Is that my bottle of Scotch Private Walker?

 

If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street;
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark —
Brandy for the Parson,
Baccy for the Clerk;
Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling,
While the Gentlemen go by!

‘A Smuggler’s Song’ Rudyard Kipling

The Government's new job creation scheme is starting to pay dividends. Particularly during the war years in Britain of the nineteen forties, a ‘Spiv’ was someone who could supply difficult to obtain items due to rationing or other government restrictions. This was known as the black market.

Del Boys everywhere are encouraged by the economic conditions created by the Executive Committee which runs the UK on Capitalism’s behalf.

Thanks then are due on behalf of spivs everywhere as the opportunities to expand the black market have risen dramatically.

Now, not just tobacco alcohol and fake ‘designer’ commodities are available to the discerning, and poor, consumer but food also has dramatically increased increased the black market possibilities.

Now it’s not so much, ‘it fell off the back of a lorry, rather, it got nicked from the supermarket or wherever. Capitalism it should be noted is not in favour of this form of private enterprise – profits are sacred don’t you know!

In 2024, going on from 2023, in the sixth or seventh largest economy in the world, everyday affordable living necessities are increasingly needed from alternative sources.

The Guardian reports that; ‘Meat, cheese and confectionery are among the items being stolen in large quantities from shops and lorries in order to be sold to people hit by the cost of living crisis.

With food prices rising, figures in policing, retail and academia said action was needed to stop people exploiting the rising demand for stolen food.

With bated breath the hard pressed population awaits the head god botherer’s dire admonishment that the eighth commandment shall be adhered to even if you and your family have to starve to keep it.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/22/britons-increasingly-turning-to-food-black-market-experts-say

The majority’s new year’s resolution for 2024 should be to finally come together and put an end to the exploitative system which is Capitalism. There are many unnecessary jobs which only exist to help perpetuate the system which will be binned under Socialism. Spivving is one of them.

Editorial from the July 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many who are vaguely sympathetic towards Socialism complain that they cannot see what basic difference there is between the S.P.G.B. and the organisations which seek to reform the capitalist system. They think we are exaggerating when we say that there is a fundamental similarity between the admirers of capitalism and the reformists which separates both from the Marxist. A glance at a topical problem, the “black market,” will show that there is no exaggeration in our claim, for both the admirers of capitalism and the reformists believe that it is possible to retain the basis of the capitalist social system and yet to change its operations and the conduct of the human beings who live under it, by means of Acts of Parliament and appeals to goodwill.

When the war began we were told by those who claimed to know that there would be no “profiteering” in this war. Socialists smiled and were disbelieving, knowing that a system built on a foundation of private ownership and profit-making will go on producing its evil results whether in peace or war. We smiled again when the News-Chronicle, nearly two years after the war began, said “the days of, the profiteers in clothing and other necessities of life are numbered” (News-Chronicle, July 25th, 1941). We were not impressed with the story that the capitalist thistle would suddenly produce a crop of social figs because of the appointment of “34 Board of Trade inspectors” who were going to track down the “profiteers.” Nor were we mistaken….

The following extracts are from articles in the Sunday Express (June 14th, 1942) : 

“The racketeers are using the existing shortage of supplies as a suitable occasion to corner stocks of many commodities and re-sell them for big profits. . . . One of the biggest profiteering ramps to-day is the whisky racket. . . . The furniture profiteering ramp to defeat both income tax and maximum controlled prices is worked in this way: A small manufacturing firm sells to the “boss” for absurdly low prices. The furniture is installed in a luxury apartment and resold at prices often 300 per cent. above those paid, and the profits are shared out. Jewellery, furs, silk stockings and underclothing are sold for cash in £1 notes in the West End by racketeers, who do not ask for coupons. Cosmetics and beauty preparations, too, can be bought in any quantity for cash.”

Lastly, there is the Judge sentencing some men charged with frauds in connection with corporation contracts who said : —

“This corruption will either be cut out of commercial life or it will destroy the State.” (“Daily Mail,” June 20th, 1942)

A pretty black picture. But, retorts the reformer, make the penalties more severe, copy Russia and Germany and introduce the death penalty, then it will cease. How little they know of that “human nature” they so often talk about. The history of capitalism has demonstrated beyond refutation that given the opportunity (the ownership of goods for sale and a ready market) and given the motive (big and quick profits) nothing will stop illicit deals in one form or another, from robbery and smuggling to black marketeering, and to the numerous operations that can be conducted just on the borderline of legality. The severity of the penalty may to a degree restrict, but it will never stamp out such deals, for operators will always be found who will discount the risk. Even within the limited sphere of keeping the number of such transactions to a comparatively moderate total, experience has proved that it is not the severity of the penalty but the small chance of escaping detection that is alone effective. Otherwise the intending law breaker always hopes that he will not be caught. This was the lesson of the Factory Acts, of the legal minimum wage of agricultural workers, and of income tax evasion. What alone made any impression was not the size of the penalty imposed on law breakers who were caught but the appointment of sufficient inspectors and the use of other means of convincing the offenders that their chances of escaping discovery were small. Even so, most legislation of such a nature is largely a dead letter. The capitalist basis which provides opportunity and motive still prevails against the puny efforts by law or pious resolution to make a competitive system work for the social good.

So much for those who hope to change by Act of Parliament the conduct of people living under capitalism as its exists to-day. But almost equally foolish are the Labour Party and I.L.P. reformists who believe that they can retain the capitalist or State-capitalist basis, with its rich and poor (but with the degree of inequality lessened), with its production of goods for sale, its property incomes and profit-making, and its whole paraphernalia of money, bonds and banks, and can yet persuade or compel capitalists and workers to desist from conduct which flows naturally from a two-class, private property social system, and go over to conduct appropriate to a social system based on human needs alone.

The present spectacle of the “profiteers” and racketeers and the comparative futility of the efforts to stamp them out should be a warning to all who believe that capitalism can be reformed. Socialists take their stand on the very different principle that only by a fundamental change in the basis of society, from private ownership to the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution will human conduct likewise change. It is to the economic foundation, not to the legal and ethical superstructure of society, that attention needs to be directed.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/07/editorial-human-nature-black-market-and.html