1960s >> 1963 >> no-704-april-1963

The Mormons who trekked across America to settle in what is now the State of Utah were driven and inspired by the visions of their leader, Brigham Young. Whatever setbacks they encountered, whatever hardships they endured, Young could always turn up the answer in a session with the Almighty. These were always enough to still the Mormons’ doubts so that the weary journey to the Promised Land could continue.

In some ways, this is what happens in capitalism. For as long as any of us can remember the leaders of the system have said that they are conducting us on a glorious pilgrimage to a Promised Land. Sometimes they tell us that we have almost come to the end of the road and that the lush, temperate valleys are only just over the next hill. Sometimes they tell us that we have run into trouble—hostile natives are about, or the undergrowth is too thick for penetration, or the weather is unco-operative. At such times they are not above trying to dream up a few visions themselves and although these are not usually like those of Brigham Young, it is true that capitalism’s leaders like us to think that God looks upon them with a kindly eye. Whatever the difficulties of our journey, though, they assure us that we must not despair. The Promised Land is never far away. Everybody is so busy listening to these soothing assurances that they do not seem to notice that we sometimes travel in the opposite direction to what was supposed to be, only a short time before, the quickest way to the Promised Land. They never notice that all the leaders’ visions turn out to be false. And most of all they never notice that, no matter how hard and how fast we travel, we never arrive.

All the capitalist political parties are in on this. The Tories try to comfort us with the promise that they alone know the way and have provided for every need of the trek. The Labour Party try to take over the head of the column and to tempt us with visions which they say are better and brighter than their opponents. The Liberals murmur that their way is the smoothest and safest of all. At election time this propaganda is particularly loud. But it goes on all the time, because the more noise the leaders kick up, the more officiously they shuffle their maps and peer into the horizon, the less chance there is of the rest of the travellers asking questions about the direction and length of the journey. Capitalism, in other words, can never be what its leaders promise for it. but it must always pretend to be doing something about its own shortcomings.

Recently, for example, Lord Hailsham had a vision about the Promised Land. This aristocrat, as we all know, is stuck with the task of explaining to hundreds of thousands of workers why their trek has come to a halt until they have settled the little difficulty of finding a job. Hailsham has had to visit one of the areas of high unemployment in this country; yet he can still radiate as much confidence as anyone about the Promised Land. But he has had to admit that the journey might be running a little behind schedule. Speaking in February last to a rally of Tory women, he said:

“The recession has given us the power, possibly for the first time since the war, and the breakdown in the Common Market talks has given us the spur, of beginning the construction of the Britain we want to see in thirty years’ time—the Britain we must see if in the twenty-first century, to which we must begin to look, we are to see Britain as a national community holding her head appropriately high among the peoples of the earth.”

This is a rather strange vision, even from one of the Tories’ favourite visionaries. For if it only needed a recession to give us the spur to build a better world —postponed now, of course, for thirty years—why do governments always try to resist slumps? And if a slump is now the way to prosperity, what way was envisaged in the other, earlier, promises? What, for example, inspired Mr. Butler’s vision of a few years ago of doubling our standard of living in twenty-five years? And has this vision faded, now, in the glare of Hailsham’s revelations of the twenty-first century?

Eyewash
Hailsham was, of course, dishing out the purest eyewash. A recession does not provide the economic power for a new leap forward; it is not a sort of purifying fire. Not only old, inefficient companies go under in a slump; the new, smart outfits also die. Capitalism goes up and down as its markets dictate; there is no depth of a slump at which anyone can say that the economy has got its second wind and that things have got bad enough for them to start getting better. In previous slumps, no end of experts have had their forecasts of impending recovery upset by the depression inexorably getting worse. Does Hailsham realise this? He probably does. But to have said so would have spoiled the vision, so not a word was breathed of it. Ladies and gentlemen, the journey to the Promised Land drags on—at least for the next thirty years.

Not only the Tories have their visions. Mr. Harold Wilson is having one or two himself lately, as he tries to elbow his way to the front of the column. Mr. Wilson complains that the trek is being hindered by the lack of scientists in this country and that if only we could keep them all here it would not be long before we were standing on the brow of the last hill, with the fertile plains spread out at our feet. This is how The Guardian reported part of Mr. Wilson’s first political broadcast as leader of the Labour Party:

“The steady drain of some of Britain’s best scientists to jobs overseas, said Mr. Wilson, was something the country could not afford and was going on because Britain did not make enough use of scientists here. “Far too many of our scientists are frustrated. They don’t have the equipment they need. They are trying to do research on a shoestring. Private industry spends getting on for three times as much on advertising as it does on scientific research. Perhaps if the ratio were the other way round we would be forging ahead in the world.”

He said that on February 27th last. But he ignored the fact that some of the eminent scientists now working in Britain originally came from abroad. He did not say whether his desire to keep British scientists in Britain also meant, for example, sending Sir Solly Zuckerman back to South Africa or Sir Howard Florey back to Australia, so that those countries could also do their bit of “forging ahead.” Inconvenient facts are no part of glorious visions of mythical capitalist prosperity.

They never were. The Promised Land has always been the sop with which working class unrest has been stifled, this is the Morning Post of April 5th, 1929, reporting a speech on unemployment by Mr. Baldwin:

“If we have not conquered unemployment, we are in process of conquering it, and if there is no great disturbance shall complete its conquest. . . .”

And this is the report of the Daily Mail of May 15th, 1929, of what Cabinet Minister Sir William Joynson Hicks had to say on the same subject:

“There are now unmistakable signs of returning prosperity. Four years of wise and prudent administration are at last bringing their reward, and we are now definitely climbing out of the trough of industrial depression. . . .”

We all know what these speeches were worth. We know that despite the fine words the unemployment figures kept climbing and the extreme hardship of the working class got deeper and harsher. We know that the vision of the Promised Land duped the workers in the ’Thirties and then faded in the flames of the 1939 War. The war was itseif an excuse for yet another vision of peace and prosperity which was to come out of the hardships endured in the defeating of German capitalism. Now the wartime visions have disappeared, to be replaced by others. And the working class are still being duped.

Perhaps one of the things which helps in this is the fact that many workers today have the things which, before the last war, were essential scenery in the Promised Land. Of all the households in this country, about 33 per cent. run a car; 46 per cent. have a washing machine; 82 per cent. have a television set. Only rich people had these things before the war; now they are wider spread. Does this mean, as the politicians claim, that the working class are prosperous? It is true that working class conditions change— they could hardly stand still — as productive techniques develop. But this is not to say that these conditions improve. The conditions and standards of the unemployed workers in the Thirties were different, and technically higher, than those of the Regency aristocrats; but who were the better off?

Needs
It is in this perspective that we must look at working class conditions today. The radio industry was bound to make a lot of television sets after the war and was equally bound to want to sell them as widely as possible. This means that the workers who once queued up to see poor films at their local cinema can now enjoy the same sort of drivel without leaving their own armchairs. People who once kept hiking and cycling clubs in a healthy condition can now jump into their cheap cars and drive straight to the nearest traffic jam, to pass the time breathing in the exhaust fumes of other cheap cars. Working class wives often need a washing machine because they have so little time to do the job the old way; a lot of their day is spent at work, earning the money to pay for the washing machine. If this is the Promised Land, was it worth the journey?

Let us spell it out simply. There are two types of people living under capitalism. One type owns land, factories, steamships, and so on, and gets enough– and often very much more than enough- from these to live. The other type— there are a lot of people like this—do not own any of these things and to live they have to find somebody to employ them. This second type is the working class and it is they who take all the knocks which capitalism dishes out. They are the people who in the best of times must struggle to balance their budget and who in a slump can descend to a dreadfully low level. They are the people who suffer the strain of an insecure existence. So they are the people who may get impatient with capitalism; they are the people who must be distracted with the politicians’ visions of the Promised Land.

We all know the famous saying that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. But for the working class there is no arrival, because there is no end to their journey in capitalism, so they must travel without hope. Until, that is, they see through the whole shabby ruse and do something about it.

IVAN