What is Democracy? A Socialist View. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is democracy?

Many people, when faced with this question, conjure up pictures of the American eagle, and think that democracy is all that that amiable bird symbolises. They imagine that a State run on the lines of the American republic is a democratic State, that the institutions of such a State are democratic institutions, that the spirit of such a State is the democratic spirit, and that the philosophy of such a State — the “Rights of Man” (printed, of course, on the reverse side of a “green-back”) — is the democratic philosophy.

All of which ideas are wrong.

The common meaning of the term “democracy”, — a form of society in which supreme power is lodged in the hands of the people — is correct enough as far as it goes, and is sufficient in all that it implies. But it implies something very different from the American republic, and American institutions, and the “Rights of Man”.

For supreme power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they are to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have complete control of all social institutions, the ordering of all social activities, the domination of the whole social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the ownership by the people of all the means of life, all the social products, even all the social intelligence and skill and energy.

There can be no other foundation for democracy than this common ownership of all the means of life, for where these fall into private possession social distinctions at once spring up, the owners become dominators, and it becomes impossible for the people to control the social activities — because, forsooth, they have not control of the means and instruments through which the most important of those activities — those directed to the production of the social wealth — are applied.

Notwithstanding, then, the popular conviction to the contrary, existing republics no more enfold democracy than do monarchies. Nor are they nearer to it since they are no nearer to the property condition upon which democracy must be founded.

That was democracy which existed among all races prior to the advent of private property. There the people of the community really controlled the affairs of the community, deputing functions to certain officials, but jealously keeping power in their own hands. The “little brief authority” in which they dressed their elected persons was never allowed to pass beyond the popular control. Even in the case of the war-chiefs — the direction, perhaps, in which usurpation was most likely — it was in many cases usual to elect two, to act alternately, in order that the influence of one should form a counter-balance to the other.

If we cannot have democracy under the present social system, at least we may have men and women imbued with the democratic spirit. Indeed, every Socialist must be so imbued. In the light of this spirit he has faith in the capacity of the whole people to control the social system as a democracy, just as he has faith, primarily, in the capacity of the working class to institute the social system based upon the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

It is obvious that the natural corollary of the claim that the working class must make these means and instruments the property of the whole people is the implication that the people, as such, and not as a few directing the many, will be able to organise for the efficient use of those instruments of labour. Therefore the class idea — the idea that the working class possess every qualification for the establishment of a democratic social system — and the democratic idea — the idea that the whole people are capable of democratically controlling the affairs of society — are intimately connected, are, as a matter of fact, inseparable.

Democracy has a philosophy of its own. This philosophy is grounded upon the exactly opposite conception to that upon which all individualist systems of thought, from the capitalist to the Anarchistic, rest. In the democratic conception the organic nature of society is the very corner-stone. Naturally this awards to the individual a subordinate place. He finds his true position as an organic atom, the product of the organic whole, and subordinate, therefore, to the social body. In the democratic philosophy it is realised how supremely important a factor in social development the mass of the people — the “rank and file” — are. There is no intellectual class. The highest intellect is a social product, the result of the food, shelter, and clothing produced by society, and of the accumulated experiences for which society has paid with pain. And further, the opportunity even for such intellects to perform their useful part depends entirely upon the general level of intelligence. Just as the female blossom on the gourd vine, open before there is a mate to round her career, must die unfruitful, so the intellect advanced beyond its day must prove sterile and useless to society.

The individual, then, is a social product; he owes not only his being, but his opportunities, to society. Instead of being the “great man”, to whom society owes everything, he is the creature of the social entity, without which he is nothing.

In the conclusions of such a philosophy the capabilities, the strength, and the energies of the individual are just as much the product of the social activities as are the means and instruments of production and distribution; also they are just as necessary to the social organism, and therefore just as properly fall under the social control.

The philosophy of the “Rights of Man” of the bourgeoisie — which mocked humanity so cynically at the Paris Commune, and does so every day, in fact, the wide world over — with the “Rights of Society”.

In the course of time democracy must also have an ethic of its own. What form this will take can at present only be roughly prognosticated. Just as, with all our knowledge of primitive democracy, we are unable to adequately conceive the outlook on life of the social units of those early days, so we cannot hope to understand the mental outlook of the democrats of the future.

As the Materialist Concept of History, however, teaches us that all ethics take their form from the method in which the people gain their livelihood, when the people gain their livelihood democratically, the ethic will be in keeping. Public opinion will then be, as public opinion always is, favourably disposed to the public welfare as it is conceived in the public mind. To-day this conception of the public welfare is distorted to the capitalist view of the meaning of the term; but the popular conception shapes the ethic of the day. The revolutionist requires a new ethic, and, cynical as he may pretend to be in this connection, he has got it. It is based on the needs of humanity as he understands them. When the Revolution has been accomplished, and warring interests have for ever been unified, when the individual interest, having been made one throughout the community, has by that achievement been absorbed by the community, when all the machinery of wealth production and distribution, and the human labour-power by which this wealth is produced and distributed, and the wealth so produced, is owned by society; when by the harmonising of social activities, and the clearing away of confusing social anomalies and contradictions, men and women come to realise through every fibre of their being that they owe everything to the commonwealth, that without society they are nothing, that they are but cells in the social organism, on which every act of theirs has a far-reaching effect for good or evil: then the ethic prescribed by public opinion will be such as will make for the clearly known good of society.

Then once again democracy will exist in the world, and men and women, nurtured into finer feeling by that standard of conduct which holds the common good to be the highest good, will unconsciously sink their individuality in the community, and strive always for that common good, as the highest morality of which the human mind is capable of conceiving.

A. E. Jacomb

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October. (1913)

Party News from the October 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Once again, I don't have enough room in the label section to include all the listed speakers, so some brief information on some of the speakers missing from the sidebar. Some of these names (and details) you have seen before:

• H. Cooper was H. J. Cooper. He joined Earlsfield Branch of the SPGB in September 1908, and his membership was lapsed in December 1915.
• C. Gatter was probably Alfred G. Gatter, who was a member of the Stoke Newington Branch of the SPGB from February 1910 until lapsing membership in April 1919.
• A. Hoskyns was Ambrose Hoskyns. He joined the Islington Branch of the SPGB in August 1910. He was an occasional writer for the Socialist Standard in the Pre-War 1914 period. There are no details of when he left the SPGB. A flavour of his writing (and the early history of the SPGB) is contained within his April 1911 article, 'The Attempted Suppression of Free Speech in Islington'.
• A. Jacobs was Alf Jacobs. There is more detailed background on him in this feature which appeared in the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• H. Joy was a member of the Tooting Branch of the SPGB. He joined the SPGB in October 1907.
• H. King was possibly H.H. King, who originally joined the SPGB in August 1905 and was, at various times, a member of both the East Ham and the West Ham branches of the SPGB in the period before 1914. He joined and rejoined the SPGB on a number of occasions, eventually lapsing from membership in October 1914.
• W. Lewington was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in March 1907. He resigned from the SPGB but no date is given for his resignation.
• G. Plummer was a member of the Tottenham Branch of the SPGB. 
• F. W. Stearn was a member of the Tottenham Branch. There were actually two 'F. Stearn's in the branch at the time - possibly father and son - so I don't know which one was a listed speaker for this month.
• B. Young was Byron Young. A member of the Walthamstow Branch, he was from a family of SPGBers. His father had been a member of the SDF, and his brother, Percy, was also a longstanding SPGBer. (His parents must have loved their poetry.) A prolific outdoor speaker for the Party, he emigrated to Australia after WW1. He is mentioned briefly in the Socialist Standard in his brother's obituary and in his nephew's obituary.

By the Way. (1913)

The By The Way Column from the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Daily News” (28.8.13) once again tells us how old people taking their 5s. portion of “rare and refreshing fruit,” reduce the wages of those with whom they live. It says :

“A family of seven . . . five of whom are in receipt of old age pensions, are living near Redhill. . . . With the 25s. a week received from the State, supplemented by the earnings of the younger men, the family are able to lead a happy and comfortable life.”

So the cunningly schemed old age pensions relieve the rates at the expense of the “earnings of the younger men.”

* * *

Whilst the anti-Socialist is fond of mouthing the old drivel that Socialism will break up the family life, the following is worthy of notice. Perhaps it is because of the frequency of the smashing of homes and breaking up of families under capitalism that the anti-Socialist prophesies it for the future :

“John Littlewood, 59, was charged with begging. He was standing in the gutter playing a whistle. Addressing the magistrate he declared that wherever he applied for employment he was always met with the reply : “You are too old.”

“I have a very good certificate here from Chatham Dockyard. I was 18 years there. . . I had a good little home, but I had to part with it bit by bit.” (“Reynolds’s,” 31.8.13.)

Too old at 58, says the employer ; too young by eleven years, says Mr. Lloyd George. This was evidently a case for the magistrate—or the undertaker.

The one, you see, can restore his “family life” for a month in the stone jug, while the other can put him into the way of having a nice little wooden hut all to himself, which he would be allowed to hold in peaceful possession until landlords are no more and bum-bailiffs cease from troubling.

* * *

The Right Hon. David Lloyd George made a speech a short time since dealing with the arma­ment question. Of course he had to refer to “social reform,” and then he informed the capitalists how they would benefit by it.

“When they came to social reform and improved the conditions of the people they improved their health and their efficiency, purely as means for the production of wealth. . . It was no good saying they were spending 20 millions on insurance and old age pensions. They had got to look at the other side of the ledger, and that was worth a good deal more than 20 millions a year.”

It is interesting to note the utterances of this oily-tongued hypocrite, for when he is addressing his paymasters he specially emphasises the benefit that will accrue to the capitalist class as a result of Liberal “social reform”—”purely as means for the production of wealth.” Yet this is the man who, a few years ago, told us that “No one can really honestly defend the present system.”

* * *

In a leading article in “Reynolds’s” (24.8.13) devoted to the increase in the prices of food and and other commodities, the writer showed the hopelessness and futility of the workers clinging to the gospel of Liberalism as a medium for their salvation. Let me quote two passages.

“In no other country has there been the same press of social reform measures ; in no other country has there been the same effort made to grapple with poverty.”

And again :

“In spite of all our social reform agitation, in spite of Compensation Acts, Wages Boards, Old-Age Pensions, and National Insurance, powerful forces have been at work to keep a vast mass of our people from getting away from the edge of the precipice of starvation.”

What an admission of failure ! Could any indictment of mine be stronger ? After seven years of Liberal rule and unparalleled trade boom, a large mass are on the verge of starvation ! Were we not told by a leading light of the Liberal party 1908 that they were going to “strike starvation for ever from the dark category of evils with which honest men and women are beset” ? Liberalism has been tried and found wanting. Socialism alone contains the remedy.

* * *

The ”Christian Commonwealth” for August 27th contains an article from the pen of Philip Snowden, M.P., dealing with the Chesterfield election, and once more is the attitude taken up by the Socialist Party justified. Under a subheading “A Myth Exploded,” he tells us that :

“The result of the election has shown that the late member was in no sense an independent Labour member. It has shown that the claim that the Labour Party in the House of Commons represents electors who have been alienated from Liberalism and Toryism, and who believe in a Labour Party independent of both, is a myth. To try to keep that myth alive is neither possible nor honest. It is perfectly true that there is in the constituencies a very great volume of opinion which is in favour of independent Labour representation. In the industrial constituencies it probably represents 25 per cent of the voters. But the Labour Party in the House of Commons has not been returned solely by that section of the electorate. Its members sit in Parliament because in four-fifths of the cases some understanding or arrangement has been made with the Liberals. Under such circumstances it is ridiculous to expect that Labour members will quarrel seriously with the party by whose goodwill they hold their seats.”

Mr. Snowden goes on :

“Over anxiety to get its nominees into Parliament has led to compromise and bargaining in the constituencies, and anxiety to keep in Parliament has prevented the carrying out of a fighting policy.”

Such is the confession of this leading light of the “Independent” Labour Party. It shows once more that these fakirs are nothing more than office seekers, trading on the ignorance and mal-education of the workers,

* * *

It would be interesting to know the object of the visit paid by the Rev. C. F. Blyth to the flat kept by a young woman. Was he desirous of seeing her about her “spiritual welfare” ?

* * *

“Birds of a feather flock together.” Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, now that he is temporarily released from his arduous labours in Parliament and India, has been enjoying a game of golf with Mr. Asquith, of Featherstone fame.

* * *

In view of the recent railway disaster at Ais Gill, all new readers of this journal should procure the issues from June and read the articles “Public Safety v. Railway Profits.” It will be seen from these that such accidents are bound to result from the cheeseparing policy of the companies, and that the only object of the Board of Trade enquiries is to blind the public to the fact that their lives are placed in the keeping of overworked and underpaid men, operating rotten engines, and supplied with bad coal.

The Scout

“The Naked Savage”. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hard and monotonous toil, sordid and dirty surroundings, poor and adulterated food, shoddy, slop-made clothing, jerry-built houses or tenement slum-dwellings, dull and colourless environment, close association with penury and hard-fisted “thrift,” miserliness unmannerliness, uncouth companionship, endless worry and turmoil about petty things—such is the lot of the bulk of the workers within the capitalist system of society.

And what should be their lot ? Do they not deserve more ? To the workers in the past society owes all that it has. All the comforts and joys of modern civilisation are the result of the energy and toil of the worker past and present. It is the worker who makes possible the comforts of the idler, the pleasures of the rich. It is the worker who, with brain-directed hand, fashions the tool, the machine, and the finished food product. He it is who erects the palace for the king and the slum-hovel for himself ; who toils in the drab factory, sinks the mine shaft and cajoles mother earth to part with her treasures. The worker it is who in laboratory and office wrestles with the problems of how and why. It is, in short, the wage-slave of today who directs and controls all the operations of the actual work of producing and distributing wealth.

The most gigantic task is not too great for organised Labour. Labour spans rivers and crosses seas ; captures the wind and the light­ning for her puposes, and has harnessed the torrent and the stream.

For long ages man has struggled with nature for mastery—at first ignorantly superstitious, stumbling along with but a blind understanding. But one by one the secrets of nature have been learnt and mastered.

In the infancy of the human race primitive man dwelt in forests or caves, depending for subsistence upon wild roots, nuts, and berries. Naked and shivering ; without either the means for, or the knowledge of the art of, producing fire; without the means of communication with his fellows, surrounded by unknown dangers, he began to think and invent.

Discovery followed discovery until to-day it is seen that man in his struggle with nature for a livelihood has triumphed and his subsistence is secure.

Frightened by the fire from the heavens, primitive man worships it, and then controls it, using his god to cook his dinner. The enemy of man—the larger beast of prey—has been conquered and exterminated. Other animals have been tamed and domesticated. Beginning with the stick and the unpolished stone, man has gradually added to his store of implements and tools. He sharpened the stone to an axe-head, and fixed it to a shaft. The discovery of the bow and arrow, and the working of soft metals, followed by the knowledge of smelting, gave the rising race enormous power. Iron tools gave man the ship ; the iron ploughshare pushed forward agriculture, and gave rise to architecture and art.

The invention of writing, permitting ideas to be passed down, discoveries to be recorded, and a wider communication between man and man, was responsible for enormous progress, and finally the discovery of a mechanical motive power capable of turning the wheel and wielding the hammer gave the means of producing wealth in abundance with very little exertion on the part of the descendent of the naked savage.

The descendent of the naked savage—who is he ? With all our advancement, all our marvellous powers and possibilities, we have still the naked savage with us. We have worse. The powers of wealth production are lying idle and in the midst of plenty the people are starving and naked. The modern worker not only hungers, but he hungers with succulent dainties all around him, and sees his children wither amid a plethora of good things—good food, good clothing, and good houses of his making, but denied to him and his though they perish of want and exposure.

Like Tantalus of the fable, the modern worker stands up to his chin in good things which elude his lips the moment he attempts to enjoy them, and all around him grows the fruit of his labour that he is not allowed to touch.

How foolish and absurd it is ! How would our savage ancestor stare. Starvation he understood ; he knew, also, what it was to be cold. But to lie down hungry beside a good dinner would be a proceeding entirely beyond his comprehension, and only to be ascribed to witchcraft and devils.

And perhaps he would not be far wrong. The working class are certainly bewitched. With the brain and muscle to produce wealth they stand idly by and allow the masters to take what they have produced. Not only so—they cringingly beg for a share and wait meekly upon the idler’s pleasure. They give him their daughters to enjoy, and take up arms to defend him against his enemy—themselves.

Astonished indeed would the savage be, for he would see winged chariots manufactured by the workers and driven by them, yet used solely for the pleasure of the drones. He would see those who work the hardest rewarded with the worst accommodation, and the laziest loafer with crowds of busy men and women waiting upon him. And he would wonder, as the Socialist wonders, and wait for the toiler to end the farce—or shall we say tragedy ?—by awaking from his trance.

The awakening seems long deferred, but awaken he must. Entranced as he is by the conception of private property, events will eventually force him to see how utterly foolish he is, and how easily imposed upon.

When the awakening comes there will be nothing in the way of the toiler’s enjoyment. Relieved of the vast amount of unnecessary labour that the idlers compel him to perform, freed from the restrictions that capitalism places in the way, no longer compelled to ask : “Will it profit my master ?” the worker will go on doing that which will add to the comfort and pleasure of the community and sweep away poverty, misery, vice, crime, and all the evils that arise, directly and indirectly, from the private ownership by a class of the means by which the people obtain their livelihood.

Twel.

The Malthusian League. Have they a Remedy for Poverty?. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Non quantitas sed qiialitas” is the motto of the Malthusian League.

“It is questionable whether we shall be able to retain our position among the nations if the decrease in the population continues,” said the Bishop of London.

“It ought to be considered immoral for a wo­man to have less than four children,” said the Bishop of Ripon.

Here we have two sides of a popular question, and we may well ask where any consideration for the working class comes in. As we might expect from a parasite class that only legislates in its own interests, and upholds its supremacy by brute force, the only question considered is the buttressing of the State or the stocking of the labour market.

Say the priests to the ruling class, “it is numbers you want,” while the Malthusian claims that more attention should be paid to the quality of the slaves. Both sides agree that the working class should remain a slave class ; both sides are therefore the enemies of the working class.

The means of life are owned by the master class, but are useless to them without workers to operate them. So long as their profits remain unaffected it matters little to them whether their country is thickly or thinly populated. It is no doubt a question worthy of discussion by the capitalist whether his class interest is best served by a working class sufficiently prolific to overstock every section of the labour market, or a working class that consciously and obligingly regulates its numbers to suit his requirements.

The individual worker may debate within his mind as to the prospects of inflicting his progeny on future generations—whether is is better to give one or two children the best possible equipment under the circumstances, or to breed a round dozen or so and let them take their chance. It may seem best to him to limit his family, and thereby reduce his responsibilities, retain a slight degree of comfort, and escape some of the anxiety incidental to bringing up a family. He may even weigh the chances of a large family being better able to support him in his old age. But all these questions are merely for the individual who, through ignorance, regards the present social system as fixed and unalterable, and who accepts the anarchy and poverty imposed upon the working class as inevitable. They are questions on a par with the questions of drink and gambling, purely individual in character, and having no political bearing whatever.

The limitation of the family has little or no effect on the general conditions of the working class, even when extensively practised. A limited population—other things being equal—involves a limited production, with fewer employed and a capitalist class with less surplus-value to spend in various ways. Capitalism adapts itself to large or small populations. The poverty of the worker was just as deep in the days of Malthus, when the population was only nine millions, as it is to day, when it exceeds forty-five.

Neither by logic nor yet by example can the Malthusians prove that theirs is any remedy for poverty. They quote the black death of 1348, which killed off a large number of workers. “How food was plentiful and wages went up, despite the efforts of Parliament to stop them.” This, however, is a case that has no bearing on modern conditions, because the people had not at that time been driven off the land. The majority of those in the towns were not wage slaves, but members of the guilds, and as such, either owned or expected to own, the tools with which they worked and the product of their labour.

France and Ireland are classic instances of the failure of Malthusian principles, yet with characteristic audacity the Malthusian League claims them as successful examples. The population of Ireland has been reduced by nearly one half in fifty years, but still the tide of emigration goes on at the rate of thirty thousand per annum, because working-class conditions there, as everywhere else, are growing worse.

The claim that “agricultural labourers’ wages seem recently to have fully kept up with prices” falls flat when we read that many of them receive in actual cash from five to eight shillings per week, the average, including allowances, being between twelve and thirteen shillings per week. The towns of Ireland, we know by repute, rival in slums and sweating dens anything in England or on the Continent. The linen industry for example, is notorious for its low wages.

For France it is claimed that real wages have gone up six per cent. in the last ten years. Whether this be true or not—and the league give no authority for their statement—French wages may still compare unfavourably with English or German in actual purchasing power.

Wages in England have risen during the last ten years, according to Government figures, but the rise has not kept pace with the rise in prices, we are told. The same applies to France. If it were not so, how are we to account for the discontent of the French workers, for the numerous strikes and demonstrations against rising prices, and for, what is even more conclusive, the consumption of horse and dog flesh by the poor ?

We are informed by the alarmists of the Malthusian League that “our excess of births over deaths is one thousand per day ; that the population of the United States has increased so that it is now consuming all its own wheat, and that Russia is having a famine of its own. That supply is getting more difficult and our demand and that of other countries, becoming greater, is it any wonder that prices rise?”

The Malthusians are not the only ones that sound alarm in this direction. Malthus himself wrote of the time when every available acre of land would be under cultivation and human beings would scarcely have standing room on the earth. Professor H. N. Dickson, president of the geographical section at the recent science association, says : “We are already making serious inroads upon the resources of the whole earth.” Such an admission, however, only reveals the inability of the ruling class to regulate their exploitation. The earth is being denuded of its wealth-giving properties for the sake of profits—to build up wealth for a parasite class—to protect and pamper that class.

The only useful class in society—the working class—even if its modest requirements were doubled, would not tax the world’s resources in ten years to the extent that capitalist anarchy does in one.

To say, as the Malthusians do, that supply is getting more difficult, is the reverse of the truth. The production, and consequently the supply, of wheat—or in fact of any commodity—is easier to-day than ever it was. Machine invention and new methods have, during the last century, multiplied man’s productiveness by hundreds. With bonanza farms miles in extent, requiring but few workers, and machines that traverse the “fields of waving corn,” performing all the operations short of actual grinding, how can anyone possibly claim that supply is getting more difficult ? Would the Malthusians claim that there are not sufficient able-bodied men to cultivate the soil ? Would they have the courage to assert that all the available land is under cultivation ?

All these alarmist theories are absurd and unscientific. There are no physical difficulties that prevent mankind from satisfying all their needs. What difficulties exist to-day are entirely social in character. They are due to the fact that the land together with all the other means of life are owned by a small class in society, who only allow production to go on for profit.

The Malthusian League support this system. The ruling class, in their eyes, can do no wrong. If there is poverty, according to them it is because of the improvidence of the workers. They ignore the anti-social actions of the capitalists—how they have burned wheat, cotton, and coffee, and allowed other commodities to rot, in order to maintain a maximum price—how manufacturers have closed their mills by common agreement for weeks on end, in order to create an artificial famine.

Trusts and combines, financiers and company promotors, are anti-social in character ; sabotage and ca-canny are practised by market riggers to an extent that would make trade unionists turn green with envy if they were but class-conscious and could realise it.

Capitalists invest their capital where they will obtain the highest dividends. They do not study the needs of the people either of this or future generations. Capital is wealth that is used for exploitation ; and every capitalist being actuated by greed, is utterly regardless of the havoc wrought in his interest, either on the earth itself or on the working class, or, for that matter, in the fortunes of his competitors. The means of life under such a system are not used to the advantage of those who operate them, but in the interest of those who own them. The one fact that emerges, clear and unchallenged, out of the chaos of competing interests that constitutes the mechanism of capitalist exploitation is that man, to-day, can satisfy all his needs, live up to a high standard of comfort, and enjoy more leisure than ever before in history—if it were not for capitalism.

The Malthusian League offer the capitalist restriction of the family as a panacea for labour “unrest,” and show their contempt for the working class in the suggestion that they should be taught to practise it—at least that larger section of the working class whose wages are twenty-five shillings a week and under.

“In Holland,” they say, “the poor have been taught to limit their families by a large, State-recognised society ; the death rate has fallen more rapidly than in any other country in the world, and there seems to be practically no labour unrest.” Holland must be a paradise for the capitalist—the wonder is that they do not flock there with their capital from all parts of the world.

Again we are told by the worshippers of Malthus that there are 960,000 adult men workers who get wages less than twenty shillings per week, and 1,600,000 who get between twenty and twenty-five shillings ; and further, that the only effective remedy for their quite natural discontent, is that they should only have one child. These self-appointed tutors of docility and submission should join hand with housing reformers and advocate more spacious homes for the working class. If the only remedy is limitation of the family, then it is not the capitalists who need separate bedrooms, but the workers. They might, at the same time, advocate the free supply by the State of certain rubber goods, as, by their own showing, those who need them most cannot afford to buy them.

Neither can they afford to have children, Malthus might have replied. Neither can they struggle against the desires of the flesh : they have not the stamina. As Mr. Lloyd George said of them : “Their wages do not suffice to replace the energy they use up in their daily toil.” In his “White Slaves of England” Robert Sherard says the workers in the “sweated industries”—men and women alike—have but one pleasure, and many of them swear it is the only thing worth living for. This, however, does not apply to the so-called sweated industries alone ; the vast majority of the workers are in the same position.

Imprisoned in a factory hell by day ; relegated to a slum for the night—a life of such days and nights with a dollar pension or the workhouse at the end—such is the worker’s prospect. All his senses fed on filth, on what is ugly incon­gruous, is it any wonder that the worker turns to the merely animal functions within his reach and makes them his pleasures ?

In sheer desperation the lower animals, when deprived of food, try to stave off extinction by excessive breeding. Man, after all, is but animal, and has not lived on a pinnacle of intelligence long enough to shed any of the fundamental instincts common to animal life ; and when social conditions rob him of his means of life and thrust him deep into the morass of poverty and wretchedness, the instinct of the brute comes to the top.

Science supports this explanation. Scientists in support of capitalism may deny it. Not all of them do so, however. The late Professor Huxley, greater in the world of science than a whole regiment of modern time-servers, said of the environment of the working class :

“It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and clothing necessary for the maintenance of the body cannot be maintained, in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which the pains of starvation, stunted development, and moral degradation accumulate ; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger rounded by a pauper’s grave.”

“The pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness.” Is it necessary to say more ? Man desires recreation and enjoyment. When he has learned to appreciate intellectual pleasures he will turn less frequently to the merely animal. Under capitalism the workers are denied the time and the means for intellectual recreation, hence their debasement.

Socialism alone, because it will give to the workers the fruits of their labour, can give them the leisure, means, and opportunities for genuine happiness and enjoyment. And even if it could be proved that under Socialism the human race would breed in swarms, still the robbery of the working class by the capitalist class would not be justified.

F. Foan

The Return of God. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The materialism of a former generation of scientists is in the melting pot, and a reversion to the metaphysical idealism is becoming very popular and common. Philosophically we can understand and sympathise, though we may not agree with, the distinction, between the idea and the thing, and the logical processes between them. Scientifically, however, we can neither understand nor sympathise with the confusion between the matter of the thing and the force or energy it manifests.

Yet it seems to be the purpose of prominent scientists to restate the scientific proposition in terms of a very much qualified materialism. The outcome of the materialistic hypothesis is too revolutionary for our masters, and its disquietening effects have to be scotched at the fountain head.

The immortality of the soul having been shown to be incompatible with a materialistic and evolutionary explanation of life, the power of the Church as a soporific for the under dogs of this world has waned. That power can be revived only by a scientific sanction of the ideas on which the Church rests, even though the whole gamut of the Church’s creed is not included. So at the British Association, the President, Sir Oliver Lodge, promulgated the opinion that the individual consciousness survived death, and was able to communicate with the living.

The phenomena of spiritualism is thus homologated, and the materialist who has insisted that the mind was of the brain, which was a purely physical organ whose functions, however complicated and obscure, were no more incapable of being understood and explained than is the process of digestion, the circulation of the blood, or any other functions performed by the various organs or collections of organs, of the body.

We do not know whether the discarnate spirit still experiences, over yonder, the inconveniences of, say, a faulty stomach or a gouty toe ; neither does Sir Oliver say that the spirit persists for ever, and is therefore immortal in the theological sense.

But of even more importance than the question of survival after death is the reference to the transcendental god as the ruler of the universe. Thus the teleology of the early Victorian era is restated with all the authority of twentieth century science. We had thought God and the ghosts were laid long since, and our spirit that was ordained either to everlastingly burn, or to perpetually twang the celestial harp in the clouds, had passed into the limbo of forgotten puerilities along with our belief in these mythical places.

For science had laid bare the majestic sweep of evolution from the star-dust of the nebula, through the material earth stage, with its atmosphere and water complete, to the burnt out cinder stage, like the moon ; had traced animal life from the amoeba to man ; and generally unravelled the whole cosmic scheme. Evolution is accepted as a fact by all the scientists and most laymen, to such an extent that even the Church has adopted it and interpreted it to fit its own theories, while active opposition to the principles of evolution is practically extinct.

If evolution means anything ; if the data of paleontology and of embryology teach anything ; it is surely the unbroken succession of changes from the lower to the higher, culminating in man. There was a great dispute as to whether man was not a special edition by himself, equipped with something different—not in degree but in kind—from any other living being. That dispute was settled by Huxley by his brilliant and conclusive contribution, “Man’s Place in Nature,” in which the reasons for placing man in a group with the “Primates,” and not in a class alone, are given.

At what stage, then, does the immortal soul appear ? Does the personality of the gorilla survive death, or does the Tasmanian aborigine start the immortals ? Or is it something between these ? In any case, what a fearful—almost hellish—confusion must reign “over there” if the souls of the millions of men and women, for the hundreds of thousands of years men have been on this planet keep on accumulating !

The Ruler of the Universe who made all that therein is, who “shaped the suns and marked their ways upon the ancient deep,” and who finally “created man in His own image,” has hitherto found no justification in science. Rather on the contrary has it been found that man in his different stages of knowledge, has created for himself a god or gods in the image of his knowledge—or want of it. And so to-day, when Sir Oliver Lodge creates for himself a god, He will be in a somewhat different image naturally from that of the Hebrew wise men emerging from the later stage of barbarism, but will have all the indications of being the embodiment of what we do not yet know. For that is what “God” has invariably represented. Backward as far as we may push the limits of our knowledge, as much as we may discover, if the workings of nature, there ever remain the doubts and questionings of the enquiring mind, and that ignorance is covered by attributing the unknown to “God.” At, best it is a begging of the question.

The fact remains that we who are of the earth earthy, are satisfied that sufficient is known to make a vast difference to our life here—the life of which we are certain and which we know most about the life of which we have tried to picture, and make practicable the realisation of, the possibilities.

It is an attempt of our masters to divert our attention to an imaginary life elsewhere in order to cover up and minimise the shortcomings of our life here. We doubt whether at this time of day the eyes of the working class can again be directed heavenward. For centuries they looked that way, and nothing came of it. “No Saviour from on high delivers” us from our slavery here ; it is to ourselves and our fellow mortals we have to look for deliverance. Science has provided us with sufficient material to afford a solution, and it now requires but the co-operation of the workers in making use of that information to solve once and for ever the social problem, through the overthrow of capitalism, and the construction of a Socialist co­-operative commonwealth out of the materials collected by capitalism in its ruthless course.

D. K.

The Forum: Socialism versus Secularism. (1913)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[To the editor.]

Sir,—While agreeing with a good deal in the article under the above heading in your August issue, there are some points in it which seem to me to require criticism.

To start with, the title is misleading. Socialism cannot be versus Secularism. It is Secularism. Your point should be that it is the only Secularism. This would then place you in your true relationship with the N.S.S. The writer objects that Atheism is anything more than anti-Theism—the negation of the God idea. He will find that that is all it is. You cannot saddle Atheism with all or any of the theories of origin which do not come within the conception of the God-origin of the Cosmos. On the contrary, it is only Atheism that is capable of analysing scientific ideas properly.

Neither is Atheism committed to the ridiculous position about the inconceivability of infinity. Atheists may be so committed. Atheism is not a red-herring. The need for your excellent pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” proves this. The only virtue or utility in Atheism is (and Atheism loses nothing by confessing it), that, properly conceived, it frees the mind to enter the analysis of Socialism and sociology with the impartiality and right thinking which religion prevents. Religion distorts the mind, therefore Socialism stands no chance of being understood.

That all the Atheists are not supporting the Socialist theories is no more the fault of Atheism than it is the fault of Socialism that some “Socialists” turn bourgeois in ideas when they become bourgeois in the manner of getting their living.

You may answer that these “Socialists” are not Socialists. I offer a similar reply re J. M. Robertson, M.P., etc. Their Atheism has done them no good. The other matter raised in Mr. Le Cart’s article I thoroughly endorse.

Yours truly,

Thomas Reynolls

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The above criticism clearly indicates that the person responsible for it is wholly ignorant of Socialism and consequently associates it with all sorts of concepts which are, in reality, quite foreign to it.

Our correspondent holds that Secularism properly understood is synonymous with Socialism. Not only is that statement delightfully ridiculous in view of the confusion that exists among Secularists in regard to the political aspect of society, but it is untrue.

Secularism merely represents the opinions of people whose observations have been narrowed down to one single aspect of society, viz., the religious one. It stands for “this-worldism” in opposition to the belief in the existence of another world.

Religious ideas, however, being shaped and determined by social conditions, only exist as a product of the particular social system in which they are manifested, and as such are not based at all on the existence of another world. Secularism, therefore, is essentially nothing but a futile negation; it mistakes a shadow for the thing that casts it and, at its best, only comes to the level of other organisations which are out to secure certain reforms while leaving untouched the cause that produces the very evil they profess to eradicate. Thus our correspondent’s attempt to justify atheistic Secularism on the ground that “religion distorts the mind” falls to pieces, for Secularism is itself guilty of inaccurate mental vision. An examination of the written objects of Secularism as it appears in its organised and concrete form clearly shows that it attacks certain superstitions only to replace them with others just as bad and just as reactionary from the point of view of the working class. Nor is there any excuse in the paltry suggestion that it is misunderstood and ill-used by its adherents, for if it leaves room for misunderstanding and ill-usage it stands condemned as a proper means of education and enlightenment.

Now, the reply to the “step-by-step and wait and see” policy of our critic, who says that Socialism stands no chance of being understood while religious influence lasts, is obvious. We submit to him that if it is possible to free the mind from religious ideas without destroying the cause that produces them, then it is even more possible to make that mind at once understand the cause of the trouble and the remedy for it. Success in the first instance would be nothing short of a miracle; in the second it is the result of a clear and simple process of education.

Unlike Secularism, Socialism is not governed by appearances, but explains them. Its policy is the outcome of an analysis of the economic forces which always lie at the base of all social structures, so that it reaches the root from which not only springs the world of ideas, but in which is also to be found the cause of all evil. These economic forces create an antagonism of interests between the few and the many, and it naturally follows that the minds of the many must be misguided if the few are to survive—hence the need for and the use of religious influence so long as that antagonism lasts. The object of Socialism is to destroy this antagonism by substituting common for private ownership of the means of life, and this transformation alone will sound the death-knell of religious influence, for the robbery of the working class will have ceased, and with it the need to subject the mind to misguidance.

Thus Socialism is anti-religious, but to say that it is the logical outcome of Atheism and Secularism is as silly as to expect a mouse to give birth to a mountain.

M. J. Le Cart.