How to end the rail strike (1994)

From the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A strike is not an act of nature, like a thunder storm or an earthquake. There were no strikes in the earliest human communities, when goods were held in common and no person worked as an employee of another. Fred Flintstone might have had trouble with his boss, but in the real Stone Age work was not conducted on the basis of exploiter and exploited, and the real Fred Flintstone would have been as baffled by such absurdities as working for wages as he would be by Hollywood cinematography. 

The strike is a result of an antagonism between two interests: employers and employees. The employer needs to pay the lowest wages or salaries possible in order to maximise profits. The employee, having no interest in the act of employment besides the money that can be obtained, seeks the highest wage or salary for the job.

The explanation of this antagonism lies in a brief examination of the nature of wages and salaries. These are, in fact, prices. They are the price paid by the employer for the labour power of the worker. A capitalist will only pay this price on one condition: that he expects the value of the worker's product to be greater than the wage or salary' paid. In short, capitalists only buy labour power if it will produce for them unearned income (surplus value) which is over and above its ow n value. So, contrary to the illusion that the boss gives his workers a wage or salary, the truth is that the workers give the capitalists a free gift (surplus value which is the basis of profit) and the wages/salaries paid are merely the part of what is created by the workers which is not stolen by the employer. To thank a boss for your wage is like sending a thank-you letter to a burglar who steals everything from your home and then leaves you a fiver to buy yourself a second-hand armchair.

Exploitation

Why do workers put up with this exploitative situation of constantly giving more to the employers than we are given back in the form of wages or salaries? The answer is simple: under capitalism we have no choice but to work for those who own the means of wealth production and distribution, i.e factories, farms, mines, railways, airlines, the media etc. The only productive resource workers own is our labour power, our mental and physical energies. Selling these for the best price we can obtain is our means of paying for the necessities, and occasionally luxuries, of life. Given that we cannot live on share interest or profits from employing others (because we lack capital), our only option is to try to sell our one possession of value: our labour power. We are wage slaves.

If the market creates a high demand for labour power workers are in a good bargaining position over wages and salaries. This is often so in a time of economic expansion, when both skilled and unskilled workers are scarce and capitalists, in order to receive their golden eggs, must pay the geese well. Often they will even seek to recruit labour power from overseas, as Enoch Powell did as Minister of Health when he urged West Indians to come to Britain and take low-paid jobs. Right now the market is far from expanding. There is an economic depression, millions are unemployed and the bosses have more supply of labour power available than they demand to make profits.

In the current situation, not only in Britain but across the globe, the capitalists can afford to be very arrogant. They will shed jobs, force workers to accept worse conditions, longer hours, fewer safety regulations and, above all, lower wages and salaries. In a market which offers wage slaves the simple choice between low wages or no wages workers tend to knuckle under.

The best way for workers to defend themselves is to form trades unions. Originally these were seen by the bosses as a threat and those joining them were deported (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) or outlawed in other ways. By uniting workers in a particular place of work or type of occupation unions could say to the employers that either certain demands must be accepted or the workers would withdraw their labour — strike. This is the most powerful defensive weapon which workers have under a system of wage slavery. It will not stop us from being wage slaves, but it can improve our conditions of exploitation.

Class Struggle

In this century two false beliefs associated with trade unionism have emerged. The first is that strikes can somehow overthrow capitalism. This is all nonsense: when workers decide to get rid of capitalism we will not withdraw our labour, but withdraw the capitalists' right to buy it. Striking is not a revolutionary strategy. The second fallacy adopted by some trade unionists, especially those with jobs within the union hierarchy, is to accept that employers and employees have a common interest. British union leaders under Labour governments have been especially willing to accept this illusion, particularly when state-run industries meant that strike action would place their members in conflict with a Labour-run state. These leaders are usually rewarded with well-paid retirements in the House of Lords. But the fact is that workers and capitalists can have no common interest. We are class enemies.

A more recent fallacy is that the class struggle is all a thing of the past. Strikes were once useful, but now workers have been "tamed" and outgrown such disruptive practices. It is quite true that in a recession unions are limited in their capacity to obtain improved wages and conditions, and that after several years of sustained attacks on trade unionism (not just in Britain, but across the world) many unions are demoralised, depleted and legally weakened. But the class struggle has not gone away; the struggle of the RMT against RailTrack is clear proof that strikes can still be used as a powerful weapon to force the bosses to retreat. If the Railtrack employers had accepted the original pay settlement without a strike they would have lost hugely less profits than has since been the case. The more united striking workers are the greater the chance of victory. This is why strikes should always be conducted democratically, for willing strikers will fight longer and harder than workers pushed into a strike by union leaders. Working class unity is also important because the bosses will always seek to bribe scabs to fill in for union workers, so weakening the effects of the strike.

Socialists recognise the important need for workers to be in unions. Not just to be in them, but to participate democratically. The unions must not be hijacked by would be Lords who use them to create a spurious class unity or by muddled leftists who use workers' struggles for their own ends. When there is a strike which is on sound class lines and democratically organised, socialists are always on the side of the strikers and against the employers and their hirelings, the scabs.

End Wage-slavery

We do not leave the class struggle there. Unlike those leftist groups which imagine that fighting the class war is the be all and end all of working class action, socialists maintain that fighting over terms of wage slavery, while necessary, is ultimately futile. The aim to struggle for is to end wage slavery and with it the class struggle.

We have stated that in pre-property society there was common ownership of resources and no employment. Socialists are not calling for a return to those times, but for the creation of those social relationships in the setting of current technological development. In short, we are not opposed to modern production, which is now capable of producing enough for all, but to modern relations of production. The objective, then, is to abolish the minority class ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth and replace this with common ownership and democratic control on the basis of production solely for use, not for sale or profit.

Do socialists want more strikes? No, we do not. The strike is essentially a feature of the waste caused by capitalism. Who wants trains standing still when there are places for people to go and goods to be moved? In a socialist society, where wage labour will be a thing of the past, there will be no reason to strike, for each of us will work according to our abilities and take from the common store according to our needs.

There will be those who say that this is too much to hope for. But what is the alternative? Years of workers striking and struggling over crumbs from the cake which we have baked. Is it not time to seek more then crumbs or even a bigger slice of the cake and go for the bakery itself?

Steve Coleman

Grunwick (2026)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Having just read The Rotters Club by Jonathan Coe which is set in and around Birmingham in the 1970s I was most interested in a piece therein where there is a description of a picket travelling down to London to support striking Grunwick workers. The description of the police violence that occurred is, subjective view, one of the best things in the book. The violence described is harrowing so a look into the Grunswick dispute was called for.

Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories was a non-union company processing 35mm film and other formats. You would post your film and remuneration of to the company and receive twenty or thirty six six by four glossy photos back from then.The majority of their workforce were female and Asian. Following a dismissal other workers joined a picket. Workers were advised to join the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff. In September 1976 13y striking workers were sacked. The strike lasted from August 1976 to July 1978. Its objective, union recognition, failed to materialise.

The below is from a Brave.com search, police violence at Grunwick.

The Grunwick dispute (1976–1978) was marked by extreme police violence, primarily involving the Metropolitan Police’s Special Patrol Group (SPG), which was deployed for the first time in an industrial dispute. The SPG, modeled on paramilitary units from Northern Ireland, employed aggressive tactics including charges into crowds, flying wedges, and physical assaults, such as dragging picketers by their hair or grabbing women, resulting in numerous injuries including broken bones.

Key details of the violence include:

High Arrests and Injuries: Over 550 arrests were made, the highest figure for an industrial dispute since the 1926 General Strike. On November 7, 1977, 243 picketers were injured (12 with broken bones) and 113 arrested in a single day.

Media Narrative: Mainstream media heavily focused on images of injured police officers (such as one with a head wound), which framed the narrative around picketer violence while often downplaying the severity of police brutality against predominantly South Asian female strikers.

State Coordination: The Labour government and Home Secretary Merlyn Rees supported the heavy police presence to enforce court injunctions against secondary picketing, with Prime Minister James Callaghan encouraging a proactive police response to suppress the mass demonstrations.

Escalation: Violence peaked during mass pickets in June and July 1977, where thousands of trade unionists and supporters clashed with police attempting to escort non-striking workers and lorries into the factory. 

Extract from the Socialist Standard December 1977

‘A year ago few people had heard of the dispute at the Grunwick film-processing laboratories; today, the effort of the strikers to win union recognition has become a national cause célèbre. The events surrounding the dispute have been obscured by the press, which would have us believe that Grunwick is some kind of elaborate game in which one side tries to drive a bus through a gateway and the other side tries to stop them. The principle involved is lost amid reports of how many policemen were injured and how many demonstrators arrested. It is also difficult because socialists, while seeing the trade-union struggle as necessary, also recognise its futility in terms of the revolutionary political action we call upon workers to take.

Members of the SPGB have attended the Grunwick demonstrations in order to sell literature and distribute a leaflet putting the Party’s view on the dispute. The first paragraph of that leaflet states:

The dispute at Grunwick will come to an end…but the class struggle will go on. The Socialist Party of Great Britain believes in the urgent need for workers to join together, not simply for the defensive right of union recognition, but for the purpose of organising for social revolution—NOW. The need for class unity for Socialism is the pressing task of the age.

That, above all else, is the message of the SPGB. To abandon it would be to abandon our claim to be socialists.’

Read full piece below

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/09/wage-labour-and-capital-case-of.html

The Vital Question. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

All men and women, whether they happen to be rich or poor, capitalist or worker, whether they are of much intellectual, physical, and social merit or are but poor fools devoid of all the graces, at some time or other come face to face with what is, did they but know it, the greatest and most important crisis of their lives. I mean that moment when they are forced to ask themselves the questions : “What am I doing ? what am I ? where am I going ?”

This moment of self-interrogation comes to everyone, brought about, it may be, by something they read, but however coming, compelling them to “take stock” of themselves. The majority of people burk the question—cannot or dare not attempt to answer. Especially at the present time, when social conditions are tending to breed a class (the working class) whose whole outlook on life is one of physical and mental supineness, and, on the other hand, a class (the capitalist class) which looks on life as a period of gross and violent pleasures, of brutal indifference to anything but its own well-being, this supremely important question is put on one side by almost everybody.

It is an inconvenient question, an ugly question—the kind of thing that keeps one awake at night, that creeps between us and the pleasure we are taking or the work we are doing; and so it is easier to endeavour to forget it than to answer it, to shelve it until we have time from our pleasures or rest from our work to think about it. We are, most of us, cowards—the worker as well as the capitalist—frightened of life, drifting downward to destruction on the current of present-day degeneration.

There are, however, some—we at least who are Socialists—who, having been brought up against this dead wall of self ignorance, realise how imperative it is that it should be stormed and broken down. We realise that this question of our present position and future activities must be answered, and answered correctly, for on the answer we give rests not only our existence as individuals, but the existence of the human race.

The capitalist class is hopeless. The uselessness of expecting help from such a class becomes every day more and more apparent. (Not that Socialists ever expected or wanted help from the capitalists.) If society is ever to be established on a basis whereon the great potentialities of life may have a chance of fruition, then it is, and can only be, the working class who will thus establish it.

To expect the capitalist class, with their narrow vision, their lack of imagination, their callous indifference and their unctuous self-satisfaction ever to engage in any task other than the conservation of themselves as a class, would be absurd. The absurdity becomes even plainer when it is remembered that the inception of the Socialist basis of society implies the total elimination of the capitalist class.

The future of mankind depends upon the strength and wisdom of the workers. But the pity of it is that the workers, who are strong enough and wise enough to produce all the world’s wealth, are still so ignorant of their position in society, of their position as wage-slaves, as to render nugatory the energy they expend on the economic and political fields. They will run after every will-o’the-wisp, will flounder in every economic and political quagmire, before discovering the only road that will lead them to their emancipation from their present slave-position.

Liberal and Tory politicians, labour leaders, priests, and pressmen, social reformers, Anarchists and Syndicalists, cranks and charlatans of every description, dangle before the eyes of the workers the false lights of their particular nostrum, in their endeavour to beguile the unwary. Bewildered by the multitudinous clamour arising from the army of misleaders, can we wonder that the average working man (or working woman) is unable to think out for himself the problems that confront him, such as his relation to his fellows and to society as a whole ?

It therefore becomes the task of the Socialist—who has realised his class position as a wage-slave, who clearly understands what is necessary to alter that degrading position, and whose whole activities are focussed upon the change in society necessary if freedom from wage-slavery is to be accomplished—to try by any and every means to concentrate the minds of the members of the working class on the things that matter. We, as Socialists, understand too well what we are ! We realise—and we want every other of our fellows to realise—that we are units in a vast multitude of men and women, working day after day, often far into the night, for what is the bare necessary amount of food, clothing, and shelter to keep us fit to continue this unending round of toil. We are the products of a system that gives us the worst food, the shoddiest clothing, the most meagre shelter. We live in an atmosphere of physical and mental squalor. Art and literature are to us practically non existent. The greatest work of art gives forth no message; the noblest literature is so many empty words. The natural beauties of the world are not for us. We have not the time nor the opportunity, not even the inclination in many cases, to study them. We are the workers ; our life’s business is to work so that our masters may enjoy (!) life. We are the slaves of a class composed of men and women who are, in a sense, themselves the slaves of the present social system of capitalism. Can there be a greater degradation than to be the slave of slaves ?

But the difference between us and the working men and women who do not yet understand their class position is that we are not content to remain as we are. To be free, as far as freedom is possible in a social sense, is the goal towards which we are striving. And we know that only by the complete overthrow of capitalism, the destruction of the present system of private ownership in the means of life and the establishment of the common ownership by the whole people in the means of life, can the slaves of capitalism throw off their shackles and be free men and women.

We know, moreover, that only by the co-operation of the working class in its entirety can this be accomplished. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. We, for our part, believe and hope that that co-operation and help we ask for will be forthcoming, and to obtain this help and co-operation is the object of our propaganda.

Every day it is becoming more evident to the workers that they are slaves and nothing more. However objectionable the term may be to many the facts of everyday experience are proving this to be the case. The question as to what the position of the worker is in society needs little answering. But the question which every member of the working class will sooner or later be compelled to answer, the question as to whether he or she is going backward or forward, onward to a time when life shall be free and full and joyous, or to an atavistic period when the chains that bind the slave shall gall even more than now, when freedom shall be a forgotten dream, when life itself shall be a hell darker than any Dantesque vision—this question still awaits a reply.

It would seem, indeed, that the wheel is come almost to full circle. Men and women of the working class, it is for you to answer your own question ! Whither goest thou ?

F. J. Webb

Exhibition Review: Betrayal? (2026)

Exhibition Review from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Great Betrayal? One Hundred Years On. The lessons of the 1926 strike revisited (Working Class Movement Library)

In May we reviewed an exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester marking the centenary of the General Strike. There are a number of exhibitions on this topic (see generalstrike100.com), including one at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, which is on until December, and focuses more on the strike itself, rather than the years since. It is entitled ‘A Great Betrayal?’, which clearly indicates its main theme.

The display consists of information boards plus some original documents. It is made clear that the government had prepared for a confrontation beforehand, for instance by setting up the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, and it referred to the strike as an attempted revolution. All army officers were required to participate in strike-breaking. The BBC of course did not present the union side of the dispute. The TUC, which apparently turned down an offer of financial support from Russia, voted for a general strike, but as a defensive action, not as a challenge to the authority of the state (though it is not at all clear what that could have involved).   

The information boards are made more personal by including information about individual workers and their treatment. For instance, the miner Bill Muckle spent over two years in prison after helping to derail the Flying Scotsman train, while Jack Forshaw was arrested for distributing a supposedly seditious pamphlet. He was diabetic and died after being mistreated in jail, before being sentenced.

The documents displayed include a booklet on the impact of the strike in Bolton, and also copies of various strike bulletins and of the British Worker and the government propaganda sheet The British Gazette.

An informative exhibition, though naturally rather restricted in its coverage, and also rather optimistic about what might have been achieved.

Paul Bennett

Letter: Workers and wages (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers and wages

In the January issue of the Socialist Standard appeared an advertisement for a meeting at the Roebuck pub on "Marx and the Abolition of the Wages System”. When I saw it I was eager to go along and hear what was to be said. But instantly I was deterred. Not because as is the usual case where visitors are sneered upon and used as chopping blocks, but just simply the title of that meeting.

The title is a 100 per cent. give-away. What one should be concerned is what does one do now, once they have a Marxist understanding of economics. If we say to ourselves:—I am a worker. I’ve been told by the SPGB that the wages system denies me the full fruits of my labour (sorry! labour-power!). So what shall I do? Pack up my job, rob banks, start up a stall in Portobello market, go burgling, start militant trade union activity. What? What?

The most vital point and question is “What do I do with my Socialist understanding of economics in relation to my economic struggle now? How can I use such knowledge? But will actions following from the same make a gap between me and my fellow Socialists?" These sort of aspects could be described for the want of a better word as psychological (Marx and Engels made use of the word).

While on the question of the wages system, what is the attitude of Socialists to the wage-price mechanism, where if the cost of living goes up 10 per cent then instantly wages go up 10 per cent, either above the trade union rate or the non-trade union rate, without cutting down the numbers of the work force? If the employer (capitalist) decides or has to put his price of goods up, surely he will think twice as he would immediately have to increase the rate of wages; this he wants to avoid. Surely this would greatly narrow the gap between price of consumer goods and rate of wages? Remember one must deal with things comparatively as well as relatively and fundamentally.

D. Brooks

London W9.

Reply:

A pity you did not attend that meeting. Apart from discovering that visitors are not “sneered upon and used as chopping blocks” (we want to make members, not drive them away), you would have heard your first question answered.

It does happen that workers half-grasp that they are exploited and react in the ways you mention: “dropping out”, attempting crime, engaging in futile militancy. As individuals there is nothing workers can do to escape from the wages system and exploitation. If there were, the working-class problem would obviously not exist. But full understanding of it opens the way to the only effective activity, participation in the conscious movement to get rid of capitalism. There is then no gap between you and others of like mind—on the contrary, a strong bond is found; and from the psychological viewpoint you mention there is great personal satisfaction in working for the only worthwhile cause.

Your second question, if we have understood it correctly, is on the following lines. Capitalist A raises his prices, causing the workers employed by capitalists B, C and D to apply for wage increases which contribute to higher costs for their employers’ products, hence higher prices; and capitalist A’s workers in turn making wage demands . . . surely, you ask, it would be better if a kept his prices down to start with?

This might have some validity if capitalists thought in such a comprehensive fashion. They do not because they cannot—each has to pursue his, or his company’s interests and let the others look after their own. Moreover, each proprietor of the means of production and distribution wants the others’ workers to have money. They are his customers; it is only his own workers whose wages he wants to keep down. Marx remarked on the idea of thrift in this light:

Incidentally . . . each capitalist does demand that his workers should save, but only his own, because they stand towards him as workers; but by no means the remaining world of workers, for these stand towards him as consumers. In spite of all ‘pious’ speeches he therefore searches for means to spur them on to consumption, to give his wares new charms, to inspire them with new needs by constant chatter etc.

(Grundrisse, p. 287)

By the way, you are mistaken in saying that a ten per cent. rise in the cost of living is instantly followed by 10 per cent. wage increases. At the present time, prices are rising at 15-20 per cent a year while wages are restricted to about half that figure.

Editors.

Editorial: The Printers’ Strike. (1911)

Editorial from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past few weeks the equanimity of London Printingdom has been disturbed by a strike of some magnitude on the question of hours. The men have taken action in support of a demand for a 48 hour week, and though at the time of writing the strike is not at an end, it looks very much as if the employees will succeed in obtaining the demand they put forward as a compromise: 50 hours immediately, and a future consideration of the 48 hours question.

Now the attitude of the orthodox Press toward this strike is full of significance. Silence can be more eloquent than speech, and their silence carries an important testimony as to the reality of the class struggle to those that have ears to hear. But of more significance than this, and of infinitely greater importance, is the attitude taken up by the men’s leaders, and reflected in the organ of the movement, the Daily Herald.

We have said that silence can be more eloquent than speech. This paper which the printers have founded to be their mouthpiece in the struggle, no less than the silence of the men’s leaders, is further evidence of that.

The dumb capitalist Press by its very silence proclaims in thunder tones the class struggle, while the quiet tongues of the strike leaders, and the still columns of their organ are vehement charges of treachery and cowardice against those who do know the true position, and a pathetic index of the ignorance of those who do not.

In every quarrel between masters and men, we take up the position that, as between masters and men, the latter can never be wrong. But in the matter of their conduct of the fight, we have seldom found a British trade union in the right—and the present strike affords no welcome exception.

Granted, in the first place, that workingmen must, however little it may affect their class position, struggle continuously to secure the best price and conditions for their labour-power, granted also that at the moment trade unions may be the most effective means to that end, still the vital thing has not been said.

After all, where does trade union effort land the workers ? After each “famous victory,” after the most famous victory that any trade unionist, as such, and under the affliction of the most violent form of palpitation of that imagination, ever dared dream of, where do the victors stand ? They may have held their own ; they may have recovered a little of what was their own. “Simply that, and nothing more.”

This much is confessed by the men’s leaders when they admit that they have been driven to the present action by the great increase of unemployment consequent upon the advance of machinery and the general speeding-up that has taken place in all branches of the printing trade. For if that is so, it is an admission that all they can hope for from victory is the regaining of some of the ground lost of recent years.

Of course, as far as the men’s action goes it is sound enough. Everyone who has anything to sell must fight for the best terms—that is a presupposed condition of the competitive market—and those who have only their labour-power to sell are no exception. But if after each battle the workers have only regained something of what they have lost, or let us even say all that they have lost; if each succeeding conflict is to find and leave them in the same state of mental torpor, with, the same paralyzing faith in the union and the strike as their economic salvation, and no outlook beyond a stronger position as sellers of labour-power, then indeed Hope may sit down by the wayside and turn her eyes backward over the way we have come—for there is nothing to gladden them in the way we are going.

For, think ! These men demanded a reduction of 4½ hours per week, and the limitations of their union are shown by their compromising, in the midst of a “winning fight,” for a 2½ hours reduction. That is less than 5 per cent. of the week’s hours. Those who know anything of the printing trade do not need to be told that this 5 per cent. reduction does not anything like counterbalance the increased output per head which has taken place in the decade or so that has slipped away since the last reduction of hours. The speeding-up and the development of, machinery in all departments have been astounding, and new processes are discovered almost daily.

In the composing department there are the Linotype and other machines, for which it is claimed that the output per man is six times that of the hand compositor. In the machine room speed has been enormously increased, and in addition mechanical contrivances are pushing the workers aside. In the case of cylinder machines, first the “flyers” got rid of the taker-off, now automatic feeders make the layer-on a superfluity. With regard to platen machines the same tale is to tell—first self-delivery, now self-feed. In newspaper production, you give the Hoe Double Octuple press half a ton of ink and a few miles of paper, and it will deliver to you 192,000 8-page papers, folded, per hour.

Magazines and the like are trimmed on all three sides simultaneously at a fearsome rate ; in the stereoing department equal strides have been made ; the process block has banished the old pictorial wood engraver so that not one of his kind now practises in this country. Even the artist and designer, who was wont to comport himself with a leisurely dignity, as one whom mechanical contrivances could not touch, has been brought to a chastened frame of mind by the camera, and may be seen plying the air-brash like a man in a mighty hurry.

In face of all this who will dare to assert that trade unionism, in winning a 5 percent. reduction in a decade, has maintained the workers’ position ? At the very moment of the strike there enters the market a new composing machine of improved form at £200 less cost ! Meanwhile the older machine develops new capabilities which enable it to eat its way into the jobbing offices. And one City firm has in position on one of its printing machines, at present under cover, lock, and key, an American automatic feeder that is going to strike consternation into the hearts of the men.

In the past this development has cheapened production and increased demand. It has given us the halfpenny morning paper—which we all read nowadays—and extended the use of advertising matter. Else had the effect of machinery been even more severely felt. But there are limits in this direction, for few of us can read two papers at once, and it is not wise to count on the abnormal increase of the cross-eyed, even to keep trade unionists in work.

And it must not be lost sight of that it is the machine the workers have to compete with. Machinery is adopted because it is cheaper; hence the very fact that this shortening of hours raises the cost of labour-power must give a fillip to the development of machinery. There is a circle of profitableness to every grade of machinery. On the fringe of that circle stand the doubters, who hesitate to adopt it. But raise the cost of labour-power and they are decided—the circle takes on a larger circumference, and the advance of machinery tumbles men out into the streets to starve.

While this in no way lessens the fact that the workers (it applies to all trades) must continually struggle against the encroachments of the masters, it shows them that the struggle is a hopeless one, and that they must look elsewhere for the true remedy for their troubles. There are among their leaders men who know this—why do they not say so ? There are among those producing their daily newspaper, men who are well aware that Socialism alone is the only hope—why, then, is no mention of the fact made ?

One reason is this—the constituencies are not ripe yet to return Socialists to Parliament, and should enlightened trade unionists demand that their officials run as Socialists, they would surely lose place and pelf.

Printers, when you have won your strike your advantage will immediately begin to slip from your hands. Socialism is the only remedy for working-class ills. We earnestly invitc you, therefore, to study Socialism.

A cutting cutting. (1909)

From the March 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

“When found make a note of !” Thus our old and esteemed friend, Cap’n Cuttle. Here is something we found and made a note of. It was discovered in the financial column of London Opinion for November 21st last. You all remember the great cotton “lock-out” of last year? The capitalist Press was never tired of reminding you of the awful loss the workers sustained in working days, wages, and what not, whilst the loss to “your country’s trade” was incalculable, irreparable, and altogether deplorable. The inference is, of course, that you were a very stupid, short-sighted lot, to grumble at, and actually go so far as to resist, attempts at slicing your wages. A shilling in the pound off £2 10 per week only meant 2s. 6d. per week short, and £2 7s. 6d. was not such a bad wage, after all. Why will you be so unreasonable ?

Perhaps it is accounted for by the fact that many of you were only getting 18s. or £1 per week, and 5% off that meant all the difference-between at best a hand-to-mouth existence and positive privation. Many of you, no doubt, took the view that “if we accept a 5% reduction, what is to prevent the imposition of a 10 or 20% reduction” ? Perhaps the cutting will help us.

“TEXTILES.—The termination o£ the strike amongst the Cotton operatives should have a good effect on prices in this section of the Industrial Market. That little harm will have been done appears apparent, and that the masters will be benefited to no small extent seems probable, for they have been able to get rid of the large surplus stocks which had accumulated during the depression which is now passing away, in addition to saving an enormous aggregate in wages and working expenses.” London Opinion.

The italics are ours.

Need we say more? Do you want it any plainer than that ? They have given you the sack for several months and made a profit on the business. Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it ?

In our unregenerate days we used to wonder what the Socialists meant by affirming that the average trade union was the best friend the employers ever had. Is anyone in doubt after perusing a statement like the foregoing ? Five or six months without employment and consequent lack of the wherewithal to live, would, if occurring upon so large a scale as in the instance under notice, speedily settle the hash of the workers. How fortunate, then, that when the cotton operatives have produced more fabric than the market can absorb, and the employers “find themselves compelled to announce a reduction in wages” in the sure and certain knowledge that the men will “jib,” how fortunate, we say, that the men are able through their trade union, to scrape along on bread and margarine until the “large surplus stocks” have been got rid of.

Nothing remains to be done now but to create some more surplus stocks, and then the same tragi-comedy will be enacted over again. You pay the piper, fellow-workers, how do you like the tune ? Don’t you think a change of melody might be advantageous ? Or do you prefer to shuffle along until the fast approaching day when you will be “scrapped”—too old at forty—and die in the cheerful knowledge that your children will do the same ?

On our back page you will find a Declaration of Principles. Read it through carefully and think it over. There is not a difficult word or sentence in it. It was thought out, written and put together by working men ; it should not be difficult for any working man in possession of ordinary common sense to understand it. If you should be doubtful upon any point, let us have your difficulty. It will only cost you a penny stamp. Or if you care to drop in at any of our meetings (they are all open) we will do our best to help you there. But, above all, do something definite. Don’t become a “half-and-halfer.” Don’t become a parti-coloured nonentity—a Socialist “er, to a certain extent” to the Socialist; a Liberal to the Liberal; a Tory to the Tory and nothing to the nobody.

If you see no flaws in our position, let us have your name and, above everything, your help. Socialism will come in your time—if you want it—and work for it. Our Secretary waits.

Wilfred.

Answers to correspondents. (1909)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

J.Smith, Ilford.—The statement which appeared in the December ’08 issue to the effect that no trade union can act even as a brake to steady the downward rush is not correct. The Manifesto, p. 15, explains the attitude of the Party towards the unions and recognises their necessity under capitalism. The matter, however, will be discussed at the next Conference ; while meanwhile, a careful study of “Value, Price and Profit” would be extremely useful.

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

Pamphlet Review from the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

(Continued from the previous issue.)

Something Less than Socialism.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Distribution of Wealth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A. E. Jacomb

(To be Continued.)

Answer to Correspondent (1939)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. W. E. Bell (Le Havre, France).—We have your letter and your comments on money, production, etc. Our observations on the latter can only usefully be directed towards the underlying ideas.

You find the Socialist doctrine of the class struggle hard to understand, because you do not go far enough below the surface. The great majority of the population possess little or nothing, and they must therefore live by being employed or as dependants of those who are employed. On the other hand, the minority who own practically all of the accumulated wealth are able to live on incomes from property, i.e., on the backs of the propertyless producers of wealth. The two classes have opposing interests, just as slaves and slave-owners have opposing interests.

Your idea that the capitalist manufacturer is “half financially strangled” is not true in fact. The great bulk of the huge fortunes are in the hands of manufacturers and traders, not of bankers. It is also based on a fallacy, the belief that over the whole field of capitalism there is a shortage of purchasing power. We agree that “all we require is access to the earth’s bounty,” but, unlike you, we see that the propertied class (landed, industrial and financial) will stand as one-man to prevent the dispossessed majority from gaining that access.

Ed. Comm.

“Unity” as a Habit in England. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

St. Vincent, Minn., Oct. 11, 1908.

Editor “Trades Unionist” :

Keir Hardie, following the fashion set by sundry British labor politicians, globe-trotting at the expense of capitalist newspapers, has again delivered himself of an athanema against the Canadian Socialist movement.

It is in the control, he says, of “the impossibilist element which

HAS TO BE ‘DOWNED’ EVERYWHERE.”

If there is any place on earth where the impossibilism so deprecated by Hardie is “downed” it is in the “‘Appy land of Hengland,” in the labor movement of which nation Hardie is one of the foremost leaders, and inasmuch as “a tree is known by its fruits,” we would reasonably expect to see a forward, harmonious movement as a result of this “downing” ; that is, if we were fools enough to be misled by the labor, even trade union, Christian, even free trade, even any old thing but impossibilist type of Socialist like Hardie and his ilk.

I am weekly in receipt of two old country Socialist papers, “Forward,” and the London “Clarion,” and there is never an issue but what is half full of “scraps” between these harmonious “compromisers” who are, unlike the Canadian Socialists, completely free from “this dogmatic and blighting creed of withering materialism.” In the last issue of the London “Clarion,” keeping faith with capitalist Liberals there is the Labor party executive in refusing to endorse Edward Hartley in Newcastle, who, mark you, is as immune from the suspicion of being an “impossibilist” as Hardie himself. The reason for which action, as alleged by the “Clarion” writer, is that in double constituencies the Liberals and Socialist, even Labor, etc., candidates have

ARRANGED TO SAW OFF

Hartley, by running at the request of the local I.L.P., S.D.F., Clarion Scouts and the numerous other organisations that go to make up the highly harmonious labor movement that Hardie thinks Canada needs so bad, has seriously imperilled this holy alliance of alleged Socialist leaders and Liberal capitalists ; hence Hartley must be “downed” too. And this is the working out of “modern Socialism,” which, Hardie says, Canadians know nothing of ! Here’s hoping they may long remain in ignorance of this Newcastle brand at any rate.

What is this term “impossibilism,” anyway, that falls so glibly from the lips of Hardie and his type ?

Will any of those “active Socialists ” Hardie refers to, who are repelled by this dreadful thing, kindly explain ? As one who has had this epithet fired at him times without number, and without—as is customary—any illuminating definition, I am naturally curious to know. Reasoning it out by comparing a known “irnpossibilist” with a gentleman known not to be such, I have reached this conclusion. An “impossibilist” is a Socialist who, knowing that in Socialism alone lies

THE ONLY HOPE

of the workers, refuses to preach anything else, and refuses to stultify himself by saying so in one speech and saying something very different in another, and as a consequence is disliked by “practical” labor men.

A non-impossibilist can do both of these things and becomes very popular, a great labor leader, etc., etc.

An impossibilist, knowing that reforms where they do tempt one section of the workers, invariably do so at the expense of the others, says so; and as a consequence gets further castigation from the “practical” politician, whose stock-in-trade is reform.

The impossibilist is, however, reminded that there are reforms which, if enforced, would make matters more tolerable for the workers, but knowing the nature of the class in control, he

WON’T WORK FOR THESE REFORMS

nor recommend them, because if they were put upon the statute book there would be nothing to them ; but the non-impossibilist, being of a practical turn of mind, spends a quarter of a century and untold energy in getting an old-age pension at an age when most working people are dead, and an Unemployed Bill on the statute book that might as well be off for all the unemployed would know about it.

The “impossibilist,” being a very unpractical fellow, foolishly reasons thus: As the workers get their eyes open to the working of the present system and the source of the strength of the capitalist—the political power they proceed to arouse their fellows to wrest the control of public power out of their masters’ hands. The more revolutionary the attitude of the workers the more sops are thrown to them, just, for instance, as a man in a desert, pursued by wolves, often delays pursuit by throwing his clothes to save his skin. If the wolves are wise they don’t waste time chewing indigestible rubbers—they

PRESS ON FOR THE GOOD MEAT.

The non-possibilist dallies by the wayside.

But the non-impossibilist says, “these arguments are all right, but you fellows don’t get elected, and by the goddess of place-hunting you spoil oar chances too !” Aye, there’s the rub ! Get elected ! Make Socialists if you can, but get elected ! Never mind if you prolong the period ; the fool workers must stew and sweat and suffer, chasing up the blind alleys of reform into which you lead them. Never mind if thereby you play into the hands of the astute capitalists. You will reach the dizzy eminence of a great labor leader ; the masses will demonstrate about you and enthuse over you even if they go straight from your meeting after listening to your speech on reforms to vote the master class the right to rule and rob for another season. Also if you can write interesting “copy” wherein you denounce the “impossibilist” Socialist who is foolish enough to be a Socialist and nothing else, the “Daily Lyre” may also finance a trip around the world for you, so you can help to make as big a mess of the labor movement abroad as you have succeeded in doing at home, to the great delight of its middle-class readers. Of course, this sizing up of the “impossibilist” and the wiseacre who is not so is, no doubt, one of the “cruditites that

MARX AND ENGELS SO SOUNDLY TROUNCED.”

‘Tis passing strange that Hardie should refer to Marx and Engels as authorities at all, seeing he he has repudiated on more than one occasion their main propositions in which are embodied the doctrine of the class struggle and the materialist interpretation of history ; but in a sense the reason is not far to seek. This class struggle, when it reaches a certain stage, plays the very devil with the political ambitions of reformers, because it unites those wage workers whose position in human society is such that no reform in capitalism can benefit them and who have intelligence enough to see that the object for which these workers unite is not to dicker about the price for which they will sell themselves for given periods when their masters need them to work. They know that this price is fixed by conditions outside of themselves and circumstances over which they have no control. If the C.P.R. machinists had listened more to the Socialist “impossibilist” and less to the “get something now trade union reformer,” they would not have made such asses of themselves during the last nine weeks. They would have spent some of the money they lost in wages to dispute with the masters this fall, their title of ownership to that railway property that the working class created and alone give value to. Methinks if they had done that and spent the same energy they squanderd in bucking an overstocked labour market, in matching an empty stomach against a bank vault, they would have caused such a flutter amongst the dove-cotes of capitalism that the capitalists themselves would have set about

REFORMING THEIR SYSTEM

to the very limit, and that whether they elected their man or not. Incidentally they would have inspired other workers to follow suit, and, by the way, it is not yet too late. Never mine your compromising, place-hunting trade union leaders. If you knew as much as an owl you would refuse to vote for a man who was only a Socialist when not seeking office, and was afraid to label himself so when he was up for election. Wherever you see a Socialist candidate this fall who is “impossibilist” enough to make his campaign on this issue alone, viz., the

DISPOSSESSION OF THE CAPITALIST

owners of our national industries and the vesting of the title of ownership in the community, with the elected representatives of the workers who operate those industries in control, vote and work for his election. Leave the compromisers at home. If he will compromise to get elected, he will sell you out to stay elected.

In conclusion, I would ask those who read Hardie’s anathema to re-read it and note where his sympathies really lie. Note the severity and contempt with which he handles his brother Socialists, who, at the worst, are merely using unwise methods of propaganda. And in contrast note his references to the “delightful experience” he had interviewing “the wealthy man who had worked his way up from poverty to affluence,” and who was so “sincere,” although the “unconscious humor” of his “poetic” declarations made Hardie smile, etc., etc. Go to, Hardie. Get back to ancient St. Stephens and have a cup of tea with King Ed and the rest of the “me, too” Socialists. Canadian Socialism is much too modern for you or any other British labor leader to catch up with.

—John T. Mortimer, in The British Columbian Trade Unionist, Vancouver, Nov. ’08.

Blogger's Note:

The editorial from the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard covers Hartley and the 1908 Newcastle-upon-Tyne by-election.

Aphorisms of Socialism: [IV and V] (1912)

From the September 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Aphorism III.

Being an explanation of the Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B.

Aphorism IV.

As in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.

This Aphorism speaks of “the order of social evolution.” The phrase shall be the starting-point of our explanation.

Society has not always been divided into the same classes that it comprises to-day. The present class division, as was shown in dealing with our first aphorism, is based entirely on the private ownership of the means of life. On this is erected the class distinction, and from it flow the class characteristics. Only this private ownership by a section could, for instance, have developed a wage-slave class (not a class who occasionally work for wages, but a class who have no other means of living than by working for wages).

But previous to the present social system other social systems have existed, upon other bases, and with other classes ruling and ruled.

Under the feudal system, for example, the feudal nobility ruled, basing their power upon a certain qualified control of the land. Under the classic States based upon chattel-slavery, a class of slave-owners ruled.

But the constant feature of society ever since it has had the class formation — that is, ever since classes have existed — has been that the ruling classes have controlled the dominating factor in production.

Under chattel-slavery it was slaves, against whose labour the free men could not, partly from pride and partly from their liability to military service, compete. The feudal nobility of the middle ages had but partial control of the land, hence their dominance was never very complete. Indeed, in England the serfs managed to throw off the shackles of serfdom and gain a position which, though still subservient, was similar to that of the free Roman citizen of the poorer class, but without the incubus of slave labour to drag them down to ruin.

But against this persistent feature of class society is the constant characteristic of the democratic societies which preceded them — the means of living belonged to no one : they were open to all.

This gives us the key to the aphorism. Without private property, without privilege in the means of living, there can be no class distinction or class domination.

The emancipation of the working class, therefore, since it can only be accomplished by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, leaves nothing to form the basis of domination. Thus it follows that the emancipation of the working class must end class domination, and must involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.

_______________________

Aphorism V.

This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.

Before the present social system came into existence the feudal nobility were the ruling class. But it was characteristic of the feudal system (as of any system that was capable of any other ending than ruin and chaos), that they could not prevent the rise to power of a new class. The source of this was largely in the towns, where surplus products of a “non-perishable” nature were produced, which fell into the hands of a class who made commerce their business.

The sources of the merchants’ wealth were capable of much greater extension than those of the nobles, partly because the products of the country districts, being more perishable than town products, did not lend themselves so readily to international commerce, and partly because the serf, having rights in the land, was chiefly producing articles for his own consumption, and only working for a strictly limited time for his feudal superior, while the handicraftsman of the town was already producing “commodities” — goods produced for sale.

It was quite in the nature of things that with the increasing productivity of labour the capitalist side of production — the production of commodities by wage-labour — should tend to increase rapidly, and certain geographical discoveries (the way to the East round the Cape of Good Hope and the discovery of America) gave tremendous impetus to this side of industrial development. The laws and restrictions placed upon commerce and production — partly feudal, partly customary to the different trades — pressed heavily upon the rising class, and so it was natural that, as their wealth and power increased, they should direct their attention toward gaining social supremacy.

As the new class rose the serfs gradually rose from servitude also, and long before the merchant forerunners of the modern capitalist class had achieved ruling power, serfdom had ceased to exist in this country. The serfs had shaken themselves free of most of their feudal shackles and stood now as independent peasant-proprietors.

But the rising capitalist class could only elevate themselves on the backs of the class of free peasants. It was from their ranks, chiefly, that these new masters looked to recruit that abundance of cheap labourers they desired for their factories. Already the break-up of the bands of retainers of the feudal nobility had supplied great numbers, and the dissolution of the monasteries had set free a great many more, but still the factories cried for more workers, and only the class of peasant-proprietors could supply the needed increase.

Events, however, proved favourable to the needs of the capitalists. An enormous demand for wool had sprung up, and in consequence the land began to wear a different aspect in the eyes of the landed aristocracy. It presented a means of keeping sheep, and hence of acquiring great wealth. Unfortunately, the peasant proprietors were in the way. The small agriculturists, whom the capitalists so badly wanted in the new manufactories and whose fields the aristocrats coveted, were clearly altogether out of place upon the land. That was a matter which the capitalist class and their landed opponents could agree upon, for all their class antagonism.

So the two combined to drive the peasants from the soil. At first they were dispossessed of their fields without any legal form, but later the classes interested passed, under various pretexts, legislation which made the expropriation of the peasants more swift. They were hunted out by troops, their dwellings were burnt to the ground, and their lands were appropriated by the great landlords and laid down in pasture for sheep.

The legislation passed against the dispossessed peasants makes terrible reading. They were expropriated at a rate far too rapid even for the rapidly growing capitalist industry to absorb them, hence their presence on the earth was inconvenient and unwelcome. Laws were passed, therefore, aiming at wiping out the surplus. Under Henry VIII (see Karl Marx’s “Capital.” Chap. XXVIII) sturdy vagabonds were to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood ran in streams from their bodies. For the second offence of vagabondage the whipping was to be repeated and half the ear sliced off. For the third relapse the offender was to be executed as a hardened criminal. Under Edward VI it was ordained that if anyone refused to work he was to be condemned in slavery to the person who denounced him as an idler. If he was absent for a fortnight he was to be branded on the forehead or back with a letter S and became a slave for life. If he ran away three times he was to be executed as a felon. Under Elizabeth similar’ laws were made. For the first offence a whipping and branding, unless someone would take him into service for two years; for the second offence execution unless someone would take him into service for two years; for the third offence execution without mercy. In the reign of James I the expropriated peasantry were subjected to like enactments.

Hollingshed says that 7,200 were executed in the reign of Henry VIII, while Strype records that in Elizabeth’s time “rogues [those, for the most part, who had been robbed of their land] were trussed up apace, and that there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes.” The same individual states that in Somersetshire alone in one year forty persons were executed.

These laws, and many others which cannot be mentioned here, remained in force even as late as the beginning of the 18th century, while in France, for three-quarters of a century later, laws as severe were active against the workers.

Other periods of history show the same bloody repression of subject classes by ruling classes, even from the dawn of written history. And the savage repression and avenging of the Paris Commune of 1871, together with numerous examples at Barcelona, Moscow, and elsewhere on the Continent, at Pittsburg and Lawrence in America, and at Featherstone and Tonypandy in England, of recent years, show that the same factor which we see running through all written history still persists. That factor is the life and death struggle between the classes.

This teaches us that with classes, however it may be in exceptional individual cases, economic interests govern actions. Convinced of this, and holding to it as a guiding principle, and knowing moreover that the interests of the master class is diametrically opposed to those of the working class, we assert that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.

This, of course, does not preclude the possibility of some few members of the master class rising superior to their environment and their class interests, and rendering good service to the workers’ cause. Capitalists, like workers, are human, which is why, as a class, they are actuated by their class interests. But for the same reason individual capitalists may be moved by any other human emotions, even to the extent of taking up the battle of the oppressed class.

The difficulties in the way of their doing so, however, are stupendous. Their outlook upon life is entirely different from that of the workers. No other system of society ever lent itself more to illusion than the present one, No other system ever so effectually concealed the chains of bondsmen and so artfully surrounded slaves with the atmosphere of freedom. The position of the chattel-slave was always very clear, indeed it appeared that he got nothing for his labour. Yet he, at all events, never starved, and was robbed of a comparatively small proportion of his product. The modern wage-slave, on the other hand, appears to be free; nobody owns him and he even has his foot on the social ladder – he may own property; perhaps he does own a bit, or has some money in the teapot. He actually has a vote. It seems that he is robbed of nothing, that he is paid for all he produces. Even the forces of the State seem to be necessary to hold markets abroad for the disposal of his products and of his the rich cargo of teapot at home.

All this presents difficulty enough even in the case of the worker, assisted as he is by his class interest in seeing through the sham. But it is an almost insurmountable barrier to those born and bred in the atmosphere of capitalist circles, so much so that the few who do get some glimmering of the position are in most cases shut off from true democracy by class arrogance and class prejudice. They are generally the superior ones, and must lead.

It is just here that our clause applies with greatest force. Without shutting the door against any who subscribe to our principles and act in accord with them, it is upon the working class that the working class must rely for their emancipation. Valuable work may be done by individuals, and this work may necessarily raise them to prominence, but it is not to individuals, either of the working class or of the capitalist class, that the toilers must look. The movement for freedom must be a working class movement. It must be founded upon the understanding of their class position by the working class. It must depend upon the working class vitality and intelligence and strength. Until the knowledge and experience of the working class are equal to the task of revolution there can be no emancipation for them. Hence they must control all individuals in their camp, no matter which class they may belong to, and they must be guided in the conflict by the principle of the class struggle, which is based on the irrefutable fact that all written history is a history of class struggles, and the knowledge that the emancipation of the working class can only be the fruits of a class struggle, and therefore must be the work of the working class itself.

A. E. Jacomb

Letter: The Rate of Profit (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rate of Profit

Did Marx hold that the rate of exploitation of workers increased inevitably? This appears to contradict his theory of the falling rate of profit, though I am aware he adduced counteracting tendencies that could increase the rate of profit?

Robin Cox

Haslemere

Reply:

The outstanding feature of what Marx wrote on this subject is his insistence that he was dealing only with tendencies, some working in one direction and some in the opposite direction. So at the beginning of Chapter XIV in Capital Vol 3 he wrote: “For this reason we have referred to the fall of the average rate of profit as a tendency to fall.”

The chief factor leading to a fall in the rate of profit arises from the tendency of the composition of capital to change in the direction that of every £1,000,000 capital invested a larger part takes the form of constant capital and a smaller part variable capital (wages). He illustrated this (see Chapter XIII) by showing how, with the same rate of exploitation and the same amount of surplus-value, the rate of profit on a capital of low composition would be 50 per cent. and on a capital of higher composition 20 per cent.

In Chapter XIV he listed some counter-acting tendencies, the first of which was increasing the intensity of exploitation, i.e. extracting more surplus-value from the workers.

But the capitalist cannot increase the intensity of exploitation simply because he wants to. He has to take account of the degree of resistance the workers can put up. Marx dealt with this in Chapter XIV of Value, Price and Profit. He showed that the actual rate of profit “is only settled by the continuous struggle between capitalist and labourer, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction. The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers of the combatants.”

That this is not just an academic question is shown by Engels in his 1892 Preface to The Condition of the Working Class in 1844, where he points out that in the fifty years since 1848 the factory workers “are undoubtedly better off” and that the condition of the workers organized in trade unions “has remarkably improved since 1848".

On the other hand a glance at Chapter XIV of Capital Vol. 3 will show that some of the factors listed by Marx as tending to raise the rate of profit are still operating.

It should also be borne in mind that in dealing with the rate of profit Marx was concerned with the workers in the productive sphere where alone value is created. This should not be confused with the different question of the proportion of annual national income received by the whole working class. In Chapter II of Value, Price and Profit Marx accepted the possibility that at that time 86 per cent. of the population received only 33 per cent, of the national income. Even if that figure exaggerated the actual degree of inequality, it is undoubtedly true that 86 per cent. of the population in this country now receive a larger proportion of national income than when Marx wrote.

Editors.