The Iron Lady, film as a hit job

     I was reading an article about Margaret Thatcher by John O'Sullivan when I encountered his description of her visit to Poland in 1988. He writes that as she left the port of Gdansk in a small boat, Polish workers dipped seawards the huge shipyard cranes in her honour (link). Then I thought, what a scene for a film! Yet I remembered that there was no such scene in The Iron Lady, the 2011 film about Thatcher's life.

     When I first saw the film I said to myself 'That was a hit job'. Certainly, if Meryl Streep was to play the character of Margaret Thatcher and if the project had financial support from the British Film Council, it was very likely that the picture would not be favourable. On seeing it again I confirm my first impression but now I see how skillfully it has been done. Instead of the too obvious hatchet they used a thin dagger.

     Many found it odd that director Phyllida Lloyd chose to portray The Iron Lady at the time she was still living and suffering from dementia. Indeed, a doctor with no political sympathies to Margaret Thatcher wrote an article in a leading British newspaper (The Telegraph, link), saying that the film was 'despicable' and made the public 'voyeurs' of the mental decline of an old woman when she was still alive and ill. He wrote 'as a doctor, I have direct experience of the reality of dementia for the sufferer and their family....As I watched scene after scene showing this once all-powerful woman as old, bewildered and scared, my discomfort turned to rage'.

     Nevertheless, by choosing to portray Thatcher's dementia the director could show, not an Iron Lady but a woman who does not know what is real and what is not, someone isolated who rigidly repeats stale phrases and clings to the past. In short, we see Margaret Thatcher as their enemies like to see her.

     From Thatcher's old age and dementia the film makes flashbacks to her youth and time as a Prime Minister. We see young Margaret looking wistfully as three girls pass by and make fun of her. They go to the cinema while she is sweeping the pavement in front of the family store. She looks at the girl's jewels, nice shoes and stockings (minute 09.11). The scene is repeated later in the film when Margaret is already Prime Minister and overhears members of her cabinet murmuring about her. That makes her flash back to the scene that apparently still haunts her when girls derided her for not going to the cinema. 

     In fact anyone who has read Thatcher's memoirs knows that as a young woman she frecuently enjoyed going with friends to the cinema (The Path to Power ps. 14-15). She even mentions that she liked musicals by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as well as the films of Alexander Korda. She listed a number of other films and added that she liked actors Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon, James Stewart, Robert Donat, and Charles Boyer. Thatcher's biographer Charles Moore cites many letters that she wrote in her youth that refer to films she saw with friends. In spite of all that those who made the The Iron Lady chose to show Thatcher as a woman marked by her early experience of seeing other girls go to the cinema while she swept the pavement.

     The thin dagger is put to work again in a scene where Thatcher preaches austerity to her cabinet ‒'we have to cut spending'‒ while some underling sews jewels to her magnificent dress. The camera comes and goes between the jewels and Thatcher's argument with her ministers. That is clever, the film does not tell you that Thatcher was hypocritical, you see that with your own eyes.

     That scene was duly prepared by another one taking place in Parliament where the leader of the opposition, Michael Foot, piles data and statistics about 'the biggest collapse of industrial production since 1921' and that Thatcher's 'free-market policy ensures that the rich get richer and the poor are irrelevant' (59.12). The camera shows the Primer Minister bored and unconcerned about all that. When cabinet members join the criticism privately and tell her that there is the perception that the government is 'out of touch with the country', that 'people can't pay their mortgages', 'industry is practically on its knees', and 'honest, hard-working people are losing their homes' (1.01.00). Thatcher's answer is that she knows the price of butter and margarine. All the while we see that Thatcher is having jewels sewn to her dress.

     Apart from hypocricy, the point is to portray Thatcher as a simple minded woman, not much different from a poorly educated housewife in her political notions, someone who thinks that she can dismiss statistics because she knows the price of margarine. Then we can forget that she had two degrees ‒chemistry and law‒ that she worked in both those fields, and read, among many others, the works of Lord Macaulay, Churchill, and Hayek ‒a trio that provides excellent instruction to any statesman. Moreover, Thatcher had the advice of brilliant men, among others Keith Joseph, to whom she dedicated her authobiographical book The Path to Power. It is also worth mentioning Shirley Robin Letwin, who worked for Thatcher and wrote a insightful book about The Anathomy of Thatcherism.

    However, it is when it comes to Thatcher's personal motives that the film turns really brutal. For the job they chose none other than her husband Denis. Again, that was clever as we must assume that nobody knew Margaret Thatcher's motives better than her husband. Although there is no evidence for it, Denis is shown as a cynical critic of his wife, dismissive of any higher purpose for her actions in cutting remarks sprinkled throughout the film.

     There is a scene in which Margaret announces she will enter the competition for leader of the opposition and says that she probably will lose but had to do it as a duty to force the party to reaffirm its principles. Denis interrups her and in anger says 'Don't call it duty. It's ambition that's gotten you this far' (40.00).

     A few seconds later in that scene, Thatcher's daughter Carol is added in support of the same sordid view. Carol was about to take her test for a driving licence ‒for which her mother has prepared her‒ and on hearing that she plans to run for the positon of leader of the opposition she storms away protesting that her mother is more concerned about her own political career than on her daughter's approaching test. In truth, Carol Thatcher has always been a self reliant woman ‒she is a journalist and a keen traveller but was not afraid of working as waitress. It is very unlikely that she made such a scene about her driver's licence test.

     Nor is it likely that Denis was so cynical about her wife's aims. In Carol Thatcher's autobiographical book A Swim-on Part in the Goldfish Bowl she writes that the only time she saw her father cry was when his wife resigned as Prime Minister. Both Carol and Denis carried on with their lives without carping about the failure of the head of government to minister to their personal needs. They were not such wimps.

     Unconcerned with truth, the creators of the film inserted scenes where Denis, already dead, appears as a ghost to chastise his wife. When she remembers the victory in the Falkland's war Denis mocks her jingoism (?) making clowinsh gestures and donning a paper hat with the Union Jack. Then he, or rather his ghost, blows a paper trumpet and tells her 'Gotcha! Well, that paid off, old girl! Your ratings have soared from the most hated Prime Minister of all time to the nation's darling!' (1.18.37). Did Denis think that the war was a stunt to increase her wife's popularity? For all we know, that was very unlikely. The film would have been more honest if such view had been put in the mouth of those who really thought that sending a task force to the Falklands was meant to “pay off” raising the image of the Prime Minister. There were some Britons, but not many, who held that opinion.

     In another scene Denis's spectre is made to visit Margaret to blame her for neglecting him. The spectre tells Margaret that she was so self-centered that probably had to ask their house maid to discover that Denis had travelled to South Africa to recover his health. He says 'Too busy climbing the greasy pole, MT' (40.29).

     Denis's death is covered in a scene in which, in Margaret's imagination, he abandons her. When she asks him not to leave ‒'I don't want to be on my own'‒, he retorts 'You will be fine on your own, you always have been.' (1.35.00). If her own husband reveals to the audience that she was pure ambition and no heart, we have to believe it don't we?

     Then there is the issue with tea cups. At the beginning of the film Margaret opens a letter and full of emotion tells her parents that she won a place at Oxford. Her mother does not congratulate her, refuses even to look at the letter, says that her hands are still damp, and returns to wash cups in the kitchen. One wonders whether that was true, and if so why there were no rags in the Roberts family home that could be used to dry one's hands.

     Certainly many of the scenes in the film are of a kind that make it impossible to ascertain how close or how far they are from the truth. According to a friend of the family (link), both Mark and Carol Thatcher thought that the film is an appalling left-wing fantasy but decided no to speak publicly for fear of giving it more publicity.

     Tea cups turn up again when Denis proposes marriage to Margaret (26.00). She happily accepts but warns him that she 'will never be one of those women...remote and alone in the kitchen doing the washing up...One's life must matter, Denis...I cannot die washing a tea cup'. Then in the last scene in the film, Margaret Thatcher is shown old, alone, washing a tea cup. The final defeat.

     I cannot fathom how some people reviewed the film and claimed that it showed sympathy for Margaret Thatcher. Certanly there is no open attack on her, apart from showing the images of protests, the diatribe by Michael Foot, the critical choir in her cabinet, and above all the cynical remarks that the film puts in Denis's mouth. But even that last stab, though cruel, is not so serious as it is less credible. It is with images and scenes that the film makes its most effective attacks. So they lead people to find 'their own' conclusions. Thatcher haunted by the memory of her humiliation by other girls ‒resentful woman‒, Thatcher repeating set phrases again and again ‒simpleton woman‒, Thatcher preaching austerity and having jewels sewn to her dress ‒hypocritical, detached from reality.

     Be it as it may, does the film still matter, or even Margaret Thatcher? I think they do matter. The fight between new Tory leaders and a party bureacracy bent on administering decay still rages on. Leaks to the press are still used as against Thatcher, and today perhaps even more effectively. Besides, the portrait made in a film reaches more people than books. And as the left as always understood, the way a country sees its past is never irrelevant.

Marx's two concessions to subjective economic value

    Karl Marx added two qualifications to a pure theory of labour as the only source of value. In both he admitted the role of individual preferences. Nevertheless Marx failed to see the implications of those concessions. I will try to show that both, which are meant to rescue the theory from obvious objections, amount in fact to a recognition that his theory is wrong.

    Marx adopted the theory of value ready made by Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo. They had just assumed without much discussion that human labour is the only source of economic value. However, Smith never followed the theory strictly, Ricardo admited exceptions, and Malthus later rejected it altogether. The modern theory that we know under the not entirely satisfactory names of marginalist or subjective, came just when Marx had given the final touches to his theory, and apparently he never took notice of it.

    Marx adopted the labour theory of value with a dogmatism that was absent in his predecesors. Such theory must have looked attractive to Marx for two reasons. Hours of labour can be counted, thus seem proper in a theory that boasted of its scientific precision. They are not capricious as individual preferences seem to be. And on the political side, the labour theory of value gave Marx the basis on which he built his theory of capitalist exploitation.

    Nevertheless, and in spite of those great advantages, Marx soon found that there are obvious objections to the idea that labour is the only source of economic value.

The first qualification

    First of all, it is patent that there is no simple relation between hours spent working on an object and its value. If one worker spends three hours to make a chair and another finishes exactly the same chair in just an hour, both chairs will have the same value. No buyer will pay more for the same chair by being informed that one has taken more time to be made. So Marx added a qualification to the simple theory: it is not just hours of labour but the amount of labour that is “socially necessary” taking into account available technology and average skill.

    Marx wrote in the first chapter of the first volume of Capital: “The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time” (Capital p. 29, I will cite the translation that can be downloaded for free at marxists.org here)

    Although such qualification allowed Marx to get rid of the obstacle, it should have led him to ponder about the source of the objection. Why is that two identical goods will have identical value regardless of the different amount of time spent in making each of them? It is a pity that Marx did not stop to consider such question. The obvious answer is that they have the same value because they have the same utility for the buyer —but that would have lead him to the real source of value.

    Marx contented himself with such qualification and went on. However, there appeared a second objection, this one even more damning, an obstacle that should have led Marx to abandon his theory altogether instead of trying to prop it up with a second qualification.

The second qualification

Say some company makes a new car and that they employ the amount of labour “socially necessary”. Nevertheless, for whatever reasons the public dislikes the car. It will not sell at a price that rewards the company for the “socially necessary” labour employed in making it. Yet Marx had assured us that “The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the labour time necessary for the production of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other. As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour time” (p. 29). After reading that, an adviser to the car company comes with an idea: we should advertise the fact that our factory uses the amount of labour “socially necessary” according to the average skill prevalent in industry. Our car has the same congealed labour-time than that of the competition.

    As we know, that won't help a bit.

    To parry this obvious objection to his theory Marx was forced to add a second qualification. It is not enough to produce a good according to the labour time necessary, so he writes “nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it, the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value” (p. 30). Marx avoids mentioning people but it is clear that utility is always utility to somebody, as judged by that somebody. At this point Marx could have discarded the theory he received as a legacy from Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo and could have formulated a better one, that value comes from the utility that goods provide to individuals, and that such utility must be acknowledged by them (rightly or wrongly), otherwise it will have no economic relevance.

    Nevertheless, Marx clinged on to the old school. He considered himself a serious scientist and was used to counting average labour hours. Individual choices seemed too frivolous. He also considered himself a revolutionary and by ditching the old theory of value he would have lost the basis for his theory of capitalist exploitation.

    Now and then Marx provided hints that should have led anyone, including him, to recognize his error. About manufactures he wrote “the product must be not only useful, but useful to others” (p. 48). I would add that it is plain that if the product is made for sale, useful and useful to others are not different things. And about the exchange of commodities Marx wrote “the labour spent upon them counts effectively only in so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is useful for others and its product consequently of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange” (p. 60).

    So Marx was very close to the true theory of value but he skillfully avoided it. He used averages to deny that different things were different, rehashed Aristotelian arguments to “prove” that exchange requires a common element (spent labour) in commodities, and rejected facts that contradicted his definition of value on the authority of that very definition. As an example of that last trick, we see that though he admited that people pay a price for uncultivated land, he declared that such land has no value. Why not? Because it would contradict his definition of value, according to which labour is the source of value.

    That curious, even desperate, argument about uncultivated land would lead us to the point where Marx made his initial mistake. It was the same mistake made by Malthus before him.

Marx's error was not even original

    Marx wrote that “A thing can be a use-value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour, such as air, virgin soil, natural meadows” (p. 30).

    Here Marx mixed up things badly. Air is indispensable to life but has no economic value precisely because it does not need economizing, it is not scarce —tough it would be different in a community that lived under water. However, virgin soil and natural meadows are scarce, there are not unlimited extensions of them, they are useful but scarce, they need economizing, that is why —in spite of Marx— they do have economic value.

    Well before Marx, Malthus had made the same mistake but he fell into it only in passing and in a few remarks limited to air. Moreover, in the second edition of his Principles of Political Economy, Malthus rejected the theory altogether (the book can be downloaded for free here). Marx instead deepened the mistake and built an entire doctrine upon it. Malthus had tried to explain why certain things like air, though useful, have no economic value. He wrote that this is because we do not have to expend labour in order to enjoy them. To be precise, Malthus should have said that as air is not scarce, we do not have to expend labour in order to have it. That slight lack of precision (later corrected by Malthus) was made far worse by Marx, who following blindly the consequences of Malthus' initial error added “virgin soil¨ and “natural meadows” as things that have no economic value. He should have noticed that although people do not purchase air (unless we think of people going under water), virgin soil is sold and bought regularly. There have been wars for land, but not wars for air.

    Marx surely saw that facts contradicted his theory so he tried to counter the objetion by writing that prices of uncultivated land are “imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics”. Marx himself must have seen that this way of explaining away facts was unsatisfactory so he added that such imaginary prices “may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it” (ps. 70-71).

    With this Marx did not explain how is that virgin soil has a price but no value, he only ofuscated the issue by suggesting that there might be —sometimes— some relation, even a direct one, to a real value. What was the nature of such “concealed” relation, and how the “relation to a value” differed from a plain “value”, he did not dared to explain.

    Certainly, the difference cannot be based on the fact that uncultivated land may play a role in the production of wheat and bread because that is also the role of steam engines and of every good that is used in the production of other goods. And Marx never said that only final goods have value.

    So in spite of his references to imaginary quantities and to concealed relations, Marx failed to explain why he declared that uncultivated land has price but no value. The issue posed a danger to the theory so it was prudent to keep it concealed in mist.

    In truth, the key is not average labour time but the all too common scarcity of useful things, the fact that there is not enough of some good so that it can be enjoyed freely and without limit by everyone. The key is the need to economize such useful goods. Actually, that is what gives rise to economics as a science.

    Unfortunately, Marx made that fundamental mistake at the beginning of his reasoning and on top of it he based his theory of capitalistic exploitation. Certainly, in spite of its flaws the labour theory of value remains powerful today, not for the strength of the reasoning that sustains it, but because of the services it provides in the political struggle. Indeed, there have been marxist academics like G. A. Cohen ready to ditch the labour theory of value and still keep the marxist brand name. Which is like trying to plant a tree without its roots.

    Marx's theory of value is not the only part of his system that shows unmerited persistence. More than a century ago Eugene Böhm-Bawerk demonstrated that Marx's theory about the rates of profit in different branches of industry is wrong. On the political side, there is also the notion of a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, which is almost a contradiction in terms. Nevertheless, it has been very useful to dictators, their coteries, and fellow travellers, to justify their oppresion.