What is Marxism? (2023)

Book Review from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critique of the Gotha Programme (translated and annotated by Kevin B. Anderson and Karel Ludenhoff, with a new introduction by Peter Hudis and an afterword by Peter Linebaugh, PM Books, 2023)

References to Marxists and Marxism are legion. China claims to be a Marxist state. So does North Korea. In the US many left-wing writers, academics and others say they are Marxists. Movements that don’t claim allegiance to Marxism, for example ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Me Too’ are nevertheless said by their right-wing opponents to be Marxist. The act of ‘taking the knee’ by professional footballers is deemed by some to be a ‘Marxist’ gesture. And Jeremy Clarkson is fond of using ‘Marxist’ as a term of abuse for just about anyone who disagrees with him on anything. So what do Marxist and Marxism really mean?

It surely stands to reason that such terms should at least have some connection to the individual from whom they derive, the nineteenth-century political philosopher and socialist revolutionary Karl Marx. But in reality, of course, it’s impossible to stop them being thrown around at random either as an insult or a beacon of pride, just as it’s impossible to stop terms like ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ being used willy-nilly, often in ways far removed from their original meaning. Despite this, it still has to be worth carrying on doing what the Socialist Party and the Socialist Standard have been doing for well over 100 years – that is attempting to shed clear light on Marxism in terms of the ideas formulated and laid down by Marx himself in his writings.

In this connection a recent edition and new translation from the original German of one of Marx’s lesser known works is a useful aid, since it helps us to identify a particularly important aspect of Marx’s thought. The Critique is a short work, not much more than 20 pages long, written by Marx in 1875 as a confidential response to a ‘Unity Programme’ issued by the German Workers Party. Dating from close to 30 years after what is probably Marx’s best known work, the Communist Manifesto, it sheds light on the thought of the ‘mature’ Marx, in particular his ideas about the kind of society that he saw as replacing the capitalist system, which he analysed in detail in the three volumes of his famous work of economic theory, Capital. So what we have in the Critique is ideas about future society from Marx’s own pen, undisturbed by the later plethora of interpretations by commentators and critics, many of whom read little or nothing of what he wrote.

What stands out clearly from the Critique is Marx’s concept of ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. As everyone knows, there have been and continue to be endlessly varying interpretations of what these terms mean. But here Marx describes as either ‘communism’ or ‘socialism’ (without making any distinction between the two) a future society based on the common ownership of the means of production and the consequent end of working for wages and producing for sale. This echoes his interchangeable use of both terms in his other writings, so thoroughly belying later attempts by commentators or regimes declaring themselves ‘Marxist’ to argue that Marxism propounds two stages of post-capitalist development, a ‘lower’ one called ‘socialism’ and a ‘higher’ one called ‘communism’.

A second important element that emerges from the Critique (and one that continues to be entirely relevant today) is Marx’s complete rejection of reformism, nationalism, and attachment to state institutions. He pours scorn on reformist demands such as ‘direct legislation’ and ‘popular rights’ and accuses the framers of the Gotha Program, the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle, of having ‘conceived the workers’ movement from the narrowest national standpoint’. All such positions, Marx declares, are ‘remote from socialism’.

The editor of this new translation, American academic Peter Hudis, who calls himself a ‘Marxist-Humanist’, prefaces it with an introduction and some notes, while Peter Linebaugh adds an ‘afterword’ to the text. Most of what they both write is helpful and difficult to fault. Hudis, for example, makes short work of ‘fake’ political Marxism by stating: ‘Neither the reformist social democratic version of socialism nor its revolutionary variant that was taken over by various forms of Stalinism and Marxist-Leninism succeeded in posing a viable alternative; instead, each morphed into some version of capitalism (in the case of Russia ‘state-capitalism’, elsewhere ‘a more equitable or efficient way of organizing exchange).’ Furthermore, he points out, the insistence of many in seeing the socialism talked about by Marx as referring to an earlier phase of social development, distinct from a later final form, communism, has meant that ‘the idea of freedom is pushed off to a far-distant future that never comes, while divesting the idea of socialism of its liberatory content’.

In this connection Hudis also explains that, though Marx avoids entering into the specific details of a future socialist/communist society other than seeing it as a moneyless global system of free access (‘the free and spontaneous allocation of goods and services’) and democratic self-organisation, he does this ‘on the grounds that communism is not a utopian ideal that one tried to impose upon the masses but is instead the result of the self-activity of the masses’. Above all, the editor goes on, ‘Marx aimed to show that capitalism is not an immutable part of human existence but a transitory phenomenon’ and ‘makes it clear throughout his writings that socialism or communism is incompatible with the state’.

There is, however, one area where we would call into question the views put forward by Hudis. This relates to his apparently unquestioning acceptance of the labour time voucher system Marx suggested might have been needed in 1875, even once capitalism had been transcended, the market system got rid of, and commodity exchange, alienated labour and classes eliminated, (until, in Marx’s words, ‘all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly’). In other words that society would have had to wait until the means of production had been built up sufficiently to allow the operation of a complete free access society of ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’,

Hudis fails to take into account that Marx was writing at a time which, compared with what came later and above all what exists today, was relatively undeveloped in terms of the resources and technology available. Clearly that has changed radically since Marx’s lifetime and there can be little doubt that there will be the means to establish very rapidly a complete free access society once the majority of workers decide to join together collectively to bring it about on a world scale. So no longer any need to go through a period of ‘labour-time vouchers’ (which, in any event, would have had drawbacks even in 1875).

No need either to spend time on the ‘reformist’ activities which Marx scorns in the Critique and which the editor too seems to agree is unnecessary. After all any such ‘in the meantime’ activity can only be time wasted, delaying if not putting off forever the ultimate objective, Given this, it is somewhat surprising that in spite of apparent agreement with and encouragement of the views expressed by Marx in the Critique, Hudis (also author of the 2012 book Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism) is on record in a recent essay (‘Democratic Socialism and the Transition to Genuine Democracy’) as supporting reformist activity, referring to such as ‘a political project that fights for and secures needed reforms while focusing on the long-term need to transcend capitalism’ (reviewed in this journal, April 2021). While we would argue that ‘long-term’ is effectively equivalent to never, at the same time, with respect to the kind of society to be aimed for, we do agree with Hudis that socialism, once established, will, as he puts it, ‘provide the space for individuals to discover themselves and freely pursue their destinies, now that such external impediments as class domination, statist control, and abstract forms of domination no longer stand in their way’.

Howard Moss

Bird’s Eye View: Danger: Capitalism at work (2023)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Danger: Capitalism at work

Writing about the factory regime in nineteenth-century England, Karl Marx observed: ‘But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its werewolf hunger for surplus labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. … All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour power that can be rendered fluent in a working day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility’ (Capital Vol. I, Chapter 10, 1867, tinyurl.com/9xzpn7p4 ).

The irony that Zero Hedge, a website home to howling mad libertarian supporters of capitalism (motto: on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero), reminded us on May Day this year of one tragic consequence of their social system of war and want at work cannot be overlooked: ‘It’s been 10 years since the Rana Plaza factory collapse in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, where more than 1,100 people died and over 2,600 were injured’ (tinyurl.com/y75u85t5 ).

Workers’ rights 1 (sporadic violations) – 5 (no guarantee)

Since Marx’s day, the werewolf can be heard baying for blood worldwide. The same Zero Hedge article informs us: ‘… 87 percent of countries having violated their workers’ right to strike in 2022, up from 63 percent in 2014. According to the report, trade unionists were murdered in 13 countries last year, with Colombia the deadliest nation. Last year, the Middle East and North Africa received the worst score of the regions on the Global Rights Index with an average of 4.53. It was followed by Asia-Pacific with 4.22, Africa with 3.76, the Americas with 3.52 and Europe with 2.49. The Asia-Pacific region saw its average rating worsen slightly in 2021 from 4.17 to 4.22 the following year. While the chart considers not only garment workers but all workers generally, ITUC [International Trade Union Confederation] analysts explain that in Bangladesh, the garment industry is one of the biggest sectors, employing more than 4.5 million people. The country received a score of 5, signifying that there is no guarantee of rights to workers. According to the report, workers experienced violence in 43 percent of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, up from 35 percent in 2021. In Bangladesh, workers strikes were met with brutality by the authorities, with at least five killed, while attempts at forming unions were shut down. India and Pakistan too saw police brutality against workers, while authorities in Hong Kong clamped down on trade unions and pro-democracy organizations and human rights abuses continued in Myanmar. In China, persecuted minorities were detained by the authorities and coerced into forced labor to fuel the garment industry.’

Never-ending struggle

‘Every year more people are killed at work than in wars. Most don’t die of mystery ailments, or in tragic “accidents”. They die because an employer decided their safety just wasn’t that important a priority’ (University and College Union, 5 May, tinyurl.com/594mtbk5 ).

International Workers Memorial Day (IWMD), 28 April, commemorates those workers. But Marx was right to conclude:’ Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system’ (XIV. The Struggle Between Capital and Labour and its Results, Value, Price and Profit, 1865, tinyurl.com/ye2aszp6 ).

China, Inc.

The China Global Television Network reminded us on May Day that the dictator Xi in his 2018 New Year Address stated: ‘Happiness is achieved through hard work’ (tinyurl.com/3jmzehu8 ). Another article dated 1 May and titled ‘One in 5 young people in Chinese cities is out of work. Beijing wants them to work in the fields’ goes on to inform us:

”’Chinese students, exhausted by pandemic lockdowns and concerned about China’s ever-evolving model of state capitalism, are beginning to realize that a degree may not improve their social position, nor result in some other guaranteed benefit,” said Craig Singleton, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (WENY News, tinyurl.com/2ya9wrjr).

There you have it in black and white: China as state capitalist. The hallmarks, such as class society, commodity production, profit motive, exploitation of wage labour, markets, etc., are not hidden. Consider, China has the world’s highest number of billionaires, many of them in the rubber stamp parliament, with a combined wealth of US$4.5 trillion. They, like the 1 percent worldwide, have been doing very nicely thanks to us. China Labor Watch has issued many reports detailing workers’ countless hours of overtime, contact with dangerous chemicals and missing wages. Their review of ‘Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China’s Workers’ is informative: ‘Well-documented in the media and by labor rights groups, those conditions include exhausting work, disciplinary management style, and increasing pressure to produce in short time frames, all for meagre wages’ (11 September 2020, tinyurl.com/3epk6nz3 ). Furthermore, China has more strikes per year than any other country, many thousands. These strikes are often unplanned, spontaneous, even chaotic, and the bosses stop at nothing to suppress them: they lie, cheat, call in the police, and hire gangsters to intimidate strikers or even beat them up.

Do It Yourself politics (2023)

From the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Socialist Party is pro-real democracy. Real democracy can only be achieved by common ownership of resources and free access to goods and services, because only this provides political equality. The tyranny of money maintains injustice and division world wide. The Socialist Party is thus anti-capitalist.

In capitalism, a minority owning class has vast amounts of extra power that it imposes by financial control. Socialists believe in people being able to do the work that they wish to do and directly for their communities, within a fully democratic system. The provision of goods and services can not only be achieved without capitalism – it can be achieved with a giant leap in efficiency. We will be freed from the shackles of the financial system, and we will be able to reap the benefits of everybody’s practical knowledge, because we will all be able to take part equally in decision-making processes.

In capitalism, for most of us, the jobs that we have to do, and/or the way that we do them, and a lot more in our lives is not freely decided by us. Nor can it be decided by our elected government. So much that affects so many is decided by the minority of owners, who have the power to set up structures and systems for their limited self-interest and to pressurise all of the rest of us to do their bidding.

For as long as there has been a ruling elite, there has been indoctrination simply by living in such a system, that it is ‘normal’ and ‘acceptable’. This is added to by propaganda that is full of lies and distortions. In ‘democratic’ countries we have thought that we are ‘free’ – but democracy has been hijacked by the capitalist class, who, via governments, and just like any other dictators, wield the power of armies and weapons of mass destruction, whilst also controlling most of the information outlets, so they can spin all the news in their favour. Even militarily imposed business expansion with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, is now called ‘bringing democracy’.

Profit priority

This is not only what capitalism allows, it is what it produces. The victories for sanity that occur are despite capitalism; because capitalism is an insane system which cannot be made fair by reform or regulation. It is a system based on competition instead of cooperation, and its only real purpose is to capitalize without conscience. If you doubt this, think about how it functions: Can’t pay? Can’t have! And: No profit? No production! Capitalism is not devoted to or intent upon supplying what we need, efficient use of resources, appreciation of beauty or being humane – its devotion and its intention is to make a financial profit. Where needs are supplied in some form this is incidental to capitalism; it happens to be necessary for the profit making.

Any benefits that are claimed for capitalism actually come from the workers, who could do a much better job without it. The rules of capitalism have been made to serve the privileges of a few over the common good for people and the biosphere. It will always fix the regulations. It will always drown out calls for equitable reforms with loud demands for profit. It will always encourage us to cheat and lie and, faced with the horrors that the system creates, to not care.

As capitalism has become globally established over the last five hundred years, money has become the main controlling and deciding factor in much of our behaviour. The wealthy are the ones with money to invest in new enterprises, and so capitalism generally delivers concentrations of wealth and thus power. The profit priority of the capitalist class results, amongst other things, in wages being as low as possible, and thus generally the priority for the workers is to buy the cheapest. This also leads to the dominance of big business producers and suppliers, which has profound and drastic effects on society. One effect has been a massive increase in the reliance on cars and on road, air and sea transportation of goods using fossil fuels. This is a typical example of something that is considered to be good for the economy – but is not good for communities or the health of individuals – or, as it turns out, for the environment as a whole.

The profit priority results in every form of waste and abuse; from the billions of deceptive three-quarter empty plastic tubs of pills to the carnage of war. People are persuaded to buy stuff that they don’t need and/or is harmful to them, money is saved in methods of production by losing quality, by abusive treatment of workers, by cruelty to animals, by pollution of the environment and by squandering resources in manufacturing products with ‘built-in obsolescence’. – Not to mention all the useless work involved in just running the financial system.

Very stressful

We are prevented in many ways from doing what is most beneficial and tempted into making unhealthy and unkind choices. This is very stressful, so even those with what is called a ‘good standard of living’ tend to suffer in this system. The diseases of unhealthy affluence are prevalent. At the same time, a huge and growing proportion of the world’s population is malnourished or starving and lacking even clean water. It is a measure of the unhealthiness of capitalist affluence that it is unsustainable; it is destroying the living environment that supplies it. And environmental damage is increasingly a factor in causing poverty and conflict.

This is not democracy failing us – the problem is that we do not have real democracy. What we are getting is clearly not what the majority of people want. Globally, in the twenty-first century, more than ever before, war is conducted in civilian areas. More people than ever before are losing their land and communities and being forced into city slums. More people than ever before live on rubbish dumps. More people than ever before are imprisoned. More young people than ever before are imprisoned. More young people than ever before are abandoned and homeless. More young people than ever before are involved in the sex trade.

These are not just problems that capitalism hasn’t got around to solving yet. They are caused by a combination of the effects of capitalism. Neither does capitalism respond to the need to solve problems that it has produced. The issue of global warming is a prime example of this. Global warming is largely the result of the particularly polluting forms of production and organization that have developed in the capitalist system. However, for instance, large profits are being made from the production and use of oil. It is integral to the cash flow in the present situation. Because of having little choice in how our society functions, yet having to function in it to get money, it is frequently very difficult or impossible for people to have workplaces and homes close enough, or to have alternative transport arrangements, so that they do not need a car. Then society becomes arranged around car use; which ties in with the dominance of big business supermarkets. Thus the whole system ferociously resists making the radical changes that are needed to protect our environment. Instead, we are taken to war to secure more oil supplies.

When it comes to creating profit for a minority, capitalism is extremely efficient. But when it comes to creating sustainable, healthy, friendly communities, capitalism is extremely inefficient. In this regard it is tragically wasteful of the abundant resources of the Earth and of human technology. All that waste to maintain something that we don’t really want! Something that is bound to be unhealthy; the undemocratic power of a minority! This is what we agree to when we vote for any capitalist party.

Majority support

By exploiting the prejudice, separation and general ignorance that capitalism breeds, the capitalist class continues to rule us with majority support. They continue to have vastly disproportionate control over how we live; to force cuts in services, to take the hearts out of our communities, to take us away from our children, to distract us from the truth, to stress us and fill us with rage that we take out on ourselves, each other and our fellow creatures, to make us depressed, to get us addicted, to wreck our environment and to take us to war – and to convince us that there is no sensible alternative! This is not democracy. This is despotism dressed up as democracy. We have to take the democratic systems that have been fought for and won through previous generations and use them to achieve our true desire.

We can change to a socialist system by using the democratic process. As socialists we do not vote for any capitalist party – and that is all of them except the Socialist Party. Other parties may have some good intentions – but in capitalism these will be lost as we have seen before. Socialism will be achieved by majority demand. The working people supply the goods and services in society. We know how to do it and we know how it can be done better, if we are not constrained by financial rules and pressures that do nothing except maintain a harmful system.

Capitalism is a perverting and corrupting influence to whatever degree it is present – and always involves deprivation, slavery and abuse in various forms. It is now in a particularly ubiquitous phase and further deterioration of the situation for humanity looks likely. Many communities and the whole natural world has become more and more damaged. People run gallant campaigns to help others and to protect the environment – but in capitalism, although there are some temporary successes, this is a losing battle.

The battle has to be to overcome capitalism with world socialism. When we remove money from the equation, our priorities can adjust to their healthy natural state. Our priority can be to do what is good. Using truly democratic processes we can find out what is good for us and do that. Our energy will be set free to develop a healthy society and a healthy world – which is necessarily to create freedom and peace.

The Uxbridge by-election (2023)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

There’s a by-election in Uxbridge on 20 July due to Boris jumping before he was pushed. The Socialist Party will not be standing but we will be leafletting the constituency.

The first socialist leaflets were distributed door-to-door on a Wednesday in Yiewsley in the south of the constituency.  This was also a chance to pick up discarded leaflets from the candidates (Labour, Tory, SDP and Rejoin the EU, but there are 13 other candidates).

After stating that “since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, real wages have fallen so far that we are now worse off by £1373 a year”, the Labour candidate Danny Beales, stated that “Labour has a plan to put money into the pockets of local people”.

Who (if you believed them) wouldn’t vote for someone who promised that? Actually, when you analyse what’s being promised, it’s not so much putting money into people’s pockets as not taking it out.

“A Labour government”, the promise reads, “would bring your energy bills down by £1400”. Which, if carried out, would just take people back to the position they were in when the Tories came to power 13 years ago.

The whole Labour campaign nationally is based on blaming the Tory government rather than capitalism. According to Labour, the fall in real wages is all down to Tory “mismanagement” as if a government is in a position to control the way the capitalist economy works.

We are being asked to believe that, if there had been a Labour government, this wouldn’t have happened. But experience shows that no government can control the way capitalism works. All they can do is react  to whatever the vagaries of the capitalist economy throw at them,  a reaction that is limited by the need to accept that capitalism is a profit-driven system and so to give priority to profits over everything else, including people’s standard of living.

As the leaflet we are distributing puts it, IT’S NOT THE TORIES OR LABOUR THAT’S THE PROBLEM. IT’S CAPITALISM.

Letter: A pretty kettle of fish (2023)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

This letter of complaint written by a very disgruntled electric kettle customer was sent to a consumer affairs television programme.

Dear Editors,

Four years ago I bought a Russell Hobbs electric kettle. I chose this one because this is a popular brand and I thought that it would be reliable and give me years of good service. It came with a 2-year guarantee, so now that it is 4 years old the company that manufactured it is not under any obligation to replace it for me.

The fault is quite trivial. It still boils the water but it has developed a leak. I looked inside the kettle and saw that there is a small nut that needs to be tightened, but it is behind the element so I can’t get at it to fix it. I took it to the registered appliance agent who told me that it cannot be fixed because the element cannot be removed. He advised me to throw it away and buy a new one. The kettle is made of stainless steel, a durable material which should last forever. If I bought a stainless steel cooking pot and boiled water in that, it would last forever, but of course, we all want a kettle because it uses less electricity to heat the water than having to put a pan on the cooker. I remember when electric kettles and electric jugs were made with parts that could be replaced, for example, elements could be replaced when they wore out.

My issue is not just, in this instance, with Russell Hobbs, but with the capitalist system which forces manufacturers of all appliances to make their goods so that they have a very short lifespan and have to be replaced every few years.

What a terrible waste of the Earth’s resources!

Shall we continue to fill up our rubbish tips with appliances that have been designed to break down after just a few years?

In a capitalist society manufacturers have to be seen to be making a profit. The only way they can do this is to make sure that we have to keep on buying their goods and replacing them on a regular basis. And to hell with using up all the Earth’s valuable resources and filling the rubbish tips with stuff that is non-biodegradable!

Until humankind changes the current exploitative system, of both workers and consumers, with one where goods are produced for use, not profit, I think that it should be illegal to manufacture anything that cannot be repaired.

Yours Faithfully,

Moggie Grayson

Reply:

We have dealt comprehensively over the years with the deliberate act on the part of manufacturers to ensure that their particular commodities are made not to usefully last for a long time but to wear out in a relatively short space of time. Why are things not built or made to last? Because longevity is the enemy of profit – which is the raison d’être of capitalism.

‘In 1960 Vance Packard (certainly no socialist) wrote a book called The Waste Makers which caused a minor disturbance at its publication because it dealt with what he termed “planned obsolescence”. Packard showed how firms made shoddy goods, designed to wear out quickly so there would be a market for new ones. He wrote of radios, car parts and television sets which their designers and manufacturers knew could easily be made to last longer. There have even been instances of workers being fired because they took the time to do an excellent job, and so were not profitable’ (‘Waste and want — the insane logic of capitalism.’ World Socialist, April 1984).

Add computers, mobile phones, white goods, microwaves and electric kettles to the items that Vance Packard described.

‘There is no technical reason why solid and reliable electric and electronic appliances with easily changeable and compatible parts and able to incorporate innovations could not be produced. Industrial designers would surely love to do this but under capitalism it is the marketing department that calls the shots, as what is being produced are not simply products to be used, but commodities to be sold on a market with a view to profit’ (‘Organised Waste’, Socialist Standard, May 2011).

An update on Packard’s The Waste Makers was published in 2006: Made to break. Technology and Obsolescence in America by Giles Slade (reviewed in the Socialist Standard, October 2009). Slade wrote:

‘Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence and everybody who can read without moving his lips should know it by now. We make good products, we induce people to buy them, and then next year we deliberately introduce something that will make those products old fashioned, out of date, obsolete. We do that for the soundest reason: to make money’ (p. 153).

Think of the regular introduction into the market of smartphones. Older models work just as well but are eventually made unusable because the operating system becomes unable to support newer applications and support for the older models is discontinued. The same can be said of computers.

The reviewer made the point that the workers, who design and produce these items – and run capitalism on behalf of the elite class – are perfectly capable of making better quality goods and that:

‘This provoked a conflict with engineers, who knew they could make solid products that could last for years, but in the end their reluctance was overcome (they, too, are in the end only hired employees who have to do their employer’s bidding). It is also enormously wasteful as still useable products, and the material resources that went into making them, are simply thrown away’.

The solution to the problem of built-in obsolescence (and to many others) is straightforward. It’s the removal of the cost-saving, corner-cutting, ‘must keep profits as high as possible’ pressures which, by the economic laws of capitalism, all producers are subject too.

The only way to stop it? The replacement of capitalism by socialism where quality will extend to all areas of life. Why, with production directly for use, would we want to turn out stuff made not to last?

Dave Coggan

Cooking the Books: Was Marx really a reformist? (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

A controversy has broken out between two reformist groups about reforms. It started with an article by Dylan Riley in the New Left Review in April which criticised ‘neo-Kautskyites’ for advocating a green new deal; this, argued Riley, would come up against ‘the structural logic of capital’ and so wouldn’t work as intended (tinyurl.com/4wy2hc75). Accepting the tag neo-Kautskyite, Seth Ackerman replied in Jacobin magazine to try to show that Marx himself believed that reforms could overcome the ‘structural logic of capital’ and so were worth struggling for (tinyurl.com/5whj5u8p).

Ackerman’s case was based on Marx’s support for the 1847 Factory Act which limited the working day for women and children to 10 hours. This had been opposed, not just by most factory owners but by tame economists one of whom notoriously argued that profits were made in the last hour of a day’s work and that cutting hours would ruin businesses. Marx refuted this by showing that every minute a worker worked was divided into paid and unpaid labour and so the Ten Hour Bill would not result in a total loss of profits (see section 3 of chapter 9 of volume I of Capital). It was also in the longer-term interest of the capitalist class as a whole, as over-working workers threatened their fitness as profit-producers of future generations of workers. In other words, it was not against the ‘structural logic of capital.’

Nevertheless, in his Inaugural Address to the founding congress of the International Working Mens’ Association in 1864 Marx did describe (which Ackerman quotes) the passing of the Ten Hour Bill as the first time that ‘the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class’.

Marx’s strategy at the time was to get a workers’ movement going, even just on a trade union basis, in the expectation that it would later develop into a conscious movement for socialism. So, this was a rhetorical flourish to show that working class struggle, even within capitalism, was not useless. In the event, Marx’s strategy didn’t work. Working class political parties did emerge but turned out to be more interested in obtaining reforms under capitalism than in campaigning for socialism.

In arguing that this meant ‘that Marx knew that the struggle for reforms was part of the struggle for socialism’, Ackerman reads too much into Marx’s rhetoric for the occasion and ignores his insistence in the same speech on the need for the workers to win control of political power (‘revolution’) before anything could be done to end their exploitation. Marx did support certain reforms that benefitted workers, and the Factory Acts did do this, but he never saw campaigns for them (‘reform’) as part of the struggle for socialism, only to try to get a better deal under capitalism.

Ackerman went on to argue that there is no ‘structural logic of capital’ that prevents reforms working but chose an easy interpretation of this logic to refute — that reforms will fail due to ‘the falling rate of profit’. That is not our position. Ours is that capitalism is a profit-driven system and that any reform that impinges on profit or profit-making won’t work as envisaged; the only reforms that are accepted are those that don’t go against this ‘structural logic’, including health services and universal education (which help create and maintain a reasonably educated and fit working class to operate modern industry).

The real argument on reforms is not about the reforms themselves but against reformism, the policy of advocating reforms in the belief that this will somehow help the struggle for socialism. It doesn’t and it can’t and it encourages illusions that divert from the struggle for socialism.

Lessons Learned (2023)

Book Review from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Class of Their Own: Adventures in Tutoring the Super-Rich. By Matt Knott. Trapeze £9.99

After he had graduated from university, Matt Knott spent a few years tutoring children of extremely rich parents. His account of this is very amusing (such as ‘you wouldn’t believe what some of these people call their children’), but it also provides an insight into the lives of the wealthiest.

This is a world where PJs are private jets rather than pyjamas. Where people take a personal chef on holiday with them. Where people have a chalet in St Moritz and a holiday home in Kenya with a privately-owned beach that is only used at Christmas. Where it is acceptable to take a 45-minute helicopter ride in order to go to a restaurant in Rome. Where a family employ a driver (‘I had realised that the word “chauffeur” was terribly common’). Where living in North Kensington is nowhere near as prestigious as living in Kensington. The super-rich apparently have ‘a way of dressing casually which only served to highlight their wealth’. Yet their lives are often empty at their core.

Tutoring really meant being a ‘study buddy’ or a posh babysitter. A tutor is a status symbol, as everyone in a school class has one. Of one boy he writes, ‘How many people had he encountered in his life who were only there because his parents were paying them?’ Knott felt he had been paid to be his friend. In general the kids had no ‘sense of freedom’, having been led to believe that everything is a competition, though clearly they were rather freer than working-class children. One boy gets into the school his parents had chosen for him (but not because his father paid for a new sports centre). International demand – from Russia, for instance – has increased the competition for places at English public schools.

Knott also spent some time volunteering to help state school pupils. He derived far more satisfaction from helping a Muslim girl get into Cambridge than from the mega-rich kids he was paid to teach.

Paul Bennett

Political instinct (2023)

From the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

When speaking of the role of instinct in humans, socialists tend to focus on the ‘adapted behaviour’ element which highlights our species flexibility and ability to learn relevant behaviour in a given natural or cultural context. Our long childhood gives the individual behavioural resources and social skills without which he or she could not flourish. Of course, as animals, we have many other instincts such as fight or flight, self-preservation, sexual desire, cooperation and the maternal bond etc and these are not always compatible with each other in certain circumstances. Socialists would like to add the need for meaningful and creative work to this list but for obvious political reasons little research (to my knowledge) has been done on this by biologists who, like other scientists, are restricted in their studies by the ideology that provides their funding.

The old nurture versus nature debate seems to have reached an uneasy truce but it would seem that the majority in society still prefer to believe in genetic determinism as an explanation for human behaviour – which merely serves as the latest incarnation of the ‘human nature’ ideology which readily embraces all of the negative aspects of humanity and none of the positive elements.

If we look closely at the cultural concept of instinct we can see that it excludes learnt behaviour. In our admiration for a sports person we might say that their talent is innate or instinctive which is felt to be somehow superior to those whose prowess is primarily the result of perfecting their craft through practice and the application of technique. Strangely many who suffer from ‘mental illnesses’ seem more content with a diagnosis of a ‘chemical imbalance’ in the brain rather than one that indicates childhood trauma or environmental and social degradation etc. Similarly, the debates concerning gender identity and sexual preference centre on whether gender and/or sexuality is determined by biology at birth or by childhood experiences.

There seems to be a desire to bypass complex sociological and psychological explanations for our behaviour in an attempt to get ‘back to nature’ which is felt to be more authentic and free of intellectual convolution. It’s hard to know if this desire is a result of the use of Ockham’s razor or just plain old anti-intellectualism. There is no denying that endless psychotherapy is a money cow but then so are the drugs produced by big pharma which claim to be remedies for medicalised emotional distress.

There are some who still believe in the concept of evil but socialists do not recognise this as a force in the world. People may be described as evil but this does not tell us why they behave in a way that qualifies them for this distinction. We would look to psychological explanations for such criminality – but then, of course, we run into the contradictions created by criminal law where the killing of individuals for money or jealousy etc. is considered to be murder but dropping bombs on innocent people during wartime is not.

It would seem that, given the right circumstances, many of us can compromise our moral values and behave in ways we would not think possible during our ‘normal’ everyday lives. Where does this overriding power for destruction come from? Some psychologists have theorized that usually dormant instincts are at the heart of this terrible behaviour that we see played out in recent history time and again. We might be able to explain wars in terms of the paranoia and greed of ruling classes but why can millions of ordinary people be seemingly so willing to murder each other at the caprice of such parasites?

The fabric of culture and morality sometimes seems to be a very thin veneer unable to restrain the hatred provoked by propaganda. Some have suggested that this is because of some innate and dormant instinct within humanity that is accumulated because capitalism is unable to provide the basic human need for meaningful work, political equality and social justice. It is reported that many young men happily went off to the First World War because it liberated them from a life of repetitive and meaningless toil. And if you give people hate figures to blame for their unhappiness (the Kaiser or Putin for example) you have a recipe for the mass murder called war.

All of us are initially dumbfounded when confronted by the evidence of the Holocaust; the City of Death called Auschwitz is a continual reminder of what can happen when the forces of hatred, sadism and genocidal madness are unleashed. Political explanations alone are inadequate in the face of such crimes. As soon as we turn from the rational consideration of politics and turn it into an ideological confrontation of faiths we begin to make room for the irrational which, if not checked, can become a full conflagration of madness. Many historians begin their analysis of Nazi Germany by saying how surprising it was that such a cultured and progressive country like Germany could plunge itself into an abyss of cruelty and destruction without considering that it might have been the very capitalist culture that they so admire which provided a fertile context for the growth of death cults like the Nazis.

No historian has given a comprehensive explanation of why the Holocaust happened and we simply don’t know if it was partly, or even mainly, the result of unleashing dormant self-destructive instincts. Human instinctual behaviour is a long way from being thoroughly understood. But what we do know was wonderfully articulated by Vanessa Redgrave in her role as Fania Fenelon in the film Playing for Time when one of her fellow inmates at the death camp condemns all the Nazi guards as ‘monsters’ to which Fenelon replies calmly and sorrowfully: ‘no, they are human beings just like us – that’s the problem’.

Wez

Editorial: A Challenge to Trade Unions (1959)

Editorial from the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ranking with football, cricket, and racing, one of the British national pastimes is baiting the trade unions. Along with editors, journalists, and angry writers of letters to the Press, it is played by comedians, parsons, radio and T.V.. commentators and politicians, and is always good for a laugh or a sneer. It is an easy game to play because, to an outsider, trade union behaviour often looks anti-social or ridiculous and trade union replies, when not suppressed, are frequently ineffective. The attacks often get a sympathetic hearing among workers not in unions and even, on occasions, among other trade unionists.

It does indeed look absurd that rival unions should strike over the question which union should control the boring of holes or the handling of a chalked string to mark out work. And trade unions appear stupid and reactionary when they resist the employment of women or foreign workers or when coal miners call on the Government to prevent the use of oil as fuel, and railwaymen demand restrictions on road transport.

Members of Unions resent being criticised and complain that their side of the case rarely gets a fair presentation. They say that from the standpoint of the workers concerned, their actions are logical and necessary.

What is this necessity? It flows from the purpose for which trade unions are formed. A trade union is not formed to help the employers’ customers or the workers in general but to serve the interest of its own members in their own particular job. Miners, railwaymen, printers and others are trying to get as high a wage as they can and are trying to keep their jobs. If in so doing they inflict incidental hardship on other workers or find themselves advocating restrictions on the growth of new industries that compete with the one they live by, that, they say is forced on them, and anyway this is how everyone else behaves in our competitive society.

From some loftier viewpoint of human ethics the trade union attitude may appear selfish and futile but the general body of critics are not at all in a position to throw stones, for they are all of them defenders of that social system which is itself a crazy jungle of contradictions. Nothing that trade union members do in trying to defend their immediate interests can equal the selfish policies of governments and employers about the problems of production and employment. What could be more anti-social than the accepted principle of our world that if the workers in a particular industry produce more than can be sold at a profit, they should be specially penalised by being thrown out of work? And on top of that, to have their intelligence insulted by being told, as the Manchester Guardian (28. 5.59) tells them, that “Nobody wants” the coal, when of course there are millions of people who “want” the coal but cannot afford to buy it.

Trade unionists have long been aware that to go on separately fighting their battles over their own wages and jobs is not enough: hence the formation of the T.U.C. and the backing they give to the Labour Party; and the thousands of resolutions, mostly pious, proposed at trade union conferences on everything from H bombs to the payment of wages by cheque. But these activities, too, have left untouched the problem that the worker's life is an endless struggle to keep himself from being submerged by forces which he cannot control by the means he uses.

We too are critics, though with real justification, for we are neither hostile nor two-faced in our attitude to trade unions. We accept that they are a necessary weapon for the workers’ self defence under capitalism. Our criticism is on a different footing.

We ask trade unionists (and all workers) to realise the limited usefulness of going on indefinitely fighting the effects of capitalism. We ask them to accept that the whole basis of capitalism needs to be challenged and that this challenge must come from the working class—not from separate groups of trade unionists organised merely to defend their group interest, but from a working class which recognises the common interest of all workers in all countries. First their common interest in opposing employers and governments everywhere, and more importantly their common interest in getting rid of capitalism and establishing Socialism.

There is no future in merely struggling over wages and jobs, and no future in electing a Labour Government to perpetuate under different labels the same class-divided system of society.

But there is a future in seeking the abolition of capitalism and its wages system. The social arrangement by which one class (with the backing of governments) owns the factories and plants and means of transport and employs the working class for wages, is not something pre-ordained for all time. It is a phase in the development of human society and one for which there is no longer any need or justification. Trade-unionists, separately or together, and with or without a Labour Government, cannot make this arrangement function in their interest as workers, as many trade-unionists are already learning through frustrating experience. It is for those who are becoming aware of this to accept the further responsibility of thinking about the case the Socialist Party puts before them. This is the only fruitful line of advance.

Socialism or Social Catholicism (1959)

Party News from the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Debate between SPGB and Roman Catholic Church

It is an extraordinary event for a representative of the Roman Catholic Church to debate in public with a Socialist. On Sunday, 10th May, however, Father Bernard Rickett, headmaster of the West Bridgeford Roman Catholic School, Notts, received the Bishop’s permission to do so. Representing the Catholic attitude he debated the subject, "Socialism or Social Catholicism?” with the Socialist Party’s speaker, R. Coster. The debate was attended by an audience of 78 on a sweltering afternoon at the Co-op. Educational Centre, Nottingham.

R. Coster

Opening the debate for the Socialist Party, R. Coster defined its scope in terms of a Catholic writer’s phrase “ human life and happiness,” and said at once it was impossible to consider the question unless one dealt with the great problems which stood in the way of life and happiness for the great majority of humanity. War and its terrible weapons; insecurity and fear, and the recurrence of economic crises; poverty and its consequences in bad housing, a great deal of disease, crime and unhappiness; the overwhelming lack of satisfaction of people in the present-day world that produced appalling figures for mental and nervous disorders: these were the impediments to human life and happiness, and these were what had to be dealt with.

The Socialist case was that all these problems were consequences of the Capitalist organization of society. Capitalism was founded on the ownership of the means of living by a class; it meant that all productive activity was carried on solely for the motive of sale at a profit, that this commercial motivation dominated all relationships in society. It meant also that the non-owning class, the great majority, must be exploited and always more or less poor; and that the interests of these two classes were therefore irreconcilably opposed.

But Capitalism meant as well the conflicts between rival capitalist groups which led inevitably to war. It meant that from time to time, unpredictably and uncontrollably, there were crises and all the suffering which depressions brought. Parties and governments, and philosophers and religious leaders too, had been powerless to prevent these things because Capitalism’s antagonistic relations arising from division of interests over property caused them. The Socialist case, therefore, was for the abolition of this system. What was wanted was a new basis for society— the ownership by everybody of all the means of living, so that poverty, conflict and all the other barriers to decent life and happiness could no longer exist.

Could Catholicism solve all, or any, of these problems? There was no point of contact between Catholicism and Socialism; the speaker pointed to Catholic reiterations that the two were antagonistic and that private property was a natural right. The Church stood not only for Capitalism, but for a Capitalism so authoritarian that its criticisms of the Russian dictatorship could largely be applied to itself. By its defence of Capitalism, the Church acquiesced in the system which was the source of the problems.

Catholics talked about improving workers’ conditions, but the living standards their Popes advocated were those of “frugal and well-behaved” workers; the rate of emigration from Ireland was no advertisement for Catholic society On the war question, Catholic authorities were as divided and helpless as any Capitalist politicians—some opposed to nuclear weapons, some ready to justify them. The remedies for crises and exploitation advocated were childish: classes could not harmonize even at Popes’ bidding, in a class-divided society, and the proposals to “lift barriers” on trade and production showed incomprehension of how Capitalism worked.

Social Catholicism had no case. The only case was for Socialism, which aimed at establishing conditions in which the problems could not arise and human life and happiness could flourish.

Father Rickett

Father Rickett, in his opening speech, said he was not an expert on economic and social matters; he must treat the questions raised as a theologian who had studied history. He expressed appreciation of the Socialist Party as the only organization professing Socialism which was logical in its arguments. The trouble with the Socialist case was that its logic, though impeccable, rested on a false premise. Its view of man's nature was incomplete and therefore incorrect. Man lived in society, but he had been created for a supernatural destiny, and the idea of Socialism was incompatible with this divine nature. Man did not live by bread alone—he had been created not for temporal but for eternal happiness, though that did not mean he had to be miserable in this world.

Man was a selfish brute, imperfect by nature, and no solution could be valid which ignored his original sin.

Catholic sociology started from the need for him to reform his own character, to curb his selfishness and be content with his station in life. Disease, work and suffering were the lot of the human race. Capitalism was largely beyond the control of the Church, which indeed was not concerned with temporal things except insofar as they related to man's salvation.

Nevertheless, Popes had strongly denounced the excesses of Capitalism and laid down for those living in it what were God's will and moral laws. Social living was the will of God. The reverse of the Class-struggle doctrine was true; capital and labour were complementary—each needed the other, and our higher standards of living today were due to large-scale enterprise and the brains and invested capital behind it. It was quite wrong to claim that the product should belong to the labourer. The Church tried to see that there was an equitable share, and laid down rules of justice for employers and employees. The employer had duties to his workmen, and the worker also must recognise moral laws in his behaviour towards the employer.

What must be sought was charity, in its sense of brotherly love and mutual support. The Catholic Church had advocated the formation of Guilds like those which existed in former times, and in these there would be not class conflict but class collaboration. Class hatred, and hatred of any kind, could never produce anything constructive.

R. Coster 

R. Coster, in reply, summarised Father Rickett's argument as that, first, man must consider his life in relation to a life hereafter, and second, that man was innately bad, and that these two conditions put the Socialist case out of court

He submitted that the argument was, in fact, complete irrelevant to the matter under discussion. We were talking about human life and happiness, and it was useless to make the supernatural a basis for argument to people who were not aware of it. The proposal that human society was divinely instituted was superfluous and meaningless; human society was a fact—man organized socially for survival, and had he not done so there would have been no man. '

Were all the things said of man's “brutal, selfish” nature true? Nothing of the kind was known historically of human nature. The only thing known was that human nature continually altered. So did valuations of it: what was brutal and selfish in one age was heroic in another, and the Catholic Church itself had undergone this kind of societal conditioning.

Did the Church want a better world? The speaker read from a Papal Encyclical which said the world could not be better, that claims to the contrary were “lying promises.” But what were the effects of the Church's laying down laws of social justice? One Encyclical had stated the duties of employers towards their employees, and Catholic employers had conspired to prevent their workpeople learning what was said in it. And this in fact underlined what Socialists said—that a class must obey, not its religious ideals, but its interests as a class.

Socialists agreed that men did not live by bread alone. The quality of living was what made happiness. But first, man's material needs must be satisfied. The conditions must be created in which man could know the enjoyment of living; that was the aim of Socialism.

Father Rickett

Father Rickett, replying, spoke of the tyranny which Socialism would impose. It meant that we should lose our freedom. No one could understand human nature unless he contemplated the Crucifixion; it was an aberration of mind to put it aside. Society without God was an unrealizable Utopia. There could be and there was happiness in our world: nothing was more lovely to behold than a little Catholic home with its many children.

It was not mere egalitarian distribution that mattered. The Church wanted to see men make the best of the existing order, and within that order better distribution had been obtained. The Church had encouraged workers to organize in trade unions and stand up to Capital. On the question of the great problems, obviously insecurity and injustice were parts of the natural order. War was hateful and the Church would never support it—but it must be realized that some things were worse than war.

What had been said about Catholic employers was true, but they would suffer in eternity for it; their action was an instance of original sin. The Church's mission was to see that life as it was organized here below was not incompatible with the destiny of man. Nowhere had working people a better friend than the Catholic Church.

Father Rickett 

After a short period in which questions were asked and contributions to discussion made by members of the audience. Father Rickett made his summing-up speech. He said that the Catholic Church was much misunderstood by people; one either loved it or hated it. The idea of the classless society was unreal. It had never been depicted, and could only be achieved if we were all angels. Marx's arguments left much unexplained : heaven help us, the speaker said, if the right of property were not safeguarded. This right was precious to all of us in our daily lives, in our homes and in preserving our possessions. It protected the small man trying to advance his business or his career. Capitalism would pass away and some other social order replace it, but the Church would remain.

R. Coster 

R. Coster, concluding for the Socialist Party, said that Father Rickett had completely evaded the issue of the debate.

The questions put had not been answered. It was claimed that the Catholic Church stood aside from politics; in fact, the Church’s record showed a great deal of political activity not advantageous to working people. To say that Socialism would take away freedom was untrue and, for the Church, unfortunate; the Concordat between Spain and the Church, for example, had stripped the Spanish worker of every kind of freedom. As for happiness, the “lovely” Catholic home was frequently a squalid, overcrowded place. As for war being hateful, in this century Catholic authorities had repeatedly advocated the suppression of heresies by violence.

The whole conception of property as a right was mistaken. The capitalist class had known no right but might: by force and every other means they had secured their ownership, and established the legal and moral titles—the “ right ”—to it afterwards. At no point had Father Rickett shown why Socialism was “unrealizable.” All that was needed for its realization was understanding, and this was the enemy of Catholicism. Cardinal Manning had once said: “ I do not have to think for myself. The Pope does my thinking for me." But Socialism had everything to offer of human life and happiness, and to think for oneself was to hold the key to it.

Freddie James

Blogger's Note:

As mentioned previously on the blog, 'R. Coster' was the pen-name/party-name of Robert Barltrop during his first period of membership of the SPGB. When Barltrop rejoined the SPGB in the 1970s, he opted to use his own name when writing and speaking for the Party.

Barltrop, in fact, briefly mentions this debate in The Monument — his unofficial history of the SPGB — when he states that Father Bernard Rickett was ". . .  the best of all the speakers I met in debate . . ."

Letter: How do Men Make History ? (1959)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

How do Men Make History ?

In his article entitled “An Essay on Historical Materialism” (May S.S.) E.W. tells us that genetically speaking man makes history. Now, if this be so, man must be held responsible for the history he makes, for we cannot logically compare man living in a society with a tree existing in a wood, meaning by that of course that the tree is not responsible for itself as a tree, whereas man is responsible for himself and his actions as a man. And although man did not consciously will himself into society and history, it is still nevertheless true that society and history could not operate independent of the will of man.

However, according to Karl Marx, this is not so, for he claimed that history is governed by laws which operate independent of the will of man. And this view of his contradicts the view of men being able to make their own history. For if history is governed by inexorable laws, man cannot will these laws out of existence and create new ones, seeing that these laws operate independent of will. But if we accepted this view we would need to believe that history willed man, instead of history being willed by man. It is true, of course, that the individual born into capitalist society did not will capitalism, but nevertheless capitalism does not operate independent of men's wills. Marx's theory of history is therefore wrong, and, in fact, a contradiction in terms, seeing that all human history is the outcome of what men willed, and not of any mysterious laws operating independent of will.

Capitalistic exploitation of the working class does not operate independent of the wills of the capitalists, but rather, on the contrary, because they consciously will to exploit the working class.

Marx thought that he discovered the key to history, but had he lived long enough he would have found out that there is no key to history at all. And in regard to the will of individuals which he did not take into consideration, he would have found out that they have not only the power to create history, but have even the power to destroy the world.

R. Smith, 

Dundee.

Reply

The writer asserts, without evidence, that Marx believed history to be an impersonal force, operating independent of men's wills. Actually, Marx said, all historical change is brought about by men’s ideas. They are not, however, just the outcome of purely mental processes but responses to a concrete social situation arising from urgent class needs and the task of actualising them. All major changes he shows are periods of intense theoretical and intellectual activity. The battle of material interests is also the battle of ideas. “History,” says Marx, “ is not something apart from men, it is the activity of man in pursuit of his ends." This makes nonsense of the writer's remarks.

The writer vaguely refers to history being willed by individuals. Historically men have willed all sorts of things but what men have striven for and what has actually transpired has so often shown great discrepancies. In social development there are no ends not willed by men but these ends are not realised merely because men willed them. Even in the contemporary situation men have sought perpetual prosperity, eternal peace, harmony between all men, etc. It is not the will that has been lacking but the conditions essential for their fulfilment.

It is true that capitalists have the power to exploit workers or, to use the writer's curious phrase, consciously will exploitation. But class ownership backed by the State power are its indispensable pre-requisites. Only when these conditions are fulfilled can the will to exploit become effective. Again the absence of certain conditions made Socialism impossible 500 years ago. Today the consequences of capitalist production not only explain why the need for Socialism arises but why the presence of certain objective conditions make it possible to will its effective realisation. What is willed must then be compatible with a discovered situation which is not willed but accepted. When it is willed must be dependent on the objective possibilities in the situation. Only in this light does the action of men become intelligible, and why the ideas of some men and groups of men have failed and others succeeded.

The writer says history has no key. In that case he himself cannot talk meanfully about it. Where facts and events are not known, where nothing is known, then we have blind determinism, where there is no knowledge of facts and processes there is no freedom. Genuine freedom like will is not something arbitrary or uncontrolled, but based on an appraisal of the objective possibilities in a given situation. Only when what is necessary is known can effective action be taken. When men do not grasp the necessities of a situation, effective action loses its freedom. It was no other than Marx and Engels who tirelessly expounded this to the working class. This is the key to Marx’s conception of social purpose. 

Ted Wilmott

The Opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway (1959)

From the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

On April 25th last, the Canadian Government icebreaker D'Iberville moved into the locks opposite Montreal. Behind her were scores of other craft, decorated with bunting; helicopters were buzzing overhead and on the shores were hundreds of people who had got up early to watch the start of her voyage. For this was not only the end of the ice-bound winter season for Montreal; it was also the first journey into the recently completed St. Lawrence Seaway.

Opposition

At the formal opening ceremony last month, nobody wanted to mention the embarassing fact that, but for the opposition of the railroad interests in the U.S.A., the Seaway would have been built long before now. These interests, with the Canadian East Coast Ports of St. John and Halifax, feared the competition which the Seaway would offer, with its cheap transport from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes. Since the 1920’s, various Canadian Governments have wanted to go ahead with the project, but could not persuade the United States to co-operate. Finally, in 1951, the Canadians declared their intention of building the Seaway on their own. This forced the hand of the United States railway lobby, who did not want the Seaway—if it had to be built—to be completely beyond the influence of Washington. Even so, they insisted that tolls should be imposed on all craft using it; something the Canadian Government, which is traditionally opposed to canal tolls, found hard to swallow. Work started in 1954.

The Seaway is designed eventually to overcome the 602 feet difference in water level between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes. Most of this is concentrated between Lake Erie and Montreal; here we have some famous rapids and falls, the most spectacular of them at Niagara. These rapids have been an obstacle since the earliest days of exploration. In 1536, Jacques Cartier (who is credited with the discovery of the St.Lawrence River) was checked by the Lachine Rapids and in 1603 Samuel De Champlain was also held up near the same point. In the 18th century a one-foot canal was dug which allowed the small trading canoes to by-pass the rapids. Over the years this was deepened until in 1821 there was five feet of water available. Towards the end of the 19th century locks were built and the canals further deepened so that vessels lying 14 feet into the water could pass.

This system stayed until work was started on the Seaway, which is a series of 27 feet deep locks and canals from Lachine to Kingston, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. Most of the merchant ships afloat can use it, being lifted more than 200 feet above sea level in the process. In addition, the Seaway Authority's powers extend to the Welland Ship Canal, which connects Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and by-passes the Niagara Falls. Since 1932, the Welland Canal has been at least 25 feet deep; now it has been dredged to 27 feet. As a result, ships of up to 8,000 tons can sail from the Atlantic to Lake Erie—and, when canals connecting the other Lakes have also been dredged to 27 feet, to the farthest end of Lake Superior. A number of power dams have also been built, which will supply millions of kilowatts of hydroelectric power. The total cost was about £405 million, split between the Canadian and United States Governments.

Steel and Wheat

The territory around the Great Lakes contains about 40 per cent, of the population of the United States and Canada and some of the best agricultural land and richest industry in the whole of North America. The optimists reckon on about 40 million tons of cargo a year coming from these areas through the Seaway to the Atlantic. There is evidence that the Seaway was primarily intended as an economic stimulant and not as an aid to shipping, for only one third of the total cost was spent on navigational aids, the remainder going on the hydro-electric schemes. Indeed, the Seaway should do a lot to revive the Steel industry of the Middle West, whose resources of iron ore from the nearby Mesabi Range were almost exhausted during the war. Plans were being laid to move the steel mills to the east coast, within easy reach of ore from Venezuela and the recently opened fields in Labrador. Now the ore will travel conveniently and cheaply from Labrador through the Seaway—and the Steel works should stay put. According to The Economist of 25th April, it was the steel men’s support of the Seaway which made the U.S.A. Congress realise that they would also have to agree to it.

The Wheat trade will also be affected. Up to now, grain from Fort William and Port Arthur—(at the western end of Lake Superior)—has been shipped as far east as possible by vessels called “Lakers"—which, although they could sail freely over the lakes, were prevented by the shallow canals from moving past Lake Ontario. The grain was then loaded into smaller vessels to be taken to ports nearer the Atlantic and transferred to the oceangoing steamers. Now, the ’’Lakers” may sail direct to the Labrador port of Seven Islands to unload their grain, replacing it with iron ore for the return journey. Another possibility is that the grain may be shipped direct from Port Arthur and Fort William to Europe, sailing past Buffalo, Montreal and other ports which have prospered on the traffic. The Canadian Wheat Board expects that this will reduce the cost of freight by about 5 cents a bushel; in an effort to keep the grain trade, the ports have started a programme of capital investment. Montreal alone is to spend nearly £10 million on its grain elevator system, £6 million on wharves and £1¾ million on transit sheds.

Railways and Steamships

The Canadian railway system was in part developed on the assumption that ocean going ships would never get any farther up the St. Lawrence than Montreal. As a result, an intricate railway network now links the St. Lawrence and east coast ports with the interior. Rail freight charges are high and, to capture some of the traffic, the Fjell-Oranje Line in 1932 opened a regular service of small steamers direct from Europe to such ports as Toronto and Cleveland. This line has no interest in any inland freight system in Canada, and so could concentrate on a cheap steamship service. But organisations like the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, which has large investments in both steamships and railways, could hardly be expected to promote the cheaper steamship service to the Lakes at the expense of its railroads. Development of the direct Great Lakes service was therefore neglected, whilst the railways and the east coast ports also strenuously opposed the even greater threat of the Seaway.

After the second world war however, more shipping companies began services from Europe to the Great Lakes and in 1956 the two great transatlantic companies— Cunard and Canadian Pacific—had to open their own service, with boats on charter from a German company. Now nearly 30 lines offer a regular service and without enough cargo to fill their holds, they are in fierce competition. The Seaway has sharpened the struggle; new steamers are being specially built and a freight war has broken out between the combine (they call it a “Conference”)—which includes companies like Cunard, Canadian Pacific and Furness Withy—and the rest. The Canadian and .United States railway companies have joined this war and have forecast all round reductions in freight rates. The governments may also step in with some subsidies.

Uncertain Outlook

The future, as usual, is uncertain. There is considerable congestion at some points of the Seaway, particularly the Welland Canal, which now takes nearly twice as long to navigate as it did 20 years ago. Again, the St. Lawrence River is closed by ice for about 5 months of the year — ice which can form so quickly that sometimes ocean-going ships are trapped upstream. The Seaway means that the shipping companies must maintain an organisation at the Atlantic ports for the winter and one at the Great Lakes for the Summer. Many of them fear that this will cost more than anything they might save by using the Seaway. For several years they may have to absorb considerable losses and possibly reduce their services.

If there is a general cargo boom and if the railroad and steamship companies can sort out their differences and agree on an attractive combined rate, the Seaway will certainly prosper. These are big “ifs”; the whole thing was conceived, obstructed and finally built in a tug-of-war between interests wanting to realise a profit on their investments. In this crazy world, that is the measure by which the St. Lawrence Seaway will be judged.

Human Needs (1959)

From the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question is often asked, “What would life be like under Socialism?'' If we can't say precisely what it will be be like, we can at least say what it will not be like. We can say it will be production for use, which means there will be no buying and selling and consequently no high pressure advertising, no costly and frenzied attempts to get people to buy this or that. It won’t be a veneer society covering the sham and the shoddy. Only the best will be good enough in Socialist production.

Before people can pursue any cultural activities their basic needs, food, clothing and shelter, must be met. Different societies have different needs depending on the level they have reached. Thus, Feudalism, based upon agriculture and individual handicraft, meant that cars television, jet planes, etc., were not only impossible, but unthinkable. These things presuppose all the scientific and technical development necessary to their production. The development of Capitalism brings with it new techniques and new methods of production that generate new needs. Mass production demands mass sales. Large-scale industry, for example, needs large-scale transport for its distribution and finds its logical extension in jet planes. Mass entertainment, from the music hall to the cinema and radio, finds its extension in television.

This may appear as though techniques were made to measure or as if some ready-made, overall, technology were just waiting to be taken off the scientific clothes' peg. It is not quite as mechanical as this. What we can say is that there is a never-ending cycle of discovery and investigation. New discoveries give rise to new fields of investigation that require specialisation and new techniques. And, like oil in the earth, they are just waiting to be tapped.

The historical conditions that gave rise to commodity production, the production of things for sale and profit, produced also the necessary new techniques. Large-scale, power-motivated industry grew up, based on mass production and from this flowed the mass advertising and the constant pressure to buy, buy, hammered into us with unchanging regularity. One could say that in capitalist society, nothing is bought, everything is sold.

Needs

Our needs are largely conditioned by the kind of society into which we are born. We satisfy our needs by buying things or services. To get the money, the majority of us, as wage workers, have to sell our energy and skill to someone prepared to make use of them. Wages approximate to what is required to keep the worker to a standard of working efficiency. Since profit is the motive of the Capitalist, he pays the worker less than the value of his product. Profit is unpaid labour, the difference between what the worker receives in his wage packet and the value of what he has produced. The Capitalist must turn into money this unpaid labour or profit on the market, hence the enormous growth of advertising and selling agencies. In America, the country of capitalism par excellence, advertising has reached a turnover involving 9,000 million dollars and we are told by statisticians that if this trend continues, by 1965 the figure will reach 15,000 million, barring a slump.

The waste that production for sale and profit engenders is immeasurable. Socialism, that is production for use, means that only the best will prevail. The gradations of quality to suit your pocket will go and along with the cheap-jack will go the sham, the shoddy, the thief and the spiv. Restrictive practices, so prevalent today, will disappear and resources will be used to the full.

Production factors can greatly influence our needs today. A new commodity plus an intense advertising campaign creates new needs. It is hard to believe that before the war we managed quite well without nylon and other manmade fibres. Snob values and the “keeping lip with the Joneses" are exploited by the advertising experts whose job it is to manipulate and play on the weaknesses of potential consumers.

The most prevalent aspiration in this society is the acquisition of money, for money gives one a social power. Without it you are a failure; with it a success. Hence the striving to climb that slippery ladder, to reach the top, at all costs, to be able to surround oneself with all the things that will earn the approbation of one's fellow men. These are the kind of values that obtain today. Relationships between people revolve around this factor. The personality becomes identified by and through the accumulation of things and not through the exercise of one's human capacities. Full development is repressed and stultified by the property society we live in.

Soul-destroying

Let us look at some of its effects. Over 40 per cent, of lying-in patients in hospitals are mental cases. The soul-destroying repetitive processes that most workers do because it is cheaper to produce in that way, completely separate them from joy in their labour. The feeling that they can be sacked only adds to the frustration and insecurity of living. Workers do not have a job. They have the loan of a job which can be taken from them whenever their employer decides to do so. The threat of war and mass annihilation, due to the same basic cause, Capitalism, hangs over us like Damocles' sword. The irritations, mistrust, guardedness and jungle morality of this society all serve to alienate the sociability of people. We know that once the property basis of society is ended and production is for use, then people will act in a harmonious and sociable way.

Production, when it is for use and not for profit, will depend solely on the amount of people available and the natural resources to work on. All the wasted and useless labour that we have today will be usefully employed under Socialism. Men in the armed forces, policemen, people engaged in accounting, collecting and doling out money, insurance, banking and the hundred and one other useless tasks so necessary to capitalism will enter into production. Potentially we can produce an abundance. It simply becomes a matter of organisation. We know that under Socialism people will not seek to acquire things which today carry with them status and prestige value. Those compensating factors will no longer fill a need and the emphasis in people's lives will at last be on the quality of living rather than the quantity of possessions.

J.C. Gormley