Revolution’s Reply to Reform. (1909)

Pamphlet Review from the December 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The answer to “Arms for the Workers: A Defence of the Programme of the Social-Democratic Party.” (E. C. Fairchild, Lon. Organiser S.D.P.)

“By common consent, Socialists agree that the control of the National Executive by the working class must precede the use of land and the instruments of production for the common good. Conflicts between the classes in society are but struggles to secure possession of the central authority that decrees the law, which registers or changes the conditions of property holding. Control of politics means control of property.”

Thus Mr. Fairchild opens. But he is incorrect. Politics is the science of government, or, the contests for power of government. Our author means neither the control of the science nor of the contests, but the control of political power. Then Control of political power is political power. Henceforth we shall transcribe the sentence : “Political power means control of property.”

The palliator then deals with his subject under sectional headings. We will do the same, using his headings.

The Principle Common to Socialists

“We cannot escape restraints upon our freedom imposed by our life in the past. Custom and tradition weigh as heavily in politics as in other departments of human activity.”

Is this the language of regret ? It seems so, for as a consequence :

“The political party that appealed to electors upon a statement of object only, would soon find the average man so far rational that he wished to know the means by which the object would be realised.”

Exactly. Were it otherwise Socialists, optimists as they are, might deem the fight hopeless. But reformers dread the question, and for fear of it will not appeal to the electors upon a statement of object only. We read:

“For this reason, the Socialist Party in every country has formulated a number of proposals, variously known as palliatives, platforms, or stepping-stones.”

The object of Socialists, reduced to the utmost limits of brevity, is—Socialism. Not so sententiously, but with more information, the S.P.G.B. states its object as “The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.”

The “rational” man at once asks “Is present society so based ?” No. Then how is the property change to be effected ? Mr. Fairchild himself supplies our answer to the dread question.

“Control of the National Executive by the working class must precede the use of land and the instruments of production for the common good.” 

Then we must get control of the National Executive, or, to lift ourselves above the S.D.P. loose verbiage, must capture the political machinery. Why ? Because it is “the central authority that decrees the law, which registers or changes the conditions of property holding.” Because, to use a less questionable phrase, “control of the National Executive” means political power, and “political power means control of property.”

The answer is clear and easy. Why then, does the reformer try to put ‘”the electors” off asking the question by giving them “a number of proposals” which are not Socialism to think about?

Of course, the reform defender has the alternative that his language is as loose in this passage as elsewhere, that these “proposals” are not formulated to avoid the question, but to answer it—and the use of the term “stepping-stones” would bear him out. But to submit these “palliatives” as the answer to the question “how is Socialism to be attained?” is to claim that they are indeed stepping-stones to Socialism ; that they are revolutionary, and undermine the capitalist basis of society. Perhaps we shall see later if he dare take up this position.

Concerning the proposals we read :

“While the private possession of land and capital continued, these proposals could be applied by a government representing the interests of the capitalist class, or by a government acting on behalf of the workers and having Socialism as its aim.”

So we are asked to imagine that the working class have obtained that “control of the National Executive” which “must precede the use of land .and the instruments of production for the common good” ; have captured that political power which means “control of property” ; are installed (in the persons of their “Socialist” representatives) as the “central authority that decrees the law, which registers or changes the conditions of property holding.” And this “Socialist” Government, with its control of property, its power of “changing the conditions of property holding”—what does it do? Does it announce the fructescence, the fruit-time longed for by the tired labourers of “myriad meetings” ? Does it, having attained all that is needful for the purpose—control of the armed forces and the other instruments of government—change the property condition from private to common ownership, and so establish Socialism and free humanity from the curse of wage labour and all its concomitant evils ? Oh no ! At the moment when exploitation should cease for ever it begins to dabble with Eight Hours Days and Minimum Wages !

But this seeming idiocy can be easily accounted for. The palliator puts forward “palliatives” in order to catch votes. When we are invited to suppose a government “having Socialism as its aim” installed at Westminster, we are really asked to imagine the most complete realisation of the “get there at any price” policy. The pseudo-Socialists have captured the seats, but, as our author knows well enough, they have not captured one shred or vestige of political power. As a matter of fact, as far as essentials go, the position remains unchanged. The working class have control of the “National Executive,” but only in the sense that they had it previously. Formerly, in their ignorance, they elected their masters ; now, in their ignorance, they elect men of their own class who are not honest enough, or intelligent enough, or brave enough, to come before them with the plain statement of Socialist object only, but have formulated a number of proposals which were perhaps intended to carry them into power, but have only carried them into place. The minds of those who elected these misleaders have undergone no change, and since it is the mind of the electorate which controls the National Executive, the control of this “central” authority means exactly what it did before—the perpetuation of capitalist control of property, decreed by working-class ignorance.

The “government having Socialism for its aim” occupies a false position. Seated on fraudulent pretensions, it is utterly impotent. The most honest of it members thought to snatch a victory for Socialism on the votes of those opposed to the revolutionary principle, and now they find that, true as it is that “political power means control of property,” it by no means follows that political power and political place are synonymous, or that property is controlled in the interests of those who have control of the “central authority.” That depends upon their consciousness of those interests.

In order to have obtained political power for working-class interests it was necessary for the working-class representatives to draw their strength from an electorate cognisant of those interests, instead of which, in the case we are invited to imagine, they are upheld by a working-class electorate with the capitalist mind, who have given them no mandate for revolution, no authority for changing “the conditions of property holding.” If it is true, then, that “conflicts between the classes in society are but struggles to secure possession of the central authority that decrees the law which changes the conditions of property holding,” then the recognition that this “Socialist” government which has become the “central authority,” is powerless to interfere with the property condition of present society is a confession that the palliator’s vote-catching policy is fighting the battle on wrong lines.

Without political power, and therefore without control of property, our “government having Socialism as its aim,” is reduced to its Minimum Wage bill, its Eight Hour act, and so on. But whether these things are “applied by a government representing the interests of the capitalist class, or by a government acting on behalf of the workers,” the result must be the same. “Political power means control of property,” but, given the property conditions, the economic laws which arise out of them are beyond its reach. Political power may sweep away private ownership of the means of production, but so long as that property condition continues, the exact degree of misery of the workers as a class will be determined by industrial development, and will be unamenable to palliatives.

Concerning the central idea of the section, that “the principle common to Socialists” which our palliator observes “beneath, or running through,” the various proposals, is “the extension of collective or communal action for the general well-being, in place of the use of national resources for private gain,” this implies “control of property,” which only political power can give the workers. To say that they have this political power is to say that they have the power to abolish private property in the means of life and to establish Socialism; to say that they have it not is to say, on our opponent’s own showing, that they cannot extend “collective or communal action for the general well-being,” or, as he earlier put it, use “land and the instruments of production for the common good.” To maintain that they have that political power which should accompany political place (and which is only important to the workers because it confers the power to change the property conditions of society) and yet allow “the private possession of land and capital” to continue while they apply their “palliative” is to rebuke the lie that they have Socialism as their aim, and expose themselves as willful perpetuators of capitalism.

Further, so far from true is it that there is any “principle common to Socialists” running through these proposals, that the principle common to capitalists—exploitation—is implied by and writ large over most of them, for example the Eight Hours Day and the Minimum Wage.

The Socialist in Politics.

There is little in this section that Mr. Fairchild has not touched upon in the previous one. He claims that “the items of the Socialist (!) programme are a recognition that the claims of society are greater than the rights of private property in land and capital.”

Are they, indeed ! It seems to the present penman that if anything could have denoted the utter abandonment of all and any rights, claims or hopes by the workers, it is to hear “Socialists” talking of the application by “a government acting on behalf of the workers, and having Socialism as its aim,” of Eight Hour Days, Minimum Wages, feeding necessitous children, and (p. 2) “public control of those agencies which supply public needs, on lines that will secure release from the burdens imposed by the payment of interest to idle money-lenders.”

What touching solicitude for the property owners’ welfare !

“The Socialist in politics,” it seems, is bound to formulate a palliative programme. We take the opposite view.

We hold that only by the change of the property basis of society from private to common ownership can the workers’ position be improved. “Political power means control of property.” To have political power we must have political place, but we may have political place without having political power. But since it is not political place which controls property, that alone is useless to us, and its attainment would prove calamitous for working-class interests. For in such a case the “Socialist” government must be on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand they would be pushed in the direction of revolution (the direction of changing the property conditions of society) by the “Social-Democrats” and others who believed they had won power for Socialism, on the other hand they would be expected by the vast majority of their constituents, who had elected them upon reforms and for reforms, to institute those reforms they had promised.

Mr. Fairchild’s statement that, “while the private possession of land and capital continued” the reforms “could be applied by a government having Socialism as its aim” indicates the direction he anticipates they would be forced to move in. But we shall show presently that these “palliatives” will not palliate, that all the economic laws which govern commodities are against the “palliatives,” and must inevitably render them powerless to affect the economic condition, of working-class existence. If we are correct in this; if, being applied the “palliatives” prove to be inoperative, what will be the result ? They will be detected for the misleaders they are and incontinently thrown overboard. Should they, on the other hand, attempt the revolutionary property change, they will quickly find out what it means to be without political power. Their political castle, built upon the rotten foundation of a non-Socialist electorate, will collapse at the first blast of their own trumpets, crumble beneath the tramp of their own feet.

Whichever course the “government having Socialism as its aim” should follow, the result must be the utter waste of all the precious working-class enthusiasm and weary effort—blood and treasure in the very essence—and consequent apathy and loss of confidence in themselves among the workers.

In order to avoid this misfortune, the Socialist Party of Great Britain takes the field without palliatives or other vote-catching devices. Holding that the duty of “the Socialist in politics” is to build up a position upon a thoroughly sound, revolutionary foundation, it discourages support from those who do not hold its principles. It is with this object it has framed a rule (31) to the effect that all or none of the vacant seats in any particular ward or constituency must be contested and that all must be elected or none allowed to take their seats. Our political place must be the measure of our political power.

A. E. Jacomb.

To be Continued.

Revolution’s Reply to Reform. (Part 2) (1910)

Pamphlet Review from the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The answer to “Arms for the Workers: A Defence of the Programme of the Social-Democratic Party.” (E. C. Fairchild, Lon. Organiser, S.D.P.)

(Continued from the previous issue.)

Something Less than Socialism.

The first objection, says Mr. Fairchild, “to the adoption of a programme of proposals to palliate or diminish the evils of capitalism, is the doctrine that anything less than the realisation of complete Socialism would be valueless to the working-class.” He goes on to declare that

“The argument that Socialism only can remove the artificial inequalities of to-day, restore the social produce to the social workers, and abolish all forms of actual poverty is perverted. That argument is held to mean that the condition of the workers is a fixture, and that poverty cannot be diminished under the capitalist state.”

This statement is untrue. The so-called impossibilists do not pervert the argument to any such meaning. On the contrary, so far are they from regarding the condition of the workers as a fixture, that they continually point out that it is ever becoming worse—a verity the reform champion himself subscribes to when he says (p. 4) “In all capitalist countries the share of the total wealth production taken by the working class is falling.”

The “Social-Democracy,” ill-grounded in social science, and, therefore, groping like blind Samson for that which they cannot see, imagine that they have their arms about the pillars of capitalist society when they grasp their “palliative programme.” But they cry “palliation” without knowing what palliation is, and think they have palliated the system when they have helped to do that which the system forces the capitalists to undertake in their own interests.

Out of such ignorance as this comes the puerile statement that “the system has been palliated to provide magnificence and great wealth for the few.” Magnificence and great wealth for the few, however, were inherent in the system, and not provided by any imaginable “palliation” Mr. Fairchild can instance. And when the term “palliation” can be applied to such opposites as the depression of the multitude in order to “provide magnificence and great wealth for the few,” and, the wrenching from these few, of the means of lessening the misery of the toiling many, then it behoves us to look to our anchors, lest we drag and drift on to the rocks of lunatic chaos.

What, after all, is a palliative ? In sociology, surely, some betterment of the social conditions, given or obtained apart from the decree of economic law and the necessities of the social system.

Thus, trade union effort to advance wages is not palliative effort, but simply the exercise of that power of resistance necessary to arrive at and assert the value of labour power. The law of exchange in accordance with which wages are determined by the cost of production of labour-power, presupposes resistance on both sides of the market. The same resistance between buyer and seller exists in all commodity exchange. It takes the place of that theoretically presumed exact knowledge of values, which no buyer or seller ever yet possessed. The man has not been born who could trace the cost of production (in units of socially necessary labour time) of two commodities through all its intricities and say of them “in such and such quantities these goods are equivalent values.” The question of values must be referred to the competitive market, where the appeal is to force and the only gauge the mean of prices over extended periods.

Similarly, as the struggle for higher wages is not a palliative straggle, since it is a necessary and presupposed part and parcel of the wages system, so there are many measures of a seemingly ameliorative nature, which, since they are necessary to the continued working of the capitalist system itself, are not in any sane sense palliatives.

What possibility, for instance, would there be of the existence in a state of profit-producing efficiency, of several millions of persons within the London area, under the sanitary conditions of the middle ages ? In these days when gardens are on the roofs, and tube underlies tube in the bowels of the earth, surface area is far too valuable for open sewers and cesspools. The night-soil man has become an impossible person, and the earth closet an insupportable expense. In addition, black plagues (and consequent scarcity of labour-power) and high profits do not go well together. Capitalism, and not the sentimental tear of the palliator, demanded cheaper and more efficient sanitary arrangements, and that demand was met by, among other things, that “liberal water supply” and “modern drainage” which the S.D.P. champion (pp. 4-5) declares have “modified the original structure of the capitalist system in the interest of the workers,” (!) and are, therefore, palliatives.

The poultry farmer who runs ten to twelve hens to the acre need not worry greatly about sanitary arrangements for his stock, but when he multiplies the number of birds by four or five, he immediately has to face and deal with the problem of sanitation. To say, however, that he does so for the hens’ sake is ridiculous. Yet it is a parallel case with the claim that modern drainage and the liberal water supply are palliatives of the capitalist system.

They are nothing of the sort. They are necessities of the capitalist system, without which the process of profit production would be hampered at every turn. They are perpetuators, not palliators, of capitalism. Is it imaginable, highly developed capitalist transport, expressed in the latest phrase—motor haulage—on the old feudal bridal paths, or even the roads and bridges that were good enough for our grandfathers’ stage-coaches ? Is it thinkable, the modern industrial and business world with the illiterate working class of the “hungry forties ?”

We all know that the constant wail of representative British manufacturers is that German education has been allowed to get so far in advance of English, and one of their number who recently said “I do not fear Germany’s competition, but I fear her technical schools,” spoke volumes as to the motive underlying the educational palliative.

Again, during the last 35 years the birth rate has steadily fallen from 36 to 26, to the horror of the patriotic pulpit and the uneasiness of the exploiting class—who can see only less honey from fewer bees. But with fewer births has come the desire to keep more of the children alive, and so we find “the amenities of the worker’s lives” (as our author puts it) by the provision of municipal sterilised milk supplies, maternal training, free meals for school children, and such “palliatives.”

The truth is that the gradual development of the productive system demands and necessitates an unceasing adaptation of social conditions, but these are not palliatives of the system, but the mere adjustment to the needs of an industrial machinery whose one motive force is the production of the greatest possible profit. They leave the workers’ position untouched. These “amenities of the workers’ lives” have not kept pace with their steady degradation. The “liberal water supply” of the water company may not altogether compensate for the loss of the sweet air that moved about the well, nor could the site of the Thames Embankment have been, as a low-lying muddy waste, a picture of more utter and hopeless despair, than now when it offers its proud, granite bosom to be the dreary, comfortless bed of scores upon scores of poor wretches that once were men, and women—and children.

No, Mr. Palliator, the position of the worker is not a fixture. Their exploitation increases, their unemployment increases, their insecurity and anxious misery increases, in spite of those “amenities of the workers’ lives,” “a liberal water supply, modern drainage, and the extension of public open spaces.”

The position of the Socialist Party is, not that the condition of the workers is a fixture, but that it is constantly being adjusted to the requirements of the capitalist system, and that this adjustment is not palliation of working-class conditions. For the working class, they hold, there is no palliation—there is only emancipation. This is why “something less than Socialism” would be valueless to the proletariat.

The Distribution of Wealth.

In the brief confines of this chapter we are treated to several curious statements. We are are told, for instance, that “the productive capacity of labour is subject to continuous change. It will rise or fall with every application of knowledge to industrial functions.” This piece of owlish wisdom, of course, flies in the face of all experience, and it would be interesting to learn when the application of knowledge causes the productive capacity of human energy to fall.

In one breath our author declares that the “proportion or amount of the requirements of life which fall to the share of the respective classes” is not “fixed by economic or political laws,” and prescribes a political law for the fixing of a minimum wage !

The Socialist Party holds, not that “the proportion or amount of the requirements of life which fall to the share of the respective classes” is fixed by economic or political laws, but that, in capitalist society, the “return to labour” is determined by the cost of producing labour-power.

This is an economic law. It operates through competition. Therefore, if the statement of the law is true, the only way to increase the “return to labour” is either by raising the cost of producing labour-power or by restricting competition.

If the reformer started out to induce the people to “waste their substance in riotous living,” to become more drunken and to burn a loaf for every one they ate, he would be derided for his pains, but he would be logical. He would be trying to raise the “return to labour” by increasing the cost of producing labour-power which governs it. But to propose to raise the cost of producing labour by increasing that which it determines (wages in the long run) is madness.

If, on the other hand, the reformer aspired to so completely organise the workers for resistance in the economic field that competition was effectually strangled, again, in spite of the hopeless magnitude of his task, he would be logical. He would be trying to defeat the economic law of exchange by eliminating the mainspring of its operation—competition.

Now the law as stated above is a law of capitalism—not of other social systems. Capitalism presupposes and hangs upon competition. To eliminate competition in the labour market (of all markets) is to eliminate capitalism. Hence every force of the existing system is arrayed against any attempt to tamper with the freedom of competition. But our would-be palliators, who say that labour’s share of the wealth produced is not fixed by economic or political laws, are going to tilt against the windmill. They are going to match a political law against an economic law. They are going to set up their Minimum Wage Act against the whole world of masters interested in paying the least possible wages they can, and the whole seething mass of hunger-driven workers, striving for employment at any wage.

Later Mr. Fairchild gives us “a little history.” Let us have little history now.

The Black Plague in the 14th century made labour-power very scarce. The Statute of Labourers was enacted to prevent the payment or reception of higher wages than had ruled prior to the outbreak. What was the result ? Many on both sides were imprisoned, but labour was not made one whit more redundant. Hence the labourers continued to get the best of the competitive straggle, and wages rose 50 or even 100%. So we have it on record that complaint was continually made in Parliament that the Statute of Labourers was utterly inoperative (see “Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” Thorold Rogers, p. 226 on).

If wages could not be kept down by law then, when labourers were not free, as they are now, to seek other masters, and when the masters, who controlled the political power, were interested in supporting the law and keeping them down, how much less can the law enforce a minimum wage now, when the masters, controlling the political power, are interested in evading such a law, and the workers themselves are forced by the awful competition for work, to cast every artificial barrier to their degradation into oblivion ?

A. E. Jacomb

(To be Continued.)

Revolution’s Reply to Reform. (Part 3) (1910)

From the February 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The answer to “Arms for the Workers: A Defence of the Programme of the Social-Democratic Party.” (E. C. Fairchild, Lon. Organiser, S.D.P.)

(Continued from previous issue)

Those who talk so glibly of Minimum Wage enactments cannot, surely, have paid due attention to the manifold ramifications of the competitive mainspring of capitalist production. Even if such an act could, in spite of all the powers against it, be carried into effect, still the be all and end all of capitalist production—profit—would not consent to defeat.

Stronger than Parliaments and the laws of Parliaments, than the colossal armed forces of nations in the hands of Parliaments, are the economic laws. So, if political law affects to limit the degradation of wages, the economic law of machinery under capitalism comes into operation and restores the degree of exploitation.

The law may be stated thus: Every increase in the cost of labour-power tends to the increase and development of machinery.

Many who are not ignorant of this law refuse to accept it because they do not thoroughly grasp its meaning. They argue that Necessity is not so much the mother of Invention that every need of the capitalist class is at once productive of the inventive genius to satisfy it. But such an argument shows a wrong interpretation of the law.

Machinery exists and plays its part in every productive field. But it is in no trade or industry of even perfection throughout. Its development at any given date is a matter of innumerable gradations and degrees. To take an example—the newspaper printing trade. Not every newspaper is printed on the latest “Hoe” machine flashing off 40,000 copies folded and counted in an hour. From this the means in use tail away, through numberless shades of backwardness, into comparative antiquity. But everywhere the means are being used which the individual proprietor judges are most profitable to him, in his circumstances. Thus though the latest “Hoe” marvel is of undoubted value, the machine of fifty years ago still clanks on its way to the scrap-heap.

Each improvement in machinery may be likened to the effect of a stone thrown into a lake. Its circle of profitableness gradually enlarges with time while the degree of its profitableness decreases until it has become too obsolete to yield profit to anyone. In one circle the invention of the hour is eagerly seized upon, in another circle the means of yesterday are most profitable, while yet a third circle of exploiters are limited to the machinery of five years ago, and so on. And everywhere there are owners debating with themselves the question, of whether it would pay them to throw out certain machinery and replace it with something more up-to-date.

Now—to revert to our example—what will be the result of an increase in the cost of labour-power in the case of the newspaper printing trade ? Wages having advanced, the arguments in favour of the further adoption of wage-saving machinery are at once increased. The waverers become decided and the fringe of doubt takes a larger circumference. Each stage of perfection in machinery experiences a rapid extension of its sphere of profitable exploitation, and throughout the whole industry, without the aid of a single new invention, machine development takes a step forward. At the same time at the top of the tree the capitalists are more receptive of new inventions, while at the bottom those who have been struggling to hold their own with antiquated means, are plunged into ruin by the fresh handicap of dearer labour-power, their machines find their way to the scrap-heap, and the work which those machines had been doing with extravagant expenditure of labour-power is transferred to more economic machinery, to the enhancement of the army of out-of-works.

Thus together with the introduction of improved machinery we get displacement of workers and an increased army of unemployed to struggle against any artificial restriction of wages, to defy every penalty with which the most sincere advocates can hedge about the Minimum Wage or any other limitation of the starving multitude’s liberty to compete for work at any price.

It is a fruitless argument to say that the advance of wages demanded by such a “palliative” as the Minimum Wage would be too small to have this general effect. Such a claim cuts against its user, for a reform does not become more worthy on account of insignificance. Moreover, the measure of its extent is the measure of its effect.

And in those trades in which such an Act would most apply—the so-called sweated industries (as if there are any industries which are not sweated) ; the industries which lend themselves to being carried on in the homes of the workers—the law of machine development would operate with two-fold force. In such fields machinery and the factory system are only kept at bay because labour-power is so terribly cheap. Yet, awful as it appears to say it, any legislative attempt to raise the wages of these poor creatures can only, as far as it is effective at all, result in handicapping them against their merciless competitor, machinery.

In a later section Mr. Fairchild talks of initiating measures to deal with the consequences of the “initial proposals.” The consequences of the “introduction of a law of minimum wage,” supposing that it could be effectually enforced, will be the extension of machinery and increased unemployment. When our reformer convinces us that he has a measure capable of dealing with this obliterating “consequence” it will be time enough to agree with him that the share of the total wealth production taken by the working class can be caused to rise by wage legislation.

The Position of the Working Class.

In the next four sections our author abandons all serious effort to deal with his subject, and indulges in a little quiet fun at the expense of his readers. He tells us, for instance, that “we do not know the things we cannot see.” The blind man, then, doesn’t know when he is hungry. Can it be also, that our reformer knows nothing of economic laws because he cannot see them ? Then an exuberance of spirits leads our opponent to have a fling at those who argue that the enactment of the palliative proposals retards the realisation of Socialism. And this is how he proves his case:

“The outcast may complain in whining minor tones while he stands shivering on the wind-swept Embankment, but a basin of soup, shared with cabinet ministers in court dress, is enough to make him suspend criticism of the social system.”

He gets a good hold and swings his opponent clean off his feet, yet when the fall is consummated our S.D.P. champion is underneath. For the starving wretch at least complained until they shut his mouth with the palliative basin of soup, after which the social system was above criticism and, presumably, Socialism was retarded.

But the greatest joke of all is that Mr. Fairchild deludes his readers with the section heading ,”The Position of the Working Class,” and then, fails to give them any information upon the subject. As a proper understanding of the position of the working class is essential to the intelligent consideration of the “palliative” question, the omission must be rectified.

The working class is the class which works for wages. Wages represent food, clothing and shelter, therefore, it may be said that the working class is the class which works for food, clothing and shelter. To give this definition is to imply that there is a class which does not work for these things. Now as a man may not always be able to work, while he must always have the necessaries of life or he must die, it is obviously of advantage to him that work, and food, clothing and shelter should not hang together, in other words that his living should not depend upon his working.

While it is true that man, as a natural order, cannot live without labour, that very truth tells us that if one class does not work for its living, it must subsist upon the product of the class which does work. So we get the first two conditions of the working-class position—it is the class which works for its own living in the first place ; it is the class which works for the living of the non-working class in the second place. What is the reason of this double disadvantage ?

If it is disadvantageous for a man’s livelihood to depend upon his working it is doubly so for him to have to labour to support others. Why does the worker do it, then ? Why, in the first place, does he not do as the non-worker does—live without labour? Why, in the second place, does he not produce food, clothing and shelter for himself alone ? Why, in the third place, does not the non-worker do the same as the member of the working class—work for his living ?

Those things which we indicate by the term livelihood, all come in the category “economic wealth.” Wealth (we must be understood to use the term in the economic sense) is natural objects which have been changed in form or rendered accessible to man by the expenditure of human labour-power. The fish of the sea is not wealth until it is caught—it is not caught without labour. Therefore the two essentials in wealth production are the natural objects and human labour-power.

No man or class, then, can produce wealth without command of or access to these two factors. Have the workers this access to the means of wealth production ? We know that (save through permission) they have not, for though they have one essential—labour-power—the source of the other essential—the natural object—is the land (or water) and the land belongs to others. We find the answer to our second question first. The working class cannot produce wealth except upon terms, because the land and—what are quite as necessary to the process in these days—the machinery of production and distribution, are held by a class.

We now learn concerning the position of the working class, that it is one of subservience to the class which hold the means of life ; and this further—that as the question of the terms upon which the workers can get access to the means of production must be referred to continuous struggle, their position must necessarily be one of opposite interests to that of the possessing class, and therefore of antagonism. In other words, their position is clearly that of one party to a class struggle, which must continue as long as there are opposing class interests, as long as one class stand between another class and their means of living, as long, finally, as private ownership in the land, factories, machinery, mines, railways, and the like shall exist.

Now what are the terms upon which the workers are permitted to use the machinery of production ? Common experience, that fount of all our knowledge, teaches us that the terms are the surrender of their labour-power in return for wages. With the product of their toil they have nothing to do—that remains with the purchaser of their labour-power. So far the worker has obtained his living, but how has the non-worker materially benefitted ? If the value of the product of labour which is left in his hands is no greater than his expenditure upon it has been, it is very clear that he has had no material gain from the fact of his dominance of the means of life, and upon such result he cannot maintain his position as a non-worker. We must therefore look for increased value in the product of the worker’s toil.

Working-class economics teach us that what really happens is this. The master or capitalist purchases labour-power and raw material (natural objects to which labour-power has been applied), and expends the former upon the latter. The labour-power, once expended, has ceased to exist: it has been transformed into labour, stored up in the material upon which it has been expended. To say that its value has entered into the latter is not the whole truth. It has undergone change, and this fact is of vital importance. When the capitalist purchased raw material he really only paid for the stored up labour within it. The actual substance of it did not count. He therefore purchased on the one hand labour (stored up in the raw material) and labour-power (stored up in the body of the labourer). Now that the labourer has expended his strength or labour-power, neither he nor the capitalist longer possesses it, but the latter possesses an increased volume of human labour accumulated in the material of the natural object.

The only difference, then, in the position of the capitalist at the time of purchasing labour and labour-power and now when the power has been expended, is, then he owned two factors—labour and labour-power—while now he owns but one—congealed labour. Yet if he is any better off, any richer or more able to live without working, the why and the wherefore must be sought in this conversion of labour-power into labour.

If a labourer by consuming one loaf of bread could gain therefrom only sufficient labour-power to produce another and equal loaf of bread, there could be no increase of value. It is quite imaginable that given sufficiently primitive means of production, no better result could attend human effort. In that case there could be no non-working class. But if the means of production improve so that the labourer by consuming one loaf generates sufficient power to produce two loaves, then an increase of value becomes possible.

Herein is the whole secret of the source of capitalist wealth. Labour-power is purchased for what it costs to produce. The energy produced by a loaf of bread is bought for wages equalling a loaf of bread (we must take broad averages, of course). It cannot be bought for less, for the labourer must have the cost of production of his labour-power in order to reproduce it and continue in working efficiency. It will not (in the long run) sell for more because machinery provides an unemployed army and the competition of these keeps wages down to this level. But the labour-power created by one loaf produces other loaves in number according to the development of the machinery of production.

If then, the consumption of a loaf by the labourer results in labour-power sufficient to produce two loaves, which the capitalist buys for one loaf, the exploitation of that labour-power leaves the latter with two loaves instead of one. He has succeeded in getting the means of life without working for them—simply by virtue of his power of keeping the worker away from the productive machinery save upon terms. These terms give to the capitalist all the difference between the value of the labour-power and the value of its product—between the one loaf which it cost the labourer to produce his energy and the two or more loaves which that energy in turn produces.

The cost (reckoned in amount of sustenance) of producing labour-power remains pretty constant. A pound of wheat generated very much the same quantity of physical force a century ago as to-day. The value created by labour remains exactly constant, for labour is the measure of value and, notwithstanding the improvement in machinery, the product of an hour’s work a hundred years ago was the same value as the product of an hour’s work to-day—in each case the value is an hour’s labour. The difference, however, between the cost of producing labour-power and the productive capacity of labour-power increases with the development of machinery, and this increase has an important influence upon the position of the working class.

If the wages of the labourer equal one loaf and his product two,, he will be able to buy back one loaf, while his master may presumably consume the other. In such case the services of the former are needed to produce bread the next day. But if by the improvement of machinery the worker is able to add to existing value (raw material) not only the loaf represented by his wages and the loaf consumed by his master, but an additional loaf, then his services can be dispensed with until that loaf is disposed of ; in other words he has produced too much and may become-unemployed. Apply this to the whole field of industry, and it is seen that every advance of the productive machinery heaps up against the workers a greater burden of “surplus” wealth to “slump” the market and throw them out of work ; that the increasing fertility of human labour renders more precarious and more hopeless the position of the working class.

From what has been said it is apparent that the development of the industrial process, ever rendering human labour more productive, ever increasing the difference between the cost of producing the workers’ efficiency and the productive capacity of that efficiency, ever heaping up against the worker a larger share of his own products which wages will not enable him to consume, draws ever clearer and firmer the line between the two classes. The development of productive instruments means increased wealth for their owners and increased poverty for those who, as a class, operate them. Here is antagonism of interests. Here is war to the knife. ]t shows itself in the banding together in trade unions, in myriad strikes and lock-outs, and in the universal endeavour of the workers to-limit output.

The position, then, of the working class is, on the economic field, fundamently one of opposition to the master class. As material interests must be fought for or surrendered, there must necessarily eventuate from these opposing class interests a class struggle. Such a class struggle, we affirm, exists. It cannot remain a struggle on the economic field for terms, for the laws arising from the productive system prescribe those terms and decrees such a struggle hopeless to the workers. Their only hope, then, is in a new system—the Socialist system. Towards this end the class struggle must be directed.

And the recognition of this class struggle is the first essential to its intelligent and successful prosecution.

A. E. Jacomb

(To be Continued.)

Revolution’s Reply to Reform. (Part 4) (1910)

From the March 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The answer to “Arms for the Workers: A Defence of the Programme of the Social-Democratic Party.” (E. C. Fairchild, Lon. Organiser, S.D.P.)

(Continued from previous issue)

On a Workingman’s Wages.

Under the above heading Mr. Fairchild tells us that the third objection usually preferred against what he is pleased to call a Socialist programme is that some of its proposals would decrease the cost of living and result in lowering wages to the detriment of the working class. He says that this objection is generally advanced by “those who claim some acquaintance with economic science,” and declares that it “depends upon confusion of the amount of money the employer pays to the workman as wages with the amount or quantity of goods the workman can purchase with that money.” The confusion, however, is with our critic, for when we claim that some of the proposals would cause wages to fall, we do so in the full knowledge of the fact that “The food, clothing, or other things which the workman can obtain for his money” (i.e., wages) “is the real wage paid to him for his labour.” Nevertheless, if the money wage falls and buys less “food, clothing or other things,” the fact remains that “real wages” have fallen, and this notwithstanding that the deficiency is made good by a dole from “the municipal authority or the Government.” An argument which the revolutionary puts forward to show that the workers can be no better off for the so-called palliatives, is met by this bolster of capitalist politics with the retort that they will be no worse off ! What a defence of the palliative programme of the S.D.P. ! What a justification for this modern wandering in the arid Desert of Gobi, that after all the toil and travail of shifting a portion of their cost of maintenance from their employers’ pay-bill to the municipal alms box the workers are no worse off ! Such a defence is a complete surrender to our contention, yet the defence goes no further. An attempt is made, it is true, to exploit the eternal “if,” but the result is ludicrous. “If,” says Mr. Fairchild,

“the money wage paid by the capitalist should fall by 5s. weekly, and the municipal authority or the Government provided the workman with goods or services to the value of 5s. weekly, the workman would not suffer any hardship. If the municipal authority or the Government supplied him with goods or services worth 6s. weekly, the workman would gain, though his wages fall by 5s.”

If, if, if. But if the result of the “palliative” (in this case the “goods or services” supplied by the municipality or Government) is a fall in wages because it cheapens living, it is clear that the effect will be measured by the cause—in other words 6s. worth of “palliation” will be followed by a wage reduction, not of 5s., but, of 6s. There was no logical position for our reformer between absolute denial of the cause and full surrender to the effect, and when, he states that the “third objection” is due to confusion of money wages and “real” wages, and that the loss in money wages is compensated by the dole, he accepts the argument of the cause and effect, confesses that his only defence against the “third objection” is that workers are no worse off, and so doing surrenders, with the worst grace he can, to our contention that they are no better off, and that their efforts have therefore been in vain.

And Englishmen’s Homes.

The burden of this section is the housing problem. The proposal seems to be to provide the employers with homes for their workers at the expense of the landlord class. It is like the horse siding with his master in a demand for a free stable. But as our author says at the end of his previous section : “the source whence the workman draws his maintenance is a matter of no concern at all. The vital thing is that he gets maintenance.” It is a matter of no concern at all to the workers who pays “the cost of the land . . and also the interest payable to the lenders from whom the housing authority borrowed.” Such charges are in the same category as taxes, which even S.D.P. literature proves are not paid by the working class. The maintenance of the workers as a class in a certain average degree of health and strength and efficiency is the first and indispensable charge upon the wealth produced by the workers. It is the vitally necessary condition without which the workers’ power to produce wealth must cease. This degree of efficiency is determined by the degree of development and general conditions of production itself. The housing problem, then, is a problem for the master class. It is an important part of the problem how to provide the necessary maintenance of the workers with smallest possible call upon the latters’ total wealth production. For the rest it becomes a tussle between the industrial capitalists and the landlords for the plunder of the fruits of the workers’ toil. It is for this reason we find certain sections of the master class proceeding with municipal housing schemes and other sections opposing.

“If the money wages of labour were to fall by a sum equal to the reduction in rent—a decrease only possible if municipal housing was of stupendous magnitude . .” next says the S.D.P. oracle. It appears then that we can have too much of a good thing—even of an S.D.P. “palliative”—and that the time may come when we shall find the reform mongers anxious to get elected to undo their own handiwork, to keep wages from falling by preventing municipal housing attaining “stupendous magnitude.”

It would be interesting to know exactly what “stupendous magnitude” means. Where is the line to be drawn beyond which the reform cannot go without affecting money wages and why ? If one municipal house, through its reduced rent, does not affect wages why should ten ? If ten do not why should a hundred ? If a hundred do not why should a thousand, or ten thousand, or a million ? What is there in the last that is not contained in the first ? Nothing. The difference between one reduced rent and a million reduced rents is simply the difference between one and a million—a quantitative not a qualitative, difference—a matter of multiplication. Hence the effect of a million reduced rents can only be the multiplied effect of one reduced rent. This talk of the wage-reducing effect of certain “palliatives” only operating when the proposals become general, or “of stupendous magnitude” is rubbish, and comes fittingly from those who magnify a few municipally reduced rents into an important increase of “the amenities of the workers’ lives,” because they can see those reductions, but cannot understand an exactly equal and equally insignificant wage reduction because, as our author very felicitously puts it, they cannot know the things they cannot see.

One municipal house in every thousand houses in the London area would mean about a thousand municipal houses. We will not ask Mr. Fairchild if such a ratio would be of “stupendous magnitude.” A two-shillings per week reduction of this thousand rents is a visible movement, because it is concentrated. If it resulted in an equivalent reduction in money wages of the actual tenants of these houses, that would be a visible effect. It would be two shillings a week off the earnings of each tenant if there was one tenant to each house. But if this wage reduction, instead of affecting merely the actual participants in the reduced rents, were spread over all the wage earners of the area, it would mean less than three farthings—not per week but—per annum reduction to each. Of how much more “stupendous magnitude” must this become before our “palliator” can see and therefore know it !

Luxuries a Necessity.

The “mixed thinking” of the reformer is shown by our opponents’ remarks under the above heading. First declaring that “the supply and demand for labour regulates the wage that is paid,” he proceeds to flatly contradict himself in the words : “the employing class . . conspires to fix wages at a price sufficient to maintain the physical efficiency required for the production of average profits, . . .” Wages are the price of labour-power, hence to speak of the price of wages is to speak of the price of a price—which is idiotic jibberish. Again, to regulate a thing is to control its movements, therefore that which is regulated is not fixed. Still again, to attribute control of wages on the one hand to competition, in the labour market and on the other hand to conspiracy by the masters is taking idiot’s license, to say the least. Two flat contradictions and a lunacy in three dozen words is not a bad performance.

Of course, by one who holds that wages are fixed by the conspiracy of a to class yield profit, it is an easy transition to the argument that they can, by the conspiracy of another class, be fixed at such a level as to leave no profit at all (that they have ceased to become wages then need not trouble such free-and-easy economists). The first step toward this is for the workers to want more. “On first awakening,” we are told, “workman demands more bread in return for labour” (how much of the “palliators'” confusion arises from ignorance of the fact that the workman does not sell labour, but labour-power ?) “He will inevitably advance from that position into the struggle to acquire education, and refinement.” So it seems that the source of the workers’ troubles is that they haven’t wanted anything. How then, are we to read the next sentence : “The standard of comfort held by the workers is the result of prolonged conflict with the capitalist class.” If they have not wanted anything what have they been fighting for ? Are we to suppose that their share of the “prolonged conflict” has been resistence to a beneficent capitalist class intent on forcing upon them “luxuries” they have not wanted ?

A most fertile source of confusion is this spectre, “Standard of Comfort.” Behind it lurks the idea that it is all to do with the resistence of the workers, and they have only to wish for and strive for a higher “standard of comfort” in order to get it. This is far from the truth. In all their long struggle with the master class the workers have never for a moment forgotten their appalling poverty, have never for a moment been without a desperate and feverish longing for a higher standard of living. If desire could have endowed with “luxury” the working class would be redolent of comforts. As a matter of fact all their powers of resistence are necessary to enable them to realise for their labour-power its plain, naked value, without any reference to the adjustment of that mystery of mysteries, the “standard of comfort.” This resistence is common to all owners of commodities. They all sell as dear as they can, and according as the market is favourable to or against them, they now get a little more, anon a little less, than the value of their goods, but in the long run neither more or less than that value. Yet no one dreams of saying that if commodity-owners desired more for their goods they could get it. The same with the commodity labour-power. The owner’s resistence, his determination not to part with it for less than the most he can get for it, is the presupposed condition which enables its value to find expression. The “standard of comfort,” on the other hand, is one of the conditions of the determination of that value. The value must exist before it can find expression, therefore the conditions determining the magnitude of that value must come before conditions which enable the value to find expression in (in this instance) the wage. To say then, that “When no longer required to devote the same proportion of his wages to the purchase of absolute necessaries, the workman . . . can be trusted to follow the methods of the middle and upper classes, who spend more when they have more to spend,” is to take hold of the wrong end of the stick. The workers can never keep the suggested surplus because they have first satisfied “absolute” needs, but only because they have made “luxuries” equally with the so-called “absolute necessaries” a first charge upon their wages. And this they can only do when their environment has rendered those “luxuries” so necessary that they are prepared to go without food rather than abandon them, and then they have become “absolute necessaries” in the cost of producing labour-power, must therefore be embodied in its value, and eventually in wages.

All this is to say that the “standard of comfort” is merely the level of subsistence determined by the general conditions of production and the social and natural environment. “The gradual lowering of the cost of living,” therefore, must leave the standard of living unchanged. The gradual lowering of the cost of working-class living is a constant factor in capitalist society, and it is accompanied by a steady decrease in the proportion of the product of their toil which goes to the workers.

And if “the gradual lowering of the cost of living” does result in “the growth of new desires,” what are these but new miseries to be endured, new whips to scourge them into submission, new chains to bind them to their benches and desks ? The anxiety of the threatened is in proportion to the loss he is threatened with, and new wants can only add to the horrors of insecurity. Not all, not even the worst, perhaps, of the evil of the working-class position is contained in their actual poverty. Its most awful aspect is the utter insecurity, the growing precariousness of their hold upon the means of subsistence. To talk of “new desires . . . leading them to resist wage reduction” is to ascribe the workers’ present awful plight to the lack of desires. Heaven knows they have desires and needs enough, and are sufficiently conscious of them, to make such insulting mockery quite superfluous. The peculiar position of the working class decrees that necessity must precede means, hence the question of luxury can never arise for them.

A. E. Jacomb

To be Continued.

Revolution’s Reply to Reform. (Part 5) (1910)

From the April 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The answer to “Arms for the Workers: A Defence of the Programme of the Social-Democratic Party.” (E. C. Fairchild, Lon. Organiser, S.D.P.)

(Continued from previous issue)

On the Generosity of Capitalists.

We will lump several of Mr. Fairchild’s sections together under this heading, partly because in some of them there is no very definite argument, and partly on account of exigency of space.

Our opponent says it is often argued that a Socialist party need not ask for measures to alleviate poverty. “The assertion that improvement in the workers’ conditions under capitalism is impossible,” he says, is “changed into an admission that good housing, maintenance of the children or the public provision of employment, are of benefit to the people, but we are told that it is unnecessary for us to ask for legislation dealing with these matters, because the governing class will give concessions of their own free will.”

It is difficult to know who Mr. Fairchild is girding at. The only persons claiming to be Socialists who still believe in that hoary old supertition, “free will,” are (as might be expected) just those who believe in asking the capitalists to make “public provision of employment” and the rest, “of their own free will.”

The attitude we take up is the proper and logical attitude of those who deny the whole theory of “free will.” Moreover, it is the proper and logical attitude of those who assert the preponderating influence of economic forces upon the human will. How obscure our author’s ideas in this connection are is shown by his assertion (p. 13) that the feudal baron was “surrounded by an atmosphere which contained the elements of magnanimity, but there is nothing generous in the nature of the man who introduces a mechanical time recorder to check the entry of his employees and when they leave.” What rubbish ! Had Mr. Fairchild said that the man who introduces a mechanical time recorder is “surrounded by an atmosphere” that contains no element of magnanimity, environed by economic forces which tend to thwart, restrict and penalise every generous impulse of employer toward employed, he would have been right. But to declare that the capitalist can have no spark of generosity in his composition is not only folly, but is peculiarly grotesque on the lips of one who charges his opponents with regarding “the capitalist in business as devoid of all sentiment and deaf to human appeal.” It is capitalism that has no heart, not the capitalist.

But to get back to the argument, no one in his senses would deny that some improvement in the workers’ condition is possible, even under Capitalism. Capitalism itself may conceivably demand such an improvement, and then it will take place. This, however, is no confession that it is possible for the “palliator” and his “palliatives” to improve the workers’ conditions. Of course we must confess that “good housing, maintenance of the children or public provision of employment, are of benefit to the people,”—if other things remain constant. But other things have a knack of changing. Thus it is significant that the Board of Trade reports that during the first year of operation of the Old Age Pension “palliative,” the total wage income of that section of the workers covered by its returns decreased by £3,599,024, and this in a year when the slight decrease of unemployment might have tended to a rise of wages, and the abnormally high price of necessaries in no way encouraged a fall. Again, it has been shown that any attempt to relieve the congested labour market, such as by the public provision of employment, lessens the relative redundancy of labour-power, hence tends to raise wages, and hence again encourages the adoption of more economical machinery, which in turn displaces further workers, and refills the depleted ranks of the “palliated” unemployed.

Now let us turn to the question of the “maintenance of the children.” Capitalism provides wages for one object only—the production of labour power. Capitalism, moreover, never ceases its efforts to reduce to the lowest possible limits the cost of producing that labour-power. In this direction, indeed, capitalism abhors waste. Yet, from capitalism’s viewpoint, the production of labour-power, at least in respect of the raising of children for the continuance of the supply, is proceeded with in a very wasteful manner. For instance, there is no way of distinguishing in the labour market between the man who is bringing up a dozen children for future exploitation, and the man who has only himself to keep, hence the wages of the latter include a margin which to Capitalism is a lamentable waste. Of course it may be argued that the single or childless man having smaller needs, is an instrument in lowering wages, but on the other hand, having less responsibility, and having moreover a margin in times of employment his power of resistance is greater.

Then under the present system of “parental responsibility,” mothers are largely prevented from entering the labour market by the fact that they have children to look after. Nor does it end here. Since the support of these children’s attendants must, broadly speaking, be included in the fathers’ wages, and as the childless married man cannot be distinguished in the labour market, he is generally able to keep his wife at home. This is a further leakage. Again, the single man, whom Capitalism was forced to credit with a certain share of “parental responsibility,” is not only the gainer in as much as he has no children to keep, but also in that he has not to support a wife to look after them.

Now assuming that the S.D.P. attain their pet and chief “palliative”—State Maintenance of Children—in all its “stupendous magnitude” and gaudy magnificence, what happens ? In the first place, parents having been relieved of the cost of maintaining their children, their wages will suffer equivalent depreciation by competition. In the second place the childless married men, standing now on the same footing as the fathers of families, share in the wage reduction without being relieved of any burden. In the third place the mothers are freed for and forced into the labour market, to accentuate the competition there. Fourthly wives who are not mothers, being now in no favoured position, are also forced into the struggle for work. Fifthly the male workers, released now from the necessity of supporting their women-kind, being, indeed compelled to compete with them for the means of subsistence, quickly find their wages reduced accordingly, so that Capitalism gets the labour-power of the women as well as of the men, for the sustenance of the two sexes, instead of only the labour-power of the men. Sixthly the advantage of the single men, who have no wives or children to keep, vanishes. 

As regards the children, it is argued that they would be better looked after and more of them would survive. As for the first argument, and better conditions after birth might be more than outweighed by the less favourable prenatal environment due to their parents' increased struggle for subsistence. As for the second argument, it is an insane sentiment of humanity that would preserve children for the labour market conditions that would arise from launching the whole body of working-class women into the industrial arena. A word as to the effect upon the working-class movement. It is fatuous to argue that the measure would strengthen the workers' hands in case of strike. The children would be returned to them in order to smash the strike. Nor could the workers prevent this unless they had strength to end capitalist domination for ever. Then when we hand our children over to the capitalists for maintenance, we hand their education entirely over to the priest and the capitalist moralist, who would blur the class line, teach them to lick the hand that fed them, and so place mountainous obstacles in the way of the growth of class-consciousness. 

And now my space is exhausted, and I can only say in conclusion

FOR THE WORKERS THERE IS NO PALLIATION, BUT ONLY SOCIALISM.

A. E. Jacomb

.

Concluded.