Editorial: The Coalition Government and its Work. (1915)

Editorial from the September 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Had some bold prophet two years ago forecast a coalition Cabinet, including Asquith and Carson, George and galloper Smith ; had he asserted that these men, then so fiercely denouncing each other, would be united to carry on the government of the country, he would have been laughed at by the politicians, the “economists.” and the reformers alike—by all, in fact, except the Socialist.

The Socialist is excepted because he knew that the “fierce fight,” the “struggle” against the Law, the frenzied battle of tongues and pens, was all so much clap-trap ; because he knew that the “great” Home Rule issue was but a political cry upon which to rally either side of place-hunters. Ireland was again the red-herring that was to draw to the theatrical conflict the paid puppets of the political pantomime.

The Socialist has all along sneered at the heroic figures struck by “King” Carson and his troupe of paste-board pirates. We have always said that the Liberal and Tory, the Home Rider and the Unionist, the Tariff Reformer and the Free Trader were all of the same gang ; were all ready to unite immediately their economic interests were really threatened. Our understanding of the class struggle gave us that knowledge. Our recognition of the vital issues underlying the political sham fight gave us that assurance. When we said that Liberal and Tory would drop their child’s play and unite as one solid party when their common interests us capitalists were at stake we were called fools and dreamers. But we spoke truth and the Coalition Government is present to bear testimony to the fact.

Then the Liberals grew angry, on public platforms, at the antics of Carson’s gun-runners ; then Carson and his crowd could find no expression strong enough to denounce such “traitors” as Lloyd George, Churchill and Asquith. But now these “traitors” are placed in charge of the most important departments of the country attacked by a vigorous enemy, and the “law breakers” are in high places at the head of English law, with the approval and consent and at the instigation of the very men who previously denounced them.

Unable to face criticism of their criminal incapacity which had plunged them into a war totally unprepared ; which had sent soldiers to fight without arms ; which had caused them to talk of victory instead of defence ; and to gas about marching to Berlin instead of taking steps to prevent the enemy marching to London ; the late unlamented Liberal Government gave up the ghost, to re-form in the company and with the assistance of those otherwise most likely to denounce their previous delinquencies.

And that is practically all it amounts to. The great things we were to expect have not yet arrived. The few attempts that have been made have developed into what is, from the workers’ point of view, not so much tragedy as farce.

Agitated at the increasing power of the organised workers in certain industries amid the abnormal conditions created by the withdrawal of the reserve army of unemployed ; recognising that the ordinary methods of strike breaking by starvation and lead are difficult of application when labour is necessary for the continuation of war, the Coalition Government introduced a “Munitions Bill” which makes striking a criminal offence. This bill, with its vague promises of restricted profits, was expected, with the assistance of the working man’s patriotism, to keep the toilers at work. How inoperative it is evidenced by the miners’ dispute, in which dispute it is only the foolish idea of saving the bosses country that prevents the men from obtaining their demands.

In the past the miners have been defeated by the lock-out : that weapon cannot now be used against them.

Compulsory arbitration, however, is of no more use to the masters now than it would have been to the miners then. In normal times it leaves the advantage with the masters who have the power to starve the workers into submission to their terms. In times of war, when it is in the interests of the capitalists of this country that production shall continue without, interruption, the workers hold the whip hand.

The Registration Act, too, is typical of a coalition government composed of both voluntarists and advocates of conscription. It promises the results of a Conscription Bill without the name. It attempts by underhand methods to force the unwilling into the trenches. The workers are to give the name and address of their employers to some local board, who will choose from among them those who are to be dragooned by a “recruiting committee” into the army by pressure brought to bear upon the individual and the employer.

A suggestion of one prominent writer is that

“In every parish or group of parishes a Recruiting Committee should be chosen . . . The names of men who should go to the front should be submitted to this body. . . He should be compelled to present himself before them. … If it should be found that there is no valid reason why the man should not go the chairman should address him in this fashion. “We have no legal power to send you to the front. We are, however, strongly of the opinion that you are not doing your duty, and we therefore give you ten days in which to settle your affairs and enlist. If at the end of that time we have not proof that you have done so we shall be compelled to print your name in the blacklist of those who have failed their country during this crisis. This list will hang outside the church and outside the public buildings of this parish.” A similar speech would be made to the employer who held back his men, and his business would certainly not be improved by the appearance of his name in such a list.”

This is the statement of one who opens his article with, the words : “I have always been an opponent of compulsion in military service,” and these are the methods by which “our glorious voluntary system” of recruiting is to maintained. The “pink form” is a preliminary to something like the above.

The absolute incapacity of the present Government was never shown more clearly than in the discussion on the miscalled “Limitation of Prices Bill.” It was admitted on all hands that the bill was ineffective to control the price of coal to the consumer. And the limit was reached when the Government accepted an amendment to wipe out the penalty if the accused could show “that he had reasonable grounds to believe that he was not committing an offence.”

It is, of course, to be expected that the men who draw up and pass such Acts would see to it that profits were secured. They are the men to whom the profits go. They are of the class who live by profit and they are safe-guarding their interests by passing the measures.

In “the house” they belittle the real cause of high prices and show how little economic knowledge they possess. They talk of drunkenness as the cause of scarcity of supplies, and gasp at the magnitude of the workers’ weekly screw (one unconscious humourist described how working men used pound notes as pipe-lights).

The increased price of materials is the CAUSE, not the, RESULT of increased wages.

The increased money wage, amounting as it does to something less than 3s. per week more for a similar output, is in reality a reduction in real wages as the cost of living since the outbreak of war has risen by something like 35 per cent.

It is true that a slight advance in prices is rendered necessary by the increased risk in transport, but beyond that the vast upward movement in prices is due to the greed of the capitalists who are taking advantage of the unique position they find themselves in to hold supplies and take advantage of every local shortage to sell old stock at huge profits. Even where supply is restricted nothing other than enhanced profits explains the huge rise in price. Bread is dear but corn is plentiful !

We are now told that the wheat crop for this year is “estimated to exceed that of last year by 51,958,000 quarters. This, too, does not include the Canadian crop, which is estimated to be 25 per cent. greater than that of last year.” But will the price of bread fall to its normal ? Not while the financiers have the opportunity of holding up supplies and of reaping huge profits thereby. The Coalition Government, like the late Liberal Government, will mark time while their friends make profits on the sale of murder machines and inferior food and clothing.

Meantime they will use the vastly distended horror, the German bogie man, to frighten the workers into working hard and working cheaply in their masters’ factories, and to fight fiercely, and also cheaply, in the defence of the masters’ country.

Editorial: Behind the Fall of the Coalition. (1922)

Editorial from the November 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

The bulk of the world’s-oil supply comes from America. According to the Daily News (May 31st, 1921), “82 percent, of oil comes either from the United States or from American mines in Mexico.” The same paper states that within 13 years the wells of the United States, unless conserved, will give out. The Standard Oil Co. practically controls the American supply and, consequently, they have been looking abroad lately for fresh fields. In this they have come into conflict with the Dutch and British group of oil companies. The capital of the respective oil companies is tremendous, and they use their resources to shape the policies of the different world powers.

The fight for oilfields and control of oil distribution has played a large part in recent foreign policy. Behind the Russian negotiations and the Mesopotamian squabble lurked the power of oil.

On Thursday, October 26th, 1922, the Financial Times reports an interview with Mr. J. Koster, the managing director of several oil enterprises. Mr. Koster, after giving detailed evidence to prove that America would be facing a shortage of oil in the near future, wound up as follows :—

  “My study of the world’s oil position teaches me these significant facts. The conclusion I have arrived at is that in the United States within the next two years there will be a crude oil shortage, and the prices of crude oil and oil-products, and the value of yet unmined petroleum, must necessarily feel the effects of such unavoidable shortage, and the one result can only be higher prices and a large premium for oil reserves.

   So the British and Dutch oil enterprises that have succeeded in securing control of a large part of the world’s petroleum reserves can face the future with every confidence. In order to account for this, one has but to consider the effect which a stopping of all export from the United States, combined with a decreasing export from Mexico, would have on the markets outside of America. Besides the profits already obtained under the present circumstances by undertakings working in countries like the Argentine Republic, Venezuela, Persia, the Far East and Roumania, the future of such undertakings, thanks to the state of affairs in the United States, seems to offer almost unlimited possibilities.”

The prize is large, the future bright— what seeds for future turmoils ! The Anglo-Persian (in which the British Government has a large interest) and Shell Groups have angled themselves into a good position in the East to threaten the position of the Standard Oil Co., and the fight between these groups to corner the world’s supply is now going ahead fast and furious.

Another factor at the root of the late Government’s fall has been suggested by two recent happenings.

Mr. Leslie Urquhart, the Chairman of the Russo-Asiatic Corporation, negotiated an agreement with a representative of the Russian Government under which his corporation gained certain concessions in Russia. Arising out of the British Government’s muddling of the recent near Eastern problems, the Russian Government refused to endorse the Urquhart concession. In his speech to the shareholders of the Russo-Asiatic Corporation on October 23rd, 1922 (see Evening Standard for that date), Urquhart blames the British Government’s policy for his failure, and urges that Russia should be treated as any other world power. He also deprecates the suggestion that his corporation would endeavour in any way to influence Government policy. The next day Mr. McKenna, the Chairman of the London Joint City & Midland Bank, and formerly a Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer, threw overboard his former associates, and appeared on a Tory platform, advising his audience of business men to support Bonar Law, the new Tory Prime Minister. On the surface, this might appear as an ordinary case of a political turncoat. It is a curious fact, however, that the London Joint City & Midland Bank owns thousands of shares in the Russo-Asiatic Corporation. Would it be too bold to suggest, in spite of Mr. Urquhart, that the above corporation have succeeded in influencing Government policy?

The Man in the Back Street. (1922)

From the October 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Daily News, of May 16th, 1922, had an interesting editorial on the Rt. Hon. C. F. G. Masterman’s article in the same issue, entitled “The Wealth of England.” Sentences in the editorial were quite up to the S.S. standard :—

  “The contrast between the gaudy phantasmagoria of politics and the sordid facts which for the great mass of the people make up life is always there. The politicians talk on interminably of their high matters, determining the fate of great nations, regulating, or affecting to regulate, the courses of trade, composing peroration upon peroration on liberty, or the balance of power, or the honour of the Empire, or whatever other catchword best reflects the mood of the moment. The man in the back street feels no doubt in the end, and indirectly, the result of it all. Directly, it has as much relevance to his thoughts and his feelings, his hopes and his fears, as the road to Mandalay. His concern is to keep a roof over his head, and, if he is lucky enough to have one already, to earn enough money to keep himself and his family in some semblance of comfort; to win, if it may be, some stray glimpse of light and colour in the hard, squalid wilderness of his life. It is easy to rebuke men so situated for ‘taking no interest in politics.’ So situated, who would? It is easy to charge them with lack of patriotism or indifference to the things that matter. Let the prophets who say these things change places with their victims, and see how much they care for Empires on which the sun never sets in courts to which the sun never penetrates.”

The Daily News see the workers are tired of the old Liberals, and in despair say plain words about the conditions of the working-class. No doubt the Daily News would like the workers to vote out the Coalition Government. But there is something deeper that is the cause of this darkness and blight on working-class lives. The capitalist system of wealth production and distribution would keep out the sun and brightness whatever the Government, with whatever name you may give it. It tickles us somewhat, when the Editor says, “Let the prophets change places with their victims and see how much they care for Empires, etc.” What funny Daily News to give us. Surely the changing of places of individuals would only change the antics of individuals. Mrs. Soapsuds of the back street would surely become Lady Pears, and Mr. Coalheaver would shine as Lord Hard Nuts? Our cocoa editor—should the Liberals gain office—would get Empire on the brain again. Socialism is the only remedy—and the artfulness of parties out of office helps us to get on with the work—sometimes.

S. W.

The "Futurist." (1919)

From the October 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The notorious Welsh prophet is again at work. Those he represents are crying out for increased production. as their palms are itching for increased profit. Now that the smashing of heads and disembowelment of bodies has slackened down, each section of the master class is eager to obtain the cream of the markets.

On behalf of the British section of the international capitalist class, Lloyd George, the example par excellence of the political dodgery brigade, steps forward to try and persuade the workers that their interests are identical with the interests of the masters—that we must "all pull together" to oust foreign competitors (including ''our'' late much-esteemed allies, America, France, and Japan !) and to usher in a wonderful new world.

In his touching anxiety to get his valuable (!) views before us Lloyd George has established a new paper called "The Future" which is being distributed free (he evidently fears we should not be sufficiently interested to buy it). The third page contains "The Prime Minister's Message to the People" in bold type as follows :

"Millions of gallant young men have fought for the new world. Hundreds of thousands died to establish it. If we fail to honour the promises given to them we dishonour ourselves."

If the returned soldiers were asked what the new world was going to be like they would doubtless reply "a world of unemployment," judging from the fact that thousands of them can't get jobs.Their position has become so acute that the Government, to save its face, has to publish an appeal on behalf of the King to employers to give discharged and demobilised soldiers the preference over others. This, of course, would not materially alter the case, as it would merely result in the "others" being unemployed, and of such would their new world consist.

How well Lloyd George's Government is treating the dependents of those who "died to establish" the new world may be judged from the following:

"The pathetic circumstances of a soldier's widow, with nine children, who had to apply for out relief in consequence of a refusal by the Ministry of Pensions to allow her more than 6s. 10d. a week was strongly commented on at the East Preston (Sussex) Guardians yesterday. :

It was stated that the husband was discharged from the Army in May, 1918, owing to shrapnel wounds. After being operated on nine times he returned to his home at Durrington last October, and died four days later from influenza and pneumonia." 

"Daily News," 3.9.19.

This is only one of numberless similar cases.

Such is Lloyd George's idea of rewarding the heroes and honouring the "promises given."

When he was speaking at Birmingham on Oct. 22nd, 1906, he said in effect that if the conditions that gave rise to the complaint of "slums, pauperism and great want in a land of plenty" were not removed within three years the party he belonged to would deserve to go, and a new movement would grow up to displace the "Liberal bunglers and rogues." Writing now of the period immediately proceeding the war (nearly eight years after he made the above-mentioned statement) while he was still the leading light of the Liberal party, he goes on to say in his "message" ;

"What does a new world mean ? What was the old world like ? It was a world where toil for myriads of' honest workers, men and women, purchased nothing better than squalor, penury, anxiety, and wretchedness—a world scarred by slums and disgraced by sweating, where unemployment thro' the vicissitudes of industry brought despair to multitudes of humble homes ; a world where, side by side with want, there was waste of the inexhaustible riches of the earth, partly through ignorance and want of forethought, partly through entrenched selfishness."

Out of his own mouth the humbug stands condemned. His delightful future world is always a world the workers will never reach, if he can prevent it.

But let me quote the remainder of his "message" :

"If we renew the lease of that world we shall betray the heroic dead. We shall be guilty of the basest perfidy that ever blackened a people's fame. Nay, we shall s:ore up retribution for ourselves and for our children. The old world must and will come to an end. No effort can shore it up much longer. If there be any who feel inclined to maintain it, let them beware lest it fall upon them and overwhelm them and their households in ruins.
It should be the sublime duty of all, without thought of partisanship, to help in building up the new world, where labour shall have its just reward and indolence alone shall suffer want."

What a string of delightful empty phrases. How like the man who sold his own party for place and pelf, who with a stroke of the pen undid the life-work of Samuel Plimsoll and sent hundreds of sailormen to the bottom of the sea. This mouther of fine phrases was the man who introduced an old age pensions Bill that was to cut "a path through fields of waving corn" down which the aged poor were to totter to the grave. But the Bill turned out to be a measure to save our masters the expense of keeping our old people in the workhouse. The "benefits" of the Bill may be gathered from the following:

"When an aged collier applied at Market Bosworth, Leicester, for an old age pension yesterday he was informed that the law would not allow the Committee to grant him a pension as he had an income of £34 per year. The old man replied that he wished those who made the laws had themselves to live on £34 a year. He had worked in a coal mine for 55 years."

"Daily News," 4.9.19.

Lloyd George is one of those who have lately engineered the stranglehold on Persia through the new Persian agreement. Curiously enough, this agreement has followed very closely on the acquisition and control of four large Scottish companies by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and their amalgamation under the title of Scottish Oils, Ltd., with a capital of four million pounds. (See "Daily News,", 13.9.19.) The wholesale exploitation of Persian working men is evidently going to find a place in the new world scheme.

This same political twister, who so lately was concerned about small nationalities, was a party to the following transaction :

"It was stated by Reuter's correspondent at Brussels that a portion of German E. Africa with a population of 3,000,000 natives has been banded over by this country to Belgium. The transaction is described as a free gift on the part of Great Britain."

"Daily News." 29.8.16.

Three million natives handed over "free," with the connivance of Lloyd George, to the tender mercies of the crew whose dastardly treatment of the natives in Belgian Congo was so notorious ! Where does the "small nationality" rights of the natives come in ? Did Lloyd George and Co. consult them as to their wishes ?

But to return to "The Future." The last page gives in more detail the new world ideas in an article entiled ''The Gospel of Work and Wages," signed "G.W.G.," from which we will take a few extracts :

  "You want to improve your position. You say that the day of the worker is at hand. It will dawn at once, improvement will come in a flood, when every worker in the land learns and obeys the true gospel of work and wages. Here it is :
GET EVERY PENNY YOU EARN: EARN EVERY PENNY YOU GET.
 . . . . . . . . . . .
There are some unwise people who think that when they pocket wages which they know very well they have not earned they are doing a very clever thing. Nothing of the sort. They are pickling a rod for their own backs.
Look at as a question of morals, that is as a matter of fair-play between man and man. In the bargain with your employer you have exacted from him the last penny in wages. On the other hand, he must exact from you, and you must be willing that he should exact, every stroke of the work for which he is paying."

So this is what Lloyd George means by the phrase "Labour shall have its just reward." For the bare cost of subsistence (our just reward) we must work ourselves stiff the livelong day. Those he refers to as "those who are indolent" are evidently those who do not give the utmost for their wages. The suggestion in the above paragraph that the masters pay us for the work we do is obviously nonsense. They pay us for the time we work (even in the case of pieceworkers), an entirely different thing. The work we turn out in a day far exceeds our wages in value ; that is why an idle and parasitic class can live in luxury while we live in poverty.

Let me make another extract:

 "Never forget that the "boss" takes one very hard job off your shoulders. When work is done, the products which result from it have to be sold to customers, and he finds the customers. If a miner had to sell the coal when he had dug it out of the seam he would be wasting most of his time."

Oh, you wicked, immoral slaves, who would deny your masters their full pound of flesh ! Your harassed employers travel around the world in luxurious cars and yachts, basking in Southern suns, romping in Alpine snows, hunting in Indian jungles and African forests. They cloy their sensuous appetites at sumptuous banquets, revive their drooping spirits at grand balls, rejuvenate their interest in life at the races—at least, so it had always appeared to me. But now we know they they only do all this to "take one very heavy job off your shoulders," to find the customers for the products of your toil—while hundreds of thousands of your fellows are dying at your doors for want of those very products.

How innocent Lloyd George must think we are when he tries to force such rubbish and humbug into our heads. What finding of customers do the shareholders do who live hundreds of miles from the place where all the work (including the selling) is done ?

The working class contains the only people who produce commodities and distribute them to the consumers, and they are the people who, relatively speaking, consume the least. The working class includes all employees, whether they be managers or office boys, scientists or mechanics, travellers or salesmen.

The latest news from America furnishes some suggestive ideas as to the new world of actual fact, as witness the following extracts relating to the strikes against the Steel Trust:

"Preliminaiy disorders disturbed the peace of Sunday in two centres near Pittsburg, where troopers of the State Constabulary broke up meetings that had been prohibited by the local authorities. . . .
Witnesses asserted that a meeting at Clairtown was proceeding in an orderly manner when the police charged the crowd.
Armed guards are protecting the steel mills."

"Daily News," 23 9.19.

The following from the same paper is an interesting side light on the concentration of capital:

"The properties owned by the corporation are valued at £380,000,000 and its total assets at the beginning of the present year were nearly £514,000,000."

And Lloyd George tells us we must work hard or our bosses will go broke !

But enough of this canting hypocrite, whose political life has been the record of delightful promises and shameless betrayals. He is but another of the tools the master class pay to blind the workers as to their true position as wage slaves.

Study Socialism and his frothy phrases will fall on deaf ears.

Gilmac.

Editorial: Birds of a Feather. (1921)

Editorial from the November 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

To those who depend for their knowledge of politics on the Capitalist Press, there seems to be acute antagonism between the different parties striving for power. The Coalitionists regard the Liberal and Labour parties with indifference or contempt, while the two latter parties appear to be jealous and suspicious of one another, and the noisy Anti-Waste Party attacks all three parties with equal venom. The intensity, vulgarity and violence of party strife, however, is not always a safe guide as to the importance of the issues.

When the worker examines the issues of to-day in the light of reason, he must soon be convinced that, so far as he is concerned, they are not worth wasting time over. When he examines the reforms or principles of the different parties, he must speedily come to the conclusion that there is not sufficient difference between them to warrant him taking up sides. The programme of the Labour Party, for instance, is so little different from that of the Liberals, that arrangements are frequently made between the leaders to support each other's candidates, and the rank and file of the Labour Party vote for a Liberal as a matter of course when no Labour candidate is running.

It is clear from this that there can be no real antagonism between these two parties. The other parties, we know from experience, only contend in the political arena for control over the Parliamentary machine, with no intention of making any fundamental changes in the system. Liberals and Tories come and go, or coalesce, but Capitalism continues while they can do either. Thus all political parties prominently before the workers stand for Capitalism, their only differences being in the methods of administration.

Two things are necessary before we can pass judgment on any political party—Socialist knowledge and knowledge of the party's actions and utterances. By Socialist knowledge we mean a clear conception of the economic dependence and the political subjugation of the Working Class, together with the class antagonism that necessarily arises therefrom, and the necessity for conscious and organised action on the part of the workers for the overthrow of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. To the Labour Leader we go for information on the Labour Party's attitude and principles. Sir Leo Chiozza Money says (October 6th, 1921) :

  "How should a conscientious Labour man, who hopes and strives for a better condition of society and a saner economic system, treat the system that is ? Should his policy be one of co-operation or non-co-operation ? Should he do his best with the tools that are, or endeavour to clog, stop or destroy the machine in order to compel the making of a better one?
  "The Labour Party's answer to these questions is a common-sense one. The proposals it has issued dealing with unemployment, for example, seek to make the best of things as they are. In the background are the voices of revolution."

Where Sir Leo and all the birds in the Capitalist nest are doing their utmost to keep such voices ; in the background along with the Socialist knowledge that would enable the workers to understand their position. "The proposals of the Labour Party seek to make the best of things as they are." In these words the Labour Party is summed up and condemned—by its own scribe. How is it possible, at one and the same time, to show the rottenness of a system and the need for its abolition, while contending that it should be bolstered or patched up in order to make it last longer? All they do is to raise false hopes and lead the workers away from the only solution of their difficulties. Not only so. When they join hands with Liberals and Tories and tell the workers that the only way to deal with unemployment is to capture foreign markets, they lie. Followed to its logical conclusion, that policy increases instead of diminishes unemployment, because the faster the workers throw commodities into the world's market, the sooner they reach the goal of universal glut and stagnation.

Backed up by the Labour Party, the avowed Capitalist parties reduce wages all round, telling the workers that they cannot get more out of industry than they put in. Who stops them from putting more in? Mr. Lloyd George says the nation is producing now only 80 per cent. of its pre-war output, admits there are a million and a half unemployed through no fault of their own, and says that it is a world condition. The utter helplessness of Capitalist Governments in the face of the present crisis is apparent in every written and spoken sentence of the defenders of the system.

They are applying their minds to the question, says the Premier, but the only result from this application of great minds is, excuses for the failure of their system, accusations of ca'-canny against the workers, and schemes to get necessary work done by local councils at less than Trade Union rates of wages.

One of the greatest adepts in the art of making excuses for Capitalism is Chiozza Money. In nearly every copy of the Labour Leader, for weeks, he has been insisting that the workers must produce more cheaply and co-operate with the Capitalists to get back our lost trade, because this country is mainly dependent on exports and shipping. If his readers gave the question a moment's consideration, they would see in this nothing but a dirty imputation that they are not doing their share in the work of production; the truth, of course, being that the workers do it all. Moreover, going slow may be possible in isolated instances when workers are in demand, but in the present congested state of the labour market must be very rare indeed. Before the Capitalists of this country can regain their lost markets, exchanges must be stabilised and European industry restored, but that is a purely Capitalist question and can only be arranged between the different conflicting groups of Capitalists themselves. The Workers have no voice in the question and cannot increase the volume of trade until they are more fully employed.

The next move is, therefore, with the Capitalists. The gentlemen who are saying that the war debts between nations should  be wiped out have made this clear. The wheels of industry can only be made to revolve when exchanges are stabilised and the countries disorganised by the war resume their normal activities. Both the Premier and Chiozza Money agree that the slump is a world condition, but both of them neglect to add that every Capitalist country can produce far in excess of its own needs, and that this excess of production over national needs is the cause of slumps. Every country must find markets for its excess, and in proportion as it fails to do so, each country finds its unemployed increasing.

Restoration of trade is the only remedy, say the captains of industry, and their political agents, from the Premier to the most obscure Labour hack, repeat their cry. Birds of a feather, they all agree that their paymasters must extend their concerns. They are harnessed to the national car of industry, and serve Capitalist interests, not only against foreign Capitalists, but against the workers of their own land, whose continued exploitation and increasing poverty is thereby insured. Agreeing that the restoration of trade is the only remedy for unemployment, they differ as to the method, and gathering into little cliques they raise the very devil of a noise over causes and remedies, exhorting the workers to patience all the while, until trade begins to revive, when they make still more noise about our glowing prospects.

The Capitalist Class, with its ownership of the means of wealth-production, its claim to organise industry, and its control of political power, whether it understands the nature of the crisis or not, utterly fails to deal with it. All they can do is to wait for trade to revive, while loudly proclaiming it to be the only solution. They cannot however, escape their responsibility in that way, because the workers are beginning to see that their poverty is not due to lack of means and nature-given materials. If Capitalism, as a system, therefore, is incapable of organising except on the basis of short periods of feverish production interspersed with long years of depression, sooner or later the workers will get tired of excuses and promised reforms and will give their minds to a serious study of Socialism. It is quite plain, among other things, that while Capitalism continues, unemployment, and consequently Working Class conditions generally, must become worse; that only by the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of a system based on production for use, can the workers' conditions be improved; that the Capitalist Class, although unable to alleviate the growing misery, will stoop to any crime in order to maintain the system and their domination over the workers. Socialism makes these facts plain—proves them conclusively—and points to the obvious deduction, the workers must organise to establish the new order for them, in spite of all opposition from the Capitalist Class.

The ruling class sits tight over the means of wealth-production, surrounded by armed forces, and it will not allow them to be used unless they can see profits accruing to them by the process. Such a situation must already appeal to millions of workers as ludicrous. The bulk of human society, held at bay by a relatively small class who live in luxury and idleness and regard it as a favour bestowed when they permit a propertyless human being to work and produce more wealth for them in return for his keep.

This is the actual basis of Capitalist society, the class ownership of the means of life and production for profit. The workers can only live by selling their labour-power; becoming wage-slaves to the master-class. By this means they are robbed of all the wealth they produce beyond what is necessary to keep them fit for work. It is to their interest, therefore, to understand this position and organise upon the basis of their class in order to put an end to Capitalism and establish a system where freely associating men and women will produce for use instead of for Capitalist profit.

Such an organisation will be antagonistic to all Capitalist parties and will recognise the genuine Working Class parties of other lands by the similarity of their principles. They will thus march forward in a real international to capture political power in every country and wipe out the system that denies them the use of the land and means of production for the satisfaction of their material needs.

By such principles the workers will also judge those who profess to lead them. They can safely repudiate the advice of those who tell them to work harder in order to capture foreign markets, because such a course can only benefit the Capitalist. Birds of a feather invariably croak on the same notes.

We cannot, therefore, mistake the friends of the Capitalist even when they label themselves "Labour."

100 Years Ago: What We Said Then (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1920 a Coalition government was in office under Lloyd George between the Tories and the Liberals who supported ‘Liar George’ and the ‘Welsh wizard’ as even the Socialist Standard called him. Labour was the official opposition. Their leader was a now obscure Scottish trade unionist, William Adamson, who was described as ‘the Leader of the Lib-Labs in his comic-opera role as leader of the Opposition’ (March). Also in opposition were those Liberals who remained loyal to Asquith, the pre-war Liberal Prime Minister.

The Labour Party had reorganised itself in 1918 as a conventional political party which individuals could join. Many former Liberals were beginning to take up the offer. A review in June of a book on nationalisation quoted its author as saying that the Liberal Party was breaking up and that Liberals of the ‘strongly individualist type will go over to the Tories, the rest will form the right-wing of the Labour Party’. A columnist the previous month had already asked: ‘Why this sudden conversion to the ranks of Labour? Why this new-found interest on the part of Sir Leo [Money], Lord Haldane, and others of their kind in the ability of Labour to govern?’, answering ‘Methinks the wind has shifted slightly and sails are being trimmed accordingly.’ This was a shrewd observation. It was also a shrewd move on the part of the former Liberals, as Labour did come to replace the Liberal Party as Tweedledee to the Tories’ Tweedledum and provide better career opportunities for career politicians.

On nationalisation itself, the review wrote that ‘nationalised industries competing with each other on a world market and paying interest to a class of idlers is merely a modified form of capitalism,’ concluding ‘the absurdity of working-class action for Nationalisation is apparent … the supreme objection remains: the wages system is to be retained’.

The Communist Party had not yet been formed, but there were groups and individuals who supported the Bolsheviks. Some of them denounced the Labour Party in the same sort of terms as the Socialist Standard did, as ‘labour fakirs’, ‘misleaders’ and ‘capitalist agents’. They were in for a shock. At the 2nd Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in July, the Bolshevik leaders, realising that the anticipated revolution in Western European was not going to come to their aid, changed tack and called for their followers to form a ‘united front’ with parties like Labour. An article in August, headed ‘The Super-Opportunists’, analysed:

  ‘Now that it is plain that the 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 Labour parties’.

The author commented that ‘if that policy is to be adopted, then it is necessary for the workers to follow every false road … Such nonsense as supporting parties and Governments to gain power to learn their misdeeds is not the way to socialism.’ Such nonsense, however, persisted for the next hundred years and is still heard today.

Earlier that year, a speech that Lenin had made in 1918 had been translated into English as a pamphlet. In it, Lenin had declared that ‘reality says that State capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us’. The July issue commented: ‘That Socialism can only be reached through State capitalism is not true’ and that it was only being adopted in Russia ‘because the Bolshevik government find their theories of doing without capitalist development unworkable – hence they are forced to retreat along the capitalist road’.

There were clashes in the letters column with defenders of the Bolsheviks over whether or not Marx had said that the state could not be taken over but had to be smashed, or held that a socialist revolution could not happen in an economically backward country, or whether he stood for democracy or dictatorship in the literal sense – arguments that have gone on ever since, but which were set out for the first time in this period.

The Socialist Standard was more opposed to the Bolsheviks’ supporters in Britain, with their demands to set up ‘soviets’ and their claim that socialism was being established in Russia, than to the Bolsheviks themselves. The Bolsheviks were of course denounced for ignoring Marx’s views and for being a minority dictatorship, but their working class and even socialist credentials were not challenged. Another article in the same issue said that ‘in the special conditions and chaos caused by the war’, a ‘resolute minority’ was able to seize power in Russia despite a majority of workers there not understanding or wanting socialism. They could not establish socialism, but:

  ‘The new ruling minority promised peace and – to their highest credit – established it’. Despite ‘the appalling chaos in which they found Russia, they have … done wonders in the way of reconstruction and reorganisation.’

Reading between the lines, Socialist Party members of the time expected the Bolshevik regime to be overthrown. The concluding paragraph of the article certainly reads like the sort of obituary Marx had written after the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871 – only fifty years previously. When the real socialist movement takes off, it said, ‘the rule of the Russian Bolsheviks will be a splendid lesson, not on the value of “Soviet” or “Dictatorship,” but on the ability of the working class to manage its own affairs’.

We wouldn’t say this today (and didn’t by 1929), partly because we wouldn’t need to, but in 1920 there had never been a government made up of workers let alone of people who claimed to be socialists. There had not yet been a Labour government in Britain. Governments everywhere were managed by capitalists or by politicians who looked, dressed and spoke like them. So, the point needed to be made that workers were capable of running society. Not that the aim was to establish a working class government. An article in February on ‘Government by Labour’ distinguished between ‘administration’ and ‘government’: ‘the first serves the people and the other represses them.’ The article concluded that, once the workers had made the means of production the common property of the whole of society, they would ‘proceed to administer them for the common welfare of all’. ‘Then’, it added, ‘the need for the State, for government – ‘Labour’ or otherwise – and the “keeping in due subjection” will vanish, and mankind will at last be free’.

The main problem facing workers at the time was growing unemployment, which was attributed to overproduction (and, sometimes, to underconsumption). Labour and trade union leaders were bitterly denounced for telling the workers to work harder and produce more and for going along with the capitalist argument that waste should be eliminated (if the capitalist class wasted some of its surplus value that wasn’t bad, it was argued, as this meant work for workers). But the real bitterness was reserved for the capitalist class who were denounced as arrogant, callous and useless parasites living off the backs of the workers and causing them to suffer. It wasn’t just class antagonism that was expressed but class hatred.

Adam Buick

All the articles from the Socialist Standard for the year 1920 are now online at the following link. 

Policies and Puppets. (1923)

From the February 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

A change in the personnel of the puppet group that moves in accordance with the string-pulling of the Imperialists who direct Government policy, may provide an excuse to introduce certain modifications in Government policy; modifications that have become necessary owing to new circumstances affecting the invests of this Imperialist section; but as such a change is not due to a fundamental alteration in social conditions, it has no important influence upon the general position of the working class, except in so far as better administration, from a capitalist standpoint, tightens the bonds of wage slavery and thereby worsens the workers’ position.

The recent statements of influential capitalist journals bear out this view in so far as it affects the change in governmental personnel from the Lloyd George group to the Bonar Law group.

The governmental change in itself provided a useful opportunity for shifting the responsibility for working class troubles from the capitalist system on to the latest scapegoat, the Lloyd George Coalition Government. The international exchange difficulties, the Eastern muddles, the reparation squabbles, labour troubles are all supposed to have been accentuated and made difficult of solution by the blundering of the late Government.

The fact that these international squabbles, muddles, and labour troubles “we always have with us,” in spite of numerous changes in Government and governmental policy, is conveniently ignored.

The “Observer,” a Sunday paper representing the big capitalists, trumpets the virtues of Bonar Law and the vices of Lloyd George. Of Bonar Law they write, in their editorial (7/1/23), after laying down certain alleged principles that should guide England and France on the question of German reparations:

  “Mr. Bonar Law has been guided by these principles. He has done well, and won the increased respect of all men at home and abroad by transparent sincerity, good sense, good temper, and the quiet moral grit which has brought this deepening muddle to a plain issue at last. No one could have done more.”

And what of Lloyd George? In the same editorial occurs the following:

  “The Entente was envenomed and almost destroyed by pretences of agreement.  . . . The direct and indirect consequences of the final fiasco of coalition policy in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor changed the whole diplomatic situation from one end of Europe to the other.”

Bonar Law’s policy has brought the “muddle’’ to a “plain issue”; Lloyd George’s policy resulted in a “fiasco.” What was the fundamental difference between the two policies? Lloyd George hung on to France as it suited certain interests to do so. Bonar Law broke with France as it no longer suited these interests to continue the alliance in its old form.

The group behind the English Government, having got all they could get by alliance with France, lately found themselves fettered by such alliance in Eastern matters and in their dealings with Germany.

In the first place, the early settlement of the German indemnity is not a matter that seriously affects the interests of the more important English capitalists. At the moment English trade with Germany is improving and would be adversely influenced by pressing for fulfilment of reparations. The following provides one illustration of this fact:

  “Last year we saw a sensational leap in the figures of our coal exports to Germany, which rose to 8,345,606 tons, being nearly equal to the total export in 1913, which was 8,952,328 tons. The rapid rise in our export of coal to Germany in the last three years will be seen from the following table:— 

1920        1921           1922
13,457 tons 817,877 tons 8,345,606 tons  

“Even last year’s figures are expected to be greatly exceeded in the near future, as Herr Stinnes and other German industrialists are stated to be in negotiation with British firms for the supply of large quantities.” (“Observer,” 14/1/23.)

The step taken by France has called forth certain rather significap^: comments. For example:

   “Our hands will be free with regard to all the peace treaties. We shall no longer be bound by any of them. We shall have to pursue a quite decisive policy of separate settlement, both with Russia and Turkey.” (“Observer,” 7/1/23)
   “We at least have recovered our freedom. We are no longer involved in a policy that has brought Europe to beggary. We can at last address ourselves to the task of re-establishing peace in the world. We have tried to carry out that task with France and have failed. We must look elsewhere, and especially westward for aid in an enterprise that cannot be discontinued if the white civilisation is to have a chance of surviving.” (A. G. G. in “Daily News,” 6/1/23.)

Here we see England’s freedom from the Peace Treaty obligations heralded with something akin to joy. But the Government did not wait for the break with France in order to “look westward,” as instance the negotiations that are going on between this country and America.

The replacement of Lloyd George by Bonar Law was the excuse for Britain’s alteration in policy in this as well as in other directions.

As can be gathered from the statement with reference to coal, quoted above, England is striving to obtain a favoured position with reference to Germany; France is also striving for the same object. Apart from the question of reparations, France bas another motive for invading the Ruhr Valley, as the following quotation points out:

  "The real hope of Paris is that Germany, when fairly laid on the rack, will soon scream for mercy after the first cry of defiance, and that under French supremacy, political and financial, there will be brought about a huge economic combination between France and Germany, but chiefly an alliance of French iron and steel with German coal, coke and shipping.” (“Observer,” 7/1/23.)

One of the lines along which English “freedom” will travel is being indicated by the attempt to come to some sort of alliance with America and freeze out France. America is righteously indignant at France’s action, and America wants to take a larger share in the Eastern negotiations (see the "Manchester Guardian Weekly,” 8/12/22, on the Crane-King Report on Palestine), in which so far she has only had a representative with a watching brief. The following remarks on the Anglo-American negotiations are instructive :

  “There are wider opportunities before the Washington negotiators. The funding of the British debt removes one of the inhibitions on American policy in Europe. Responsibility then rests more heavily on the two creditor countries for intervention of a constructive, even if limited, kind in Europe, where the course of affairs, without their help or influence, threatens their interests more and more gravely. Protest against the state of things which is developing will be useless unless accompanied by proposals for its remedy.”

  “England and the United States have a common interest and now a common occasion for action in this sense. It is hardly possible that the conversation at Washington will not broaden out informally into a full survey of the immediate future in Europe. The British Chancellor of the Exchequer is there. Mr. Harvey, fully informed as to European conditions, and fully alive to the dangers now in plain view, is there. The risk, now immediate in Europe, of a decisive plunge into chaos, supplies such an occasion for a departure in policy such as there has not been since America took up Germany's challenge and entered the war.” ("Observer,” 14/1/23.)

Here we see foreshadowed a temporary bloc with America to skim the cream in European and Eastern negotiations. The two nations together make the most powerful financial and political bloc in existence.

The whole matter at the bottom is nothing more than the manipulations of certain powerful groups of capitalists for control of the sources of raw material (with particular reference to oil) and the arteries of distribution.

The policy of England and America scores with the majority of people on account of its apparent peaceful tendency.

Internally the English Government are in a strong position on the indemnity question. On the surface the French have committed what is virtually an act of war by invading the Ruhr Valley. So the English piously throw up their hands and protest their desire to “keep the peace.” In this they have the support of “labour’s opposition party.” 

The National Joint Council of the Trades Union Congress General Council, the Executive Committee of the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Labour Party has played directly into the Government’s hands by its protest against the French Government’s policy, winding up by demanding that the British Government "shall refrain from all measures of support or co-operation with the French troops in their present action,” etc., etc. (“Observer,” 14/1/23). Was this manifesto inspired? How the Imperialist group must smile! Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, the Leader of the Parliamentary Labour group, was not behindhand in making a pronouncement on the situation. Speaking at Port Talbot on the 6/1/23, he said :

  “Lastly, in our policy regarding Reparations, we ought not to be ashamed to let the world know quite definitely that we must look after our own national interests, and not sacrifice them merely to keep up the balance of an alliance with France or any other country.” (“Observer,” 7/1/23.)

A very statesmanlike statement, no doubt, but what has it all to do with the working class? Who does "our” and “we,” etc., stand for in the above quotation? Evidently the British Imperialists, as the workers' interests are not national, but international, and at the moment are bound up with such questions as unemployment and labour conditions generally.

The plain and obvious facts of the case can be gleaned from the statements we have already quoted above.

The different nations alter their policies and their spokesmen to suit the interests of the particular capitalist sections that predominate. The section served by imperialist policies predominates at present in all capitalist nations. This section in England replaced Lloyd George by Bonar Law. The position, therefore, from the workers' standpoint, is the same all the world over. That position is that the struggle over trade routes and exploitable territory, with coalitions and breaks among capitalist nations, is a struggle that concerns the capitalists alone. These, struggles will continue to occupy the historical stage until capitalist rule is replaced by Socialist administration. This will come into being when the workers conquer political power and administer the affairs of society in the equal interest of all the members of society.

Gilmac.

Work and Want: An Old Farce with New Players (1947)

From the June 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Government is anxiously appealing to the working class to work harder. Hundreds of thousands of posters are being displayed bearing the inscription, "We're up against it! We work or want." Thousands of speeches are to be delivered in the workshops, and thirty films are to be shown up and down the country. It is an old farce revived.

It was put on in the autumn of 1919 under the Lloyd George government. The posters then bore the photographs of four prominent Labour leaders, Messrs. J. R. Clynes, J. H. Thomas, John Hodge and J. T. Brownlie, and the slogan was, "Produce more, earn more, get more." Mr. J. R. Clynes, who backed that campaign, is still preaching the same doctrine, but some of the men in the present Government have changed their tune. They used to denounce Clynes and Thomas for their part in the old campaign, but are themselves in the new one. Mr. Strachey, Minister of Food, is one of them. As recently as 1944, when a revised edition of his Why You Should be a Socialist was issued, he condemned the 1919 increased production propaganda and wrote that "however hard the workers work, they will remain workers, and poor workers at that. Hard work will not make the workers any richer, but it will make their employers much richer." Mr. Strachey also wrote, "You remember the old 'produce more' cry. I suppose we shall get it again." He prophesied correctly; but he did not foresee that he would be backing that old cry himself.

In 1919 the S.P.G.B. attacked Mr. Clynes and showed the dangerous fallacy underlying his argument. The S.P.G.B. has not changed its view; increased production will bring the same dire consequences for the workers as it did a quarter of a century ago.

Mr. Clynes was not unaware of the case made against him. In a speech in the House of Commons on 20th April, 1920, he admitted that workers were not readily accepting the advice offered to them to produce more. He said ". . .  the working man thinks in the terms of his former experience. He found the market overstocked because he worked overhard and long hours to produce, and he was thrown out of work because he produced in abundance." (Hansard, 20/4/1920, Col. 279.) Mr. Clynes said that the Government ought to give some sort of guarantee that overproduction should never again be allowed to cause unemployment. Even if the Government had made that promise it would not have been effective because capitalism needs constant unemployment to keep down wages, and it periodically produces crises of "overproduction." So Mr. Clynes gave his own assurance. Writing in Reynolds (30/11/1919) he said:

  "If ever there was risk of overproduction, causing unemployment, there is none now. For at least a dozen years there must be conditions of shortage which, with the best energy and effort, cannot be removed. We are in arrears. We need have no fear of the supply exceeding the demand."

In the columns of the Socialist Standard at the time Mr. Clynes' economic fallacies were exposed. He thought and still thinks that if there are people in need of food, clothes, houses and so on, then there cannot be "overproduction." He does not understand how capitalism operates. Capitalism has crises of "overproduction" not because too much is produced to satisfy the needs of the workers, but because too much is produced for the needs of the market. Capitalist production begins to be curtailed at the point where the articles cannot be sold at a profit, so "overproduction" for capitalism exists though millions are in desperate need. What matters is whether they have the money to buy what they need.

At the time Mr. Clynes wrote his article in the autumn of 1919 there were already 530,000 unemployed. At the beginning of 1947 the number was 400,000. About 18 months after Mr. Clynes' prophecy of no unemployment for 12 years, there were over 2,000,000 unemployed. That was not under a Labour Government, and the defenders of Labour Government said things would be different when the Labour Party came to office. In 1931 they were in office and unemployment again soared in the crisis to over 2.500,000. History will repeat itself. Labour Government or no Labour Government capitalism in its next crisis will produce the same results as before. In 1919 another of the Labour propagandists for increased production, Mr. John Hodge, declared that if the workers did not increase output they would be "workless and wageless." Members of the present Government talk in a similar strain. We said in 1919 that great numbers of workers would be workless and wageless under capitalism whatever they did. We were right then and we are right when we say now that it will all happen again.

In 1930, under Labour Government, another of the preachers of increased production, Mr. J. H. Thomas, admitted that "one of the great anomalies, at that moment was that the main cause of the world depression, as well as our own, was overproduction." (Times, 22/3/1930.) A month earlier Mr. Clynes, faced with the overproduction that he said would not happen, was backing another capitalist cure-all, "rationalisation." He confessed that it would, to begin with, actually increase unemployment, but he urged the workers to bear it with patience "because it was a kind of surgery that was being applied to industry, and after it industry would rise stronger and better able to compete with the world." (Manchester Guardian, 10/2/1930.) Mr. Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is telling us about the good times we are going to have someday provided we quietly put up with hard times now; in 1930 his predecessor in that office under the Labour Government was Snowden, who was telling the same story. In a broadcast he spoke about the "vital improvements" that would be "only possible out of revived and prosperous industry from which our national revenue is derived." (Daily Telegraph, 15/4/1930.)

Under capitalism there are no "good times" for the working class, but just so long as the working class does not see through the capitalist "work hard now and wait for reward" fairy story, there will always be Tories and Labourites, Churchills, Attlees, Clynes and Stracheys to tell it. Only the S.P.G.B. keeps to the sound working class position that the only remedy for the evils of Capitalism is Socialism, and that the time for it is now.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Party Funds. (1917)

From the September 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent debate in the House of Lords on the subject of the sale of parliamentary honours is of decided interest to those who are not acquainted with the inner workings of the political machine. Raised in debate by the Marquis of Salisbury, the ensuing discussion brought out some really delightful admissions of corruption in legislative channels. The admissions hardly come as news to seasoned Socialists, but this is one of the first occasions where the subject has been discussed at any length, many previous attempts to raise the matter, especially in the lower house, having signally failed.

The party funds, let it be here stated, are moneys contributed by financiers and rich business people for the purpose of securing recognition in “birthday honours" lists and the like for services rendered or expected. In the course of the discussion, however, mention was made as to the way in which the party funds were expended. Hilaire Belloc, a well-known character in jingo journals, has said that he resigned his seat in the Commons some years back owing to his disgust at party politics and “the party system generally".

In the course of his short career as a member of the Commons Belloc tried hard to raise the question of the expenditure of the party funds by asking for an audit, but needless to say, he failed. In his book The Party System is dealt with at some length, and much that we knew of legislative corruption is proved to the gaping world.

One of the richest morsels of the recent discussion came from Lord Curzon, who said with all the impudence possible:

  The idea of a commercial transaction, of disposing of a peerage like a parcel of goods across a counter, is a horror to all right-thinking men. When such things are spoken of some of us are moving, however, in a world of which we know nothing. I know no foundation for these public rumours.

—“Daily Express," 8.8.17.

His talk of “moving in a world of which we know nothing" may in a sense be true, for has not the great patriot Bottomley just said that “Sir Edward Carson is under the impression that the Rhine is the border of France and Germany” (“Sunday Pictorial,” 12.8.17), and that Mr. Balfour has “never beard of the kingdom of Bohemia” ? (Same source.)

Just previously, however, the noble earl had said:

   . . . that but for the aid of party funds he would have been unable to enter political life, as neither his father nor he at that time was able to afford a parliamentary contest .—Ibid.

From which it will be seen that if he did not know where the party funds came from and why, he was not altogether ignorant of where they went and why.

Evidence that elections are contested by means of such funds was handed out by another noble lord, for listen to this:

   Lord Charnwood said that he had contested several expensive elections and received help from the party funds, and was not in the least ashamed of having received it .—Ibid.

This, therefore, is the way the present-day politician rejoices in the sickening fraud of party politics. The average member of the back benches is merely a pawn in the political game, the real power coming from the front benches and the Ministers. In the matter of choosing the members of this front bench the workers have no part whatever. Small wonder that Ministers themselves were found describing the whole thing as “despicable.”

When will the workers awake to a consciousness of their surroundings and, taking over the political machine in their own interests, sweep the whole tainted system from public life?

The present brief criticism is but a detail. Pages might be written in condemnation of the stinking mass of corruption. I will be content with quoting that clever reflection of Oscar Wilde’s, who, upon the subject of “Critics and Criticism” said: “Surely in order to test the quality of a wine it is not necessary to consume the whole cask.”

B. B. B.