Holidays and Toil. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The holiday season is here, and a great exodus of holiday makers is to be seen at every great terminus. The tired toilers everywhere are—where they can—making frantic efforts to obtain a little of the imperative relaxation for the human machine. Nature demands it ! Capitalism, as it develops, exacts more and ever more of the physical and mental make-up of the individual wage-slave and his class. Body, brain and nerve, under the present system, have an ever-increasing strain thrust upon them by the exacting demands of a ruthless system of exploitation and production for profit.

The consequence is that not only individual workers, but our wage-slave class, are automatically worn out quicker. They are the speedier thrown onto the industrial scrap-heap of unemployment, discarded like an orange from which all the best has been withdrawn. They are the sooner smitten with disease, and the more frequently overtaken by death prematurely. These are some of the “rare and refreshing fruits” of capitalism which cunningly-framed insurance Bills are powerless to cope with. Karl Marx pointed out with his usual profound insight, that it suits the capitalists’ interests better to have a virile generation that they can exploit intensively, and, through that, wear out quicker, than a generation which they can only exploit at a slower rate. The pace kills ! But in the race for wealth human beings are given by our masters less consideration, than they bestow upon their racehorses.

In some cavalry exercises in the South of England a young soldier and his horse met with an accident. The horse stumbled and broke his fetlock, and the man was thrown and broke his collar-bone and leg. Several soldiers hastened to the injured man’s assistance. “Never mind him ! Look after the horse!” the officer shouted. “We can get men any day ; the horse cost £50” !

That is true, as it was told me, and reveals a similar attitude to that displayed by our exploiters.

The “Great War” (how long will it be ere a greater is organised ?) showed the utter callousness of the capitalist class. The lives of the workers were considered of no account to the workers themselves by our war makers. They were only of value as they served our masters’ purposes as pawns to fight and die for capitalist interests alone.

And in “peace” it is just the same: the working class are used as mere human machines for the production of surplus value. They are TOILERS ! They have to drudge. Their work, which would be only a means to an end under a sensible system of society, is for millions a relentless slavery. The damnable monotony of it, the harsh conditions and blighting effect of it upon mind and nerve and body are disastrous to our class.

Work should be a joyous exercise of all the necessary faculties brought to bear upon some socially useful purpose. It should not be unduly prolonged, and even if it is laborious it should be tempered to the worker.

Under capitalism every ounce that can be is daily wrung out of the wage slave. This is the result of having a system where the very means of life are in the hands of, and controlled by a class.

We work far too long and far too often ! Why ? Because all that the masters can compel us to produce beyond what they pay us in wages goes into their pockets, and it is only for this that the masters allow us to use the means of production in their possession. The surplus-value thus produced through a fleecing wages system permits a class of parasites to riot in luxury. They can make holiday all the year round, till holiday bores them with ennui. Wintering at Cannes or squandering at Monte Carlo, they know that “money will come in” because their wage-slaves are toiling for them. The “London Season” sees them luxuriating in “Town” ; later they flaunt at Ascot, and in the exquisite villas at Maidenhead, and to the moors they go for grouse-shooting. And they do it all while their slaves are toiling, and on the wealth which these latter so painfully produce.

There are thousands upon thousands of workers who are annually quite unable to scrape together enough to go for a much-needed rest and change at the seaside. Capitalism denies them the opportunity !

Socialism alone will ensure to all, not only every means, in abundance, necessary to physical well-being, but every opportunity for rest and recreation. Under Socialism the workers will not live to work for exploiters, for class rule will not exist.

At present the working class only exist to serve a sordid purpose—the interests of capitalism.

Graham May

The Return of the Prodigal. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the world went mad—when it was only stupid, the Socialist was wont to be met by certain stock phrases and arguments with such regularity and persistence that they became as familiar to him as old friends.

The man in the street used to be perturbed by the problem : “If you eliminate the capitalist who will pay my wages?” The capitalist defenders of their system in their turn argued that since they paid the wages of the working class (or as they would have it, working classes) the capitalists are as indispensable to humanity as the sun is to the universe.

But then the International capitalist gang quarrelled over the spoils of the exploitation of the working class, and the man in the street ceased to worry about wages under Socialism and went forth to do battle or to dodge it. Consequently the old familiar phrases went amissing too.

It was, therefore like meeting again an old acquaintance whom we have missed from amongst us to come across the following which appeared in a report of the speech of the Chairman of Crosses and Winkworths Consolidated Mills at a shareholders’ meeting:

   Money — capital is the very vein matter of industry. Without it the commercial life of this or any other country must cease. Labour is dependent on employment, and employment is furnished by the people who are able to put up the money to pay wages. The excess profit duty of 60 per cent, at one fell swoop snatches away £300,000,000 a year that would otherwise be invested in production. Instead of being paid out in dividends and reinvested in some producing concern, this gigantic sum of money will be withdrawn from its proper use in order to meet the bills on armaments, or shipping control, or the Civil Service. What can this mean but so much the less development and growth of industry, so much the less production, and, in consequence, so much the less employment ? Secondly, Labour must depend to a very large extent on the establishment of new enterprise. But this duty makes it impossible for any new business to be set up in competition with old-established firms. A certain number, a growing number, among the leaders of industry are raising their voices against this tax. But, as a matter of fact, they are doing so only because they are long-sighted enough to see what it means to themselves as well as to every one else in the end. There are many manufacturers who appear to be incapable of realising so much, and who almost welcome these proposals as being the finest protective wall that they could have wished to have erected. The concessions promised to the new man must be very great indeed to give him a chance against the old-established concern. Unless I am completely wrong, this tax must surely stifle enterprise and the creation of new business. Once more, so much the less production and so much the less unemployment. 

It would be but reiteration to prove that Sir Edward Mackay [Edgar] , the chairman in question, has in common with all the apologists of the present tern, got the cart before the horse. We have shown in these columns time and time again it is wage-labour that creates capital and not vice-versa. Furthermore, capital cannot increase unless it beget a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. All that mankind needs to maintain its existence is the application of human labour-power to the nature-given material. The function that the capitalist performs in the present system is that, having regard to the fact that capital is his personal property, he is in a position to expropriate the products of labour, returning only a portion, barely enough to keep it in existence, to the working class. That portion is called wages.

Edgar, however, is quite an altruist. He tries to make it clear that he is not solely concerned about himself. Despite the fact that, as he says :

  We are in a first-rate position, earning good money, and have an order book filled for seven months ahead at profitable prices. Our cotton position is excellent.

He is anxious to prevent Labour from doing itself an injury,

  We have lately had a readjustment of wages in the trade, and certain operatives are now earning sums that were undreamt of prior to the war. I would be the last to oppose any legitimate demands based on the rise in living cost, and none of us will deny that the workers should benefit by the prosperity of the trade in which they are engaged. Before the war in many cases labour was underpaid. It was inevitable that when they were presented with an opportunity of getting on terms with their employers they should seize it with both hands. But now one can see signs that the great body of intelligent workers are beginning to realise that the policy of grab, of squeezing the employer to the limit, is more than likely to react on Labour itself if carried any further. Appetite comes by eating, and demands in many trades have reached such a point that to-day many of the responsible trades union leaders and the great army of sensible — hard, common-sensible workers are beginning to realise the danger, and are not a little frightened at the greedy monster they have raised. It is a truism that Capital and Labour are interdependent. We are all in the same boat — a boat labouring against a head wind and a heavy sea.

Such kind-hearted consideration must surely make us Socialists feel a little ashamed of ourselves for wanting to deprive the capitalist class of its sole means of existence. But I am afraid we are a flint-hearted crowd and Edgar’s appeal to “the great army of sensible workers” leaves us cold.

We have met our Edgars before and know them for what they are worth. But the man in the street, what is he thinking about? Will he still worry about wages under Socialism, or who it is that is to do the dirty work ? In any case, however, the Socialist has an answer to every question, new or old, and if the returned prodigal questions are only accompanied by a real desire for enlightenment the man in the street will soon discover that Socialism is the only system of society that will secure him as the fruits of his labour far more than anything his wages under capitalism can bring him. And our cotton magnates will soon receive their congé together with the rest of the parasite class who draw dividends from the blood and sweat of the working class and insult them with their hypocritical “consideration.”

Stanley H. Steele

Progress and Poverty. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reformers and revolutionists have from time immemorial been the recipients of that deep antagonism inherent in the brain of man towards any form whatsoever of ideas or actions detrimental to those at the time prevailing. History tells us that the advance of man from the savage state to the degree of intelligence of man to-day has been a gradual evolution from one stage to another. The germs of the actions which will govern the future state of mankind always being found in the previous state, make themselves felt among the people concerned, until at last conditions are ripe for a process of discarding the old and establishing the new. The Socialist, having studied these facts, recognises that no waving of red flags, plotting against governments, or such futilities, can bring about the coming advancement from Capitalism to Socialism, his object being to disseminate amongst his fellow men ideas regarding the position in which they are to-day relative to that which they could attain were they only to concentrate their minds on matters which affect their welfare and overcome that primitive opposition to ideas which aim at changing the present system of society.

By virtue of the present system itself society is unsocial in every aspect of the word. With regard to the methods of production, so long as the worker is maintained on a scale of living which is consistent with his efficiency as a worker no consideration is given to his social life. He is not considered as a member of society privileged to enjoy its pleasures, but rather just as a “hand,” a mere tool to be used how, when, and where the master requires.

For example, with regard to the recent report in the papers anent a mid-week football match, the promoters were asked to discontinue mid-week football, not because watching football was detrimental to the eyesight of the spectators or society at large, but because “profits” were being lost to shareholders.

The Socialist does not desire to impose any rules or conditions on society. All he asks is that society will consciously apply principles for the benefit of society as a whole, entirely eliminating any question of class distinction, thereby directly being the means of man recognising that he has no reason to humble himself to anyone. Servility and humility are but the primitive acts of religious superstition, fostered by Press and pulpit in an endeavour to blind the workers to the stern reality that while capitalism continues its course the poverty of the workers must become continually greater.

No reforms or palliatives can possibly improve the condition of the working class for any period, it is the wages system that is the cause of all the ills which are rampant to-day, and until that system is abolished the Socialist can confidently prophesy that the condition of the working class will gradually become worse. Speeding up production in an effort to secure greater profits, choke the warehouses with the goods produced by the workers ; unemployment becomes more intense, and, in the struggle for markets, war becomes a necessity of the system. And the cycle goes on only with greater intensity.

Socialism is the only system yet advanced which claims to offer humanity a world devoid of poverty. The only party in Great Britain, advocating Socialism is the S.P.G.B., and while various freak parties glitter in the light of publicity only to fade away, the Socialist Party steadily gains ground.

A. J. Stuart

An Unusual Friendship. by Franz Mehring (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

 The victory of Marx’s career was not only due to the man’s enormous power. According to all human probability, he would have succumbed sooner or later, if he had not found in Engels a friend, of whose self-sacrificing fidelity we have had no accurate picture until the publication of the correspondence of the two men.

No other such spectacle is afforded in all recorded history. Couples of friends, of historical importance, are found throughout history, and German history has its examples also. Frequently their lifework is so closely interwoven that it is difficult to decide which accomplishment belongs to each one of them. But always there has been a persistent remnant of individual obstinacy or stubbornness, or perhaps only an instinctive reluctance to surrender one’s own personality, which, in the words of the poet, “is the highest blessing of the children of men.” After all, Luther saw in Melanchton only a chicken-livered scholar, while Melanchton regarded Luther as a coarse peasant. And in the correspondence of Goethe and Schiller, anyone with sound senses can discern the secret lack of attunement between the great Privy councillor and the small Court councillor. There is no trace of this ultimate human weakness in the friendship of Marx and Engels: the more their thoughts and labors become interwoven, the more each one of them remained a full man, complete in himself.

Their exteriors were quite different. Engels, a blond Teuton of tall stature, of English manners, as an observer once said of him, always well dressed, with a bearing that was rigid with the training not only of the barracks, but also of the counting-house. With six clerks, he said, he would organize a branch of the administration a thousand times more simple and efficient than with sixty government councillors, who cannot even write legibly and get your books all balled up, so that the Devil himself can make nothing of them. A member of the Manchester Stock Exchange, perfectly respectable in the business dealings and the amusements of the English bourgeoisie, its fox-hunts and its Christmas parties, he was yet a tireless mental worker and fighter, who, in a little house on the outskirts of the city held his treasure concealed, his little Irish girl, in whose arms he would refresh himself whenever he tired of the human turmoil in the world without.

Marx, on the other hand, short, thick-set, with flashing eyes and a lion’s mane of ebon hue, betraying his Semitic origin; of careless exterior, a father whose family cares alone would be sufficient to keep him away from the social life of the great city; so intensely devoted to consuming intellectual labor that he has hardly the time to gulp down a hasty dinner and uses up his bodily strength to all hours of the night; a tireless thinker, to whom thought is a supreme pleasure; in this respect a genuine successor of Kant, of Fichte, and particularly of Hegel, whose sentence he loved to repeat: “Even the most criminal thought of a scoundrel is more sublime and more magnificent than the miracles of the celestial sphere,” but differing from them in that his thoughts inexorably drive him to action: he was unpractical in small matters but very practical in large matters; far too helpless to arrange a petty household, but incomparably capable in the business of recruiting and leading an army that was to revolutionize the world.

If it is true that “the style is the man,” we must also note their differences as writers. Each in his way was a master of language, a linguistic genius, with a mastery of many foreign languages and even of individual dialects. In this field Engels was even more remarkable than Marx, but whenever writing in his mother-tongue, even in his letters and of course in his writings, he exercises a most austere care to keep the language free from all foreign admixture of word and phrase, without falling, however, into the vagaries of the patriotic linguistic purists. He wrote with ease and lucidity, always in a style so pellucid that you looked right down to the bottom of the current of his animated speech.

Marx’s style was at once more careless and more difficult. In his youthful letters there is still apparent, as in those of Heine, a condition of struggle with the language, and in the letters of his later years, particularly after his settlement in England, he began to make use of a picturesque jargon of German, English and French, all mixed up. In his published writings, also, there is an over-liberal use of foreign words, and there is no lack of Gallicisms and Anglicisms, yet he is so distinctly a master of the German language that he cannot be translated without serious loss. Once when Engels had read a chapter by Marx in a French translation, even after Marx had revised the translation, it seemed to Engels that the vigor and sap and life had disappeared. Goethe once wrote to Frau von Stein: “In metaphors I am ready to stand comparison with the proverbs of Sancho Panza.” Marx could well bear comparison with the greatest of the world’s adepts in figures of speech, with Lessing, Goethe, Hegel, so full of life and vigor is his language.

He had fully absorbed Lessing’s statement that a perfect representation requires a fusion of image and conception, as closely joined as man and woman, and the university pedants have gotten square with him for this, from Father Wilhelm Roscher down to the youngest fledgling of a Privatdozent, by accusing him of being incapable of making himself understood except in an extremely vague way, “patched up with a liberal use of figurative language.” Marx never exhausted the questions which he attacked beyond the point of enabling the reader to begin a fruitful train of thought; his speech is like the dancing of the waves over the purple depths of the sea.

Engels always saw in Marx a superior spirit; he never wished to play anything but second fiddle by his side. Yet he never was a mere interpreter and assistant, but always a collaborator of independent activity, a kindred spirit, though not of equal size. In the early days of their friendship, Engels played, in one important field, rather the role of a giver than of a receiver, and twenty years later Marx wrote to him: “You know that all ideas come to me too late, and that, in the second place, I always follow in your tracks.” With his somewhat light equipment, Engels was able to move about more freely, and even though his glance was sharp enough to distinguish the decisive features of a question or of a situation, it did not penetrate far enough to review at once all the conditions and corollaries with which even the scantiest decision is often burdened. For a man of action this defect is even an advantage, and Marx never made a political decision without first calling upon Engels for advice, and Engels was usually able to hit the nail on the head.

Accordingly, the advice which Marx asked from Engels was not as satisfactory in questions of theory as in questions of politics. In theory Marx was usually the better of the two. And he was absolutely inattentive to such advice as Engels would often give him, in order to impel him to terminate his labors on his great scientific masterpiece: “Be a little less severe on yourself in the matter of your own productions; they are far too good for the public. The main thing is to have it finished and to get it out; the defects that you still see, the asses will never discover.” It was a characteristic bit of Engels advice, and it was just as characteristic of Marx to ignore it.

It is clear from the above that Engels was better fitted for a journalistic career than Marx; “a real walking encyclopedia” — so Marx once described him to a mutual friend, “capable of work at any hour of the day or night, drunk or sober, swift with his pen and alert as the devil.” It seems that both, after the cessation of the Neue Rheinische Revue, in the autumn of 1850, had still in mind the issuing of another journal in common, to be printed in London; at least, in December 1853, Marx wrote to Engels: “If we — you and I — had started our business as English correspondents in time, you would not now be condemned to office-work in Manchester, nor I to my debts.” Engels’ choice of a position of clerk in his father’s firm, in preference to the prospects of this “business,” was probably due to his consideration for the hopeless situation of Marx, and to a hope of better times in the future, and certainly not with the object of devoting himself permanently to the “damned business.” In the spring of 1854, Engels again considered the desirability of returning to London for literary work, but this was the last time; it must have been about this time that he made up his mind to assume the cursed burden for good, not merely in order to be of assistance to his friend, but in order thus to preserve the party’s best mental asset. Only with this motivation could Engels make the great sacrifice, and Marx accept; both the offer and the acceptance required a great spirit.

And before Engels became a partner in the firm some years later, he cannot exactly be said to have trod a path of roses, but from the first day of his stay at Manchester he aided Marx and never ceased aiding him. An unending stream of one-pound, five-pound, ten-pound, later even hundred-pound notes began to flow toward London. Engels never lost his patience, even though it was often sorely tried by Marx and his wife, who had no over-great supply of domestic wisdom. He forgot the amount of a note and appeared unpleasantly surprised to learn of it when the note fell due. Slight also was his concern when, on the occasion of another general clean-up of the domestic economy, Mrs. Marx, through misplaced considerateness, concealed a large item and began paying it off by stinting with her household money, thus starting the old trouble over again, with the best of all intentions; on this occasion Engels allowed his friend the rather pharasaical amusement of bewailing the “idiocy of women,” who manifestly are “in constant need of guardianship,” and contented himself with the gentle admonition: See it doesn’t happen again.

But Engels did not alone slave away for his friend in office and exchange all day long, but he also gave to him most of his evening leisure hours, in fact, a great part of the night. Although the original reason for this added labor was the necessity of preparing an English version of Marx’s articles for the “New York Tribune,” until Marx should be able to use the language well enough for literary purposes, the laborious cooperation continued for many years after the original reason had been overcome.

But all this seems a slight sacrifice as compared with the greatest service Engels rendered his friend, namely, his renunciation of his independent accomplishments as a thinker and investigator, which, in view of his incomparable energy and his rich talents, would have produced valuable results. A correct notion of this sacrifice can also be obtained from the correspondence of the two men, even if we note only the studies in linguistic and military science, which were carried on by Engels partly owing to an “old predilection” and partly with a view to the practical needs of the struggle for proletarian emancipation. For, much as he hated all “autodidacticism” — ”it’s all damn nonsense,” he contemptuously said — and thorough as were his methods of scientific work, he was yet as little a mere closet-scholar as Marx, and every new piece of knowledge was doubly precious in his eyes, if it might aid at once in lightening the chains of the proletariat.

He therefore undertook the study of the Slavic languages because of the “consideration” that in the next great clash of national interests, “at least one of us” should be acquainted with the language, history, literature, social institutions of those nations with whom there was some likelihood of immediate conflict. Oriental troubles led him to the oriental languages; he steered clear of Arabic, with its 4,000 roots; but “Persian is a veritable child’s play of a language”; he would be through with it in three weeks. Then came the turn of the Germanic languages:

  “I am now buried in Ulfilas: I simply had to get rid of this damned Gothic: I have been so long carrying it on in a rather desultory manner. I am surprised to find that I know much more than I expected. I need one more book, and then I’ll be absolutely done with it in two weeks. And then for Old Norse and Old Saxon, with which I have long been on terms of half-acquaintance. As yet I have absolutely no paraphernalia, not even a lexicon: nothing but the Gothic text and old Grimm, but the old fellow is really a brick.”

In the sixties, when the Schleswig-Holstein question came up, Engels undertook “some Frisian-English-Jutian-Scandinavian philology and archaeology,” and when the Irish question blazed up, “some Celto-Irish,” and so on. In the General Council of the International his comprehensive linguistic accomplishments were of great value to him; “Engels can stammer in twenty languages,” was said of him, because in moments of excitement he displayed a slight lisp.

Another epithet of his was that of the “General,” which he earned by his still more assiduous devotion to the military sciences. Here also he was satisfying an “old predilection” at the same time he was preparing for the practical needs of the revolutionary policy. Engels was counting on “the enormous importance which the parti militaire would attain in the next commotion.” The experiences with the officers who had joined the revolution in the years of rebellion had not been very satisfactory, and Engels declared that the military rabble has an incredibly dirty caste spirit. “They hate each other worse than poison, envy each other like schoolboys at the slightest mark of distinction, but they show a united front against all civilians.” Engels wanted to arrive at a point at which his theoretical remarks might have some weight and might not merely expose his ignorance.

He had hardly gotten established in Manchester when he began to “plug up military science.” He began with the “simplest and most rudimentary things, such as are asked in an ensign’s or lieutenant’s examination, and are therefore assumed by all authors as already known.” He studied everything about army administration, down to the most technical details: elementary tactics, Vauban’s system of fortification, and all other systems, including the modern system of detached forts, bridge construction and field works, fighting tools, down to the varying construction of carriages for field guns, the ravitaillement of hospitals, and other matters; finally he passed on to the general history of war, in which connection he paid particular attention to the English authority Napier, the French Jomini, and the German Clausewitz.

Far removed from any shallow attacks on the moral folly of warfare, Engels sought rather to recognize its historic justification, by which effort he more than once aroused the violent rage of declamatory democracy. Byron once poured the vials of his scorching rage over the two generals who, at the Battle of Waterloo, in the character of champions of feudal Europe, inflected a deathblow on the heir of the Revolution; it was an interesting accident that made Engels, in his letters to Marx, outline historic portraits both of Wellington and Blucher, which in their small compass, are so complete and so distinct, that they hardly need to be altered in a single respect to make them fully acceptable to the present state of advancement of military science.

In a third field, too, in which Engels also labored much and with pleasure, namely, in that of the natural sciences, he was not to have the opportunity, during the decades in which he accepted the bondage of commerce in order to afford free rein to the scientific investigations of another man — to put the finishing touches to his own labors.

And this was really a tragic lot. But Engels never wailed about it, for sentimentality was as foreign to his nature as to his friend’s. He always held it to be the great good fortune of his life, to have stood by Marx’s side for forty years, even at the price of being overshadowed by Marx’s gigantic form. Nor did he consider it to be a belated form of satisfaction to be permitted, after the death of his friend, to be the first man of the international workers’ movement, to play the first violin, as it were, undisputed, in this movement; on the contrary, he considered this to be an honor that was too great for his merits.

As each of the two men was completely absorbed in the common cause, and each made an equally great sacrifice to it, although not an identical sacrifice, without any disagreeable reservation of objection or of boast, their friendship became an alliance which has no parallel in human history.

 (Franz Mehring in “The Class Struggle,” May, 1919)

The Historical Method of Karl Marx by Paul Lafargue. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reprinted from the “International Socialist Review,” Oct., 1907.

Link to Part 3.

IV. The Natural Environment and the Artificial or Social Environment—Continued.

A few historical facts, too recent to be forgotten, will illustrate the interplay of the various parts of the artificial environment through the medium of man.

When industry had utilised the elasticity of steam as a motor power, it demanded new means of transportation to carry its fuel, its raw material and its products. It suggested to the interested manufacturers the idea of steam traction on iron rails which began to be practised in the coal fields of Gard in 1830 and in those of the Loire in 1832; it was in 1829 that Stephenson’s first locomotive drew a train in England. But when it was desired to extend this mode of locomotion, active and various opposition was encountered, which delayed its development for years. M. Thiers, one of the political leaders of official capitalism, and one of the authorised representatives of its common sense and public opinion, opposed it energetically, because, he declared, “a railroad cannot work”. Railroads, indeed, upset the most reasonable and established ideas: they required, along with other impossible things, grave changes in the mode of property – serving as a basis for the social edifice of the bourgeoisie then in power. Till then a capitalist created an industry or a mercantile establishment with his own money, increased, at the most, by that of one or two friends and acquaintances who had confidence in his honesty and skill; he directed the use of the funds and was the real and nominal proprietor of the factory or the commercial house. But the railroads were obliged to amass such enormous capitals that it was therefore necessary to induce a great number of capitalists to confide their money, which they had never left out of their sight, to people whose names they scarcely knew, still less their ability or morality. When they let go of the money they lost all control over its use; they had no personal proprietorship in the stations, cars, locomotives, etc., which it served to create; instead of pieces of gold or silver, having volume, weight and other solid qualities, they received back a narrow, light sheet of paper, representing fictitiously, an intangible morsel of the collective property, the name of which it bore, printed in big letters. Never in bourgeois memory had property taken on such a metaphysical form. This new form, which depersonalised property, was in such violent contradiction with that which summed up the joys of the capitalists, that which they had known and handed down for generations, that to defend it and propagate it no one could be found but the men charged with all the crimes and denounced as the worst disturbers of social order, — the Socialists. Fourier and St. Simon welcomed the mobilisation of property in paper stock-certificates. We find in the ranks of their disciples the manufacturers, engineers and financiers who prepared the revolution of 1848 and were the plotters of December 2: they profited by the political revolution to revolutionise the economic environment by centralising the nine provincial banks into the Bank of France, by legalising the new form of property and causing it to be accepted by public opinion, and by creating the network of French railways.

The great mechanical industry, which must draw its fuel and its raw material from a distance, and which must scatter its products widely, cannot tolerate the parcelling of a nation into little autonomous States, with tariffs, laws, weights and measures, coins, paper currencies, etc., of their own; it requires, on the contrary, the development of unified and centralised nations. Italy and Germany have met these requirements of the great industry, but only at the cost of bloody wars. MM. Thiers and Proudhon, who had numerous points of resemblance, and who represented the political interests of the little industry, became ardent defenders of the independence of the States of the Church and the Italian princes.

Since man successively creates and modifies the parts of the social environment, therefore, in him reside the motive forces of history, — so Vico and popular wisdom hold, rather than in Justice, Progress, Liberty, and other metaphysical entities, as the most philosophical historians stupidly repeat. These confused and inexact ideas vary according to the historical epochs and according to the groups or even the individuals of the same epoch; for they are the mental reflections of the phenomena produced in the different parts of the artificial environment; for example, the capitalist, the magistrate, and the wage-worker have different ideas of Justice. The Socialist understands by justice the restitution to the wage-working producers of the wealth which has been stolen from them, while to the capitalist justice is the conservation of this stolen wealth, and as the latter possesses the economic and political power, his notion predominates and makes the law, which, for the magistrate, becomes justice. Precisely because the same word covers contradictory notions, the capitalist class has made of these ideas an instrument of deceit and of domination.

That portion of the artificial or social environment in which a man functions gives him a physical, intellectual, and moral education. This education by things, which engenders ideas in him and excites his passions, is unconscious; so when he acts, he imagines he is following freely the impulses of his passions and ideas, while he is only yielding to the influences exercised on him by one of the parts of the artificial environment, which can react on the other parts only through the intermediary of his ideas and passions. Obeying instinctively the indirect pressure of the environment, he attributes the direction of his actions and emotions to a God, a divine intelligence, or to ideas of Justice, Progress, Humanity, etc. If the march of history is unconscious, since as Hegel says, man always finishes with a result other than that which he sought, it is because thus far he has been unconscious of the cause which makes him act and directs his actions.

What is the most unstable part of the social environment, that which is changed oftenest in quantity and quality, that which is most apt to disturb the whole?

The mode of production; answers Marx.

By mode of production Marx means not what is produced but the way of producing it; thus there has been weaving from prehistoric times, but it is only for about a century that there has been machine weaving. Machine production is the essential characteristic of modern industry. We have under our eyes an unparalleled example of its terrible and irresistible power to transform the social, economic, political and legal institutions of a nation. Its introduction into Japan has lifted that country in one generation from the feudal state of the middle ages into the constitutional state of the capitalist world, and has placed it in the front rank of world powers.

Multiple causes unite in assuring to the mode of production this omnipotence of action. Production absorbs, directly or indirectly, the energy of an immense majority of the individuals of a nation, while in the other parts constituting the social environment (politics, religion, literature, etc.) a slender minority is occupied, and even this minority can not but be interested in procuring the means of existence, material and intellectual. Consequently all men undergo mentally and physically, more or less, the modifying influence of the mode of production, while but a very small number of men are subjected to that of the other portions; now, as it is through the intermediary of men that the different parts of the social environment act on each other, that which modifies the most men possesses of necessity the most energy for moving the whole mass.

The mode of production, relatively unimportant in the social environment of the savage, takes on a preponderant and ever-growing importance through the incessant incorporation into production of the forces of nature, in proportion as man learns to know them: prehistoric man began this incorporation by using stones for weapons and tools.

Progress in the mode of production is relatively rapid, not only because production occupies an enormous mass of men, but again because, by enkindling “three furies of private interest”, it puts into play the three vices which, for Vico, are the moving forces of history, – hardheartedness, avarice and ambition.

Progress in the mode of production has become so headlong for the last two centuries that the men interested in production must constantly remodel the corresponding parts of the social environment to keep them on the level; the resistances which they encounter give rise to incessant conflicts, economic and political. Thus, to discover the first causes of historic movements, we must seek them in the mode of production of material life, which, as Marx says, dominates in general the development of the social, political and intellectual life.

Marx’s economic determinism takes away from Vico’s law of the unity of historical development its character of predetermination, which would carry the idea that the historic phases through which a nation passes, like the embryonic phases of an animal, are, as Geoffrey Saint-Hillaire thought, indissolubly linked to its very nature and determined by the inevitable action of an inner force, an “evolutionary force”, which would conduct it along pre-established paths toward ends marked out in advance; whence it would follow that all nations must progress, always and whether-or-no, at an equal pace and along one and the same path. The law of the unity of development, thus conceived, would be verified by the development of not one nation.

History, on the contrary, shows nations as they are, some limping through certain stages of evolution, which others traverse like race-horses, while others again go back from stages already reached. These delays, progressions, and recessions are explained only when we examine the social, political and intellectual history of the several nations in the light of the history of the artificial environments in which they have evolved, the changes in these environments, determined by the mode of production, determine in their turn historic events.

Since artificial environments are transformed only at the cost of national and international struggles, the historic events of a nation are thus subjected to relations which arise between the artificial environment to be transformed and the nation, fashioned as it has been by its natural environment and its hereditary and acquired characteristics. The natural environment and the historic past have impressed upon each nation certain original characteristics; so it follows that the same mode of production does not produce, with mathematical exactness, the same artificial or social environments, and consequently does not occasion historical events absolutely alike in different nations and at all moments in history, since vital international competition increases and intensifies in proportion to the growth in the number of nations arriving at the higher stages of civilisation. The historic evolution of nations, then, is not predetermined, any more than the embryonic evolution of individuals: if it passes through similar organisations of family, property, law, and politics, and through analogous forms of thought in philosophy, religion, art, and literature, it is because nations, whatever their race and geographical habitat, experience in their development material and intellectual wants which are substantially alike and must inevitably resort, for the satisfaction of these wants, to the same methods of production.

Paul Lafargue 

(Translated by Chas. H. Kerr.)

(Conclusion.)

Soft Soap for Leverhulme. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is much confusion in the minds not only of the rank and file of the organised workers, but also among their most prominent leaders with regard to the forces that make for Socialism. Those forces may be divided under two heads. First, the discovery and general dispersion of Socialist knowledge, and second, the general development of the capitalist system, which constantly tends to place the social organism out of harmony with its surroundings. The first is by far the more important at the moment, because the second has already reached a stage where its results are seen on every hand : poverty in the midst of plenty, and endless disputes over the distribution of wealth that threaten to plunge all human society into chaos and anarchy.

A system of society in which wealth does not belong to those who produce it may for a long time be borne with patience by the producers, if it does not impose any great hardships on the majority. The fact that with increased powers of production and a greater expenditure of energy poverty becomes more acute, is excused and partly hidden by the current belief that wealth cannot be produced except for markets. The imperative necessity—from the capitalist standpoint—for ever cheaper methods of production, coupled with the insatiable greed of the master class, breeds antagonism everywhere between the two classes in society. The competition between combines and groups of capitalists wipes out large numbers of smaller capitalists and leaves the bulk of wealth-producing concerns in the possession of a dwindling number of financiers.

Whether the means of wealth-production are owned and controlled by a capitalist class large or small in numbers, the interests of that class are always opposed to Socialism. It is even possible that, as the capitalist class grows smaller in numbers they may be able to combat Socialism more successfully because of the greater ease with which they could agree upon, and set in motion, antagonistic forces.

The growing antagonism between capitalists and workers centres largely around the question of wages and conditions of employment. The workers in the main are thus expending their energy in the struggle over hand to mouth conditions, and neglecting any study of the root causes of their poverty. The longer they pursue this short-sighted policy, which at the best can only slightly retard their downward progress into depths of poverty, the more permanent and fixed does the capitalist system appear to them, and the more hopeless does their struggle seem.

It does not follow that their hopelessness will cause them to accept Socialism, which has to be understood first, and which therefore requires a certain amount of study. Until the workers are prepared to give the necessary time to its study the question of economic development is a secondary matter, and small progress is being made toward Socialism. Those who pretend that anything else but the propaganda of Socialist knowledge makes for Socialism are only spreading confusion among the workers and encouraging them in the belief that economic forces of themselves will work out their emancipation for them. Philip Snowden, writing in the “Labour Leader” (17.6.1920), is guilty of this kind of confusion. He says :

  Disciples of Marx must be following with sympathy the frequent public appeals by Lever Brothers, Limited, for new capital. The function of the capitalists which Socialists can regard with approval is that of eliminating competition and concentrating capital into huge combines. If this process be a preliminary to Socialism, then no man of this generation is more entitled to the gratitude of Socialists than Lord Leverhulme. It is a pity that he is getting into advanced years, for if he could be spared to live and continue his activities for another generation, he would probably succeed in amalgamating all the commercial enterprises of the world. Then we should be ready for complete International Socialism. 

The Socialist does not regard with approval the elimination of competition—that is only one of the contradictions of capitalism he calls attention to. Up to twenty years ago the economists all boasted that competition protected the consumer, while the economist of to-day tries to prove that the big concern—a result of the eliminating process—makes for economy in production and lower prices. It is no satisfaction to the Socialist that the development of capitalism causes greater suffering for the workers. Suffering alone does not make Socialists : it is more likely to result in desperate actions or futile attempts at reform, generally followed by apathy and inaction.

Mr. Snowden. after enumerating these items of economic development, says “Then we should be ready for complete International Socialism.” But Socialism must be established by the working class, therefore, until the working class perceives in these economic factors the necessity for revolution and understand how to carry it through, we are not ready for Socialism. The economic factors wait on the knowledge of the workers. Without Socialist knowledge, no matter how these factors intensify, Socialism cannot be established. With Socialist knowledge the workers can take possession and control at any stage in capitalist development.

It is only the sentimental labour leader, always professing sympathy and friendship for the workers, that can see in their increasing poverty and hardship something to be thankful for, and can even express gratitude to the enemies of the workers for their callous methods. Thus Mr. Snowden says:

  Men like Lord Leverhulme are undoubtedly instruments in the evolution of capitalism, and the services they have rendered in preparing the way for Socialism will probably be gratefully acknowledged, by the erection of marble monuments perhaps, by the Socialist Commonwealth.

Such monuments would be incomplete without the effigies of labour leaders supporting the entablature, to signify their willingness to support them under capitalism.

But even while Mr. Snowden is lavishing praise on Lord Leverhulme and calling him comrade (extremely apt, by the way, as both are in one camp—the capitalist camp) Lord Leverhulme, in a dispute with his wage-slaves, beats them to their knees and forces them to accept his terms, thereby proving his antagonism to them and to the working class as a whole. In addition he cancels the co-partnership arrangement made with the strikers, who thus find in that arrangement another weapon that can be used against them when they threaten to strike.

But the discovery by the workers that one reform is useless, or even harmful to them does not help them to see that all reforms are equally helpless to release them from the results of capitalist domination. Because one reform has failed them, they do not necessarily examine other reforms critically ; on the contrary, they either swing back to the methods that captivated them before, or follow new will-o’-the-wisps invented by labour mis-leaders.

Profit-sharing was going to do wonderful things. Among others it was going to make the interests of capitalists and wage slaves identical. It did if the workers submitted — a chief condition of all capitalist experiments. The inevitable rupture having occurred, and Lever being the sole judge as to who is responsible for it—he being in possession—the workers lose their co-partnership holdings, and another bubble they have been chasing bursts, and leaves them wondering at their own childish credulity.

This has evidently convinced them, not that the interests of employers and employed are always opposed, but that “improvement in wages would have more permanent value to the whole of the workers.” Thus they swing backwards and forwards like the pendulum, first putting their faith in the promises of their masters, and then just as blindly following the lead of labour confusionists. Every capitalist party deceives them in turn, and after each experiment, or reform, they find themselves no better off. With strikes, however, the workers have the satisfaction of knowing that they have at least put up a fight, tried to do something but simply to wait on economic development, calling the capitalist “comrade” the while, is mere senseless optimism.

Economic conditions are ripe now for the establishment of Socialism, without any further amalgamation of capital or nationalisation of industries. The only thing now wanting is the acquisition of Socialist knowledge by the working class, and the organisation of the toilers for the accomplishment of their mission. The bigger the organisation spreading this knowledge, and the more rapidly and perfectly this other condition is achieved, the sooner shall we be ready. The obvious course for every worker, therefore, is to study Socialism, push Socialism, organise for Socialism.

F. Foan

Truth Will Out. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

In spite of the determined endeavours in capitalist circles to vilify the Bolsheviks upon every possibly occasion, there come times when the more responsible of them, driven into a corner, have to admit the truth. Such grudging admissions are not less impressive because they are wrung from hostile witnesses. Thus Mr. Bonar Law did much to demolish the structure of lies which his fellow capitalists have built up, with the aid of disgruntled parsons, dispossessed duchesses, and the prostitute Press, when he admitted in the House of Commons on August 9th, in reply to a question, that, “British women and children in Baku have not been molested, and they have been allowed to look after their male relations in prison.”

***

As we go to press the air is thick with rumours of war. The labour fakers are playing the same old game, promising to “reconsider the position,” if the “independence” of Poland is violated. No wonder. Lloyd George said “That is enough for me.” Our readers know our position towards all capitalist wars. It is the Socialist position.

You Can Help (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

One or more capitalist groups or individuals have been busy of late issuing pamphlets and leaflets pretending to combat Socialism. Lord Leverhulme’s pamphlet “What is Capital” is a case in point. These lucubrations bear the name of no organisation or individual as the issuer, hence it is difficult to find out who the responsible parties are. In all cases that have come before our notice the effort at capitalist propaganda is so comically poor that there is no wonder no one can be found to publicly father the miserable weakling. It seems, however, that many large employers are thinking it worth their while to get these leaflets circulated, more or less surreptitiously, among their workpeople.

This, of course, is sufficient reason for us to find out just what is going on, and we shall be glad if friends who are fortunate (!) enough to share in these generous gifts from their masters would forward them to the Editorial Committee of the Socialist Standard, at the Head Office of the Party, giving fullest particulars as to how they came by them.

We would point out to our friends that there can hardly be any finer antidote to this sneakish capitalist propaganda than our Manifesto, of which we have just issued the Sixth Edition.

The Super-Opportunists: A Criticism of Bolshevist Policy (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Fatuous Policy
The Bolshevik leaders are opportunists. They start out with a definite programme and policy but change it completely when they find the world’s workers do not support them. Lenin, Trotsky, Radek, and the other officials denounced Kautsky, Henderson, Longuet, and others for their reformist policy, but we now have Lenin and Zinoviev advising the Socialist workers of England to take parliamentary action and join the Labour Party.

The report of the Executive of the Communist Party of Russia to the 1920 congress of the Third International lays down the position that we should get inside the Parliamentary Labour parties. This advice is anti-Socialist, as anybody with a knowledge of the history and composition of the Labour parties know.

The Bolshevik leaders told us that the workers of the world were ripe for revolution and their support of Bolshevism was expected and depended upon. Now that it is plain that workers do not understand socialism and fight for it, Lenin is pandering to the ignorance of the world’s workers. In defence he says that by supporting the pro-capitalist Labour Party and helping to establish a Labour Party government, the workers will learn the uselessness of the Labour parties.

The Logical Conclusion
If that policy is to be adopted, then it is necessary for the workers to follow every false road, to support every reactionary measure, and to join every movement and learn from their mistakes—in other words, exhaust every possible evil before they try the right road. If this policy is right why did not Lenin support Kerensky’s policy of capitalism for Russia and let the workers painfully learn its uselessness? Such nonsense as supporting parties and Governments to gain power to learn their misdeeds is not the road to Socialism, it is the path to apathy and despair, and lengthens capitalism’s life.

The Coat Turned
After spending much ink and eloquence in denouncing parliamentary action Lenin tells us in his interview in the Manchester Guardian that it is necessary in modern capitalist countries.

In his telegram to the British Socialist Party Lenin calls upon them to support parliamentary action by means of a Labour party. After all the attempts of Lenin to show that Marx and Engels believed in smashing the State power, Trotsky tells us in A Paradise for the Workers that we have to get control of the State power and use it instead of abolishing it. Radek, in his Communism—From Science to Action, denounced parliamentary action and majority rule, but in a recent letter to a German Communist he completely changes round and advises parliamentary action.

The Opportunist Weathercocks
Lenin, in his letter to the German party, supports Parliamentary Action and the winning of the masses in defiance of all his previous advice and previous praise of the Spartacan minority action. The Amsterdam Bureau of the Third International was abolished because it told the English Socialists not to engage in Parliamentary Action or to support the Labour Party. All this demonstrates the absence of any principle and simply to veer with the changing winds.

We have been denounced for our attitude of insisting upon the need of Socialists making a revolutionary use of parliaments. Our position, however, was based upon Socialist principles and a recognition of the facts of history, not a desire to pander to popular prejudices such as support of a dangerous and fraudulent Labour party.

We have opposed Kautsky’s reformism and opportunism because it is not Socialism and is against the principle of the Class Struggle. We are equally opposed to dangerous teachings if they come from Lenin, Radek, or any other man who sets himself up as a teacher of socialism. Our position is that taken up by Marx and Engels and made plain by them in their writings. Engels says in his last (1890) preface to the Communist Manifesto that we must gain the minds of the masses. Bolshevism, however, has depended for its triumph upon the minority, who ignored the majority of workers. So true is this that Radek in his pamphlet ridicules anything else in minority action for Socialism.

Bertrand Russell, who accompanied the Labour delegation to Russia in June, records his interview with Lenin in the Nation (July 10th and 17th), and Lenin there admits the opposition of the peasantry. Lenin in reply to Kautsky (The Dictatorship and the Betrayer Kautsky) does not attempt to deny Kautsky’s charge that the Menshevik and Social-Revolutionary delegates to the Soviets were suppressed in order to maintain Bolshevik majorities. Russell states the Soviets are moribund and that any other delegates than Bolshevik ones are denied railway passes and so cannot attend the Soviet meetings. He also says that the All Russian Soviet meets seldom, that the recall is exercised for minor offences, such as drunkenness, and that the delegates continually ignore their constituents. We do not accept Russell as an authority, but much of his report agrees with Bolshevik writings.

We have always contended that the Bolsheviks could only maintain power by resorting to capitalist devices. History has shown us to be correct. The January 1920 Congress of the Executive Communists in Russia abolished the power of workers control in factories and installed officials instructed by Moscow and given controlling influence. Their resolutions printed in most of the Labour papers and the Manchester Guardian here show how economic backwardness has produced industrial conscription with heavy penalties for unpunctuality, etc. The abolition of democracy in the army was decreed long ago, but now that the army is being converted into a labour army it means rule from the top with an iron hand.

Russia has agreed to repay foreign property-owners their losses and allied Governments their “debts.” This means continued exploitation of Russian workers to pay foreign exploiters.

With all the enthusiasm of the Communists they find themselves faced with the actual conditions in Russia and the ignorance of the greater part of its population.

There is no easier road to Socialism than the education of the workers in Socialism and their organisation to establish it by democratic methods. Russia has to learn that.

Adolph Kohn

Birthday Honours. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

With, this number we complete the sixteenth volume of our Party Organ, the Socialist Standard. During the sixteen years through which we have run our journal we have had trying times—times which have been as severe tests, both of political solidity and of determination to survive, as we are likely to encounter short of the final struggle of the Revolution, and we have come through with unsmirched banner and untarnished record. There have been many hands at the helm, but as time has removed some and brought others to the labour the changes have left no discernable mark upon our pages. Just as we have found no occasion to alter one word of the. Declaration of Principles which has appeared in each copy we have sent out, so, no matter what changes have taken place in the personnel of our staff, what editors have come and gone, what successive Executives have taken control, in all things that matter our paper has remained unchanged. The reason for this is not far to seek—they have all done their work under a sound Declaration of Principles, published to the world, a guide alike for those within to work by, and for those without to test that work by.

So through these years we have held on our course without deviation, true to every clause, every statement, every affirmation, of the guiding principles under which our journal was launched. Others have tried all manner of shifts and dodges to find a short cut, or even to snatch personal advantage for interested Controllers. We, however, sure of the correctness of our claim that there it no royal road to Socialism, no other path than the hard and steep one of working-class revolutionary education, no other helpful policy than that based on the Class Struggle, have resolutely and consistently left such expedients to those others, content to have them provide our object lessons for us.

For our part we still proclaim that the proletariat must want Socialism before they can establish it, and that they must understand Socialism before they can want it; we still assert that society is divided into two classes—a master class and an enslaved class—with diametrically opposed interests, and that the freedom of the enslaved class can only be the fruits of victory in a class struggle; we still declare that the basis of society as at present constituted, is the private ownership of the means of living, and that reforms—anything in fact short of the abolition of private ownership in the means of living, and the establishment of common ownership in its stead—must be futile and utterly helpless to effect amelioration of the general condition of the workers' position; we still preach that the road to this overthrow of the present social system lies in the capture of the political machinery, and we are as emphatically insistent as ever upon the point that the means to such end are already in the hands of the workers in their possession of the vast bulk of the voting power in all advanced capitalist countries.

Such being our beliefs we have shaped our policy sternly in accordance therewith. We have set our faces against compromises of every shape and form. We have refused to have anything to do with reforms, no matter how alluring they appeared, or how much they ran in the popular fancy. We have conducted all our activities in the light of the class struggle, keeping clear the issue—the overthrow of the dominant capitalist class and the system under which they dominate.

This policy has not been without its reward. The sickening records of the pseudo-Socialist parties become increasingly maloderiferous in the nostrils of thoughtful working men and women, and as our exposures drive, and historical events draw, these renegade parties into the open, and force them more and more to reveal themselves as the anti-Socialists they are, our clean record is appealing to increasing numbers. The demand for our Party Organ, notwithstanding the smaller facilities for disposing of it at our disposal, is greater at the close of the sixteenth volume than it has ever been, a fact which has its reflection in greater enquiry for our application for membership forms and a steady enrolment of new members.

An Interesting Document. (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why Jack London resigned from The Socialist Party of America.

We reproduce below the letter by which the well-known novelist, Jack London, resigned his membership of the Socialist Party of America. It is of interest as showing, how far he was from taking up the position which his widow afterwards embraced, and which she declared would have been his position had he lived.

Honolulu,

7th March, 1916. 

Dear Comrades, 

     I am resigning from the Socialist Party of America because of its lack of fire and fight and its loss of emphasis on the Class Struggle.

   I was originally a member of the old up-on- its-hind-legs-fighting-Socialist Party; Since then and up to the present time, I have been a fighting member of the Socialist Party of America. My fighting record in the cause is not even at this late date entirely forgotten. Trained in the Class Struggle as taught and practiced by the Socialist Labour Party,—my own highest judgment concurring,—I believed that the working class, by fighting, by never fusing, never making terms with the enemy, could emancipate itself. Since the whole trend of Socialism in the United States of America during recent yearn has been one of peaceableness and compromise, I find that my mind refuses further sanction of my remaining a Party member. 

   Please include my Comrade wife, Charmian K. London’s resignation with mine. 

   My final word is that liberty, freedom, and independence are royal things that cannot be presented to, nor thrust upon, races or classes. If races and classes cannot rise up by their strength of brain and brawn, wrest from the world liberty, freedom and independence, they never in time can come to these royal possessions, and if such royal things are kindly presented to them by superior individuals on silver platters, they will know not what to do with them, will fall to make use of them, and will be what they have always been in the past —inferior races and inferior classes.

Yours for the Revolution,

Jack London.

(From the “Overland Monthly,” Nov. 1917.)

Party News (1920)

Party News from the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our Manifesto is Out.

We were not in a position when we went to press with our last issue to announce that the new edition of the “Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain” was ready for sale, although before the July number was published the “Manifesto” was actually in the hands of the public. We have had to prepare a large edition in order to be able to sell the book at 3d. without financial loss, so comrades should push the sale to the utmost.

The special preface to the edition covers the extremely important ground of the actions of the so-called Socialist parties during the period of, and in relation to, the recent world war, and it should be brought into prominent and special notice in all working-class circles. It will undoubtedly become a valuable weapon in the fight for Socialism.

Our £1,000 Fund.

Once again we draw attention to the urgent need for the “sinews of war.” Though we do not care to spare a great deal of our spare for appeals for funds, the need is not on that account any the less pressing or vital. There is much work awaiting the financial means to enable it to go forward, and all who are possibly able to do so should send regular donations to our £1,000 Fund. In particular those who are unable to take part in the direct active work of the Party should make a special effort to support the efforts of their comrades through this medium. A further list will be published in due course—don’t let your name be missing from it.

Capitalism's Admirable Crichtons (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of J. M. Barrie’s immortal plays portrays the butler who by sheer force of superior mentality and ability assumed leadership over his aristocratic employers when shipwrecked on a desert island. The position is intended to be a more or less fanciful one, but in reality present day society teems with examples of the repression of great minds by the mediocre-minded few. Many of us in even our small circles can point to one or two acquaintances who can find no outlet for really brilliant intelligences, and who are forced by stress of economic circumstance to spend their lives in uncongenial work and uninspiring environment. History has many cases to show of genius which has been discovered too late, of great minds that have been starved of opportunity. Men and women who, even under adverse conditions, managed to leave something behind that humanity is the better for, have in countless cases died of want and hopeless despair. The painting that might fetch a small fortune at Christie’s to-day perhaps was sold by the artist for the price of a loaf of bread. The machine that may make a modern Croesus was invented by one whose life was one long struggle against penury and who died, as he had lived, in obscurity.

Many more must there be who have no opportunity of bringing into the light ideas that would stamp them as being more than ordinary men. Who could expect a man to come back, after a long day’s toil, to a miserable hovel, surrounded by those scenes and noises which are so great a part of the worker’s environment, and to sit down and compose beautiful music, or paint a masterpiece, or write a treatise that should make history ?

All that matters to-day is the ability to make a profit—if that be ability. Very few employers are more intelligent than some of their own machine-minders, but the fact that the machines belong to them and not to the minders is sufficient to obtain for them the comfort and luxury that the latter and their families are not even able to dream of. Even their vaunted “directive ability” is vested in managers and foremen. We had the case recently of an American millionaire who made a fortune while in the madhouse! He, like the rest of his class, could not help it. It requires practically no effort on their part. That is the irony of it all. If ability counted they would not be in the position they are in. The working class invent machinery, they work machinery, they pay their own meagre wages, and hand the surplus to the employers. There is not an operation from the loading of a trolley to the cashing of a cheque that is not performed by a member of the working class.

The position, however, never seems to strike the workers themselves. If a man is a good workman and boasts about it he will compare himself with his neighbour, but never with his employer. In the same way he is familiar with and deferential to names like Rothschild and Rockefeller, but of Faraday and Pasteur, who have benefited society almost as much as the first-named have harmed it, he has not the faintest notion.

It is true of capitalism more than of any other system of society that the good in men does not pay so much as the bad. It is more to the advantage of doctors to pander to the fanciful notions of old dowagers with well-lined purses than it is for them to devote their lives to endeavouring to cure some dread disease. It is useless for a man to invent something that would make workmen in a particularly dangerous occupation safer if it would mean adding to the employer’s establishment expenses.

Only under Socialism will every man find it to his advantage to give of his best, since it will be the community that will benefit and not the the pockets of the few. The machine that will run will not throw men out of work as at present, but will, as it should, reduce the hours of labour. Scientists will not experiment with poison gases and explosives, but will use their knowledge in protecting the human race and bringing health and strength to those that lack it. And what is more, the man in the street, the common worker, instead of being any longer the slave of toil, with only “a soul to be damned, a body to be kicked,” will become a responsible member of society with a right to all that the world has to offer and with no man to say him nay.

Stanley H. Steele