The Family Car

This is a sad and true story. A young man buys a second hand car and, eager to show it off, packs in his family and takes them for a spin. The car is old, that is obvious. What is not so apparent is that it is dangerous—lethal, in fact. The exhaust pipe, wired to the rear axle, is badly split. There are rust holes in the floor. Carbon monoxide seeps from the broken pipe, through the rotten floor and quietly kills the family’s baby son.

A scandal, you say. The seller, or the buyer, or somebody, ought to be in gaol. But you’re missing the point. That car was bought and sold at a time when workers in the British car industry are being sacked or put on short time because the owners of the industry cannot fined sufficient markets for their goods. Why should a man buy an ancient concentrate of rust when thousands of shiny new models are being stockpiled, just waiting for owners? Simple answer: because he can’t afford a new car: a safe car.

Then why doesn’t he wait until he can, and use other methods of transport meanwhile? Perhaps housing difficulties have forced him to live out on one of the new estates, a long way from his workplace and relying on a poor public transport service. Perhaps he believed all the talk about the affluent society and decided to get in on a little of it himself. Perhaps he simply fell for the advertising line that a car denotes status, gets you the job, the girl, the smiles of the passers by. Perhaps he knew that not to own a car now almost indicates that you are either fabulously wealthy and eccentric (all his mates know that he isn’t), or that you are practically down and out.

Yes, you’ve missed the point. The profit making basis of capitalist society means that we must deliberately turn out inferior goods—like cars—because the vast majority of people can only afford something very much less than the best. The working class have to live with the second or third hand because their purchasing power is not sufficient for them to acquire the first class stuff.

Sadly, rather than face this fact, many workers take refuge in a life of putting on the style. And if the style demands a car, it sometimes does not matter that it is an old and dangerous one.

This is a typical result of our capitalist world. But we can do better than this. We can co-operate to produce things of the highest quality and workmanship—and have them freely available to all human beings. We can have a world in which we tackle problems like transport congestion in a humane fashion; a world which is not cluttered up with articles which do nothing to enhance our happiness and welfare.

Which was more precious—the dead child, or the rust-embellished heap of a car? Which do you choose–Socialism or Capitalism? In a way, the two questions are almost the same.

JACK LAW