South Africa and Ireland: Lessons for the Misguided. (1914)

From the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa is in strike turmoil that has set the Union Government in such a panic that, in addition to the most elaborate military precautions, it is described as a revolution more than a labour quarrel. Yet the demand of the strikers is for the reinstatement of the men displaced by the economies effected in the railway service by a policy of retrenchment!

The Capitalists’ Risks

Making full allowance for the fact that any will do to hang a quarrel on when a quarrel is brewing, it is difficult to imagine a revolution in any way connected with what the red flag, that decorated the streets of Johannesburg, is supposed to indicate, being dependent upon a question of capitalist administration.

On the other hand, the Government in South Africa have expressed the opinion that the present trouble arises from the presence of “agitators,” and that when these are successfully deported the trouble will cease. This is flattering to the agitators, but very doubtfully true to facts.

The most successful labour agitator must have the conditions for his success present, and the discontent must arise from something material in addition to the appeals of the agitator. The following figures from an article which appeared in the "Daily Telegraph” (Jan. 15th, 1914) may help to explain the economic conditions on which the “agitator” had to work:

  In 1912 the Rand, as it, is colloquially known, produced in round figures, £37,000,000 of gold. Over £13,500,000 of that vast sum was paid in wages, £7,865,000 going to Europeans of whom 23,518 were employed on the mines, and £5,691,000 to South African natives, of whom 193,351 were employed. Stores and supplies consumed on the Rand cost nearly ten millions sterling; £5,800,000 was spent in development work, leaving a balance of about £8,000,000 to be distributed as dividends to investors who had furnished the necessary capital for the mining enterprises.

Why Safety cannot be Afforded

It is interesting to note that the “investors who had furnished the necessary capital” had already had that capital returned to them in dividends up to forty-four times over, drawing 12 per dividend.

The “Daily Telegraph” says further:

   Some of the Rand mining companies have made enormous returns to their shareholders. There are 115 companies on the Rand from which returns were received, and it is impossible to give details of all of them, but a few typical instances of high dividends may be mentioned. The Ferreira Company, since its flotation has paid 4,415 per cent, on its capital, and has distributed nearly four millions sterling in dividends. The Crown Reed has paid 2,404 per cent. ; the Johannesburg Pioneer 2,107½ per cent. ; the Emmer, 1,237 per cent. ; the Meyer and Charlton, 1,105 per cent, ; the Durban Roodeport, 1,100 per cent. ; the Crown Mines, 1,067½ per cent. ; the New Hereto, 992½ per cent. ; the New Primrose 817 ½ per cent. ; and there have been many distributions amounting in the aggregate to 200, 300, and 400 per cent, and upwards. The total sum paid in dividends by the Rand mines amounts to £88,159,489. If the whole of the Transvaal gold mines be included, the payments to shareholders reach the colossal total of £91,462,773 distributed between 1887 and 1912.

Then if we recall the articles that went the rounds of the Press last July on the occasion of the former strike on the Rand, which showed how short-lived the miner was on account of the mortality from a form of phthisis resulting from breathing the dust-laden atmosphere, we shall get a further glimpse of the motive force behind the agitator.

The Answers to Industrialists

Apart, however, from the actual conditions of labour for white workers in South Africa, which on the showing of the above figures represent a degree of exploitation seldom to be met with – and leaving out the industrial position occupied by the native blacks and the imported Indians, which is infinitely worse – the attitude of the Government is enlightening. There is a growing body of labour opinion in this country and elsewhere, that contemns and belittles the political forces which we Socialists pronounce of the very first importance. In South Africa a big strike is on, and a general strike is threatened, and the answer of the capitalist Government is the mailed fist—the mobilisation of all forms of the weaponed arm of the law. With it the capitalist Government can batter the working class into submission, whether it, be in Johannesburg or Dublin.

The same lesson was taught by the strike of French railway workers that was scotched in a similar way—by calling up the military reserve, many of whom were of the strikers.

That lesson was quite lost upon the Industrialists. They argue that a general strike will bring society to a standstill. Which may be true, but the working class are at a hungry standstill easily first. The workers cannot hope to starve the masters into surrender. In the starvation handicap the workers are half way along the course to start with. Nor can they fight the masters, while the latter control the fighting machinery. Nor can they lock the master out while he holds the keys. If and when they are ready to stop capitalist exploitation, and expropriate the master class, granting they will instinctively turn to direct and immediate force to express such a conviction, we ask as—How will they use the vote they already possess?

The Weapon of the Vote.

According to the attitude of the Syndicalist, he would not use it at all. To tell him that the vote is —or should be—the modern, civilised methods of registering the opinions of citizens leaves him cold. Historical explanations of the growth and significance of the vote merely cause his lips to curl. But the majority of votes controls the policy of government, and if you refuse the social expression of your opinion you leave the majority with the enemy; your case is lost by default.

To be ready to right against capitalism and to refuse to vote against it is to us sheer folly—folly in its own account, and rank madness when the voting is an essential preliminary to successful fighting, and may even render the lighting unnecessary. The “agitators,” therefore, in South Africa may be arch-Larkins, but they are not Socialists. For the Socialist always emphasises the importance of the political weapon. It is this very emphasis that has enabled the Labour members here to steal our thunder, and substitute the form for the substance. While we insist on the necessity of political representation for Socialism, they insist upon political representation only, with themselves as the representatives.

The colour or creed of the capitalist government does not matter in the least. When Larkin brought his fiery cross across the Irish Sea, in his first speech here, at the Albert Hall, he said it was important that the Dublin strike should be won, but it was a thousand times more important that the Home Rule Bill should go through. Which shows that Larkin doesn’t understand the working-class position. For does not the situation in South Africa show the Boer generals— Delarey, Botha, and the rest who were prepared to fight for independence for South Africa, hand in glove, shoulder to shoulder, with their erstwhile opponents against the working class?

What Larkin Does Not Know

And so in Ireland, the Home Rulers, with the passing of the Bill that Mr. Larkin thinks so important, would be found side by side with Carson, Law, Smith & Co. against the workers.

The incident in South Africa is a glaring instance of the fundamental nature of the class struggle, and a standing example of how it overshadows any sectional difference between the masters, which all Socialists know, and which Larkin does not.

The same thing is going on in Dublin. The authorities are inclined to blame the “agitators,” and made the mistake South Africa is copying of imprisoning them. The forces of law and order ran amok and battered people not wisely but too well. The official investigation that was to follow has provided an illuminating spectacle. The process of white-washing is so flagrant that a Liberal member of Parliament who saw the battering and was going to throw light on the investigation has been badly snubbed and is disgusted. It is to be hoped he makes a noise when Parliament meets, but it is to be feared he is too loyal a Liberal to have the heart to inconvenience an administration that is already up against difficulties enough. After his timely rescue of the Government last session when they were threatened with a minority on a snap division, surely he will not round on them now! They must explain things to him.

The conduct of the police, however, can only be considered from their point of view as indiscreetly over-zealous, and one can quite understand the displeasure of the legal luminaries engaged upon the difficult task of glossing over so rough a case, at an English M.P. “poking his nose in,” as they expressed it.

As the action of the police in Dublin was no different in kind, if it were in degree, from their action in Wales and in Cornwall, when a Commission does sit on the matter, it may as well include in its terms of reference those and other cases besides Dublin.

But the present writer is strongly of the opinion that if the working class do not want the police force, and the army, and the navy, and the bench, and the rest of the present social machinery, used against them, the only way is to grasp the power that wields these forces, which is to be had by the casting of a vote in the right way, with the consciousness and the intentions of the Socialist behind it. You must get behind the gun; you must guide the policeman’s baton from the centre of government. The capture of the political machinery is still the essential preliminary to a successful working-class revolution.

Dick Kent

" . . . saved before it is too late," (1914)

From the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will the pious Christian who last month stole a copy of the Socialist Standard from a public library in order to send us thereon the hope that one of our contributors might “be saved before it is too late," apply at this office for a copy of one of the Commandments which he got into the envelope evidently by error.

Answers to Correspondents. (1914)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the same town (Coventry), on the same date, we received two queries on similar general lines, though, perhaps, different in detail.

G.S. wishes to know if he would be consistent in joining the S.P.G.B., as he believes in Industrial Unionism. H.K. says he agrees with the principles of the S.P.G.B. and also with the principles of the I.W.G.B., (meaning. I suppose, the Industrial Workers of Great Britain), and asks, would he be logical in joining the S.P.G.B.

The similarity lies in both stating that they believe in Industrial Unionism. But whereas H.K. specifies the particular type be endorses, G.S. merely gives the general phrase.

There happens, however, to be a common ground of agreement between all sections of Industrial Unionism, namely, that the workers can take and hold the means of production through an economic organisation, and this whether they add or exclude political action as a detail of their case.

This basic factor necessarily places its supporters in opposition to the Socialists, who maintain that the capitalist class rules through its possession of political power, and that the economic supremacy of the masters — that is, their ownership of the means of production — is entirely dependent upon this political power, through which they make laws and raise and maintain the force (Army, Navy, Police, etc.) necessary to carry out those laws in their own class interest.

The above position is laid down briefly in the Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B. Hence acceptance of these principles must — logically and consistently—include a rejection of the nonsense that the workers can “take and hold" the means of production by an economic organisation while the master class are left in possession of the political power.

How the workers could “take and hold" while the masters had control of the fighting forces, no Industrial Unionist has ever been able to tell us, though we have had numerous debates, oral and written, with them.

G.S. and H. K., therefore, would be acting illogically and inconsistently in joining the S.P.G.B. while accepting the principles of Industrial Unionism.

Jack Fitzgerald

The Class Struggle Is on. (1914)

Editorial from the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

In obedience to the poet’s command, old Time rolls on. And the ever changing sequence of events which he drags after him, in spite of the fact that they ore ever-changing, bear a remarkable similarity, day after day, in their main features. All over the place strikes and rumours of strikes All over the place the mustering of organised and drilled and armed bodies of men to preserve “law and order.” Here the coal porters and carmen resort to the weapon of the strike in the endeavour to induce their “very good friends and humble servants," their Liberal and Tory employers, to shell out a little more wages ; there the Catholic workers of Dublin wear thin in a long death struggle with their Catholic masters; yonder corporation tramway men come to grips with those who control "people's trams.” In South Africa the “Outlanders” set up the “red flag” against the inevitable results of “nationalized” railways, and a new “miner’s war” finds all old sores healed between Boer and British masters, who deal out in touching unity to the white miners, and as lavishly as if it cost nothing, the same medicine that a few weeks ago these same white miners helped them to deal out to their Indian and native fellow workers.

The taxi-cab drivers try to find surcease from strife in a trade union effort to run their own cabs, and the ’buss men talk of following suit. The commercial traveller on the ’buss confides to the conductor the opinion that "the King and the rich people ought to go round by the docks at 6 o’clock in the morning—as I have done—and see the poor fellows” and so on. The old lady in the train is heard to declare that “in all these strikes it is the poor that suffer,” and to suggest the novel remedy of “ taking it to the Lord in prayer.”

In all this confusion only the Socialist Party holds a clear and consistent course. Other working-class organisations ship heavy seas of confusion and head now this war and now that, as a rudderless ship will. First there is a class struggle, then there is not; at one time the Liberals are the enemy, at another time the Tories; now political action is sufficient for the workers’ emancipation, anon only “direct action” is of use at all.

The Socialist Party, however, at its inception pointed out definitely the essential facts of the working-class position, and laid its policy down in a course buoyed with clearly formulated principles which, after nearly ten years of stress and storm, still mark the course as distinctly and as safely as at first

We have not said the most that can be said for them when we have said the lapse of a decade has revealed no weak spot in those principles, nor presented any need to add anything to them, or to take anything away. They have proved sufficient, as they have proved sound. And more than this, the events which follow day by day, and which are dealing such blows at the quasi working class parties, and stripping the masks from their vain pretences, are hall-marking our principles as fundamental, and confirming our position as impregnable.

Every day those who deny the class struggle find it more difficult to hold their own against the siege guns of fact. When it is seen that no differences of religion, no political barrier, no race hatred or sex jealousies, can keep the masters of the world from joining hands in a struggle with the workers, it is clearly enough demonstrated that the Class Struggle is on. When it is observed that common religion, common race, common politics, and common sex fail to save the workers in the industrial strife, again it is clearly enough demonstrated that the Class Struggle is on. When it is seen that in every case of resort to the armed forces in the name of “law and order,” those armed forces, those pitiless weapons, are turned always toward the workers, still again it is proved that the Class Struggle is on. So we are we confirmed in the very foundation of our policy.

And when it is seen how helpless the workers are everywhere in face of the organised forces of repression, how even the best equipped and most desperate are compelled to surrender and go to prison without firing a shot because they know the futility of attempting to withstand the forces controlled by Parliament, then the necessity for obtaining control of that political machinery as the essential preliminary to taking possession of the means of life is irresistibly borne in upon the intelligent. Thus are we being supported by current events in our insistence upon the extreme importance of the political weapon.

Perhaps the moat significant feature of events to-day is that those who reject the political weapon in favour of what they are pleased to call “direct action” make no headway. Everywhere their earlier efforts have been their most successful, or rather, their least inglorious. It is ever the capitalist authorities that gain by experience. Each recurring attempt at “direct action” finds the master class more easily able to deal with it. Wherever Syndicalism springs up this is so, and appealing only to ignorance, having no support of scientific knowledge, having nothing but the effects of “direct action” to sustain it, it must automatically cure its victims with its succession of ghastly failures.

The Socialist Party, firmly founded on the Class Struggle, holding resolutely to the need for the workers to advance to their emancipation through the conquest of the political machinery, is the hope of the working class. Its Class Struggle foundation keeps it free from those who would have one foot in the capitalist camp; its political policy prevents it from leaning on any but class conscious workers. Hence it can not be betrayed by ambitious misleaders on the one hand, or experience defeats on the other. So when the bitterness of disappointment eats into the hearts and saps the courage of those who are burning their fingers with fire and cutting them with edged tools, the Socialist Party will stand between them and despair, as the only Party that has consistently fought for Socialism, the only Party that has never confused the issue by compromising with the masters, the only Party that has never led the workers into the morass of confusion, the only Party that has never tasted defeat, but has gone steadily on from victory to victory, as it has gone steadily on from strength to strength.

That is one of, the first of our reasons for opposing those misguided people of our class, utterly without reference to what their intentions may be, who are spending their energies in the vain pursuit of error. The time will come when error presents on further possibilities to be exhausted. Well then, for the working class, that they can find one policy they have never tried, one path they have never trodden, one weapon they have never found fail them — the policy and path of the Socialist Party — the weapon of political action on class-conscious, uncompromising, revolutionary lines.

So we go on as we have gone on, declaring that the only way is by the capture of the political machinery by means of the ballot, by the organised, politically educated workers. This implies that the first need is to politically educate and organise the workers. In the pursuit of which purpose the first essential is to adopt such a policy of stern opposition to all other political parties and objects as should leave no doubt as to what the issue is or who the enemy are, and make clear the class nature of the fight.