Answers to Correspondents. (1907)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A. Porcelli, Baron de St. Andrew (The Cottage, Camberley.)—Your statement that Society cannot be divided into two classes because “there are, for instance, children in arms,” is distinctly refreshing. We are, however, always glad to deal with intelligent opposition. We note also that you profess to belong neither “to the working class nor to the capitalist class, but to a much nobler class, viz, the Sons of God.” Nevertheless, if as we surmise the necessities and comforts of life which you enjoy in your baronial “Cottage” do not descend direct from heaven, but are the products of worldly labour, it would materially assist us in deciding (at least to our own satisfaction) to which economic category you belong if we were informed whether your present income is the result of your own mental and physical labour, or is derived through the ownership of property and is therefore a tax on others’ labour. This is not a personal question, for “we must all toil, or steal, (howsoever we name our stealing).”

The statements regarding your numerous charities to the distressed working class prove only that those who produce the wealth do not enjoy it and that the appropriators, who flourish through the workers’ misery, accompany their alms with misunderstanding and contempt. We would, indeed, in this connection (in return for the text on unclean beasts to which you referred us) commend to you respectfully Matthew VI., 1-4.

You assert that we are “perfectly ignorant of the Bible.” But to this we cannot plead guilty; for we regard and use the Bible as a valuable historical document of the upper status of barbarism in social evolution. As you, however, appear to value the Bible in quite another sense may we suggest that you take as texts for your next epistle Matthew XIX., 21-24 and Isaiah V., 8?

We cannot afford space to deal with all the curious points you raise. Your point of view, moreover, not being that of a wage-worker, and presenting otherwise no common ground of logic and experience as a basis for argument, renders further discussion difficult.

Socialism, as such, is not directly concerned with religion or the supernatural, and is not antagonistic thereto except in so far as religion is used against the working class. It would, however, be idle to deny that the fulcrum toward obtaining a rational conception of life provided by the scientific basis of Socialism can ultimately leave no room in the consistent mind for belief in the supernatural.

The concluding statement in your letter that “Woe betide the man who ignorantly seeks to make God responsible for the warped nature of fellow man, and the evils produced by Satanic devilry” is, as applied to us, entirely gratuitous; and you may be comforted by the assurance that we hold no metaphysical cloud-pusher responsible for the misery of the world.

G.H.L. (Kentish Town).—No. There is no “mental labour” that does not involve physical labour, and no physical or manual labour that does not involve mental labour also. When we speak of labour we do not discriminate between mental and manual, they are complementary.

The distinction you also desire to make between the “producer” of commodities, such as the brick-maker, and the “non-producer” such as the transport worker, will not hold. The transport worker is just as much a producer as the brickmaker, neither really produces in the sense you mean, both however are engaged in producing values. The brickmaker usefully alters the form of the raw material supplied by nature, and the transport worker usefully alters its position ; embodying in the process, quite as much as the brickmaker, a portion of the labour necessary to placing the bricks upon the market and creating values in so doing.

F.D. (Wimbledon).—There are essentially but two classes to-day, as we say. The capitalist class comprises all those whose income is derived from the ownership of property and is contrasted with the working class which comprises all those (with their dependents) who are possessors of only their power to labour which they are forced to sell to those who monopolise the means of wealth production.

All marketable wealth is the product of labour, and the able-bodied man who lives without contributing his quota of the necessary labour is robbing his fellows.

On the border line, between the two classes of exploiter and exploited, (which are, on the whole, vividly distinct), there are a number—with a foot in each camp—called the “middle class.” The members of this group are becoming an almost negligible factor owing to the growing centralisation of industry, but in so far as they express themselves politically they cling tenaciously to the capitalist side of their interests, and all the more desperately since the small property or position that they hold is alone that which distinguishes them from the working class properly so-called ; and this small property or means of exploitation is that by means of which they hope to climb into the select and secure section of the exploiters and so save themselves from the proletarian abyss which ever threatens to engulf them. Hence this section of lower capitalists is not only reactionary in that it fights against industrial advance, but also is most unscrupulous in defending its right to exploit, in sweating, and in conserving its monopoly of education or position against the interests of the workers. A small section, it is true, would “organise” the workers, on condition that it be given (under title of “the expert”) all the well-paid jobs and the right to govern the masses; but in face of a genuine proletarian advance all of these stand by the reaction and bitterly oppose genuine industrial democracy.

It is therefore seen that as economic categories reflecting politically their fundamentally opposing interests, there are, in reality, but two classes: those who live by labour and those who live upon those who labour; so that the workers in their task ot abolishing all privilege and exploitation, stand alone, and must rely only upon themselves.

J.T.T.—Thanks for information. We are always pleased to receive local papers with interesting articles or reports. Your query will be dealt with next month.

The Fraud of Municipal Bakeries. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reply to R. B. Suthers.

“Bread and Bunkum” is the title of an article in which Mr. R. B. Suthers draws, in the Clarion, a harrowing, soul-rending picture of the last gasp of the petty shop-keeper, particularly the master baker (perhaps the most pious, unctuous, psalm-grinding, callous sweater civilisation has produced) who is now being crushed by the newest thing in trusts—the Bread Trust.

Mr. Suthers, out of the fulness of his heart, is moved to prescribe a remedy. What is this precious remedy ? None other than municipalisation, which he imagines is Socialism. He says :

“The only question for the small baker is, ‘Am I to be abolished by the Trust or by Socialism ?’ Allow me to put the problem from a Socialist point of view. Here is a community in which bread is a necessity to life. So much bread is required every day. The question is how to make bread in the cheapest and most expeditious manner. It is plain that in a large town it would be cheaper and more efficient to have one or more large bakeries from which bread could be delivered in motor cars direct to the customers, rather than have a number of small shops with a little hand cart or slow horsed cart each overlapping the district of half-a-dozen others. Local depots might be necessary, but they need not be so numerous nor so large as under the wasteful system of to-day.”

If I thought Socialism was anything so monstrous as this glorified capitalism I would fight it for all I was worth.

I have been a victim of this Manchester god of “cheapness” and “expedition” for over twenty years, and during that time have seen many journeymen bakers broken on the wheel of “cheapness,” “expedition,” and “efficiency.” I would ask Mr. Suthers to quit for a while his beloved rate-saving, middle-class view point, and look at the matter from the position as it affects the working class, the only class that matters, or is worth consideration in any way.

Assume that the rate-savers decide to municipalise the bread supply (it won’t be decided by master bakers, Mr. Suthers) what happens ? To ensure expedition and efficiency, cheapness, and other Manchesterisms, it will be necessary to have the newest and most down-to-date machinery operated in the most scientific manner and the latest manner is this: A large bakery is erected on scientific principles, that is, the interior of the structure is divided into two bakeries, exact duplicates, each with its gear of flour sifters, sack shakers, dough mixers, dividers, moulders, provers, ovens and storing racks, with one clock for the use of both. No partition divides them, so that the gangs of nearly naked, emaciated slaves work in full view of each other, each driven by an enslaved slave-driver

.

At the stroke of the clock the two gangs begin their mad race against time and efficient, untiring machinery. An industrial policeman, called the General Foreman, who is not necessarily a baker, clad in snow white cap and overalls, Stalks majestically from gang to gang, book in hand, recording by the common clock the time each gang takes to finish its “rounds,” not that the most “expeditious” may be decorated with a “Crown of Wild Olive,” but that the laggards may be called upon to render an account of their stewardship in that capitalist hell of “cheapness, expedition, and efficiency,” and the misfits weeded out and “scrapped.” This mode of procedure brings out the tigrish instincts of the ganger, who is especially selected for his ability to drive and bully, and who is always on his trial, and can only retain his job by keeping time with his “opposite” or by running past him, consequently the “hand ” who slows down or does not hear a shouted order is “woke up” with a torrent of foul abuse and indecent oaths. The hawk-eyed “Pinkerton” looks on and makes a note. Such is a modern bakery !

In one of these efficient infernos I wot of, the most happy human machine is a big and powerful deaf mute, who works by watching the others. He never complains, nor does he hear the ganger’s live and modern English, nor “the roaring loom of time,” as typified by bread-making machinery. Yet he is sometimes pitied as being afflicted !

In a factory of this description the output per man engaged averages about twenty-two sacks of flour per week: in handicraft bakery it averages about twelve sacks. It is obvious, therefore, that as the industry becomes either trustified or municipalised, a large number of bakers will be thrown on the streets, and the market is already overcrowded with this class of merchandise, as a visit to the factory gates at 11 p.m. will testify. After that hour the poor devils who have failed to secure a night’s job may be seen tramping, Christ knows where, while their brilliantly lighted municipal trams, only half filled, glide past them. Perhaps by tramping through the slush and rain in broken boots they can meditate the better on the advantages of municipalising the trams, which Mr. Suthers with ghastly irony, told us a time ago now belongs to all the people. Mr. Suthers does not say what municipalisation will do for these, or for the “outed” master bakers, the redundant carmen, the superfluous shop-girls, millers’ travellers, shop fitters, and a host of others who will go into the ranks of the unemployed, and in the fulness of time become unemployables, wastrels with drooping lips and slouching gait, fit material for the casual ward and the lunatic asylum, if no worse fate awaits them.

Mr. Suthers, in his tender solicitude for the small master (the ever-starving journeymen seem to be an entirely negligible quantity) asks : “Will the trust buy him out ?” and answers : “No ! the trust will freeze him out.” “Will the trust,” he goes on, “find the starving shopkeepers work ? Will it ?” No, Mr. Suthers, it will not, neither will the municipality buy him out, though, certainly, he may secure a job by the influence of his co-religionists on the council. If he be a Freemason he may even become a “Pinkerton.”

Mr. Suthers concludes by asking “Why then should we not organise this business of making bread, and put an end for ever to the degrading condition and struggle for existence between rival bakeries ?” And my answer is because it would be better to eliminate all the “business” out of industry absolutely, and make bread to be eaten, not to lower rates. Municipalities go into business to make profit only, like any other capitalist concern. It does not signify whether the owners absorb the profits in the shape of “reduced prices” or lower rates. If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread the operation of the “Iron Law of Wages” will secure all the advantage for the capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on the working class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist, joint-stock enterprise, municipality or government, and with each step in concentration the working class gets relatively less and the master class gets richer, more corrupt and more bestial, as recent events in Berlin and elsewhere show.

Why should all the bread be made in factories, anyhow ? In a Socialist community the housewife would have the facilities, if she so wished, to make bread and pastries for herself, her mate and her children, and to suit their individual palates. The essence of Socialism is freedom, and if a woman prefers to develope her individuality by making pure and wholesome food she will be at liberty to do so. All healthy humans must expend their energies in some manner, and why not in cooking—who shall say them nay ?

The damnable idea of being marshalled and drilled, or numbered and docketted, like any other merchandise, in a state of glorified capitalism is not the Socialist’s ideal, but its antithesis, no matter what the capitalists and their protagonists, the pseudo-Socialists, choose to name it. We don’t want to be driven to the gate of the municipal or other factory to hustle and elbow our fellows out of the way so that we may catch the official’s eye in the mad and sordid scramble for mere belly food, for a mere animal subsistence, to be thrown on the social scrap-heap the moment we cease to be “expeditious,” there to rot out a living death, the mental agony prolonged by being kept on the brink of Kingdom Come by a “George Barnes” pension, previously deducted from our competition wage. With the advent of Socialism the whole of the capitalist State and its superstructure will collapse, with its cant of living wages, its Brotherhoods of Man, and the rest of its nauseous humbug.

Socialism will enable us to co-operate with our fellows for the production and distribution of all the necessaries and comforts of life, and to further bring under control the forces of nature for the common weal. Then and then only will the humanities have a chance. Then we shall live, stand erect and be men and women. Away with all forms of capitalism ! Speed the Social Revolution !

W. Watts

Blogger's Note:

A number of R. B. Suthers' books are available over at Archive.org.