failure of reformism

The total net household wealth of the top 10 per cent of the population is £853,000, almost 100 times more than the net wealth of the poorest 10 per cent, which is at most £8,800. , while one in five people lived in a household with less than 60 per cent of average income.The report says: “People on lower incomes are more likely to live in over-crowded housing, and those living in social housing, in particular, are more likely to say that their local neighbourhood has problems with crime.” One in ten people lived in polluted and grimy neighbourhoods, with crime, violence and vandalism more likely to affect women with children and many ethnic minority groups.

Equality and Human Rights Commission chairman Trevor Phillips said: "For some, the gateways to opportunity appear permanently closed, no matter how hard they try; while others seems to have been issued with an 'access all areas' pass at birth."

Men and women in the highest socio-economic group can expect to live up to seven years more than those in the lower socio-economic groups. The rich also enjoy significantly better health while they are alive.

What classless society?

An interesting article by Jack A. Smith, editor of the Activist Newsletter and a former editor of the Guardian (US) radical newsweekly. Some extracts:-

The so-called growing rich-poor gap in “classless” America is a euphemism for the existence of an accelerated class struggle against American workers and the poor by a relatively small minority that possesses or has access to great wealth and power.

According to the Wall St. Journal, a 2008 study of wealth in the United States found that the richest .01% (that’s one-hundredth of one percent, or 14,000 American families) possess 22.2% of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 90%, or over 133 million families, control just 4% of the nation’s wealth. The remaining top 9.99% made ends meet with what’s left, 73.8%.

A recent study done by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management found that a mere 1% of Americans are hoarding $13 trillion in investable wealth…and that doesn’t even factor in all the money they have hidden in offshore accounts.

In 1980 the richest 1% of America took 1 of every 15 income dollars. Now they take 3 of every 15 income dollars.

According to Paul Buchheit of DePaul University in 1965, the average salary for a CEO of a major U.S. company was 25 times the salary of the average worker. Today, the average CEO’s pay is more than 250 times the average worker’s.

The New York Times reported March 31, 2010, “Top hedge fund managers rode the 2009 stock market rally to record gains, with the highest-paid 25 earning a collective $25.3 billion" The annual GDP of nearly 90 UN member nations is lower than what these people took home last year. The highest paid manager on the list was David Tepper of Appaloosa Management, who made $4 billion last year.

Throughout their lives, average Americans are taught by their school, church and corporate mass media that theirs is a classless society, and that the notion of classes, class struggle, or class war is just left wing propaganda. Differences in income are acknowledged — but it is claimed that since upward mobility and attainment of the American Dream are available to everyone if they work hard enough, there is only one class despite gradations in wealth. It’s called the middle class. How often do you hear the politicians of the two ruling parties or the government they administer referring to the working class, lower middle class, the lower class or the upper class and the ruling class? In America, virtually everyone seems to be lumped into the middle class if they are earning between $25,000 and $250,000 a year, which is a preposterous parody of real class relations.

The millions living in poverty are called “the poor” and are in the public mind often blamed for their own plight (lazy, shiftless, ignorant). The very rich are called the “top 1%,” and the simply rich are termed the “top 10%,” and are often admired and thanked because they create the jobs that prevent the inhabitants of the middle class from falling into the ranks of the poor.

The problem isn’t just the disproportion of money in the hands of a small minority while the standards of most American families are eroding, but it is what’s done with all that money. It elects Presidents, governors and mayors in most of the major cities. It elects members of the House and Senate and state legislatures. If you have millions to spend without batting an eye, you have political clout in America, often decisive clout, and it’s principally deployed to further the interests of the “haves,” as opposed to the “have nots.”

This is what is meant by class war, and it seems to be waged these days only by the top 10% (the upper class) that controls 96% of the wealth against the 90% (working class to middle class and lower class) which controls 4%. The bottom 50% by the way accounts for a pathetic 1% of America’s wealth.

Isn’t it time for the “bottom” 90% to stand up, fight back, and claim their share?

America - Them and Us

A factoid on income inequality in usa.
In 1928, the top 10 percent of earners received 49.29 percent of total income. In 2007, the top 10 percent earned a strikingly similar percentage: 49.74 percent. In 1928, the top 1 percent received 23.94 percent of income. In 2007, those earners received 23.5 percent.

SOYMB reads that despite the vast sums expended on these social programs, the gap between the super-rich, the wealthy and "the rest of us" has widened, creating what is in essence two Americas -- the top 5% and the bottom 95%.
As total household income declines, the wealthiest Americans take home a larger piece of the national income pie. In 2008, Americans reported $8.4 trillion in total income, down 4.6% from 2007. Adjusted for inflation, that is down 8.4%, the sharpest decline in total income since the brief recession that began in 1990.

David Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Reagan, recently noted in an editorial that the top 1% of Americans received two-thirds of the gain in national income from 2002 to 2006.
Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have reported that the top 10% of earners took home about half of all income as of 2007.
The number of people in the highest reaches of income also fell--tax returns reporting income of $1 million or more fell by 22% to 321,294, and the number of returns that reported income of more than $10 million fell 36% to 13,480.

Put the data together and this reveals an increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top. The U.S. economy is increasingly dominated by the wealthy. According to research from Moody’s Analytics, the top 5% of Americans by income are responsible for 37% of all consumer spending—about the same as the entire bottom 80% by income (39.5%).
Out of 130 million households, 1/100 of 1% rake in $10 million or more annually. As consumers, the top 5% carry the same weight as the bottom 80%. The top 10% take in 50% of the income.

The very rich are pulling away from the merely wealthy. Those earning $10 million or more per year are increasingly wealthier than the 321,000 earning $1 million or more, and those top earners are pulling away from the 6 million others who make up the top 5% of households by income.
In the housing and stock market boom years of 2002 and 2007, the bottom 99 percent of households by incomes grew by a meager 1.3 percent a year in inflation-adjusted terms, while the incomes of the top 1 percent grew 10 percent a year.

Over the past 25 years since 1985, the top 1 percent's share of national income has doubled; in 2007, it netted 23 percent of the nation’s total income. The income of the wealthiest Americans -- the top 0.1 percent—has tripled in that 25 year period. This wafer-thin slice of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million people.

The extremely wealthy are pulling away because their earnings come from capital, not labor. While wages have stagnated, returns on capital investments and speculations have soared. None other than former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently described this yawning divide between those in the top slice of the economy who are doing very well and the 95% below them who are struggling.
"Our problem is that we have a very distorted economy in the sense that there has been a significant recovery in a limited area of the economy amongst high-income individuals who have just had $800 billion added to their 401(k)s and are spending it. Large banks and large corporations, as everyone’s pointing out, are in excellent shape. The rest of the economy, small business, small banks, and a very significant amount of the labor force, which is in tragic long-term unemployment, that is pulling the economy apart. The average of those two is what we are looking at, but they are fundamentally two separate types of economy.”

If the wealthiest Americans are buying luxury cars and apparel again, that may pump up the nation's GDP, but it doesn't mean 95% of the populace are doing better financially.

Not So Socially Mobile

"poverty status at birth is linked to worse adult outcomes"

An estimated 14.1 million Americans under age 18 are poor. The longer a child is poor, the worse his or her adult outcomes.Childhood poverty rates, according to the U.S. Census Bureau says the report, have ranged between 15 and 23% over the past four decades. Children who are born into poverty have much higher rates of economic and educational difficulties in their adult years. According to a study from the Urban Institute "Childhood Poverty Persistence..." by Ratcliffe and McKernan, 49% of American babies born into poor families will be poor for at least half their childhoods.

•13% of all children (40% of black children and 8% of white children) are born poor.
•37% of children live in poverty for at least a year before reaching age 18.
•10% of children spend at least half their childhood years (9 years or longer) in poverty.
•Black children are 9 times more likely than white children to be poor for at least three-quarters of their childhoods; 18% versus 2%.
•69% of black children and 31% of white children who are poor at birth stay poor for least half their childhoods.

$18 MILLION - A PITTANCE

BP's, CEO Tony Hayward is stepping down, but he will be receiving a severance package amounting to an estimated $18 million."That's what he gets for presiding over a record oil disaster and massive losses," commented Chris Hayes, Washington editor of The Nation.Hayes went on to note, however, that "Tony Hayward's $18 million payoff is an absolute pittance compared to the kind of cash top CEO's are raking in." He cited a recent Wall Street Journal story which revealed that over the past decade, the two highest-paid CEOs at public companies each took in over a billion dollars in compensation, while others in the top 25 received compensation in the hundreds of millions.

A study recently released by the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities which shows that if you're in the bottom 20% of earners, "you're making only 16% more today than you would have in 1979." If you're in the middle fifth, you're making 25% more. "But the top fifth of earners in this country -- they're making 95% more." The income of the very richest among us has shot up by 281% since 1979.

"There's a social pyramid in this country," Hayes commented, "and as you climb it, you encounter a smaller and smaller group of people doing better and better, while everyone at the bottom stays where they were...A select group of people are able to completely immunize themselves from the fate of the rest of the society. Our entire social and economic way of life in this country is broken and unfair and inequitable."

Israel's Inequality

Just 18 families in Israel control roughly 60 percent of the equity value of all companies in Israel according to this economist .

Of course, there are other rich people in Israel who control much of the other 40 percent. Israel is the most unequal country in the developed world, second only to the United States. In the year 2009, Israel bypassed Mexico for the first time as more unequal. In 1965 there was a survey of all countries in the world in terms of equality, and Israel was ranked between the Netherlands and Finland—one of the most equal countries in the world. Today, Israel is one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Because Israel spends so much on security and the military Israel actually spends about 75 percent less, in ratio comparisons with OECD countries on health care and unemployment benefits and such like. In 2002 the chairman of the Manufacturers Association in Israel said that because of the struggle with the Palestinians, because of the intifada, Israelis have to learn that they cannot expect an increase in the minimum wage, or perhaps even they should expect a decrease in the minimum wage, meaning that the security constraints are used as a justification to stifle social struggle.

Socialists have always argued that the workers of all countries have more in common with each other than with those representing the interests of capital. Zionism hasn’t established a workers’ paradise. The sole fruit of the decades of strife which Zionism has known has been the establishment of yet another capitalist state - an achievement the workers of the world, Jewish or otherwise , could well have done without. The tragedy is that Israeli workers take sides in this struggle instead of organising for socialism.

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The self-made man

Psychology Today has an interesting article on the American Dream. The belief in the "self-made man" and the benefits of meritocracy are largely myths and don't serve society well. Movies, TV and newspapers, as well as politicians, are reinforcing these myths by promoting the notion that anyone can be wealthy or make it to the top by virtue of hard work and a positive attitude and that's how successful people did it in the past. Images portrayed by the media try to convince the masses that "you too" can be the next athletic, singing, acting or business star regardless of your background, when the odds are astronomical that it will happen. Self-help gurus help to perpetuate the myths by convincing their clients that anyone can make it to the top with hard work and a few positive affirmations. These naive practices just reinforce and sustain the myth of the self-made man and meritocracy.

Erick Schmidt, CEO of Google says, "Lots of people who are smart and work hard and play by the rules don't have a fraction of what I have. I realize that I don't have my wealth because I'm so brilliant."

Stephen McNamee and Robert Miller of the University of North Caroline in their book, The Meritocracy Myth, cite data which shows that 20% of American households receive 50% of all available income and the lowest 20% of households receive less than 4%; the top 5% of households receive 22% of all available income; the richest 1% of households account for 30% of all available net worth. Despite the popular view that America is a middle class society they say it is not because most wealth is concentrated at the top.
Working hard is often seen as a part of the merit formula. But what is meant by working hard? The number of hours we spend to reach a goal? Energy spent? There is no correlation between hard work and economic success. In fact, those people who work the most hours and spend the most energy are usually the poorest. And really big money doesn't come from working, it comes from owning assets.
Nor is the idea that moral character and integrity are important for economic success. There is little evidence that being honest results in economic success. In fact, the reverse is true, as seen in the examples of Enron, the Wall Street frauds. White collar crime in the form of insider trading, embezzlement, tax and insurance fraud is hardly a reflection of integrity and honesty. Playing by the rules probably works to suppress prospects for economic success, compared to those who ignore the rules.
."...the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success..." -John Steinbeck

The belief in a meritocracy is sustaining a myth that disguises economic inequality.

The New Elite

So who are our new political masters?

The Times describe how MPs’ background shows that the new House of Commons is more socially exclusive than it was in 2005.Nine in ten were university educated, almost three in ten being graduates of Oxford or Cambridge.The study suggests that being a politician has become a graduate profession.

Fewer than half of MPs went to comprehensive schools, with the remainder taught at grammar or independent schools. Thirteen schools — 12 of them fee charging — produced a tenth of all MPs.

The report concluded: “The creation of the country’s social elites is largely a result of educational inequalities exhibited in the school and university system. Children at leading independent and state schools dominate entry to the country’s most highly academically selective universities, which in turn produce the lion’s share of graduates in the professions...Parliament does not reflect society at large. Parliament as a whole remains very much a social elite. "

Russia's Capitalists

Another article from the archives of the Socialist Standard explaining the non-socialist nature of the old Soviet Union .

The Nomenklatura

What is the nature of the ruling class in Russia? Who are they and what is the basis of their power and wealth? Obviously, the answers to these questions cannot be found by simply comparing the Russian rulers with the capitalist class in the west. For example, no one in Russia has legal title to any of the factories, mines, mills, transport and communications systems, and to underline this there is an absence of shareholding and stock exchanges. Nevertheless, there is a social class there whose members live privileged lives in comparison with the vast majority of Russian people. Indeed, the higher ranks of this class enjoy luxurious lifestyles and have an army of servants to look after their every comfort.

How can all this be in a supposedly "socialist" society and how does this privileged class get its wealth if not from legal ownership? These questions, and many more, are dealt with by a dissident Russian scholar, Michael Voslensky, in his book Nomenklatura - Anatomy of the Soviet Ruling Class. This book was first published in German but the English edition has been brought right up to date to include the periods in office of both Andropov and Chernenko.

Nomenklatura is a Latin word meaning an index of names. A more meaningful definition is contained in Structures of the Party, a manual of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:
"The Nomenklatura is a list of the highest positions; the candidates for these positions are examined by the various party committees, recommended and confirmed. These Nomenklatura party committee members can be relieved of their positions only by authorisation of their committees. Persons elevated to the Nomenklatura are those in key positions. "(p 2).

Anyone admitted to this magic circle is issued with a document confirming his or her exalted status and membership is virtually guaranteed for life.
Voslensky, who now lives in the west, was himself an important figure in Russia and writes with insight about his subject. He identifies the Nomenklatura as the secretaries and heads of departments and divisions of the Communist Party, Komsomol (communist youth) and trade unions; the central committees of those organisations at both national level and in the various republics; the heads of state administration and their deputies at national and republic levels plus a host of representatives of the state security services, the armed forces, the KGB, the diplomatic services, education, science, industry and agriculture. According to Voslensky the Nomenklatura totals about 750,000 and together with their families at around 3 million, or 1½ per cent of the population. So it is only those who have reached a certain rung on the Communist Party ladder who can become members, and even the international fame and personal wealth of such as writers, artists and fiIm stars do not gain them admission.

Even if we could not put our finger on the exact point in the Communist set-up where someone becomes a member of the Nomenklatura, this need not concern us any more than what is the exact amount of capital someone in Britain must have invested before becoming a member of the capitalist class - is it £100,000 or £1 million? The undeniable fact is that despite any grey areas there is a capitalist class in this country which, because of its legal ownership, monopolises the means of production and distribution. Similarly there is a class in Russia, the Nomenklatura, which, because of its monopoly of political power, does exactly the same there.

Voslensky argues that the Nomenklatura are in fact the collective owning class in Russia. He points out that ownership does not have to be by individuals with legal title and cites the nationalised industries in the west where the state undertakes their management on behalf of the national capitalist class. If those industries show a profit then the capitalists will get their "dividend” in the form of tax cuts or of not having to pay tax increases to finance them. At the very least they will get industries which, even if not profitable, they can use to service the enterprises they themselves own. The capitalists in this case own not as individuals but collectively, as a class. And collective ownership exists not only in nationalised industries. The Roman Catholic Church owns vast wealth in property, investments, art treasures, etc, but no individuals, not even the Pope, have legal title to any of it. This wealth is owned collectively by the church hierarchy who use it to protect and extend their power and influence and, incidentally, to live very well but none of them could, for instance, sell St. Peter's. Any such decision would have to be taken collectively because that is the basis of their ownership.

It is the same with the Nomenklatura. They own as a class and the state manages the production of wealth on their behalf. Their pay-out comes in the form of inflated salaries, the free use of luxury apartments, Black Sea villas, country houses (dachas), more or less free food, free use of cars and many other perks. Also, many of them are allotted more than one official post and receive a separate salary for each. This may not compare with the huge incomes of some western capitalists but, what the Nomenklatura get is a fortune to the average Russian.

Of course the top ranking members of this class do have incomes on the scale of western capitalists. How else can we view the disclosure that a district committee first secretary paid 192,000 roubles (about 160 years' pay for the average Russian worker) into his wife's bank account? Moreover, they have an open account at the state bank which allows them to draw out any money they require. Even western capitalists cannot do that. Those at the very top have no need to touch their salaries as everyone at this level simply lives at the state's expense. Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, recalled how her father never touched his wages: "The drawers of his desk . . . were full of these sealed envelopes” (p 231). And yet the Nomenklatura, denies its own existence as a class of exploiters and try to pass themselves off as workers

This personal wealth is only a fraction of the surplus value which the Nomenklatura robs from the Russian workers. The entire state apparatus which keeps them in power is financed from this source. The armed forces the arms industry and the spy and espionage systems which are used to protect their interests from the threat of their international rivals, the massive police force, prisons, labour camps, courts, militia, phony trade unions, all of which are employed in keeping the workers in line, are paid from the proceeds of this robbery.

One significant similarity the Nomenklatura has with the capitalist class in the west is that it endeavours to hand on its privileges to its children. Although it is true that membership is not hereditary in any legal sense, in a practical sense it may as well be. Voslensky gives several examples of how the children of the Nomenklatura are as good as guaranteed important, well paid positions irrespective of their personal abilities and concludes that although entry to the Nomenklatura can be obtained by ordinary careerists, “. . . the chance of entering it by that route are becoming more and more restricted while the royal road of birth is more and more frequently used" (P 102). The most important difference between the Russian rulers and the western capitalists is explained by Voslensky.

"What matters to the Nomenklatura is not property but power. The bourgeoisie is a class of power owners and is the ruling class as a consequence of that. With the Nomenklatura it is the other way around; it is the ruling class and that makes it the property owning class. Capitalists magnates share their wealth with no one, but gladly share power with professional politicians. Nomenklaturists take care not to share the slightest degree of power with anyone. The head of a department in the Central committee apparatus never objects to an academician's or a writer's having more money or worldly goods than he, but he will never allow either to disobey his orders". (p 72)

So, in the west it is money which is paramount. In Russia what counts is power of which privilege is the proof. This explains why the Nomenklatura apparently have no wish to actually own a dacha. What is more prized is having a state-owned dacha made available to them. That is a sign that they have really arrived, and to actually own a dacha is considered to be bad form. On occasion Voslensky reveals a sound grasp of the theories of Karl Marx. For example, he approvingly quotes an old Bolshevik ruefully explaining to him, as a schoolboy, why Russia was not ripe for the socialist revolution.

"You and your friends, Misha, would like to be airmen or arctic explorers, but with the best will in the world it is impossible because you are still children, and you can no more skip your age than I, unfortunately, can become a schoolboy again. It is not we who determine the various stages of our life, it is those various stages that determine us. And that is true not only of individual human beings, it also applies to human beings in general, to human society. Could Russia, or any other country at the same stage of social development, by a mere act of will take a single leap that would put it ahead of the most advanced countries? Marx said it could not and it was obvious" (p 15).

He denounces Leninism as not Marxist at all but merely ". . .a strategy and tactics for the seizure of power decked out in Marxist slogans" (p 289) and goes on to pour scorn on the idea that the Nomenklatura are Marxists "Marx would have turned away in disgust from the system they have established" (p 290).

Voslensky's own conception of socialist communist would seem to be the same as our own, for he says
"I believe the idea of a classless communist society as a free association of producers of material and intellectual goods to be a fine one" (p 347).

Against this he shows some weakness on Marx's theory of surplus value, confusing surplus labour - which is present in any society – with surplus value, which is produced under the specific conditions of capitalism's commodity production. He also shows a certain naivety in stating that government ministers in the west "live on their pay, just like other people", and that their wives do the cooking and housework themselves "(p 178)!

We can easily forgive Voslensky's slips. By throwing more light on Russia's rulers and by highlighting the class divided nature of Russian society together with its repressive state, his valuable book is surely one more nail in the coffin of the idea that socialism or communism exists in that tortured land.

Vic Vanni
Socialist Standard November 1985

The Posh Poor

SOYMB have had a few posts now on those higher paid members of the working class that some seem determined to describe as another class . The Independent has an article that once again demonstrates that the so-called "middle" class share almost the identical social inequalities as the low-paid .

A "middle-class" couple would normally be seen as a success if they had their own large, detached home, two cars in the driveway, nice holidays, a golf course lifestyle and children lined up for private school. But when he handles middle class divorces, the family solicitor Andrew Newbury finds that a growing number of such couples have borrowed their way to apparent prosperity. Unbeknown to the wife,the lifestyle is built on credit cards.And, instead of sharing out the matrimonial assets,the couple will split the debts. The seemingly wealthy are suffering from the business downturn. And they will range in type from the flamboyant over-spenders to the lone mothers, the graduates who lose their good jobs and never get back on track, and the people who are derailed by ill health, divorce or some other problem and gradually sell off their bits of silver as they edge closer to poverty.
Financial adviser Garry Spencer of Wilbury Financial Management stands up for one group that few others would defend: solicitors.
"A lot of them are struggling," he says. "They got as big a mortgage as they could get, and now they are fire-fighting. A lot are having pay cuts. They are cutting their pension, the life cover and cashing in the ISA [Individual Savings Account]. Some of their kids are being taken out of private school. Many are borrowing again, and they are missing payments on their credit cards. That affects their future credit card rating. Poverty is a spiral, and you get deeper and deeper into debt."

Employment adviser Richard Lynch, formerly an official at the union Unite, believes that the combination of 3.7 per cent inflation and pay freezes across a third of employers will ratchet up the pressure. "It's going to be very difficult for people of all levels to keep up."

But those that do get laid off are likely to suffer more. The University and College Union predicted 6,000 job losses among academics and college staff last year, but has just upped that figure to 15,000. The specialists in this sector – like the experts on Romantic poetry may find it harder than others to transfer their skills to a different environment.

People get caught in a rut which wrecks the rest of their life or vastly reduces their enjoyment of it.Young blacks suffer 48 per cent unemployment rates, compared to 20 per cent for young whites, according to the Institute of Public Policy Research. Single parents of whom 57 per cent are unemployed, according to the Government and older, single women who "have a 24 per cent chance of living in poverty", according to the Fawcett Society. These groups are always vulnerable, but can suffer much more than others in a downturn.

Marx points out that the wage is the purchasing price of labour-power . One is paid so much as is necessary to reproduce that labour power in its "normal state" . Marx speaks of reproducing the means of subsistence, but clearly he means a historically produced subsistence as opposed to the minimum amount of food and clothing one could possibly live with. The means of one's subsistence can include sufficient wages to , purchase a car, mortgage a house , take foreign holidays , have the normal range of consumer durables, including any other labour-saving device that allows you to get to work on time and have sufficient hours after the working day to unwind and recuperate for the next eight hours. It would also include support for a family, which is after all the unit through which the labour is replaced. Those who some describe as middle class are now coming to the increasing realisation that they are indeed just workers and wage slaves.

Wage slaves in pin-striped suits

SOYMB has posted a few times on what defines a person as working class and we have questioned the validity of the claims of the existence of a so-called "middle-class". The TUC , that organisation made up of the gnarl-handed , cloth-capped , overall-wearing proletariat has just exposed the exploitation of the higher paid members of the working class.

The TUC has found that almost a million workers are spending hours every week on an activity that may give them no pleasure and certainly no reward.

Five million including professionals and managers in both the public and private sectors are working an average of seven hours a week without extra pay — and a million of them are working 48 hours a week or more, which the TUC called extreme. Last year people clocked up an average of seven hours and twelve minutes of unpaid overtime a week — worth £27.4 billion, or £5,402 each. Official figures show that 2.8 million people say they want more hours in their existing job or full-time work instead of their present part-time job.

According to the TUC almost half of all lawyers report working unpaid overtime, with 18 per cent of them working more than ten hours a week of unpaid overtime. The average number of unpaid hours a week worked by legal professionals is 16 hours.The legal profession has long had a reputation for excessively long working hours, with staff routinely working through the night in order to complete deals. Despite job cuts and a dearth of deals during the recession and job cuts across the profession, a culture of presenteeism is still prevalent.Long-hours and a high-stress culture meant that alcohol abuse was “endemic” in law firms and that the use of hard drugs was increasing, particularly in big City law firms.

Managers in finance and industry — including corporate managers, managers in service industries and business managers — who are working long unpaid hours, the average number of unpaid hours worked each week is 20 hrs .

Single women are the biggest group of people working unpaid overtime. More than a quarter of single women work extra hours, with 5.3 per cent working 18.5 unpaid hours a week on average. More than a fifth of single men and more than a fifth of married or cohabiting people with no children also work unpaid overtime.

The TUC said that nearly half a million managers would be willing to work fewer hours, even if it meant a pay cut, and that there was a mismatch between the hours that people want to work and the hours that they are getting.

Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, questioned the need for such long hours: “There has been a surprise increase in people doing ‘extreme’ unpaid overtime, with nearly 900,000 workers giving away 18 hours of free work a week last year,” he said. “There is no direct link between excess overtime and underemployment, but those people who are struggling to find enough or, indeed, any hours to work must be wondering why some workers are doing so much for free.”

Redundant Managers

SOYMB continues its series of past Socialist Standard articles that explores what it means to be working class and dispelling the myth that a middle class exists .

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 his 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 d £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 mangers do, and are not entitled to redundancy payment. This wangle is gradually being introduced onto the shop floor. 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 forcible 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.

VV Socialist Standard June 1981

Class Struggle - Ancient and Modern

SOYMB once more re-produces an article from the Socialist Standard revealing for us more on the concept of class.

"The history of all hitherto existing society", wrote Marx and Engels at the beginning of the 1848 Communist Manifesto, "is the history of class struggle." To which Engels added the qualification, in the English edition of 1888, "all written history" to take account of the fact that humans had originally and for many hundreds of thousands of years lived in classless communistic conditions. So Marx and Engels were saying that the history of society since the break-up of primitive communism has been one of class struggles.

But has it? Well, that depends what is meant by the term "class struggle". Certain historians, including some in the Marxist tradition, have understood this to mean struggles in which one or other of the contending groups recognises itself as a class and is consciously pursuing its interests. In other words, that class struggle has necessarily to involve an element of class consciousness. The drawback with this view is that class-conscious struggles have by no means been a permanent feature in all written history, thus negating the claim.

The Socialist Party, on the other hand, has always understood the class struggle to be a basic feature of any exploiting class society, whether or not those involved are aware of their historical role. The class struggle necessarily goes on whenever there is exploitation of one class by another; whenever, that is, part of what one section of society produces is appropriated by another section. It is the struggle between members of the two classes to maximise or minimise the amount appropriated.

The slaves who refuse to work hard and the slave owner who whips them are both engaged in the class struggle, even if neither consider they belong to one of two separate classes in society with antagonistic interests. So is the modern wage or salary earner who demands better working conditions, higher wages or shorter hours, or who resists having to work harder; or, indeed, who turns up late for work or takes days off. The class struggle—resistance to exploitation by the exploited class—is a daily, permanent feature in any class society.

One historian who has taken up this position is G.E.M. de Ste Croix of New College, Oxford, in his 500-page book The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981). This is how he puts it in chapter II:

“Class (essentially a relationship) is the collective social expression of the fact of exploitation, the way in which exploitation is embodied in a social structure. By exploitation I mean the appropriation of part of the product of the labour of others: in a commodity-producing society this is the appropriation of what Marx called ‘surplus value’. A class (a particular class) is a group of persons in a community identified by their position in the whole system of social production, defined above all according to their relationship (primarily in terms of degree of ownership or control); to the conditions of production (that is to say, the means and labour of production) and to other classes. . . The individuals constituting a given class may or may not be wholly or partly conscious of their own identity and common interests as a class, and they may or may not feel antagonism towards members of other classes as such...
...It is of the essence of a class society that one or more of the smaller classes in virtue of their control over the conditions of production (most commonly exercised through ownership of the means of production), will be able to exploit—that is, to appropriate a surplus at the expense of—the larger classes and thus constitute an economically and socially (and therefore probably also politically) superior class or classes.”

This is essentially the position we take up too, and why we say that class struggle is a permanent feature of any class society—governments continually seek to extract as much profit as they can from the wage and salary working class and workers resist in any ways they can, individually as well as collectively.

Applied to Ancient Greek society, this struggle over the level of exploitation went on mainly between slaves and slaveholders, but not exclusively. Ancient Greek and Roman society, it is important to realise, was not composed just of slaves and slaveholders; most people were in fact free (in the sense of not being owned by someone else) peasants who owned no slaves and lived by working on the small pieces of land they occupied.

At no time was the bulk of the wealth in ancient society produced by slave-Iabour, although Ste Croix estimates that in the early part of the period studied—which spans some 1300 years from the 8th century BC to the mid-7th century AD—the bulk of the wealth appropriated by the exploiting, propertied class was probably produced by slaves. As time went on, however—and this is the basic theme of his book—the propertied classes, identified by Ste Croix as those who had a sufficient income from their land owning so as not to have to take part in production themselves, came to more and more exploit the non-slave working population as well. This was done not by appropriating the product of their labour by virtue of being owners, but through rents (in money or kind} and taxes and through debt-bondage. By the end of the period under study virtually the whole working population of the Roman Empire (of which ancient Greece had been a part since the 2nd century BC) had the status of serfs, tied to the land and obliged to produce a surplus for their landlords; this included slaves, most of whom had by this time been settled on the land in small farms rather than working big estates in chain-gangs.

Since Ste Croix covers a period of 1300 years and an area comprising not just Greece proper but also modern Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt - then within the sphere of Greek culture - his book could not be a chronicle of events. It is rather a history of the relationships between the three classes of slaves, peasants and the land and slave-owning propertied class and of how these changes affected the general course of history.

He argues that the increasing exploitation of the non-slave working population arose because, at a certain point, slaves had to be bred rather than simply captured in wars and raids. As breeding was more costly, the propertied class sought to maintain their standard of living—that is, the amount of appropriated wealth on which they lived—by taking a greater surplus from non-slaves. Ste Croix speaks of

“the fall in the rate of exploitation of slave labour consequent upon the widespread extension of slave breeding, and also an increased exploitation of humble free men, as a material result of the fact that the propertied classes were determined to maintain their relatively high standard of life and had all the political control necessary to enable them to depress the condition of others.”


Thus did the class struggle—the struggle over the level of exploitation—determine the general trend of events in ancient Greek and Roman society and eventually led to its decline and replacement by a society based on serfdom rather than chattel-slavery.

Ste Croix's attitude to Christianity is refreshingly hostile. The Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its state religion in 313 AD and Ste Croix refuses to see this as an advance in civilisation, as we are taught, but regards it, if anything, as a regression. He points out that it introduced another layer of parasites—the bishops and higher clergy—who had to be maintained out of the labour of the working population, as well as instigating religious persecution (of other Christians regarded as heretics, rather than of pagans) which had not existed previously. Readers might find some of Ste Croix's comments here more in the rationalist than the Marxist tradition, but it should not be forgotten that Marx was an atheist and Jesus therefore an impossible bedfellow, whatever some might think.

But then, so is Mao. Which is why it is disconcerting to have to note that Ste Croix was a Maoist of some sort when he wrote his book. Just how a person capable of writing this excellent application of the materialist conception of history should at the same time have fallen for the ravings of a mad dictator like Mao is difficult to understand. For a start, why didn't he realise that his analysis of class and exploitation applied equally to Mao's China as to ancient Greece?

ADAM BUICK
(November 1988)

Poor Health for the Poor

A major review of health inequalities in England says people in the poorest neighbourhoods are likely to die seven years earlier than people in the richest areas - and a greater portion of those shorter lives will be spent unwell .

Professor Mike Kelly, of the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence said "We need to shift the emphasis away from medical interventions that treat existing illnesses to interventions to prevent those illnesses developing in the first place, but it needs political support and system change to make this happen..."

Indeed a change of system is what SOYMB would endorse.But we fear it is not quite the same as what the good doctor intends.This report indicates the real purpose of a national health service and the need for it to address problems - "inequality in illness accounts for £33bn of lost productivity every year." . It's costing capitalism money when the wage slaves cannot perform .

The Independent explains how plans to raise the retirement age to 68 will cause hardship for millions because three-quarters of people could be too ill to work. Yet the richest enjoy an extra 17 years of good health.

The previous Inquiry into Health Inequalities in England was published in 1998. However, the gap between rich and poor has not closed since then despite a range of policies aimed at tackling the problem. So no change which now leaves a fundamental change in the social system as the real solution .

SWP and the Middle Class

SOYMB recently posted about the middle class and by coincidence the SWP paper Socialist Worker similarly have an article on the subject . And as always with the SWP , truths mixed with confusionism .
" Some commentators and politicians say that changes in society make class meaningless...They claim that the people who work in these “white collar” jobs are middle class...This view of society has become mainstream – but it is wrong. Class is not about whether you do manual work or work in an office. It is not even about how much you earn. It is about where you stand in relation to how things are produced in society...Workers still have to sell their ability to labour to capitalists to survive, just as they did 100 years ago.Some workers may think they are middle class – but it’s not about what you think. Class is based on the reality of whether you own a workplace or have to work for a wage..."

And here the SPGB can only agree . But as usual with th SWP they then disingeniously add:

"Marx did, however, recognise that there is a middle class. It is smaller than the working class but bigger than the ruling class. The middle class have more control and autonomy over their working lives. This class – made up of doctors, headteachers, lower-level managers and small businesspeople – faces contradictory pressures. Their wealth and social position mean that they can buy into the system."

Engels gives a clearer meaning for the usage of the term "middle class":
"Firstly, that I have used the word Mittelklasse all along in the sense of the English word middle-class (or middle-classes, as is said almost always). Like the French word bourgeoisie it means the possessing class, specifically that possessing class which is differentiated from the so-called aristocracy" (our emphasis) - exactly just as SOYMB pointed out the word's origin here

But this “middle class” the SWP claim the existence of is said to be composed of higher-grade white collar workers and to make up between 10 and 20 percent of the workforce (The Changing Working Class by SWP leaders Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, p. 37). The reason given for excluding these people from the working class is that they exercise some degree of control over the use of the means of production and/or authority over other workers; in short, because they perform some managerial role ( similar to the Parecon co-ordinator class perhaps) . But to adopt this view is to abandon the relationship-to-the-means-of-production theory of class for one based on occupation. The SPGB have always maintained that, as far as the actual production of wealth is concerned, the capitalist class are redundant. They play no part in production, which is run from top to bottom by hired workers of one sort or another. This means that all jobs , including those concerned with managing production and/or disciplining other members of the working class, are performed by members of the working class. To exclude from the working class workers with no productive resources of their own who are paid, among other things, to exercise authority of behalf of the employing class over other workers is to give more importance to the job done i.e. their occupation than to the economic necessity of having to sell labour power for a wage or salary which for Marxists is the defining feature of the working class. Having to work for an employer was how Marx defined the working class. Of management he says :

"With the industrial capitalist, this labour of superintendence, which is “his”, is performed by workers delegated by him. These are the NCO’s of the workshop. It is in fact the overlookers and not the capitalists who perform the real labour of superintendence. The mechanical workshop is altogether characterised by these relations of subordination, regimentation, just as under the system of slavery the ruling mode of cooperation is slave-driving Negro slaves and working Negro slaves. It is labour for the exploitation of labour." (our emphasis)

It had been the experience of the 70s that forced the change in the SWP class theory. They found that the largest and longest-lasting of the rank-and-file groups they sponsored were not those for industrial workers but those for white collar groups such as teachers, council staff and lower level civil servants and indeed, they found that (apart from maybe university lecturers ! ) this was where most of their members came from.
This was a bit disturbing in terms of Tony Cliff’s 1966 perspective about a “new socialist movement” arising and that “its roots will be in the class struggle at the point of production”. What to do ? Revise the theory and extend the definition of the working class to include these groups. Harman and Callinicos were commissioned to write The Changing Working Class.

Of course they had no problem in doing so since such groups are indeed part of the working class, though their classification of which white-collar workers should fall into the working class and which should not (based on the degree of authority they are or aren’t able to exert over other workers) ended up being a bit tortuous .

The SWP was forced to make this shift towards recognising that most, if not all, white collar workers were fully-fledged workers and not middle class because they had to accommodate their average member . Any Marxist objectivity in class definition was secondary to their motives .

The "middle class" again

More than two-thirds of Britons now claim to be middle class, a Daily Telegraph poll has found.

66 per cent of voters now consider themselves to be middle class, while less than a third say that they are working class. The poll found that most people considered that those earning between £40,000 and £60,000 were middle class, with an annual salary of £20,000 or less deemed to be that of the working classes. An income of £100,000 a year is seen by a majority of voters as wealthy, those who earn at that level still consider themselves to be middle class.60 per cent disagree with the proposition that Britain is a fair country where all children have a broadly equal chance of doing well whatever their background. And despite 13 years of a Labour government, a higher proportion 45 per cent think Britain is actually a less fair country than it was in the 1990s.Around half thought the financial gap between rich and poor is too wide.

SOYMB have blogged previously on the issue of class identification.We argue that what class you are in is defined by the position in which you stand with regard to the means of production.The job you do and the status it might have, the pay you receive and how you chose to spent it, are irrelevant as long as you are dependent on working for a wage or salary in order to live.Others such as the self-employed – small shopkeepers, independent workers, professional people – whose income is derived from selling some service or other directly to the consumer rather than from selling their labour power to an employer, many of these can be assimilated, in terms of income, to the ordinary worker. The working class is defined socially as those members of capitalist society who are excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production and are therefore forced to get a living by trying to find an employer to buy their labour power.The capitalist class are those people who enjoy a privileged non-work income derived from the surplus value produced by the working class.

What this means is that essentially we are living in a two-class society of capitalists and workers. But what about the “middle class” ?

In the last century, the term was used by the up-and-coming industrial section of the capitalist class in Britain to describe themselves; they were the class between the landed aristocracy (who at that time dominated political power) and the working class. Eventually, however, the middle class of industrial capitalists replaced the landed aristocracy as the ruling class and the two classes merged into the capitalist class we know today. In other words, the 19th century middle class became part of the upper class and disappeared as a “middle class". The term, however, lived on and came to be applied to civil servants, teachers and other such white-collar workers. But there was no justification for this, as such people were clearly workers just as much obliged by economic necessity to sell their ability to work as were factory workers, miners, engine drivers and dockers. The only difference was the type of job they were employed to do – and a certain amount of snobbery attached to it.

The so-called "middle class" are as dependent on what their employer pays them as the working class are. It may be called a salary and come in the form of a monthly cheque rather than a weekly wage packet, but its recipients still need it in order to live. The overwhelming majority of the population are in the same boat, employed, paid a wage, needing to work for a living, at risk of losing their job, pushed around at work, working longer hours and doing less interesting work than they would wish. They shop in the same malls and supermarkets, use the same schools, hospitals and transport systems, are subject to the same laws and government regulations. Above all, they are seen by their employers as a means of creating profit rather than as human beings with feelings and family responsibilities.As far as socialists are concerned, anyone in this situation is a member of the working class, irrespective of their educational background or the accent they speak with.

Living in a larger house and running a couple of cars does not in itself raise someone into another class. Neither does earning a bigger wage. The roller-coaster of capitalism's economy has recently brought thousands of people in this country sharply up against the fact that there is more to it than that. Thousands who thought that taking out a mortgage on a house made them "middle class" were deprived of that delusion by the reality of re-possession. Thousands who assumed they were middle class because they sat in a manager's chair and drove a company car were forced to re-arrange their concepts about society when they got their redundancy notice.

Those who proclaim that "we're all middle class" are not stating a fact. They are putting forward a political programme. They want us to think that we are all just isolated classless individuals who can only improve our lot by our own individual efforts. It is an attempt to disarm the working class ideologically, to get us to give up the idea of collective struggle, whether on the industrial front or to replace capitalism with socialism. While governments continue to fail to solve social problems, while profits continue to be put before needs, while exploitation continues, the class war is not yet over.

The Suburban Poor

SOYMB's companion blog Socialist Courier recently posted a blog on class called Getting the Blues in Suburbia . It argued that "The fact that many people...live in better houses, do different work or earn more money than some others does not elevate them out of the working class."

SOYMB reads that in America "Suburban poverty rose 25 percent between 2000 and 2008, according to a new Brookings report, as poor suburban populations grew five times faster than their urban counterparts."

Americans may have to get used to the prospect of poor, jobless suburbs that could be just as intractable as the bombed-out inner cities ever were.
There are 1.5 million more poor people living in suburbs than in big cities.The suburban poor are people who have lived there all along and are grappling with job loss, reduced pay and a flailing economy where one unexpected expense can send them into a tailspin.
"This is the new poor who have never had a connection to a safety net before." Scott Allard, a professor at the University of Chicago's school of social service administration said.

What class are you in?

Chris Harman, one of the leaders of the SWP died last week. He had a mistaken idea of who the “working class” were.

What class you are in is defined by the position in which you stand with regard to the means of production. In capitalist society there are two basic classes: those who own and control the means of production and those who own no productive resources apart from their ability to work.

The working class in capitalist society is made up of all those who are obliged through economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. If this is your position then you are a member of the working class. The job you do and the status it might have, the pay you receive and how you chose to spent it, are irrelevant as long as you are dependent on working for a wage or salary in order to live.

In Britain over 90 percent of the population are members of the working class. Of the rest only about 2-3 per cent are members of the exploiting, capitalist class who enjoy a privileged non-work income derived from the surplus value produced by the working class over and above what they are paid as wages and salaries. The others are the self-employed – small shopkeepers, independent workers, professional people – whose income is derived from selling some service or other directly to the consumer rather than from selling their labour power to an employer. And many of these can be assimilated, in terms of income, to the ordinary worker.

What this means is that essentially we are living in a two-class society of capitalists and workers. But what about the “middle class”? The existence of such a middle class is one of the greatest myths of the twentieth century. In the last century, the term was used by the up-and-coming industrial section of the capitalist class in Britain to describe themselves; they were the class between the landed aristocracy (who at that time dominated political power) and the working class. Eventually, however, the middle class of industrial capitalists replaced the landed aristocracy as the ruling class and the two classes merged into the capitalist class we know today. In other words, the 19th century middle class became part of the upper class and disappeared as a “middle” class.

The term, however, lived on and came to be applied to civil servants, teachers and other such white-collar workers. But there was no justification for this, as such people were clearly workers just as much obliged by economic necessity to sell their ability to work as were factory workers, miners, engine drivers and dockers. The only difference was the type of job they were employed to do – and a certain amount of snobbery attached to it. .

It is not just the Daily Mail persists in believing that there is a middle class. So does the SWP which has come forward with a theory of the “new middle class”. This “class” is said to be composed of higher-grade white collar workers and to make up between 10 and 20 percent of the workforce (The Changing Working Class by SWP leaders Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, p. 37). The reason given for excluding these people from the working class is that they exercise some degree of control over the use of the means of production and/or authority over other workers; in short, because they perform some managerial role.

To adopt this view is to abandon the relationship-to-the-means-of-production theory of class for one based on occupation. Socialists have always maintained that, as far as the actual production of wealth is concerned, the capitalist class are redundant. They play no part in production, which is run from top to bottom by hired workers of one sort or another. This means that all job, including those concerned with managing production and/or disciplining other members of the working class, are performed by members of the working class. To exclude from the working class workers with no productive resources of their own who are paid, among other things, to exercise authority of behalf of the employing class over other workers is to give more importance to the job done (occupation) than to the economic necessity of having to sell labour power for a wage or salary which for Marxists is the defining feature of the working class.

Of course not everybody who receives an income in the form of a salary is necessarily a member of the working class. Some capitalists chose to manage their own businesses and pay themselves a “salary” for doing this. Although a part of this might correspond to the price of labour power (the part corresponding to what the capitalist would have to pay to hire a professional manager to do the same job), usually most of it is only a disguised way of distributing some of the surplus value at the expense of the other shareholders. What makes a salary-earner a member of the working class is not the mere receipt of a salary but being economically dependent on it for a living.

Having to work for an employer was not only how Marx defined the working class. It is also, and more importantly, the view of many workers who have never heard of Marx. When asked, as in a number of recent radio broadcasts, a surprising – and pleasing – number have replied that anyone who has to work for a living is a worker. Which makes them more sensible than both the Daily Mail and the SWP.

ALB

Is the working class still the agent of socialism?

G A Cohen departed this world on the 5th of August and one of his major works has been reviewed in the Socialist Standard which is worth a peruse

If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? By G A Cohen. Harvard University Press, 2001.

In 1978 Cohen wrote a basically sound (if tedious) book called Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. In this series of lectures given in 1997 but only published as a paperback last year he explains why he now thinks Marx was wrong after all.

He claims that Marx's agency for the socialist revolution was the "industrial" working class which would form the majority of the population but that this has not come about because of the rise of modern technology which has resulted in the "industrial" working class forming a shrinking proportion of the working population. However, Marx was well aware that the development of the division of labour and specialisation would lead to the development of a section of the working class not involved in direct factory work.

When workers are trained to perform certain tasks for example, they have to be taught and instructed, and this involves teachers and instructors. The teacher or instructor can teach or instruct inside the factory or outside it in a school or college. It is absurd to regard the teacher as an industrial worker when employed inside the factory but a "middle class" professional when employed in a school or a college. The function they perform is exactly the same and so also is their relationship to the means of production – they are still teaching or training future workers and they are still reliant on a wage or salary in order to survive.

As industry becomes more complex and as technology develops there is a need for an increasing army of educators, organisers, researchers and the like. As a result the proportion of "front line", factory workers shrinks. This change in the composition of the working population does not alter one iota their relationship to the productive wealth of society, nor does it alter the fact that it would be in their interest to overthrow capitalism. There is no justification for regarding factory workers as being exploited whilst teachers, lecturers, organisers, researchers, etc are able to escape this exploitation. It is true that most of these "white collar" workers would deny that they are being exploited but so also would most factory workers.

Cohen claims that workers in advanced industrial countries are no longer exploited (not that he defines what he means by exploitation). His claim is that exploitation now takes place in the factories and sweatshops of underdeveloped countries and that only these fit Marx's description of the industrial proletariat. However, he goes on, these again cannot be regarded as the agents of revolutionary change as they do not constitute the majority of the population in these countries because they are swamped in a sea of peasants. He does not pay any attention to the fact that the "exploitation" of his workers in the underdeveloped world has led to the undermining of the incomes of factory workers in the advanced countries.

He concludes from this that there is no hope of a revolutionary transformation of capitalist society and that only a development of altruistic attitudes can usher in a better and different world. He can only come to this pathetic conclusion by either ignoring or not understanding the capitalist system.

Most liberal political philosophers who claim to strive for "a just and equal society" view modern society as being stratified from top to bottom into different income and status groups ("social classes") and that it can only be a question of redistributing wealth more "fairly" within these groups. Other political philosophers see this as posing a potentially serious problem in that it could lead to a slacking of effort on the part of the top strata as this could affect their efficiency and effectiveness "in the pursuit of the general good". In other words, that there is still a need for some inequality in order to provide an incentive for those able and willing to take on demanding, responsible positions in society.

Volumes and volumes are written on this theme and writers like Cohen demonstrate their learning and cleverness by finding loopholes in each others' theories and developing their own irrelevant versions of the same. What they have to say and write has no bearing on what is happening in the real world. For the real world is not merely made up of a population stratified into different income groups. It is true that the working class can be divided into different income groups. But between these groups there is no direct opposition, tension and conflict – they are just groups of people having different characteristics in terms of income, education and status.

The real world is a world in which the population is divided into two main groups obtaining their incomes in distinct and completely different ways. One group obtains its income from the ownership of the productive wealth of the world and the other group obtains its income from the sale of its labour power to the owners of productive wealth. The first group has to attempt to continually increase the productive wealth its owns by continually revolutionising their productive techniques and by attempting to reduce or limit the income of the non-owners. To do this they have to accumulate as much wealth as possible under given market conditions. The whole system depends upon, and is defined by, this compulsive need of capitalists to accumulate wealth. To think that it is possible to intervene or halt this process through any system of redistribution of incomes – either through taxation or "rich" egalitarian political philosophers foregoing part of their incomes – is unrealistic nonsense. The social system such philosophers wish to reform bears no resemblance to the social system they conjure up in their analyses.

Nowhere is Cohen's pathetic position more clearly demonstrated than in his belief that he and his fellow philosophers are "rich". They are not rich even by comparison with other salary earners; when compared with the incomes of the capitalist class their incomes are pitiful. What is more, like most workers they have to consume their incomes in order to survive at the prevailing standards of comfort of their peers. The individual consumption of the capitalists, on the other hand, although often colossal when compared to the individual consumption of workers, is normally only a small proportion of their income as they are compelled to accumulate most of it in order to survive as capitalists.

Lewis Hopkin.

Class

A damning picture of an increasing dominance of top jobs by children from the wealthiest families emerged yesterday in a strongly worded repor , The Independent reports

The best-off 1 per cent of the population owned 21 per cent of the national wealth in 2003; the proportion in 1996 was 20 per cent. If housing is excluded, the proportion of Britain's wealth concentrated in the hands if the richest 1 per cent of citizens has jumped from 26 per cent to 34 per cent over the period.

Only seven per cent of youngsters are privately educated. But 75 per cent of judges, 70 per cent of finance directors, 55 per cent of solicitors, more than 50 per cent of top journalists and 45 per cent of senior civil servants are public-school products. Well-paid professional jobs continue to be passed down between the generations: doctors, lawyers, accountants and bankers typically grow up in families with incomes two-thirds higher than average. The typical professional of the future will come from the wealthiest 30 per cent of homes. In other words, the professional elite will become even more elitist.

"Access to the professions is becoming the preserve of those from a smaller and smaller part of the social spectrum.Access to university is extremely inequitable and the correlation between the chances of going to university and parental income has strengthened in recent years. Far too many young people who have the ability to go university are unable to do so because of their background.""

Some evidence may suggest, superficially, that we live in a society of greater equality. For example, we can accept that not so long ago “posh toffs” were people who played golf and went on motoring holidays, touring the Continent. Now, many people from all walks of life do these things. This shows that these pursuits have become relatively cheaper and that some working people are now able to enjoy them, but this in no way alters the economic relationships of production. It does not alter the economic, class relationship between capital and labour which dominates the way we live. At the point of production, the workers and their employers who may be sharing a golf course in their leisure time remain in a relationship of conflicting economic interests which, whilst it continues, must always condemn our society to the class divisions of strife and to the many ugly comparisons that we see of poverty amidst luxury. Class is a social relationship that invades and has a corrupting influence on every part of our lives.

Our lives and the quality of our society depend upon our relationships of production and on the services we can provide. An analysis using economic/class categories tells us who gets what from the pool of wealth that is made available and how a privileged class has accumulated great wealth and property; it therefore explains the great social differences that we see about us.The traditional division between ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’ implies that there is a conflict between these two groups, with the middle class being better paid, educated and housed, often at the expense of the working class.Emphasising divisions among workers suggests that they have different interests and statuses rather than stressing what they all have in common. It suggests that removing inequality is about people climbing upwards the social ladder and so doing better than their parents, rather than overturning the whole system. We note, however, that members of the so-called middle class are as dependent on what their employer pays them as the so-called working class are. It may be called a salary and come in the form of a monthly cheque rather than a weekly wage packet, but its recipients still need it in order to live. From this point of view, in fact, the overwhelming majority of the population are in the same boat: employed, paid a wage, needing to work for a living, at risk of losing their job, pushed around at work, working longer hours and doing less interesting work than they would wish. They shop in the same malls and supermarkets, use the same schools, hospitals and transport systems, are subject to the same laws and government regulations. Above all, they are seen by their employers as a means of creating profit rather than as human beings with feelings and family responsibilities. As far as socialists are concerned, anyone in this situation is a member of the working class, irrespective of their educational background or the accent they speak with.


Over decades, millions of workers the world over have invested their hopes in so-called ‘practical’, ‘possibilist’ organisations like the Labour Party and well meaning individuals such as Milburn yet they turned out to be the real ‘impossibilists’ – demanding an unattainable humanised capitalism – is one of the greatest tragedies of the last century, made all the greater because it was so utterly predictable.

Class society is both morally and materially indefensible. It need not linger on and on as part of an outdated system. An ethical society would be one in which all people would live their lives, free from the disadvantages of under privilege and class injustice. To live in a classless society would be in the interests of all its members. Freedom for every person to develop their skills and talents on equal terms could benefit everyone. Equality has the potential to enrich all our lives and would be a basis for a true community of shared interests.