Abolish the cause of war (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

That “the old order changeth” is a statement that few would now contest. Not only have individual capitalist owners been replaced by huge corporations and state ownership but the face of the world has been changed within living memory. Gone is the ramshackle empire of the Russian Czar, the German empire of the Hohenzollerns, the Eastern empire of the Japanese, the self-contained policies of the Americas, and the vast colonial empire of the British. In between the two wars the Nazi and Fascist empires had a brief though hectic existence.

In spite of these tremendous and far-reaching changes one thing has not altered—the exploitation of the wealth producers. The changes have only been changes in the composition of the groups that live out of the surplus wealth wrung from the toil of the workers of the world. The workers as a class still receive in return for their labouring only sufficient to enable them to live at the level required in order to carry out the work they have to do. Even that is only true in “good” times; in “bad” times starvation or semi-starvation is frequently their lot. All the time they are harassed by insecurity, for they are never sure how long their jobs will last nor what prospects they may have of getting another one at the same standard of living or even below.

The last thirty years have brought into greater prominence another form of insecurity, the insecurity of life itself, brought, about by the expansion of wars and of the means of destruction developed by warfare which threaten the existence of both the members of the fighting forces and those behind in their homes. All the fine schemes for outlawing war, building up League of Nations and United Nations organisations, as well as limiting armaments, are rendered impotent by forces and ideals that are the necessary product of the present social organisation which drive the privileged groups into conflict over the plunder extracted from the labour of the workers. A little talk awhile there is and then—breath-taking plunges into the production of means of warfare that successively increase the weight of the staggering burden of armaments. In 1914, and again in 1939, we were assured that the war, in which millions lost their lives and millions more suffered injury, hardship and misery, was a war that would end all wars. Now we are threatened with another war which promises to reduce to insignificance the terrible results of all previous wars.

All the boasted intellectual eminence at the disposal of governments is incapable of solving the problem of war and this impotence is made plain by the disagreements between the “experts” and their attempts to blame “the other fellow.” In this also there has been no change ; the general propaganda justifying going to war uses arguments that are as old as war itself. And yet the real solution to the problem of war is a simple one, but one that only the workers can apply. The solution is simply to abolish the cause of war

What is the cause of war? We have said wars are struggles between privileged groups over the plunder extracted from the workers’ labour. What is this plunder and how is it extracted?

The workers in the extractive, productive and transport industries produce the wealth of the world. The worker works for a period and receives in return for his labours a wage or salary. The total output of the workers is sold for a price that is greater than the price the workers receive (expressed in wages or salaries). This surplus, which costs the privileged class nothing, is taken by them and it is out of it that they live, some in stupendous luxury. Broadly speaking the more that is sold of what the worker produces the greater is the surplus to be divided among the members of the privileged class. Consequently this class (or rather those who act on its behalf) is constantly engaged in increasing the amount of capital invested in industry, finding more prolific sources of raw material and expanding the market for the goods produced by the workers.

Although members of the privileged class, the capitalists, have a united interest, the interest of plunderers, as opposed to the interests of the working class, they come into conflict with each other over the division of the plunder. Hence sections of the privileged class fight each other over spheres for the investment of capital, over sources of raw material, over markets for the sale of commodities and over trade routes to markets and to sources of raw material. It is these conflicts that at times flare up into wars, and, as we have shown, they have their fundamental source in plunder wrung from the workers. Therefore the only way to abolish war is to abolish its source—plunder. And that is where the workers come in, because it is they alone who can accomplish this job.

Is it necessary to urge that the workers have a vital interest in abolishing war? Hardly—the devastation of the last war and the promise of the next should be sufficient to compel them, even if they only want to live, to spend a little time and mental energy pondering over the problem. Here is a simple solution which must be obvious to any worker who will clear the capitalist cobwebs out of his brain for a few minutes.

The wealth that is produced is the result of the application of human energy to the material provided by nature. The people who apply this human energy are members of the working class employed as labourers, mechanics, managers, foremen and so on—people who have to sell their energies to a privileged class for wages or salaries. The capitalist as such is not engaged in industry; he may be touring the world, feasting or hunting or dying, but wealth production goes on just the same—he is simply a parasite upon industry; his disappearance would therefore have no direful consequences to industry. As the workers run industry today for the benefit of a parasitic class they could just as easily run it to-morrow for the equal benefit of the whole human race. This would involve the common ownership of the means of production and the abolition of all forms of privilege that arise from private property ownership. This is the only solution to the problem of war and to all the other evil consequences of Capitalism from which humanity is suffering.

Gilmac.

Notes by the Way: For Heaven’s Sake Don’t Shoot! (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Heaven’s Sake Don’t Shoot!

In a speech in London on 24th September, Mr. Herbert Morrison elaborated a familiar Labour Party theme, which is that the workers have now got what they wanted and must be very careful not to do anything to endanger their triumph:—

“Mr. Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council, declaring that the ball was now at the feet of the worker, said in London to-night that if he exploited his advantage against the needs of the community as selfishly as the old employer did when he was on top, the great victories of trade unionism would melt away, and would deserve to melt.” (Manchester Guardian, 25/9/48.)

Which prompts the natural question, if the workers really have got the ball at their feet and just when they are about to score a goal, their captain bawls out, “For heaven’s sake don’t shoot,” what was the use of starting the game at all?

* * *

Mr. Horner’s Bluff

In the row between Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist and secretary of the Miners’ Union, and the other officials of the union who are Labour Government supporters, his opponents argued that it was his duty to keep to the declared policy of the Union which is in favour of the Marshall Plan. Instead he supported the strike of the French coal miners which his Labour opponents maintain was a Russian inspired move to prevent European recovery, though ostensibly a strike for higher wages.

Mr. Horner defended his action on the ground of international working-class solidarity. He said that the French miners’ wages are lower than the wages of British miners, and that “if French miners are allowed to stay at their present level it will threaten the standards of existence of British miners.” (Observer, 17/10/48.) He told a Daily Express correspondent (16/10/48) that he would have supported the strike on its merits even if it had not been backed by the Communists—”I would on principle support the workers if they thought they were justified in refusing their wages.”

So far so good, but let us test the claim by Mr. Horner’s actions in other directions. Only 12 months ago members of Mr. Horner’s union were on strike at Grimethorpe colliery. Did Mr. Horner support them? Not at all. He opposed the strike, told them they were wrong, and accused them of wrecking union policy. This, of course, was before the Communists had switched over to their campaign against the Labour Government.

And what about the miners and other workers in Czechoslovakia who were honoured by a visit from Mr. Horner just before he went to France? On his return he admitted that “wage standards were lower than in Britain and the tempo of work harder ” (Daily Worker, 4/10/48), and that the Czechs work “six eight-hour days a week. (Manchester Guardian, 4/10/48.)

Since the Czech workers work longer hours than British miners and are lower paid, why doesn’t Mr. Horner offer his support to a strike of Czech miners and other workers to improve their position?

The reason is obvious. In Czechoslovakia the Government that enforces these low wages and long hours is a Communist Government, so Mr. Horner is against the workers and for the Government. In France the Communists are not in power, so it suits Russia to back the strike.

During the row Mr. Horner confirmed that he had been offered, and refused, a job on the Coal Board at £5,000 a year (five times his present salary). He also told the Sunday Express (17/10/48), “I would sooner go back to the pit than have another year of this torture.”

The tragedy of the whole business is that the trade union movement is being divided over the issue whether to line up with American private capitalism or Russian State capitalism. Mr. Thurtle, Labour M.P., forecasting Mr. Horner’s defeat, actually put it in the terms, “British patriotism will triumph over alien ideology.” (Sunday Express, 17/10/48.) Is it too much to hope that the miners themselves will remind all their officials that the union is supposed to exist to look after the interests of the members, and that at one time there was at least some conception of international solidarity, not with governments but with the workers everywhere against all their exploiters?

* * *

The United Nations—Promise and Reality

In his speech on world affairs at the Tory Conference at Llandudno, Mr. Winston Churchill opened up with a description of the purpose served by the United Nations Organisation.

“The Assembly of the United Nations, which we fondly hoped would be the majestic centre of world security and, later on, of world co-operation, and, finally, of world government, has been reduced to a mere cockpit in which the representatives of mighty nations and ancient States hurl reproaches, taunts and insults at one another to marshal public opinion and inflame the passions of their peoples, in order to arouse and prepare them for what seems to be a remorselessly approaching third world war.” (Evening Standard, 9th October, 1948.)

* * *

The Juicy Orange

The following is from the News Chronicle (4/10/48) :

“Millions of oranges are being buried every week in the Murrumbidgee area of New South Wales.

“Bulldozers turn them into trenches 100ft. long, 20ft. wide and 7ft. deep.

“Growers say the oranges are second grade and are dumped because only the best are saleable, yet they would be labelled ‘choice in fruit shops here and sell at 3d. and 4d. each.

“The growers blame the local marketing system and say they would like to give the oranges to schools, but packing and railway costs are too high.”

* * *

“Daily Worker” Reporting

The Communists complain, with good reason, that reports in the capitalist press are often biassed and distorted. The careful reader of the Daily Worker will find that the Communists do pretty well themselves. One of the things the Worker is reluctant to let its readers know is the enormous amount spent by Russia in the armaments race, though it keeps them well posted about the expenditure of the other Imperialist powers.

On 8th October the Worker published what purported to be a report of speeches made on that subject by Mr. Vyshinsky and Mr. Hector McNeil at the Paris meeting of the United Nations Committee on disarmament.

According to The Times (8/10/48) Mr. McNeil made the following statement: —

“Could anyone say—even, perhaps, countries in the closest relationship with Soviet Russia—that they knew the forces the Soviets deployed to-day, or what was spent on them last year?

“Soviet military estimates to-day amounted to 66.1 milliard roubles, against 17.5 milliard roubles in 1937, to say nothing of an estimated surplus of 41 milliards, the destination of which was unknown.”

Mr. McNeil’s statement may be right or wrong (the critically minded would ask for much more information before accepting the apparent conclusion that the Russian Government is spending four times as much as in 1937; and probably the value of the rouble is less), but his intended point is clear enough, that the admitted expenditure of 66.1 milliards might have been added to out of the 41 milliard budget surplus.

Now observe how the Worker suppressed the figures entirely and reduced these passages in the speech to the following mangled version: —

“After quoting figures of Soviet military expenditure, which he admitted he was not himself sure of, Mr. McNeil declared…..”

What have Professor Haldane and Mr. L. C. White and the other members of the Editorial Board to say about this?

* * *

‘Twill be a Glorious Victory

Some time not far off, the political Olympic teams will run their general election race. They are at present training and preparing, inspecting the track in the constituencies, and watching the political weather reports from the by-elections, all in anticipation of the great day. It will be a glorious victory for Labour over Tory or for Tory over Labour, unless, of course, the international situation produces another coalition. In that event it will prove to be what Lewis Carroll’s Dodo defined as a “Caucus-race,” one in which all parties win and all get prizes.

At the 1945 election nationalisation was a big issue, but just now, though nearly all preparations for the elections are made, there is one thing missing—something substantial to fight about. Liberals, Labour and the Tories fall over each other in their anxiety to agree about foreign policy and Western Union, about opposition to Russia, about detestation of Communists and Fascists and love of democracy. At home they all claim to have fathered the National Insurance scheme and to be in favour of social reform, more houses, more production, more exports and more wages—but not now. It used long ago to be said of the Labour M.P.s that they were hardly distinguishable from Liberals. Now it seems that the epithet Lib-Lab has to be broadened to Con-Lib-Lab so that it covers all three parties. Early in October the Tories held their annual conference at Llandudno. This is the summing-up made by the Political Correspondent of the Observer (10/10/.18) : —

“No one can read this programme without being struck by one singular fact: the wide agreement that exists between the Tory and Labour Parties. The Iron and Steel Bill may change all that, but at the moment the Tories have no real quarrel with either Sir Stafford Cripps or Mr. Ernest Bevin. There would be few fundamental changes if they were returned to power. They have accepted the Nationalisation of coal, gas, electricity, transport and the Bank of England, either implicitly or explicitly. They may try to unscramble … air transport, but that is not very important. They would keep up the export targets and reluctantly continue austerity. There would be changes in emphasis, private enterprise would be encouraged and not bullied, and there would, of course, be a change in leadership. But the fundamentals would remain because the present economic situation puts any Government in a strait-jacket.”

So much for the Tory and Labour Parties. Within a week of that assessment the Liberal Party published its “Programme for Britain,” and this is what the Liberals say in it about Nationalisation: —

“The profit motive is not wrong. On the other hand, unrestricted private enterprise does not give the best results, from the community’s point of view, in every industry. Liberals believe that postal services, railways, gas, electricity, and coal should be publicly owned. Competitive private enterprise should, however, be encouraged in many fields, and Liberals are utterly opposed to the Nationalisation of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange.” (Manchester Guardian, 15/10/48.)

In default of any other issue to bemuse the electors perhaps the three parties will agree to re-inflate the old bogey, the House of Lords, and stage a smashing exhibition of shadow-boxing about that.

* * *

Nationalisation and Wage-slavery

In a speech very briefly reported in the Evening News (24/8/48) Sir Geoffrey Vickers, V.C., who is Coal Board member for Manpower and Welfare, is said to have claimed that the Coal Board “were trying to abolish ‘wage slavery’ just as human slavery had been abolished.”

Sir Geoffrey is an optimist to say the least of it. Perhaps the kindest explanation is that he uses the term without knowing what it means. In the meantime the Coal Board (was it the Manpower and Welfare Department?) prosecuted 96 miners at Chorley, Lancashire, on 13th August for taking part in an unofficial strike. Fines of £10 were imposed on 87 of them. (Daily Mail, 14/8/48.)

We notice that the workers’ discovery that nationalisation or State Capitalism is much the same as private capitalism, has even reached Mr. Ernest Thurtle, Labour M.P., who writes every Sunday in the Sunday Express. “It is a plain fact that there is much disappointment among the workers in these industries at the way in which the changeover from private ownership has worked out.” (Sunday Express, 29/8/48.)

The former coal owners are being looked after. In its report on the three months April to June, 1948, the Coal Board states that it paid £3,900,000 to the Government as interest on loans and on “interim income” (pending settlement of compensation) to former coal owners.

* * *

Workers who worked too hard

The following was published in the Manchester Guardian (3/9/48) :

“Sixty workers at a Merthyr factory making agricultural machinery have had to be dismissed through ‘ redundancy’ although the works this year has produced more combine harvesters a day than ever before. This is due, said the manager (Mr. C. R. Light), yesterday, to a stiffening in the home market and currency regulations which prevent the delivery of foreign orders, some of which have been completed.

“More than 2,200 people are unemployed in the borough.”

* * *

Civilisation comes to Ethiopia

In an article on the Administration of the law in Abyssinia, published in the New Statesman (29/8/48), Mr. Elwyn Jones, M.P., has this:

“There are still public hangings in the capital for the more serious crimes. In the Addis Ababa jail an electric chair has been installed. I was assured that this was a gift from U.N.R.R.A.— which, if it is true, must surely be the grisliest manifestation of ‘relief and rehabilitation’ of all time.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Old Tales retold (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Propagating Socialism is like spending an afternoon at a fair ground shooting clay pigeons down; you shoot them down, they place them up; you shoot them down again, up they come again. It is the same with arguments against Socialism.

The “you can’t change human nature” argument is an example. Those who put it forward usually know very little about human nature or human history, which is much the same thing. As Marx wrote in the “Poverty of Philosophy” :

“All history is nothing but a continuous transformation of human nature.” (Marxist Leninist Library Edition, p. 124.)

The characteristic traits men have expressed in societies based on private property are different from the traits expressed by men in the period termed prehistory. This period, prehistory, has formed by far the greater part of man’s existence on earth. The people who say you can’t change human nature usually give as evidence to support their belief the behaviour of politicians who are all for the working class when standing for election but when in power are different. Whatever we may think of this statement it doesn’t support their contention that human nature doesn’t change, but defeats it, as it implies that people act differently when their circumstances are altered.

Another example is the argument tendered by Mr. Winston Churchill at the Conservative rally in London, quoted in the Observer (13/6/48) : “Socialism is the philosophy of failure and the gospel of envy.”

This argument can’t hold up to a moment’s analysis. Robert Owen, the Utopian, who first coined the term Socialism, was a wealthy textile manufacturer. Frederick Engels, one of the formulators of scientific Socialist theory, was also a successful business man.

The “failure” argument is based on the false assumptions that society is alright and the trouble lies within ourselves.

Those who maintain that the trouble lies within ourselves claim their assertion has a scientific basis in the theories of the psycho-analytical school of psychologists. An essential feature of science is verification by experiment. Otto Fenickel wrote in “The Psychoanalytical Theory of Neurosis,” published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.:

“The application of the general principles of natural science to psychology naturally presupposes the development of new methods of research that are adequate to its subject matter. Attempts to keep the mental realm outside of causal and quantitative thinking . . . thwart real insight as does also a pseudo exactness which believes it necessary to transfer the biological methods of experiment and scientific protocol to a field where these methods are not suitable (astronomy also is unable to resort to experiments and nevertheless is a natural science).” (Page 7.)

To call psycho-analysis a science before these new methods of objective verification have been discovered is to beg the question. Verification of astronomical theories is made when an eclipse or the position of some heavenly body is forecast.

What agreement is there between the various schools of psycho-analysis’? With Freud, the determining feature is sexual interests; with Adler lust for power and organ inferiority; with Jung, racial consciousness and the theory of types, extrovert and introvert. All can’t be correct.

The other assumption is that society is alright. In capitalist society there are two classes. The capitalist class who own the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth and the working class who own nothing but their labour power which they must sell in order to live. According to statistics gathered by Sir John Orr, Seebohm Rowntree and others about one-third of the population don’t receive enough to keep themselves in health. It can’t be unemployment that is the cause of their poverty, because in the years before the war about one-fifteenth of the working class were out of work. This doesn’t account for the plight of one-third of the population. Nor is their poverty caused by buying fish suppers and strong drink, as they don’t receive sufficient money it doesn’t matter how they spend it. It doesn’t make any difference which Party of capitalism is in power, whether it is Conservative, Liberal, Labour or a Coalition, the conditions remain the same.

Statistics don’t tell you anything, opponents argue; or statistics can prove anything. Well, they can’t have it both ways. The every-day business of capitalist society is carried on with the use of statistics, for example, how many special trains will be required on Derby day? How many special postmen for the Christmas week? Society is the laboratory where social statisticians verify the accuracy of their methods.

The social investigators mentioned were all staunch defenders of the capitalist order of society.

The Socialist can accept their figures and conclude from them that the poverty of the working class follows from the fact that the working class must sell their labour power to the capitalist class in order to live. Common ownership of the means of living with free access to all is the only solution to the problem.

J. T.

The Passing Show (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attempts of our rulers and spiritual advisers to formulate the mode of procedure best fitted to keep the workers quiet are becoming so fantastic as to cause even their docile dupes to wonder if there is not some leg-pulling going on somewhere; the hope of heaven on earth promised at the last election has gone with the wind. The way of the transgressing wage-slave is indeed hard; he suffers for the sins committed in Capitalism’s interest and bears all the burdens of his exploiters during the process; he is becoming weary and inclined to flag, but this cannot be allowed. “What we want is more production.”

It will be noticed that during those periods when the worker, driven beyond endurance, ventures to quit, he is always out of order (practically all strikes are unofficial). The Labour Leader of the Union and the Labour politician unite in condemning his rebellious conduct; and the capitalist press wholeheartedly support them. Denounced by the leader of his union, attacked in Parliament by his own Labour member, shown the error of his ways by the Church and universally vilified by the capitalist press, he may be excused if he doubts the evidence of his senses, but in spite of all these handicaps, he still keeps up the fight; he feels he must; his instincts bred of the class struggle he feels to be correct; he is becoming conscious of himself ; he is beginning to realise what history has called upon him to do. Upon the worker’s action rests the fate of humanity and every socialist on the planet is sustained during these perilous times by the firm conviction that he will not fail.

It is interesting to consider the views of the pioneers of scientific Socialism on the functions of the trade unions. Lucien Laurat, on pages 74 and 75 of his book. “Marxism and Democracy,” states that Marx made a number of important statements to Hamann, the treasurer of the Metal Worker’s Union. The discussion took place in Hanover in 1869. Among other things, Marx is reported as saying the following:—

“The trade unions must never be associated with or dependent upon a political group. Otherwise they would never be able to fulfil their task, and they would receive a mortal blow. The trade unions are the schools of Socialism. In the trade unions the workers become socialists because they see every day before their own eyes the struggle against capital. Political parties, whatever they may be, can arouse the enthusiasm of the working masses only temporarily for a time only, whilst the unions hold their loyalty much more securely, and it is only these unions which can be a real working class party and erect a bulwark against the power of Capital.”

This is what Marx is alleged to have said about 80 years ago. It is questionable if he would repeat the statement were he alive to-day.

Long before this, Engels, in his “Condition of the Working Class in England,” stressed the importance of the economic movement, and Marx, in his “Poverty of Philosophy,” fiercely attacked Proudhon for his hostility to trade unions and to strikes.

Wherever the unions are mentioned in Marx’s writings we find he defends them. In another quotation in the book above referred to he stated: “The struggle of class against class is a political struggle.” 

When the Chartist movement was analysed by the old timers the fact that the trade unions did not as a whole support the Chartists was referred to with regret. 

In “Value, Price and Profit,” the part played by the unions was dealt with, their limitations clearly shown, together with their utility, but it is pointed out they could be more successful if they used their power more intelligently: they should have as their watchword not a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, but the revolutionary “abolition of the wages system.”

Since the founders of the movement passed away the workers have acquired considerable knowledge as a result of their experience..

The wage-slave sells his labour-power to the capitalist, and competing with him is his fellow slave. The identity of interests of the workers on the economic field is obscured.

When labour-power is in demand the sellers of that commodity, by means of their organizations, try and raise the price, but when the demand falls off, and the unemployed become numerous their organizations weaken and the price falls. There is nothing in trade union action that can take labour-power out of the category of commodities. Trade unions are often the means of enabling the workers to obtain a rise in wages before they otherwise would do and also in preventing a rapid fall when circumstances are in favour of the exploiter. They are, in addition, a vehicle for obtaining better conditions which through custom sometimes become more or less permanent, Their value to the worker cannot be questioned, but they cannot emancipate the toiler from wage slavery.

It is not the function of a political party to interfere with the operations of the unions.

The movement in Britain has not been helped by the political levy and the fusion of some unions with the Labour Party: the unions have not benefited: the trade union leader is now often in opposition to the aspirations of the rank and file, and is backed, on almost every occasion, by the Labour politician in resisting efforts to use the organisations for the purpose for which they were originally formed.

It is inspiring nevertheless to see the gradual spread of class consciousness : it is slow, but sure in its coming. Capitalism is up against problems it cannot solve. There is no power that can prevent the advance of the workers permanently, but it can be helped along by socialist knowledge.

The socialist aims at the removal of Capitalism : the trade unionist who is not a socialist thinks he can get something worth while out of the present mode of production. Sooner or later it will dawn upon the working class that trade union action can’t beat the capitalist system.

In 1850, at the time of the split in the Communist League, Marx judged it necessary to tell the workers “You will have to go through fifteen, twenty, perhaps fifty years of civil and international wars, not merely to change conditions, but to change yourselves, and make yourselves fit to take over political power.” He was optimistic; the workers are still in the wilderness, but his vision was clear. A long preparation was necessary before they could be equipped with knowledge sufficient to enable them to take possession of the promised land.

We have now undoubtedly arrived at a point from which the wage-slaves can see where to head for.

Charles Lestor

Blogger's Note:

Lucien Laurat's Marxism and Democracy was reviewed in the February 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard.

A personal statement (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arising out of the reply to his letter published in the September Socialist Standard, Lord Amwell asks us to publish the following statement: —

September 16th, ’48.

The Editor, 

Socialist Standard.

Dear Sir,

I must ask you to correct one misrepresentation in F.F.’s reply to me this month.

It is unwise to trust the capitalist press, even when it suits one in its facilitating a jibe. I did not say in the House of Lords that I went into trances or, as several newspapers put it, that I was a medium. Popular spiritualism is a thing I despise and I am not an obscurantist by any means.

What I did was to speak against a body of fellow citizens being persecuted under medieval statutes rather than common law. To illustrate my point I mentioned that many years ago I looked into certain phenomena and produced, as anyone can, some abnormal results. This without any assumption whatever about a future life or theory of spirit. As matters stood before Mr. Morrison’s order to police authorities, I could have been prosecuted for investigating psychic matters in my own home.

This had nothing to do with trances or spiritualistic claims. The press seeks sensation—don’t you follow suit. I am neither spiritualist nor medium.

I wish I had space to go into the other matters fully, especially F.F.’s complex about tripe and sheeps’ brains.

Yours sincerely,

Amwell.

Mixing the drinks (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

CALIFORNIA, Saturday.—More than 124,000 gallons of beer have been pumped into the Pacific because a judge thought the brewery, involved in receivership proceedings, would not make profit if the beer was bottled.— Reuter. (From Evening Standard, 28/8/48.)

SPGB Meetings (1948)

Party News from the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life and Times: Way back when (2025)

The Life and Times column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a ring on the bell. When I opened the door, a smart looking young man wearing suit, collar and tie and carrying a brief case told me he was selling insurance (those were the days when insurance was still sold door to door), but then he quickly added that what he was really interested in was the Socialist Party of Great Britain. He was very polite and said he knew about the SPGB and had found my name as a contact. I was surprised but also pleased to have someone actually coming round to the house to find out about socialism. So I invited him in and we sat down in the front room. He asked me to tell him about the Party and I tried to sum it up as quickly as possible. I said we stood for a moneyless, wageless democratic world of free access to all goods and services, without leaders or led, based on the idea that this will happen when the majority class in society – all those who had to work for a wage or salary – develop the consciousness necessary to democratically take power from the tiny minority in society who own and control the wealth and to establish the new society. Or something like that.

Andrew – that was his name – seemed enthusiastic and I showed him some of the Party’s leaflets and pamphlets. He appeared particularly interested in certain ideas and positions – for example our attitude towards the use of violence as a political instrument (I told him we were opposed to it) and what was going on in Ireland at the time (it was the period of ‘The Troubles’). He appeared satisfied with this and asked if he could become a member and he would pay the subscription there and then. I told him there wasn’t a joining subscription and I couldn’t enrol him, but, if he came to our next branch meeting at the Swansea Central Library, he could apply to join then. He kept apologising for being an insurance salesman while patting his briefcase and telling me he needed to do that to keep the wolf from the door for himself and his family. I said I understood and he left, telling me he’d see me at our next Monday evening branch meeting.

I felt somehow exhilarated about this – until, that is, my wife emerged from the adjacent room, where she’d been listening to everything that had gone on. ‘He’s a policeman’, was the first thing she said. Wow! It took a moment to sink in, but then it dawned on me that his coming to the house and asking questions in particular about violence and Northern Ireland had to be a bit peculiar. It dawned on me that I’d been naïve. But maybe that was to the good, because, if he was a policeman – an undercover policeman – he might have had a weapon in that briefcase for if and when he might be challenged. And that felt a bit scary.

But was that over-dramatic? Well, I never really found out because Andrew never came to one of our meetings. But I did see him again – about a year later when I attended an indoor public meeting in Swansea put on by the organisation called the International Marxist Group. A group of us were selling our magazines and handing out our leaflets before we went in. As we did, I found myself faced with a casually dressed man who seemed to be one of the organisers. He wasn’t someone I recognised but he said hello to me, looked embarrassed and then sort of blurted out that he was out of the insurance game now and how was I? I realised it was Andrew and reciprocated his ‘hello’ before sitting down.

Make of that what you will. Was I (am I) being paranoid in regarding this as confirmation that he was a police spy? Maybe. But when in 2022 I read and reviewed for the Socialist Standard a book entitled Red List: MI5 and British Intellectuals in the Twentieth Century by David Caute, my mind went back to that time. The book’s author had drawn on official but publicly available documents which gave startling insights into the enormous efforts (and massive resources) put into tracking the activities and affiliations of an extraordinarily wide range of people and organisations suspected of being subversive, of constituting a possible ‘threat to national security’.

All this was brought back to me by a recent investigative series on BBC Radio 4 presented by Mark Steel and entitled Shadow World. The People Versus McDonald’s. It was largely about the so-called McLibel case in the 1990s when two anti-McDonald’s Greenpeace campaigners were pursued through the courts by that company for making claims about their activities and methods which McDonald’s said were libellous. The series was an interesting one in itself, but one of the things that emerged from it was the discovery by one of the campaigners that a member of her group she’d engaged in a two-year relationship with was a police infiltrator. He then vanished, but when she later tracked him down, it emerged that, while he was with her, he was married to someone else. She also discovered that other undercover policemen had had relationships with other female activists (over 60 of them in all) from small ‘suspect’ groups. One of these policemen had been involved with four different women, with one of whom he fathered a child. Finally, Mark Steel revealed that, as a member of one such ‘suspect’ group himself in the 1980s, his local branch of the Socialist Workers Party had discovered that one of their members was a police infiltrator, and that records now available showed that, from 1968 to 2008, Special Branch oversaw what he called the ‘massive expensive palaver’ of spying on more than 1,000 different organisations in Britain.

So why not the SPGB as part of that? Just in case. After all it would only be a small part of the massive expensive (and wasteful) palavers of every description that capitalism is full of.

Howard Moss

Pathfinders: Basic skills (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent YouTube essay argues that modern literature is poor quality because young writers don’t know how to write. This is because they don’t really know how to read, and this is because the US abandoned the century-old and evidence-backed phonics reading system in favour of something called ‘critical literacy’, which supposedly prioritises personal interpretation over text analysis. Thus, goes the narrative, literary comprehension has cratered, offset by a skyrocketing tendency to react subjectively to texts instead of objectively analysing their meanings. In conclusion, this is what’s behind the modern epidemic of cancel culture, where words mean whatever you want them to mean, and anyone is entitled to be ‘triggered’ by anything.

25 percent of US adults have only a kindergarten reading age, the video says, and 60 percent have that of a 10 year old. This is broadly verifiable. The essayist believes that abandoning phonics was a deliberate strategy to dumb people down and thereby make them more compliant. But this overlooks a contradiction. While politicians might love dumb voters, and advertisers love dumb consumers, any industry report will show that capitalist employers want the opposite, smart and productive workers with industry-relevant skills, because their labour is what produces profits. And taxes on those profits finance governments. Worker, voter, consumer, same person.

Conspiracy explanations are lazy. Better to apply the principle of Hanlon’s Razor: ‘Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.’ Capitalism is chaotic, contradictory and incompetent all the way down, including its education systems. Unlike the US, the UK never abandoned phonics. In fact it’s a statutory requirement. Even so, ‘the average reading age of adults in the United Kingdom is typical of a child in UK education at 9 years old’ while ‘some have a much lower reading level’.

Social media means many young people don’t read books. Reading test scores have been declining across OECD countries since 2012. Worse, AI provides a ‘frictionless’ user experience which is proving addictive, and some evidence suggests that AI-reliant students are losing the ability to learn or retain information.

Sourcing a quote provides an example of this frictionless user experience in action. Back in the 18th and 19th century, some intellectuals did indeed view the education of workers with abject horror. One remarked that teaching workers to read was ‘to tie firebrands to foxes and set them loose amid the standing corn’. Who was it? Google’s AI Overview answered at once: ‘The quote is by the Russian anarchist Emma Goldman. She wrote, “To teach the masses in a compulsory fashion is to tie firebrands to foxes and set them loose amid the standing corn,” in her 1911 essay “The Americanization of the American Girl“‘.

Er, no. The idea of Emma Goldman deprecating widespread worker education is preposterous. The essay title also looked dubious, and hyperlinked to this: ‘The phrase “The Americanization of the American Girl” is likely a misremembering of the title “The Americanization of Emily,” a 1964 British-American romantic comedy film starring James Garner and Julie Andrews.’

Well, the film is real, but otherwise, nul points so far for Google Overview. Why not ask the AI to check its own answer? ‘Did Emma Goldman write an essay called The Americanization of the American Girl“? It flashed back: ‘No, there is no evidence that Emma Goldman wrote an essay with that exact title […] “The Americanization of the American Girl” does not appear in her known works or bibliographies.’

You don’t get internal consistency because current generative AI doesn’t remember what it last told you. Next we got: ‘The quote is from the conservative politician Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said teaching workers to read was “to tie firebrands to foxes [etc]” to express her view that it would lead to “radical, anti-American, anti-God, and anti-police sentiment”.

A gargling MAGA nutjob could hardly have authored an 18th century quotation. Time for some ‘prompt engineering’, ie, rephrase question, get different answer: ‘Who opposed general education on the grounds that teaching workers to read was ‘to tie firebrands to foxes and set them loose amid the standing corn”?

This time Google Oversight gave a more plausible response: ‘The phrase was not used to oppose general education, but was a popular quote attributed to the English politician and magistrate Sir Thomas Bernard, who opposed the teaching of reading to the poor in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He feared that educating the working class would lead to unrest and was quoted as saying, “to tie firebrands to foxes… [etc].’ The AI further assured us that Sir TB, ‘a prominent 18th-century English politician and magistrate, was a vocal opponent of educating the poor’ who highlighted ‘the dangers of educating the poor, suggesting it would lead to social chaos and unrest’.

It seemed prudent to ask ‘Who was Sir Thomas Bernard?’ In a flash, the multi-hundred billion dollar oracle responded:

‘Sir Thomas Bernard (1750–1818) was an English lawyer, philanthropist, and social reformer, best known for … founding the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor… he […] dedicated much of his life to improving the lives of the poor and working children.’

Could this philanthropist have worked to improve the lot of the poor while emphatically against educating them? Not unless he was very confused. A clarification then: ‘Did Sir Thomas Bernard oppose educating the poor while campaigning to improve their conditions?’

‘No, Sir Thomas Bernard did not oppose educating the poor; in fact, he was a strong advocate for their education and included it as a key part of his efforts to improve their conditions.’ 

Acres more text in the same vein.

So, bright, shiny, and useless. ‘Frictionless’ learning is a delusion. The mind needs friction like the body needs fibre. Reading, writing and critical thinking are vital for workers. They’re the basic skills of revolution.

Many expect the AI bubble to burst, as the rampant spending shows derisory returns. The result could be a cold shower all round.

Paddy Shannon

Technofeudalism – is capitalism dead? (2025)

From the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists might seem a bit obsessed with how words are used, not because we consider ourselves to be the special constables of whatever language we speak, but because we are interacting with our fellow members of the working class, engaging with ideas about what words represent and defending and advancing our political tradition, in order to gain working class freedom.

So it is of some interest that we have had a globally known political individual, celebrated by many, stating in bold capital letters on the back cover of his book that ‘CAPITALISM IS DEAD WELCOME TO TECHNOFEUDALISM’.

It is this assertion, made popular by Yanis Varoufakis with his book Technofeudalism – What Killed Capitalism (2023) and its consequences that will be examined here.

Two years before the publication of Varoufakis’s book, a French academic published a book titled Technofeudalism: A Critique of the Digital Economy which argues along similar lines to Varoufakis’ book but with a more philosophical perspective. Durand puts the root of the digital economy’s structure in what he calls ‘The Californian Ideology’ – radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberalism emerging from Silicon Valley – but does not go as far as stating that technofeudalism has replaced capitalism. Varoufakis mentions Durand’s work in the acknowledgements of his book.

The book by Durand locates the first use of the word ‘technofeudalism’ to a science fiction role playing game manual – the GURPS (Generic Universal Role-Playing System) Cyberpunk Adventures where it is mentioned once:

‘As the world becomes tougher, the corporations adapt by becoming tougher themselves, out of necessity. This “we protect our own” attitude is sometimes called techno-feudalism. Like feudalism, it is a reaction to a chaotic environment, a promise of service and loyalty from the workers in exchange for a promise of support and protection from the corporation’.

GURPS Cyberpunk Adventures book has an interesting story in itself: the editor’s home and publisher’s office were simultaneously raided by the US Secret Service who were under the impression that the book was a computer hacking manual and confiscated the disks containing the book. The publishers got them back in the end although the hard drives no longer worked and the book had to be re-written from memory. Several of the people involved in that episode went on to become founder members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Technofeudalism

In the body of Varoufakis’s book, the author makes the case for technofeudalism in the form of a conversation with his father, who had recently died. There are lots of interesting examples, anecdotes, bits of history, and the recalling of conversations about current events as they happened in the context of his father nearing the end of his life. The book has an appendix named The Political Economy of Technofeudalism, where Varoufakis lays out his case in a much more direct way.

In the main part of the book there are lots of sweeping statements made without qualification, and somewhat gross generalisations. The author makes similar statements in some of his interviews. He has said capitalism ‘is defined by profits and markets’ and left it at that, but in this appendix he shows a greater understanding:

‘Under feudalism, the power of the ruling class grew out of owning land that the majority could not own, but were bonded to. Under capitalism, power stemmed from owning capital that the majority did not own, but had to work to make a living. Under technofeudalism, a new ruling class draws power from owning cloud capital whose tentacles entangle everyone’.

‘Cloud’ here means data centres. That data may be data (information) or it may be code which enables networked software like Zoom to work. Like most resources in capitalism, the cloud is mostly owned by a few capitalists and is thus used to ration access to software and data via subscription services, such as Netflix.

Capitalism

Varoufakis states there are eight keys to understanding capitalism: commodity production; distribution of revenue into wages, interests, rents and profits; circulating money capital; capital accumulation, frequent crises; social classes (capitalist, middle class, waged labourers); extractive power (inequality and state enforcement); and a ‘techno-structure’; marketing and behavioural modification infrastructure.

Varoufakis also has a spin on the Labour Theory of Value to support his view. He states that value in capitalism has an experiential form – which seems to be synonymous with what Marx called use-value – examples given include – both commodities such as drinking water – and non-commodities like sunsets, or feeling appreciated. Exchange or commodity value, he states, is a quantity at which goods and services trade for one another. Labour is treated as a separate category but in similar terms as experiential labour and commodity labour. He states the ‘exchange value of commodity labour equals the sum of experiential labour that other workers have put into commodities that a worker’s wage can buy’.

According to Varoufakis two main forces cause capitalism to enter crises – the falling rate of profit and debt crisis (financiers going on credit strike). Rent he considers to be any price paid by a buyer above the price which most closely reflects the exchange value of the commodity. This includes ground rent, financial rent (interest), monopoly rent and brand rent (higher prices associated with in-demand brands, eg Apple computers or Nike training shoes). Varoufakis considers capitalism to be driven by profit and private debt.

Private debt he says is created by financiers from thin air – which qualifies him as a bit of a ‘currency crank’ – his note on this simply says bankers create loans from thin air by an audacious transfer of future values to the present. In the main text he states:

‘Most people think that banks take Jill’s savings and lend them to Jack. That’s not what banks do. When a bank lends Jack money, it does not go into its vault to check it has enough cash to back the loan. If it believes Jack will return the loan, plus the agreed interest, all the bank needs to do is add to Jack’s account the number of dollars it lends him. Nothing more than a typewriter or, today, a few strokes on a keyboard are necessary’.

We would disagree here and state that crises are caused by the chaotic nature of capitalist production that doesn’t know when to stop producing. Debt crises are a symptom of over-production in the real economy. The falling rate of profit is a real tendency but is generally negated by the development of new markets and labour market flexibilities. The Thin Air Theory of Debt is debunked (as detailed in the Socialist Party Pamphlet The Magic Money Myth). There is no reason to extend the concept of rent to the price pain of money loans (interest) or monopoly prices.

Cloud serfs, cloud proles and cloud fiefdoms

Varoufakis goes on to define technofeudalism. He starts with cloud capital, defined as the agglomeration of network machinery, software, AI-driven algorithms and communications hardware criss-crossing the whole planet and performing a wide variety of tasks. These include inciting billions of non-waged people (‘cloud serfs’) to work for free at replenishing cloud capital’s own stock (eg by uploading photos and videos to Instagram or TikTok, or submitting film, restaurant and book reviews, allowing their every click to be tracked across their social media use). Two further ideas central to his case are introduced here: the industrialisation of marketing to buy goods on platforms (‘cloud fiefdoms’), plus and the enhanced automation of actual physical production of goods by what he calls ‘cloud proles’.

Here the word capitalist is replaced by “cloudalist”. He states that because there are major cloud-based services (such as Twitter/X, or Uber) that have not made significant profits but managed to grow via issuing shares. He also states that Big Tech were the main effective recipients of extra currency produced by central banks in the post-2008 growth period and particularly during the pandemic. Via the money and share markets, and the inflation of the value of fictitious assets low interest loans were obtained to spend on cloud infrastructure. So profit via the direct exploitation of labour, became irrelevant for the cloudalists, instead their focus was on market dominance – the establishment of “cloud fiefdoms”. Varoufakis argues that profit is no longer the goal of the cloudalist, instead they seek “cloud rent” paid by “cloud vassals” (the “terrestrial capitalists” who now sell their goods and services via the cloudalist platforms).

Using social media services is of course not working for Big Tech for free: that is not an obligatory activity for survival based on social class like wage-labour is for most people. In fact, those who are doing the value-creating work are those collecting data – which is a whole industry: it’s the bread and butter of Google and Facebook and their thousands of workers. And almost every other firm selling on the internet is using in-house or third party SEO (search engine optimisation) software and expertise to boost sales by exploiting data about potential clients. It’s as if shopkeepers don’t rearrange their window displays to attract their customers, just because they can now do it remotely tailored for individual customers. Profit is still the driver, and movement of surplus capital from one section to another has always happened, including via the state’s capital which is sourced by skimming off capitalist production by means of taxation.

Many of the trends identified in Varoufakis’ thesis are in fact the continuation of long running trends in capitalism. Capitalists in different sectors are in constant competition for access to shares of the surplus value created by work. As the review in this journal stated: ‘What Varoufakis is analysing is not the downfall of capitalism, but its purest application’.

Critical and uncritical reception

Publicity material for the book garnered positive comments from a variety of sources: ‘The dark scary exciting song of our age’ (Irvine Welsh), ‘An urgent demand to seize the means of computation’ (Cory Doctorow), ‘Remarkable’ said the Financial Times who made it ‘Best Book of the Year’, ‘This is the world grappling with an entirely new economic system and therefore political power’ (Observer).

Several Trotskyist papers criticised the book on similar lines as this journal. Meanwhile a lengthy review in Jacobin Magazine said it was wrong about serfdom and that the economy still relies on a class of wage labourers.

However, for every review that seriously engaged with the idea and agreed that capitalism was not dead and that technofeudalism was not a new form of society, there are a multitude of newspaper reviews and blogs that just repeat the ideas in the book – trading on the excitement of something apparently new, it seems. Whilst not widespread, we have seen the term ‘technofeudalism’ spring up across social media: in posts by commentators suggesting that it is now the new social system and needs to be escaped from, in adverts for security software that will prevent cloud serfdom, for crypto-currencies, and for introductions to join slightly shady looking discussion groups on Telegram which promise to spill the beans on how to break out of the system.

Viewed generously Varoufakis’s contribution in Technofeudalism – What Killed Capitalism has put discussion of ideas about capitalism, the system we have now, into the ‘Recent Publications’ section of bookshops and libraries, both physical and in the cloud. But socialists have not been convinced that capitalism is dead. What it will take to kill capitalism is a politically organised working class that understands capitalism and wants socialism.

PDH

Blogger's Note:

There is a review of Yanis Varoufakis' book by Pik Smeet in the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Tyranny (2025)

From the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

 

Tyrants are surely not difficult to spot. A Hitler or a Stalin are, in hindsight, ludicrously obvious. Yet, in their own time, they garnered popular support, even as their excesses were becoming evident. Even with the clarity of history exposing their misdeeds, there are those who look back on them with political affection.

It is more difficult to evaluate the tyrannous potential of an individual who is in the process of emerging. Especially to those who are looking for, craving for, a leader to cure their individual and national ills.

Take the near veneration of Winston Churchill, despite his political record of disasters such as the Dardanelles campaign in the First Word War. It was, of course, his war leadership in the 1940s by which his political sins were largely, if not universally, absolved. Can he be cited for any actual acts of tyranny though? The deaths of an estimated 3 to 4 million Bengalis due to Churchill diverting food supplies makes an argument, especially in Bengal.

A strategic decision in wartime circumstances it might be argued by those more sympathetic. But tyrants usually claim their decisions are strategic, in the best interests of their people. The need to crack eggs to make omelettes.

The point though is not that this or that person is a tyrant. Such would be to identify tyranny solely with individuals. A problem solved by the expedient of choosing leaders who are not tyrants. Tyranny as a personality disorder.

However, if it’s the whole political, economic and social system that is tyrannous, then a tyrant is an individual expression, the figurehead of that tyranny. Hitler and Stalin had whole coteries around them as complicit as those individual leaders. The death of Stalin did not lead to the dismantling of the tyrannous regime in the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Stalin period was the continuation of that established by those who assumed power along with Lenin. It is arguable that the Bolsheviks, for all their communist posturing, merely adapted the previous Czarist methods to their own ends. The present Russian incumbent is a continuation barely veiled by a very dubious and threadbare ‘democratic’ cloak.

Over 2300 years ago Aristotle commented at length on the subject of tyranny, identifying its main features. Tyranny is often the manifestation of political turmoil, unstable government and a disaffected people. It reflects deep social and institutional issues caused by economic disparities and political dysfunction. People begin to look for a solution in the form of a leader who seems to embody the promise of resolution. Such an individual though will be looking to exploit these disruptive features for their own political or economic (or both) ends. Tyrants will impoverish their subjects to the point they feel they cannot resist. Aristotle was, of course, addressing individual rule in the political circumstances of his own time. It is feasible to consider his principles of tyranny in the broader context of society at large. In our time this is the continuing predominance and rule of capitalism.

Instability

Instability is a fundamental feature of a system posited on the principle of ruthless competition. The accruing of profit is the motor driving the system and this is achieved at the expense of the wealth creators, the workforce, and competitors.

To best serve capitalism’s requirements the workforce is stratified economically by a variety of remuneration levels. Economic disparity between workers creates sectional interests that divide rather than unite workers in the face of the real schism, between workers as a class and capitalists. Political dysfunction then arises when workers begin to identify with different political parties purportedly serving their particular interests, while actually administering the system on behalf of capitalism. This enables the capitalist system, in its role of tyrant, to use these disruptive features for its own economic and political ends. Capitalism’s subjects, the workers, are impoverished to the extent of being wholly dependent economically upon capitalism.

Even the seemingly well paid rarely, if ever, achieve economic security that might allow them to feel independent of capitalism. A seemingly luxurious lifestyle can quickly dissipate if the ‘generous’ salary disappears. Impoverishment is certainly more obvious to those on or near the minimum wage end of the pay spectrum. They are so insecure and drained by their circumstances they are rendered seemingly powerless to resist. Nor do they readily recognise common cause with those who are financially more comfortable, even (erroneously) called middle class. Indeed, it is this sector of the working class that becomes an object of their dissatisfaction. They feel diminished by the ‘middle class elite’, readily portrayed in the media dedicated to serving the interests of capital, as espousing ‘liberal’ or ‘lefty’ notions from their detached estates. This can manifest as mass street demonstrations against supposed ‘middle class’ shibboleths such as immigration, even socialism, as ineffective reformism is often misidentified. Would-be tyrants emerge to offer leadership that is actually misleadership.

There are actual tyrants heading brutal regimes as well as those who aspire to being tyrants with their own brutal regimes. These are often not as useful to capitalism as freer societies more compatible with free markets and flexible workforces. The democratic, or at least seemingly democratic, political model largely seems most suitable for capitalism to flourish, or deal with social unrest when flourishing periodically gives way to economic crisis. Should the democratic model become undermined by ineffective governance, with none of the established political parties able to maintain stability, then the implicit tyranny of capital can find explicit form through an insurgent political force.

The only antidote to the tyranny of capitalism, implicit or explicit, is socialism. Until workers can look beyond the immediate circumstances of their particular strata and identify themselves as a class they will remain as subjects of that tyranny. Socialism is the way workers can take real democratic possession and control of the means of life, where use and the meeting of all needs, not profit, is the motive force of society. Then the tyranny will have been truly toppled.

Dave Alton

What if there’s a shortage? (2025)

From the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

For a socialist post-capitalist society to come about presupposes two basic things. In the absence of either of these (and, even more so, both), this society would not be realisable.

Firstly, you have to have a majority of people who want it, understand what it entails and are committed to seeing it flourish and succeed. It cannot be imposed from above by a minority, however enlightened or well-meaning.

Secondly, you have to have in place an advanced technological infrastructure that has at least the potential to enable us to adequately meet the reasonable needs of the population. In other words, to more or less ensure ‘plenty’. The more output were to fall below the level required to meet these needs, the greater the strain that would be imposed upon the particular kind of social arrangement that defines a post-capitalist society – a society characterised by the free distribution of goods and services provided by the voluntary work of its members.

What is plenty?

Of course, what is meant by ‘plenty’ is something relative; it depends not just on physical output but, also, on our values. When we talk of ‘plenty’ the question always arises – ‘in relation to what’?

If what you deem to be minimally acceptable as a standard is something so extravagant as a sprawling multi-bedroomed mansion set in its own spacious grounds along with a fleet of luxury cars parked in the garage and outbuildings for the servants then, very clearly, in per capita terms, we are not going to achieve ‘plenty’ by this yardstick, in a post-capitalist society.

You can therefore forget about achieving such a society in that case. However, by the same token, you can also forget about ever extricating yourselves from the circumstances you find yourself in today which for a great many people are grim and precarious. In short, you will be lumbered with capitalism for the foreseeable future.

To achieve ‘plenty,’ then, will require us to lower the bar to something rather more realistic. This is precisely why the first of these preconditions of a post-capitalist society cannot be separated or considered in isolation from the second: to some extent they mesh together.

In principle, achieving and maintaining a state of ‘plenty’ would eliminate the need for any form of rationing – money, of course, being the means by which goods are rationed today under capitalism. However, we cannot entirely rule out the possibility of some shortages arising in a post-capitalist society, whether in the early days or from a natural disaster. That being the case, we cannot rule out some form of rationing in the sense of restrictions on the consumption of some goods.

Prior to the 20th century it probably would not have been feasible to establish such a society given that the means of production would not yet have been sufficiently developed to materially support it. This is no longer the case. Indeed, it has not been the case for quite a long time now. As a generalisation, one can say that it is fairly indisputable that the technological potential to satisfy most, if not all, of the needs of the population, globally speaking, exists today.

Not erased overnight

The legacy of capitalism’s self-inflicted shortcomings would not be able to be erased overnight. We cannot expect universal ‘plenty’ to suddenly materialise the ‘day after the revolution,’ so to speak. The apparatus of capitalist production is geared to creating and maintaining artificial scarcity. It will take some time, however short, to restructure and reorganise industry to fully meet human needs as well as ensure it is effectively managed in an environmentally sustainable fashion.

This means that at the beginning, post-capitalist society is likely to have to contend with some shortages of one kind or another for a while. However, this should not present too great an obstacle to such a society functioning properly as intended.

The reorganisation of productive capacity to realise its full potential to meet the reasonable demands of people everywhere would be happening under new conditions in that effective market demand would no longer be the determinant of what gets to be produced, as it is today under capitalism.

In a post-capitalist society, the relationship between our subjective preferences and the products we desire would be a direct one – not one mediated by money or, for that matter, labour vouchers. Insofar as comparisons need to be made between products in terms of their value to us, this would be effected entirely according to our preferences, which would simply be ranked.

Productive activity would be guided by a flexible hierarchy of production priorities, responding to shifts in the pattern of supply and demand. Our values would thus be able to directly engage with, or find expression in, the process of material production itself – by continually informing and guiding it rather than production being dominated or regulated by the impersonal laws of the capitalist market economy.

The single most important way in which productive capacity to meet human needs can be rapidly increased in a post-capitalist society is to convert that large chunk of existing productive capacity currently having nothing to do with directly meeting these needs and diverting enormous quantities of resources and labour away from those needs. This means progressively eliminating the enormous legacy of capitalism’s structural waste.

As a result a lot more in the way of socially useful output could be produced while, at the same time, the amount of resources needed overall or in the aggregate would decline significantly by comparison with what is required today. This will alleviate the unsustainable pressures currently being exerted on our global ecosystem.

In post-capitalist society we will see a dramatic shrinkage in the extent of the social division of labour, with many of the socially useless jobs we are obliged to do today no longer being required. This will allow much more labour and resources to be redirected towards socially useful production. The resultant increase in socially useful output will have obvious implications for the question of any shortages.

Dealing with shortages

Given that some shortages are likely to remain in the beginning – even if to a steadily diminishing extent, how would we deal with these shortages under the very different set of circumstances of a post-capitalist society?

In considering what form of limitation on the consumption of some goods might be most appropriate in a post-capitalist society, the possibility, however remote, needs to be taken into account that it might lend itself to the re-emergence of some form of market exchange through the back door, as labour vouchers might. Any system that would need to be implemented in a post-capitalist society would need to be scaled down to only what it was absolutely necessary to limit. It would need to be, in other words, a limited, partial system, targeting only those goods that are clearly in short supply.

What kind of goods are we talking about whose consumption might require limitation in the early years of a post-capitalist society? These would be goods that figure rather low down in our hierarchy of production goals – most notably, inessential or luxury goods. The objective would be to strictly limit or restrict only those goods subject to shortage. This would minimise the adverse psychological, cultural, and administrative costs that any system of restricting consumption unavoidably entails.

Targeting only some goods is exactly what a system of labour vouchers disallows; by its very nature, it is a universalistic form of rationing. However, the need to restrict the consumption of some good arises only in the case where there is a shortage of the good in question. Consequently, a universal system of rationing, which is what a system of labour vouchers amounts to, would therefore seem to imply, on the face of it, a condition of generalised or widespread scarcity applicable to each and every good.

But how can this be reconciled with the claim that a communistic post-capitalist society is firmly predicated on the real prospect of material abundance? How can we even envisage that such a society might be possible if all around us we see, not the portents of post-scarcity, but a chronic and all-pervading shortage of everything?

While there might well be some shortages in the very early stages of a post-capitalist society, the idea that there will be shortages of everything – universal or generalised scarcity – is hardly credible. Even today under capitalism this is not the case, as for example in food production and housing.

For a system of ‘free distribution’ to come about, people need to be mature and adult enough to recognise what is and what is not possible. They also need to feel confident that, broadly speaking, all their reasonable requirements for food, shelter, clothing, medical attention and so on are capable of being satisfactorily met under this arrangement, allowing for the occasional shortage of some items.

Robin Cox