What Does Life Mean To You? (1928)

From the February 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the present writer, about the most remarkable feature in modern life is the lack of interest displayed by the working class in their economic condition. They seem to accept their status of beasts of burden as a matter of course, a state of affairs to be put up with without grousing. A job of work seems to be the highest aspiration they have. Round that revolve their hopes and fears. A job of work brings them all the joy of life they ever know—food, clothing, shelter, a turn at the “pictures,” a new gramophone record, fags, and a bob for “seed” for the “bird.” For these things they start like horses on Monday morning, and finish like cows, complacently chewing the cud of future milking, on Saturday afternoon.

That cow-like satisfaction is, indeed, considered to be the hall-mark of the “respectable” working man who has “something to be thankful for,” i.e., a job. Inasmuch as it is the sign of a contented mind, it is the highest of the virtues now that it is not fashionable to treat discontented minds to bullets and bayonets except as a last resource. And as the vast majority of the workers have jobs, contented minds are a vast majority also.

The miseries of the workless workers are patent. The worker out of work is conscious of his unhappy position. The writer has no desire to spend ink on that side of the case. But all the workless worker wants, as a rule, is work. Given that, and relieved of the immediate fear of losing it, he becomes as complacent as his fellows who know not what unemployment is.

Yet what is that “life” which they embrace with such equanimity? No farmer works his horses as long hours as he works his men. The workers live to work. They are instruments for the production of profit. The bread they eat, the clothes they wear, the houses they live in, are not so much necessaries of life as necessaries for the production of that labour-power, that energy, which is to be expended in the creation of profit. And, saddest thought of all, those who live only to labour and to exude profit, are so used to this aspect of life that they have become dead to the real meaning of the word.

To the savage mind, the wage worker is a “slave of a slave.” What would the peasant proprietor of mediaeval times have thought of the idea of bartering his whole life for the meagre means of maintaining it? And, before him, the serf, by no means a free man—how would he have received the bestial proposal? In no epoch have men succeeded in fastening on their fellows fetters so galling; never have they succeeded in so completely robbing vast populations of their lives, as under the wages system. In days of chattel slavery, though the slave’s position as such was noon-day clear, no means existed of bringing him under such intense exploitation as in the case of the wage slave. As the farmer to-day does not work his horses so long as his men, because they are property and subject to deterioration, so the slave-owner could not proceed to extremities with his human cattle, for the reason that they also were property, subject to deterioration. Cases of brutality do not alter the general truth of this. No means of discipline capable of wide application existed under chattel slavery so effective as the fear of getting the sack is now to a wage earner.

So, in spite of all the superficial trappings of ”civilisation,” the “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” those who do the weaving and the spinning which the lilies of the field do not do, are in some respects in worse case than the bondmen of any previous age. The mediaeval worker, whether serf or peasant, truly worked in order to live. The products of his labour had a different meaning to him from that of the wealth produced by the modern worker. They were, for the most part, the means of his sustenance, created to enable him to live his day and enjoy it. A few weeks in the year—some 14 or 15—and he had wrested from nature his material requirements for the year.

To-day, existence for the workers has become, indeed, as the poet says: “ Life’s fitful fever.” Because he is free (though afraid) to refuse to work for any particular master, the whole tragic truth of his slave condition is hidden from him. He sees himself as a free unit in a free system, less fortunate than some, but never so badly off but that he can find some poor devil in sorer straits. He gets a few hours off every week, but cannot see that they are merely respites from toil necessary for recuperation in the interests of his employer. He gets so little leisure that his “pleasures” must be speeded up, like his work, in order that he may enjoy a bit of “life.” But all his days are tainted with the fear of unemployment, and his very holidays, if he is lucky enough to get any, are poisoned by the thought that it is “ back to work next week.”

Oh, my fellow-workers, can you not see the tragedy of it all? You are being robbed of life. If it was merely your purse, you would kick hard enough. Why will you not challenge this insolent verdict of your masters that you are merely beasts of burden, existing only to produce profits for them, sacrificing your whole lives in order to make the world luxurious and glorious for them! The Carthaginian slave, chained to his master’s portal, has engaged the pity of centuries; but the time will come when men, seeing with clearer vision, will revolt with even greater abhorrence from the spectacle of the modern worker chained to his machine. And how many thousands of to-day’s hopeless toilers there are who would gladly accept the chains of the ancient bondman, with his security of food and shelter, and surcease of worry !

It is hardly to be expected that men and women who have not realised their grievances will take even the first step towards abolishing them. It is for this reason the fervent hope of the writer that these lines may turn the thoughts of those whom circumstances have not driven to desperation, to what life really is for them, and what it might be under a social system whose every activity was actuated by the motive of the greatest good and happiness of the members of the community. Those who have become desperate are not always the best material to work out the remedy for their ills. Those whose plight is not so bad may be in worse straits to-morrow. Let them, therefore, study the Socialist proposition, for that alone offers them the full and joyous life that should be theirs.

A. E. Jacomb

Tear Away the Veils that Blind! (1928)

Editorial from the February 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

The system that oppresses us to-day has centred in the hands of a few the control of the wealth produced by the many. Like an echo of this the blind strivings of the workers for freedom from oppression has centred the control of their organisations in the hands of a few trade union and political leaders. For decades the cult of leadership has lain like a blight on the struggles of the workers. The International Working Men’s Association opened full of promise, but was split and broken by this foul disease; its successors were born with this birth-mark upon them and linger a living testimony of futility.

The parties that claim the suffrages of the working-class to-day are, with one exception, saturated with the worship of the “great.” Avowed enemies, or professing friends, they alike deserve the uncompromising hostility of the workers.

The Labour Party, which opened its political career as the self-appointed guardians of the interests of the working class, after a long period of active work quenching the fires of revolution, and heading off almost every aspiration that promised progress to the workers, has finally graduated into the official opposition, the grave of dead hopes. Its leaders preach and pen empty platitudes, futile reforms that have seldom even the merit of simplicity. Intellectually bankrupt, undisciplined and eternally torn with dissension, it forms a solid barrier across the path to working-class emancipation.

The Independent Labour Party, having been built up on the same shifting sands of reform, is useless, and worse than useless, for the purpose of' achieving Socialism. It is irrevocably bound up with the Labour Party. It is in name “independent,” but one single independent blow for Socialism would bring upon it the open opposition of the Labour Party machine, would rend it from top to bottom and destroy the illusion that it is a real political force.

The Communist Party spurns Parliament and watches leaders, in theory. In practice, it helps into prominence and position the ghouls of the social battlefield, and prepares, a shambles for its guileless victims. With every change in the Russian situation it changes its policy and tactics. The “heroes” of yesterday are the “Petit Bourgeois” of to-day, and the “trusted leaders” of to-day will be the “traitors” of to-morrow. And as Russia, in harmony with historico-economic laws, daily proves more and more clearly that a society “can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development,” so the water of capitalism enters the milk of Communism in increasing abundance. The latter loses its driving force, and the wiser political charlatans turn to the richer field of spoil in the Labour Party.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed to propagate great principles and not “great” men. From the beginning the Party unflinchingly rejected all attempts at taking out of the hands of the working-class the control of its destiny, taking as a motto the watchwords, "The emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself.” The social sufferer, like the sick, is slow to grasp the cause of his sufferings and prone to place his trust in those who promise quick relief —at a price. Hence we, who urge the worker to raise himself and conquer the world for himself, have made headway very slowly, and only after much toil. But we have made progress. Slowly the seed we have sown is bearing fruit. Here and there through the world, modest though it be at present, the germs of a greater International than the world has ever known is struggling into being. Here and there in the mighty cities that crowd the earth the voices of brother slaves have echoed our message: “Too long have the toilers been the playthings of the idle and the ambitious; let the capitalist world tremble at the upward march of its grave-diggers.”

Letter: Are Our Views On Russia Correct? (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Below is a letter from an American reader, with our reply.

San Francisco Labor College,

San Francisco.

Editor of SOCIALIST STANDARD,

I have been requested by some of the members of the Labor College to say a few words to you in regard to the last issue of the STANDARD.

On account of the front page article on "The Class Struggle in Russia," it became impossible for us to sell this issue at our regular meetings. The position taken in this article comes very dangerously close to the position taken by the anarchists in Russia to-day. You do not seem to grasp the difference between Democracy and Dictatorship. If the Bolsheviki did not act in a strong dictatorial manner, and had not acted in this way in the past, then the chances are about 999 out of a thousand that the capitalists would be in control of Russia to-day. 

Trotsky is right in some of the criticisms that he makes. But on other things he is wrong, that is, if he is quoted correctly on democracy.

Also it has been called to my attention that, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Soviet Russia last November, the STANDARD did not have very much to say.

We value the SOCIALIST STANDARD on account of its lucid position on World Capitalism, but we would like to see it take a different attitude in regard to Soviet Russia. Yours for Socialism,

JOHN LOHEIT

(Secretary).

OUR REPLY.

Our critic makes a number of sweeping statements, but does not attempt to give particular instances of our alleged wrong policy, nor does he support his assertions with evidence. Our attitude on Russia is precisely the same as it was when the Bolsheviks seized power. We said then, and say now, that Socialism could not be established in that backward country, dominated as it is by an overwhelming majority of peasants and lacking a highly-developed industrial organisation. Neither the Bolsheviks nor any other dictators can revolutionise the economic basis of society by issuing decrees, nor by exiling or imprisoning all who are guilty of pointing out these obvious facts. Our critic tells us that, if the Bolsheviks had not been dictatorial, the capitalists would almost certainly be in control of Russia to-day. If by this he means to make the astounding assertion that Socialism has replaced Capitalism in Russia, we challenge him to produce one single scrap of evidence. Apart from this, it is interesting to notice that one specific charge made by Trotsky is that Russian industry has become so utterly dependent on credits granted by German and other banks and traders, that in fact Russian policy is again dictated, as it was before the war, by German and other foreign financial groups.

Our critic has apparently overlooked the explicit statement in the article referred to that we could not guarantee the accuracy of Trotsky's estimates of conditions, and that we did not accept all his views on policy. We published the quotations for the information of our readers. Would our critics have us suppress all news and views which we find disagreeable, as is, it seems, the suicidal policy advocated by some of the communists?

If those who consider our Russian policy not in accordance with the facts and with the interests of the working class will point out wherein it is wrong, we shall be pleased to answer their objections.

Edgar Hardcastle