The Labour Party and the Unemployed (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Statesmanship.

The question of unemployment was the first to occupy the preliminary conference of the Labour Party at Hull. “Important” speeches were made by the “statesmen of labour," and a no less “important” resolution was passed.

Mr. Pete Curran said: “Until we are in a position to utilise the legislative machinery of the country for the purpose of curtailing the income of the rich who are in possession, and in adding to the income of the poor, we shall never solve the unemployed problem.”

Mr. J. R. MacDonald, in moving the important resolution said: “Unemployment was now part and parcel of our industrial system; it was produced by the system with the same certainty and accuracy with which the industrial system produced profits.”

Mr. O’Grady in seconding that resolution .said: “The present industrial system was a machine turning out profits on the one hand and unemployed on the other. It was inevitable that it must be so.”

From the foregoing extracts from the most “important” speeches that were uttered on the question, our readers will naturally gather that since unemployment could confessedly only end by the abolition of capitalism, therefore the resolution that was carried by an overwhelming majority urged that steps should immediately be taken to instruct and organise the working class in the work before them, namely, to concentrate upon the capture of the powers of government to the end that the productive powers may be transformed from instruments of oppression and exploitation, into the means of promoting the welfare of those who produce.

But no. That would not have been statesmanlike. It would have been too logical.

This was the resolution actually carried: - 

  That in the opinion of this conference of trade union, Socialist, and co-operative organisations, unemployment is not caused by the free trade policy of the country, and is not averted by periods of good trade, but is a permanent feature of our present industrial organisation. This conference therefore declares that the problem can only be solved by a vigorous use on the part of the Government, and of local authorities, of the legislative and administrative powers, including shortening the hours of labour of public and other employees and protecting the worker from the operation of land and other monopolies, which depopulate the country, overcrowd the towns, lower wages, and increase the share of the national produce which is secured by the idle rich. This conference consequently calls upon the Government to fulfil its promise in the King's Speech of 1906 that it would amend the Unemployed Workmen Act, and it declares that such an amendment to be satisfactory must embody the principles and general policy of the Labour Party's Unemployed Workmen Bill.

And that is so like the Labour Party. The unemployed, you see, can only disappear on the abolition of capitalism, therefore, do not let us take steps to that end, let us ask the capitalists to abolish themselves!

If no unemployed are available, the capitalist loses his great weapon in the cutting down of wages and in the speeding up of the employed, nor is any reserve army available for the expansion of production in busy times, nor are any available to take the place of strikers. Without the deadly competition of the unemployed for jobs, the employed would be enabled to obtain almost the whole available product of their labour. Profits would therefore vanish and capitalism come to an end. Yet the master class are to be asked to themselves abolish the very corner-stone of their dominant existence. This is reasonable, possible, statesman like, reform wisdom.

When we on the other hand insist that since unemployment is inseparable from capitalism, and since from unemployment flow the greatest miseries of the workers, including the wholesale starvation of children, women and men, and since, moreover, the abolition of capitalist exploitation is admittedly the only solution of unemployment, therefore the workers should concentrate upon the capture of political supremacy in order to abolish class exploitation, when we insist upon this, the only logical policy, we are dubbed impossiblists, heresy hunters, or moon-raking rainbow-chasers by those whose hard-headed, practical and "possible” policy consists in requesting of fire that it shall not burn.

A Reform Analysed.

But what is one of the principal factors upon which the Labour Party relies in its solution of the unemployed? It is the reduction of the hours of labour. There is nothing to be said against the reduction of the hours of labour as such, but as a solution of unemployment what could be more fatuous?

From the passing of the Ten Hour Act until the present day nothing is more certain than that the reduction of hours has not in the aggregate of cases decreased, but has caused an increase in productivity. That is to say, instead of more workers being required to produce the same amount as formerly, fewer are actually required. This holds good generally. It is partly due to the fact that the very reduction of hours, by allowing a greater time for the recuperation of the strength to the worker, enables him to put forth a greater effort per hour. He is, indeed, usually compelled to do so, and to produce as much or more in the reduced working day as in the former longer hours.

Further, there are in most departments, mechanical appliances ready for adoption which for the nonce are no cheaper to work than the human machines they would displace. When, however, an increase in the wages bill threatens, these appliances are introduced to save such increased expenditure, and by reason of the continual perfectibility of the machine, particularly due to the experience born of its being put into practical daily working, the appliances improve rapidly and bring about considerable reductions in the number of workers the masters need hire in order to produce the same amount of goods as before.

Therefore the reduction of hours, unless carried to such extreme and wholesale lengths as would require a revolution to accomplish, would not reduce the numbers of the unemployed.

Any reduction of the working day that is introduced by the ruling class will, from the very interests which promote it, be only upon such a scale as is consistent with greater output on the part of the average worker employed and greater profit for the possessing class.

So the reduction of hours, as a "palliative,” instead of requiring more workers to be employed to produce the same amount of wealth as before would, in the long run, actually require less, and would have the tendency to increase rather than diminish the very evil of unemployment against which it was directed. It is, indeed, a typical palliative.

F. C. Watts

Party Notes (1908)

Party News from the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Branch continues to do well. Each week brings fresh tidings of meetings held and literature sold. They attend meetings of other parties, asking questions and offering opposition, and selling Manifestoes. This is distinctly good business. On Jan. 19th Moses Baritz was refused permission to oppose an I.L.P. speaker. Owing to his persistency the Manchester (Central) branch closed the meeting, whereupon Baritz addressed the audience and afterwards had a good sale of our literature.

* * *

At the Co-operative Hall, Burnley, last month, Mr. Philip Snowden was asked bow he reconciled his position with the compacts made by l.L.P. candidates with the Liberals at Leicester and Halifax at the general election. Mr. Snowden denied that any compacts existed.

* * *

A Manchester comrade has sent Mr. Snowden, in a registered envelope, a copt of the Manifesto of the S.P.G.B. in which full particulars of these compacts are given. Mr. Snowden will therefore be enabled to reply to the question differently when he speaks at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on Feb. 2nd.

* * *

The Manifesto is the most comprehensive statement of our position yet made, and all comrades should do their best to push it. A Third Edition is now ready, the second edition of 5,000 being sold out within seven months. This edition should be sold out before the Easter Conference.

* * *

The second of the Kautsky pamphlets will he shortly on sale at a penny. Branches can be supplied at the usual price of 13 copies for 9d.

* * *

The last month has seen a large number of debates, and preparations for several are even now in progress.

* * *

At Poplar on Jan. 12th Anderson debated with R. C. K. Ensor the question of “Reform v. Revolution.” Ensor boasts of being the best educated man in East London, but his arguments on behalf of reform were of the usual kind dealt with in these columns. Will Crooks M.P., was present at the debate and assisted the proceedings by shouting “liar!” “liar!” during the course of Anderson’s speech.

* * *

Although wit and learning were thus combined against us in Poplar, and although our man had to speak first to draw the crowd, some of the audience will have been given furiously to think as a result of hearing a word for the other side.

* * *

The Islington Branch have fixed up a debate in Grovedale Hall, Upper Holloway, on Thursday, Feb. 6th, at 8 p.m., between A. Anderson and Councillor Dey on the question whether “Socialism would be detrimental to the interests of the People.”

* * *

Meetings will be continued on subsequent Thursdays until further notice in Grovedale Hall.

* * *

Fitzgerald debated at Battersea with an Anarchist on the 12th Jan. All the other Anarchists present disagreed with their exponent’s exposition, with the result that Fitzgerald debates again, with another Anarchist, in the same hall. Watch Battersea’s lecture list.

* * *

Tooting Branch have challenged the Rev. Waldron to debate, and he has accepted. Negotiations are pending.

* * *

We have received a letter from Comrade T. Dix, from Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A., in which he draws a gloomy picture of poverty in the land of the free. He corroborates our conviction that there is no essential difference between the conditions of the working class in Protectionist and in Free Trade countries. Comrade Dix sends fraternal greetings to his old comrades. He will be remembered as the secretary of the Tottenham Branch a year or so ago.

* * *

We have pleasure in reporting the formation of a branch of the Party in Clapham. There is plenty of S.P.G.B. work to be done there and anyone willing to assist should communicate with the secretary (see Branch Directory).

* * *

Romford Division Branch are making satisfactory progress in their new Club premises. On Jan. 19th J. Kent dealt with other parties, specially criticising the Ilford Socialist Party. The discussion was long and lively, and was eventually adjourned to Feb. 2nd.

* * *

At the S.P.G.B. Club, 27, York Road, Ilford, a speaker’s class is held every Thursday, at 9 p.m., conducted by J. Kent.

K.

Legality and Revolution (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Because, with the International, we shout warnings of the pitfalls to the workers of France, whom it is sought to divert from political action under the pretexts of the general strike and other operations of the holy ghost of Anarchism, some of the bourgeois press conclude that we have more and more the physiognomy of a parliamentary party. According to them we have renounced revolutionary procedure.

But then - you will think - there must be rejoicing among the conservative genus; surely the fatted calf already turns on the spit for the return of the collectivist sheep to the fold of legality.

Hasten to correct yourselves. Our brave quill-drivers start from what they call our rally or conversion to parliamentarism to denounce us with greater vehemence, and to vanquish us under the redoubled fire of their anathemas.

What, then, is this mystery? And how explain such contradictory language? Quite simply by this - which is not at all mysterious - that our adversaries do not believe a word of what they tell their readers. They know that far from turning the back to the revolution we maintain and impel the army of the workers in the revolutionary road, when, instead of allowing it to engage itself in the blind alley of a systematized strike, we show it the political power -the state - to be conquered.

This conquest is, indeed, an indispensable condition of the social revolution, in other words, of the transformation of capitalist property into social property. It is only after and by the political expropriation of the capitalist class that its economic expropriation can be achieved, as is recognised by the common programme of Socialists the world over.

In order to restore the means of wealth production to the producers, there must be a proletariat having become the government and making law. It remains now to be seen how from being as now a governed class, the workers can and will become the governing class. The ballot, which has already installed us in numerous Hôtels de Ville and which has put an important minority into the Palais Bourbon is the first means. But will it be the sole?

No more than we believed this yesterday do we believe it to-day. But since when, because it will not be all, must legal action be therefore nothing? Far from excluding each other, electoral action and revolutionary action complete each other, and have always completed each other in our country where - for all parties - the victorious insurrection has been but the consequence, the crowning of the ballot.

The antagonism that it is sought to establish - useless to enquire why - between the suffrage which commences and the stroke of force which terminates, has never existed except in the hollowest of phrases. History, all history, is there to demonstrate that the deviations from legality have always and necessarily been preceded by the usages and employment of that legality as long as it served as a defensive - and offensive - arm to the new idea, to the new interests in their recruitment, and while the revolutionary situation had not yet been produced.

It was legally and electorally that Orleanism prepared its advent to power. That, however, did not prevent it finally coming to musket shots in a three days’ battle. The “glorious” three days immortalised by the July column.

It was legally, electorally, that Bonapartism installed itself at the Elysée. But this did not prevent it from employing force - and what force! The rifle killing Baudin, and the cannon shattering the Boulevard Montmartre - in order to move into the Tuilleries as the third and last Empire.

The Republic was no exception to this rule. Twice (under the July monarchy and under the Empire) it legally and electorally constituted its army and partly gained the country. But this again did not prevent the Republic, in order to become the 1907 government presided over by M. Fallières, from having to pass through a violent accouchement by means of the forceps of street battles.

Well! Socialism to-day is legalist, electoralist, by the same title as all other political parties which have preceded it, and which are at present coalesced against it with what remains of their virility. We do not pretend to innovate, we content ourselves with the means of struggle and victory which have served others and of which we will serve ourselves in our turn. If anything is particularly idiotic it is the divergence that has been made between the means, divided into legal and illegal, into pacific and violent, in order to admit the one and exclude the other.

There is not, and there never will be, other than a single category of means, determined by circumstances: those which conduct to end pursued. And these means are always revolutionary when there is a question of a revolution to be accomplished.

The vote, however legal it may be, is revolutionary when on the basis of class candidatures it organises France of labour against France of capital. Parliamentary action, however pacific is may be, is revolutionary when from the height of the tribune of the Chambre it beats the call to the discontented of the workshop, field and counter; and when it drives capitalist society to bay in the refusal or powerlessness of the latter to give the workers satisfaction.

Anti-revolutionary, reactionary in the highest degree, would the riot on the other hand be, in spite of its character of illegality and violence, because by furnishing the popular blood-letting that moribund capitalism needs for survival, the riot would put back the hour of deliverance. Not less anti-revolutionary, not less reactionary -and for the same reason - is all attempt at general strike that is condemned, through working-class and peasant divisions, to the most disastrous and abortive results.

The duty of the Socialist Party is to avoid as a snare, as a machination of the enemy or to the profit of the enemy, all that which in spite of its scarlet and explosive character would mislead and uselessly exhaust our forces of the first line; and to use parliament, as we use the press and the meetings, in order to complete the proletarian education and organisation, and to bring to a conclusion the revolution that is prepared by this end of at social order.

(Translated from Le Socialisme)

Jules Guesde