A Bishop on Credulity. A Parson’s Poisonous Piffle Pulverised. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cross and the Crook.

“Christ died on the Cross,” We are told, and a wag who knew something added, “and his followers have lived on the cross ever since.” Consequently, when we read that the Bishop of London, holding aloft a “shepherd’s crook,” has commenced a series of open-air sermons, we must agree that the symbol fits the occasions. For if the crook is not emblematical of crooked ways it signifies a shepherd and sheep, and the sheep need a shepherd because the wool is drawn over their eyes. A beneficent capitalist executive, having for long realised the need of the sheep, have provided shepherds at a huge expense to their class. The Bishop of London is one of the provided (and well provided for—so well provided for, indeed, that he says, “Why, I wouldn’t take another blessed farthing if it was offered me.”)

“At 58 years of age, and unmarried,” says the Bishop, “I am one of the healthiest men in London.” Even sheep with wool combed over their eyes should be able to see that it is possible for their shepherd, with such an income, to keep healthy for quite a long time to come. He need not live in a reeking slum, or work in the poisonous fumes of a factory, or feed on adulterated and semi-decayed food. With £15,000 a year he can have the very best of medical attention, and should live to a hundred. Even then he will not wear out—his duties are too light—and he certainly will not rust, out, because, like most of the clergy, he is naturally oily.

Of course, the Bishop insists that his good health is the reward of a moral life, with especial emphasis on celibacy.

A word of explanation here. Personalities are not in our line ; as critics we deal with suggested reforms, with social evils occasionally, and always with the capitalist system itself. But the Bishop of London comes out with a mission of regeneration, denouncing drink and prostitution and furnishing an example of moral rectitude in his own person; talks endlessly about himself. Consequently I take up his challenge and merely remark that no doubt every member of his audiences could acquire all his boasted virtues on his salary.

The Science of the Crook.

Of course the Bishop would question their ability to perform the duties of his position. What are these onerous and brain-racking duties? First, to understand the standard of intelligence of his flocks, to be able to discern what they will appreciate according to that standard, and then to tickle their intelligence by bolstering up all the vile superstitions that poison their lives and render them easy victims for his capitalist masters. He jeers at science—that pleases his flocks, to whom study and thought are painful—but if he were charged with ignorance of modern science he would doubtless repudiate the charge with indignation. Yet in his discourse he adopts the attitude of one entirely ignorant of the facts and evidence of scientific evolution.

He selects two opposite points in the evolutionary circle and, ignoring the intervening ages with their endless panorama of development, seeks to ridicule science by comparing the phenomena of each, and by thus bringing them into juxtaposition, giving them the appearance of an absurd metamorphosis. His hearers, however, would swallow even this if it were only in “the book” alongside other miracles such as driving out devils and turning water into wine. But I leave it to the reader’s judgment.

The Argument of the Crook.

The following is from a “Daily Chronicle” report, 12.9. 16.

“The first thing that helped him to believe in God, added the Bishop, was Nature. “Why are we not blown off this earth as we rush through space at 10 miles a second ?” he asked. “The answer is because Someone has wrapped 70 miles of atmosphere round the earth. The most credulous person who is here is the man who can believe that that happens by accident.”

One might as well say that by flinging broadcast a bundle of letters one could produce a play of Shakespeare as that the universe was not the result of a designed plan.”

Of course, scientists have never suggested that the scattering of type broadcast would produce a Shakespearian play, or even so poor a thing as a bishop’s sermon, though both, they tell us, and everything else good and bad, have come in their turn as a result of the long process of development from the clashing of dead suns, the diffusion of fire-dust, the fusion of nebulas, and all the subsequent physical changes that resulted in the existence of this planet with an atmosphere and temperature capable of nursing into maturity capitalist society.

When we say nursing, however, we fail to perceive the necessity of a nurse. Unlike the bourgeois bishop who must have “someone” to wrap seventy miles of atmosphere round the earth, we perceive that the forces immanent in matter being the eternal property of matter, must manifest themselves wherever matter exists.

But the bishop has the effrontery to tell us that unless we can conceive of “someone wrapping seventy miles of atmosphere round the earth” have no alternative but to regard it as an accident. He would doubtless be surprised to learn that in nature—apart from man—there is no such thing as an accident. Accidents can only exist as ideas in the brains of animals, like man, who are ignorant of natural laws. When we know all the substances in which matter can express itself, and all the forces that belong to those substances, such words as accident and chance will be meaningless.

The Credulity of the Crook.

Those who uphold a social system where the mass of the people are enslaved by a small class, which exploits and governs them, cannot conceive of law without law-makers. The physical world must be analogous with their social world—and the spiritual world of their imagination an echo. If it, the physical world, reveals the fact that it evolves according to laws that can be understood and defined, that is evidence to them of a personality behind it—a supreme law-maker of the physical world, who was also its creator. Surely credulity cannot exceed this! Because an atmosphere envelops the earth “Someone” wrapped it round. Because suns are scattered like dust over the sky “Someone” arranged them. But the followers of this system of argument (!) never have the faculty of logic sufficiently developed to ask the old but still unanswered question, who created that “someone,” and again, who created that creator, and so without end.

When scientific knowledge becomes general it will be seen that the idea of a supreme law-maker, together with a spiritual world and the ideas of chance and accident, grew in men’s minds because of their ignorance, and its adoption and preservation by the ruling class is the outcome of their desire to maintain supremacy over the working class. To keep alive the fictions and superstitions of the past is to cloud the intellects of the workers and shut them off from real knowledge.

Thus are the workers, under capitalism, provided with a philosophy—a way of looking at things—ready made, that fits the system and keeps them mentally wedded to it. If sickness comes their way they must visit the panel doctor and have faith ; when husbands and brothers are murdered in capitalist mines or factories, or butcher each other on the capitalist-made battlefield, it is “God’s will” ; when the worker is unemployed it is his “luck” that’s out or he is “not worth his salt” ; when we point to the class division of society—the ruling class owning wealth but not producing, and the working class producing all wealth but owning none—it is “God’s will” once again, “otherwise it could not be.”

The Exit of the Crook.

It is small wonder that those who hear the message of Socialism for the first time fail to see in the working class the instrument of its fulfilment. It is only when they realise the full strength and meaning of Socialism that their doubts leave them. However ignorant and apathetic the workers may be to-day, the Socialist philosophy, pregnant with truth and appeal alike to self interest and the interest of their class, must eventually triumph over the traditions and superstitions of the past. As the torrent of human knowledge swells, the efforts to dam it up, to confine it to the ruling class and their sneaking tools, becomes ever more futile. The very sanction that a capitalist government must have from an ever-widening circle in society—which compels them to extend the franchise—opens the way to discussion of all the facts of capitalist society, and teaches the worker to use his reason and judgment. As these faculties develop, Socialist principles will be understood and accepted by the workers generally, because they embody the truth of their social position, show them the cause of their poverty, and point the way to their emancipation.

Down the steeps of capitalist anarchy the workers are driven to worse horrors and suffering. One by one the battle-cries and watchwords of their leaders and shepherds are proved worthless and discarded. Socialism—an object of contempt for the “respectable”—is first examined, next tolerated, and finally recognised as the only hope of the workers.

Poverty and misery cannot achieve Socialism, but those who suffer must needs seek the remedy, which they undoubtedly will find in spite of all the hopes and efforts of capitalists and their ecclesiastical agents to the contrary. The strength of Socialism, to-day is in its principles, based upon scientific analysis. The last century has seen the triumph of science in the field of wealth production and distribution. Tomorrow will tear down the theological and economic veil that masks the slavery of the wealth producers, and, revealing to them the real nature of capitalist society, will forge them a weapon to break through the social forms that bind them, to a system dictated by science and common sense.

Meanwhile we are faced with a wily foe. Every discovery in the realm of science is discredited until it is established beyond doubt, when it is claimed as a manifestation of the power of “Almighty God” and a justification of capitalist society. Thus Gallileo, when he, alone, proclaimed the earth’s movement round the sun, was imprisoned and threatened with torture by the priests of his day ; now celestial motions are claimed as evidence of supreme power. Darwin’s theory of evolution was hotly contested by the clergy, and is even now ridiculed by the more ignorant among them ; the more cunning, however, accept evolution and pretend to believe that “God” breathed into the elementary protoplasm and thus imparted the character of struggle and development.

Because the capitalist and his bishop are smug and self-satisfied they overlook the obvious—the poisoned nature of the breath. For their claim is an admission of “God’s” responsibility for parasitism, the cruelty of religious persecution, the horrors of militarism, and the squalor and misery of the working class.

There is still one discovery they have not yet annexed to the glory of their universal dictator—”the Materialist Conception of History,” given to the workers by Marx and Engels 68 years ago. Over that discovery the last great conflict must be fought. Only the working class can bring it to an issue. The game of the master class is to ignore it because it is the key to social evolution, and leaves them stranded in the realm of sociology, without a divine law-maker or a divine purpose in their rule.

And Dr. Ingram, how will he regard it ? For him it will be an accident, because it threatens with extinction his class and his vocation. To him it will matter nothing that the working class will rise to take over its inheritance—to free themselves from capitalist slavery. His sympathies are with his class, the class that he serves by fraudulently misrepresenting science, preaching decaying superstitions, and assisting to keep the workers in ignorance to facilitate their exploitation.

F. Foan

Analysis of Society. I. Interests. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The analysis of society is the logical continuation of the analysis of wealth. The problems which the nature of modern wealth presents ramify into all social relations and are reflected in all phases of social thought. Economic science is valuable in that it illuminates the conditions on which society rests, and thus provides the key to an understanding of its history, but it is by no means complete in itself. Thought must be translated into action, and it is when we come to the practical as distinct from the theoretical solution of the problems in question that we become impressed with the conservatism of existing institutions and find it necessary to discover some instrument for their overthrow. Prior to this, however, we must examine the exact nature of these institutions and their relation to their economic basis.

To commence with the last first, in considering the nature of the units of wealth, i.e., commodities, we arrived at the conclusion that the relations between them resulted from their mutual relations to an outside element, the human race. Only in so far as they were, all alike, products of human labour, was any meaning discovered in their exchangeability and the process of their existence generally. So in examining the relations between the units of society, let us pursue a similar method. We see already that they mutually enter into relations with outside elements, the various forms of matter which they convert (or have converted) into articles of use.

This is no mere whim on their part, but a matter of necessity. Human life is a material process demanding the continual absorption of matter and the use of the objects of the material world on an ever-expanding and more varied scale. From the simple process of digestion to the complex operations of the brain all human functions are material and presuppose objects either for the supply of energy or as a means for its exercise. The most idealistic of philosophers have never yet shown us how to live without eating, and living includes thinking, as a matter of course.

Human beings, then, have this in common—they are part of the process of organic evolution and, as such, have definite interests in the world around them. In pursuing these interests they enter into relations with one another, and according to the nature of these interests and the circumstances of their satisfaction so the social relations between them take their form.

Simple association in pre-historic times was a heritage from pre-human ancestors, and appears to be a feature common to the existence of all the higher mammals. Its basis was the quest for food and the necessity for mutual protection and assistance, and so long as the hunting and fishing (or, as an alternative, arboreal) mode of living continued this primitive tribal harmony was preserved. By degrees, however, it was destroyed by the domestication of animals and the discovery and development of agriculture, which claimed more intense application of effort and paved the way to slavery and conquest. Class rule was established, and as the mode of production has developed so has one class given way to another whose methods of exploitation were more up-to-date.

To-day antagonism is the most obvious characteristic of material interests. One and all must purchase their wants, “be they of the stomach or of the fancy,” and must therefore be first possessed of money. This implies, again, that they have made a sale of some commodity or other. Thus all persons come to be owners of commodities and appear now at one pole, now at the other, of the commercial magnet. They are continually opposed to one another as buyers and sellers.

Our economic investigation showed these opponents to be divided into two classes—the sellers of labour-power and the venders of all other commodities. These latter are also the buyers of labour-power since the commodities in which they deal are only produced by the action of labour-power on raw materials. We also saw that their object in purchasing labour-power is to obtain the surplus over and above its own maintenance which it is capable of producing, and further that this process is only possible because the owners of labour-power are destitute of any other commodity or means of production and subsistence.

Now if, as we have seen, wealth in its various forms constitutes the basis of social relations, then the ownership of wealth determines the nature of these relations. Capital is the ownership of the social means of production and subsistence by a small class. It forms the pivot on which modern society turns, and consequently all social relations to-day take the form of an antagonism between two classes, of opposite interests, i.e , capitalists and wage-earners, In place of the primitive free association for the satisfaction of common interests we have the compulsory subjection of one set of human beings and their interests to another set.

This division of interests in society is reflected in the constitution of the individual. Thus the average wage-slave, in order to secure the satisfaction of his stomach, enters a factory, office, or other stronghold of robbery, to perform tasks against which, more often than not, his brain and senses revolt, albeit somewhat blindly.

The greater portion of his energy is spent in producing value for which he receives no return. So far as he is concerned it is wasted and his life curtailed by just so much. With his wages he purchases the necessities of his commodity-existence, which are on the average no more than will enable him to perform his task to the satisfaction of his purchaser. If the nature of his employment demands that he shall wear “respectable” clothes, then his screw is adapted to this condition ; if not, well, he considers himself lucky to get any clothes at all. If extreme muscular energy is required of him, then he can afford to indulge in quantities of food which would make the dyspeptic clerk green with other things than envy ; but his expenditure must be limited in other directions. Everywhere we see that the standard of “living” of the various sections of the working class is restricted to the level which will enable them to subsist “economically,” that is, as producers of value for the expansion and development of capital. They are not credited with possessing “higher interests,” with the exception of those termed “spiritual.” For reasons which will be explained later it pays the capitalist class to encourage these. Even his meagre economic wants are at the best inadequately satisfied. His food is adulterated, his clothes consist of shoddy, and his house is jerry-built.

For a scientific appreciation of nature the wage-worker has neither the energy, time, nor means to spare. For artistic enthusiasm in his labour and its products he has no inclination. The essential conditions of genuine science and art are freedom and the power to express oneself, which implies possession of the means for doing it. In the capitalist process of production the individual worker is a passive factor. It is not he who uses the instruments of labour but rather these instruments which use him on behalf of their owners. Incidentally he keeps his body moving after the style of an automaton, but only at the expense of his emotional and intellectual nature.

It is not, however, only the workers whose natures are rent asunder and who suffer loss of individuality. The capitalist himself, for all the luxury of his existence, is at the mercy of the system which creates him. His emancipation from the necessity to labour reduces him to an economically meaningless position. The means of production which he controls are social in character and do not provide him, their owner, with any outlet for his energies. His only function is to accumulate. To spend his wealth is beyond him, and if he ever tries, a la Carnegie, soon gives it up as a bad job. The best he can do is to indulge in insensate extravagance. His most exact science is a knowledge of his accounts. His highest art is the multifarious one of cheating and gambling in the commercial and financial sphere. Any other “science and art” he buys, as he buys labour-power, to augment or display his wealth. Showy advertisements of his goods, mechanical contrivances for reducing wages and increasing profits, pompous mansions with a retinue of flunkeys, public libraries crammed with unintelligent technicalities and the dull prejudices of the bourgeois mind—these are the fruits of his patronage. He calls himself a self-made man, but his words and actions proclaim him the creature of his money.

This is well shown by his never-ceasing fear of revolution. So much is the capitalist the embodiment of capital that he cannot conceive himself existing under any other social order than the present one. Change for him can only mean extinction, so he clings in morbid frenzy to every institution or idea which supports things as they are.

If the wage-earner has yet to learn to live and be a man the capitalist, on the other hand, has got beyond that stage. His day is passing. Rotten product of a rotten system, he has lost the possibility of manhood, and dissolution alone awaits him and his class.

To the Socialist worker revolution is the breath of hope which inspires him to learn and endure until his class is ready for the task ; and his spare time and energy are readily given to assist his fellows to learn likewise. In order to satisfy their mutual interests they must dispossess the capitalist class of the ownership of the social means of subsistence and must convert these into the common property of society.

Present-day society is not the first to be characterised by division into classes with opposing interests any more than capital is the first form of private property. Other social systems based on other property relations have preceded it.

Primitive society was, as already hinted, communistic on a narrow scale. The unit of tribal organisation was the gens or clan, a group of kinsfolk which controlled economic affairs in the mutual interests of its members. Slavery and conquest, which were the outcome of agricultural development, put an end to this relation of equality. Slaves were prisoners of war or tribesmen who had fallen under economic obligations to their fellows. As private property increased in magnitude and importance, so the originally equal tribesmen became divided into rich and poor. There were, therefore, in the first civilised society at least three distinct classes, viz., slave-owners, slaves, and freemen who did not possess slaves.

The process of conquest, with its motive of territorial acquisition, broke up the independence of the local tribal communities and laid the foundations of Feudalism. The essential feature of this system was the military tenure of land. Freemen became divided into lords and vassals ; slaves were converted into agricultural serfs or chartered freemen privileged to carry on handicrafts. Here we have a regular hierarchy of classes whose rival interests made the history of the Middle Ages.

The collapse of Feudalism and its supersession by the existing order have been briefly described in a previous article. Sufficient has been said to enable us to contrast Capitalism with previous social orders. In the societies just described class divisions were numerous and complex, whereas to-day we are faced with one simple line of demarcation, i.e., the possession of capital. To-day there are but two really distinct classes.

When the feudal aristocrats supplanted the local patricians, when again, later on, the capitalists overthrew them in turn, they simply substituted one form of class rule for another. Beneath the revolutionary class in each instance there existed the workers whose exploitation has formed the basis of all civilised societies.

When the workers overthrow their present masters they will end the last of the ruling, exploiting classes. By abolishing private property in the means of life they will eliminate the cause of hostile interests and class rule. In emancipating themselves they will free and unite humanity.

Their task, however, demands knowledge. At present their minds still hold the numbing superstitions with which their masters feed them. To criticise the mentality of capitalism is, therefore, our next concern.

Eric Boden

Independence for All. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the report of an interview with a Mr. R. M. Kindersley, which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” of July 13th under the title of “The New Habit,” is about as much piffle as it is possible to get into two columns of that paper. The writer, Mr. Arnold Bennett, praises the subject of the interview for the part he is playing in getting other people to economise and save during the war, by the use of the bait of, not 9d. for 4d. this time, but £1 for 15s. 6d.— we are dealing with “high finance,” don’tcher-know.

Now, you 223,000 railway workers who, according to your “leaders” (“Daily Telegraph,” 21.8.16.) are getting less than 25s. a week, and you other workers who are getting less than a pound, have you read the scheme ? It shows you how to get rich without work ! Buy War Loan certificates. You will see you are on a good thing if I quote from the article. Mr. Kindersley is speaking.

“The proposition is the £1 for 15s. 6d. War Savings certificate. It means an unsurpassed security, the security of the British nation, and principle paid back at the end of a short term, together with compound interest at the rate of £5 4s, 7d. per cent. And no income tax ! And you can cash it at any time on three days notice. This form of saving presents every advantage.

There is simply nothing else to touch it anywhere on earth. Most people, old and young, have a foundation of common sense, and they only need to understand the advantages of the 15s. 6d. certificate in order to buy it.”

Stick a pin there—nothing to pay for the tip. This statement, of course, is wrong. You need more than to understand in order to buy a certificate : you need money. But still they have made it easy to quote again.

“Members need not wait until they have the 15s. 6d. in hand. They can begin to save at once with as small a sum as 6d. . . There is no limit except that no single human being can buy more than 500 certificates.”

This scheme is easy ; indeed there is nothing like it ; it gives everybody a chance. Mr. Kindersley has said so and he ought to know, as this article will show later. Let us see where the chance comes in for a person getting 25s. a week with a wife and four children to keep. He will probably have to pay out for

After providing for these items he has 11s. per week for food for six persons.

In order that at least one of the six can produce a profit for a boss he must be more or less fit and unfortunately (for the boss) he must eat a little. Consequently we will allow him, with things at present prices, 1s. a day, to be allotted as follows :

Now, Mr. Kindersley, after allotting the man a diet the cost of which would starve you, there are still five persons to feed on the princely sum of 4s. a week. How is it done? Do you feed one of your children at that cost ? Not much ! It is quite clear that there is nothing to spare for beer and tobacco, or holidays, or motor-car tours, or for governesses, toys, or pets for the kids. There is nothing for luxuries of any kind, or even to meet the expenses of illness.

Now, Mr. Kindersley, show us where it is easier to effect a saving—but I forgot, you are not doing that ; this side is left to the wives and maiden ladies of your class.

To turn to the interview again, Mr. Arnold Bennett asked, “And what are you persuading the women to do?” To this Mr. Kindersley replied: “We are persuading them to undertake house-to-house propaganda among women and to serve as honorary secretaries of associations, and to arrange for war economy exhibitions, competitions, cookery demonstrations, and all that sort of thing.” “But,” said Arnold Bennett, “this means heavy work for them.” “It does,” agreed Mr. Kindersley. “But the women will do it. They are doing it. They know, as a sex, the value of economy.”

Is it possible for impudence to go further ? For women who have as much in one week to keep a house on as the worker’s wife has in a whole year, to go and preach economy to these same workers’ wives is extreme irony. I should like to hear how they are received when they suggest cutting down the bill of fare in order to buy War Loan certificates.

“Don’t you want to hear about our advertising department ?” asked Mr. Kindersley. “Don’t you want to hear about, our travelling speakers ? And about our film ‘For the Empire’ ?” One of these talking machines or so-called speakers, has been found out by a section of the workers. He was billed to speak twice at an aircraft factory during dinner hours, bat his reception was such, and the heckling and questions were so much to the point, that only one meeting was held, and that of but 15 minutes duration.

Let me quote Mr. Kindersley again :

“But the most important reason is that we are showing members of the Association how to help the country, and this is what they want above all to do. They like to feel they have a stake in the country, and are helping it as well as saving. This combination is a new and delicious sensation to many of them.”

Until they wake up, when they discover it was only sensation.

The workers of this country, like the workers of other countries, have no stake in the country they happen to be born in. Out of the hundreds of thousands of members of the working class that have been killed in the present bloody war, how many have left wealth sufficient to have to pay death duty on, although the amount is only £100 ? Read the list of wills and you will see how seldom the working-class soldier has anything to bequeath. The butchered wage-slave has given all he had—life. And even that was not his. All there is in and on this country belongs to the capitalist class. Not only have the workers no stake in the country, they have no right in the country except at the bidding of the master class. This class has set up its tribunals to decide whether you shall work, where you shall work, and what work you shall do—or whether their interests would be better served by making a fighting unit of you, to go and murder other workers who are cajoled and coerced by masters in the same way that you are.

What rights have you ? For all the boasted “freedom” of the British race you have the right of slaves—the right to obey your masters. Anything you do in your own interests which is against the interests of your masters, as it must be since the interests of masters and slaves are opposite, is met with imprisonment, banishment, the ignominy of being strapped to a gun wheel, of even death by shooting or hanging.

Don’t blame the master class for what they are doing. Every class acts in its own interests as it understands them. Therefore as this country is owned by the capitalists who live in it it is to their interest to see that it is not endangered by the capitalists of another land, hence their present actions.

Just another quotation from the report in question ; it is a warning of what is likely to happen to all who don’t save. Says Mr. Kindersley :

“My belief is that these Associations are doing more than help the war—they are changing the nation. I foresee the day when the man, woman, or child who does not possess savings in the shape of a national security will be a marked man, women, or child.”

There’s a timely warning. Take heed, otherwise you will be marked “Cain” because you weren’t “Abel,” and the crime will not be on Mr. Kindersley’s shoulders.

Has it ever dawned on you why these people want you to save ? Some of the least astute of the capitalist class have partly told us, though we knew previously. Lord Clarendon, presiding over a War Savings committee meeting at Watford a few weeks ago said : “This saving scheme will not only help us now, but it will help to tide over the industrial depression which must follow the war.” There you are, fellow-workers, though these be lean years there are leaner ones to follow, and if you can be kidded to take up your belt another hole now and live on a bit less you will either be used to it or dead by the time the leaner years come. In either case you will not want poor relief. Should you fail to save in these times of “plenty” and dare to seek relief in the lean period, look out, for Mr. Kindersley has said you will be “a marked man, woman, or child.”

Perhaps the workers who exist in the small village in Herts where Mr. Kindersley’s large residence is situated will wonder what is going to happen to them seeing that their wages are well below 25s. per week. This apostle of working-class economy had the damned cheek to lecture these opulent villagers on the interesting subject of economy a few weeks before he took his family for a month’s holiday to Bangor. A staff of servants, averaging more than two to each member of the family, was sent on by rail, whilst the family followed by road in a Rolls Royce motor car and a cheap £750 knockabout Wolsely car (purchased to run one of the kids to and from school at Eton).

That is economy as practiced by a director of the Bank of England and a governor of the Hudson Bay Company. It is typical of the capitalist class as a whole. In peace time they rob you, the workers, of two-thirds of the wealth that you produce, and now when it is harder to live than any living person can remember, they tell you to save while they themselves spend more on their private billiard room than the average worker gets in wages all his life.

How do they manage it ? They are few compared with the working class, yet they control the lives of the latter. It happens this way.

The capitalists own the country and all on it. The business of the country is carried on through a political machine called Parliament. Control of this machine gives control over the Army, Navy, Police, magistrates, and all the judicial machinery of the country. All laws that matter are passed by and in the interest of those in control of Parliament, and are forced upon the people by the Army, Navy, Police, etc., who act according to instructions from Parliament. Any worker or body of workers who attempt to do anything against the interests of the capitalist class, who at present control Parliament, can at any time be punished or brought back to capitalist law and order by the coercive forces. How do the capitalists get control of Parliament and keep it ? It is quite simple. Every few years an election takes place, whereat there usually come before the people two persons, one calling himself a Liberal and the other a Conservative. Sometimes a Judas from the working class is allowed to take the place of the Liberal, but in the main it is Liberal v. Conservative. Now you know how they call each other names in order to get you to vote for them. Both are representatives of the class who own the country, and in the fight for the seat whichever gets elected makes no difference to the workers.

Millions of pounds of the masters’ money are spent on elections, and it pays because it gives them political control. They dangle before your eyes on posters big loaves and little loaves. “The foreigner has got your job !” they tell you on other posters. “Vote for Have’em and work for all,” they implore; “Vote for Kidem and cheap food,” they wail.

All this goes on because the working class have the power in their hands to give or withhold control of Parliament. That is, they possess the majority of votes. Consequently they have the power to take the control of Parliament from the capitalist class and use it in their own interests. But while they continue to vote for the representatives of the capitalist class, thereby giving them power, they must expect that power to be used in the interest of the class who, for the time being, possess it.

The way out of the trouble is to organise for the capture of the political machine. Organise on the basis of your class interests ; that is, organise as a class who produce all the wealth and own none of it, but who has for its object the social control and ownership of all the means and instruments for producing wealth, and the wealth when produced.

In this way and in no other will you prevent an idle class robbing you of 13s. in the £, and be able yourselves to live a free and full life.

SNOOKEY

The Ruin of Christ. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

A note on a newspaper's wish for a United Church.

For nearly two thousand years people have been told that Jesus Christ came to the earth for the well-being of humanity, left a stock of immortal truths and after great sorrows returned to his Heavenly Father. From the Scriptures we read that The Man of Sorrows worked miracles, put beautiful parables into his public speeches, and was superior to the powers of Death and the Sea. In history we learn that his parentage was so obscure, the evidence of either his existence or his work so debatable, that opinion drift between two extremes, Renan believing him to be a humble, considerate man and Shelley an ambitious man who aspired to the throne of Judea.

Interest was centred on Christ until quite recently because of the nature of the claims on his behalf ; the divine power with which his name was invested, the singularity of his birth, the lowliness of his habits, his nobility and his patience. If, when we consider Jesus in the most favourable light, we find his parables not entirely uninstructive, we also see that under the care of the Church they have become either wretched or villainous. Jesus, like King Lear, gave his property into cruel hands. By popes and archbishops his ethics have been falsified ; by philosophers he has been stript of his divinity ; his Godliness has become the faith of the fool and the target of Historians. In the future, interest will centre on Christ chiefly in consequence of some articles and letters which lately appeared in the “Daily Chronicle.”

The editor of that newspaper is urging the adherents of the two-and-seventy jarring sects to unite into a common brotherhood. He thinks that with a little trimming of faiths, a modification of the gospel to meet the advancements of science, and sundry other things, that Christianity might still be a power in the land. Alas ! why do not your friends tell you, poor ”Chronicle” Editor, that a writer on such a theme may nowadays wear out a mine of nibs and use a sea of ink before a sceptic will even smile. Am I alone to tell you that you should close the lid of your pot and pack up your pens ? Your God has made another error in judgment ; you are born too late in the day. Somewhere in the sixteenth century your kith and kin in Spain did not use pens. I learn on good authority that the founder of the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada, was never the editor of a newspaper.

But as I do not wish to be thought inconsiderate, or in any unworthy way to gloat over the downfall of Christ and his Church, I would like to openly consider some of the reasons for your proposals. Although I am an Atheist I see something infinitely pathetic in the fact that a people once so prosperous and proud, with abilities, as they once had, to construct their old giant crusades, with energy to war, with cunning enough to arrest the growth of science and art, should at last lose the power of their science-riddled Jesus and become dependent upon London newspapers.

In your columns you hint, as we have been told so often before, that religion is a necessity of national life : that God’s hand is in the work of the scholar and his influence felt in the life of the savage. With the latter half of your contention I am in complete agreement. Knowing something of the history of Christianity, and a little of the life of savages, it is difficult to see how they would lose anything by exchanging a crucifix of Christ for the images of wood and hobgoblins of stone to which they are devoted. But whatever loss they sustained, or whatever hostility the substitution aroused among the base Indians or the cannibals of Tierra del Fuego, the proposal should be insisted on English manufacturers would thus be able to export a large number of ivory Christs which are lying stagnant in the workshops. The other of your contentions I cannot so easily endorse. Voltaire, Tom Paine, Marx, Spencer, Darwin, were all great men ; so if it is true that the scholar cannot work without God’s help, then God alone is responsible for some of the deadliest arguments against his own existence and some of the wittiest satires on his own son.

We learn also that the Christian has worked and does work in the service of God. As a little pamphlet which we issue, entitled “Socialism and Religion,” deals with the birth, life, and death of the Idea of God, it will not be necessary for me to speak of it here ; I will alone consider the world’s work of his servants.

What has the Christian done in the world which the Atheist has not ? Point to an achievement of a saint who has the advantage of intimacy with the Almighty and I will counterbalance it with an important work of a Freethinker who is on no friendly footing with a divinity. Against the literary value of the Bible I place Shakespeare ; against “Genesis” and the “Book of Job” I place “King Lear” and “The Tempest.” We are told that St. Francis of Assisi held conversation with the sparrows and by the sea-side lectured the fishes. In contrast to these second-hand records of this laughable saint I place the beautiful lament of Burns over the field-mouse, written in subtle sweetness, not for the instruction of the simple creature which lost its nest under the ploughshare, but for the enjoyment of humanity. In the Psalms God gets praised in choice language, but no more tremendous melody of praise and sorrow has been penned than Shelley’s elegy on the Death of Keats—”Adonais.” Blake was intimate with the Almighty and kept in touch with the events of Paradise. Blake saw Eden and Hell. Blake had God as a model in his studio. Blake, so Blake claimed and many believed, passed through all the celestial and infernal valleys. He claimed that he had a special invitation, but I am inclined to think that it was just the result of an unsettled disposition. In any case his work has little artistic value or topographical importance. They are neither pictures nor maps of hell, so we must conclude that Blake was utterly foolish and could not learn, or that his divine instructor was out of touch with the modern French artists. I incline to the latter view after having read a biography of Blake by G. K. Chesterton. You may now agree with me, nearly-forgotten editor, that in works of beauty the saints are not supreme. But still the question remains—what have the religionists done which the sceptics have not ? For an answer we must look slightly at the noble work of the world.

Look to the early days of astronomy and you will find religion there as a worm in the bud. The slightest slip from the ritual of the Church, the publication of the feeblest heresy or the mightiest truth, was followed by hellish punishment. From the time when the priests first got power until the time when they lost it they struck right and left in a mad, blind fury. Up till the time when Voltaire lived eight million people had perished in Holy Crusades. There is no doubt the biblical God made priests in his own image.

Bruno suffered after Copernicus ; homes were ruined, arts and sciences enslaved ; authors, reformers, philosophers were blinded, branded, tortured, poisoned, or burned. Blind with the love of Christ, the Inquisitors did not know their own kith and kin. The friend of superstition died with its enemy. The poet was exiled and the astronomer murdered. Not a soul must breathe a syllable of any fresh thought. Those among our friends who know the joy of listening to or uttering fresh truths will understand the deep gloom of this enslavement. It is not alone to those rare and lonely martyrs of the cause of progress that we must always feel grateful, but also to those nameless thousands who have gone to their graves with the fire of truth in their hearts, with wonderful thoughts unpublished. Well we may remember the intellect and honesty of those olden mortals who braved the smiles, bribes, and fury of Christ’s ministers and dealt the first mortal blow to superstition, but we shall never know the details of the unhappy lives of those who were forced to let their poetry wither away—not so much as whispered—hide their yearnings, stifle their young dreams, as a mother the child she loves and yet fears to keep. We shall never be able to count the lost lives of the people, nor measure the infamies of the Church during those miserable years. The Church may do good by stealth, the rest of its work is on record,

Yet I am not of a spiteful nature, so I will offer Christians a few words of advice on how they may, if they will, become united. Do not write books, do not distribute crusts of bread, do not wage wars, for the love of God ; but sow and gather corn, weave clothes, build houses, on communal principles, for the love of humanity. Study the poets, historians, scientists, and architects, then in the music of their sentiments you will forget old hells, conjurors, and tricky heavens. In the knowledge of architecture and the love of nature which follow you will burn all the churches that have corrugated iron roofs ; in the strength of character which follows you will possess the foundations of future happiness.

No doubt you will often be told that an Atheist’s life is black and vacant. The men who repeat this stale nonsense are all men of less brain than Bacon, who says in his “Moral Essays” that “Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to virtue ; but superstition destroys all these and erects itself into a tyranny over the understanding of men.” Irreligion certainly accompanies an understanding of Socialism, but we Socialists can enjoy the picturesque parts of all religions, from the beautiful mythology of old Greece to that of the “Daily Chronicle.” We may enjoy the beauties of the country, the wonders of the cities, the solitude of the sea, or its commerce. The riddle of the universe is still with us to test our wits and keep them keen. Books, music, and art are now strongly established as the elements. It is not much that we lose when we lose a Christ, a priest, and an iron chapel. We are progressing. The Bible can no longer be used as a weapon against us. It is rapidly becoming an entertaining book in our hands. With our complete freedom from superstition, political and industrial as well as religious, we shall have reached the time when the Chapters of Genesis may be raised to the superb dignity of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The religion of Christ was no more fit for the guidance of the world’s workers than the fishing boat of Peter was fit for the circumnavigation of the world or the sandals of Joseph fit for a journey from Bethlehem to the North Pole.

But the old Church, the old slave-ship of Christ, last century was sinking fast and the wish to sail in solitary triumph was gone. Truth has been treated by their flinty clerics as a wolf with a small belly and a moderate appetite whose pursuit may be delayed with morsels of flesh. But Truth, instead, is like the sea on which no unprincipled ship can sail for long in security. The billows have been hammering at the old hulk of the Church for some ages now. Starting a voyage from Galilee, Christianity sailed smoothly for a thousand years or so, gathering up the slaves, stealing the treasures of free thought ; its blight was terrible, absolute, and swift. Thus astronomy rose like a whirlwind ; geology was as lightning. The surrounding sea beat harder and faster. The crumbling ship’s sails were ruined, its masts were snapped at the roots. The passengers and slaves rebelled and after much turmoil managed to get some kind of a Reformation. No one cared what was tossed to the sea so long as the crippled ship was saved. Year after year the storm grew worse and Christ’s compass led it astray. When their provisions were gone they turned cannibals : sect devoured sect. Last century the “Origin of Species” and the Socialist Philosophy were published and fell like thunderbolts in the old, rotten, rat-riddled, shattered ship. Amid the howling billows and gusts of wind the vessel sunk. In the wilderness of the waves it was lost with all its pretensions, tyrants, conundrums of Heaven, spectres of Hell, and the rest of its ghastly cargo.

I am afraid you cut a miserable figure, London Editor, as you stand on the shores of Fleet Street crying pitifully to the tempest: “Peace, be still !” Yet it will be interesting to see for how long an editor may sit by a grave trying to restore a corpse to health and strength, and remain free from pity and contempt.

H. M. M.

By the Way. (1916)

The By The Way Column from the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past month several conferences have been held in various parts of the country, and the reports appearing in the Press of their deliberations, though brief, are somewhat interesting reading. For instance, I gather that at the closing meeting of the British Association at Newcastle the subject for consideration was that of industrial fatigue. On this occasion one, Dr. Hunter, declared that the question of fatigue had been very much exaggerated, and he went on to say that :

“In yards where they worked four and a half days a week of 37 hours there could not be any over-fatigue in the ordinary sense, but it was found that if men combined hard work with drinking whisky then over-fatigue might and did come in.

Men who did not take drink worked longer hours in his works and did not suffer in health or complain of over-fatigue.”

Presumably Dr. Hunter would have us believe that the men engaged in the shipbuilding yards only work 37 hours per week, and that the main cause of the trouble in whisky drinking. How many more times is the drink gag to be trotted out as the first and last reason of the failure of capitalist production? One has only to recall the shortage of munitions in the early days of the war to recollect that then there was the same outcry of drinking and shirking. The concluding remarks of the speaker are exceedingly interesting. He continues:

“If men took a more intelligent interest in their work and worked harder they would feel very much less fatigue. The effort to work slowly was really very fatiguing.”—”Daily Chronicle,” Sept. 11, 1916.

Of course, all those wage slaves who have had the good fortune to write daily time sheets and the privilege of punching the clock when they start and finish a job will be able to appreciate to the fullest extent the reference to “a more intelligent interest in their work.” Delightfully funny, isn’t it ?

* * *

A reference to the foregoing conference in another paper states that “Dr. Oliver said that industrial fatigue did exist and played a very important part in the number of accidents that took place.” There you are, you pay your money and take your choice. This quotation is from the “Daily Mail,” same date.

* * *

The Chief Officer of the Board of Education has recently issued his annual report and has emphasised the value of open-air training for children. This is not in the least surprising when one takes into consideration the hovels that vast numbers of the working class have to inhabit from sheer compulsion. What with the dark and gloomy basements to the barrack-like “model dwellings” where the sun’s rays hardly ever penetrate, is it to be wondered at that our children require open-air treatment and social welfare centres !

That the subject is a serious one, and particularly so in view of the wastage of war, may be gathered from the fact the Chief Officer states:

“Not less than a million children of school age are so physically or mentally defective or diseased as to be unable to derive reasonable benefit from the education which the State provides.”

This in itself is a sufficient condemnation of capitalist society. Miss Margaret McMillan, commenting on the above, says: “That is a very low estimate. I should have said that the number of such children was two millions—rather more than less.” Think of it you who toil and slave and who consciously or unconsciously support modern capitalism, what your apathy means to your children and your class. You labour that others may have ease, you build houses but live in dens where your masters would not put their dogs. Such are the legacies resulting from the private ownership in the means of life.

The lady above referred to cites a fact from her own experience in Deptford as to the condition prevailing therein the following words :

“We once examined 147 children who were sent to our clinic to see if they were suffering from something other than the complaints for which they had come to be treated. And we found that 71 of them had weak backs and that 42 of these cases were so serious as to place the future lives of the children in jeopardy. Yet not one of these children had been sent to us as suffering from this complaint at all.”

We ask you to study these things for yourselves, to get at the why and the wherefore of them, to recognise the continual slaughter of the innocents, and when you understand the cause of these abominations to join with us that an end may be put to a system of society which means poverty, misery and want for the vast majority, and assist in ushering in a new society wherein these horrors may be eliminated. Isn’t this worth fighting for? (Quotations from “Daily News,” Sept. 16th, 1916.)

* * *

Reference to the above is also made in “Reynolds’s” (17.9.16) and may perhaps add further to the point. The writer asks: What are we going to do about it ? The importance of the question to our masters is not overlooked as may be judged by this reference.

“Time after time “Reynolds’s” has pointed out the menace to the future of the nation which the neglect of children and child-bearing mothers means. Perhaps now, when the flower of our young men is dying on the battlefield, we may find widespread recognition of the importance of making the best of our children. . . . But the greatest blame most be borne by the democracy, which has not insisted long ago on the sweeping away of many causes which make such a report as Sir George Newman’s possible. Some of the evils are not preventible, but many of them are, and it is only ignorance and apathy which have allowed us to remain quiet while so little has been done.”

Many of the “evils” are “preventible,” then, if so, why not prevent them ? Only the Socialist holds the remedy. Capitalist politicians and reformers have tinkered about with them, long enough, and in the words of Lloyd George stand condemned, for has he not stated that as soon as they heal one social sore another one breaks out. Thirty-bob at birth, sickness and unemployment benefit, and old age pensions at 70 fail to touch the spot. Arise, then, ye workers !

* * *

Still they come ! Another object lesson in the way patriotism is rewarded is to be found in a newspaper report to hand of a man who was in the 13th Essex Regiment and has been discharged “as being no longer physically fit for war service.” The report states that the man threw up a good job early in 1915 to enlist. He was not a conscript, and he sacrificed between £2 and £3 a week. Passed as medically fit for active service he eventually began training and at last took up the work of a cook. He said:

“We used to get our clothes soaking wet through at the field ovens, but there we had to stick, no matter what sort of weather it was. I have been at it … many times in rain, snow, and blizzards. At Northampton in January it was awful.”

The result was that his health broke down and ultimately he was discharged. The allowance his wife had been receiving was also stopped and he himself on the 10th of August received the following intimation:

“I am directed to acquaint you that the Commissioners of this Hospital [Chelsea], having fully considered your case, have decided that you have no claim to a pension.”—”Star,” August 25th, 1916.)

As this decision stands it serves to show the cold and callous indifference of those who in times past have framed the necessary regulations governing the grant of pensions. May it prove to be a means of opening the eyes of those who are used as cannon fodder to realise their true position in society.

* * *

The Trades Union Congress recently met at Birmingham, and an idea of the revolutionary nature of this body may be gauged from the fact that they were received by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Mr. Neville Chamberlain. In his opening speech he “emphasised the need for effort all round, and made an eloquent plea for the preservation of that national unity which the war has brought us. He admitted the claim of working men to take a greater share in the organisation of industry than they have hitherto enjoyed, and did not attempt to gloss over the fact that the conditions in many trades in the past had been bad, and that every man who did his best deserved to obtain decent conditions of life and work and the opportunity of bringing up his children under cheerful and healthy conditions.” How nice and kind our masters are when it suits them for the purpose of swanking the workers. Tell them part of the truth, how in many trades in the past conditions had been bad (as if they were not now), but for heaven’s sake don’t let them realise how they are fleeced.

* * *

In the same article the writer tells us that “the secret of industrial peace lies not in attempts by labour to squeeze capital or by capital to squeeze labour, but in the working together of employer and employed against the competition of outside forces.” Here again we have the old bogey trotted out, the robbed and the robbers are to work amicably together in order to fight against “the competition of outside forces.” That there will be “competition” for jobs here is religiously omitted from the article in question, and the writer says that the fear of a flooded labour market with the disbanding of our great armies is very largely “illusory.” How simple all are !

The Scout

[The Bishop’s sense of humour.] (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some months ago the Bishop of London declared that he was ready to “break stones if necessary,” but though it has been found necessary to drag WORKING men from their homes for all manner of work, it has not been found necessary for his grace to soil his hands. Now the Bishop says he would not take “another blessed farthing” if it were offered. Has he any sense of humour ?

The T.U.C., What it is and What it Should be (1956)

From the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not difficult for anyone who reflects dispassionately on the world situation to see broadly what the human race needs to solve its problems; an end to war and war preparations, an increase of the production of useful articles and services, and means to secure that these things are made available to all. Put in so general a form, these aims would be endorsed with more or less sincerity by members of all political parties all over the world; but there the cleavage begins. Non-Socialists, if they believe the ends practicable at all, think they can be won by modifications of the existing social order and by building up United Nations. Socialists hold that class and international conflict can only be ended by replacing Capitalism by Socialism and that until this is done neither the problem of achieving a large-scale increase of production of useful articles, nor the problem of distribution to all, can be solved; while Capitalism endures there will always be wars, and the workers will go on producing wealth not for themselves but for the Capitalist owners of the means of production and distribution, with accompanying waste of labour and materials on armaments and other Capitalist anti-social activities and with inevitable poverty for the many and riches for the few.

Where does the T.U.C. stand in this? It represents a large proportion of organised workers in Britain, is committed in theory to internationalism through its affiliation to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and vaguely approves of a new social order declared to be the aim of the Labour Party here and of similar parties in other lands.

How does it shape up to its responsibilities? Regrettably it does so very ill, as the recent Brighton conference shows; this despite the much overrated shift of attitude from half acceptance of some degree of “wage restraint” to a more or less definite repudiation. On every issue it dealt with effects not causes and this was as true of the “militants” as of those they condemned.

Certainly the organised workers should use what strength they have to press for higher wages but how far does this carry them? They have been doing this ever since there were trade unions and in so doing they tacitly accept Capitalism and the wages system. The limit of trade union pressure on the industrial field is set by the state of trade. When trade declines or when the sales of Capitalist industries in one country are hit by competition from other countries, the ability of the trade unions to do more than fight rearguard actions disappears. How can motor workers fight for higher wages against employers who have less need for labour?

No delegate even thinks it worth mentioning that, as Marx pointed out, the only way out of this is that trade unions should recognise the need to aim at the abolition of the wages system. This means aiming for Socialism but among all those who pay lip-service to Socialism no-one ever reminds T.U.C. conferences of it.

Conference gave its approval to “automation” while seeking safeguards for displaced workers and consultation between employers and trade unions, but nobody thought fit to raise the one vital issue that the new automation plants, like the old ones, are the private property of the Capitalist class, used for their profit not for the good of the community as a whole. The extent of the demand that the delegates considered they were entitled to make was. in the words of the Communist, Mr. Haxell, of the E.T.U., being ready to fight “and win some of the increase of productivity for the workers."—(Manchester Guardian, Sept. 5.)

Some delegates urged support for automation on the ground that if British industry did not adopt it, while industries in foreign countries did, British products would be priced out of world markets. Here was a chance, which the Conference did not take, of recalling that the international trade union movement ought to have as one of its functions united action to prevent employers playing off the workers in one country against those in others, to the detriment of the whole working class.

The resolution demanding the 40 hour week was an exhibition of unreality. True the trade unions ought to struggle for shorter hours but they have most of them long ceased to do so in any real sense. Before the war 47 hours were the typical working week in British industry. Now it is nominally 44 hours; but in fact, through widespread overtime working, average actual hours are longer than before the war. The only people who have actually reduced hours are the employers in those industries where falling sales have resulted in a compulsory shorter week with shorter pay.

The resolution against “wage restraint” showed muddled thinking and demagogic speeches at their worst. Socialists would have stated the Socialist case for the ending of Capitalism and with it the ending of the wages system. What conference did was to tie up wage restraint with an attack on the Tory Government because it had not played its part in controlling Capitalism—as if the workers were any better off when the Labour Government was in power trying vainly to improve Capitalism by “controlling it.” Mr. Campbell, of the N.U.R., in what goes for a “fighting speech,” slated the Tory Government for saying that “balance of payments” difficulties made wage restraint necessary and he received the applause of delegates by declaring that Tory policy had meant “to many working class households,” “difficulties with their balance of payments ."—(Daily Telegraph, September 6.). This is the veriest claptrap, for working class households have been faced with difficulties of making ends meet ever since there was a working class and just as much under Labour Government as now. Indeed the evidence shows that under the Labour Government the position happened to be rather worse. Official figures show that between 1947 and 1951 wage rates rose 22 per cent, while the cost of living outstripped wage rates with a rise of 29 per cent. Since the Tories came in, helped by more resolute trade union pressure, that position has been reversed and now wage rates at 64 per cent, above 1947 are ahead of the cost of living at 56 per cent. This was recently pointed out by a Labour M.P. Mr. Crossman. Writing in the Daily Mirror (November 15, 1955), he admitted that but for the workers' acceptance of the Labour Government’s “wage restraint” wages under the Labour Government could have been higher than they were. The workers failed, he wrote, to extort “the highest possible price for labour in a free market.”

And in spite of his bold words on rejecting wage restraint Mr. Campbell went on to say that if the present government were to restore the controls used by the Labour Government “ trade unionists might not be compelled .to press for wage increases to meet the price increases forced upon us.” He is prepared, in other words, to go back to the defeatest trade union policy operated under the Labour Government.

Br. Cousins, who carried conference with him on the resolution, demanded that the Tory Government should go in for disarmament and thus save £750 million as an alternative to wage restraint.—(Manchester Guardian, September 6.). He also spoke for a Labour Government. It brought applause from delegates who seemingly forgot that it was the Labour Government who launched the £1,500 million a year rearmament programme and inaugurated the “wage restraint” policy.

But having thus attacked armament costs and having also resolved to press for a reduction in the length of military service below the two years fixed by the Labour Government Conference went on to pass a resolution on the Suez dispute which, while anti-war in tone nevertheless committed Congress to support the use of force if it was approved by the United Nations. But war is no less war because carried out under United Nation auspices as the delegates should well know from the Korean conflict into which the Labour Government entered in 1950. Supporters of this resolution mistakenly argue that workers' jobs are involved and therefore trade unions must act including giving support to war, if United Nations gives approval. Which brings us back to the total failure of the T.U.C. to envisage the urgent necessity of getting rid of the social system that causes wars.

After being in existence for three-quarters of a century the T.U.C. is still going nowhere and offering no guidance to the workers about their vital interest.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: This money business (1956)

Editorial from the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Socialists do not hold that “money is the root of all evil". (And before knowledgeable readers rush for their pens to let us know that we have the quotation wrong, Socialists likewise do not hold that it is the love of money that is at fault.) What Socialists hold is that the root evil of the modern world is Capitalism, the social system based on private ownership of the means of production and distribution. Capitalism presupposes the existence of an owning class and of a working class, and the whole arrangement for producing goods and services for sale at a profit. Money is a necessary part of Capitalism. It is not the root, but a rank, festering jungle growth on the surface in which the world's population blindly gropes its way.

The way the Socialist views this jungle growth is quite unlike the way of the various non and anti-Socialists. This is an acid test and it separates the Socialist from all the others. When the Liberal or Tory believer in Capitalism says “Of course you can’t do without money,” he is at least talking a sort of sense, for what he means is that you can’t have Capitalism without a money system. But the Socialist has no desire to keep Capitalism and knows very well that if you have Socialism you do not need and could not have a money system.

It is at this point that the Labourite and Communist joins the Liberal and Tory and echoes their jibe that nobody in his senses really believes in a world without money. Which just goes to show what a deplorable effect the Labour and Communist policy of running Capitalism has had on their ideas. Half a century ago not only Socialists but also the pioneers of the organisations that eventually produced the Labour and Communist parties were quite familiar with this proposition and felt no need to break into asinine guffaws about it. They knew then that this was an essential part of Socialism. Now their successors are deeply shocked by the suggestion, which comes to them out of their forgotten past as from another world. They have handled Capitalist problems so long that they are Capitalist-minded. Now they line up with the open defenders of Capitalism to produce their muddled plans for dealing with dollar gaps, balance of trade deficits, inflation, direct and indirect taxation and all the rest of the rigmarole. And what a rigmarole it all is.

Let us ask them one question. When they say “you can’t do without money,” what is it they think they are doing with the money system. Anyone who wants a good laugh should go to any of the orthodox economic text-books and read about the functions money is supposed to perform, or alternately go to any Labour or Communist electoral programme and compare their promises of what they would do with what they actually do when in office, here or in Russia. One of the jokes in the textbooks is that money is “universally acceptable.” Apart from dollars and gold bullion there is hardly a currency in the world that meets this requirement. Or take the nearly universal swindle of the past quarter of a century practiced on depositors in savings banks. Authority assures them, and they believe, that they will get their money back, with interest; in fact they get back depreciated currency which will buy far less than the amount originally deposited.

It isn't only Socialists who are critical of the ever more complex monetary and taxation systems. Money is supposed, according to the textbooks, to smooth the working of industry, promote greater production and in particular to facilitate efficient international exchange. Yet, what do we see? In America farmers have for years been paid money to increase production., Now the stuff has piled up into mountains of unsaleable surpluses while elsewhere in the world, and in America itself, are millions of undernourished people who cannot afford to buy it.

On this ponder the Economist (June 9, 1956);—

“Farmers will soon be ploughing growing crops back into the ground under Government auspices, something they have not done since 1933."

The American Government is now going to stifle production by paying farmers to take land out of the cultivation of cotton, maize, wheat, rice, tobacco and peanuts. But because the Bill could not be passed in time by Congress some of these crops are already growing and to get the money from the Government for not producing crops the farmers are being allowed to plough them in. Mr. John O’Rourke, editor of the Washington Daily News, who is in this country, read about the English titled lady who was ejected from her farm for not producing enough crops (for which incidentally British farmers likewise receive government subsidies). So Mr. O’Rourke wrote to the Daily Express (June 11, 1956) suggesting that this crazy muddle could be straightened out by a trans-Atlantic switch; let the English lady lease her unproductive farm to an American who could then be paid for not having produced, and in return she could hire an over-productive American farm and be paid by the English Government for producing more. Would this be crazy? Surely, but not more so than the reality.

And in face of this, the empty-headed opponents of Socialism tell us that it would not work!

Now take a glance at two believers in Capitalism and see what they have to say about their money system. First, Mr. George Murray, who in the Daily Mail (February 20, 1956) had an article “Is Money Out of Date?” 

"Between the wars Britain tried deflation as the remedy for her currency troubles. The result was that prices and wages fell. We had to drive such hard bargains with our overseas suppliers of food and raw materials that they could not afford to buy our goods. We had chronic unemployment. To-day we are hell-bent for inflation. The result of this is that the price of our goods is forced so high that our overseas customers still cannot afford to buy them, though they are much better supplied with money. And we have 'overfull' employment"

Mr Murray, who, of course, does not really/believe that money is “out of date,” lamely ends with a "plea for finding, somehow or other, some means to strike a balance: as if Capitalism ever did, or ever could provide price stability and an uninterrupted flow of production and sale. 

Lastly, there is the witty and sometimes shrewd economist who is permitted by the Sunday Times to poke irreverent fun at our rulers and their financial antics, Mr. George Schwartz. In the issue for April 15,1956, he discussed the popular but quite baseless belief that Chancellors of the Exchequer are really able to master the monetary monster nominally under their control. Mr. Schwartz doesn't think that Mr. MacMillan even understands the simpler aspects of monetary policy such as the connection between the note issue and the price level; but even if he did, it is Schwartz’s opinion that the whole thing is now hardly comprehensible or controllable. Here is a typical passage:—

“Who’s in charge of it? I can tell you that right away. No one. Of course, Chancellors talk largely of operating switches and of pulling plugs as if they were in charge of a control panel that registered the pressure in every part of the kingdom, and the outside world as well. But it is nothing like that. A Chancellor to-day is confronted with a vast refuse heap of smouldering fiscal expedients that have piled up over the past fifty years. On Budget day he can only make elaborate flourishes and then deliver a few pokes at the accumulated rubbish. If he did any more it might come down on his head or burst into flames. At the end of this ritual the Chancellor mounts the pile for a peroration, and for the rest of the week there is a rattling of the lids of empty dustbins which passes for a debate."

Mr. Schwartz delivers many more blows at the monetary and fiscal system, and ends by demanding at once and just as a first instalment the instant abolition of purchase tax, entertainment tax and the distributed profits tax. But does Mr. Schwartz believe that this will be done? and if it were would it seriously diminish the monumental muddle? Capitalism is a mess, of which its monetary contortions are a symptom. There is no cure within Capitalism. There is even little chance that it will ever get back to the crude but less complicated monetary chaps of the 19th century. Socialism offers the only way and by comparison its proposition that people of the world shall co-operate to produce what the world needs and provide free access to it, without ownership, sale or profit, is simplicity itself. And if you think it still sounds shocking in its simplicity, a little thought about it will soon rid it of its terrors for you.