The General Election: Our Manifesto to the Workers. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE WORKING CLASS,

Once again the various political parties are seeking your support in a General Election. The Liberal Government, who are appealing to you to retain them in office, were boasting in January last of their “great victory” at the polls. They pointed to the anti-Lords majority of 120 as a proof of their clear mandate and sufficient backing to abolish the Lords’ veto. Yet within a few months of this “great victory”, they are again asking you to return them for the same purpose.

Hardly had the Liberals been elected when Mr. Asquith admitted that he had not got the “guarantees” without which he promised at Albert Hall  he would not hold office.

The history of the Liberal party shows that the House of Lords has nothing to fear from them. Besides acting as a trysting place for their financial supporters, it does duty as an excuse for their broken promises and procrastination. They have raised the bogey election-cry of “Down with the House of Lords!” ever since the rejection of their 1832 Reform Bill, but though in power a dozen times since then with large majorities, they have not once joined issue with the peers. Instead of “ending or mending”, they have been extending, the Second Chamber. A far greater number of peers were created in the 19th century by the Liberals than by the Tories, and they are well ahead, with a total of 40, in the 20th century. In fact, the necessity of rewarding with peerages the great contributors to the party’s funds is, doubtless, one of the reasons for the Dissolution.

After indulging in the most violent denunciation of the Lords the Liberals arranged to patch up their quarrel by holding a conference, which, after five months existence, has been abandoned “for the present” – to use Mr. Asquith’s phrase. During these months a truce was called and we told not to disturb the little game of coddem evidently being played by the wily “eight”. The Government, if returned again, obviously intend to continue the sham-fight ’til the Coronation, when we may expect another General Election – or another conference.

Although the Liberals admit that the reform in the composition of the House of Lords means strengthening it against the people, the preamble to the Government Veto Bill states that “it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists, a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis”. This Bill gives the Lords power to reject every bill twice. Even one of their own members has admitted the hypocrisy of his party. Writing to the Daily Chronicle (June 20th) the Hon. J. Martin, Liberal M. P. for St. Pancras, said: “The Government have changed front several times on the House of Lords question, and on account of their wobbling since the Election, I have no hesitation in saying that I have no confidence whatever in them.” During the Dissolution debate (18.11.10) he said: “I do not believe the Government are in earnest in their fight against the Lords. With a majority of a hundred members like myself to stand by them, I do not believe there was any need for a dissolution.”

All this goes to show how fraudulent the Liberals are; but even were they sincere on this question of the Upper Chamber it would not concern you, fellow-workers. Mere political changes do not affect your economic condition. The Liberals say that there is not such a reactionary Second Chamber abroad as the British, yet you know that poverty and unemployment abound there as here.

The poverty and insecurity from which you suffer has its roots, not in political forms, but in the class ownership of the means of life. No reform, whether of Tariffs, Franchise, or Poor Law, can touch the cause; consequently the effects persist though social reforms are continually passed.

Even Lloyd George confessed, in his City Temple speech (17.10.10), that “before we succeed in remedying one evil, fresh ones crop up. We are hopelessly in error”. That is a very significant admission. But the very reforms that fail to touch the evils they are supposed to remedy are, the “wicked Lords” notwithstanding, being made the issues by the Liberals at the present election.

Very Old Age Pensions for those on the verge of the grave (adopted because they are cheaper than Poor Law relief); Labour Exchanges (organised to smash strikes and reduce wages); a specious promise to qualify the legal effects of the Osborne judgment (a sop to catch the votes of the trades unions): these are the futilities with which the Liberals mock the care-worn wage-slaves of capitalism.

The Labour Party, as we have continually pointed out, is merely a wing of the Liberal party. It is composed of job-hunters who, like Shackleton, are seeking office in Liberal administrations. Said their chairman in the House of Commons (18.11.10): “It was because the Labour Party believed the solution of the House of Lords question would be a step forward that  they supported the Government”.

Your masters are seeking your suffrages in this election because upon their control of the political machine their supremacy depends. Liberal and Tory alike are out for the maintenance of this system, which means for you a continuation of your slavery. While pretending to be in deadly enmity, they are united as one against you when you try to better your lot. They combine in Masters’ Federations and try to starve you into submission by locking you out when you seek to make your wages cover the increased cost of living – as in Lancashire. They bring the armed forces into your midst to bludgeon you and menace your very lives – as in South Wales. Through their political supremacy your masters control these forces of repression, and if you are to change the conditions under which you work and live, you must fight to get control of the machinery of Government.

In that fight you cannot take sides with any section of the capitalist class, because it is to their interest to maintain this system which means luxury and idleness for them. Neither can you support those parties which, like the Labour Party and the Social-Democratic Party, are parties of compromise and reform. (The latter of these organisations has, in its election manifesto, advised the workers to stultify themselves by voting for the Tories. Their only candidate is a champion of “a strong navy”!) Your interests, being opposed to those of the capitalists, must lead you to ally yourself with a working-class political party waging an uncompromising battle against all the forces ranged in opposition to your class.

Your emancipation can only be achieved by converting the instruments of production from the property of the few (who use them to exploit you) into the common property of society, so that they can be used to produce the requirements of life in abundance for all; in a word, Socialism must be established.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the only party in this country that consistently works for this end: and as the realisation of Socialism depends upon the conversion of the workers, your place is within its ranks, striving to bring your fellow-workers into line, helping to hasten the day when the fratricidal warfare of capitalism is supplanted by the fraternal co-operation that Socialism alone can ensure.

Pending the time when the workers rally in greater numbers to the Socialist Party, and so enable it to take its proper place in electoral contests as the only working-class political party in this country, it has no candidates in the field. Hence all candidates before you at this election, whether they be openly and avowedly capitalist, or slink at the heels of the Liberals under the title of I.L.P., S.D.P., Labour or Socialist, stand for the maintenance of capitalism, and from the position we have outlined your duty is plain.

ABSTAIN FROM VOTING

on this occasion, and, lest the enemy impersonate you, go to the ballot-box and inscribe “SOCIALISM!” upon your voting paper. Above all, the work that lies before you is to enlist the support of your fellows in the fight for Socialism, for that alone can deliver you from the misery which to-day you endure.

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

The position of the I.L.P. A parallel and a moral (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The means by which the defenders of an established order seek to retain supremacy and resist progress are always interesting, not merely from an abstract point of view, but also because of the valuable lessons which can be learned by a thoughtful observer, and applied with advantage in the future. Such a case occurred when the theory of Natural Selection, so intimately associated with the name of Darwin, burst like a thunderclap over the old ideas of a special creation, with each human individual, as distinct from the lower animals, endowed with a “soul” or “spirit”. These modern notions were met on the one hand with a conspiracy of silence, on the other with a venomous outpouring of abuse. But, of course, neither method proved to be any great barrier to the progress of an idea that was bound to grow and spread, by reason of its intrinsic truth and logic. The more astute, though less honest, apostles of ignorance were not slow to realise this, and in consequence they adopted a new method of combating the truth. We are now generally told that there is no real or necessary conflict between science and superstition, or, as it is phrased, between evolution and religion. Science is now invested with clerical garb where formerly it was reviled. By such means do the clergy desire to prevent its real significance being known, and to prolong the life of their creed and therefore the term of their occupation.

The essential features of the reception given to the above mentioned idea are also common to the attitude adopted toward the theories in which we are more immediately concerned. I refer to the principles upon which the Socialist takes his stand. The starting point is as follows:

The way in which wealth is produced and distributed in every social system determines the ideas of the people; in other words, material conditions dominate and form the basis of all the legal, ethical, moral and religious superstructure of society.

In modern society there are two distinct classes, namely, the producers and the possessors. The material interest of the possessing class lies in the direction of more profit, which means more poverty and greater hardship for the producers. The interest of the workers is, of course, against this, and lies in getting all the wealth it produces. Such is the position to-day, and we cannot ignore it. The ideas and aspirations of the master class are rooted in their class privilege — they will not abdicate their favoured position. Their legal and moral codes seek to justify their position as robbers. The man or the party that advises the workers to support capitalist candidates or parties under any circumstances is an enemy of the working class. It is our duty to keep the class issue clear. Either you must engage in the struggle against the capitalist system or else actively or passively support the ruling class. With its cause lying in the private property basis of society, the class struggle cannot be suspended, but must be waged with increasing bitterness until the capitalist class are overthrown and classes cease to exist. We do not cloak these facts, but make their clear presentment to our fellow-workingmen the very first object of our propagandist endeavours.

Realising the dangerous character of these revolutionary theories, the master class and their henchmen first endeavour to keep the working class in ignorance by such clumsy methods as the exiling or imprisoning of men (such as Marx) who discovered and first stated these facts, and by the suppression of their works and the harrying of those who openly accept their ideas. Finding the futility of such a course, they take a lesson from the Church, and resort to the boycott. In this the capitalist class in this country found a useful ally in the Independent Labour Party, and later in the Labour Party. The I.L.P. (as also the L.P.) at its inception completely ignored the fundamentals of working-class organisation, thus playing directly into the masters’ hands. This party, with whom popularity and Parliamentary seats appear to be the only measure of success, is bound in order to maintain its success, to preach and support anti-working-class nostrums which have been popularised by capitalist agencies. An ever-growing number of the working class have pointed out the futility of dropping revolutionary principles for votes and fighting elections on election cries kindly provided by the Liberal party, and specially designed to serve capitalist interests. Naturally enough, the labour leaders have been annoyed at these irreconcilable notions, and when they could not ignore them they have indulged in violent denunciations of the principle of the class struggle and everything connected with it.

After the International  Conference at Amsterdam Mr. J. Bruce Glasier, a prominent I.L.P.er, distinguished himself in this direction with the following (Labour Leader, 26.8.04): “The Class War dogma is a reactionary and whiggish precept certain to lead the movement away from the real aims of Socialism”. On another occasion Mr. Keir Hardie showed his “love” for the materialist class-war basis of Socialism by stating that if Socialism was to be achieved on these lines nothing would be changed, except for the worse, adding that it would be “a merely glorified animalism, dangerously akin to bestiality” (Labour Leader, 17.8.01). This sentiment, of course, is merely a variation of the old “religious” wheeze that everything materialistic is inexpressibly vile.

Another instance (out of many) of specific denial of the Socialist principle of the class struggle is contained in The New Theology and the Social Movement, a pamphlet issued by the I.L.P. Publication Department. The brochure is a report of the first I.L.P. meeting the Rev. R.J. Campbell addressed (Hope Hall, Liverpool, March 25, 1907). Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Labour M.P., wrote regretting his inability to attend and added: “Mr. Campbell’s adherence to the principles of our party is one more proof that we do not appeal to narrow class interests or prejudices, but that we aim at a state of society which commends itself to conscientious and rational people irrespective altogether of social status”. This childishly Utopian notion of a perfect society commending itself to all “conscientious and rational” people becomes merely laughable when tested by the historical fact that no ruling class has ever willingly relinquished its power, no matter how “good” or “rational” such a course might have been.

But in spite of this Keir Hardie specifically endorsed MacDonald’s effusion. “As MacDonald says” he declared, “his (Campbell’s) presence here is one more proof that the Socialism of the I.L.P. is no narrow class movement. It is a great principle which we invite all classes to come into and help to realise”. This is the sort of stuff Hardie ladled out in the name of the I.L.P. as an antidote to Marxian principles, and, be it noted, none of these statements have ever been repudiated or even objected to by his party. In fact, in I.L.P. leaflet Nº 5, ironically called “A Statement of Principles”, the same position is taken up. We are told that the party does not make war upon a class but considers a man’s convictions and not his social status, thus making it plain that they consider the two things entirely separate instead of, as the Marxian philosophy shows, vitally connected.

Considerations of space prevent me quoting further evidence of the opposition of the I.L.P. to Marxian tenets. Sufficient however, has, I believe, been written to prove beyond all doubt the hostile and anti-working-class attitude of the Labourites.

It is becoming increasingly evident that after all neither Utopian day-dreams nor sentimental piffle have much effect upon the steady progress of the Socialist idea. With the deplorable results to the labour “leaders” themselves consequent on the workers embracing the new philosophy, ever before their eyes, the more astute of them have fallen back to their last ditch. The time has gone by when it was profitable to repudiate Marx, and now the wirepullers of the “Labour” movement shift their ground and affirm that the Labour Party is based upon his teaching.

In view of this insidious move it is more than ever necessary for us to point out what position the labour “leaders” and the organisations they dominate have occupied on this question. Let any of these “latter-day Marxists” show, if they can, how a Marxian party could be guilty of such anti-Marxian pronouncements as those quoted above.

It is peculiar that it should have been left to Keir Hardie, who has so vehemently denounced the principle of the class struggle in the past, to introduce the new methods and pose as a Marxist. Yet, relying on the proverbially short memory of the British working class, he has not shirked the task. In My Confession of Faith in the Labour Alliance, a pamphlet issued just after the Edinburgh conference of the I.L.P., Mr. Keir Hardie, among other curious statements, makes the following assertion: “The Labour Party is the only expression of orthodox Marxian Socialism in Great Britain”.

Unfortunately for Mr. Hardie and his gang of political brigands, he neglected, when perpetrating this foul lie, to give his confederates the cue, with the result that some amusing complications have arisen. Father should have said “turn”, for the sake of harmony. As it is some of the party are still declaring that Marx was the last of the Utopians, while others, more up-to-date, are repeating Hardie’s prevarications. For instance, after the latter had discovered that they were a class party, Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, of the “Brunner Bill” fame, wrote in the Labour Leader of May 21st, 1909: “The Socialist movement knows no class but is drawn from all classes”, and clinched the matter thus: “So I can sum up, the Labour Party is not a class but a community party”.

What a spectacle of contradiction and confusion! Here are two men with unrivalled opportunity of knowing what the Labour Party really does stand for, flatly contradicting each other on the very basis of their movement. If the leaders are so divided on root principles it may be left to the reader’s imagination to determine what state of mind the “rank-and-file” of the party must be in.

The most important point, however, is just that the labour “leaders” have in the past first ignored and then opposed the theories of Marx. Only recently have they attempted to “revise” these great scientific truths. The “revising” process is merely an endeavour to emasculate the Socialist doctrine, to rob Marx’s terms of their meaning and so make them fit in with the confusing and contradictory propaganda of the Labour Party.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the new plan has already caught on. The official organ of the I.L.P. for September 9th last tells us that no one can have a complete knowledge of Socialism unless he is acquainted with the theories of Marx. Incidentally it has taken them seventeen years as a party to find this out. But they go on to say that Marx’s work belongs to the pioneer stage and requires some restatement. In this way they seek to impose upon the credulity of those of their readers who do not know that Marx’s work was the laying bare of the economic foundation of society – which remains the same now as when his labour was accomplished. Consequently they do not suggest a study of Marx’s works, but advise the perusal of a pamphlet written by a pseudo-Marxist of the Labour Party type, who can be depended upon to suppress awkward truths and distort inconvenient theories.

It is not my special purpose here to show that the class struggle has nothing in common with licensing bills, capitalist budgets, Free Church councils and P.S.A.’s, even were it necessary to do so; but I shall be satisfied if I enable my readers to see through the shame enthusiasm of the Labour “leaders” for their perverted Marxism. Just as the clergy opposed the theory of evolution until its progress made it imperative to smother it with embraces, so too the changed attitude of Hardie and his gang toward the principle of the class struggle is forced on them by the rapid spreading of the idea among the working class. Hence it is a hopeful sign, signifying that the Labour tricksters are being forced into their last resource.

When the facts are known, the insincerity and double-dealing of the Labour “leaders” are plain. It is not surprising that their fight against progress runs on parallel lines to that of the clergy for they have much in common. Both are the servile tools of the capitalist class, and their function is to mislead the workers and so postpone the day of reckoning – hence the Socialist Party spare no pains to effect their exposure.

R. Fox

The Revolutionary proposition (continued) (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our last instalment we saw that the Revolutionary Proposition must be achieved, firstly by the education in its principles of the only class that, in the nature of things, can become revolutionary—the working class—and secondly by the capture of the political machinery.

The Revolutionary Proposition is a proposal to dispossess the master class, therefore the first axiom of the revolutionary politician is that, as a politician, he must necessarily be in conflict with the master class.

The political machinery exists for no other purpose than to serve and conserve material interests. Its every action finds its motive power in the all pervading “bread-and-butter” question. Why should it be otherwise ? The first passion is the passion to eat. The poet, whose mission under capitalism has been to supplement the work of the Church in the endeavour to depreciate the material, has tried to lift love to the first place, and calls it “truth,” while the modern novelist, true product of the bestial conditions of modern life, makes lust the premier passion, and calls it “realism.”

But how many of us, having the courage to speak as we find, give assent either to Beauty or The Beast ? How many of us, being “Men in earnest” who

“have no time to waste,

“Weaving fig-leaves for the naked truth. ”

dare assert that mankind in general would toil and moil and suffer, from the cradle to the grave, as mankind in general does toil and moil and suffer, for love, or lust, or any other passion than the passion to eat ? And history, indeed—the history of the slave peoples of all times—proves that neither is the poet’s frenzy truth, nor the novelist’s grossness reality ; for it shows, in its records of suppression, and violation, and emasculation—the concubines and eunuchs of the East, the “right of the first night,” the enforced celibacy, and the prostitution of the West—shows in these how love and lust have universally been trampled under foot. And history further shows that no other passion than the passion to eat, no other question than the earthy “bread-and-butter” question, no transcendent conception of justice or liberty or equality or fraternity, has ever led a subject class to revolution. Enslaved classes have been subjected to every indignity, deprived of the opportunity of satisfying every human passion, but withal the worm has only turned for food, and the one protesting appeal has been: “Bread ! More bread !” Earth is more powerful than heaven ; preservation stands even before procreation.

Since the power of economic interests dominates all others, the bitterest of all struggles must centre about the possession of the political machinery—the machinery of the ruling class for conserving their economic interests.

The political struggle is in very essence the struggle for life, therefore it must be supreme. This struggle to capture the machinery of government, in order that it may be used to disarm the possessing class, preparatory to dispossessing them, must take the first and foremost place in the working-class political life. All other things must be secondary to this endeavour. Therefore the votes and support of the workers must be won openly and above-board, on the plain, clear issue of the Revolutionary Proposition,—for or against the abolition of private property in the means of living ; for or against the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means and instruments of production and distribution.

The vote belongs to the idea behind it ; the seat, hence, no matter what manner of man fills it, belongs to the political faith of its constituents.

If then, a seat is won by revolutionary votes, and the man who fills it should turn out to be a traitor, the seat still would be a revolutionary seat, though temporarily perverted from its proper use. If, on the other hand, well-meaning enthusiasts desirous of the new social system, displaying all their gaudy baubles—cures for unemployment, State maintenance of children,and the like—gain by these means the votes of those who want the reforms but cling to the system, and through these votes get seated, their seats still belong to capitalism, and they, willy-nilly, become henchmen of the capitalists. In such case no atom of progress has been made in the struggle for the revolutionary capture of the machinery of government; and if it can be shown that the reforms are either impossible or futile (a future consideration), then it is demonstrated that working-class effort has been utterly wasted.

But experience shows that the result of this building on unsound votes is worse than mere waste of energy. It affords opportunity to the wily and unscrupulous demagogues, the Burnses and Hardies of England and the Briands and Millerands of France ; and the workers, finding those whom the fondly hoped were to do their bidding, made Cabinet ministers, and suppressing them with bayonet and ball cartridge, heap curses on Socialism, and, losing faith in political action, fly to the sophistries of Anarchism, or sink in the sluggish waters of indifference.

The political struggle is the struggle for the instrument of class domination, therefore it must be a class struggle. The very fact of the existence of this machinery of government proves that. It is a strange superstition that conceives the possibility of the master class assisting in the work of giving the working class control of the legislative and judicial machinery, the police and the armed forces of the nation. The fight for these instruments—the only power which to-day maintains the dominant class in their position—will be long, stern and bitter, and every weapon and artifice the ruling class can resort to they will.

The political party of the working class, therefore, must stand opposed to all other political parties, must, in short base their activities upon the fundamental principle of the class struggle. The issue is one that can only divide men into two camps—those for and those against the Revolutionary Proposition. This issue must be clear of all befogging issues and illusions, on the principle that only the revolutionary is of any use for the revolution, and the revolutionary will always vote right on the clear, simple issue of the revolution.

A. E. Jacomb

[To be Continued.]

Social contrasts. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anatole France in one of his novels says that “the life of a people is but a succession ui miseries, crimes and follies.” This is largely correct. Certainly, from the manifold volumes of historical works in existence, treating of various periods and various peoples, we may gather some knowledge of the crimes and follies perpetrated by the ruling classes of these times, and the enslavement, and consequent misery, of the other, and greater, portion of the populace. It would, indeed, appear from an examination into different historical epochs, that the greater the wealth and culture of the ruling class, the more degraded and hopeless is the condition of those they rule.

If, for example, we turn back to the so-called “golden” age of Greek civilisation, we find that at the time of the greatest prosperity of the Attic state, the whole number of free Athenian, citizens, women and children included, amounted to about 90,000 ; the slaves of both sexes numbered 365,000 ; the balance of the people being made up of aliens—foreigners and freed slaves—these numbering about 45,000. History tells us little or nothing of the lives of these 365,000 human beings on whose toil practically the whole structure of the much-vaunted Greek culture rested. We have had handed down to us the philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle, the lyrical dramas of Aeschylus and Euripides; the sculpture of Pheidias can yet be seen in the British Museum ; in the glowing pages of Pluttarch (to say nothing of William Smith) are to be found the records of all the heroic deeds performed by Pericles and Alcibiades ; but the life of a slave does not make such pretty reading as that of a philosopher or artist, and so the historians have been very careful not to disturb the sleek complacency of their readers by a recital of the doings of the mere wealth-producers. The blood and sweat of the slaves would soil the classical purity of Greek culture, so the blood and sweat must be buried beneath the traditional glory of the slaves’ taskmasters.

Coming down to later times a very similar contrast may be observed between the status of the rich and the poor, between the dominant class and the class dominated. In another “golden” age—that of the “virgin”‘ queen Elizabeth—wealth, we are told, increased to an enormous extent. Green, in his “Short History of the English People,” says,

“The lavishness of a new wealth united with a lavishness of life, a love of beauty, of colour, of display, to revolutionize English dress. The Queen’s three thousand robes were rivalled in their bravery by the slashed velvets, the ruffs, the jewelled purpoints of the courtiers around her. Men ‘wore a manor on their backs.’ The old sober notions of thrift melted before the strange revolutions of fortune wrought by the New World. Gallants gambled away a fortune at a sitting, and sailed off to make a fresh one in the Indies. Visions of galleons loaded to the brim with pearls and diamonds and ingots of silver, dreams of El Dorados where all was of gold, threw a haze of prodigality and confusion over the imagination of the meanest seaman.” English literature, following in the wake of the Italian Renascence, took on. a new lease of life through such men as Spenser, Shakespeare, [Bacon and the numerous other poets and writers who graced the Elizabethan age. A scientific knowledge of natural laws was spreading.”

“It was only in the later years of the sixteenth century that the discoveries of Copernicus were brought, home to the general intelligence of the world by Kepler and Galileo.”

Drake, Raleigh, Hawkins and Frobisher, between the intervals of “singeing the King of Spain’s beard,” were circumnavigating the globe, breaking into the charmed circle of the Indies, or discovering the North-West passage.

And yet there is very distinctly another side to the medal. During the reigns immediately preceding that of Elizabeth, a great and ever increasing number of the people had been forcibly expropriated from the soil and thrown out upon the highways to exist as best they might.

“They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe, a bloody legislation against vagabondage The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as voluntary criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own goodwill to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed.” (Marx in “Capital.”)

Marx further tells us that

“In Elizabeth’s time ‘rogues were trussed up apace, and there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes.’ (Strype’s ‘Annals of the Thee-formation and Establishment of Religion, and other Various Occurrences in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth’s Happy Reign,’ Second ed., 1725, Vol. ‘2.) According to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 discharged as ‘incorrigible vagabonds.’ Nevertheless, he is of the opinion that this large number of prisoners does not comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence of the justices and the foolish compassion of the people ; and the other counties of England were not better off in this respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse. . . . Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.”

In modern capitalist society these same sardonic contrasts prevail. In the Daily Chronicle of June 6th, 1903, it was pointed out that “the whole volume of British Trade has increased from 764 millions sterling in 1898 to 877 millions in 1902,” and in the same issue appeared a report of a speech delivered by the late Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, in which he declared that about 30% of the population were underfed, were on the verge of hunger. (Vide SOCIALIST STANDARD, August this year.)

During the first nine months of 1910, official trade returns show that :

Imports rose by £37,530,000,

Exports of British goods rose by £41,239,000, and Exports of imported goods rose by £11,063,000

as compared with January to September 1909. In the same issue of the paper (Morning Leader 8th October) in which these figures are given, is a short paragraph, headed “Pea-pickers Hardships,” giving an account of a meeting held at Romford, at which “the lamentable conditions under which the pea-pickers live in Essex” was discussed, Canon Ingles remarking at this meeting that the way the pickers lived while on the farms was a disgrace to a Christian country and Canon Lord William Cecil supporting the view that employers should be compelled to provide pure water for drinking and clean straw for beds.

In spite of the great increase in trade that has taken place since the beginning of 1910, at the present time there is perhaps more dissatisfaction among the industrial workers of this country than for some years past. The boiler-makers, the miners, the cotton operatives, the chain-makers and the railwaymen. to mention only a few, are seething with discontent. And yet exports of British goods rose by £41,239,000 !

Historical research shows that, no matter at what period—ancient, medieval or modern,—no matter what may be the wealth and culture, the spread of knowledge, the goodwill even (if such there be) among the dominant class, the condition of the class dominated is, in the main, one of base and degrading servitude, of physical and mental misery. Using the words of the before-mentioned French author, we may epitomise the history of the members of the slave-class by saying that “they were born, they suffered, they died.” Suffering has been their only heritage since slavery was first instituted ; whether it he chattel slavery or wage-slavery does not make very much difference, except that perhaps the chattel-slave was, in some respects, better off than the modern wage-worker.

The Socialist Party exists for the purpose of abolishing, once and for ever, both slave-class and master-class. We of course recognise that natural inequalities between individuals do and must exist. But we know further that social inequalities and contrasts between individuals or classes are an anomaly. To help do away with these social inequalities and contrasts, to raise society to a higher plane, where equality of opportunity shall be accorded to all, irrespective of race or sex, is the reason for our existence as a party. We ask for the intelligent co-operation of our fellow wage-slaves to assist us in this work, so that the day may be hastened when such terms as slave and master, owner and owned, working class and capitalist class, will be, without meaning. When society has evolved into this stage, when the Socialist Commonwealth has at last been established, then for the first time will a period of real culture and intellectual activity be possible to all, and not to, comparatively, a mere handful of men and women, such as have monopolised all the best things of life up to the present.

F. J. Webb

Socialism & the State. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist propagandist is often confronted with the assertion that the establishment of a system of Socialism would involve the subjection of the individual to a hide-bound State, that would eventually result in the enslavement of the people. 

The Socialist, on the contrary, asserts that the working class are enslaved to-day, and that only the establishment of Socialism can effect their emancipation.

The individualist attacks Socialism from the standpoint that the proposed change simply means the continuation of the present wage-system of production, in which the whole of the wealth of society shall be owned by a number of persons incorporated into a State or bureaucracy, instead of being, as at present, owned by private individuals. He maintains that the right of the individual is supreme, and condemns any action on the part of a State or collection of individuals, that interferes with his desires.

Since correct understanding implies correct interpretation of terms used, and the point revolves upon the meaning of the term “slave”, I will preface my remarks with such a definition. 

A slave is one who is owned by or controlled by another; one who is compelled to labour to satisfy the wants of another. 

The chattel-slave originally was a prisoner of war, whose life was at the disposal of his owner. He was allowed to live in order that he might produce more wealth, or greater satisfaction, for his owner, than could be obtained from his death, his owner, of course, providing him with the food, clothing and shelter necessary to keep him in a fit condition.

Later on in the development of society we find the serf, who was compelled to labour for a certain period for his lord, the remainder of his time being at his own disposal for the purpose of providing himself and his family with the necessaries of life.

To-day the worker, in order to live, is compelled to labour for a certain period. He receives, however, but a portion of the wealth created. Out of the wealth he has produced he receives (according to Mr. Chiozza Money [who estimates the wealth produced at £4. 5s. per week per family of five, while the average amount received by a working class family of five is shown to be 25s . per week] and other capitalist statisticians) about one-third. That is to say that if he produces goods to the value of £3, he receives as a wage £1, his master taking the remainder.

While there may be a difference in degree in those different forms of exploitation, the principle still remains. The under-dog is compelled to labour for the purpose of producing something to satisfy the wants of others who, holding the things necessary for his life, thereby control him. He is, therefore, still a slave.

The principle would remain if the working class was compelled to work for a State instead of for individual employers. If the whole of the wealth and the means of production are owned by a State and the worker receives a wage, then slavery is not abolished, but is intensified.

The worker to-day, while compelled to work for a master, still has some sort of a choice among those masters, but with the State as the only employer he is compelled to work for that employer and under that employer’s conditions, or take the only alternative and starve. State Capitalism would intensify slavery, but State Capitalism is not Socialism.

Our individualist opponent, if a toiler, is subject to others. Others have the power to say when he shall work and when he shall starve, how he shall work and under what conditions. His life and action are determined largely by his spending capacity; by the extent of his wage. He cannot do as he would wish because he is bound to the bench or to the counter. The greater part of his life is occupied by laborious toil or petty business – toil and worry and anxiety in the interest of others. He is robbed by the capitalist employer and oppressed by the capitalist State.

And what is this State? Merely representative of the dominant class; the class in power, whose interest lies in an opposite direction to the interest of the workers. 

The State is merely the force that enables the working class to subject the working class.

Large  bodies of drilled and armed men are only necessary where the greater number of the people are subject to the few, and those civil and military forces necessary to control the oppressed and exploited class are the “State”.

The State grew up at a certain stage of economic development with the growth of classes, and when the classes are abolished the State will go too. Socialism means no State.

The propertyless have no “rights” under capitalism — not even the right to live. Far from being in any way free they are the property, to all intents and purposes, of the propertied class. Our opponents have been misled by the so-called friends of the worker — the municipal-cum-nationaliser — by the pet theory of the Fabian, who holds that the “government of the future must be by experts”, with the Fabians, of course, as the experts.

Those who read of the conditions of the people of Peru, prior to its conquest by the Spaniards, will find therein many points of resemblance to the proposed bureaucracy of the Fabians.

The Peruvian State was not capitalism: goods being produced, not for sale, but for consumption by the people. Take the following from Prescott (p. 56):

“The Peruvian Government watched with unwearied solicitude over its subjects, provided for their physical necessities, was mindful of their morals, and showed throughout the affectionate concern of a parent for his children, who were never to act or think for themselves, but whose whole duty was comprehended in the obligation of implicit obedience”.

And on page 26 we are told “Industry was publicly commended and stimulated by rewards”.

Compare this with the following from Fabian Essays (1908 edition) under the heading of “Socialism and the State” (p. 163).

“Out of the value of the communal produce must come, rent of land payable to the local authority, rent of plant needed for working the industries, wages advanced and fixed in the usual way, taxes, reserve fund, accumulation fund, and the other charges necessary for the carrying on of the communal business. All these deducted, the remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a bonus . . . 

"If there is one vice more than another that will be unpopular under Socialism it is laziness.”

In Peru, we are told (Prescott, p. 26) “Occupation was found for all, from the child of five to the aged matron not too infirm to hold a distaff, no one was allowed to eat the bread of idleness in Peru”.

Well may working-men who have studied the conditions of present-day capitalism resent the proposals of the “State Socialist” with his grandmotherly legislative enactments. Such a change as is proposed by him would indeed mean slavery, and would throw the propertyless class still deeper in the mire of social degradation.

The Government of the Incas was in spirit truly patriarchal since “the task imposed upon him was always proportioned to his strength, he had seasons of rest and refreshment and was well protected against the inclemency of the weather”, and “every care was shown for his personal safety”. Yet the greater number of people in Peru were slaves, and slaves of such a type that the conditions of to-day are preferable to those who, recognising the evils of wage-slavery under which they exist, are trying to find a way out. True the people were kept in subjection by the superstition that the Inca was a supreme being, a descendant of the sun, and they blindly worshipped him as omnipotent. They were prepared to toil for his benefit and for the benefit of his nobles.

But is the superstition of the Fabian worshipper in any way preferable? To blindly worship the State and toil to support the supposed experts in control (for we are told [Fabian Essays, p. 164] that it is probable that the “captains of Industry will be more highly paid than the rank and file of the industrial army”) is as great an error, as foolish a superstition, as to worship the sun and its supposed descendants.

The worker must be forced to realise that to effect his emancipation he must discard  all superstition and must refuse to be led and bossed by self-styled “superior persons”. He must understand that in order to obtain the best of things necessary for life, with the least expenditure of energy he must organise with his fellows.

Individual production is played out. Without doubt the best results are to be obtained by social production. All the evil is caused by that co-operation ending with production, and the wealth, socially produced, being owned by a small section of the community. We cannot go back to individual production, nor is it desirable. What must ultimately come is a system wherein wealth shall be socially produced and collectively owned by the producers, who shall say in what way and in what quantity it shall be produced.

In brief, the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth must be owned and controlled by the whole working community.

Twel.

Pot Pourri. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

I did not go to the Business Exhibition, but I have done the next best thing — read the newspaper puffs of it. One needs not to be a master of deductive philosophy to read the lesson writ large over the pages of booming devoted to it. The features of this year consist of calculating machines for eliminating clerks ; a machine (the Dictaphone) for doubling one’s output ; another that addresses envelopes at the rate of 2,000 an hour, and so on. Competitions for speed and accuracy are again a leading item, marked this year by the large number of women who have entered for the first time. One firm will teach you (for a consideration) how to develope your powers, how to manage men, increase efficiency and such like.

* * *

The Dictaphone is best described in the maker’s advertisements : “enabling one person to do the work of two, saving 50% time and labour in any office. The work of the principal is simplified, the output of the typist doubled.” Wages, we understand, will remain stationary. When the envelope addresser and the Dictaphone get thoroughly going, throwing half the clerical workers on the streets, making the unfortunate remainder work doubly hard, I suppose the Tariff Reformer will still have no difficulty in proving to them that a tax on Dutch cheese and a preferential tariff in favour of Colonial sardines will solve the problem. The Free Trader, doubtless, will glibly assure the beaten competitors of the Dictaphone and the mechanical calculator that as soon as the Budget has had a chance, and when the 99 year leases fall in, and when the great schemes that the Liberal party has up its sleeve (at present only darkly hinted at) get in full swing, “then !” he’ll say, “then !—” Ah ‘then !

To the clerk, as to every other labourer for hire, it should be clear that the good things of life are not for him whilst the present system of “managing men” is the vogue. If you believe in a step at a time (most of them backwards), join the Liberal party, or its adjuncts, the I.L.P. or S.D.P., and work for State Christmas Trees for your great-grandchildren and municipal ice-cream barrows. If you want freedom now, not in 99 years, join the S.P.G.B.

* * *

I would like to say just here that we Socialists don’t ask for any license, poetical, political, or of any other variety. When we say the I.L.P., Labour Party, S.D.P., Fabian Society, etc. are capitalist agencies, please don’t assume that pique or arrogance actuate us. Just to show you what is meant, here is an instance.

* * *

The Railway Clerks’ Association has recently affiliated to the Labour Party. The latter, of course, accepted it on the usual terms. The character of the.R.C.A. is succinctly outlined in. the October No. of their official organ, p. 202 : “The policy of the R.C.A. is not only to secure justice for its members, but also to urge and assist them to make themselves worth more to their employer.” Of such is the kingdom of Henderson & Co.

* * *

Whilst we are on the subject I may have a jab at the Fabians. Now look at this !

“I came to the conclusion that just as it is in the interests of Capital to keep the rolling stock and the permanent way in good repair, so it must be to the interest of Capital to be constantly raising the standard of living for the men in order that the human factor may be improved.”

Who said that? None other than Mrs, Sidney Webb, at the opening of the new A.S.R.S. offices. That’s the sort of fool’s errand the Fabians are on. Don’t join them.

* * *

A few lines from a poem by Mr. James Stephens are worth repeating.

"For I’ve sat my life away with pen and rule,

        On a stool,

Totting little lines of figures, and so will

        Tho’ the chill

And the langour of gray hairs on my brow

        Mock me now.

And sometimes while I work I lift my eyes

        To the skies,

To the foot or two of heaven which I trace

        In the space

That a grimy window grudges to the spot

         Where I tot.

And I ask the God who made me and the sun

          What I’ve done

To be buried in this dark and dreary cave

           Like a grave,

While the world laughs in scorn now and then

          At my pen."

You see, that’s just where he is silly, asking God anything. You can sit on a stool asking conundrums of space and gather nothing but a harvest of wasted years and a heap of worn-out trousers. It may be easy, but it is quite profitless. Get off your stool and get to work on your slave-irons. Gazing through a couple of feet of smoky window-glass wont help you any. If you have any spare brain your employer has not a lien on, we’ll tell you what to do with it. Come in.

Wilfred.