These Foolish Things: Lies, damned lies and . . . (1996)

The Scavenger column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lies, damned lies and . . .

DSS data show: Numbers living below half average income rose from 5 million (9 percent of the population) in 1979 to 14.1 million (25 percent) in 1992-93. Richest tenth of the population had 62 percent rise in income, poorest tenth a 17 percent cut.

But Peter Lilley’s study shows the top fifth of male earners in 1978 enjoyed a 33 percent rise in real earnings by 1992/93. But bottom fifth increased earnings by 42 percent. Guardian, 27 June.

Honey, I shrunk the housekeeping

Nearly 30 percent of workers in the West Midlands have experienced unemployment since the last general election, Margaret Beckett, shadow trade and industry' secretary told a meeting. Addressing the annual lunch of the West Midlands CBI, Mrs Beckett said that 29 percent of the West Midlands work force—579,340 men and 296,980 women—had been out of work at least once in the last four years. Evening Mail, 11 July.

Welsh coolies?

The gusto with which the Government welcomed yesterday’s decision by the Korean electronics firm, LG, to create 6,000 jobs in Wales underlines the ministerial belief that inward investment is the industrial policy of the 1990s . . . Britain is attractive because it is cheap and getting cheaper. Britain is close to the bottom of the European league table for labour costs, which are around half those in Germany or Switzerland, but the recent spate of investment from the dynamic Asian economies such as Taiwan or Korea suggests Britain’s labour costs—in regions such as Wales, at least—are now lower than those on the Pacific Rim. Guardian, 11 July.

Money mad

Mental health services for the severely disturbed are on the point of collapse, with the safety of patients, health staff and the public at risk in some areas because of a lack of beds, the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned yesterday . . . (Professor Thompson said]: “We fully support the principles of care in the community, but this cannot be done if it is not properly resourced and we are in that situation. We are aware of plans to close remaining psychiatric beds in many areas and concentrate on community services. This is no longer an option.” Money from the sale of old asylums had not been put back into psychiatric services, and hospital beds were not available to readmit patients if they relapsed into serious illness. Guardian, 11 July.

Real education

Cadbury Schweppes chairman Dominic Cadbury has told Birmingham businessmen that university students should pay their own tuition fees in order to save taxpayers’ cash . . . And Mr Cadbury questioned the value of arts degrees—unless they armed graduates with skills for the work place . . . Mr Cadbury, who was educated at Eton, Trinity College, Cambridge and Stanford University, said: ‘‘The taxpayer’s investment in university graduates is many times greater than that in the school leaver” Evening Mail, 17 July.

The Scavenger

A world of waste. (1917)

From the September 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps the chief characteristic of the present regime is the production of colossal wealth by the workers of the world. In no period has the earth been so ransacked for its potential riches; in no age have the forces of nature, and scientific knowledge, been so utilised to extract wealth as during the last fifty years. In the domain of earth, sea, and air, man exerts wonderful power. Ultimately he may even prevent earthquakes from being a menace, make plagues impossible, and turn the uncontrolled force in the lightning stroke, and the energies of the sea and the sunlight, to the common good.

Man, alas ! has assisted in his own enslavement. The wealth he has shaped has diverted him from the destiny that should be his. With all his great heritage, wielding untold potency through science, he should be happier far than those of ages gone. Health and real happiness, knowledge and power, should be his in excelsis were he but the real possessor of his own productions, the disposer of his own powers.

But a blight has settled over Society—the blight of capitalism ! That which blossoms and promises abundance for all is turned to foulness, and the fruit it bears is bitter.

And so we see the saddest spectacle of the ages—the vast masses of the people, who are the wealth producers, surrounded by gigantic wealth yet themselves in stint and wretchedness.

Poverty, ceaseless toil, disease, and misery are theirs. Slaves without knowing it are most of them, contented with their chains. Without hope and bereft of ideals, their lives sunless and shorn of imagination by this system that exploits and finally “scaps” them, they exist only as beasts of burden. The epitaph of millions might justly be : “In the grip of the capitalist system they were compelled to waste their very lives.” For capitalism, with all its Midas-like power, produces, from its very nature, the most terrible waste imaginable. It is, indeed, in the final and real sense, the essence of wastefulness and misdirected energy.

Let us consider now some aspects in which this is presented.

The children of the workers suffer from malnutrition—due to the inability of their exploited parents to supply them with the necessary food. Often they come into the world the offspring of ill-nourished parents, thus being handicapped from the start. They grow up puny, and continue to be ill-fed, and the most important fundamental is missing from Society : healthy, strong children. The wastage of potential citizens and wealth producers through capitalism is enormous.

Then they are educated. And what an education it is ! What efforts are made to develop them physically, to make them sturdy, robust, so that existence becomes enjoyable ? Their own innate tendencies are but rarely encouraged ; their talents are rarely discovered and developed. Individuality is crushed out of them by the system of education, and the imaginative faculty is looked upon as something to be eradicated ! A smattering of this and that is given them, and many of the most valuable kinds of knowledge are denied them altogether.

Thus they are turned out of the schools, half-baked products of capitalistic instruction, with minds impaired by narrow national prejudices, designated “patriotism.” They are given only enough “education” to make them docile and industrious wage-slaves. All knowledge that would be dangerous to the present system, and all history of the struggles of the workers in the past to gain freedom, are glossed over, lied about, or hidden from them.

Now consider the hap-hazard employment of children under the system, and their development into full-grown wage-slaves.

Few of the workers can exercise a choice worth calling such in the profession or trade of their children. They take what presents itself. The medical, legal, and scientific professions are excluded by lack of opportunities. Money paves the way. The one idea is to so place them that they may “make a living.” The consequence is that the potential artist, scientist, author or architect becomes a mere drudge.

The world will never know what a wealth of intellect and power is thus dissipated and lost.

Socialism, with its utilisation of human ability for the world’s Commonwealth, alone is the remedy. It alone presents the opportunities.

The youthful workers become inured to the system, and generally everything that is is taken as a matter of course. The workers’ lives are spent in creating wealth. Their very lives are not their own. They become mere drudges. A fatalism is engendered that makes many end their slave existence as they began it—by blindly accepting it. Others may understand their trade interests and become trade unionists, yet never possess the key to emancipation—class-consciousness.

One final word on the gigantic waste manifesting itself in a thousand ways. Through their hellish system the masters are compelled to maintain huge fighting forces to conserve their interests. Intetests of rival groups of capitalists clash and war is precipitated, and air, sea and land become the scenes of hideous waste—waste of life and wealth.

Millions have been slaughtered, millions maimed for life. Desolation, ruin, and famine cover the earth. War has created a wilderness of untold waste.

Workers, the one remedy that lies in your hands is Socialism. Organise for the establishment of that system in order that human energy and ability shall no longer be run to waste, in order, instead, that you may reap the fruits of your labours and peace and prosperity be yours. So shall you become masters of your own destiny ; so shall man come into his own and realise his infinite capacity to make this globe worth living on ; so shall be established, as never before, happiness and liberty for the multitudes of all nations, founded upon the wealth that flows like water from their concerted efforts.

“Isn’t this worth fighting for” think you?

G.

Ninepence for Fourpence. (1912)

From the October 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Everyone does not appreciate deep economic arguments, but every workman can appreciate between getting 9d. and 4d.”

Thus spake Mr. Lloyd George—beg pardon, Lord Limehouse, the (rare and refreshing) fruit merchant, addressing a “Labour” deputation on June 20, 1911.

Mr. McKenna, not to be outdone by the load-line raiser, said : “The fundamental fact is that the workman contributes 4d. and gets 9d.”

* * *

 

You are to get 9d. But turn from the official report of the aforementioned deputation (Cd. 5869.) to leaflet 2393 of the National Liberal Federation, which says :—

“Of course, this does not mean that for every 4d. paid the insured person always gets 9d. Back.”

I hope every workman “can appreciate” that. You get 9d.—but not always. A kind of three card trick. Find, the 9d. among Lloyd George’s knaves.

* * *

 

It isn’t an employers’ Bill, oh, no ! Look, however, at Lloyd George’s speech to the deputation from the Chambers of Commerce (30.6.11), introduced by Lord Brassey :—

“Under the Compensation Act the workmen malinger at the expense of the employer, but under this Bill they will malinger at their own expense. If a man malingers he cannot draw more money from the State, he cannot draw more from the employer. He will have to find the deficiency out of his own pocket.” (Same report.)

* * *

 

“That is a very important point for the protection of the employer which I am surprised you have overlooked. … I quite agree with Mr. Parkes [Tory M.P. for Birmingham] that the doctor is perhaps the most important and essential person in this connection, and it is also very important that he should be put in an independent position, and that is why, as far as I am concerned, I should be very glad if the House of Commons took the responsibility of placing the doctors under the local Health Committees, because, after all, the local Health Committees will be independent bodies. I have no doubt there will be employers there because there are far more employers than workmen on the county councils of the country ; the proportion of workmen is not very high.”

The workmen cannot malinger—Lloyd George has seen to that. But what about the employers ? Ever heard of masters malingering, David ? Announce that grouse shooting commences on August 12th and see how they run ! The Liberals won’t stop them malingering. A lot depends upon the doctor, says David. Workingmen with experience of the London County Council doctor in compensation cases, for instance, will agree with him. Therefore Lloyd George urged employers to get upon the Councils “because membership of the Council means lower rates.” And he went on, “he would, if he gave the benefit of his business administration to the local authority, cut down the rates and lighten enormously the charges which fell upon himself.”

To a “Labour” deputation the Chancellor preaches one tale, but to this deputation from the employers and merchants he preaches another. Listen to this :—

“I would invite the attention of employers to the way in which, we have framed this Bill, because it is framed in a way to completely protect them.” (Cd. 5869.)

This appeal to Property is equal to the one in the National Liberal Federation’s leaflet (No. 2422), which says of the employer :—

“He will be repaid partly in the increased efficiency of his workers. In good health and with a mind freed from financial worry, a man will do better work though working no harder than now. Then, again, men will be saved from the workhouse and the relieving officer, and so tho employer will have less to pay in Poor Rates.”

The “Manchester Evening News” (Liberal) of 7.8.12 reported the Clerk to the South Manchester Guardians thus :—

“The National Insurance Act will do more to prevent and eventually to eradicate pauperism than all the Poor Law Acts on the Statute Book.”

Being notified of this Mr. Lloyd George wrote:—

“I have always felt confident that its operation must have the effect of relieving the rates. . . . I was informed the other day by the Local Government Board that consumption alone costs the rates about a million and a half per annum. . . . Mr. Bloomfield is therefore perfectly right in assuming that the operation of this Act must necessarily have the direct effect of relieving taxpayers of a large proportion of the burdens which sickness now casts on their shoulders. . . . The maintenance provided in days of sickness by the Insurance Act and the institutions set up and subsidised out of its funds will be offered to the workingman as substitutes for the workhouse and workhouse infirmary—substitutes which will be consistent with ‘the honour and dignity of Labour.'”

* * *

 

When this glorious Bill was introduced, Liberals pointed jubilantly to Clause 51. “There is the worker’s clause,” they declared. “Under it no landlord can levy distress for the whole period any person receives sickness benefit.” But—”there’s many a dip twixt the cup and the lip.” The Employers’ Parliamentary Council waited upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a spokesman of the Farmers’ Federation said :—

“The great bulk of our workmen are housed in cottages belonging to us, and if those cottages are not at our disposal when the workman leaves off work the whole work of the farm is stopped at once.”

To this Mr. Lloyd George replied :

“If the clause were confined to cases where life would be imperilled by the process would that satisfy you ?”

Farmers’ Representative: “Yes, I should say so.”

Mr. Lloyd George : “Then I propose doing it. I am with you entirely. I think the clause as it stands is far too wide and malingerers might take advantage of it.”

So at the behest of landlords he altered the clause, which now states that if in the opinion of a doctor the person receiving sick benefit is likely to die if distress is levied, it shall not be done. The doctor’s certificate is to be issued for a week only, but may be renewed each week up to a month by the doctor, unless the landlord has applied to the Registrar of a County Court, whose decision must be accepted without appeal.

On this point we had an item in “Reynolds’s Newspaper” (2.7.11) headed “Master of Elibank Reassures Landlords re Clause 51.” It ran as follows :—

“The Master of Elibank has written to Sir Robert Aske at Hull with reference to the Insurance Bill. In the course of his remarks he says : ‘it should not be overlooked that the provision of sick pay is likely to make the payment of rent by the working classes during sickness very much more regular than it has hitherto been, and Mr. Lloyd George has no doubt that this will far more than compensate the owners of small houses for any loss that may be suffered in the rare cases where Clause 51 becomes operative.'”

This is “rare and refreshing fruit,” indeed— for the landlords. In fact, the striking unanimity of Liberal and Tory, landlord and factory-lord, over this Bill, should convince the toiler of its fraud, The “wicked House of Lords” passed it without a murmur. The Tory party largely supported its Second Reading, and refused to vote against the Third Reading. Mr. Lloyd George eulogised prominent Tories for their support of the Bill—Mr, Charles Bathurst, Lord Henry Bentinck, and Mr. William Waldorf Astor ! The latter, a large property owner, objected to postponing the operation of the Act, and explained the large saving of rates that would result, remarking, “We must make the ratepayer realise it.”

“We are going,” said Mr. Lloyd George at Queen’s Hall, on December 31,1909, “to provide adequate insurance against unemployment to prevent the starvation of the wife and children of the man who is out of work perforce.” Under the Insurance Act the “adequate” insurance becomes seven whole bob a week. But should he be unemployed “perforce” because his Liberal or Tory employer has locked him out, then the starvation will take place through the deliberate provisions of the Insurance Act, which say that in case of a lock-out no money shall be paid to the men. if the toilers should be goaded into striking by a Liberal Devonport or a Tory Penrhyn, then, also, they get—nothing. They may have paid in pounds, but they can starve. If, also, a toiler fails to make application for benefit “in the proper form,” if he fails to come at the “required time” to the “required place” to sign on, he draws—nothing. Should he, in the eyes of the Jacks-in-office, leave work “without sufficient cause,” or lose his job through what his boss calls “misconduct,” then he gets the figure which multiplied by itself is the same. Again, should he be in arrears in his contributions through lack of work, he may look in vain for the Welsh rarebit’s “rare and refreshing fruit.”

* * *

 

This idea of what is “adequate” provision seems to vary with the recipient. Baron Robson, late Sir William Robson, applied in July to the Ministry for “adequate” assistance as he waa retiring. He had been Solicitor-General at £6,000 per annum, and after a year or two became Attorney-General at £7.000 a year. Both these jobs carried with them “fees” which would be a good deal more than the salary itself. The next job Robby got was Judge of the High Court at £10,000 per annum. He stuck that for a year or two, without “malingering” more than half the time, and then retired—of course, with “just cause.” So David’s Government presented him with a pension “for the term of his natural life,” of a dollar a week—no, beg pardon, three thousand, seven hundred arid fifty pounds a year. £72 a week is “adequate” for this lawyer to malinger upon, but the sick working man is adequately provided for with seven bob.

* * *

 

Every Insurance Commissioner draws twenty pounds a week, while the Chairman of Commissions gets twice that sum. Where do these huge salaries come from ?

Mr. Lloyd George won’t say. But talking to the Merchants and Bankers of the City of London just after the Bill was brought in (July, 1911; he said :

“It would be a great satisfaction to them to know that in his judgment the Insurance Bill would not add a single farthing to the taxation which had already been imposed in this country.”

They don’t come out of taxes, so where are they coming from ? The employers say they won’t come from them in any other way.

Listen to Sir Adolph Tuck, presiding at a meeting of Raphael Tuck & Sons (23.7.12) :

“I am of the firm opinion that this expenditure (on Insurance contributions) will, in the long run, prove one of the best investments which the company has been called upon to make.”

A few days previous to this Lord Ashton, the employer of 6,000 men at his Lancaster carpet and other works, said : “It is one of the grandest Acts ever passed.” On July 7th Mr. F. D. Acland (a member of the Government) told the people of St. Albans that “in Germany they could not find a big employer who would go back to the days before the Insurance Act there.” 

* * *

 

As a last quotation let me give Mr. Lloyd George’s speech to the deputation from the National Farmers’ Union of England on July 4 1911 (Cd. 5869) : —

“I want the farmers to remember this, that this is going to be a tremendous relief to the Poor Law, and the casual labourer is the man who gets on the rates. It would be an enormous relief to the poor rates. Our real economic trouble is the casual labourer. We want, somehow or other, to make provision for him, and I think it is worth our while, and it is certainly worth the farmers’ while, to do so ; because the poor rate is their heavy burden, and to get the casual labourer off the rates would be a benefit to you, if you could get him off. I am very loth to keep the casual out if I can possibly help it. That is the most helpless class in the country and they become a burden on the community. IT IS FAR BETTER TO GET FOURPENCE OUT OF HIM, BECAUSE NOW YOU ARE BEARING THE WHOLE OF THE EXPENSE.”

Does this, set alongside his emphatic statement that the workers are to get “9d. for 4d.,” sufficiently prove how much of the liar and the cheat lies hidden in the unblushing hide of this little Welsh lawyer ?

Adolph Kohn

SPGB Snippets: Poverty deepens (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website 

October 21, 2026

According to a report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, more than 1 person in 5 in the UK was living in poverty in 2023/4, which is just over 14 million people. London may be seen as a comparatively well-off city, but it had the highest level of poverty, at just over a quarter.

Of the 14 million, nearly half were in ‘very deep poverty’, with income far below the standard poverty line. Since 2017, the numbers experiencing destitution have more than doubled, and nearly three million struggle to access enough nutritious food.

This is the extent of poverty in a supposedly ‘developed’ country, and it shows that capitalism cannot meet the needs of all.

Foreign trade and the workers (1948)

From the September 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

On every conceivable occasion the Labour Government has urged the workers to work harder to wipe out the gap between imports and exports. “When this gap has been closed,” says the Government, “Britain will again be prosperous; there will be plenty to buy in the shops, and the workers will no longer suffer the shortages and restrictions of the present day.”

A glance at history is sufficient to show the fallacy of these claims as far as better working-class conditions are concerned.

The closing years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth found British capitalism enjoying unparallelled prosperity. Exports, profits on shipping, and returns on foreign investments more than balanced the value of imports. Looked upon as “the workshop of the world” Britain had rich and plentiful rewards for those who invested in her industries. An idea of the wealth being acquired by the British capitalists at that time can be gained by a glance at the estates upon which death duties were levied in 1903. According to the “Daily Mail Year Book” for 1904 (page 270) five millionaires left estates totalling nearly eight million pounds, whilst two hundred and nineteen further members of the comparatively small capitalist class left a total of nearly forty-nine million pounds.

Yes! England was certainly a, rich country at that time—yet, for the workers, where was the freedom from shortage which, according to the Labour Government, comes with this national prosperity?

Let us refer to a writer of the time, Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet. Imbued with immense but ill-founded optimism, Mrs. Bosanquet and other philanthropists mistakenly imagined that help from the rich could reduce the poverty of the workers. Yet, so bad were working-class conditions, that even Mrs. Bosanquet’s great optimism became depleted and we find her writing in her hook, “Rich and Poor” (published 1896) : —

“Of other charities it would take too long to speak. The parish is beset with them at certain seasons of the year; and money is flung in amongst us much as nuts are flung to boys to scramble for. Soup-kitchens, philanthropic societies, country holiday funds, ragged school funds, funds from all the enterprising newspapers, and funds from all the political clubs in the district; church funds and chapel funds, missions and mothers’ meetings, all are engaged in pouring money into a slough of poverty which swallows it up and leaves no trace of improvement.” (Page 37.) (Our italics.)

Let us revert to the “Daily Mail Year Book” for 1904. On page 141 we find that the number of people seeking poor relief in the year 1900 was 1,882,000, and when referring to the unemployed in 1903 Mrs. Bosanquet said :

“They seem to increase year by year, and the next trade depression will probably show them in formidable numbers.” (Page 9.)

Page 246 tells us that a Professor Vort gave the minimum cost of the diet required by an average working man, his wife and three children as twelve shillings to thirteen shillings and sixpence per week. This diet was so stringent that it did not allow for tea or cocoa—only water. Looking then at the wages of agricultural workers (same page) we are informed that in England the average weekly pay was 17s. 1d., whilst in Wales and Scotland the averages were 16s. 5d. and 18s. 2d. respectively.

Eighteen shillings per week in wages when the weekly cost of the barest food necessities for a man, wife and three children was round about thirteen shillings. Five shillings left over for the provision of rent, clothing, insurances, etc. ! And what of those married workers who had more than three children to support?

The “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics,” issued forty years ago by the Board of Trade, gives us further information. It states that “on every day throughout the year 1892 the average number of persons in receipt of poor relief was 953,719, this number rising steadily each year with but very slight fluctuation to 1,103,724 in 1906, being an increase not only in the number, but also relatively to the increase of population.”

Such was the prosperity of many workers during the Golden Age of British Capitalism when the export trade was said to be in a highly flourishing condition.

Experience shows that whilst the capitalist class is endeavouring to sate the world’s markets it will keep wages as low as possible, for only by doing this can commodities be produced at a price that will allow the undercutting of rival competitors.

On the other hand, as soon as the markets are filled and commodities can no longer be sold profitably, production is curtailed and large numbers of workers are thrown out of work. The capitalist class does not employ workers out of benevolence, but for the express purpose of amassing profits from products that will sell. When commodities cannot be sold it is useless, as far as the capitalist class is concerned, to retain workers in commodity production.

Thus it is seen that whether trade is balanced, or whether there is a gap between imports and exports, the lot of the workers, as a class, remains much the same.

Only Socialism will end commodity production with its wage-cutting;, “sweating,” unemployment, and wars over markets, etc. Only Socialism, wherein the means of production and distribution will be commonly owned, will bring production for use and not for sale. Only within Socialism will production bring plenty to every man, woman and child.

F. W. Hawkins

SPGB Snippets: Poverty in families (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

 

August 27, 2026

A recent study showed that nearly half of parents are struggling financially after having a baby.

In some cases this has even led to them watering down baby formula milk in order to save money. This can be really serious for an infant, as it may result in growth problems and developmental delays. Baby banks supply clothes, nappies and baby wipes to parents, but get few donations of baby milk.

This is what life can be like for some of the poorest workers under capitalism: essential items such as baby formula can barely be afforded. A society that results in this level of poverty needs to be replaced by one where meeting human need is the priority.

Does the Navy safeguard our daily bread? (1936)

From the July 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Two opinions about the Navy have been jostling for front place in the past six months. One is that the Navy is rotten: just a lot of old tin-cans waiting for an enterprising dictator to sink them. The dictator, the ex-Labour leader Mussolini, is supposed to have bawled the British fleet off the Western Mediterranean into an Eastern funk-hole, and to have assumed the mastery of the sea. The other opinion is that the fleet retired voluntarily, too proud to fight, or according to some crooked hidden plan of those who decide the foreign policy of the British capitalists.

Which of these is the truth we do not know. Probably the supermen who are in control do not know. Probably the naval experts who advise them, like the professional economists, are all at sixes and sevens, and able to provide every variety of contradictory opinion on demand. As for the theory of a cunning piece of double-dealing, perhaps it is true, as alleged by Continentals who have studied British diplomatic and Governmental methods, that the reputation for cunning enjoyed abroad by the British ruling class is due to pure mischance. The benighted foreigners watch the elephantine blunderings of the British Cabinet and conclude that it must be an elaborate smoke-screen hiding deep-laid plans and plots, simply because it is unbelievable that Baldwin and Co. can really be as silly as they seem.

However, these are realms into which it is profitless for us to go. Instead, let us try to answer another question about the Navy.

What the Navy does for the British Workers

What the Navy does for the British investors who have some £3,000 million invested abroad we know, but what do the workers get out of their masters' expensive little toy? Mr. Kenneth Lindsay, M.P., one of Mr. MacDonald’s ex-Labour Party group, has answered the question. Mr. Lindsay is Civil Lord of the Admiralty and presumably knows all about fighting ships. Speaking in the House of Commons on May 28th, 1936, he told the M.P.s that he identified himself with Mr. Winston Churchill’s statement, “the purpose of the Navy is to ensure the arrival of our daily bread.” He went on to say that “the Admiralty programme was based on months of careful studies. They aimed to make the British Navy 100 per cent, efficient.” (Manchester Guardian, May 29th, 1936.) This should give comfort to us all, the knowledge that the Navy is seeing to it that we are all rightly and adequately fed and that the gentlemen in control have been burning the midnight oil to ensure 100 per cent. efficiency. But not so fast. On turning over the pages of the same newspaper from which that piece of news was taken we find more news about our food. Dr. G. W. Theobald, of the British Post-Graduate Medical School, London, says that at least ten per cent. of our population has to be fed on a weekly budget of 4s. or less for each individual. (Dr. Theobald’s proposal was not more steel for the Navy, but that “every school should instruct girls to take iron for one month in the year to prevent anaemia.”) Another doctor, speaking at the joint conference of the Royal Institute of Public Health and the Institute of Hygiene, where Dr. Theobald made his speech, commented on the inadequate food of working-class mothers: "One finds mothers towards the end of the week living on bread and tea, and saving pennies to buy meat and pies for the boys.” Dr. M’Gonigle and M. J. Kirby, in a recent authoritative study, ”Poverty and Public Health,” have shown that there are 20,000,000 people in this country who are too poor to be properly fed. Mr. Lloyd George, in a speech at the Central Hall, Westminster, on March 13th, 1936, added his testimony (Daily Telegraph, I4th March, 1936):—

We have it on the authority of men of science, who have devoted the whole of their lives to the study of this problem, that over 40 per cent. of our fellow-countrymen are inadequately fed in a land of exuberant plenty and abounding wealth.

There are still millions living in habitations that are unfit for human beings to dwell in, and side by side with these conditions we have statistical and revenue testimony as to the enormous fortunes and huge incomes enjoyed by a few.

We find then that if the Navy’s job really is to ”ensure the arrival of our daily bread,” it falls down badly on the job. Or rather, it ensures that the working class get bread but very little else, for, according to the Medical Officer of Health for Chorley, tea and bread and butter forms seventy per cent. of the breakfast and tea meals of elementary school children in that town, “the term bread and butter” including “bread with margarine and bread dipped and fried in fat.” (News Chronicle, June 13th, 1936.)

What the Navy is really for

Of course there is no need to elaborate the argument. The Navy does not and never did exist for the purpose imagined by Mr. Churchill and Mr. Lindsay. British capitalists might at one time, even if they cannot now, boast of being mistress of the seas, but it was not for the sake of British workers. The purpose of the Navy, as of the rest of the armed forces, is to defend capitalist investments at home and abroad against attacks from all quarters. Mr. Philip Jordan, in an article on ”Empire Defence” (News Chronicle, June 12th, 1936), gives a reasonably accurate account of the reason why the Navy is engaged on keeping open the "pipe-lines” of British commerce: —

”These pipe-lines British naval strategy is concerned to preserve; for upon their unimpeded maintenance depends the ease with which tribute and life flow into imperial Britain: gold and diamonds from South Africa, cotton from Egypt, spices from Ceylon, all treasure from India, tin and rubber from Malay, wool from Australasia; and from all and more of them interest on the loans with which British capitalists dowered them in early and late days.” (Italics ours.)

Among the purposes of the armed forces is defending capitalist property against the working-class. It includes keeping the working-class in perpetual poverty, for only so can they be compelled to submit to exploitation for the good of the class which controls the political machinery, including the armed forces, and through it the accumulated wealth of the country.

What is the moral? An obvious one. The working class must themselves gain control of the machinery of Government and use it, including the Navy, for the purpose of ending capitalism. Then for the first time will the whole population be well-fed, well-clothed and well-housed.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Salvation Army and the Working Class III. (1910)

From the May 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part II.

The Social Scheme.

 The indirect features of the scheme must not be such as to produce injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit.

While assisting one class of the community, it must not seriously interfere with the interests of another. In raising one section of the fallen, we must not thereby endanger the safety of those who with difficulty are keeping on their feet. . . . It is no use conferring six pennyworth of benefit on a man if, at the same time, we do him a shillings worth of harm.

—”In Darkest England,” page 81.

The Book that Made a Stir.

General Booth, when launching onto a sea of controversy his now celebrated book : “In Darkest England and the Way Out,” told his readers that, from calculations he had made himself and from the figures supplied by various authorities on the subject, in these islands fully one-tenth of the population was hopelessly submerged. Hopelessly that is, so far as all previous efforts on their behalf were concerned. This section of the people he nicknamed with his cant phrase “the submerged tenth.”

The purpose of his book was to arouse the public interest in these “lost ones,” and to obtain financial support for the starting of his “social scheme.”

We were shown at great length how hopelessly inadequate to cope with the evils of want and destitution had been the efforts of well-meaning reformers who worked in connection with various “charitable” agencies.

“It is no use trying to bale out the ocean with a pint pot,” said he (“In Darkess England,” page 253). What was wanted, we were told, was an all-embracing plan. “This scheme changes the circumstances of those whose poverty is caused by their misfortune. To begin with it finds work for the unemployed. This is the chief need.”

The Legion of the Lost.

The way in which our octogenarian professor of philanthropy proposed to go to work may best be set forth in his own words :

“The Social Problem presents itself before us whenever a hungry, dirty and ragged man stands at our door asking if we can give him a crust or a job. That is the social question, what are you to do with that man? He has no money in his pocket, all that he can pawn he has pawned long ago, his stomach is as empty as his purse, and the whole of the clothes upon his back, even if sold on the best terms, would not fetch a shilling. . . He asks for work, which he will set to even on his empty stomach and in his ragged uniform, if so be that you will give him something for it, but his hands are idle, for no one employs him. What are you to do with that man ? . . . To deal with this man is the problem of the unemployed. To deal with him effectively you must deal with him immediately, you must provide him in some way or other with food, and shelter, and warmth. Next you must find him something to do, something that will test the reality of his desire to work. This test must be more or less temporary, and should be of such a nature as to prepare him for making a permanent livelihood. Then, having trained him, you must provide him wherewithal to start life afresh. All these things I propose to do. My Scheme divides itself into three sections, each of which is indispensable for the success of the whole. In this three-fold organisation lies the open secret of the solution of the Social Problem.

The Scheme I have to offer consists in the formation of these people into self-helping and self-sustaining communities, each being a kind of cooperative society, or patriarchal family, etc. 

These communities we will call, for want of a better term, Colonies. 

There will be

(1) The City Colony,

(2) The Farm Colony,

(3) The Over-Sea Colony.”

(Before proceeding to our dissection of results we have troubled to quote Booth at some length, in order that those of our readers to whom ”Darkest England” is inaccessible may gain a clear and definite idea as to what his main object was when he set out to conquer “the powers of evil” and bring about “a new heaven and a new earth.”)

The “City” Colony.

By the phrase “City Colony” was meant a number of institutions which were to act as “Harbours of Refuge.” Into these havens were to be gathered all who had been “ship-wrecked.” Food and shelter were to be provided in return for work. Employment found for him, the mariner wrecked on life’s stormy sea was to be rescued and “reformed.” He was then to be restored to the joyful bosom of his happy family, or (in case the wild happy family were not having any) he was to be passed on to the Colony of the second class.

The second stage in this new Pilgrim’s Progress was intended to work out as follows :

Farms for the Famished.

The Salvation Army would buy land near some great city (the neighbourhood of London being chosen for the first experiment). Buildings would be erected and a farm stocked. The “wretched outcast” having passed through the refining fires of the city shelter and workshop, was then to be dumped down into a real live farm—there to be taught the whole art of husbandry.

In fine a regular “Garden City” would arise wherein our friend the W.O. would work out his economic and moral salvation.

Just here we may note a significant remark of the General’s when discussing the prospects of this portion of his scheme. (“In Darkest England,” page 249.)

“As the scheme progresses, it is not irrational to expect that Government, or some of the varied Local authorities will assist in the working out of a plan which, in so marked a manner, will relieve the rates and taxes of the country”.

(The last passage was not originally italicised.) 

In our examination of the actual, every-day working of this famous scheme, we shall have occasion to again refer to this pious hope that the “authorities” would patronise the concern. He then goes on to say: “From the Farm, as from the City . . . large numbers would be restored to friends up and down the country. Some would find employment in their own callings” (thereby pushing others out and lowering the rate of wages), “others would settle in cottages on a small piece of land that we should provide, or on Co-operative Farms which we intend to promote ; while the great bulk, after trial and training, would be passed on to the Foreign Settlement, which would constitute our third class, viz., the Over Sea Colony.”

As the last-named section of the Scheme has up to the present failed to materialise, we shall not let it worry us.

The Return of the “Golden Age.”

The Scheme, in its entirety, was, in the General’s own words :

“To draw up these poor outcasts, reforming them, and creating in them habits of industry, honesty, and truth . . . forwarding from the City to the Country, and there continuing the process of regeneration, and then pouring them forth on to the virgin soils that await their coming in other lands . . . Why not ?”

And Echo—after twenty years of scheming and planning, with money poured out like water ; after twenty years of “food and shelter depots,” Elevators, City and Farm Colonies, et hoc genus omne ; after twenty years of bluff and brag in the capitalist Press, self-denial weeks and special collections—shouts across this awful waste of time, “WHY NOT?”

The Answer.

The answer must be because the whole “Darkest England” Scheme from top to bottom has proved a gigantic fraud and failure. In our detailed examination of the actual working of the Scheme, reviewing the various divisions in their due order as set forth by Booth in his Vade-mecum, much damning evidence in support of our statement will come to light.

At the base of the “Social Scheme” were to be the food and shelter depots of the City Colony.

It was proposed to establish in connection with every Food and Shelter depot a workshop or labour-yard (ominous term) in which any person who came destitute and starving would be supplied with sufficient work to enable him to earn the 4d. needed for his bed and board.

The Salvation Army’s official figures for 1908 tell us that nearly six million meals were supplied at cheap food depots, and over two million cheap lodgings for the homeless were provided.

Specious and Misleading Advertisements.

Judging from the advertisements which appear under the “Army’s” aegis daily in the papers—of which the subjoined taken from the Westminster Gazette is a fair sample—anyone not in the know would naturally imagine that the 6,000 poor referred to had only to present themselves in all their abject misery at a Shelter, and lo and behold—they would be welcomed with open arms.

“STARVATION AND MISERY

are found on every hand among the Poor and Outcast by the Officers of the SALVATION ARMY who live among them, and are qualified to help them in the most economical and able manner. PRAY SEND HELP for so needy a work. £150,000 annually needed for the Army’s Central Funds alone. Over 6,000 Poor sleep in the Homes nightly. 170 Branches of Social and Relief work; are in operation.

Please address cheques (crossed “Bank of England, Law Courts Branch”) to GENERAL BOOTH, 101, Queen Victoria-street, London. Balance-sheets forwarded.”

In reality nothing of the kind takes place. “I was a stranger and ye took me in.” Yes, but there’s an if. The tune they play at the door is “The Absent Minded Beggar” with its haunting refrain of “Pay ! Pay ! Pay !” There is no work test applied at these “poor men’s hostels,” and the “crowd of hungry, desperate wretches, without even a penny in their pouch, demanding food and shelter”—over whose woes twenty long years ago William the saintly waxed so tearfully eloquent—unless they can furnish the needful coin of the realm, are met with that sternest of all arguments on a winter’s night, a closed door !

Fritz.

(To be continued)

SPGB Snippets: Poverty grows (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

April 8, 2026

There are over 13 million people in the UK living in relative poverty (which means in a household with income below 60% of the average income). This includes four million children and nearly 1.7 million pensioners. The figures are for the year to March last year, during which the total rose by half a million.

The Work and Pensions Minister described the situation as ‘wholly unacceptable’. This is right of course, but, like all politicians, she has no understanding of the causes. It’s due to capitalism, a system which, in the midst of potential abundance, relies on poverty and inequality as a means of coercing people into wage labour and hence exploitation.

The queer side. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under a capitalist regime one is either exploiter or exploited ; there is ever a gulf between the two sections of society, and that gulf widens as the system developes. The affairs of every-day life give the lie to those who, from ignorance or interest, promulgate the idea of the identity of interest between robber and robbed.

* * *

“Before an audience of 10,000 sightseers and guarded by a band of 300 police, Lord Deceis has been married to Miss V. Gould, heiress of Mr. G. Gould . . Lord Deceis is 45 years of age, his bride 18. . . A cake costing £200 was imported for the purpose from Scotland. . . . The bride wore a dress of white satin embroidered with silver . . and a rope of diamonds.”

* * *

“That the worst of slums may exist even in fashionable Folkestone was proved at an inquest on the body of an old woman, of 72 named Mary Sellars. The evidence proved that she died under the most terrible conditions of suffering and neglect. ‘In a small attic 8 ft. x 10 ft., which contained as furniture an iron bedstead, an old chair and a pail,’ said the coroner’s officer, ‘he found the deceased, in the midst of the squalor, lying naked save for the protection of a pair of trousers, an old skirt and a coat thrown over her.’ The deceased had suffered from pleurisy and peritonitis, and had not had any food for hours before death.

“The husband was a corporation labourer earning 18s. a week. The coroner censured him severely, and the jury returned a verdict that ‘Death was due to natural causes.’ ”

* * *

The above cuttings are from the same issue of Reynold’s Newspaper (12.2.11). The first refers to a marriage of members of the capitalist class—people who have never performed a necessary function in the production of the wealth they waste. The latter records the death of one of the exploited—a member of the class that produce the wealth that loafers such as Lord Deceis may roam the world in luxury and comfort, and that the daughters of millionaires may purchase titles.

Such is the evidence of the “identity of interest.” Wealth produced by one class whose members starve, and owned by another class whose members squander.

* * *

“Death was due to natural causes.” It is, of course, natural for a person to die under such conditions, but are the conditions natural ?

It was natural for a policeman to die after receiving a bullet in a vital part, but the twelve “good men and true” returned a different verdict. But then the policeman was a defender of private property, while the woman was only a worn-out toiler. More evidence of the “identity of interest.”

* * *

A writer in the same paper says “Pauperism is the question of the hour. . . The public mind is aroused to the importance of the subject and measures heroic are advocated in order to strike at the root of the evil.” He also quotes Dr. Chalmers as having said “It is thus, then, by a sort of festering and spreading operation, the sphere of destitution is constantly widening in every parish where the benevolence of love has been superseded by the benevolence of law. The following might be given as an example of the benevolence of love.

* * *

The Evening Times, reporting an interview with a Mr. Mumford, chairman of the Paddington Works Committee, quoted that gentleman as follows :

“These figures might be given as an approximate estimate of the numbers of willing to work “out of works” in the building trade :

Painters 3,823

Plasterers 297

Bricklayers 847

Carpenters 597

Navvies 1,269

Labourers 5,254

“It is a simple proposition in the economy of labour to suggest that housewives get their houses in order early this season in order to give work to the painter and others, and to save the extra money they will have to pay when the men are in demand for the Coronation week.”

* * *

The usual form of “benevolence.” Get the work done now, primarily in the interest of the poor unemployed workman, but incidentally—quite incidentally of course—to save money. That means that the same amount of work will be spread over a longer period at a reduced cost. It means that, in the long run, less wages will be paid. That appears to me to be a good method of increasing poverty—but then, of course, the more poverty there is the greater scope for the “benevolence of love,” for this particular sentiment, like appetite, “glows by what it feeds on.”

* * *

The other brand of benevolence can be witnessed in the spectacle of the kind Liberal Government endeavouring to persuade the aged pauper to leave the workhouse and starve outside on five bob a week. According to a writer in the London Quarterly Review, the cost of London indoor paupers, including all charges, amounts to £34 15s. 11¾d. per head per annum. The benevolence of the law offers them £13, and that fierce democrat, Lloyd George, swells his manly buzzum and talks about “sweeping poverty from every hearth.”

* * *

The fringe of the evil is not touched by such reform, much less does it “strike at the root.” The cause, as Lloyd George admits, “lies deep down in the social system,” where also that antagonism of interest finds its root—in the ownership by a class of the means of life. It is indeed questionable whether George & Co. could do anything if they desired to, as all things work to the interest of those who own.

* * *

A contributor to the Nineteenth Century Magazine (Jan., 1911) says that the introduction of State maintenance means that the husband gives the wife less for housekeeping because the children are now provided for by the benevolence of the State. True, and the unemployed worker will reduce the price of the said husband’s labour-power by the amount so saved in order to obtain a job, and so in a short space of time the average wage will suffer a depreciation equal to the diminution of the burden placed upon it.

Nor does it necessarily follow that money wages will drop. The cost of living of the working class is continually on the increase. The Board of Trade Labour Gazette (January, 1911) shows a steady increase in the price of necessaries. The price of food in 1909 reached a point that has net been recorded since 1884. So, even did money wages remain stationary, the workers’ condition would be worsened. The same official return for Feb., 1911 shows a fall in the total wages bill of £49 per week, while the number of unemployed has increased.

The interest of the ruling class is to rule and to keep a subject class as cheaply as possible and all such alterations will be toward that end.

The interest of the working class is not to be ruled, but to shake from their backs those social parasites who keep them poor and insult them by talking twaddle and endeavouring to prove what is obviously untrue, that these tinkering reforms and proposals are introduced “in the interests of the masses.”

Twel.

Editorial: Much Ado About Nothing. (1909)

Editorial from the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

We refer, of course, to Mr. Asquith’s speech of the eleventh of December, at a dinner given in commemoration of a Liberal defeat. “We are met,” said the Premier on that auspicious occasion, “to celebrate a failure.” The Lords had inconsiderately slaughtered a Liberal licensing bill, and sour-faced Nonconformity had in consequence been cheated of its sop. Weeks had been spent by the Commons in dreary talk in the passing of that measure, and tons of unreadable printed matter had been issued, but this had not prevented it going the way it had been expected it would, and perhaps intended it should, go—apparently to the relief of the majority outside. The bill, indeed, was utterly worthless to the workers, and quite hopeless in the promotion of temperance : its only function seems to have been to square the electoral account for nonconformist and teetotal support.

The collapse of the so-called Education Bill, added to the violent death of the licensing measure, had depressed the Liberal party and made many of its supporters discontented, and it became incumbent on Mr. Asquith to give a rallying cry to decaying Liberalism, and revive the drooping fortunes of his party. And to the accompaniment of loud and prolonged cheering the anxiously awaited pronouncement was made public. “I invite the Liberal Party from tonight,” said the hero of Featherstone, “to treat the veto of the House of Lords as the dominating issue in politics.” Hardly inspiring, this, as a rallying cry, even if it were not mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. Indeed, what did the Premier propose to do to make his dominating issue a reality ? Was the party to go to the country forthwith upon the issue and fight the Lords ? No, quoth Mr. Asquith, that would be to admit the right of the Lords “to dictate both the occassion and the date of a dissolution.” So the Liberals were going to be brave—and to submit. The hollowness of Liberalism hardly needed further demonstration. “Down with the Lords” is again to be its empty rallying cry ; and although the House of Lords, has not yet gone to Jericho, still its walls are expected to crumble at a shout, for certainly the Liberals are prepared to do nothing more.

It cannot be denied that there exist powerful constitutional weapons against the Lords which the Liberals could use were they sincere, but wherever capitalist interests are endangered Liberal and Tory have two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one. In view of working-class unrest, does not the second chamber offer a possible barrier to working-class advance should other obstacles not suffice ? And does not this account for the tenderness with which the Lords are treated by the Liberals, and partly, also, for the enormous number of peers which the latter create ? Not, however, that we are enamoured of a reform of the House of Lords, for the reform of a rotten institution simply serves to perpetuate that institution, and a House of Lords reformed would undoubtedly be a House of Lords strengthened as a weapon against the workers. Nevertheless the fatuity of Liberalism in this respect, as in regard to their projected Land Tax, cannot escape recognition. The fiscal reform of the Liberals, indeed, is at least as futile as the fiscal reform of the Tories, as far as working-class interests are concerned. So, also, with that other measure which collapsed of its own weakness—the “Education” Bill. There, also, we have an example of Liberal futility. Though called an Education Bill, this measure had nothing whatever to do with the improvement of education, but was solely a faction squabble between sections of the capitalist interest as to which particular brand of Christianity should be forced down the throats of the children. In other words, since the particular form of superstition to be taught is but the outward and visible sign of the interests of one section or other of the ruling class, so the squabble over religious education was really to decide which section of the ruling class the children were to be taught to look to for guidance. To capitalist parties this religious squabble may be vital. Mr. Hill, “Labour” M.P., may claim that “the Bible is still his best book,” and that he believes “in simple Bible teaching.” But from the working-class point of view the fact remains that the worker’s interest is foreign to all this Labour cum-Liberal twaddle.

Moreover, the Liberal-Labour bankruptcy on the question of unemployment could hardly be made clearer. Along with the boasted avalanche of Liberal measures—all conceived in the interest of the ruling class —the position of the worker has been steadily growing worse. Statistics convey a quite inadequate idea of the extent of dumb suffering and poverty that exists among the workers from this cause. Mr. William Redmond, M.P., is moved to remark in Reynold’s that “there is no part of the world where the contrasts between luxurious wealth and miserable poverty are so marked as in England, and particularly in London.” And he further adds,

“We have in Ireland suffering and unemployment enough. But the humblest labourer in his cottage in the country is to be envied in comparison with the workman in the great cities who finds himself without employment. Bit by bit the little articles of the home are sacrificed. The pawnshop stretches forth the only hand of assistance often to be found. The home goes, and there is nothing left but the streets. Far preferable is the lot of the poorest dweller is the countryside to this.

England has been glorified because of her great industrial progress, her mighty factories, and her great hives of industry. But when the depression of trade brings with it the discharge of workmen and the hopelessness which that entails, it is futile to talk of the glory of England’s progress. She then presents a spectacle which is unparalleled in the history of the world, of the most boundless wealth on the one hand, and the direst poverty on the other.”

But to these sufferings of the working class the Liberals, like the Tories, are cynically indifferent, and are, in fact, only likely to move when the workers start acting for themselves. So bad is the state of affairs, indeed, that the Labour Party, that docile tail of the Liberal bow-wow, is even moved by the callousness of the Government to murmur a faint protest. We quote from the daily paper of December 12th.

“Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., secretary of the Labour Party, speaking at Coventry last night, said deliberately (according to the Central News Agency) that unless the Government turned over a new leaf and observed more sympathy, initiative, and determination in dealing with the serious problems of unemployment it would find the Labour Party before long in violent conflict with it.”

Things must be bad indeed, when the Labour Party threatens to be in conflict with the Government ! In fact, we cannot believe that it will ever come to that. The faithfulness to the Government that has hitherto characterised the “Labour” members is not likely to be disturbed. As we have been reminded on more than one occasion, they find their seats too comfortable.

For the working class, however, groaning under their increasing burden of misery, only the policy of hostility can be of use. They must, as distinct from the Labour Party, find themselves all the time in violent opposition to the capitalist Government. They must democratically champion their own interests against all sections of the capitalist party, and realise to the full that the rallying cries and faction fights of Liberals versus Tories are in very truth rightly said to be “much ado about nothing.” Indeed, if the workers are not prepared to take a stand with their comrades in the Socialist Party and fight their own battles, then there is no power can save them from the deepening misery that threatens.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you make $60,000 a year after taxes, in order to make $700 billion, you’d need to work for nearly 12 million years. ‘The richest 1% own half the stock market (49.9%), while the bottom half of the U.S. owns just 1.1% of the stock market’. ‘The richest 0.0001% control a greater share of wealth than in the Gilded Age, an era of U.S. history defined by extreme inequality’. 

[Consortium News]

The toilet, by Maurizio Cattelan — the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall — went up for auction Tuesday evening at Sotheby’s in New York. The starting bid for the 223-pound, 18-karat-gold work was about $10 million. Cattelan has said the piece, titled ‘America’ satirizes superwealth. ‘Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise’, he once said. 

[Yahoo]

Mother Teresa is still praised around the world for her charity work, but her legacy is deeply controversial. Reports from former volunteers and medical professionals claimed that many of her care homes were unsanitary and neglectful, with patients denied pain relief because she believed suffering brought people closer to God. Despite receiving millions in donations, her organization frequently failed to provide proper medical treatment or transparency regarding the use of the funds. She also accepted money and praise from dictators and was firmly against abortion, contraception, and divorce, even in extreme cases.

[Yahoo]

There are still people who say that Marx is outdated because Russian socialism collapsed … In Russia, capitalism was interpreted as being about private property and private ownership of the means of production, and the Soviets’ proposal was, ‘What if we nationalize everything?’ Then they found that state control ended up being absolute. If you look at the situation of the workers, it didn’t change that much from one system to another. In capitalism, it’s the employers who exploit the workers. During Soviet socialism, the workers were exploited by the Communist Party or by the bureaucrats. 

[ara]

The Russian communist party has awarded North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the “Lenin Prize” for his outstanding contributions to ‘socialist construction’, praising him for standing up against ‘imperialist aggression’ by supporting the invasion of Ukraine. 

[NK News]

The cobbled streets of Newport in Middlesbrough survive from the Victorian era. The staggering levels of child poverty here also feel like they belong in a different time. Six out of every seven children in Newport are classified as living in poverty. 

[Sky News]

It’s time to stop settling. ‘The working class is going to have to look at itself as a whole and say, “Our divisions in race, politics, religion, sectors of the workforce — all that will have to be laid aside,” he says. “It’s a ‘workers of the world, unite’ situation. We’re all in it together against the billionaire class, and it’s going to take that in the fight to win”’. 

[In These Times]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Social contrasts. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anatole France in one of his novels says that “the life of a people is but a succession of miseries, crimes and follies.” This is largely correct. Certainly, from the manifold volumes of historical works in existence, treating of various periods and various peoples, we may gather some knowledge of the crimes and follies perpetrated by the ruling classes of these times, and the enslavement, and consequent misery, of the other, and greater, portion of the populace. It would, indeed, appear from an examination into different historical epochs, that the greater the wealth and culture of the ruling class, the more degraded and hopeless is the condition of those they rule.

If, for example, we turn back to the so-called “golden” age of Greek civilisation, we find that at the time of the greatest prosperity of the Attic state, the whole number of free Athenian, citizens, women and children included, amounted to about 90,000 ; the slaves of both sexes numbered 365,000 ; the balance of the people being made up of aliens—foreigners and freed slaves—these numbering about 45,000. History tells us little or nothing of the lives of these 365,000 human beings on whose toil practically the whole structure of the much-vaunted Greek culture rested. We have had handed down to us the philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle, the lyrical dramas of Aeschylus and Euripides; the sculpture of Pheidias can yet be seen in the British Museum ; in the glowing pages of Pluttarch (to say nothing of William Smith) are to be found the records of all the heroic deeds performed by Pericles and Alcibiades ; but the life of a slave does not make such pretty reading as that of a philosopher or artist, and so the historians have been very careful not to disturb the sleek complacency of their readers by a recital of the doings of the mere wealth-producers. The blood and sweat of the slaves would soil the classical purity of Greek culture, so the blood and sweat must be buried beneath the traditional glory of the slaves’ taskmasters.

Coming down to later times a very similar contrast may be observed between the status of the rich and the poor, between the dominant class and the class dominated. In another “golden” age—that of the “virgin”‘ queen Elizabeth—wealth, we are told, increased to an enormous extent. Green, in his “Short History of the English People,” says,

“The lavishness of a new wealth united with a lavishness of life, a love of beauty, of colour, of display, to revolutionize English dress. The Queen’s three thousand robes were rivalled in their bravery by the slashed velvets, the ruffs, the jewelled purpoints of the courtiers around her. Men ‘wore a manor on their backs.’ The old sober notions of thrift melted before the strange revolutions of fortune wrought by the New World. Gallants gambled away a fortune at a sitting, and sailed off to make a fresh one in the Indies. Visions of galleons loaded to the brim with pearls and diamonds and ingots of silver, dreams of El Dorados where all was of gold, threw a haze of prodigality and confusion over the imagination of the meanest seaman.” English literature, following in the wake of the Italian Renascence, took on. a new lease of life through such men as Spenser, Shakespeare, [Bacon and the numerous other poets and writers who graced the Elizabethan age. A scientific knowledge of natural laws was spreading.”

“It was only in the later years of the sixteenth century that the discoveries of Copernicus were brought, home to the general intelligence of the world by Kepler and Galileo.”

Drake, Raleigh, Hawkins and Frobisher, between the intervals of “singeing the King of Spain’s beard,” were circumnavigating the globe, breaking into the charmed circle of the Indies, or discovering the North-West passage.

And yet there is very distinctly another side to the medal. During the reigns immediately preceding that of Elizabeth, a great and ever increasing number of the people had been forcibly expropriated from the soil and thrown out upon the highways to exist as best they might.

“They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe, a bloody legislation against vagabondage The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as voluntary criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own goodwill to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed.” (Marx in “Capital.”)

Marx further tells us that

“In Elizabeth’s time ‘rogues were trussed up apace, and there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes.’ (Strype’s ‘Annals of the Thee-formation and Establishment of Religion, and other Various Occurrences in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth’s Happy Reign,’ Second ed., 1725, Vol. ‘2.) According to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 discharged as ‘incorrigible vagabonds.’ Nevertheless, he is of the opinion that this large number of prisoners does not comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence of the justices and the foolish compassion of the people ; and the other counties of England were not better off in this respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse. . . . Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.”

In modern capitalist society these same sardonic contrasts prevail. In the Daily Chronicle of June 6th, 1903, it was pointed out that “the whole volume of British Trade has increased from 764 millions sterling in 1898 to 877 millions in 1902,” and in the same issue appeared a report of a speech delivered by the late Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, in which he declared that about 30% of the population were underfed, were on the verge of hunger. (Vide SOCIALIST STANDARD, August this year.)

During the first nine months of 1910, official trade returns show that :

Imports rose by £37,530,000,

Exports of British goods rose by £41,239,000, and Exports of imported goods rose by £11,063,000

as compared with January to September 1909. In the same issue of the paper (Morning Leader 8th October) in which these figures are given, is a short paragraph, headed “Pea-pickers Hardships,” giving an account of a meeting held at Romford, at which “the lamentable conditions under which the pea-pickers live in Essex” was discussed, Canon Ingles remarking at this meeting that the way the pickers lived while on the farms was a disgrace to a Christian country and Canon Lord William Cecil supporting the view that employers should be compelled to provide pure water for drinking and clean straw for beds.

In spite of the great increase in trade that has taken place since the beginning of 1910, at the present time there is perhaps more dissatisfaction among the industrial workers of this country than for some years past. The boiler-makers, the miners, the cotton operatives, the chain-makers and the railwaymen. to mention only a few, are seething with discontent. And yet exports of British goods rose by £41,239,000 !

Historical research shows that, no matter at what period—ancient, medieval or modern,—no matter what may be the wealth and culture, the spread of knowledge, the goodwill even (if such there be) among the dominant class, the condition of the class dominated is, in the main, one of base and degrading servitude, of physical and mental misery. Using the words of the before-mentioned French author, we may epitomise the history of the members of the slave-class by saying that “they were born, they suffered, they died.” Suffering has been their only heritage since slavery was first instituted ; whether it he chattel slavery or wage-slavery does not make very much difference, except that perhaps the chattel-slave was, in some respects, better off than the modern wage-worker.

The Socialist Party exists for the purpose of abolishing, once and for ever, both slave-class and master-class. We of course recognise that natural inequalities between individuals do and must exist. But we know further that social inequalities and contrasts between individuals or classes are an anomaly. To help do away with these social inequalities and contrasts, to raise society to a higher plane, where equality of opportunity shall be accorded to all, irrespective of race or sex, is the reason for our existence as a party. We ask for the intelligent co-operation of our fellow wage-slaves to assist us in this work, so that the day may be hastened when such terms as slave and master, owner and owned, working class and capitalist class, will be, without meaning. When society has evolved into this stage, when the Socialist Commonwealth has at last been established, then for the first time will a period of real culture and intellectual activity be possible to all, and not to, comparatively, a mere handful of men and women, such as have monopolised all the best things of life up to the present.

F. J. Webb

Editorial: The Personal Service Committee. (1908)

Editorial from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again the axiom is illustrated that the master class will do anything for the workers—except get off their backs. The newest illustration is the attempt at promotion, by personal visitation, of “friendship” between rich and poor in an endeavour to soften the increasingly apparent antagonism between those who live by robbery and the victims. This “Personal Service” committee includes representatives of the families of Asquith, Balfour, Gladstone, Cadbury and Lyttleton, while Lords Norfolk, Salisbury, and Wolverhampton are of the number, together with Mr. Arthur Henderson, leader of the Labour Party, who once again may be known by the company he keeps.

In their letter of appeal the committee say that if a sufficient number come forward “many families in poor circumstances might be tided over the coming winter, who, if left to themselves would inevitably fall below the poverty line.” But they also say in the course of the same appeal that the cases for visitation will be selected through the Charity Organisation Society and the Unemployed Distress Committees, and this practically guarantees that all those dealt with shall be already far below the poverty line ; so that the committee’s statement in this respect is simple a piece of unctious humbug.

In the Daily Mail H. Hamilton Fyfe warmly praises the idea, and attempts, with little success, to make a distinction between the new scheme and the old insulting district visitors’ coal-ticket distribution. He further accuses the “working classes” of inelasticity, unadaptability, and “ignorance or mistrust of the little things that make all the difference to life,” and suggests that “most of those who come off badly in the struggle for existence are lacking either in bodily strength or in mental equipment.” The workers, forsooth, are poor because they are inferior in bodily strength or in mental equipment to the parasites that social conditions compel them to keep in luxury ! And the worker, able and willing to supply his needs by his labour, but denied the opportunity by the profit system, is to be advised and lectured on his unadaptability and ignorance by useless, jewelled parasites who owe their wealth and position to the fortune of birth and class rule, and who know nothing of working conditions, being totally incapable of supplying their own needs, or even of dressing themselves in many cases ! One can imagine the sullen rage that must rise within the intelligent but impoverished worker under the torture of such stupid advice and degrading charity from the class that lives by his robbery.

Indeed, if the truly terrible distress from which the working class are now suffering were the result of what is usually called a natural calamity, such as an earthquake, there might be some excuse for such a movement. But the distress of unemployment is not a natural calamity in that sense ; it is a preventable disease. Moreover, the names of the Personal Service Committee are emphatically representative of those who have, in the interests of the master class, set themselves determinedly against the only possible remedy, and have championed the system of robbery that manufactures the unemployed and their distress. They stand, indeed, for those who decline to do even that which is within their power toward ending the possibility of this preventable and unmerited misery. Such an appeal as that of the committee, therefore, can in plain English, only be characterised as damnable hypocrisy.

Not being prepared to be just, some of the master class profess a willingness to be charitable. Feeling that there is danger to their profits and their security in the growing feeling of hostility between rich and poor, they make a pretence of friendship, endeavouring to tranquillise their victims and prevent them taking steps that may endanger the position of the capitalist class. It is not love, but fear, that makes the ruling class loosen its purse strings, as experience has repeatedly shown. And the dainty, jewelled dames who may soon find a hobby in insulting visits, stupid advice and priggish charity, would readily, as has happened in the past, applaud police and soldiery in their brutal batonning and slaughter of the workers the moment the latter, driven to desperation, took their fate into their own hands. The name of Asquith would once again find congenial association ; and charity and humbug, having failed in their purpose, would be cast aside by the master class in favour of a frank reliance on coercion by means of the armed forces of the nation. There can, indeed, be no conciliation in the great class antagonism. All pretence at friendship between the two armies in the modern struggle is sheer hypocrisy. This we know, and all history is its confirmation, that the working class, in the ending of their misery, must rely, first and last, upon themselves.