needed. In short, the sheer scale of planning.

In capitalism, literally millions of plans are implemented every day. Most obviously, this is because there are literally millions of separate competing enterprises operating in a capitalist economy – from some giant corporation like Walmart to your local self-employed plumber. Thus, capitalism is a ‘polycentric’ system – meaning it has multiple planning centres or bodies. Those millions of plans are said to mutually adjust to, and mesh with, each other in a quite spontaneous, or unplanned, fashion via the market mechanism and in a way that purportedly benefits everyone in accordance with Adam Smith’s quasi-theological concept of the Market’s ‘Invisible Hand’.

‘Socialism’, argue these commentators, would be very different. Instead of millions of bodies each striving to implement their own plans, there would be just one single planning body and one single vast plan encompassing the totality of production. Meaning there would be conscious, society-wide, ‘central planning’ in the classical sense of this term.

This, it is argued, is because the entire apparatus of wealth production would be socially owned. There would be just one ‘owner’– society itself. However, society-wide planning is not a necessary corollary of social ownership. Even within a large capitalist corporation today, though it is owned by those who hold equity in it (and who thus exert ‘ultimate’ control over it), there are numerous gradations of control below this level of ‘ultimate control’. Different departments or branches of the same corporation often exercise a considerable degree of initiative in planning their activities. Even within each department or branch we see gradations of control in the form of a managerial hierarchy.

Of course, the workers filling the various positions in this hierarchy don’t own the corporation they work for. They don’t exert ‘ultimate control’ over the corporation which is what real de facto ‘ownership’ boils down to – having the final say over the disposal of the corporation’s assets. But they do exercise some control, albeit within certain limits.

The point is that the numerous operational decisions affecting the corporation’s performance don’t all emanate from a single source. Of necessity, a great deal of decision-making is devolved down the managerial hierarchy. Only the most important decisions get to be made at the top.

If a single entity like a corporation today is obliged to implement a ‘polycentric’ model of decision-making, then how much more true would this be of a future socialist society embracing all humanity? Of course, this is not to suggest the organisational structure of a future socialist society would be modelled on that of a hierarchical capitalist corporation.

Lenin once famously depicted a post-capitalist world in The State and Revolution (1917) as one in which, ‘The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory, with equality of labour and pay’ (he soon enough abandoned the idea of ‘equal pay’ on taking office). No doubt the dictatorial principle of ‘one-man management’ ruthlessly imposed by the Bolsheviks on Russian workplaces would similarly apply in Lenin’s imaginary post-capitalist world. Socialists see nothing appealing about this top-down version of what a socialist society is supposed to look like.

From our standpoint, it is entirely possible to envisage the world’s productive resources being owned in common by the global community yet subject to a complex system of polycentric democratic planning – with multiple plans being implemented at different spatial levels of organisation: global, regional and local – (depending on the nature of the ‘resource’ in question). While under capitalism, ‘planning’ likewise takes a polycentric form, minority class ownership of the means of wealth production invests it with a thoroughly authoritarian character. This is where any comparison with socialism ends.

Common ownership of the means of wealth production eliminates the very possibility of one individual or group exercising economic leverage over another, compelling the latter to comply against its will. In fact, socialism is the only conceivable basis upon which a truly free society can flourish.

Society-wide planning

Nevertheless, the idea still persists in certain circles that socialism would be a system based on society-wide central planning. Let’s examine this claim more closely to see why this cannot be so.

There are literally millions of different kinds of goods produced in a modern economy. Some of these (‘consumption goods’), in order to be produced in sufficient quantities to meet the demand for them, depend on the availability of other goods (‘production goods’) that likewise need to be produced in sufficient quantities to ensure enough of the former are produced. To produce production goods requires yet other production goods to be produced. Sometimes, the number of inputs needed can be truly mind-boggling. For instance, a single Boeing 747 plane is reckoned to have approximately 6 million component parts, supplied by hundreds of suppliers scattered right across the globe.

In an idealised system of society-wide planning, the requisite quantities of all these millions of consumption and production goods that society needs will have to be calculated in advance by the single planning centre and expressed as ‘production targets’ for each and every good within some vast Leontief-style ‘input–output’ matrix or table. Calculating these production targets does not simply involve finding out the aggregate demand for each good; one would also have to take into account the ‘technical ratios’ involved in producing them – something that, in theory, can be done through a method called ‘linear programming’ which we will look at later.

So, if a particular good – A – consists of two components, X and Y, and if it takes 2 units of X and 5 units of Y to produce 1 unit of A, then you will obviously need 20 units of X and 50 units of Y if you want to produce 10 units of A. This could change if your method of producing A changes. Let us say due to some technological innovation it now takes 3 units of X and 4 units of Y to produce 1 unit of A. If you stuck with your original production targets for X and Y – namely 20 and 50 units respectively – you won’t have enough units of X to produce 10 units of A while, at the same time, you would end up with a wasteful surplus of units of Y.

Incompatible with socialism

Looking at this simple example, we can begin to see why this concept of ‘society-wide’ planning is completely incompatible with socialism.

Firstly, it is pretty obviously impractical for any kind of large scale system of production, let alone socialism. To successfully implement this society-wide plan would require the production targets for each of the millions of consumption and production goods to be precisely calibrated and then exactly fulfilled right across the board. Any deviation from any one target would have knock-on repercussions that would jeopardise society’s ability to meet all those countless other targets because of the interdependent nature of modern day production.

Even something as simple as a typhoon in Indonesia or a crop blight in the American Mid-West could seriously disrupt supply chains, resulting in shortages of some goods and surpluses of others. The plan would then have to be completely redrawn and, in the real world, since changes happen all the time, what this means is that the plan would never get off the drawing board. It would need to be constantly revised by the planners.

Moreover, for the plan to be successfully implemented, this would require a moratorium on any kind of technical innovation. This is because technological innovation, as we saw, tends to alter the aforementioned ‘technical ratios’ involved in the production of goods, thereby altering the production targets of the inputs needed.

Some enthusiasts for central planning argue that the exponential increase in computing power in recent years now makes the concept quite feasible. However, this is to misunderstand what the problem is about. It is not the lack of sufficient computing power that makes the concept impractical but, rather, the attempt to apply it to the real world when the latter is constantly changing. Saying that ‘the plan’ can be rapidly adjusted to accommodate any change in the real world means simply that it loses its quality of being a ‘plan’ – something that is supposed to guide production in an a priori sense. The application of such computing power then becomes simply the means of tracking, rather than initiating, changes in the real world. This is a very useful faculty to have but it does not technically amount to ‘planning’.

Secondly, and more importantly, the very nature of socialism itself rules out the concept of society-wide planning. The two outstanding features of a socialist society that are relevant here and spring directly from the very fact of common ownership of the productive resources of society are, firstly, that individuals will have free and unfettered access to society’s stock of goods and services and, secondly, that they will freely and voluntarily cooperate to produce these things.

Society-wide planning flies in the face of both these core social practices. To take the demand side of the equation first, how can one possibly ascertain in advance what people want if their appropriation of goods is self-determined? It is not logistically feasible to carry out a global survey of over 7 billion people and then compile a list of production targets for the considerable array of consumer goods they might want. It would also be completely pointless given that what individuals want can change from day to day. This is to say nothing of the fact that the global population can expand or contract.

Instead of free access, what a centrally planned economy would have to institute is some form of universal rationing. People will need to be told what they can consume even if they had earlier been able to vote on the matter. Very likely, this would lead to an asymmetrical distribution of power in favour of a bureaucratic elite tasked with devising and implementing this system of top-down rationing and ensuring compliance. Creeping corruption and re-emergence of some kind of class-based society would be the probable outcome.

Then there is the supply side of the equation – specifically, the labour inputs needed to produce what society wanted. To ensure that, the planners would have to impose some form of compulsion requiring workers each to perform a certain quantum of labour (in order to meet the Plan’s multiple targets) as a condition for gaining access to the goods and services they needed. Not only that, these workers would also have to be subjected to a compulsory division of labour to ensure the proportionate application of labour inputs required to meet all those production targets specified in the Plan: you couldn’t just choose what work you wanted to do, or when.

As the Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky, revealingly noted in 1920:

  If we seriously speak of a planned economy, which is to acquire its unity of purpose from the center, when labor forces are assigned in accordance with the economic plan at the given stage of development, the working masses cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers … Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.

Exactly. What socialist could possibly endorse this capitalist apology for a workhouse system? As one commentator has noted, Trotsky’s recommendations are reminiscent of the Poor Laws enacted in Elizabethan England to combat the problem of vagabonds and beggars, as the rising bourgeoisie saw it, driven off the land by the Enclosure Acts and deprived of a means of living (‘Capitalism and Planning’, Libcom)

The voluntary nature of work carried out by the freely associated citizens of a socialist society would thus have been utterly obliterated. In short, we would have regressed back to something very much like a system of waged slavery that is the hallmark of capitalism.

(Next month the need for feedback).

Robin Cox

Link to Part 2.

Socialism and Planning Part 2: ‘Feedback’ (2019)

From the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

Socialism and Planning: The Need for Feedback

Last month we explained why socialism could not possibly be organised on the basis of ‘society-wide’ planning – that is, a single vast plan encompassing everything. Though the numerous production (and distribution) units would obviously all be engaged in planning, the overall pattern of production would be unplanned. Meaning it would be the emergent outcome of many different plans. What would ensure these plans co-ordinated to produce a coherent outcome is something called ‘feedback’.

Any large scale, technically advanced society requires information in the form of feedback to function. ‘Feedback’ is an attribute of dynamic systems, when the ‘outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop’ (Wikipedia). In this way the system is able to adjust its behaviour to accommodate changing circumstances.

The market is a good example. A contraction in the market for frozen fish fingers, perhaps because of some scandal concerning contaminated fish stock, causes a drop in prices and a decline in profits, resulting in some factory closures and reduced output. Here the relevant information takes the form of market prices. However, there is another kind of feedback system that operates alongside market prices and is, in fact, of far greater significance inasmuch as any kind of large scale society (including capitalism) utterly depends upon it. This is the feedback intrinsic to a ‘self-regulating system of stock control’.

Here, the basic information takes the form, not of prices, but of physical quantities – for example, counting the number of cans of baked beans stocked in your local supermarket. This is called ‘calculation-in-kind’. The supermarket simply tracks how many cans have been removed from the shelf – these days this is often computerised – and calculates the quantities needed to sufficiently replenish the stock to meet future demand, (taking into account the rate at which it is being depleted). That automatically triggers an order for fresh stock from the suppliers.

The beauty of the system is that any shifts in the pattern of demand can be picked up and almost instantaneously responded to, given the power of modern computer technology. This is precisely the kind of feedback system a socialist society can make full use of, enabling it to monitor and respond to the fluctuations in the demand for any conceivable kind of good produced in that society. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. This system already exists and functions today under our very noses.

Misunderstanding socialism

In a chapter entitled ‘Understanding the Market’, Norman Barry lists three possible ways of ‘organising a society for the production of wanted goods and services’ – altruism, central command and the market:

  Altruism presupposes that individuals, without either the incentives of personal gain or fear of punishment, will satisfy the wants of others in a system of generalised reciprocity. It is now generally agreed that this places impossible burdens on a fragile human nature and on human knowledge. In a large society, even if people were uncommonly well-disposed towards each other, how could they know what others’ wants were? In fact altruism is only conceivable in very small communities where there is broad agreement about ends and purposes (The State or the Market, 1991)

Since socialists reject both ‘central command’ and the ‘market’, it would seem we are left with only ‘altruism’ with all the limitations Barry imputes to it. However, his argument is plainly wrong on two counts.

Firstly, to take his point about not being able to know what other people want, this is simply not true. It seems to naively assume that to do that you have to directly ask them what they want. Now it is certainly true that customer surveys and the like can provide useful pointers when it comes to product innovation and design but it would be impractical to canvas the entire population; only a small sample is required. It is also unnecessary since, as we have seen, the great bulk of information concerning individual wants in a socialist society can be acquired indirectly in an aggregated form via the aforementioned procedure of stock control. Since this is an open-ended procedure, the question of the size of the society is completely irrelevant.

Secondly, regarding his point about motivation, it is misleading to suggest that socialism would be a society based purely on altruism. For sure, people can and do behave altruistically and a socialist society will draw abundantly upon this very human quality of feeling concern for the wellbeing of others. Barry equates this altruistic concern with a ‘system of generalised reciprocity’ but fails to properly comprehend what that means. Yes, it denotes helping others out of concern for their wellbeing without expecting any direct or immediate return (what is called a quid pro quo transaction). However, it emphatically does not mean there is no expectation whatsoever of these others reciprocating in due course. It is not purely altruistic in that sense – as the very word ‘reciprocity’ itself suggests.

Actually, ‘generalised reciprocity’ denotes a system of moral, (rather than economic) transactions, governed by the ethos that we should all contribute to the common good rather than free ride on the contributions of others. It implies a generalised expectation that we help each other rather than just one-sidedly sacrifice our own interests for the sake of others. As such, this is a fair description of the kind of social dynamics that would operate in a future socialist society. It is not something completely unfamiliar to us today or necessarily confined to only small scale face-to-face societies. Even under capitalism, there are plenty of examples around. Indeed, the internet itself has been compared to a gigantic ‘gift economy’. (http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Gift_Economy)

Ironically, the accusation that socialism ‘places impossible burdens on a fragile human nature’ in assuming humans should expunge any concern for their own interests – can be thrown back at critics like Barry himself. If according to the market ideology they embrace, individuals are purely driven by self-interest, then why do the great majority today put up with a social arrangement that so demonstrably works against their interests? Why permit a tiny owning class to accumulate vast fortunes at their expense? Clearly, it is not out of self-interest that workers allow this to continue.

Economic calculation

Apart from enabling us to respond to the ever-changing pattern of consumer wants, feedback in the form of a self-regulating system of stock control will also facilitate the efficient allocation of resources by ensuring these are allocated in a way that economises most on those that are least abundant. Here, we are alluding to the ‘Law of the Minimum’ formulated by the 19th century agricultural scientist, Justus von Liebig, who demonstrated that the total output of a crop is determined, not by the total amount of resources available for plant growth but, rather, by the scarcest resource or ‘limiting factor’ – for example, nitrate fertiliser. Increasing the supply of this input would then mean some other input becoming the limiting factor – perhaps, irrigation water. The point is that it is entirely possible to grade all the relevant inputs required to produce a given output in terms of their relative availability and determine the degree to which this constrains output.

In 1920, the Austrian economist and prominent opponent of socialism, Ludwig von Mises, published a tract called ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth’. In it he set out to prove that socialism was impractical since, without market prices, it would be unable to make the economic calculations needed to efficiently allocate resources. As he put it:

  It would be evident, even in a socialist society, that 1,000 hectolitres of wine are better than 800, and it is not difficult to decide whether it desires 1,000 hectolitres of wine rather than 500 litres of oil. There is no need for any system of calculation to establish this fact: the deciding element is the will of the economic subjects involved. But once this decision has been taken, the real task of rational economic direction only commences, i.e., economically, to place the means at the service of the end. That can only be done with some kind of economic calculation. The human mind cannot orientate itself properly among the bewildering mass of intermediate products and potentialities of production without such aid. It would simply stand perplexed before the problems of management and location. It is an illusion to imagine that in a socialist state calculation in natura can take the place of monetary calculation. Calculation in natura, in an economy without exchange, can embrace consumption-goods only: it completely fails when it comes to deal with goods of a higher-order. And as soon as one gives up the concept of a freely established monetary price for goods of a higher-order, rational ownership of the means of production, rational production becomes impossible. Every step that takes us away from private ownership of the means of production and from the use of money also takes us away from rational economics.

Mises could not have been more mistaken. His unwarranted belief that calculation-in-kind could apply only to consumption goods and not ‘higher order’ production goods stems from a peculiar blind spot at the very heart of his ‘economic calculation’ argument. This is the taken-for-granted assumption that the allocation of these higher order goods would be undertaken by a single planning authority acting on behalf of society – what he meant by his ‘Fuhrer principle’. As we saw last month, that means establishing, in advance, production targets for each and every one of the millions of different production and consumption goods in the economy within a single giant plan.

However, what that does is to eliminate the very possibility of a feedback system and, therefore, a means of efficiently allocating resources. If, instead, you had a polycentric system of planning in place this would permit such a feedback system to come into play and thus enable you to rationally allocate resources in the light of known stock levels.

Contrary to Mises’ claim, calculation-in-kind is applicable not just to consumer goods but ‘higher order’ production goods too. Thus, if a particular consumer good, M, consists of three components, X, Y and Z, it is entirely possible to calculate how much of M we can produce, given the available supplies of X, Y and Z. If there were sufficient supplies of X and Y, but not enough of Z, to meet the demand for M (thus making Z the ‘limiting factor’ in this example) you then have two options if you want to fully satisfy the demand for M. Either you modify the ‘technical ratio’ (discussed in Part One) involved in producing M so as to reduce the quantity of Z needed or you divert supplies of Z from other end uses. This latter option would entail ‘opportunity costs’ that can be readily quantified in terms of the reduction of output for those other end uses.

In either case, the Misesian claim that socialism cannot resort to economic calculation to efficiently allocate resources is refuted. What remains to be done is to establish the social priorities to guide resource allocation (which Mises conceded was possible) and, also, when to switch resources from one end use to another depending on supply and demand – neither of which strictly relate to the question of ‘economic calculation, as such.

The first boils down to a question of society’s values. Establishing a hierarchy of production priorities (perhaps informed by concepts like Maslow’s famous ‘hierarchy of needs’ model) might, for instance, entail classifying different consumer goods according to a rough-and-ready ‘points system’ to guide resource allocation. The second, concerning when to switch resources, could make use of such indices as the rate of take up of particular lines of stock or planning tools like consumer surveys. In neither case is pinpoint accuracy required; what matters is that the general thrust of decision-making broadly moves in the direction society deems desirable and that we have the means of ascertaining what society desires by fully utilising all the available means of communication.

Mises never really grasped this way of looking at socialism because he was too fixated on the idea that it would be a system of society-wide central planning. However, as we have seen, that precludes the very possibility of feedback so crucial to the refutation of his entire theory.

Robin Cox

Letters: Don’t die for oil (1991)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Don’t die for oil

Dear Editors,

At this eleventh hour on the eve of a possible war in the Gulf I would like to appeal to our fellow workers in uniform. Whether you are waiting in readiness in the Gulf region, at home training for the eventuality or in civilian employment contemplating joining the reserve forces, you should know that you will die in vain.

I was a Royal Marine for seven years and know how confused you must feel now. I know the discomfort of endless night exercises, the pain of long route marches, the boredom of sentry duties and the natural longing to be at home with your families. That feeling of missing the children growing up, tackling the puzzles of everyday life without their fathers, is the worst feeling of all. However, you are weighing these emotions against the propaganda that you are being fed. Stories about the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein and the atrocities committed by his soldiers. Stories about the mistreatment of British hostages in Iraq and Kuwait. You are told that you can right these wrongs by fighting a war in the desert.

Let me tell you that you cannot right these wrongs by bloodshed and war. Whether the stories are accurate or not, Saddam Hussein’s military regime was supported, armed and trained by the West. Just as Western governments support other murderous regimes around the world if it suits their economic purpose.

It is not for freedom or democracy or the lives of Western hostages that you will fight for and probably die. It is the economics of what lies below the soil on which the battle is fought that is the sole reason for a war. Like all wars it will be fought to secure the rights of ownership of the land and its proximity to trade routes. Nations will send their armies to fight in the Gulf in order, to secure the right of their oil companies to continue trading in the area.

However, the owners of the oil companies will not be fighting alongside you. They will be safe in their ornately-decorated offices in the capitals of the world. They alone shall benefit from a war, rights to the land will be secured, workers will produce the oil, the military will protect them while the oil barons sit back and watch the profits appear on their computer screens.

The armed forces, like the police and fire services, are part of the capitalists' elaborate insurance policy and they are about to cash in on it with a war to protect their access to Middle Eastern oil.

I urge all workers in uniform or civilian reservists to question the propaganda they are being fed and to discover the real causes of the present situation. To understand is to agree, and once you agree that this system of society is not worth dying for you should consider the only alternative.

The courage of men and women shown on the battlefield would be better spent standing up and putting forward the case for Socialism.

Andrew Wilkes 

Chichester, West Sussex

Dear Editors.

In the December issue, Keith Martin refers to my review of the book William Morris and News From Nowhere: A Vision For Our Time and states that the real purposes of this book is to confuse William Morris’s Marxist heritage, thereby reinforcing the ideas of those radical liberals and green reformers who wish to "claim” Morris as their own.

Although, as the Editorial Reply stated, there is an attempt to do this in some quarters. I find it difficult to accept that the book falls into this category. On the contrary, most of the writers show a respect and enthusiasm for Morris’s vision of a socialist society without money, wages and the state that is rarely to be found elsewhere. As the review pointed out, some of the chapters show a greater understanding and commitment to socialism than others, but it would be grossly unfair to suggest that this book is simply an attempt to confuse the issue and provide succour for reformists of every hue. If Keith Martin really thinks this, he could have at least backed up his generalisations with some facts and evidence.

Dave Perrin

Wrexham

Bombastic blusterer (1991)

Book Review from the January 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Speeches of Winston Churchill. Edited by David Cannadine, Penguin Books. 1990, £6.99.

Those who have admired Winston Churchill as a politician of unswerving principle may be shocked by the contents of this book. In reproducing some of his more notable orations, from his maiden speech to the House of Commons in 1901 to his formal farewell speech as Prime Minister in 1955, this book shows Churchill’s career to have been one dominated by unoriginal thinking and contradiction, reinforced by a good deal of bluster. Anyone who could, even in the earlier part of this century, seriously describe religion as "the great agent of civilization” deserves to be treated with suspicion, but if his earlier speeches were ridiculous and overblown, some of his later ones were downright dangerous even by the standards of a hardened capitalist politician.

Indeed this book is useful in that it shows that Churchill’s political vacillations didn’t end when he left the Conservatives to join the Liberals and then left the Liberals to join the Conservatives again. Throughout his political career Churchill set up principles and alliances only to cast them aside at a later date. For instance, in his speech to the House of Commons on 11 April 1919 warning of the dangers of Bolshevism. he stated:

  The British nation is the foe of tyranny in every form. That is why we fought Kaiserism and that is why we would fight it again. That is why we arc opposing Bolshevism. Of all tyrannies in history, the Bolshevist tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, and the most degrading. It is sheer humbug to pretend that it is not far worse than German militarism.

What "sheer humbug” then for Churchill to have allied himself with the monstrous Stalinist dictatorship against the equally monstrous Nazi dictatorship from 1941-45, and to have joined with Stalin and Roosevelt in the carving-up of Europe at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Indeed, Churchill was able to blind himself to the realities of the "Bolshevist tyranny" under Stalin to such an extent that he could bring himself to say:

  Marshall Stalin is a very wise man. and I would set no limits to the immense contribution that he and his associates have to make to the future. (House of Commons. 16 August 1945).

So much for principle and the lofty status of being "the foe of tyranny in every form". It is also interesting to note that Churchill was head of a wartime Coalition government which included the Labour Party, with Labour leader Clement Attlee serving as Deputy Prime Minister. All the more strange then, that Churchill should say that a post-war Labour government would end up instituting "some form of Gestapo".

If this book has a fault it lies in the solely chronological, rather than thematic, presentation of Churchill’s speeches. A book based on a more comprehensive collection of his speeches and articles dealing with Fascism, Hitler and the Second World War, including his praise for Mussolini’s corporate state and his admiration for the abilities of Adolf Hitler, would have proved even more illuminating.

Dave Perrin

50 Years Ago: Hitler the "Socialist" (1991)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

One might almost gather from some of the speeches that the armies on both sides (not to mention the Finns and the Russians) are all striking a blow for Socialism.

Thus, Hitler in his speech at Berlin on December 10th. The following is from the report published in the Evening Standard (the morning papers the following day all appear not to have noticed this passage):—

  "Should Nazi methods be victorious, the ruling class in the democracies would have to renounce their dividends of 40 and 100 and 160 per cent. In Germany 6 per cent is the highest dividend, and 3 per cent of this has to return as taxes, while the remainder must be disposed of in the interests of the nation."—(Evening Standard, December 10th.)

According to a further report published in The Times (December 11th). Hitler impudently described the Nazi programme as "our Socialist work of construction." and contrasted it with what he said is the attitude of the ruling class outside Germany, who say:—"If we lose, our world capitalist structure will collapse, and the idea will spread among other peoples that labour is the decisive element."

("Strange Champions of Socialism", Socialist Standard, January 1941.)

Here and There: Harry Pollitt (1936)

The Here and There column from the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. H. Pollitt has written a series of articles in the Daily Worker on Communist policy. In the last, article, May 11th, he says: —

  “The peoples want peace. They want to be shown the clear road to be able to keep peace. The working-class movement has the sacred duty of showing them . . . what road has to be taken.  . . . Let the working-class movement of Great Britain lead the way to peace. It can do— it shall do!”

AND HOW?

  "Forward, then, to the greatest Crusade for Peace this country has ever known: —
  For the defeat of the National Government;
 for helping in every way the German people to overthrow the Hitler Government, the Government that is the chief war incendiary in Europe to-day;
 for the expulsion of the Japanese invaders from China and for a democratic Japan;
 for the expulsion of the Italian plunderers from Abyssinia, and the liberation of the Italian people from Fascism;
 for a world front of workers and peasants and all friends of peace against the instigators of war.”

If Mr. Pollitt ever gets the time to ponder on his inane slogans he might ask himself and try to explain how the working-class movement could effect the expulsion from Abyssinia of 250,000 Italians, armed with guns, tanks, aeroplanes and poison gas, without war. Having settled that problem he might also try to explain in what way the working class would benefit by the expulsion of the armed forces of Italy from Abyssinia and of the Japanese from China.

Come, Mr. Pollitt, the Daily Worker will be read with interest for your reply!

#    #    #    #

Thieves’ Progress
Slave-ridden, barbaric, semi-feudal Abyssinia has been "annexed” by capitalist Italy. The annexation, inevitable otherwise, might have been prevented by the intervention on the side of Abyssinia of strong capitalist Powers like Great Britain and France. The intervention did not take place, despite the vociferous demands that it should by many capitalist interests, supported as usual by soft-headed Labour and Communist Party leaders. Italy’s new Abyssinian Empire, situated as it is on the British sea route to India, and in a strategic position among British African colonies, gives Italy a vastly increased bargaining power with British capitalism. The conquest has doubtless caused intense concern to British interests. That the British Government did not intervene to prevent this possible threat to its interests and prestige suggests that they had hoped for a result less decisive—a compromise giving Italy a less dominating position, or that they had considered the cost too great and the possible consequences at the moment too grave. For it is certain that if British capitalism became involved in another war that smaller capitalist Powers would seek to embarrass her by throwing off her domination, by demanding concessions, and even, if the opportunity occurred, by grabbing part of her wealthy Empire.

It is indeed a hard world for capitalist countries that have the responsibility of owning enormous wealth.

#    #    #    #

Capitalism’s Health
“The disappointing thing to me about the Budget is that it reveals an altogether unpleasant healthiness about the capitalist system."

It must be discomforting to Mr. Maxton to reflect that six years ago he made a dramatic forecast that the capitalist system would collapse within six months. He was wrong, as we pointed out then, and as events proved. He is now disappointed in capitalism’s “unpleasant healthiness.” That much he has learned. If Mr. Maxton had the ability he might, by study, understand the workings of the capitalist system: why, in times of crisis, it appears to be collapsing and at other times shows “unpleasant healthiness.” It is more likely that Mr. Maxton will understand capitalism better and ultimately acquire Socialist understanding only as events force their lessons home to him. That is, in the same way that the mass of workers will acquire an understanding of Socialism.

#    #    #    #

Postmen and Knights
The Annual Conference of the Union of Post Office Workers, held at Brighton, at its sitting on May 5th, had a minor breeze. Sir Walter Citrine, General Secretary of the T.U.C., who was a fraternal delegate, came very near to being refused a hearing. A resolution was moved to delete his name from the list of fraternal delegates. This drastic action was proposed because Sir (formerly Mister) Walter Citrine had accepted a knighthood. The voting was amazingly close. The resolution was defeated by 1,081 votes to 910. In explanation, lest it be inferred that the respectable postmen recognise the emptiness of titles and the futility of working men possessing them, the resolution was supported mainly on the ground that it was conferred by the National Government. The delegates supporting the resolution staged a walk-out when Sir Walter rose to speak. An awkward situation, through which, it may be assumed, the dignity of his title helped Sir Walter without undue embarrassment.

#    #    #    #

Socialism versus Reforms
The Socialist argument that reforms have only a limited benefit for the working class is graphically supported by the following from the News Chronicle (March 12th, 1936): —

  Sir John Orr’s report on Malnutrition is no pleasant reading for a lazy afternoon; and it should dispel the belief which seems to be gaining currency in lazy circles that malnutrition is due to ignorance of food values rather than to poverty. It is easy for well-fed persons to accept such doctrines as the truth.
  Proof, if proof be needed, that poverty is, in fact, the villain of the piece can be found in Stockton-on-Tees, which boasts one of the best Medical Officers of Health in England: .
  In the last five years Stockton has re-housed nearly half its worst slum population in one of the country's best designed and spacious housing schemes.
  Economy and efficiency have made possible a rent in this new district of barely one shilling per week per head more than was paid in the slums.
  And in the last five years the only really noticeable difference between the slums and the new area has been a big increase in the death rate among those who have been better housed. The slum death rate remains the same.
  That one shilling per week per head means, in fact, sufficient food to make the difference between life and death.

We oppose reformist policy on the grounds that reforms do not solve the working-class problem of poverty, even though reforms might have some immediate benefit. The reform dealt with above— better housing—would appear to be definitely harmful to the working class: the position being that health suffers and the death rate increases as more money is spent on rent and less is spent on food. And after a hundred years of reforms we have as much poverty and more reformers than ever.

Harry Waite

Why the Budget does not Matter (1936)

Editorial from the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the Cabinet is the instrument of the ruling class, what of the Budget, for which the Cabinet, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is responsible? Those who do not know the secret will tell you that the Budget is of vital concern to every man and woman in the country. That is the message delivered to you from the platforms of Conservatives and Liberals, Communists and Labourites. Yet again it is not true. The Budget is and must be, under capitalism, a capitalist question. The Cabinet’s function is to protect the property of their masters. The Budget is the method by which the necessary armed and civil forces are financed. The merit of the Budget system in this country is, from the capitalist standpoint, that it is closely surrounded by constitutional checks and safeguards, so that there is now no longer any danger of the Monarchy, the House of Lords, the Army, or any section of the capitalist class itself, usurping the powers exercised for the ruling class as a whole.

In modern times the Budget expenditure has included a growing amount of money which is not devoted to maintaining the armed and civil forces, but to what are called social services, the old-age pensions, unemployment pay, and so on. It is here that one source of confusion about the Budget easily arises. Another source of confusion lies in the fact that much of the money raised for the Budget appears to be a burden on the workers. Hence, we have the Labour Party, the Liberals, and Tories warning you that you have an interest in the nature and amount of taxation, and in the purposes to which Government expenditure is devoted. In an immediate sense there is a grain of truth in this statement. If (which is by no means necessarily the case) the removal of a tax on some article leads to a reduction of price, and if wages remain unchanged, then the workers are at the moment that much in pocket. If, therefore, wages were something fixed and constant, we could say, as the Labour Party does, that lower prices, the removal of taxes on foodstuffs, rents restricted by law, and greater Government expenditure on social reforms are the way to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, and thus raise the standard of living of the latter. Yet you know yourselves that all the social reforms, the death duties on big fortunes, the surtax and other levies on the rich have not made any noticeable alteration in your position in the past 50 years. The Labour Party is mystified at this failure of events to follow the course it expected them to follow.

Yet a little thought would have shown the Labour Party that its theory was wrong, and that wages are not fixed and constant. Wages follow prices more or less closely and quickly. Thus, in 1921-22, when the cost of living fell by about one-third, so did wages. Wages have been rising lately after a rise of prices. The workers do not benefit, nor have they benefited in the main, by the Government’s expenditure on social services, which appear to relieve the workers of certain expenses. In the first place, it must be remembered that the workers suffered heavy loss since the war owing to the bigger volume of unemployment. The employers' and the Government’s contributions towards unemployment pay have only partly covered this loss. We also see that, to a great extent, the grant of health-insurance, pensions at 65, war pensions, etc., has merely resulted in corresponding amounts being knocked off the standard rates of pay of the individuals concerned.

So that, in effect, the bigger Government expenditure on these things is, in the main, merely a way of restoring to the workers a part of what was lost to them through the aggravated unemployment since the war.

It is true that the workers' standard of living is itself not unalterably fixed. It is possible, in certain favourable circumstances, for the workers to win for themselves, through organised struggle, a higher standard of living. On the other hand it is possible for the standard to be beaten down to lower levels as, for example, appears to have occurred in the U.S.A. in the past 10 years or so. It must, however, be observed that any such raising or lowering represents a certain change in the relative strengths of the capitalists and workers, and is, therefore, not to be confused with the Labour Party notion that mere lower prices or lower taxes on foodstuffs, or the expenditure of Government money on social reforms, represent a corresponding gain to the workers. Unless the bargaining position of the workers has been improved for other reasons, these surface changes are followed by wage reductions which leave the workers where they were.

Let us now put the Budget into proper perspective, in relation to the capitalist class and the working class.

Not Your Fight: Keep Out

The capitalists do not live by engaging in wealth production themselves, but by living on the backs of the wealth producers. And they do this not by dishonest merchanting and shopkeeping, but by appropriating the proceeds of the workers' labour at the point of production. It has been officially estimated that in this country the workers in manufacture and mines produce each year goods to a value which (after allowing for all the expenses of production, raw materials, wages, etc.) leaves in the hands of the capitalists a surplus of about £100 per worker per annum, nearly £2 a week in respect of each worker employed. It is out of the fund formed in this way that the whole capitalist class lives—industrialists, landlords, and bankers. It is out of this fund that they have to provide the cost of the Government, which protects their property and their economic system.

The cost of the central Government is, roughly, £750 millions a year, with a further £250 millions for local Government, but a large part of this total of £1,000 millions (about one-third of it) is quite illusory. It is made up of interest on the National Debt and Local Government debts. In other words, the Government and local authorities collect from the capitalists in the form of rates and taxes money which flows back again to the capitalists (though not necessarily to the same individuals) in the form of interest on war loan, and Local Government loans.

Of the remaining expenditure something like £150 millions is spent on armaments to protect capitalist property and £100 millions on educating the workers in the knowledge required in capitalist industry. Other millions go to the Civil Service, the police and prison services.

The remaining expenditure, on war pensions, old-age pensions, poor relief, housing, health insurance, etc., is necessitated by the war-time and peace-time destruction of the workers' health and earning capacity, or is required to prevent destitution and consequent acute discontent and agitation inconvenient to the ruling class.

On the income side the Budget is a burden on the capitalists only, even if, to a superficial view, parts of some taxes appear to be a burden on the workers. Without pressing the point unduly in the case of a few exceptionally placed individual workers, whose position is, or appears to be, an exception to this rule, the working class as a whole are not affected by the amount or nature of taxation. What the workers get out of capitalism— the amount and quantity of their food, clothing, accommodation, leisure, amusements, etc.—is determined not by prices or taxes but by capitalist pressure as a whole and the workers' powers of organised resistance to it. No juggling with taxes or prices or social reforms will alter the main position—that of a subject class trying to defend itself against a dominant class—or will free the workers from poverty and insecurity. Don't be misled by the movements to alter the amount or nature of taxes and Budget expenditure. The aim, or at any rate, the effect, is merely to remove a burden from one section of the capitalists and place it on another. It is a capitalist fight, so keep out. Concentrate, instead, on abolishing capitalism.

This is our Budget secret. Master it and you will be on the way to understanding the futility of reformism.