Refuted by Himself (1910)

From the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Translated from Le Socialisme by F. C. Watts

We have an erudite Minister of Agriculture. If you doubt it spend a half-penny on the Journal Official of 16th of March last. You will find therein, spread over thirty-nine columns, a speech delivered by M. Ruau, on the 14th of March 1909, at the Musée Social under the auspices of the French National Federation of Friendly Societies (Fédération Nationale de la Mutualité Française). You will not repent of your extravagance because there is something in the speech that will amuse you. In the first place notice at the foot of each page, the reference to the numerous books the author has made use of. There Marx’s Capital is quoted a dozen times, Kautsky’s Agrarian Question is also referred to; as is Frederick Engels, Vandervelde and David. It is quite a Socialist Library. In the text of the speech you will at each step come across the same names, and also those of Gatti, Jaurès, and others, including even our Limoges Congress, not to speak of the Congresses of the French Parti Ouvrier.

What an honour!

The fact is that the speech is entirely designed to “demonstrate” (against the Socialists) that capitalist concentration does not operate at all in agricultural property, and that “the present state of small property is flourishing”, and that even “with regard to the future growth there is reason to believe in an increase in its vitality”.

I do not know to which of his subordinates M. Ruau (having to deliver a speech) gave the order to make the discourse he read. But I know that he must be a good practical joker. He took it for granted that his chief, happy to find himself at the head of all those quotations from books which he had never read, and perhaps never opened, would not notice anything wrong. And he has amused himself by causing his chief to give in support of his statements, arguments which prove exactly the opposite of his assertions. His joke has succeeded, and doubtless he laughed up his sleeve to know that his minister, with all the “side” and self-sufficiency of a man sure of his facts, had “found” that the number of small proprietors does not diminish, by reading to his astounded hearers the following statistics:

An enquiry in July 1908, made by the Ministry of Finances, gave as 5,505,464 the total number of agricultural proprietors, which is thus split up according to the area exploited:

           1908

            Very small property (less than one hectare)                    2,087,851

            Small property (1 to 10 hectares)                                       2,523,713

            Medium property (10 to 40 hectares)                                   745,862

            Great property (40 to 100 hectares)                                      118,497

            Very great property (100 hectares upwards)                          29,541



            The corresponding figures for 1892 are

            Very small property                                                           2,235,405

            Small property                                                                   2,617,557

            Medium property                                                                  711,118

            Great property                                                                       105,391

            Very great property                                                                 32,280

  This comparison appears to show that small property has increased sensibly by 2,845 exploitations, as much to the detriment of ‘very small’ property as to that of the ‘medium’ and ‘great’, and that the ‘very great’ property has slightly increased by 2,739 exploitations, to the detriment of ‘great’ and perhaps a little, very little, at the expense of the ‘medium’. The development of ‘very great’ property noticeable from 1882 to 1892 has stopped in order to give place to that of ‘small’ property: the slight increase in ‘very great’ property will have continued, but this time it clearly appears that the movement does not touch ‘small’ property at all.
  The most reliable statistics tend therefore to prove that there exists no movement toward the absorption of small rural property.”

All this beautiful reasoning had but one misfortune, for without taking the trouble to find a pencil and work it out, it is seen at a glance that the 2,523,713 of 1908 are less (and not more) than the 2,617,558 of 1892. Consequently instead of “increasing” from 1892 to 1908, “small” property has “diminished sensibly by 93,245 exploitations”.

That is what the Minister of Agriculture has been pompously giving forth at the Musée Social.

It is true that a friend, a little better at arithmetic, has apparently warned him that he was giving arms against himself. A week after he sought to retrace his steps by giving (Journal Officiel of 22nd of March) a so-called erratum of his speech, which, so far from confirming, still refutes his thesis.

M. Ruau, in that erratum, recognises that 93,000 exploitations less is a decrease. But, says he, there is only question here of the element “number”; if we consider the superficial area “the facts change entirely”.

Let us see, then. The minister gives us now, as the figures of “very small” property (sterile and uncultivated land not included) super,

            for 1892   1,243,200 hectares

            for 1908   1,228,597 hectares

As figures regarding the superficial area of “small” property

            for 1892    10,383,300 hectares

            for 1908    11,559,342 hectares

And he cries triumphantly:

  “Thus ‘very small’ property has diminished by 14,603 hectares, apparently to the profit of ‘small’ property; ‘small’ property has increased by 1,176,042 hectares.”

But, excuse me! In the first place and in passing, if the “small” property increases to the detriment of “very small”, it will be because, always weak, the plots of land nevertheless are being concentrated. This would already be the contrary of what M. Ruau affirms.

And as for the principal point of his argument it hasn’t a leg to stand on. If there are 93,000 less proprietors in possession of one million hectares more land, it is therefore (just the contrary of his assertions) that the “small” exploitations increase in area, and that consequently there is still concentration.

Each “small” proprietor instead of possessing an average of 3.9 hectares as in 1892, owns 4.5 in 1908.

Fewer proprietors to more land owned, that is what is put forward as proof that agricultural concentration is a Socialist fiction.

And that’s what comes of accepting the role of simpler reader of a lucubration that one doesn’t understand.

Bracke

Socialism and the Suffragette. Miss E. Barry, B.A. and the Socialist Party. (1912)

From the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

The Poor Male

Sir,

A naturalist who, in noting a change of habit or variation in conduct of a creature under his notice, and about which he had recently written a book, should fly into Poor a rage, abuse the animal, and endeavour, lest the value of bis book be destroyed, to force it back into its old customs, would be regarded with justice as a traitor to science. Yet this is precisely what the male politician does with regard to the new developments among women. Angry that she no longer fits into the little corner be has prepared for her in the social scheme he has built up, entirely without her co-operation, he finds relief in abusing her, and in shouting her down.

Moreover, all politicians, of whatever party colour, use the same methods of vituperation. A touch of originality would at least enliven their recriminations, but with dull, age old, prejudiced invective the bitter war goes on. Who shows the greatest “sex-bias,” to quote F.C.W., in the strife?

We picked up the Socialist Standard and read about the Suffragette. As well might we have picked up the “Daily Mail” or the “Morning Leader” ; for all three on this question speak the same language, breathe the same ignorance, the same sentimental, masculine futilities, the same contemptuous comment on what they fail to understand. We felt after we had begun to read the description of the Suffrage movement as “a pitiful caricature of the male struggle for the franchise,” a trading on "sex-privilege," and after making the allusion to the “cheap glory ” and to that “starvation which has all the charms of novelty” (!), that we should soon chance across the words “morbid," “hysterical,” and “illogical.” and there they were, our dear old friends, without which we should hardly know that a man was describing the sex of the mother who bore him.

Could it have been?
We found, moreover, what we do not often see stated in black and white and with such simple confidence, that “the true woman worships the male" (O fatuous complacency!), that “the professional woman is nerve-racked and overwrought by the very intensity of the effort needed to compete with men” (we have intimate knowledge of men and women working side by side in a profession, sharing everything with rigid equality, except the emoluments, and we have failed to notice these shocking consequences. We have seen the men overwrought and nerve racked quite as frequently as the women. (Could it have been it have that this was the result of the “very intensity of effort needed ” to compete with the women ?)

We are told further that Nature has handicapped the woman in her competition with this superior creature by making “extra demands on her vital force,” that, in short, woman’s place is in the home, doing “crochet, embroidery,” and pursuing “old-time occupations,” and that this loudly emphasised to drown inward qualms — she must be content, in short, to sew on his buttons and nurse the baby.

The writer of the article stops just short of the suggestion inevitably made by the mail in the street to the Suffragette marching in her interminable procession, that “All she is fit for is to have ten children.” O reverence and respect for motherhood in which we are told man believes, here you have your exponent in the voice of the people!

The Socialist is as primitive in his prejudices as is any Liberal or Tory. It is not a question of politics but of masculinity.

“Go home,” says the Tory, “mind the baby, and if it is a bit dull, come to our Primrose League meeting and your well known powers of persuasion—though, of course, your logic is inferior to ours your habit of never getting into rages at people’s front doors while canvassing—though, do not mistake, you are hysterical and we are not—your quickness in seizing the gist of the argument—though your intellect is inferior to ours—will be of great help in getting our logical, sane intelligence into Parliament.

Suspicion
The Liberal offers the Liberal and Radical Association as a means of mental refreshment; the Socialist offers the S.P.G.B. meeting and the prospect of a neat future all arranged for women by men as blind to her needs as is F.C.W.

For, as regards Socialism, the last word for women has not been said when the Declaration of Principles of the S P.G.B. has been accepted. There is still left untouched the whole question of sex relationships. Of this not a word is said in the aforesaid declaration. Yet this matter is at least of equal importance to women as that the means of production of wealth should be owned by the people. Nor can the sex question be settled except as a separate issue. The “people” might very well own the means of production and women yet be enslaved. But women cannot trust men who shriek “morbid!” “illogical!” “hysterical! ” at the woman who is endeavouring to expound her point of view, to settle this tremendous question for them. In this matter she is the protagonist, and must continue to elucidate her own needs in spite of the fact that the man is working or speaking so busily about his point of view of her that he cannot hear or read her view of herself.

I base my right to a hearing on several things: first, as a patient student of the history of women ; secondly, as one who has followed the windings of the Suffrage movement for as many years as there has been a militant section; thirdly, as one who is acquainted with dozens of Suffragettes and who has some intimate friends among them ; but, before all, because I am a woman.

That quality is the first and absolute necessity for understanding the present feminist movement and its political indications.

A Drop in the Ocean
The Suffrage movement is merely a drop in the wave of doubt on the part in the of women that men have ever or will ever understand their needs. This wave in sweeping over the whole civilised world of women. From Turkey to America, from Japan to Moscow, women are raising their eyes and seeing how things are with them. They are realising, what F.C.W. does not, that, in contradiction to his statement, men’s and women's interests are not by any means always one. What of the prostitute? What of the woman forced into the artificially unequal competition of the labour market ? in which not “woman’s inferior labour-power” obtains a lower wage— for when she takes his place at the same work ; and produces identical results she is paid less.

No, it is her sex which is penalised. She is paid less because she is a woman. Astounding to relate, F C.W. seems to imply that this is just, since she is supposed to have no encumbrance and the man a family to maintain Has F.C W. ever noticed a case where a widow with six children to support has been paid more than the bachelor on that account ?

But not one trifling thing or another can account for the woman's movement. Woman’s ears are full of the voice of Evolution. She cannot hear the man’s exhortations, futile ragings and vain prohibitions. This is her hour. She has arisen to build a future for herself.

Before this great conception of the Feminist movement such writers as F.C.W. appear as flies on the wheel of Fate. Their efforts to cause it to cease turning are as valueless as a fly's efforts. His destiny is to watch and wait. Woman can no longer be legislated for. The honest woman has ceased her pretence of “worshipping the male.” Man must stand by and see her work out her own salvation, for assuredly she cannot, if she would, accept the ready made systems which he is offering her.

Cleaning the Slate.
Not only is F.C.W. ignorant of the psychology of this greatest issue of the present day, but also of that small, though meaningful part of it, the Suffrage movement. Of its actual history he is staggeringly unaware. Thus he says that “its adherents do not lose a living by their farcical bravado.” I know at least a dozen women who have lost their sole means of livelihood by taking part in the movement. I know intimately two who have had no work except of the most casual kind for a year. I know three women, all self-supporting, who are the complete invalids for life from treatment received at the hands of policemen and male opponents. I know of nurses, teachers, and mill girls forced to quit their work. That F.C.W. does not know these things completely wipes out his indictments that these women make “a hubbub” about their ill treatment and that they get much out of “sex- privilege.” If he wishes I can supply him privately with names and addresses.

I cannot say I know any Suffragette whose “robes” are taken off and put on by servants, but I do know women who prefer to work in the world rather than bring up their own children, and I applaud the woman who realises that her vocation does not lie in the direction of training the young. Since I know that all fathers do not possess the necessary qualities, I see that we can not expect all women, who are just as much individuals, to possess them either.

On the purely political side F.C.W. errs unpardonably. He should at least acquaint himself with facts. What women want, he says, is a property vote. He is wrong They ask for the vote on the same terms as men. If F.C.W. can effect an alteration in the old, bad laws his sex have produced, and find a more democratic basis for the vote, woman would still demand the vote on the same terms as men, and his plaint will perforce be bushed. But women are not going to set about agitating for the reform of man's own suffrage laws until they have got a weapon with which to strike at them. They have done enough spade work for men. Thus if F.C.W. secures manhood suffrage, women will advocate womanhood suffrage, and there is his adult suffrage bill complete.

In these words: “On the same terms as men,” lies woman’s just and natural indignation at the prospect of more men—working or otherwise— having the vote while sex still excludes herself. It is another insult to her as a woman.

F.C.W.’s attitude to the “superficial and amusing" Mrs. Gilman, of a fame which has spread over two continents, I shall not speak of, except to comment upon it as an example of the way in which a man will speak contemptuously of a great woman, qua woman. Hence, knowing that common respect for sincere research and patient intellectual effort is merely decent and good form, I am inclined to echo F.C.W.’s statement that as for man, “there is little that is Godlike in the poor worm.” But otherwise F.C.W.’s article is of errors all compact. A complete answer would take a whole Socialist Standard. As rhetoric we applaud it, but of knowledge it has not a syllable. Yet, however, there is a hint that at the bottom of F.C W.’s heart he has doubts about woman’s happiness in the home, with the crochet and the embroidery, to which he, in common with the Tory and the Liberal, so forcefully consigns her, for he says uneasily that this life may be “deadly monotonous” for her. However, he has no remedy except crochet and a vague recommendation to her to wait for the time when “the dawn” is ushered in and men will “no longer resemble cave animals,” etc. We cannot heed him. We women have to build a future system for ourselves. We are not satisfied with the place assigned to us by the “hysterical! - illogical !—morbid ! ’’-crying Tory, Liberal, and Socialist. We have our livings to get, our own and our children’s future to watch over — a future made to our wishes, suited to our natures, conforming to our intellects, allowing for our individualities and for the strength of nerve and endurance of body which have perpetuated the human race.

Elizabeth Barry, B.A.

Reply:
The above typically illustrates how the Suffragettes always avoid the vital issue.

The article in question described the factors giving rise to the Suffragette movement, and showed it to be capitalistic. It exposed the fraud in the present “votes for women” agitation, and pointed out that the emancipation of working men and women from economic bondage, drudgery, and poverty could only be hindered by giving more votes to property. That is why we oppose the Suffragettes, it said. Only through Socialism could the women (as well as the men) be emancipated ; and to that supreme end all working-class efforts should be directed.

And how does Miss Barry meet this? By making a man of straw. She treats the issue as being one of sex, when it is one of class. She endeavours to identify our case with that of the “Daily Mail” ; and, desiring to saddle me with some particularly foolish view, she says that I “stopped short” of it, and proceeds as though I had uttered it. She quotes the contemptible attitude of an imaginary Tory toward his women folk, and says “So speaks the Socialist and offers the S.P.G.B. meeting''! But that is not all. She says that in my article "we are told further that . . . in short, woman’s place is in the home, doing 'crochet, embroidery,’ and pursuing 'old time occupations,’ and that — this loudly emphasised to drown inward qualms — she must be content to sew on his buttons and nurse the baby.” All of which is nothing less than deliberate falsehood, being contradicted both in the letter and the spirit of the article in question.

Moreover, in practically every case Miss Barry has re-arranged the words of her “quotations’’ to suit her convenience, while retaining the inverted commas—a thing inadmissible in honest journalism. For example, she “quotes” with regard to the Suffragettes, that “its adherents do not lose a living by their farcical bravado.” Here, apart from a re-arrangement of the words, she has, to suit her case and enable her to talk plausibly of secret addresses, carefully omitted a vital phrase from the very midst of the “quotation”. But even were this not so, the matter does not turn on rare cases. One swallow does not make a summer. And no misquotation, no subterfuge, can hide the obvious fact (which Miss Barry dare not openly deny) that the Suffragette movement is not working class. It is a movement of the well to-do and their hangers-on. Its society weddings, receptions, huge collections, and titled adherents, all proclaim its capitalist nature. To the workers this class issue is of supreme importance. It is clearly stamped on the Suffragette demands, for it is futile to deny that they mean “votes for property irrespective of the sex of the owner.”

As already stated (and it has not been denied) the Suffragettes oppose adult suffrage. The vote to women on the same terms as men as at present would exclude the mass of working-class women (or their husbands) because of their lack of property. It would permit the doubling of the voting strength of property by enabling the wealthy to provide their women with the requisite qualifications. It would deal a blow at the whole working class, and set back the hour of emancipation.

It is actually suggested that I consider the lower remuneration of women to be just! This is an absurdity so obvious that only the direst poverty of argument could have induced Miss Barry to utter it. The laws which determine wages are the consequence of the wages system, and can only cease to be true when that system is abolished. We are endeavouring to overthrow that system; my critic is labouring, consciously or unconsciously, to perpetuate it. The misery of the sweated widow, equally with the sale of women’s bodies for a living, demonstrates, above all, the pressing need for Socialism—not for more votes for property !

And how nauseating is the hypocritical sentimentality, characteristic of the Suffragettes of both sexes, which repeatedly apostrophises the “reverence and respect for motherhood,” when they treat motherhood as a curse and applaud those who renounce it!

It is, it appears, sex bias to pillory the absurdities in a book written by a woman. We must surrender our honest judgment to Mrs. Gilman because the Suffragettes consider her great! A book, whether by man or woman, is entitled to our respect as Socialists, not for its meretricious brilliance, but for its truth and usefulness. Mrs. Gilman’s book signally failed at the test. It is our duty to brand errors which are pernicious to our class. These are questions of fact, not of “good form” or “respect.” They can only be met by questions of fact; and Miss Barry has wisely refrained from defending in this way her heroine’s manifest absurdities.

However, it is not necessary to be as verbose as my critic. Her letter is a good example of Suffragette “logic.” It shows yet again that the only weapons against the Socialist case are misrepresentation and evasion. Miss Barry has been unable to dispose of the Socialist contention that the interests of working men and working women are identical, and that Socialism alone can provide the economic foundation for the full and free development of men and women. In face of this fact how childish is her assertion, put forth oracularly on behalf of all women, that they cannot wait for Socialism, they are going to “ build up a future system for themselves” !

Truly the futures of working men and women are inseparable As stated in the Declaration of Principles of this party, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex. And the task before proletarian men and women is the exposure of the capitalist nature of the “votes for property” campaign, and the organisation of their class in the struggle against all sections of the capitalists and their sycophants, irrespective of sex.

F. C. Watts

Why are we revolutionary? (1906)

From the September 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Reformer’s “Case”

Probably few of our comrades have failed to meet the kind of working-man who cannot repress his disgust at the depravity of those of the working class who adopt an attitude of political antagonism to the heaven-appointed “classes” – the working-man who apes the nauseating mannerisms and shallow opinions of the middle class under the impression that it is “respectable” and “superior” to do so. Such superficial minds as our would-be superior friend fall an easy prey to the charlatan who devotes his energies to rounding up the workers to the support of middle class interests.

When such a “superior” person condescends to speak to the revolutionary Socialist, it is often to repeat, parrot like, the formulae: “Don’t be ridiculously extreme and shout for the moon. You must be prepared to work with anybody who is going even a little way in your direction. It is nonsense to talk of revolution. You must work for Socialism in small doses, such as Nationalisation of the Land, Mines or Railways, or Work for the Unemployed; for these are practical steps of a ladder reaching to Socialism”.

The answer to this parrot cry is not difficult, and need not be long. Rarely, however, can our opponents be got to discuss this important matter so we would fain do so here, the more readily since such an attitude toward Revolutionary Socialism is a very common one. It betrays a misconception of the meaning of the word “revolution”, and an outlook upon political affairs that is by no means taken from the standpoint of the working-man’s well-being; and this results from a blindness to the class structure of Society and to the real purpose of the “reforms” that are so loudly advocated.

The Judgment of History

In politics, owing to the diversity of interests which divides men into classes, it is safe to say that no change from one form of Society to another has been accomplished without a period of revolution. Russia to-day, in her transition from Feudal to Capitalist rule, is a modern example of the revolutionary period. Revolution, however, is not synonymous with bloodshed and disorder, (although owing to the blindness of vested interests they often go together), It means something quite distinct, to wit, the control of political power by a fresh class, whether accomplished peaceably or the reverse. It is of necessity a period of more than usually rapid change, for the new class immediately seek to use their newly acquired power for the purpose of bringing the political system more in accord with their own interests.

That which determines the directions of the various class interests, and in fact forms the basis of political Society, is the manner in which wealth is obtained and distributed; but the manner in which wealth is produced changes gradually along the line of least resistance, (in the direction of greater economy), and is in reality an evolution of industry, taking industry in its widest sense.

This changing industrial basis enables favourably situated groups (a class) to  command greater wealth, to become increasingly powerful, in short to become the “fittest” under the prevailing conditions. The warlike rulers of Ancient Society, the Patricians and slaveholders of Antique, and the Lords of Feudal Society, are examples of this, as are the capitalists of modern times.

Although a rising class becomes more and more powerful it is unable to make any deep and lasting impression to its advantage on the political affairs of a country until its power is greater than that of the hitherto ruling class; for the ruling class controls not only the making of laws but also the administration of the laws that are made.

In almost every instance the class suited to the outworn form of Society has clung tenaciously to power in face of the growing opposition. It has, aided by the advantage of possession, clung to its interests, to the spoils of power, in short to its existence as a class, until forcibly ejected by the more virile power beneath. Of this fact history gives repeated instances, at times as in the great French Revolution at one fell swoop, at others as during the English Rebellion and Revolution as the culmination of a series of more or less violent oscillations. In truth all history is the record of a series of class struggles thinly veiled.

Society’s Class Structure

The importance of a recognition of this class structure of Society can hardly be over-estimated, for it alone can keep the working-man’s policy clear and show him the way to his complete emancipation. Upon the basis of the class struggle the policy of reform pedlars and sentimentalists stands condemned, because it is obvious that the ruling class can, and will always so long as they rule, thwart the aspirations and interests of the class upon which they live. The ruling caste can and will by their control of legislation and administration prevent the people’s will being done in any particular that clashes with the interests of the master class. The only hope of the people is to dislodge their oppressors.

We see, then, that the revolution is the culmination of evolution; the landmark, as it were, in the evolution of Society. Taken in its broad aspect the revolutionary method is seen to be logical, and when contrasted with the methods of the reformer who seeks Socialism on the instalment plan, this fact is made still more striking.

Reforms intensify Unemployment

Let us by analysis of a typical radical reform or two show what is meant. The panacea of Railway Nationalisation is an example to hand. The annual waste of separate railway management and working in this country is estimated at £30,000,000. Nationalisation would therefore, in addition to other economies considerably reduce the amount of labour (number of workmen) required to work the railways. Not only would it cause the discharge of those required to run the superfluous trains now running (through the waste of competition) nearly empty to many towns, but even though by reduction of tariff extra business were attracted to the railways, it would mean the discharge of those working the other means of transport thereby out-competed. Nationalisation of the Railways under capitalist rule will therefore tend to increase the unemployed and to intensify competition on the labour market. It is a reform that may safely be left to capitalist interests. It is an advance in organisation and economy obviously, – for the master class; and so long as the workers are a subject class the benefits of the inevitable improvements in organisation, efficiency and economy, will go to their masters. It is by no means our purpose to oppose reforms, but to show that the workers can only derive benefit therefrom when they control political power. Under capitalism, profits would be made for Bondholders and in relief of capitalist taxes by such reforms as Railway Nationalisation, whilst the workers would be more under control of the capitalists united in government as in Germany and Austria.

The same applies to most municipal and national monopolies under the present regime. Their object is to save rates and taxes and to economise “labour”. Like the Trusts (to which they are placed in apparent opposition) they represent economic advance, and like them also they are intended to enable sections of the ruling class to extract more wealth from the labour of the people. And it is this that is the secret of the advocacy of these “reforms” by the bureaucrats and ratepayers of the middle class.

We cannot stem, and have no wish to stem, the march of economic progress, but we are forced to recognise the unpleasant fact that so long as capitalists control the State every increase in industrial organisation and economy renders the workers more redundant and their existence more precarious; and this unpleasant fact provides at once the necessity and the stimulus for our revolutionary propaganda.

The reformer, denying the class struggle, mistakes the progressive organisation of production for the progressive improvement in the lot of the working class, and ignores  the fact that the fruits of organised production are denied to the wage-slaves until they emerge victorious from that very class struggle.

Land and mine nationalisation are also mentioned as “reforms” to benefit the workers, forsooth. But again it is the Bondholder, the Landowner and, perhaps, the Capitalist Farmer who would benefit, while the labourer remains a slave with his wage kept down by competition as now. And even if he could hire land cheaply from the Government he would be utterly unable to compete with organised capital at home and abroad.

The “Right to Work” Farce

Then we come to what is perhaps the most fatuous of all the reform cries: “Work for the Unemployed”. The unemployed can never be abolished under capitalism, as every Socialist is aware. The progressive displacement of the workman by the machine must continue and the capitalist could not, if he would, prevent it. A reserve army of labour is necessary to provide for the expansion of production in times of good trade; and, in times of bad trade, when every capitalist feels how necessary it is to keep down expenses, the unemployed are a godsend to him, for they enable him to reduce the wages of those in work.

Let our reformers try to imagine what would happen if there were no unemployed. Instead of men undercutting one another to gain employment we should have employers bidding against each other for additional workmen. Just imagine a strike taking place with none to take the place of the strikers! One has visions of the re-enactment of the Statute of Labourers, of profits vanishing, wages rising, and capitalists working for a living!

The master class realise this to the full and will never even attempt to solve the unemployed problem. They will promise, and give a few crumbs in charity, or exploit a few of the out-of-works by setting them to useful work at half the usual rates, but – give work to all? Never! Their very existence depends upon it. The abolition of the unemployed is a “reform” that it will require a social revolution to accomplish.

The Revolutionary Method vindicated

The great problem would, however, be untouched by the majority of the reforms proposed. Various sections of the exploiting class would benefit, but, even though these reforms were inscribed upon the tablets of the law, the workers would remain competitive wage slaves and a subject class. We have always to remember that all energy spent on these side issues is lost to the great movement forward. The working class have their own battle to fight in unconfusing opposition to the interests arrayed against them, to the end that production organised now by Company, Trust, and State may be then co-ordinated and controlled by and for those who produce the wealth; in order that improvements in production may lighten the worker’s burden instead of throwing him out of work or intensifying his toil; in order that an increase in productivity may increase his wealth instead of glutting a market and starving his family. But this Industrial Democracy is a possibility only when the capitalist class have ceased to rule the State. Hence the class struggle is the greatest struggle, and the revolutionary method the only correct one.

F. C. Watts

A “Clarion” mare’s nest. (1906)

From the August 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Clarion is a comic paper, but never more so than when it treats of economics. Its latest outbreak is entitled, with unconscious humour, “Mind Your Own Business”, and advocates the adoption on a large scale of the Guernsey plan of raising money for municipal expenditure by issuing notes redeemable at term and acceptable in payment of taxes.

The people of Guernsey are reputed to have raised £4,500 in this way, about 100 years ago, calling in £450 annually to be destroyed until this whole had been redeemed, and they are understood to have never repeated the experiment.. The Clarion writer, however, to rid the municipalities of their debts and to obviate all further borrowings, advises the wholesale adoption of the Guernsey idea, no doubt upon the principle that since a man may take a fraction of a grain of strychnine without serious harm, he may therefore take a few ounces with impunity.

To show what an utter nostrum this currency fad is, it is only necessary to pass in review the conditions governing the currency.

The earliest form of exchange we have knowledge of is barter – the direct exchange of one thing of use for another, as, for example, cattle for implements of war, or these for ornaments, and so on. A stage higher in civilization we find the exchange of goods has become more frequent and that the old method of barter has become too cumbrous. Among tribes whose chief wealth was cattle we naturally find cattle being used as measure of the values of other things and as the medium of exchange. Cattle, however, soon gave place to the “precious metals”, whose use for ornament, whose durability, convenience and divisibility peculiarly fit them for use as exchange medium or money.

Gold and silver would, therefore, tend to be generally accepted in exchange for other things of equal value: that is to say, for things requiring approximately the same amount of toil to obtain. With the further advance of Society, and the still greater frequency of exchange; the numerous disputes between buyer and seller respecting the quality or weight of the silver or gold used to facilitate exchange, led to the adoption of an official stamp or coinage to secure uniformity, and as a guarantee of weight and quality of the metal. Here we have money in its complete form; but whatever metal may be serving as the universal equivalent it had its origin as a simple commodity, and was singled out by reason of its convenience to serve as the expression of value in general.

It will now be seen that money is wealth, although the Clarion man cannot grasp the fact because he does not distinguish between popular and scientific terminology. Popular phraseology calls everything money which serves as circulating medium, whether it really be money or only a credit substitute for it. Accurately speaking, however, money comprises solely the coins of the standard metal; since notes and tokens are merely instruments of credit and not really money any more than theatre or soup tickets.

The significant fact is that to-day through no matter what mechanism of exchange, it is only those who have commodities for sale which are desired by others, who can exchange at all, either directly or indirectly; and only then when there are individuals in the same position as themselves (i.e., having commodities for sale desired by the other commodity owners) to exchange with. The fact is at the bottom of all exchange, whether the medium of circulation be gold, notes or whatnot. Clearly, then, the amount of circulating medium is determined by the value of the goods to be exchanged by these possessors of the desired commodities, who are facing each other so much more easily through the institution of money.

It is, therefore, the disorganisation of production and distribution which causes gluts and crises, and the currency fluctuates in quantity as required by the circulation of commodities.

The remedy, then, is not the inflation of the currency with paper, for that cannot improve the conditions of production, but to so organise industry that what is required is produced, and that those who produce are not robbed but get the full value of their product. The remedy, in short, is SOCIALISM; and there are no short cuts through the currency.

We can, by considering briefly the credit side of our question, more clearly see the childishness of the currency faddist’s idea, that to be rolling in money we need only set our printing presses to work turning out millions of paper notes.

In a system of production for exchange a large amount of circulating medium is continually going from hand to hand, being sought after, not for its intrinsic worth, but for the purpose of being exchanged again for the article desired. Obviously, then, so long as the Government is stable and has a monopoly of the coinage, it, or its agents, may replace part of the currency by tokens or notes, provided always that the credit of the Government be good and that the total issue does not exceed the minimum amount of currency at par that is always required in circulation. The difficulty of making mere tokens acceptable is got over partly by their convenience, and by making them legal tender in payment of debt in certain proportions.

Should, however, the Government swell the currency beyond the amount which the circulation of commodities can absorb, then the standard is depreciated and the value of the circulating medium is diminished by the amount of the excess.

Modern Governments, in their own interests and from bitter experience, go quite as far as is safe in the issue of paper currency, (indeed, only the financially bankrupt oversteps this limit) and the more extensive use of symbols or tokens can only have the effect of increasing the speculative character of industry and adding to the existing distress; whilst if the paper issue inflates the currency beyond the amount needed at par to do the work, then prices rise and the separation of real and nominal value commences; and although a £1 note might still purchase a nominal £1 worth of provisions, the £1 worth of provisions would, with every fresh issue, grow smaller by degrees and beautifully less, the workers, as is usual being the first to suffer.

From the time of the Assignats of the First French Republic to our own day we have numerous instances of the dire effect of the inflation of the currency with paper, and at the bar of History the currency faddist stands irrevocably condemned. For confirmation one has only to turn to some of the instances given by Mulhall and other statisticians of the United States in 1836, 1864 and 1868; of Russia from 1817 onwards; of Austria from 1810 to 1850; of Italy in 1867; of Sweden in 1834, instances when the paper issues depreciated the currency from 15 to 80 per cent., causing a corresponding rise in prices and terrible distress. Even in England in 1814 owing to an over issue of notes the price of an ounce of gold had risen (in notes) from £3 17s. 10 ½d to £5 4s., other prices rising proportionately.

We see, then, how “credit money” works in practice, and to clearly understand why that is so let us here recall the economic law: – “The amount of circulating medium that can be absorbed is governed by the sum of the prices of the commodities to be purchased during any period, divided by the number of times the average £1 in coin or notes changes hands during that time”. If the amount exceeds this there is an over-supply of the medium and prices rise, for the currency is depreciated. Paper is not hoarded, since it is entirely useless and valueless out of circulation, the gold is held in preference, (since it is intrinsically of value) and, if the currency is depreciates by an overissue of notes, the gold remaining in circulation becomes more valuable as bullion than as coin, and is consequently melted down or exported. Thus it is that “bad money drives out good”. With a sufficient margin of standard metal circulating side by side with notes the currency adjusts itself naturally to the fluctuations of trade by the coining or the melting down of gold, but if all the gold be driven out of circulation, then every fluctuation in the volume of trade causes either a shortage or an over-supply of circulating medium with corresponding fluctuations in prices; because a pure paper currency even under the best conditions can only be adjusted artificially to the fluctuations in the amount of trade, and that only when the evil has been made manifest by the rise or fall in prices.

But, it may be objected, although you show us under what conditions notes may circulate and the limits under economic law to their quantity, you do not show why municipalities cannot issue notes in order to avoid borrowing.

Having disposed of the general principle of the “paper money” faddist, let us answer this final objection.

Provided that sufficient of the standard metal is left in circulation as a safety valve to provide against fluctuations, and the notes are issued cautiously and from one central authority, municipalities may issue notes with safety as Guernsey is reputed to have done. Those, however, of the middle class who are anxious to reduce taxation by this means, conveniently forget that by the proposed redemption of the notes in payment of taxes a large portion of the revenue is thereby turned into so much unprofitable waste paper. The point which we wish to emphasise in this connection is that the amount the municipalities can issue, even under the most favourable conditions, is ludicrously small compared with their needs; and that is the joke.

In the first place, by far the greater part of the commerce of this country is carried on already (as far as the master class is concerned) by means of a perfectly sound system of credit. As long ago as 1889 the business of the principal clearing houses alone amounted to £7,620,000,000 for the year. Indeed, as Marx has pointed out, gold is practically driven into the retail trade, and the amount in circulation is much smaller than most people suppose, whilst it does not increase proportionately to the increase in trade.

In order to give the municipal note enthusiast plenty of rope, we may even for the moment disregard the historic and economic evidence which, as we have seen, shows the dangers of an increase in “paper money”; we may even assume that the amount of gold in circulation may be entirely replaced by credit notes. They admittedly cannot exceed this without causing a depreciation of the currency and a rise in prices. But when all the gold is driven out of circulation by the notes, where are we then?

Mulhall shows that the amount of gold circulating in this country to be about £102,500,000. We will, therefore, to please the currency faddist, assume that no ill effects follow from the displacement of this sum by notes. Now (excuse me smiling) the outstanding liabilities on loans of local authorities in Great Britain are over £400,000,000, or about four times as much as would be available from the currency! Could folly farther go? Some even have intimated that the National Debt also could be liquidated by this means, but the National Debt alone is over £762,000,000. Yet it is proposed to make the currency an universal milch-cow!

Verily, instead of a milch-cow the Clarion has found a Mare’s Nest.

F.C.Watts

Socialism and Nationalisation - Part 1 (1912)

From the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

An early article by Paul Lafargue

  Readers know the circumstances in which Paul Lafargue and Laura Marx have ended life together, with their last words expressing their belief in the early triumph of the cause for which they laboured. We bow before death. Nevertheless we rejoice that, although Lafargue has laid down his pen, his words still fight on behalf of the workers. The following article, written in “L’Egalité” of June 2nd, 1882, is still trenchant and useful.

At the present moment a kind of Socialism for the capitalists is being created. It is very modest. It contents itself with the transformation of certain industries into public services. Above all, it does not compromise one. On the contrary it will rally a good number of capitalists.

They are told: Look at the Post Office, that is a Socialist public service, functioning admirably to the profit of the community, and more cheaply than if it were entrusted to a private company as was formerly the case. The gas supply, the railways and the building of workmen’s dwellings must also become public services. They will function to the profit of the community and will chiefly benefit the capitalist class.

In capitalist society, the transformation of certain industries into municipal or national services is the last form of capitalist exploitation. It is because that form presents multiple and incontestable advantages for the bourgeoisie that in every capitalist country the same industries are becoming nationalised (Army, Police, Post Office, Telegraphs, the Mint, etc.).

Certain monopolised industries, indeed, delivered up to the greed of private companies, become instruments for the exploitation of other sections of the capitalist class, and so powerful that they disturb the whole bourgeois system.

Here are a few examples. The electric telegraph, on its introduction into France, became a state service because the political interests of the Government required it. In England and the Unites States, where the same political interest did not exist, the telegraphs were established by private companies. The English Government was compelled to buy them out in the interests of all, particularly the speculators, who in the transformation found means of obtaining scandalous profits. In the United States the telegraph service is still in private hands. It is monopolised by a gang of speculators who control the entire Press of the country. Those speculators communicate telegrams only to newspapers in vassalage to them, and which must pay such a heavy tax that many, being unable to bear such a burden, do without telegraphic news altogether. In America telegrams are the most important part of the newspapers; to deprive them of these dispatches is to condemn them to languish and die. In that republican Republic, which individualist Liberals take as the ideal of their most daring dreams, the liberty of the Press is at the mercy of a handful of speculators, without government force and without responsibility, but in control of the telegraph service.

The railway monopoly is so exorbitant that a company can ruin at will an industry or a town by differential or preferential tariffs. The danger to which society is exposed by the private ownership of the means of transport is so keenly felt that in France, England and the United States, many capitalists in their own interests demand the nationalisation of the railways. In capitalist society a private industry only becomes a State service in order to better serve the interest of the bourgeoisie. The advantages which the latter obtain are of different kinds; we have just spoken of the social danger created by the abandonment of certain industries to private exploitation, dangers which disappear or are attenuated as soon as the State directs them but there are others.

The State, by centralising administration, lessens the general charges; it runs the service at a smaller cost. The State is accused of paying everything more dearly than private enterprise; nevertheless, such is not always the case when there is a question of the establishment of means of communication, one of the most difficult and complex enterprises in modern society. Thus the tramways constructed in France have, with rare exceptions, cost an average of 250,000 to 300,000 francs per kilometre as a first establishment charge. The railway from Alais to the Rhone has eaten up per kilometre of line a sum of about 700.000 francs. M. Freycinet, who is not a bourgeois director for fun, has established upon positive grounds that the State could construct railways at a cost of 200,000 francs per kilometre. The State can therefore sensibly diminish the prices of the services it exploits. It is the capitalists who profit by the reduction, because it is they, principally, who make use of them. Thus, what a number of workmen only use the postal service once or twice a year! And how very numerous are the commercial houses and industrial concerns which send out over ten and twenty letters a day!

State services become a means to politicians for placing their tools or dependants, and for giving good, fat sinecures to the sons-in-law of the bourgeoisie. M. Cochery has accorded lucrative posts to Orleanists; among others, to the son of Senator Laboulaye, the man of the inkpot.

Militants of the Parti Ouvrier may and must in their polemics against the public men and the politicians of the capitalist class, make use of this transformation of one time private industries into State services, to show how the bourgeoisie themselves are led by the logic of events to attack their own principles, which demand that society, represented by the State, snatch no industry from private initiative. But they must not desire, and still less demand, the transformation of fresh industries into national services, and that for diverse reasons.

Because it is to the interest of the workers’ party to embitter the conflicts which lacerate the capitalist class, instead of seeking to pacify them – these antagonisms quicken the disorganisation of the ruling class; because nationalisation increases the corruptive power of capitalist politicians; because State employees, like workers in private employ, strike and engage in a struggle with the exploiters.

The only Socialist reason that one might put forward for that transformation is that perhaps it might simplify the revolutionary work of expropriation by the workers’ party; we will examine this on another occasion.

Translated by F. C. Watts

[To be concluded.]

The Pace That Kills. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Modern Street Traffic Problem Discussed.

A philosophy in a Nutshell
“Hurry on, please!” is the catch phrase of the day. It expresses the salient characteristic—with or without the please of every modern industrial centre, just as “Get on or get out!” sums up its brutal philosophy. In the roaring traffic of the highway, indeed, we have a vivid yet typical example of this “non-stop” age.

Take modern road traffic, then, as a case in point. It illustrates the rapid yet enormous changes forced upon society by economic development, and it shows unmistakably how little the hireling worker profits by the wonderful mechanical progress his physical and mental labour has made possible. The ubiquitous motor has made the dweller in the most distant hamlet familiar with its dust and dangers, but in London’s streets the “motor peril” now reaches its apotheosis.

Truly the motor is everywhere, but on the crowded roads of the metropolis its presence and speed have raised a problem for which the multitudinous highway authorities seek in vain a solution.

The streets are turned into slaughter yards, and it is no crime in the eyes of those who administer the law, for the motorist to slay the harmless passer-by. It is by far the cheapest form of murder, for it is scarcely too strong a statement to say that the motorist has practically been granted the right to slaughter any who dare to cross his path.

At inquests the motorist is almost always exonerated from blame—particularly if it is pointed out that he was sober. And even in those rare cases where this does not happen the penalty is a puerile censure, or a punishment ludicrously disproportionate to that which is inflicted when the murder is done other than with the aid of a motor.

Way for the Road Hog!
Above all the conflicting and hysterical statements anent the modern highways problem one thing is clear: that high speed is the chief bugbear. “It’s the pace that kills.” Exceeding the speed that is safe in the particular circumstances is the cause of most of the maiming and slaughter. Indeed, the law, ass though it is, nominally establishes a speed limit. Yet motorists habitually exceed that limit. In fact, travelling at the legal limit is stigmatised as a “mere crawl”. Moreover, it is not for the safety of the public that corners are rounded and roads widened and strengthened, but simply to allow greater speeds to be attained—with the inevitable consequence of a longer casualty list.

It is, further, an understood thing that the police never prosecute for exceeding the speed limit unless it is exceeded by over five miles, and very rarely even then. The car owner’s most frequent boast is of the speed at which his motor travels, and the rare fine is regarded as a certificate to the quality of his engine, and is a tribute to his childish vanity.

Despite the fact that most of those killed and maimed on the highways would still be safe and sound if a rational speed in the circumstances had been adhered to, representatives of motor associations fatuously assert that not high, but “low” speeds, are the concomitants of accident! And as though to support this risible doctrine, almost every motorist in the courts, contemptuous of the law relating to perjury, states his speed to have been at the time of the smash, between five and twelve miles an hour! That is the homage that vice pays to virtue!

Motoring magistrates are ever ready to condone the recklessness of the motorist, and sometimes even lecture pedestrians and cyclists on the nuisance and danger their existence on the road presents for the man behind the “petrol gun”! They reserve the vials of their wrath, however, for the urchin on a bicycle, whose crime was in enjoying an innocent “coast” down an incline at little more than half the legal speed limit for motors!

The Hog’s Grunt Translated.
To such a pass have things come that the attitude of the average motorist is practically that the roads are his property, and that all others are trespassers, to be hooted off. “Get off the earth or I’ll push you off!” is the sentiment expressed in the imperious howl of the motor syren.

Besides being the capitalist’s instrument of profit, the motor is now his chief toy—or at least it runs his “blonde” or his “brune” very close for pride of place in this connection—and to the arrogance engendered by the possession of the most powerful and speedy thing on the road is added the arrogance of wealth and class. The result is a growing contempt and intolerance on the part of the motorist toward the weaker users of the road, mitigated only faintly by spasmodic reprisals and agitations on the part of the latter.

But why go on? It is neither necessary nor advisable to recount at length the manifold abuses of the motor vehicle—the simplest statement of fact suffices.

Yet the petrol engine is a marvellously efficient instrument, and in its further development its possibilities are great for humanity. The simple question to be emphasised then arises—why should an undoubted mechanical advance spell greater discomfort, toil, and danger to the workers? It would be quixotic, or worse, to attempt to stop the development of motor traffic, and it would be equally futile to drag the red-herring of the individual “reckless driver” and the exceptional “road hog” across the trail. The trouble has deeper roots.

The chauffeur, for example, must obey his master or be supplanted by a more obedient servant. The taxi-driver must keep up the earnings of his cab or lose his livelihood. The employee of the motor-bus trust must keep carefully to his schedule times and maintain the earnings of his vehicle—indeed his wage depends on the number of miles he can run. Thus it is that other road users suffer who are too weak to cope with the powerful motor.

Inciting to Murder.
Among the weakest of road users is the cyclist, and, it so happens that the cycle is, above all others, the workers’ vehicle; and those who employ it as a means of getting to and from their daily toil, know full well how the danger grows. But the bus driver, held by the trust to an inelastic time table, with his livelihood endangered if the takings of his vehicle and its daily mileage fall, is economically compelled to make unscrupulous use of the power his motor gives him, to the detriment of others. Self-preservation makes him regard the slowly moving cyclist and pedestrian as obstacles to his livelihood, hindrances to the keeping of his time schedule, impediments to his speed in getting first to paying points on the route.

The type of mind engendered by such an economic position may be gauged from the complaint of a motor bus-driver, at a South London inquest on a victim, with regard to cyclists, that “he frequently had to give way to them”.

Not always, evidently. Indeed, when pedestrian or cyclist is killed, well, “accidents will happen”, and there is an obstacle less on the road, while after all, coroners are indulgent. If a cyclist is scared off, he becomes a passenger the more for the bus, and another source of profit for the trust—a trust which, by the way, has the sublime effrontery to pose, in an official letter to the Press, as jealous of its “reputation as the guardian of the public safety”. Gordelpus!

Of course, if every human being killed or injured by their agency was made to cause such a heavy monetary loss to the transport companies that it outweighed the profitableness of high speed and reckless driving, then the massacre would cease. But is anyone so simple as to believe this will be done? Can thugs be relied upon to prohibit murder? It is motor owners who legislate. What avails human life when put into the scales against dividends. Indeed, the attempt to make human life of more account than profits would be howled down as a dastardly, senseless, revolutionary attack upon the sacred rights of property.

A Profitable “Remedy”.
No. Whatever “reforms” may be inaugurated will not diminish, but may increase, profits. A limitation of further bus licences is already semi-officially foreshadowed, and worked for. This would mean the granting of a permanent monopoly against the public to the existing trust, and the exclusion of fresh competition, without any guarantee for public safety or convenience.

But is this question of the killing and maiming by motors the only one, or even the most important? Obviously it is not; and it is only dealt with here because it is but a symptom. It is true that nearly 150 persons have been killed outright by the motor-bus trust in the metropolitan area alone during the past year. That is terrible enough; but have not equal numbers of workers being sacrificed at one fell swoop in preventable colliery disasters—not this year alone but every year? And should we have heard so much about the motor-bus slaughter had it not suited the purpose of a set of officehunters to make political capital out of it, on behalf of that cheerless piece of humbug, “the people’s trams”?

There is, however, no need to belittle in any way the facts relating to the motor peril. They are appalling. But the rest is more terrible still. The one is but the manifestation of the greater evil, for the sinister result of modern traffic conditions has a deeper meaning than is realised or expressed by commentators in the Press. It signifies the growing pace and intensity of industrial life, the universal acceleration of production, and the decreasing value of the life of the worker when put in the balance against the pleasure or the profit of the class that owns the country. The huge and increasing size of industrial centres, and the greater distances between the workers’ home and the factory, the need for more quickly transferring labour, the greed of the rack-renter of the central districts, the knowledge that the workers’ “time is money” to the capitalist, the rush for profits of a transport trust, and the all-pervading atmosphere of hustle, recklessness, and speed that is engendered by capitalist greed and the ever-increasing world-wide competition—all these are symptoms of the deep-lying social malady.

It is not very long ago that miners were entombed in a burning mine by bricking up the mouth of the pit in order to save the property! No! the sacrifice of human life on the road is not an isolated phenomenon. The drowning of seamen for the sake of a few extra tons of cargo consequent on the raising of the load-line by a Liberal Board of Trade; the killing and maiming of an enormous and increasing number of workers in mine and factory for the sake of extra output and extra profit; and the toll of life taken on the highways for the sake of the profit or pleasure of accelerated transport, are all phases of the same fact. Men are the slaves of the machines they have created.

Modern machines, in their marvellous precision, complexity, and swiftness, bring with them the possibility, the material groundwork, of greater leisure, and the provision of the good things of life in ever-increasing abundance. Yet the only reward of those who toil is more intense labour, a less secure position, greater hardships and dangers, and a shortened life. Out of good cometh evil? Why? Because those who work are hirelings, while those who toil not own. The machine supplants the hireling, makes him redundant, and starves him instead of feeding him. The new machines and higher speeds only increase the wealth of the parasitic owner, enabling him to discharge more wage-labourers, reduce wages, and intensify toil. Thus it is that instruments capable of dispensing wealth and leisure to all, impoverish and overwork the many. Thus it is that the triumphant advance of technology has only carried our class on to ever more painful labours. We are victims of the machine only because we are the hirelings of the class that owns it. The evolution of industry leads us on, and we struggle painfully to adapt ourselves to its steps. Hitherto the workers have neglected the one needful step—the democratic ownership and control of all industrial machinery.

Speed and concentration are the order of the day. But the London transport trust, while it provides the example of the disease, hints at the only remedy. Industry after industry has developed to the trust stage, and has shown us plainly that since those who produce now run the machinery and organise industry—for absentee shareholders—they are demonstrably capable of running production for themselves! Surely the time when they will do so is near at hand! The need, the possibility, and the economic foundation of Socialism are manifestly present.

Industrial advance places the means of socialised production within the workers’ reach, and their daily trials and difficulties must open their eyes to the supreme need of realising that possibility, and of wresting the power to control from those who now usurp it. Then they will resume control of their means of life, becoming the masters of the tool of production instead of remaining enslaved; and will for the first time be able to utilise technical progress humanly and intelligently, to provide more leisure and a completer life for all.

But so long as class ownership remains, for just so long will the long list of killed and maimed continue to grow, and all remediable measures fail to keep pace with the break-neck speeding up of our daily tasks. Already we are becoming inured to the motor murders as to the butchery in other spheres of industry. The sudden development of the road motor “within the memory of a schoolboy” has struck the popular imagination, leaving scarce heeded other and more deadly fields. But soon this too will pall, and the great problem as a whole will only press more surely for solution.

Hustle and worry, then, will continue to be the worker’s lot; danger, suffering, and want dog his footsteps ever more closely, until, in the fullness of time, the scales shall fall from his eyes and he shall see how frail his fetters are. And when he feels his mighty strength, and at long last sees its obvious use, woe betide the parasites who have battened on his sweat and blood in the long night of his blindness and ignorance!

F. C. Watts

What is Patriotism? (1937)

From the February 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Reprinted from "The Socialist Standard," December 1915)

The answer depends largely upon the point of view. From one standpoint patriotism appears as the actual religion of the modern State. From another it is the decadence and perversion of a noble and deep-rooted impulse of loyalty to the social unit, acquired by mankind during the earliest stages of social life. From yet another viewpoint, that of capitalist interests, patriotism is nothing more or less than a convenient and potent instrument of domination.

Its Origin
The word itself, both etymologically and historically, has its root in paternity. In tribal days the feeling of social solidarity, which has now become debased into patriotism, was completely bound up with the religion of ancestor worship. In tribal religion, as in the tribe itself, all were united by ties of blood. The gods and their rights and ceremonies were exclusive to the tribesmen. All strangers were rigidly debarred from worship. The gods themselves were usually dead warriors. Every war was a holy war. Among the ancient Israelites, for instance, the holy Ark of Jehovah of Hosts accompanied the tribes to battle. It was this abode or movable tomb of the ancestral deity that went with the Jews in their march through the desert, and even to Jericho, playing an important part in the fall of that remarkable city. All the traditions of the Jewish religion, in fact, were identified with great national triumphs.

A Bond of Union
Thus tribal religion was completely interwoven with tribal aspirations and integrity. Tribal “patriotism" and religion were identical. Indeed, without the strongest possible social bond, without a kind of “patriotism" that implied the unhesitating self-sacrifice of the individual for the communal existence, it would have been utterly impossible for tribal man to have won through to civilisation. Natural selection insured that only those social groups which developed this supreme instinct of mutual aid could survive; the rest were crushed out in the struggle for existence. Is it a matter for wonder if it be found that such a magnificent social impulse, so vital to the struggling groups of tribal man, received periodical consecration in the willing human sacrifices so common in primitive religious ceremonial? Bound up with the deliberate manufacture of gods for the protection of the tribe and its works, there is indicated a social recognition of the need for, and value of, the sacrifice of the individual for the common weal.

A Bond of Another Kind
This noble impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But being a powerful social force it has lent itself to exploitation. Therefore, with the development of class rule this great impulse is made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves.

Patriotism and Religion Part Company
With the decay of society based on kinship, religion changed also, and from being tribal and exclusive it became universal and propagandist. “Patriotism” at the same time began to distinguish itself from religion. The instinctive tribal loyalty became transformed, by the aid of religion and the fiction of kinship, into political loyalty. In a number of instances in political society, as in Tudor England, the struggle for priority between religion and patriotism became so acute as to help in the introduction of a more subservient form of religion. Thus patriotism became emancipated from religion, and the latter became a mere accessory to patriotism as handmaiden of class rule.

Patriotism Always Obliges
Though universal religion did not split up at the same time as the great empire that gave it birth, patriotism did so. The latter has, in fact, always adapted, enlarged, or contracted itself to fit the existing political unit, whether feudal estate, village, township, county, kingdom, republic or empire. No political form has been too absurd for it to fill with its loyalty. No discordance of race, colour or language has been universally effective against it.

What, then, is patriotism in essence to-day? It is usually defined as being devotion to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live is an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other races. The nation they call “ours” is the result of a conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribesmen we are hirelings; we possess no country.

The One Common Bond To-day
Nationality, of which patriotism is the superstition, covers no real entity other than that of a common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixity of territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.

The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us to-day is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality that is little more than a manufactured unit of discord: a mere focus of economic and political strife.

Ignoble Exploitation
Thus one of the noblest fruits of man’s social evolution—the impulse of sacrifice for the social existence—is being prostituted by the capitalist class to maintain a system of exploitation, to obtain a commercial supremacy, and preserve or extend the boundaries of a superfluous political entity. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many so-called Socialists have fallen headlong into this trap.

Had social solidarity developed in equal measure with the broadening of men’s real interests, it would now be universal in character instead of national. The wholesale mixture of races, and the economic interdependence of the whole world, show that nationalism is now a barrier, and patriotism, as we know it, a curse. Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can the instinct of social service find its highest and complete expression. The great Socialist has pointed the way. He did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose only loss could be its parti-coloured chains. And in this alone lies the consummation of that tribal instinct of social solidarity of which patriotism is the perverted descendant.

Capitalism the Barrier
Capitalism, therefore, stands as the barrier the destruction of which will not only set free the productive forces of society for the good of all, but will also liberate human solidarity and brotherhood from the narrow confines of nationality and patriotism. Only victorious labour can make true the simple but pregnant statement: “Mankind are my brethren, the world is my country.” Patriotism and nationalism as we know them will then be remembered only as artificial restrictions of men’s sympathy and mutual help; as obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; as impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and co-operation; as bonds that bound men to slavery; as incentives that set brothers at each other's throats.

Despite its shameless perversion by a robber class the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead. Economic factors give it an ever firmer basis, and in the Socialist movement it develops apace. Even the hellish system of individualism, with its doctrine of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, has been unable to kill it. And in the great class struggle of the workers against the drones, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this last great struggle for the liberation of humanity from; wage-slavery, the great principle of human solidarity, based upon the necessities of to-day and impelled by the deep-seated instincts of the race, will come to full fruition and win its supreme historical battle.

A Vile Use of a Noble Sentiment
That is our hope and aspiration. For the present, however, we are surrounded by the horrors of war added to the horrors of exploitation, and subjected to the operation of open repression as well as to the arts of hypocrisy and fraud. With the weakening power of religion to keep the workers obedient, the false cult of nationality and patriotism is being exploited to the full. Like religion, patriotism has its vestments, its ceremonies, its sacred emblems, its sacred hymns and inspired music; all of which are called in aid of the class interests of our masters, and utilised desperately to lure millions to the shambles for their benefit. Thus is an heroic and glorious social impulse perverted and debased to the support of a régime of wage-slavery, and to the furtherance of the damnable policy of the slave-holding class: to divide and rule.

F. C. Watts

Christian Socialism (1910)

Book Review from the May 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Is Socialism Atheism? A Prejudiced Answer” by James Adderley, of the Church Socialist League. 1d. (Frank Palmer.)

The value of this apology for the brain-softening affliction known as “Christian Socialism” may be gathered from a few quotations.

“Socialism," says Mr. Adderley, “whatever it may have meant in days gone by, now means the Movement going on in all civilised countries towards a gradual change in the social system by which the State (that is the whole community, rich and poor alike) shall eventually own and control collectively for the common benefit the land and capital which is now, for the most part, owned and controlled individually for private profit.”

To know whether Socialism is Atheism it is obviously necessary to know, first of all, what Socialism is, and Mr. Adderley fails, consequently, at the very outset. His definition describes State Capitalism. His ideal is a nation organised into a kind of huge post office. “The poor ye have always with you,” Christ is reported to have said, and his faithful minister sees “rich and poor alike” even in the state of society he conceives as his ideal.

Starting with such a false definition of Socialism, the rest of Mr. Adderley’s pamphlet is wasted labour as far as his argument is concerned, but it is so typical of the mentality of the “Christian Socialist” that it may detain us a little longer. The very phraseology is of a piece with the rest —“ Movement going on . . .  rich and poor alike . . . shall eventually . . .  for the most part.”

His definition of Atheism is equally precise.

“A Christian who says he believes in God but manages his business without regard to honesty or justice or mercy is practically an Atheist. A man who says he does not believe in God but tries to be honest and just and merciful is less of an Atheist than the other. . . . Socialism, if it makes for justice, mercy, brotherhood, etc.,” [only one “etc,” Mr. Printer.] “cannot be called Godless or Atheist even if its professors say that they do not believe in religion,” and so on.

We do not, of course, disagree with everything Mr. Adderley says. We agree, for example, that

 “The Labour Party in Parliament consists to a great extent of rather puritanically minded, unorthodox Christians.” (Page 11.)

He also states that Mr. Keir Hardie himself said in his (Mr. Adderley's) hearing some 15 years ago: “Send me to Parliament for the sake of those for whom Christ died.” We understand that Mr. Hardie’s meaning was, of course, “ For Christ’s sake send me to Parliament!”

How little knowledge Mr. Adderley has of “human nature,” Socialism, or of sociology in general may be seen from the conclusion of his pamphlet:

“ ‘This is a dream: it is against human nature,’ says the Anti-Socialist.
“I grant you it is a dream. I grant you it is against human nature as we know it.
“ ‘Human nature’ is a tough nut to crack. But my religion impels me to believe that it can be redeemed and changed by the power of Him who came to save mankind.”

To the understanding mind Mr. Adderley's brochure is yet another demonstration of the incompatibility of Socialism with Christianity, in spite of the fact that it contains no discussion of the question worthy the name. Its title, indeed, is unjustified. It could have been entitled, with a much greater degree of justification, “From Nebulae to Balderdash.” Perhaps it is not yet too late. I offer the suggestion for what it is worth.

F. C. Watts

The Socialist Party of Great Britain. (1904)

Party News from the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Official Notice.

The General Meeting of the Socialist Party of Great Britain will be held at the Communist Club, 107, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, London, W., on Sunday, 18th September, 1904, commencing at 9.30 a.m.

The following Preliminary Agenda has been arranged:

Election of Chairman.
Appointment of Stewards.
Election of Standing Orders Committee.
Report of the Executive Committee.
Party Organ.
Rules.
Report of Delegates to the International Socialist Congress, Amsterdam.
Party Emblem.
Premises.
Election of General Secretary.
Election of Treasurer..
Other business.

On behalf of the Executive Committee,

(Signed) C. Lehane,

General. Secretary.

Literature Agency.

Branches and members should purchase their literature through the Party Agent, F. C. Watts, 154, Ashmore Road. Paddington, London, W. Write for particulars as to terms, etc.

Central Economic Class.

The class meets weekly and is free to all. Full particulars will be sent on application to J. Fitzgerald, 34, Wilmington Square, London, W.

50 Years Ago: What is Patriotism? (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

This noble impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But being a powerful social force it has lent itself to exploitation. Therefore with the development of class rule this great impulse is made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves.

Capitalism, therefore, stands as the barrier the destruction of which will not only set free the productive forces of society for the good of all, but will also liberate human solidarity and brotherhood from the narrow confines of nationality and patriotism. Only victorious labour can make true the simple but pregnant statement: “mankind are my brethren, the world is my country.” Patriotism and nationalism as we know them will then be remembered only as artificial restrictions of men's sympathy and mutual help; as obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; as impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and co-operation; as bonds that bound men to slavery; as incentives that set brothers at each others' throats.

Despite its shameless perversion by a robber class the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead. Economic factors give it an ever firmer basis, and in the Socialist movement it develops apace. Even the hellish system of individualism, with its doctrine of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, has been unable to kill it. And in the great class struggle of the workers against the drones, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this last great struggle for the liberation of humanity from wage slavery, the great principle of human solidarity, based upon the necessities of today and impelled by the deep-seated instincts of the race, will come to full fruition and win its supreme historical battle.

From the Socialist Standard, December 1915.