Letter – Wage labour as poverty

In your Questions of the Day you state: “Under capitalism the workers are, in the strictest sense, poor, that is, they lack the means to afford the best that is available”. The Socialist Standard similarly refers constantly to ‘poverty’ — see April 1975 headline, “The poor including the unemployed, including the old, are still here”. This use of the term ‘poor’ indicates that the SPGB accept as real all the multifarious ‘problems’ chewed over and half digested by hole-and-corner reformists of every hue; that it is interested in alleviating ‘poverty’ and is therefore a reformist party, or on the road to becoming one, which merely lacks the facilities of the Child Poverty Action Group.

If the SPGB doubts this then they must answer the following questions. If by ‘poverty’ they mean wage-labour then is it not misleading — in the sense that concerns the amount of use-values consumed by the worker — and redundant, since workers are exploited by the wage form whether they enjoy their” use values or not? What alternative meaning can be given to the word ‘poverty’ which does not imply: (a) a moralistic concern for distributive justice; (b) an amelioration of the condition of only a few workers, the rest not being in ‘poverty’; and (c) ‘social engineering’ a la Webbs? Could the SPGB please give me a clear definition of ‘poverty’, nay more, of the poverty-line income? If they could they may like to send a copy to the Fabians, whose members have a hard time thinking up an ‘objective’ one. In fact I shall wager that the SPGB cannot give me a definition which is not vague, redundant or circular.

Mike Mansfield (Sheffield)

Reply
Had our correspondent read to the end of the Questions of the Day chapter quoted, our position would be clearer. Here we state: “A little thought will show how capitalism, besides ensuring that workers stay poor, needs them to be poor. If they could get a living without having to sell their mental and physical energies to the capitalists, then the system could not function for who would do the work? By ‘poor’ we do not mean ‘destitute’ though this is an extreme form of poverty.” We go on to point out that “What is called the housing problem is really but an aspect of the poverty problem or, what is the same thing — since it is the other side of the coin — the class monopoly of the means of production.” (page 7).

Government statisticians class as ‘poor’ families whose net income, less housing and work expenses, is less than 20 per cent over the Supplementary Benefit rate; five million British families, or 15 per cent of the population, fall into this category. We, on the other hand, use the word to describe the condition of all wage and salary earners, irrespective of individual levels of income and consumption. Workers are poor as a class because they do not own the means of production and cannot therefore afford the best that is available; indeed, we receive today a smaller percentage of the total wealth than our nineteenth-century counterparts. Reformism cannot affect this fundamental feature of the capitalist system.

Finally, were we to accept our correspondent’s logic, the use of the word ‘rich’ to describe the exploiting class would be unnecessary. Perhaps if we called the workers not rich and the capitalists not poor, he would be not unhappy.

Editors