Criminal Capitalism

  Populism is on the rise in many parts of the world. Populism is based on the perception that the political establishment  has betrayed the people and that what is required is a more direct and forceful representation of the people's wishes.  Often populism goes hand in hand with  belief in a charismatic "strong man" political figure to do the job. At the heart of the idea of populism is a patron-client relationship,  In return for the support of the voters , the Leader-cum-Saviour will affect radical change to the the existing political order to bring it into line with the wishes of the people.  It is for this reason amongst others that socialists oppose populism.  The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself.

 Developments like Brexit and the election of Trump are part of a wider pattern. This signifies something more than the usual change of government and its replacement by a more or less identical successor government. Of course, fundamentally its still capitalism but there has been a shift in the relationship between the political and economic realms, a change in the institutional  architecture of capitalism itself - possibly away from neoliberalism towards a more mercantilist world if Trump's words are to  be taken at face value.  Trump's whole campiagn hinged on the delusion that he was some kind of saviour of the people who  had beeen maltreated  and betrayed by the political establishment represented by the likes of Clinton.  And the people bought into this message,  imagining that a billionaire buffoon was one of them, intent upon overthrowing this political establishment and draining the Wall St. swamp. A lot of Trump's support came from the industrial rustbelt.   And you can bet your bottom dollar that many of those gullible voters that voted for Trump in the expectation that he will radically overhaul the status quo will sooner or later realise they have been conned and will come to see him as part of the "establishment."

 The current populism is not a working class movement but a movement run and financed by the ruling elite, using demagogues to motivate the workers to support their national and international interests, and their geopolitical plans.  Our real target should be capitalism itself instead of blaming the economical problems on others workers, which is what the Trump movement is doing. Blaming the economical and political problems on the Mexicans and the Middle Easterners is leaving intact the profit system and destroying one commercial cartel to create another one is only beneficial to the capitalist class, a group Mafioso trying to take the market of others groups of Mafioso. They are just a bunch of glorified gangsters. Consider some of Al Capone's observations on society:
"Some call it bootlegging. Some call it racketeering. I call it a business."
"All I do is supply a demand."
"I am just a businessman, giving the people what they want"
"This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and make the most of it."
"My rackets are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way."
"Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class."
"It's a racket. Those stock market guys are crooked."
"Don't you get the idea I'm one of those goddam radicals. Don't get the idea I'm knocking the American system."
"Bolshevism is knocking at our gates, we can't afford to let it in...We must keep America whole and safe and unspoiled. We must keep the worker away from red literature and red ruses; we must see that his mind remains healthy."

Populist movements can be viewed as the pus coming out after the boil has been lanced.  Many workers are not so tired of the elite when they are electing members of the ruling class to govern them, a capitalist is not going to defend our own interests. They are tired of certain problems that are taking place in the capitalist society, but they do not have the proper political and economical knowledge to understand  why this is taking place, that is the importance of studying socialist theory. Racial prejudice, blind patriotism and extreme nationalism using foreigners as excuse for political purposes is nothing new in the USA. Despite all that,  the main problem is not racism, the main problem is capitalism

If we understand that  profit is produced by the workers and that we are supporting a bunch of parasites, and legalized thieves known as capitalists, we will understand that  the root of the problems is capitalism. If we understand that we are wages slaves we will understand that this society in divided into two social classes only and that the so called middle class is one a fallacy
If we understand that our real allies are all the members of the working class of the whole world, workers would not be claiming to build walls and seeking to deport others workers, or to go into wars with others workers.
If we understand that the state is financed with surplus value, and we are not the so called taxpayers, workers will not become echo of the rulers by saying that they are the ones providing social services to others workers. Religion is not the main problem of the world, it is the profit system, that is the excuse used in order to cover the real root of the problems. All our problems are socially produced, they are not produced by an individual's failing.

There is a long list of social and economical issues that workers do not understand due to the lack of political and economical knowledge, that is reason why workers should read socialist materials, and throw out the trash the bourgeois political education. There is a lot of talk among the ruling class of different nations about trade treaties but none of them will ever benefits the majority of the workers of the world. They will only benefits the bourgeois class. Capitalism will never be beneficial for the working class.

The World Socialist Movement does its best to counter the falsehoods of the likes of Farage and Trump, but we need help. Marches, protests and demonstrations mean little unless practical gains in understanding, organisation and action spring from them. Part of the understanding is to link issues to the wider class nature of society.  This essential point seems difficult for many to grasp – even to want to start trying to understand.  For example, there is a lot of talk among some groups about the "evil" influence of banks – as if banks can be seen in isolation to their role within capitalism. This is also like the case of the African Americans who believe that their main problem is race and the solution is electing black leaders, senators and governors, but they also become co-opted by their capitalist masters.

 Are we doomed to forever experience the “awakenings” of global movements to fizzle out, leaving no trace on our political lives?

Not seeing the forest for the trees

An interesting article in the Scotsman about the foresty business in Scotland where profit prevails over common-sense.

"...The financial drivers for forestry planting and management over the last few decades in Scotland have resulted in the dominance of one species of tree – the Sitka spruce, which makes up a staggering 70 per cent of the forested areas in this country.

It’s easy to understand why. Forestry developers seeking wealthy investors have plumped for Sitka spruce because it grows quickly and provides a high-quality softwood timber product, felled in as little as 25 years. Solid long-term returns in excess of 12 per cent, which have been largely unaffected by volatile markets ...

However, Sitka spruce is native to the Pacific north-west coast of the US, not Scotland. Add to this a strategy of “clear felling,” where all the trees in a forest planted together are cut down and replaced together, and we have been left with an endemic monoculture habitat that fails to support the natural fauna and flora that a mixed pine forest would. Furthermore, such monocultures can leave a forest susceptible to catastrophic diseases and pest damage, as happened in Thetford forest, which suffered from red band needle blight. If such an occurrence were to happen to Sitka in Scotland, it would spread rapidly and widely with enormous economic and social consequences. A naturally managed mixed forest, including Sitka spruce with native pine species and deciduous trees, would go a long way to redressing the monoculture issues Scotland’s forestry sector faces. Add to this a move away from clear felling to a continuous cover model of forestry, where a canopy is always maintained, would further resolve these issues.

On the down side, this model would deliver diminishing returns, which may be enough to drive wealthy investors away. That’s a shame because the principles and ideology that founded the accord, where countries agreed to support the reforestation of Europe, was really driven by the desire to replant natural mixed and deciduous forests that where once indigenous in Europe and would be ecologically more beneficial.

Sadly, this is a clear case of economic pressures competing against ecological drivers, and at the moment, the former is winning the day."

Expropriate the Expropriators

“He that being robbed misses not that he is robbed of, let him not know it and he’s not robbed at all.” Shakespeare, Othello Act 3

In a world where profit-making is the motive force to production all sorts of rubbish, shoddy and inferior goods are produced. The purpose which such goods will serve is secondary. Whether they serve any purpose at all does not really matter so long as a market can be found for them and a profit realised. Inferior goods must be presented as equal to superior ones. The health, wealth and general well-being of the people who buy does not come into the picture from the business point of view. Alternative medicines, for instance, even if not dangerous in themselves, can cause a delay in the time before proper treatment is applied, and thus be a danger. Advertisers can bamboozle workers into the acquisition of all sorts of consumer goods and create the impression that such possessions indicate an improved standard of living andworkers can look back on previous generations and imagine themselves better off than their forefathers, losing sight of the fact that their forefathers had things which they have not, and were without things which workers today might have missed with advantage. Capitalism is a system of society which produces goods incidentally. Fundamentally its aim is the amassing of surplus value. Productivity and Profit are interchangeable and synonymous terms. Of all the commodities exchanged in the market there is one peculiar commodity known as labour power. That commodity is represented by the mental and physical capabilities of the men and women of the working class. Since the workers under capitalism have no means of obtaining a living other than by way of selling their power to labour, that labour power becomes a commodity. Like other commodities, it is, broadly speaking, paid for or exchanged at its value. But between the value of labour power and the value of its product there is a difference. The capitalist does not employ workers from a motive of philanthropy. Capitalism could not exist in that way. The workers produce the wealth, only a portion of that wealth is returned to them, the remainder being retained or appropriated by the capitalist. The difference between what the workers produce and what they get in wages is generally known as profit, but called by Marx surplus value. That profit or surplus value, though not realised until the exchange of commodities takes place, is actually derived from the process of production, and represents the unpaid labour of the workers. The Marxian theory of value, not only shows us what value is, and how it is determined, but also shows us the source from which flow the riches and poverty in modern society.

There is a complete divorce of production and consumption. Production is earned out for profit and not for use. Capitalism is contradictory and anti-social. An unavoidable feature of capitalism is that goods and services are produced for sale. The profits which are realised when goods are sold go to the people who provide the capital - the investors, who invest their money precisely because they hope to get a profit. If the investors think their profit is in doubt they will usually withdraw their capital regardless of the consequences. Capitalism is now a futile social system. It cannot unite the human race — it can only divide it catastrophically. It cannot serve human interests; it can only deny and damage them. It cannot solve its problems, such as poverty and war, but only continue to produce them in one form or another. No socialist claims that in socialism the workers will receive the full value of their product, since a certain amount must be set aside for reproductive purposes. But all that is set aside for this purpose under socialism will be used for the benefit of the whole of society, and not as it is to-day, for the benefit of a few leeches.

Non-socialists may see certain evils in the world, evils which grow more glaring as the years pass, and all they can do is to say in effect, “Let us destroy these abominable evils, and if, in doing so, we, at the same time destroy associations of peoples, even if we thereby wipe out mankind itself; better chaos or annihilation, than the degradation and prostitution of life as it is to-day." The Socialist Party, however, has no desire for social chaos or total annihilation; these visions of despair would drift into nothingness if people could only be brought to understand—to understand themselves and the social system under which they live and which makes them the unhappy beings that they are. We are endeavouring to give to our fellow-workers an exposition of life as it now is, as it might soon be, and as eventually it will be. What we. desire is a sane and healthy system of society, to be erected on the dead ashes of the system which is passing, wherein no-one   shall be called upon to sacrifice ability or body in order to obtain the wherewithal to live; wherein the worker, the artist, the scientist (possibly a trinity in one person) may unite with, and dovetail into, one another, in the production of wealth, which would be the property of an appreciative and enlightened humanity; not, as now, the property of a few unworthy and unappreciative parasites.

The capitalist class, by means of their control of the media, are able to focus the attention of the working class on things that are often of little concern or consequence so the exploiter can devote his energies more closely to the source of profit. The wage-worker listens to the master’s voice and submits to the master’s will. The owning class live on the surplus value extracted from the workers: the workers have to wage a ceaseless struggle to maintain even a part of the value of their work for themselves. In such circumstances it is a truism to say that the more the owners can fool the workers into believing that there is no conflict of interests, the happier—and richer—the owners will be. The standard of living of the proletariat falls, yet one rarely hears a statement that places the blame where it belongs, on the supporters of the capitalist system. The exploiter could not long continue in his privileged position if he failed to keep going the deception; the capitalist not only lives at the expense of his victims but he succeeds in preventing them from finding out how it is done. It is obvious that the process will continue until the worker decides to end it, and the idea of ending it will never enter his head until he realises that only by doing so can he or she hope to enjoy a life worth living. The trouble with human beings, as anyone who has mixed with them knows, is that they are — human beings. They are too often different from each other; they have different tastes, capacities, abilities. Capitalism does not, and must not, see human beings like that. From its beginnings it has had the need to flatten individuals, as far as production and exploitation are concerned, into the same mould. The story of capitalism has been the story of the death of one individual craft after another, of the refinement of productive techniques and of the progressive separation of man from the things he makes. The first crude steam engine was part of this process and so is the most recent computer.  To capitalism human beings are units on the production line, just like nuts and bolts although needing different handling. They are part of the costs of production, a column in a ledger, a click on a computer. Capitalism tries to dehumanise mankind.

Anyone who wants to abolish the capitalist social system should not waste their time trying to reform the nature of capitalism. Their place is in the Socialist Party, helping with the task of achieving socialism. Yet nearly all of us, without knowing it, give our support to and help perpetuate the very things we find unacceptable. We endorse the poverty, hunger, cruelty and warfare that blight humanity. We do it every time we express support for the big political parties, every time we vote for them. Because all of these parties stand for the continuation of a world system of which poverty, hunger, cruelty and warfare are an integral part. We repeat the lesson we have been repeating, monotonously for years: No leader, however honest, clever or well-intentioned can lead the workers out of slavery. No man or group of men, however intellectual, can found a new society which depends for its success upon the knowledge and understanding of the bulk of the population. Socialism can only be attained by working men and women who know what socialism means and how it is to be obtained. Therefore, it is necessary for working men and women to do the comparatively small amount of thinking that is necessary to understand socialism. When they have done so they will know the steps to be taken, and will no longer need to rely on leaders. How then do we go about not supporting poverty, famine, disease and war? The answer is to take a long hard look at the world around us, to see that all attempts to improve the nightmare system of production for profit are futile, and to join a vigorous democratic movement determined to replace it by the society of abundance, equality and security which is there for the taking. But it can only be taken when a majority of men and women use their votes not to elect leaders who promise to run things for them but send to the seats of political power democratically elected delegates from a mass socialist party who are committed to one thing and one thing only the abolition of the outdated system of money, wages, profit and buying and selling and the bringing in of a new, truly humane society which will produce only for people’s needs and will make full rational democratic use of the abundant resources of planet earth.

According to many academics the world is full of "socialisms" and the plethora of definitions they present us with is certainly confusing. The Socialist Party has always had to challenge the avowed enemies of socialism and denounce the self-styled friends of socialism who attached the name socialism to the varied forms of state-capitalism. The anti-socialist parties and press, often for reasons of their own, but sometimes out of pure ignorance, helped on the work of misrepresentation by describing as “socialist” the Labour Party, and Soviet Russia. We are concerned to defend the name of socialism. Let us, then, reiterate that the Socialist Party never has and never will lend itself to the pretence that something else other than Socialism is "just as good.” We have never worked for or defended state-capitalism, whether as advocated by the reformist parties in this country or as practised by the Bolsheviks in Russia. We have never been prepared to pretend that Lenin and the Bolsheviks were democratic; we have never glossed over the brutalities of committed. We have always held that Socialism is, in its nature, democratic and international. We have never been prepared to compromise those views. In war, as in peace, we repudiate the false friends and avowed enemies of socialism who seek to associate socialism with various forms of capitalism and capitalism’s wars. Some continue to emulate revolutions of the past and so urge a revolutionary civil war, as the only ways possible, while condemning in advance as 'opportunist', 'reformist', the more peaceful ways of capturing power. The future revolution will take place with a minimum of violence since by becoming the movement of the immense majority it will have radically altered the relationship of forces to the detriment of the tiny exploiting minority, desperately seeking to maintain an exhausted and outdated economic system. Obviously no one can know in advance but it is possible to speculate that the capture of power will take place relatively without violence. No doubt the existing power will be tempted to install a dictatorship, but will it still have the strength, undermined as it will be by an immense majority determined to see things through; in the long term the ruling class will be obliged to yield.

The rate of progress in socialist thinking of the working class is difficult to judge. But it by no means follows that because we are a tiny handful of socialists now, a few hundred after over a hundred years, that their progress cannot suddenly take off. And once a take-off point is reached, it is reasonable to expect that socialists’ efforts to convince their fellow workers will accelerate at a rather more encouraging rate than we have seen until now. One lesson fellow-workers must learn, and must learn soon, is that the development of society has now reached a stage where nothing but the establishment of socialism can save society from collapsing into ruins. Capitalism is doomed by the fact that it inevitably produces poverty, wars ad environmental havoc; only by the replacement of the present order by the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production in the near future can society be saved. Failing this solution to the social troubles that afflict us the possibility of a complete social breakdown and a relapse into barbarism is a not impossible end to present social development. The future depends upon the workers understanding the source of social misery and taking the only course that can end it. That they will do so is our conviction in spite of the ugly shadows that are gathering. The job of a politician is to be an illusionist, to convince the property-less that they had power, that they were the strength and glory of the nation, that they were free and that their freedom was precious, that they controlled their civilisation by their vote, to make them feel proud and superior because they were not slaves. Then, no matter how how poor they were, they felt proud and ready to defend the society that kept them in that condition against those who were their companions in misery—their fellow workers. Only a social revolution can get rid of the ailments which afflict human society today. That revolution cannot be masterminded by leaders; it must be carried through by a politically conscious, participating working class, worldwide. This is at present a minority viewpoint yet it is the very stuff of social progress to a free, co-operative, abundant world.

Redundant managers (1981)

From the June 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unemployment has particularly hit workers in manufacturing, shipbuilding, textiles and construction, but another section of the working class whose jobs have generally been protected until now has also suffered. This is the “executives”, those workers who are employed as managers of one kind or another. The Professional and Executive Register (PER), a department of the Manpower Services Commission, had 30,000 unemployed executives on its books in March 1974 but the total stood at 117,000 at the end of 1980 and is certain to be even greater now.

Until recently companies which wanted to economise during a slack period would get rid of shop-floor and clerical workers readily enough but would continue to carry managerial staff on the grounds of “mutual loyalty". Nowadays, the slump is biting so hard that, just to stay in business, companies are compelled to have a clear-out right up to the highest level, even the boardroom, and the result is a flood of redundant executives.

Who are these executives, and can they really be classed as workers at all? The Executive Post, which is the PER’s job-finding magazine, is mailed to registered jobless executives each month and the advertised jobs are almost all for “managers”, “officers", “administrators” and the like, but this cannot hide the fact that these are merely fancy titles for what are, in the main, only higher paid workers. The truth is that they have to sell themselves on the labour market in order to live just as mechanics, shop assistants, bus drivers and bricklayers must. Incidentally, many of these executives are not all that highly paid: although the salaries advertised in the Post go as high as £30,000 they go right down to £3,000 and many shop-floor workers earn a good bit more than that.

All these redundancies have given birth to a whole new industry in the shape of a horde of private agencies which, for a fee, will provide a course designed to teach jobless executives how to look for a new employer and maybe even find them one. Some of the “quality” newspapers regularly feature ads from these agencies in the job columns:

We offer the UK’s first Redundancy Counselling Programme designed exclusively for senior people. A concentrated, intensive programme to help you to resume your successful career path. (Daily Telegraph, 28/4/81)

Help from such agencies can cost as much as £2,000 so many of the jobless rely on the free course provided by the state-run PER or cheap courses run by other organisations like the Institute of Industrial Managers.

And how this help is needed! Many of the jobless executives have spent all their working life with one company and simply haven't a clue about how to look for a job. After all, getting the sack had always been something that happened to somebody else. The sacked executives are actually in a worse situation than their shop-floor counterparts because they have further to fall. They will almost certainly have much higher financial commitments such as a huge mortgage and perhaps children at expensive private schools. With the job will have gone various perks like the company car, expense account or private medical cover. Also, their chances of finding a similar job are poorer. They can expect to spend six weeks job-hunting for each £1,000 of salary they want, so a job at £8,500 a year will, on average, take a year to land. And because there are so many in the same boat they can also expect to follow up 200 leads with only one in ten of these producing any response.

So despite the ego-massaging and corner-cutting techniques of the agencies the prospects of finding a job at all aren’t rosy because there are many more applicants than vacancies. According to the Sunday Times (14/12/80) all of this causes the redundant executives to suffer loss of confidence and become depressed and bad-tempered. All very well for the course organisers to tell them to “suffer no indignities” while job-hunting, but how do you keep your dignity after you have attended several interviews, written dozens of letters and been either turned down or ignored? In any case, indignity doesn’t end with landing a job: having to sell oneself to an employer is an indignity in itself.

The same article in the Sunday Times described how one redundant executive lost his £20,000 a year job. Having just planned the sacking of ten fellow executives and 750 other workers he found his own head was next on the block. How ironic that he had been employed as a “long range planning director": the anarchy of capitalist production means that it is nearly impossible to plan with any certainty what will happen next month never mind years ahead. How could he have forecast that the strength of the pound last year against the dollar would force his American employers to switch production back to the United States?

The popular notion that all redundant executives receive a “golden handshake” is untrue. For example, the chief executive of a big toy manufacturer which went bust last year earned £25,000 a year but left with only one month’s salary. The reason is that many executives are on a “service contract" which means they only get the outstanding amount of their salaries when they leave, just as sacked football managers do, and are not entitled to redundancy payment. This wangle is gradually being introduced onto the shopfloor. Marathon, the big oil-rig builder on Clydeside, employs its workers on thirteen week contracts which can be renewed at the end of the period but there are other companies whose workers are employed on contracts lasting as little as one week. That way you never qualify for redundancy payment. If the history of reform teaches us anything it is that a way can always be found round any reform which gives temporary benefit to the workers.

Doubtless, many of the redundant executives will find new, equally well paid jobs but many more will probably have to move down a notch or two on the salary scale. All of them, however, must be painfully aware that they are no longer a protected species where unemployment is concerned. Their position as members of the working class is being forcibly demonstrated to them along with the fact that, just like any other workers, their future job prospects will depend less on their “loyalty” to the company than on whether or not it is profitable to employ them.

Vic Vanni

Build a World to Change Our Lives

Nothing is guaranteed in this life, except change.  Our history shows society constantly transforming. We are told that there are “not enough” resources and that in order to ration scarce resources we need a system that efficiently allocates scarcity. The truth is most goods are in fact abundant. We have created the capability to provide for all, and it takes fewer and fewer man-hours each year to do it.  We  need to end commodity-based production and exchange. We need to create a world in which social needs form the basis of production and distribution. No one will need to, nor be able to, sell their labour power. This is the minimum criterion for a socialist society.  People will nonetheless work, not out of a need to get pay in order to live, but as part of their expected duty to others and, hopefully to an increasing extent, because we are able to re-design work so we will enjoy much of it.  A non-market socialist world  needs to be promoted urgently because present society has laid the basis for our extinction using capitalist practices and thinking.  At the heart of the capitalist system is the practice and concept of money as a measure, even a god. The structure and relations of capital are impossible without the practice and concept of money as a general all-purpose means of exchange and unit of account. Capital is money that begets more money.  Thus monetary values come to dominate social and environmental values. We see non-market socialism as the only way to address the combined crises we face, which are results of a capitalist system based in production for trade, relying on monetary accounting and exchange. This system contorts and confuses the values, relationships and structures that ideally exist between people and between people and nature. Capitalists are defined by money, their power is monetary power, their logic is a market-based logic. Socialism must mean sharing the power to decide what is produced, how it is produced and for whom. Socialism must be state-free and class-free because states and classes represent exclusive power. To institute socialism we only need to understand the potential, limitations and needs of a natural and built world held in common along with the basic needs of humans — and share decision-making based on a discourse of use values and distinct measures appropriate to differing use values. There is no need for a universal unit of account or means of exchange.

Imagine the entire world focusing our efforts on education, building renewable energy, growing healthier food, and improving our medical, housing, and transportation infrastructure.  Is that not what life's all about? Imagine, having the right to develop our human capacities more fully; the free time to become more active Citizens; to finally use our free time for something other than escape.

Deep inside, we know life can be much more than we experience and with less fear.  The working-class has little or no choice but to submit to our ritualistic commodification. We allow capitalists, landlords, corporations, and their politicians to dehumanise us as their tools. We are forced into the labour market, for example. Although business worldwide are using technological advances in robotics to replace humans labour power and thus lessen their dependence on the working class, there is still a heavy reliance on people. Under capitalism, the ruling hierarchy relies on the state to control and establishing cultural hegemony. Millions of impoverished people who can barely afford basic necessities to survive, spend much of their time admiring wealthy celebrities. This intense consumption process has exposed the working class to informal channels of indoctrination,  through advertising and marketing, popular media entertainment such as television shows, movies, and video games, and the worship of the cult of personality and fame (and, thus, wealth).  In fulfilling this role, workers become consumers in the market for both necessary and conspicuous consumption while showing up every few years to vote for politicians that do not represent them. Members of the working class receives its values through many different channels, formal and informal. Part of this is accomplished through formal education, where traditional intellectuals become more specialised, and where the process of learning and thinking is replaced by indoctrination. A prime example of this indoctrination can be seen in the field of economics, where students seem unable to apply their thought beyond the narrow confines of capitalism. All exhibit an unwillingness or inability to see the most obvious of contradictions within their theory. Public education is not concerned with the students’ ability to comprehend or critically think, but rather with turning them into docile and passive tools of production and the the creation of obedient workers who are minimally competent to fulfil their exploitative labour role. Through this manufactured acquiescence the working-class literally buy into, become vested in, and thus serve and protect, the capitalist system. In a class-based society, fear becomes an effective tool in shaping ideas and pushing through ruling-class agendas with widespread working-class approval. Today, corporate news stations that are concerned only with ratings (thus, profit) choose sensationalist narratives that strike fear in the viewer. In the media industry of profit-based ‘news’, there is no need for overt government propaganda because corporate ‘news’ outlets willingly fill this role through sensationalism.

Under capitalism, the working-class finds itself in a paradoxical state. Our entire lives are dominated by activities that directly benefit those who own and control the production of the commodities we buy and the businesses we work for. Our participation in these activities both strengthens those owners while also further alienating us from what would otherwise be productive and creative lives. Our activities increase the owning class social and political capital while at the same time separating us from our own families and communities. This existence takes on a more severe form when we are called upon to fight and die in wars that, only benefit the property owning elite. We are conditioned to follow the status quo, despite its propensity to steer us into authoritarian avenues.

 Socialism is a market-free, money-free, class-free and state-free society, want-free, sustainable and just world-system. We stand for a global society in which production is for need and not profit (and is therefore sustainable), where the state, national frontiers and money have disappeared. 

World at work (1971)

From the January 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private property utilises every aid in upholding its rights. Armies in the field, policemen in the streets and detectives in the stories, each armed with the marvels of modern technology, are obvious examples of this. All this is necessary in a society in conflict where every man's interests seem to be in opposition. The struggle is world wide and is carried into every sphere of human activity — even London Underground, where one of the latest technical innovations, automation, is being used to protect the property rights of London Transport against the encroachment of an army of fare-dodging passengers.

The exact amount of income which London Transport loses through this phenomenon is unknown although they put the figure for buses and Underground combined at around 1 per cent of receipts, which were £112 million in 1969. So by their own reckoning it is costing them over £1 million yearly, and since it is harder to dodge paying on the buses, especially with the introduction of pay-as-you-enter, then it can be safely assumed that most of this is lost on the Underground. London Transport have tried to fight back as convictions for dishonest travelling on the Underground show — an average of 6,000 yearly, but still the cash is lost and they must continue the fight.

The answer as London Transport sees it is to ensure that correct fares are paid. Today, thousands simply buy no ticket at all and just hand the collector a shilling at the exit. This disinclination to pay full fare was best seen during the 1965 strike of booking clerks when “honesty buckets” were placed inside stations for passengers to put the cost of their journey into. The response prompted a London Transport official at Victoria to complain that “so far as I can gather over the weekend thousands of people must have moved to within a sixpenny travelling distance of Victoria". (The Times, 16 March 1965). Therefore, a way has been devised whereby passengers must have paid full fare before being allowed to leave the station. The solution is automated ticket issuing and collecting.

This entails selling chemically coated tickets on which the details of the journey are magnetically encoded. To gain access to the trains the passenger feeds the ticket into the entrance gate which scans it before letting him through. The ticket is again electronically read by the exit gate which opens only if the code is correct. If not, the passenger is “attended” to by one of the station staff. This system is already in wide use on the new Victoria Line and double the normal excess fares have been collected at some stations during the first year. The signs are that London Transport’s figure of £1 million lost due to fare-dodging will be shown to be hopelessly under estimated.

How much of society’s resources will it cost to introduce automated ticketing throughout London Underground? Anthony Bull, London Transport’s Vice-Chairman, stated in 1966 that it would cost, at a very rough estimate, £10 million at 1966 prices. Obviously the final figure will be much higher, but Bull sugared the pill by adding that the capital expenditure of designing and installing the system was of a once-and-for-all character. (Modern Railways, June 1966). We shall return to this.

Of course fare-dodging isn't the only reason for installing automation. London Transport expects to save £1 million a year by dispensing with surplus staff who, as we have seen, are liable to take costly strike action. This saving, together with the money at present being lost, would go a long way towards solving London Transport’s financial plight. It is currently losing £10 million a year—£7½ million on interest on loans and the rest on running losses. Accordingly, vast amounts of highly skilled human time and energy are to be wasted in order to prevent workers freely utilising the transportation which their brain and muscle power alone created . . . but which they do not own. And this is something which is happening all over the world. The growth of private motoring is forcing authorities in countries like America, Germany, Japan, Holland, to turn to Rapid Transit Systems as a means of maintaining communications in large cities and automated ticket issuing and collecting is being almost universally adopted.

But there is even more waste involved than meets the eye, because London Transport’s Mr. Bull was reckoning without human ingenuity when he made his “once-and-for-all” claim. When Milan’s Underground opened in 1964 it used an admittedly simple automated ticket system. A few minutes after the Archbishop and Mayor had cut the riband and the Milanese discovered that a holy picture cut to the correct size would operate the electronic turnstiles very well. So it was back to the drawing-board in order to produce an even more sophisticated machine. And in America change-giving machines, which are a “must” in the new systems, were withdrawn for modification a few years ago because workers were getting the change by inserting copies of banknotes run-off on office photocopy equipment. Obviously today’s ticket machines will cope with these simple ruses and no effort is being spared in ironing out the snags. In two American cities passengers have been invited to try and beat the system any way they can without retribution —for a trial — period — and if successful to confess their secret afterwards. No one can say with certainty that new methods of beating the machines won’t be developed. For example, if currency notes can be forged or stolen then why not special extended-travel tickets valued at, say, £5?

Reporting the Milan episode the Guardian correspondent cited it as proof of “man's answer to the tyranny of machines” (4 November 1964). The fallacy is that it is machines which dominate men when what actually happens is that some men, through their ownership of capital, use machines in the production and realisation of surplus value from other men — the workers, who sometimes hit back in whatever way they can, usually at the machines.

Nor is the situation any different in “communist” Russia. Moscow Metro is considering introducing automated ticketing and change-giving machines in the hope of dispensing with 300 booking clerks. Already Leningrad Metro employs a simple light-ray device which is placed just behind the coin-slot on the gate. If the intending passengers breaks the ray without first inserting the required coin then, just as in avowedly capitalist Britain or America, the gate remains closed. The Russian government claims that all public transport will eventually be free of charge as a social service (Modern Railways, April 1967). We have heard promises like this before, but even if it is realised it has nothing to do with Socialism when carried out within the context of an exchange relationship society such as Russia. The Expo 67 railway in Montreal was free “because of its importance in distributing visitors”. Substitute “workers” for “visitors” in state capitalist Russia and you have another reason why free transport can be such an attractive proposition to exploiters the world over.

Capitalism can easily provide us with better examples of its wastefulness and divisiveness and the contest between London Transport and the fare-dodgers is really only a sideshow. But it is part of the overall picture of how capitalism, in attempting to solve its problems, not only increases the productive forces and technical know-how but also glaringly exposes itself as the cause of the accompanying social conflict. In a society where all the goods and services man needs, including transport, were freely available themselves with brilliant thoughts of how to cancel out each other’s inventiveness would be impossible.

Vic Vanni

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

Consider...

That human society must reproduce itself continually, because its constituents—we life forms—are compelled to replenish life continually.

That this compulsion for society to reproduce itself imposes temporal persistence upon the social modes of its reproduction.

That these social modes of reproduction are constrained by the historically developed means available for society to reproduce itself.

That these social modes of reproduction manifest themselves historically—in their pure form—as persistent moments in an evolving dialectical process.

That these persistent moments are grounded in persistent forms of social relations of ownership and control of the means available for society to reproduce itself.

That when persistent social relations of ownership and control of the means available for reproducing social existence are overturned then the entire social formation, which has been raised upon these persistent social relations, is transformed into a new mode for reproducing social existence that is raised upon, and appropriate to, the changed social relations of ownership and control.

That a social process that is grounded in persistent social relations is not grounded in our will, but rather grounds our will.

That ownership and control of the means of social reproduction by a class of society—the ruling class—is the foundation upon which the ruling class exploits the dispossessed social class—the working class.

That the capitalist ruling class has transformed the social reproduction process into the reproduction of capital, and has simultaneously transformed the worker from a producer of goods into a producer of capital, independent of his/her will, but determining his/her will; independent of his/her conceptions, but determining his/her misconceptions.

That so long as the necessity of the process of social reproduction is not comprehended by the dispossessed class, the current social form prevails.

That Marx and Engels gave their working lives to comprehending the necessity of the social process as a deterministic science, with the practical aim of ending the persistence of the current mode of production and establishing social relations of common ownership and democratic control of the means of social reproduction to ensure the persistence of a socialist mode of production.

That the capitalist ruling class has hijacked the necessary process of social reproduction and converted it into the socially parasitic process of return on investment.

That the capitalist social process has turned working life into a moment in the expansion of capital, and has produced the producer as a non-producer of goods—the unwitting producer of the ruling class’s capital that enslaves him/her.

That a persistent social system driven by return on investment is not driven by social freedom, but is necessarily driven by the negation of freedom for those compelled to labour persistently at producing illusory proxies for the capitalist class’s return on investment.

That the delusion that producers produce goods is the sustaining illusion of an unfree working class, that is productive only when productive of capital.

That the motive force of return on investment overrides consideration of sex, colour, health, disability, intellect, security, love, community—in short, humanity.

That the motive force of return on investment generates obfuscation, lying, brutality, cheating, swindling, war—in short, anti-humanity.

On consideration, capitalist society gives us zero freedom to control it.  Human will is powerless to intervene successfully in a process it doesn’t comprehend.  Society remains at the mercy of its uncomprehended process.

Gravity likewise acts independently of our will.  We no longer engage in merely willing freedom from a gravity that is indifferent to us.  We have learnt by bitter experience to unleash gravity’s inexorable necessity for our ends.  The modern motor car relies on gravity’s necessity, comprehended in the form of general relativity, to help it navigate by GPS.

This is precisely what Engels (following Hegel) means by his deep enigmatic gloss “Freedom is the recognition of necessity”.  Think it through.  Engels, like Marx, assumes a reader willing to think.

Necessity must be comprehended for us to be able bridle her, for us to gain freedom through her.  We can never free ourselves from necessity.  The illusion that we can ignore necessity is illusory ignorance—anti-human utopian dreaming.

Willed ‘freedom’ is zero freedom, so long as prevalent necessity remains uncomprehended.  That’s precisely why humanity needs science.

Consider the inhumanities we will free ourselves from when we free ourselves from the necessity to drive society for return on investment—when we free ourselves from the insatiable necessity for capital to expand itself at the expense of the socially crippled humans whose socially-necessary task it is to perform this compulsion for the capitalist class.  Those humans are us, you and me!


TWC

The fool's tale (1983)

Book Review from the November 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Democratic Alternative by Peter Hain

Like a good comrade I agreed to review one of several books offered to me by the Socialist Standard. Like a loser I picked this one and had to plough through 180 pages of muddle-headed nonsense. Peter Hain’s intention in writing this book is to outline how he thinks the Labour Party can win back the support it has lost and get back into power. This is to be achieved by what he calls “socialist policies", which inevitably turn out to be just another collection of reforms of capitalism.

For example, he wants to sec the pound devalued, exchange controls re-imposed, price controls, a statutory minimum wage, the drug companies nationalised, a windfall tax on bank profits and, for good measure, Bobbies back on the beat. Of course, even if all of these reforms were enacted we would still be living in capitalism: the workers would remain an exploited class.

Hain still believes, despite all the evidence, that capitalism can be managed and controlled by a future Labour government. All that would be needed is the will to do it. He wants the next Labour government to work with the unions in developing yet another “National Plan" which would regulate production, trade and investment. But no government can plan these things with any hope of success because it cannot know what future market conditions will be like or what action other governments may take. In other words it cannot act independently of what is happening in the rest of the world.

Hain’s answer to the current slump is the old one of spending-your-way-out-of-it, the spending to be financed by increased government borrowing and heavily taxing the rich. This, he claims, will rejuvenate the economy and bring unemployment down; but it is not as easy as he thinks. Increased government borrowing causes interest rates to rise to levels where many employers cannot afford to borrow just to survive let alone expand. Indeed, in the last few years this “lack of liquidity" has caused many companies to go down the drain and with them a their workers' jobs. And the more taxation is a raised then the less profits the capitalists will have for re-investment or dividends. If profits fall to the point where investors are unwilling to invest then this, too, will act against reducing unemployment. Incidentally, another of Hain’s ideas for raising capital to finance extra government spending is to lay hands on trade union pension funds!

Other sure-fire vote losers proposed by Hain include giving the rank and file of the armed forces a say in the selection of military leaders, turning the diplomatic service into an instrument of “international socialism", and Britain to sell armaments only to those who ". . . are advancing the cause of human justice". Needless to say he is thinking of the likes of Mugabe of Zimbabwe, whose forces are responsible for the murder of thousands of that country's citizens.

Over and over again Hain reveals his ignorance of even the simplest aspects of capitalism’s operations. He thinks that wages are paid out of profits when, of course, profits are what is left to the enterprise after all costs, including wages, have been met. He also thinks that trade unions protect their members against exploitation. If that were the case then those workers would be producing no surplus value at all. What trade unions do, to one degree or another, is to minimise the level of exploitation. As any genuine socialist knows, exploitation of wage-labour by capital is a feature of capitalism and will only be ended by socialism.

Although this book is studded with references to socialist-this and socialist-that, nowhere does the author reveal any knowledge of what a socialist society entails — a worldwide system of common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. A system that will exclude exchange relations and all the things that go with them such as money, prices, wages, profits, banks and pensions. On page 116 Hain writes: "What do we mean by . . . socialist?”, but he never tells us. Maybe this is what he meant when he warned us in the Preface that he wouldn't be "dotting the i's and crossing the t’s”.

 Vic Vanni

Capitalism's Gamble

The report on the shoddy construction of schools in Edinburgh which led to the closure of 17 as they were unsafe and required to be fixed has been released and , surprise-surprise, the cause was the council and the builders cost-cutting. The fact that no injuries or fatalities to children resulted from the collapse of the gable wall at Oxgangs School was a matter of timing and luck. Approximately nine tonnes of masonry fell on an area where children could easily have been standing or passing through.

  The report explains that City of Edinburgh Council could have employed someone, for example a Clerk of Works, to oversee the work on site. This costs money.

Keeping costs down is one of the factors that appears often in the report. It says "the procurers of buildings need to consider whether the drive for faster, lower cost construction may be being achieved to the detriment of its quality and safety".

One of the senior staff at VB Contracts who built the walls at Oxgangs, and others, has previously said they were told to build the walls in a way that is not considered good practice.  The report explains that the architects spotted the way the walls were being built at one school and highlighted it to the main contractor who, they say, ignored it.

PPP was the private finance model used to fund the schools. The report says that aspects of the way the private finance model was put in place put the quality of the buildings at risk.
 Larry Flanagan, EIS General Secretary, said: "This is not an area where corners or costs should ever be cut. The legacy of the PPP/PFI funding model is too many inferior buildings, for which we will all be paying a vastly inflated price for decades to come. Scotland's pupils and school staff and, indeed, Scottish taxpayers deserve far better."

The Socialist Party and social revolution

The Socialist Party wants a revolution involving much more than a change of political control. We want a social revolution, a revolution in the basis of society which is a sweeping, fundamental change in political and economical organisation. The meaning of socialism is simple to grasp, and grasp it you must, if you wish to support it. Socialism describes the future world that socialists think you ought to desire as the creators of wealth. It will be one world of common ownership, democratic control and free access to the products of labour. A social system like that is yours for the taking. It will be a struggle to get. but there will be a new world waiting for all at the end.

We hear a great deal about the future. The Socialist Party has much to be proud of. We have stuck to our principles despite all the so-called pragmatic "something now” opportunism. We started out as, and remain today, the only genuinely democratic political party in Britain. We have no leaders, no secret meetings, no hidden agendas. We are a party run by its members. The S.P.G.B. claim that dependence on leadership is a menace to the working-class movement and that not emotionalism of leader-worship but knowledge, understanding and self-reliance are the workers' road to emancipation  Never once have we made any concessions to racist or nationalist sentiments, and from our inception declared against racism and sexism in all their forms. We have no blood on our hands, having never once supported a war for capitalist interests. Every war since our founding in 1904 has been exposed and opposed, even when some of our comrades were thrown into prison for their principles. We have not lied about the possibility of reforming capitalism so as to make it tolerable to live under. Whilst never opposing reforms which might alleviate the lives of the wealth-producing majority, we have consistently and. at the risk of unpopularity, stood firmly against reformism and the illusion that capitalism can somehow be made decent.  We have never collaborated with any capitalist government, unlike the Left who  accept the view that the Labour Party is anti-working-class until election times when they have consistently told workers to vote Labour.  We have kept alive the great socialist vision of common ownership and democratic control, never once confusing that with the state capitalist nationalisation proposals for placing the profit system under new management. We have stood out not for fair wages but for the abolition of wage labour; not for more money for the poor but for the abolition of money and thereby the end of poverty; not for the welfare crumbs but free and equal access for all to the abundant resources of this rich and fruitful planet. And we have never flinched from advocating revolution as our goal. Ours has never been to ask the bosses for a share of the loaf; only when conscious and democratically organized workers take the means of life will the world be ours. The Socialist Party has stood alone and with iron principles throughout these years and for that we have reason to be proud. We will not let our political enemies forget how we, in opposition to both Right and Left, refused to be taken in by the Leninist claims of having introduced socialism in one country a backward, peasant economy at that. But remembering the past is no substitute for making the future. We look forward to the day when the absurdity of having to argue in favour of producing food for people to eat and not for it to be sold with a view to profit will mystify historians of our movement. Our purpose is not merely to dream, but to make real our vision by destroying the nightmare which is the system of production for profit.

 Let the supporters of the status quo promise what they may, no modification of capitalism can relieve the workers to any important extent of the evils that are bound up with the system— poverty, insecurity and oppression. But these evils will disappear once the source of them—the private ownership of the means of production—has been removed by substituting common ownership by the whole community.

In order that this change may come about, the workers, in whose interest it mainly is, must understand a few broad general principles, and desire and work for the change. It is not necessary that the workers must first of all become erudite students of Marx, or have a first-class knowledge of the sciences, though, of course, if it were possible it would be helpful. All that it is essential they should understand is that they run society to-day in the interests of a privileged and idle few, and that they could much more easily run it to-morrow in the interests of the whole of society; that capitalism is only one stage in social development, and it had a beginning and will have an end, just as other social systems had; that what they can get out of life to-day is determined by the fact that they must find a buyer for their physical energies because they exist in a system where everything is bought and sold; that at election times they present the capitalist class with the political power which enables that class to order society in its interest.

Armed with this understanding, the workers can build a new society that will be well worth while living in. Human labour is so productive and human brains are teeming with such knowledge that once given free play the mind is staggered by the vast possibilities that open up for the human race. There will be no religious bars, colour bars or social bars to stand across the path of anyone in the employment of his faculties for his own enjoyment and the benefit of society at large. The citizens of the socialist community will work voluntarily because they are doing a job they love, for the benefit of society as a whole—i.e., in the long run, for themselves. All labour in the socialist society will be essential and useful. There will be no need to try to stop people from doing wasteful and unessential things, like pouring luxuries into the lap of parasites.

The building of this new society must and can only be the work of the workers themselves; they cannot expect help from above, for privilege will hang on until it is shaken from its perch. In this new society there will be no privileged idlers; unless they have physical disabilities, each will play his part according to his ability. The future belongs to the workers, and the capitalists are already trembling at the vision. Socialism cannot be achieved without a social revolution, that is a change in the property basis of society, from private ownership to social ownership and democratic control.

Scotch Mist

 In Scotland today it’s true that there is a struggle – as there is in England, Wales, Ireland, or rest of the world for that matter. But the struggle in Scotland is not, as the Scottish National Party would have us believe, the struggle for home rule, self-government, self-determination, or self anything. The struggle in Scotland, as in the rest of the world, is a class struggle: the struggle between the working class and the capitalist or owning class.

The SNP tell us, the workers, that independence from England and the control of our own purse strings will cure all our problems. What they do not seem to realise is that the problems they are going to try to solve are an integral part of the capitalist system, and history has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that within this system there is no satisfactory solution to these problems apart from Socialism.

The SNP talk about the Scottish culture and the Scottish way of life. But in what way is the life of a Scottish wage slave basically different from that of an English, an American, or for that matter a Russian wage slave? There is no basic difference in the way of life of the world’s working class because we all suffer from the same problems such as poverty and insecurity. Independence from England will not cure the poverty and insecurity of the Scottish workers, because they will still be the wages labour and capital relationship.

There is no truly independent country in the world, because international capitalism has made sure of this, and our own experience here in Britain, especially since 1964, should have brought it home to us. The past few years should have shown us just how independent Britain is, when foreign "bankers" tell the British government how to spend money, and how it must not spend money, in order to keep the international capitalist class happy.

Class Struggle
 Independence for Scotland therefore is a myth put about by the Scottish National Party, which further confuses the Scottish section of the working class and blinds them from the real struggle – the class struggle.

The outcome of the class struggle is the abolition of capitalism and an end to poverty, insecurity and the ever-present threat of war.

Socialism is a sane society, where the means of life will be owned in common by the whole of the world socialist community. By the means of life we mean the land, mines, factories, railways, and the like – in short, the means of production and distribution. In Socialism the rule of life will be : from each according to his or her ability, to each to according to his or her need. There will be no need for buying and selling, just a free world for a free people. It could be like that now, so why not do something about it ? The world is ours for the taking. So why not take it ?

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE FOR SOCIALISM!

J. MOIR

From Socialist Standard No. 779 July 1969

Economics: Theory of Rent (Part 2)

 GENERALLY SPEAKING, commodities sell at their price of production. This is calculated by the amount of the total capital involved in their production - constant capital (machinery, materials, etc.); variable capital (wages); plus a profit. Through the action of competing capitals an average rate of profit is formed, and all capitals, usefully employed,whatever the field of investment, will generally obtain the average.

 This means that the range of goods produced by these capitals will sell at average prices appropriate to their classification as use-values. For instance, similar-quality bread produced by one baker would not alter dramatically in price from that of another baker, although their individual prices of production may be different. The amount of profit is the difference between the cost of production and the average price of production, which is not determined by individual prices, but by a socially determined price based on socially necessary labour which regulates the market, Socially necessary labour is not measured industry by industry.

 It should be borne in mind that no capitalist manufacturing concern by itself produces commodities or value; products only become commodities when they come into contact with other commodities which provide their social equivalent. This means they all contain social labour - the labour of society. The individual labour which has gone into the production of groups of commodities forms part of the social labour. The value of commodities is determined by the amount of social labour, measured in time, and they exchange with one another according to the amount or proportion of this social labour vested in them. It is not individual producers who determine the proportion, but society generally. The realization of the market price (value) of a commodity depends purely on social interaction without regard to the nature of the commodities, whether they be agricultural products, motor cars, pig-iron or coal.

 Commodities can only average this price of production with reference to the whole field of commodities, and the total social capital, and cannot realize their price of production in groups isolated from other groups. If we assumed that all commodities sell at their price of production, and that all capitals secured the average rate of profit, there would be no rent available for the landlord. As land in itself does not form part of the social cost of production, it cannot have any influence on the rate of profit. Therefore, rent must come from a profit over and above the average rate of profit - in effect a surplus profit. The individual cost of production for most capitalists within particular industries are generally the same, pro rata to the capital invested. The larger firms may be more efficient, although this is not always the case. Wage rates are regionally and nationally determined, and the cost of materials, machinery, etc. and the other elements of constant capital are similar. This will establish a general average cost of production.

 Let us assume that a few factories within a certain country, because of their location are able to drive their machinery with the use of natural hydro power, whereas the great majority of other factories have to use electricity in the production of their commodities. Suppose that for every £100 unit of capital expended the factories using electricity make a profit of £15. The average price of production of the commodities in that case would be £115. (We are ignoring for the moment any temporary fluctuation of the market or any other accidental factors.) Assume that the factory using water power could produce the same quantity of commodities in the same time, but that instead of using a unit of £100 capital they need only use a unit of £90, because the water power was provided by a natural force, and not having to buy electricity they managed to save £10, this brings their production costs down to the £90 referred to above.

 In effect, through the use of this force they were able to produce the same amount of commodities with less capital. In the normal way their commodities would contain less value than those of the capitalists using electricity, because less social labour was involved in their production. But the average price of production is based on the socially-necessary labour of the whole of society, not of individual factories. The majority of factories using electricity determine the price of production, because all commodities can only realize their value by acting as equivalents to each other over the whole field of commodity production, and not in separate compartments.

 Individual industries do not produce commodities as value; it is society at large which creates the commodity form (e.g. a tailor produces a coat. He does not produce the exchange-value of a coat - that is socially determined.) The capitalist using water power, would, therefore, be able to sell his commodities at an average price of production, i.e. £115 - the same as the others. In that case, he would receive a surplus of £25 per unit of capital, an excess of £10 over all the other capitalists who had to buy electricity. This is a surplus profit; a profit over and above the average rate of profit, and this fact directly arises because the conditions under which he used his capital were more favourable; his exclusive use of the natural force denied to other capitalists, and which
could not be reproduced by them and consequently was not at their command. Capital can reproduce electricity at will, but you cannot reproduce a natural waterfall or the land upon which it flows.

 In the same way, capital cannot reproduce land, and therefore the landowner holds a position of monopoly. In the final reckoning, the surplus profit of the capitalist using water power was due entirely to this force - something which had no value because no labour had entered into its production, as with all natural power. The labour of harnessing this natural power would add value, and this is taken into account. Nevertheless, the cost of harnessing and supplying electricity has been shown to be greater, and it is this difference in cost which constitutes the surplus profit.

 Inevitably the owner of the land over which the river or waterfall flowed would require payment for permission for the use of the land which contained the natural force, otherwise he would forbid its use. If the capitalist were to part with the surplus profit of £10 out of the £25, he had received, to the landowner that would constitute a ground rent. He would have, in effect, transferred his surplus profit to the landlord. At the end of the day he would have earned a profit of £15, the same as the body of capitalists who used electricity. If he owned the land it would make no difference to the formation of the ground rent. In that case he would retain the surplus profit of £10 in his capacity as landlord and not as an industrial capitalist, because the surplus profit was not due to
his capital as such but to a natural force which he has monopolized. It is evident that any capitalist who is able to use ( a natural force based on land, whether it be hydro power, naturally fertile land, natural pasture-land, Iand( where the climate is more favourable, and other natural attributes, will be able to cut down his production cost below that of his fellow capitalists who are no in a similar position. He will always be in a position of earning a surplus profit
over the average rate o1 profit, which he transfers to the landlord by way of ground rent for permission to use the land in question.

 Agriculture and mining dominate the use of land The degree of fertility of the soil and the potential mineral wealth will determine the amount of rent But the existence of rent is due to the use of the land itself. There is an erroneous view held by the Labour Party and other left -wing parties that if you nationalize land you abolish rent. In fact, at no time has any Labour government taken any action to abolish ground rent. The object of the present Land Nationalization Bill is to curtail by taxation the profits of the landlords the price of whose Land( has risen because of planning and other consents - external factors. In other words, an attempt to prevent landowners from consuming the whole fruit: of social progress instead of sharing it with their brother capitalists whose interests are represented by the State.

 This makes no difference at all to the formation of ground rent, nor would it make any difference if all ground rent were paid to the State. It would mean that all land was owned by the State and has been taken from the private owners. How this came to pass, whether by nationalization with compensation or by confiscation does not matter. In point of fact, the State is inevitably the largest land lord in any country, and the State is the embodiment of all capitalists' interests.

 As the total amount of agricultural land in England and Wales is 27.2 million acres (Min. of Agriculture statistics 1972), tenant farmers alone pay an average of £260 millions rent annually for the use of the 13.6 million acres. The formation of rent over the whole 27.2 million acres would amount to approx. £540 million by present rent levies. Practically the whole of London is in the hands of ground landlords, both public and (very) private family trusts.

 The colossal amount of wealth which is appropriated annually in rent comes solely from the surplus value produced by the working class. Every advance in agricultural science, every intensification of the use of land, is of direct benefit to those parasites who have literally inherited the earth. In the same
way, every advance in technology and science generally is appropriated for the benefit of their industrial capitalist brethren.

 If human rights mean anything, they mean the right of every man, woman and child to the best possible existence society can provide. Freedom from paying rent, selling labour-power, and producing surplus value for a wealthy group of international idlers.

 Capitalist society simply cannot cope with the multifarious social problems which it has created because of the restrictive social relations which hold it together. Socialism is an urgent necessity, and working men and women everywhere must devote their thoughts and energies to its establishment through the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

J.D.

From Socialist Standard No. 848 April 1975

Economics: Theory of Rent (Part I

 CARVED IN STONE above the Royal Exchange in the City of London is the Biblical legend "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof", to which we reply "The earth is the landlord's and the rent therefrom". In the same Biblical strain we add "And he reaps where he does not sow".

 The ancient forms of rent paid to a feudal lord, or lord of the manor, or to the Church, were usually levied in kind, and met either by the supply of a portion
of the produce from the land, or by performing unpaid labour on land belonging to these groups. These old social relations of feudal society have been replaced with other higher social relations of production associated with the land and its capacity to attract rent. Land use, including agriculture, has been specifically adapted to the needs of capitalism. The vast bulk of society's food is obtained from the land, and takes the form of commodities, i.e. articles
produced for sale and profit. Consequently agriculture is under the domain of capital.

 Rent is the money tribute levied by one section of society (landlords) against other sections for permission to use certain portions of the globe which they (landlords) have appropriated and monopolized to the exclusion of others. To grow food, to build houses, factories, shipyards, etc., a ground rent must be paid to the owner of the soil. Private property of land, and this includes land owned by the State, is a prerequisite for extracting rent. History is full of instances as to how the rural labourers were driven off the land by force, bloody violence, threats of imprisonment and deportation, as in the case of the Land Enclosures over the last few hundred years.

 The fact remains that permission even to inhabit the earth has to be obtained from a group of rentier parasites who monopolize it. Ground rent is surplus-value which has previously been extracted from the working class. Whether this is paid to private individuals, the State or the Church makes no difference. It is an element in the overall economic organization of capitalism.

 Land has no value - that is, it contains no socially necessary labour, the source of value. The labour of society has not participated in its creation. It cannot be reproduced, and is not a commodity. Not being a commodity it does not have exchange value, and consequently does not contain surplus value. Surplus-value comes from unpaid labour, and as no labour at all has gone into its creation it cannot contain value. Land has use-value as have commodities
generally, but whereas you can have use-value (the utility of a thing) without exchange-value (price), you cannot have exchange value without use-value.

 The landlord cannot sell non-existent commodities; the service he provides is the service of rent collection. It is obvious that land is bought and sold both as building plots and agricultural land. To that extent it assumes the commodity form. Capital can be fixed in the soil either through the erection of buildings, land improvements like ploughing, drainage and fertilization, mining and quarrying operations etc.

 This capital forms part of the labour of society generally and does not spring from the soil. The capitalist farmer produces wheat etc. in the same way as the capitalist manufacturer produces other commodities. They differ only in the element in which their capital is invested. Their capital, like all other, qualifies for the average rate of profit, and if needs be can move from one sphere of production into another. Capital fixed in the soil - plant, factories, office blocks etc., as with capital elsewhere, would be entitled (under the laws of capitalism) to attract interest, but strictly speaking this is not the same thing as ground rent, which is specifically paid for the use of the soil and for permission to fix the capital in it in the first place.

  Unlike machinery and industrial plant which wears away and has to be replaced, the land (apart from natural catastrophe) with normal care and attention, fertilized and drained regularly in the case of arable land, or developed with office blocks and shopping precincts, continues to improve. To that extent it can attract a higher price for its use in the form of ground rent, or fetch a higher price should the landlord decide to sell it. The price of land has nothing to do with its value, which is nil. The price of building land depends purely on the oscillations of the market, or competition between buyers and sellers.

 The location of the land is a very important factor in this competition. Land required for building in a big commercial centre like London will fetch a higher price than land elsewhere. With agricultural land the position is somewhat different, but the monopoly of the land owner is a major factor in the determining of the final price in both cases. Obviously good agricultural naturally-fertile land which can yield 2 tons of grain per acre would fetch a higher price than land of lesser quality which would only produce 30 cwts of grain per acre. The rent charged for the use of these lands would vary, and bear some relation to their yields.

 Certain vineyards in the Bordeaux/Medoc area - Pauillac, Pomerel, etc. because of certain chemical properties in the soil, are able to produce fine wine. Other vineyards which lack these properties in the soil are unable to produce such fine wines, although the same amount of useful labour has gone into their production. The finer wines and lesser-quality wines contain, broadly speaking, the same amount of useful labour, but there is a considerable difference between the price of a bottle of Chateau neuf de Pape from the Rhone valley, and a bottle of Chateau Petrus or Chateau Lafite from Pomerel or
Pauillac, as any wine- drinking capitalist will tell you - at £5 per bottle this is hardly a worker's tipple.

 The difference in price does not arise from the labour involved but purely because of the natural properties of the soil. The owner of land where the vines
were grown would be able to charge a higher rent for the use of this land, and the wine producer would have to part with a larger share of the surplus value to the landlord than would the Rhone wine producers. Were the fine-wine producer the owner of the vineyards instead of the tenant this would make no difference. In that case, he would pocket the extra profit in his capacity as a landlord and not as a wine-growing capitalist. In any event, before he could
become a landlord, he would have to acquire the land from the previous owner, and spend a capital sum in order to achieve this. To that extent, the rent that he virtually paid to himself instead of to the landlord would merely represent the interest on the capital which he had invested in the purchase of the land.

 Rent is the way in which land realizes itself economically, and whilst rent itself is not interest (i.e. money paid for the use of c apital), it is influenced by the rate of interest, as also is the buying and selling of the land. Naturally, market conditions intervene because of the monopoly of landlords (sellers) and demand from the other portions of the capitalist class (buyers), particularly competition for building sites in city centres where any price may be paid.

 During periods of inflation the price of land will rise with other prices, not only because the value of money has fallen but because ownership of land provides a certain protection against the depreciation of money. The price of farmland rose from approximately £50 per acre in 1949 to £800 per acre in
1973, due to inflation. Prices are now falling. They fell 22 per first half of 1974, and are expected to fall to £582 per acre towards the end of 1974.
(Farmland market, Farmer's Weekly: The Times 3rd February 1975).
 Mr. Donald Campbell, editor of the report, said "The market is highly volatile; only a few years ago changes in value were gradual and their range was small."

 Over a period, the yardstick for measuring the price of land is by a capitalization of the rent. That is, by assuming that the rent represents the interest on an imaginary capital. If the prevailing rate of interest is 10 per cent, and the landlord receives a ground rent of £500 p.a., that £500 would represent the interest on an imaginary capital of £5,000. Were the rate of interest to fall to 5 per cent, the £500 p.a. would represent the interest on an imaginary capital of £10,000. The price of land is arrived at under normal conditions by the number of years it would take for the rents to reach the capital sum. In the first case the price of land would be £5,000 i.e. 10 years' ground purchase. The external rate of interest can and does influence the price of land. During a period of low interest rates, the price of land will tend to rise, and during a period of high interest rates the price of land will tend to fall,without affecting the rent at all. In England particularly, land is usually sold at so many years' purchase, usually twenty years or more.

 A value is therefore conferred on land by circumstances outside, i.e. the rate of interest, and does not arise from the land itself, simply because those who own the monopoly can prevent others from having access except on terms and conditions decreed by them. In this the landlord is joined by capitalists generally who operate in the same way by excluding society at large from access to the means of production and distribution, as well as monopolizing the social wealth.

 As society develops, and the population increases, and there is a growing demand for land for all purposes, the landlord will share in the fruits of this social progress without contributing anything at all. The industrial capitalists who dominate the political machinery take legislative measures to curb the appetite of the landlord, but you cannot abolish rent without abolishing private property in land, and as this forms the basis of the capitalist system of production, you cannot abolish private property in one sphere and retain it in another.

 Private property includes State property, which will be dealt with later.

J.D.



From Socialist Standard No. 847 March 1975

The Big Bang

 So that was the Big Bang was it? What revolutionised the Stock Exchange and shook the City actually made no difference to most. Workers woke up one morning to a deregulated Stock Exchange, but would not have had much time to ponder the significance of such a revolution on their lifestyle before they had to get to their work or their place in the DHSS queue.


 But of course, such matters must be important mustn't they? After all, it's on the news every evening, after the royal item and before the Granny parachuting-for-charity, we get the summary of the share price fluctuations, and hear how the Pound struggled, rallied, finished weakly. As one who after a usual day's work (struggled, rallied, finished weakly) cannot see the significance of it all, I sent off for the Stock exchange's glossy pamphlet An Introduction to the Stock Market. Thinking that "bull" was what economists talked about (rather than a type of market), I needed to see what all the fuss was about.

 The cover had lots of photographs of the type of people who, Presumably, own shares, all ages from smiling babies to smiling OAPs; all occupations from cooks to builders, welders to fishermen. They even managed to get half-a-dozen different ethnic groups represented on the pamphlet cover, which is about five more than are effectively allowed on the trading floor of the Stock Exchange, to go by recent reports.

 Of course it's the same sort of rubbish that we get on TV with every advert for the TSB flotation, the idea that becoming a capitalist is as easy as wearing a bowler hat, everyone can do it. It's a popular notion - borne out by the over subscription for TSB - that we can drag ourselves free from the varying degrees of poverty and pressures of working-class life. There is nothing wrong with wanting to escape that, but there is everything wrong in believing that a handful of shares in the TSB will free you of anything but a few hundred quid.


 It is a popular notion because people want it to be true but it has no basis in fact. Research by London Weekend Television shows that the City is not full of self-made men (or women).Those who reach the top in the City still come, predominantly, from a privileged background. Indeed the class division between rich and poor, owners and non-owners did not end Years ago with the nineteenth century, nor the nationalisation of the 1945. Labour government, nor the privatisation of the present government and certainly it will not end with the next stock market flotation (there should be one soon), nor with the next boom period (there should be one sometime), nor with a next Labour government.

 The situation today has changed little, the top one per cent own some twenty per cent of the total wealth in Britain, which is as much as the bottom seventy five per cent;the 20,000 millionaires in Britain own more wealth than half the population put together;the top six per cent enjoy forty-four per cent of unearned income, while two-thirds have none.(They didn't tell me that in the glossy brochure, I had to look elsewhere.) The fact that, some of those who work in the factories now have a couple of shares in British Gas tucked under their pillows, and a fifty pence reduction in their gas bill, will not upset the factory owners.

 But isn't the Big Bang going to change all that? Isn't it going to sweep away the inherited privilege of a lucky few, in favour of real rewards for those with courage, enterprise and a will to work hard? You know the sort of person, a cliché that only exists in the head of a Tory Party speech writer - he (not she) is pulling himself up by the bootstraps and pulling in his belt, he's got his nose to the grindstone, one foot on the ladder and is on his bike . . . Well, "Yes" is the answer if you have eyes to read the brochure with;.. "No" is the answer if you also have a brain to think with.


 Far from opening up the City to the individual and the entrepreneur, the Big Bang means the deregulation of exchanges and emphasis on high technology, allowing very complex and very fast transactions of commodities all over the world. In the USA this "programme trading" has produced much larger and more frequent swings in the markets. Judgements are decided by short-term market fluctuations, not on longer term evaluations like the state of the economy in general. Consequently, small investors cannot weather the large swings in the market without large financial backing. It's the big fish that remain.

 But regardless of the fluctuations of share prices, the legal business of exploitation is not just a matter of gambling on the Stock Exchange - buying and selling at the right times and the right prices - where you are rewarded for your "courage". All you need to do is sit on your shares and spend the money as it comes in. You don't need talent or guts, just a lot of money.


 Indeed, a BBC Nationwide news programme a few years ago had an item about a dog (presumably they could not find a parachuting grandmother that day), who placed his paw on the Financial Times and chose the shares for his master. The dog was a millionaire. And his owner looked about as happy as a dog with two million pounds. You can do it too. Try it at home all you need is a dog and somewhere in the region of £100,000. A trained monkey could do it. Even Gerald Grosvenor (the Duke of Westminster - two billion pounds and two 'O' levels to his name) can do it.

 Most capitalists are the same, they get someone else to do the little bit of work of buying and selling shares. Most hardly even see the Stock Exchange, let alone the factories, land or offices they profit from. Quite simply, the City cannot be opened up to everyone. As my brochure says (stuck away in the last paragraph on the bottom of page nine), your broker will "tell you honestly if your personal circumstances are such that you would be ill-advised to become an investor".


Capitalists need workers but we don't need them. They couldn't tolerate  builder or a manager or a secretary retiring at the age of thirty to live off the proceeds of their work. They need to squeeze as much as possible out of you, from when you are strong enough to work until you are old enough to drop. The rest of your life is your own.

 Unfortunately for this scheme of things, capitalism never runs smoothly for very long. The deregulation which has already started has produced some blatant examples of inflated salaries in the City. At a time when wage councils are being abolished and while one quarter of full-time workers in London are below the poverty line, the news that a few miles away in the City salaries can touch £1m cannot help the government's pleas to workers for wage restraint. At least the Queen has set the right example to Britain's greedy workers by accepting a pay rise below the rate of inflation, in the process boosting her earnings last Year from £3,850,000 to over £4million.


 Then we have the interesting sight of Thatcher criticising the excessive salaries. The champion of the market-place, outflanked by the uncontrollable nature of the system she supports. For capitalism, which periodically bares its "unacceptable face" that no cosmetic can hide, is the best ever advert for socialism.

 We could have a society where personal consumption of wealth will not be restricted by your personal circumstances and where production of wealth will not be restricted by the requirement of a surplus called profit.

 Socialism will take the information and communications technology that today enables vast amounts of useless information - Like market fluctuations and share prices – to circulate the world in seconds, every second, and will liberate its potential for a society based on production for use, as we liberate ourselves in a movement for World Socialism which makes the Big Bang look a damp squib.


BRIAN GARDNER

From Socialist Standard December 1986