Acknowledgments. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

RECEIVED —

“Western Clarion” (Vancouver, B.C.).

“Weekly People” (New York).

"New York Call" (New York).

“Gaelic American” (New York).

“Western Wage-Earner" (Vancouver, B.C.).

“Civil Service Socialist” (London).

"The New World" (West Ham).

“Freedom” (London).

Quotes (Western Clarion) (1908)

From the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolution is merely a phase in evolution and it is erroneous etymology and mere carping to place them in contradiction to each other. You would call him a fool despite the dangers of hell’s fire, who allowed the weeds, cut-worms, the multifarious enemies of agriculture and horticulture to destroy his crops, while he sat by and impotently murmured Laws of Nature—evolution, survival of the fittest. Not any wiser would we be did we act in a similar fashion before the enemies of our existence.

Western Clarion.

Premier McBride tells us that the only difference between Conservatives and Liberals is their attitude towards Labor. He neglected to add, however, that the only difference in their attitude towards Labor is as to which of them shall hold Labor down while Capital goes through him.

Western Clarion.

Cuttings and Critiques. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Social-Democratic “Victory.”

____________

In reporting the return to the Barking District Council of Mr. Edwards of the S.D.P., Justice claimed that he ran as a straight Socialist. Below we reproduce a “revolutionary” appeal issued by Mr. Edwards :—

To the Electors of the West Ward.

____________

Vote For A Man.

Who will support your interests as a working man, not a man who, if you ask him for a job, should say “Aye, mon, let’s look at your honds?”

What price

Working or a gasholder at 6d. per hour

in all winds and weathers. Is this the type of a man who supporting Contractors and others in the undercurrent which is now so prevalent on the Council, the man for the West Ward ? Show your disgust by

Voting For 

Edwards.

* * *

The Tariff Reform propaganda is certainly compelling the Liberals to make some very interesting admissions, in their efforts to show that the existing unemployment and poverty are not due to that Free Trade which they claim has brought so much prosperity to this country. Thus in the House of Commons on April 14th Mr. Lloyd George declared that we are to-day producing the same quantity of hops as hitherto, but out of a smaller acreage—due to improved methods of production. Those engaged in the industry are suffering, he said, because of these improved methods and machinery, which have enabled a great saving of labour to be effected. In a similar strain the Daily Chronicle wrote in connection with the Wolverhampton bye-election. Local unemployment, it declared, was to some extent due to improved machinery and machine tools. The output is greater than ever, but owing to methods of standardisation, the cost of production is decreased, and less labour is required.

* * *

The manufacturers are doing well, it added. Of course they are, and always will so long as they own the machinery which the workers improve and operate. No fiscal arrangements or rearrangements under capitalism will affect the workers’ position.

* * *

Some idea of the extent to which that “Peasants’ Charter,” otherwise the Small Holdings Act, will “solve the land problem” may be gathered from the reports in the Liberal Press of the recent floods. Some recently laid down allotment land in Upper Caversham, wrote the Daily News on April 30th, is submerged to a considerable depth, which means a heavy loss to those working men who have rented the ground and who have already planted for the season. It also reported that allotment holders around Towcaster and in other parts had suffered considerably.

* * *

And yet some folk still continue to swear by these pills for the earthquake.

* * *

According to the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association, the revenue from intoxicants in India continues to rise, having reached £6,510,000 in 1907. In 1875 it was £1,755,000. This of course has taken place side by side with an increase in the number of conversions to Christianity.

* * *

In reply to a correspondent who asserted (inter alia) that everybody knew the I.L.P. was a Socialist Party, the Editor of the Western Clarion (Vancouver), in the issue of that paper for April 25th, 1908, writes as follows :—

“He is mistaken in stating that we all know the I.L.P. Is a Socialist Party. We all don’t know that a party is a Socialist Party which has for its leading lights and parliamentary representatives men who, like Ramsay MacDonald and Shackleton, favour child-labour and advocate the lowering of the school age to thirteen years so that the child-slaves may be available to the profit mills of capitalism at as early an age as possible; or men who, like Henderson, oppose the eight-hour law ; or who condone a rifle diet for hungry strikers, like the whole precious bunch of them. Socialists ? Why, no Whig or Tory could serve capitalism better.”

* * *

The reply is commended to the careful attention of the Western Clarion’s English namesake. It is not expected that the organ of the house of Blatchford will enthusiastically endorse the views so definitely expressed in the Vancouver journal, but it does not follow therefore that the views are not true. Rather the contrary.

* * *

The recent election at Dundee provides yet another illustration of the compromising tactics of the “Labour” Party. The manner in which the officials of the Labour Party acted was directly opposed to the “Labour” nominee. It is well known that Mr. James Ramsay MacDonald went down to Manchester to interview Mr. Winston S. Churchill, and assured the Liberal Cabinet Minister that no opposition would be forthcoming from the Labour Party at Dundee. Is this the reason why Mr. MacDonald and the senior member for Dundee, Alex. Wilkie, did not speak on Mr. G. Stuart’s behalf and did not send a message to him ? What a curious lot ! And what “Independence ” !

Cuttings and Comments. (1908)

From the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Consider ye the millionaires, how they toil not, neither spin, yet Solomon in all his glory couldn’t buy the gasoline for their automobiles. How do they manage to do it? It’s a cinch. You are foolish enough to work and they are sensible enough to let you. By ‘abstinence and thrift’ they have succeeded in gobbling everything in sight, so that when your poetic soul is filled with the noble aspiration to toil, you have to do it with their tools, in their factories. Whatever you make should logically belong to them. And it does. Out of the fulness of their pocketbooks they humanely return you enough so that you may live to work another day, and all goes as merry as a funeral until their warehouses are filled to overflowing. Then it becomes manifestly impossible for them to allow you to work any longer. You have been gluttonous and intemperate instead of taking your work in decent moderation and look what you’ve done.”

–++–

The reference to millionaires in the above extract from the Western Clarion (Vancouver, B.C.) reminds one of the Harmsworth publication, entitled, “Fortunes made in Business,” in which it is stated that

“The House of Rothschild is to-day one of the greatest powers of the world. Its members exercise more direct influence on human affairs than perhaps any king. Its agents, mostly unknown, are at work in a hundred lands. It creates new nations. At the bidding of its members kings stay their campaigns. . . . The total of their wealth can only be imagined. In the great capitals of Europe they hold their court—the money lords of the Eastern world. Their nod could produce, if they wished, the greatest financial panic the world has ever seen, sending hundreds of thousands to ruin almost in a day.”

–++–

The apologists of the capitalist system declare that the “common people” rule in this “democratic age.” The words quoted above will be useful to our propagandists who run up against such flapdoodlers.

–++–

From the same series we learn that the foundation of the Rothschild’s wealth was laid by an incident that occurred when Europe was in arms against Bonaparte. Hearing that Napoleon had sent an army to seize him and sack his country, the Landgrave of Hesse took flight, but before doing so he handed over his gold and art treasures to Rothschild (Mayer Anselm of that ilk) to mind. The Jew buried them and after the soldiers had left, having failed to discover anything, dug them up and sent the bullion to his son (Nathan Mayer) in London. He used it and luck being with him multiplied it exceedingly. Had Waterloo gone against the British, the Rothschilds would probably have been ruined and would certainly have lost the Landgrave’s millions. As it was, however, they were enabled to return his money and also considerable profits.

–++–

It is always advisable to be successful when you set out to gamble with others’ property. If you fail, you will probably be sent to jail, as often happens to solicitors and others who try to emulate the deeds of the Rothschilds and gamble with wealth entrusted to them to “mind.” But if you succeed and succeed on a sufficiently large scale, you will be appointed to high places in the State and may “exercise more influence on human affairs than perhaps any king.”

–++–

“We will never have Socialism until the working class become conscious of being a class and a disinherited class, and until as the result of this class consciousness they struggle as a class for the institution of a society in which they will be equal participators with all at the festal board of humanity.”

Wilshire’s Magazine (New York).

–++–

Messrs. J. Keir Hardie and J. Bruce Glasier of the Independent Labour Party, which Mr. Wilshire in his journal supports, declare there is no class war ; they say it is a “shibboleth” and a “reactionary and whiggish precept, certain to lead the movement away from the real aims of Socialism.”

–++–

But political job hunters will say anything.

–++–

“With a Labour party on a trade union basis Liberals could always work in sympathy, although they could not go the whole way with them. With a Labour party which had become the instrument of revolutionary Socialist propaganda they could have nothing to do. They accept Sir Henry Fowler’s words spoken so opportunely at Wolverhampton this week. With a scheme such as the Hull Conference has adopted for “the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange,” Liberals “will have nothing to do ; they will oppose it to the utmost; they will oppose it in the interests of commerce and industry, and in the interests of the people themselves.”—Daily Chronicle, Jan. 24th.

–++–

Those who really understand Socialism know that neither Liberals nor Tories will help it along, they will fight it to the bitter end. That is why they advise the workers to abstain from voting for candidates of these parties. And when organisations such as the Social-Democratic Federation and the Independent Labour Party not only urge the working class to vote Liberal but also make arrangements with them for dividing the working-class vote it is evident that they do not really understand the principles of revolutionary Socialism.

–++–

“The laboring class, who perform the work of the world, must sell themselves to the ruling class. They cannot produce independent of the owners of the machines, mines and factories, because under competition only the cheapest production demands the best, most expensive and complicated machines. They are compelled, because of the fact that social progress and private property in improved machines is making vast numbers of them unnecessary in the process of production, to fight among themselves for any opportunity to live. If they are to rise an atom above the slaves’ portion, they must unite and fight side by side against the class of exploiters,”

–++–

Thus says the International Socialist Review for Australasia, but to fight against the class of exploiters means to fight against them all the time, not to oppose them in one district and support them in another as has been the practice of the professing Socialist parties, the S.D.F. and the I.L.P., in this country.

–++–

“If I have to take money from you does it matter whether I take it from your right or your left pocket ?” asked the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain in one of his Tariff Reform speeches.

–++–

As the working class must be exploited by the master class, does it matter to the former whether the latter call themselves Liberals or Tories, Christians or Jews, Imperialists or Little Englanders, Protestants or Catholics ?

–++–

“It (a minimum wage for State employment) should be fixed at such a sum that whilst it would be sufficient to support life on a scale of decency it would not unduly tax the resources of the capitalist system to afford it,” says Mr. H. Russell Smart, of the Independent Labour Party, in his pamphlet, “The Right to Work.”

–++–

How anxious the I.L.P. leaders are not to “unduly tax the capitalist system” ! Can the Socialist omelette be made without breaking the capitalist egg ?

–++–

At Fairbairn Hall, Canning Town, on Feb. 14, Cllr. J. Jones, S.D.F., in his well-known manly manner, persistently interrupted the speech of Mr. Masterman, M.P., on the Unemployed. When the speaker declared that the most he hoped for from the Farm Colony was that it would improve the men’s physical condition, Councillor Jones shouted: “Yes, for their masters to exploit them and make more money out of them.” Jones denouncing palliatives is a sight for gods and men.

Acknowledgements. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

RECEIVED —

“Weekly People” (New York).

“Gaelic American” (New York).

“British Columbia Federationist” (Vancouver).

“Civil Service Socialist” (London).

“Freedom” (London).

“Cotton’s Weekly” (Canada).

“Appeal to Reason” (Kansas).

“International News Letter” (Berlin).

“The Western Clarion” (Vancouver).

“The Socialist” (Melbourne).

“Industrial Union News” (Detroit).

Pamphlets for sale. (1927)

From the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been fortunate in securing quantities of seven pamphlets published by the Socialist Party of Canada, and are offering them for sale at the rates set out below. There is, of course, no need to make special mention of the standard works of Marx and Engels. The pamphlet on the causes of modern war contains much useful information with copious references, and consists of articles which appeared serially in the Western Clarion (now defunct). “Slave of the Farm” describes and explains the hard and losing fight waged by the Canadian farmer against the organised financial and industrial Capitalists. It is a corrective to the fanciful tales of the Empire boosters and emigration touts.

“Causes of Belief in God,” by Lafargue, has not been published in this country in pamphlet form, and will be new to most English readers. It is written with Lafargue’s accustomed brilliance.

The Socialist Party of Canada has now ceased to exist, and the pamphlets will not be reprinted in the present editions.

Those we have obtained represent the bulk of the remaining supply. They are excellently produced, of convenient size, and well worth the price asked. All but two (“Slave of the Farm” and “Economic Causes of War”) are in the uniform and attractive series known as the “Whitehead Library.” As the stock will soon be exhausted, you are urged to make early application.

“Wage-Labour and Capital” (Marx), – pages, 4d.

“Communist Manifesto” (Marx and Engels), 59 pages, 4d.

“Slave of the Farm” (A. Budden), 63 pages, 6d.

“Economic Causes of War” (P. T. Leckie), 132 pages, 6d.

“Causes of Belief in God” (Lafargue), 48 pages, 6d.

“Socialism—Utopian and Scientific” (Engels), 95 pages, 6d.

“Value, Price and Profit” (Marx), 78 pages, 6d.

Note.—Postage extra : ½d. per copy.

Blogger's Note:

The Socialist Party of Canada referred to in the notice was the Party which dissolved in 1925. The Socialist Party of Canada, which is affiliated to the World Socialist Movement, was founded in 1931. There is an overlap between the two organisations because the original Socialist Party of Canada had a significant impossibilist membership within it, and there was an overlap of members between both organisations.

How Will You Vote? (1909)

From the November 13th, 1909 issue of The Western Clarion

How will you vote, fellow-worker?
   Have you given the matter a thought?
Will you prove befooled when the last votes polled,
   By bribe or promise bought? 

Will you vote for the same old parties
  By whom you’re bought and sold?
Will you bow once more, as you’ve oft before,
  To the cursed rule of Gold? 

Will you vote to be saddled and bridled
  And rode by a grafting crew?
Will you say that what was your father's lot
   Is good enough for you? 

Will you vote to be human cattle?
   For your babes to be the same?
Will you throw away your vote today

  To their wrong and your shame? 

Will you vote again for the master class,
  For their right to rule and rob?
Will you vote that the best you can hope for the rest
  Of life is (perhaps) a Job? 

A job that is merely lent to you,
  At your master's will to lose;
Thraldom for'you and your children, too,
   Is this the lot you'll choose? 

Will you vote for a life uncertain.

   Which constant cares annoy?
To suffer need, to sweat and bleed,
   That Idlers may enjoy? 

Or will you vote for a grand new right?
   The right to be really free,
The right to produce for the workers' use,
   The right to security. 

Will you vote for the Socialist demand?—
   THE WORLD FOR THOSE WHO WORK;
The means of wealth and comfort and health,
   And "naught for those who shirk.” 

Think of these things well, brother,
   And it will come to pass
That your vote will be a vote. to be free,
   A vote for the working class!

Wilfrid Gribble

Blogger's Note:

As well as being a member of the Socialist Party of Canada, Gribble was a founder member of the Workers' Socialist Party of United States in Detroit in 1916. (He was the WSPUS' first organiser.) He was one of the Canadian-based socialists who migrated south at the outbreak of World War 1, finding work in the burgeoning car industry.

A valueless contribution (1996)

Book Review from the March 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Feminist Challenge to 
the Canadian Left 1900-18 by Janice Newton
 (McGill-Queen’s University
Press.)

The Canadian Left from 1900-1918 consisted essentially of the Socialist Party of Canada and the Social Democratic Party. The SPC was the Canadian equivalent of the SDF in Britain at the same time, but there was an important difference. Whereas the SDF had a reformist majority and an “impossiblist" minority (some of whom broke away in 1904 to form the SPGB), the SPC had an impossiblist majority and a reformist minority. The Canadian Social Democratic Party was formed when this reformist minority broke away in 1911.

"Impossiblism" was a term of abuse invented by the reformists in the SDF to describe their opponents. Basically, it was the view that a socialist party should only seek support on the basis of Socialism and the abolition of the wages system and so should not have any programme of immediate demands. It also involved the view that socialism could only come about when a majority of workers wanted and understood it The task of a socialist party was seen as being educational—with a view to get workers to become socialist then eventually, when there was a socialist majority winning control of political power — as opposed to advocating reforms to be achieved within capitalism.

However, this refusal to advocate reforms did not mean that impossiblists thought a socialist party should oppose them. On the contrary, it was recognised that any Socialist elected to a parliament or a local council should vote for any measure considered to be in the interest of the working class.

The SPC, for instance, in its platform (which it published in every issue of its paper the Western Clarion and in its pamphlets) declared:

  "The Socialist Party, when in office, shall always and everywhere until the present system is abolished, make the answer to this question its guiding rule of conduct: will this legislation advance the interest of the working doss and aid the workers in their class struggle against capitalism? If it will, the Socialist Party is for it; if it will not, the Socialist Party is absolutely opposed to it. In accordance where this principle the Socialist Party pledges itself to conduct all the public affairs placed in its hands in such a manner as to promote the interests of the working class alone.”

The SPGB adopted a similar position, but in Canada this was not just an academic matter since the SPC did succeed in getting a few of its members elected to local and provincial councils.

Despite reproducing the SPC’s platform in full on page 23 of her book, Newton persists in equating not advocating some reform measure with being opposed to it. For instance, she claims that the SPC was opposed to giving the vote to women and attributes this to the party supposedly being a men’s organisation. But even the quotes she gives from the Western Clarion show that the SPC was not opposed to this measure, but merely that it did not seek support on the basis of favouring it.

She herself mentions that an SPC member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly brought into a bill to give votes to women. She also mentions a debate between the SPC and the Political Equality League on the subject of "Will Woman Suffrage Solve the Economic Problem?” in which the Suffragette speaker complained that her SPC opponent (also a woman, incidentally) wasn't really opposed to giving votes to women. Of course she wasn’t as the SPC wasn’t. What the SPC was opposed to was the argument that the granting of votes to women would somehow solve the economic problems faced by working class women; in a socialist society women would of course have an equal say with men in the way things were run. As the Western Clarion (as quoted by Newton) put it “every Socialist as a matter of course stands for the enfranchisement of women and equal rights for the sexes in every department of life".

What Newton, as a reformist herself, fails to understand is the logic of the impossiblist position adopted by the SPC. This involved not advocating any reforms to be achieved within capitalism on the grounds that Socialism was the only solution and that absolute priority should be given to trying to achieve it. So the fact that the SPC did not advocate woman’s suffrage is not to be attributed it being against women any more than the fact that it didn’t advocate old-age pensions is to be attributed to it being against retired people. It sprang from a more general position.

To tell the truth, not only does Newton not understand the impossiblist position (she expresses a preference for the confused reformism, where Christianity and temperance reform were mixed up with some socialist ideas, of the Social Democratic Party) but she is profoundly prejudiced against the SPC. She paints a picture of it as a male organisation composed of lumberjacks and miners who smoked, drank, swore, told dirty jokes, used prostitutes and whose conception of Socialism was one where men would continue to go out to work but where women would be confined to working at home, cooking their meals, washing their clothes, darning their socks and serving as objects of their sexual desires.

Needless to say, this is pure prejudice. No doubt the fact that some SPC members smoked and drank at party meetings would have put off women (in those days). It is true also that the rhetoric sometimes used—calling on working men to show their "manhood” and stand up to the bosses who were exploiting them—wrongly suggested that the class struggle was exclusively a male affair. There will also have been individual SPC members who were prejudiced against women. But to claim that the SPC’s conception of socialism was a male-dominated one is an absurd fabrication. We have already quoted (re-quoted from Newton herself, in fact) the statement from the Western Clarion to the effect that “every Socialist, as a matter of course, stands for the enfranchisement of women and equal rights for the sexes in every department of life".

So what evidence does Newton produce to back up her case? Her first line of argument is the same mistaken one as over votes for women. The SPC didn’t advocate it, therefore it was against it. Thus Moses Baritz is quoted as arguing against the view that birth control would allay poverty; Newton twists this into saying that he and the SPC were against birth control. Similarly, just because the SPC did not seek support on the basis of sex reform (abolition of marriage, etc.), she claims this meant it was against this even though the passages she quotes from the Western Clarion make it clear that SPC members had "individual opinions" as to what will happen to relationships between the sexes in a socialist society.

But the biggest distortion comes over the concept of the "family wage", i.e. a wage paid to a man providing him with enough to maintain a wife and family at home. Newton quotes Kautsky and the Western Clarion to the effect that one of the consequences of the entry of women and children on to the labour market is to exert a downward pressure on men’s wages, since, whereas previously employers were obliged by market forces to include in men’s wages an element to cover the cost of maintaining a family, with women and children earning something too this was no longer necessary. Kautsky and the Western Clarion stated this as a matter of fact (a fact, we would have thought, that can’t be contested). But Newton interprets this as a complaint and as a call to keep women out of the labour market so as to maintain male wages.

Some male trade unionists did take up this position, but not the SPC as can be shown, yet again, by quotes from their literature which Newton herself gives. The SPC stood not for a family wage, nor equal wages, nor any kind of wages but for the abolition of the whole wages system. As the Western Clarion put in 1910 (quoted by Newton on p. 68) "for the she worker there is only one issue, the destruction of the wages system". She also records (p. 97) that an SPC candidate in Ontario was called to order by the SPC’s executive committee for including a proposal for equal pay in his election manifesto and "was told he should stand only for the abolition of the wages system".

So how can she claim that the SPC’s vision of the "socialist future" was one where "the working man earned sufficient wages to support a wife and family" (p. 101) and which “would reverse the effects of capitalism on family life, return women to the home and re-establish the male wage earner’s position as head of the household” (p. 155)?

Such patent distortions— there are many others too regarding the SPC—make the book valueless as a contribution to feminist let alone working class history.

Adam Buick

Keir Hardie in Canada. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Western Clarion (of British Columbia) and many of its readers seem to be under no delusions either as to the sort of job Keir Hardie was attempting to manage during his recent visit in that part of the Empire which we call “ours,” or of the possibilities of the job, assuming it could be accomplished. We reproduce the three extracts which follow with thanks.

  “Keir Hardie, we are told, is to attend the Trades Congress at Halifax, for the special purpose of bringing together the forces of Socialism and Trades Unionism as they have been brought together in the Old Country.
   "We are very much afraid that neither the Socialists nor the Trades Unions will bite. The proposition is just a little too raw. Stripped of all wordy ornament it just amounts to this: That the Socialists shall put their hands in the Trade Union’s pocket and their principles in their own.”—LEADING ARTICLE.

#    #    #    # 

  “So Keir Hardie is coming to Canada on a special mission of inducing the Socialist Party and the Independent labourites to get together for united political action. Well, he has undertaken a contract that all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t accomplish. He is attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. That he should think of such a thing shows how little he knows of the uncompromising revolutionary spirit of the Socialists of British Columbia and Ontario. He is harking up the wrong tree, and displays the fatal spirit, of compromise which is the weak spot in the Anglo-Saxon character, and has done more than anything else to retard the growth of genuine Socialism in England and in fact among English-speaking people generally.
   “There is and can be no common ground between the Socialist whose end and aim is the abolition of wage slavery and the ownership by the workers of the machinery of production and distribution, and the man who simply wants to effect a few ameliorations of the lot of the wage slave. The Socialist recognises that at this stage of the game the all essential thing to be done is to educate the workers to want and insist upon Socialism as the only permanent and effective remedy and uses elections simply as a means of propaganda, He wants first and foremost to make Socialists. The Independent Labour man merely wants to make votes. The Socialist knows that votes are no good unless there are clear-cut convictions behind them. The Independent Labour man expects to carry everything with a hurrah! and when his candidate comes in among the “also rans” is apt to get cold feet. The Socialist knows that all that can be done at present is to lay foundations, and wants to lay them good and strong on the bed-rock of scientific truth. The other fellow wants to win the election any old way and get something right here and now. The Socialist knows that a desperate, long-seated disease can't be cured suddenly by any quack remedy, and will only yield to a long course of treatment. The Independent Labour man ignores the root of the disease and wants to doctor the symptoms. Phillips Thomson."

#    #    #    # 

  “Keir Hardie. M.P., with his wife and daughter, has been visiting Toronto this week and the capitalist Press has been full of his doings. I’ll content myself with reporting a meeting I had with him a year ago. After the usual preliminaries I enquired’ ‘Comrade Hardie, I’d like to know your position on the class struggle."
  ‘ “There is no class struggle,’ he replied, following this up with a denunciation of the 'foolish’ tactics followed by the Socialist Party of Canada.
  “Having had some experience in publishing Labour and Socialist papers, I know it’s difficult at that game to get enough to buy a decent meal ticket, let alone tour the world with a family. Knowing, too, that a man won't grow rich on the salary paid a British M P. or out of the contributions to M.P.s by the union men, it puzzles me to figure out how Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardie, Victor Grayson and such men manage to finance these globe-trotting expeditions. If any comrade can enlighten me I'll promise to send the suggestion on to the Dominion executive so that if the game is straight the path of the next organiser sent out to our Canada for our Party will be made a little more easy than this summer's trip by the 'Old Man.' G. W. Wrigley."

Party Pars. (1908)

Party News from the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every opportunity should be taken to push the sale of the Party Organ, with a view not only to present needs but to enlargement. The paper is worth special attention—see that it gets it.

#    #    #    #

Rumours of certain alterations in the police regulations affecting street collections have brought the E.C. into communication with Scotland Yard. Will branches report at once to centre any steps taken by the authorities locally ?

#    #    #    #

The Tariff Reformers, debating in haste, are now repenting at leisure. Bat the discouraging experiences of their champions at Battersea and Paddington hardly justify the action of the Watford Tariff Reformers against our propaganda in that town. There our comrades have had to deal with no argument or intelligent questioning but with rowdyism organised to smash meetings in the Market Place. This, however, has only had the effect of rousing local opinion against the tactics of hooliganism, and far larger meetings are being now held than might otherwise have been the case. Watford, with tho assistance of London comrades, have kept their end up well.

#    #    #    #

A verbatim report of the debate between Comrade Fitzgerald and Mr. Lawler Wilson, of the Tariff Reform League, which took place some weeks ago at the Battersea Town Hall, will be published in pamphlet form as soon as funds permit. This will be an excellent addition to our propagandist literature. A pamphlet on Religion and Socialism is projected, and only waits upon the production of the harmless, necessary money. The third of the Kautsky pamphlets is nearing completion, and will appear directly it has run its length through these columns.

#    #    #    #

The Western Clarion (Vancouver) has reprinted in their entirety the two articles “Past, Present, and Future” and “The Old Age Pension Snare,” by Comrade A. E. Jacomb, which appeared in recent numbers of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD. The Western Clarion is apparently several miles in front of the London Clarion in power of appreciation of a good thing. The Party Organ may fairly claim to be amongst the most quoted journals; notwithstanding this the pries will remain the same.

#    #    #    #

Manchester are still making their presence felt, as is shown by the local Press reports, often running to a full column length. We are assured that we may look for another branch in the district shortly. Good! But why don’t these fellows die instead of falsifying the S.D.P. prophecy so?

#    #    #    #

At the great August “Labour” demonstration in Burnley, John Tamlyn (who spoke for the Party) after refusing the cool request of Dan Irving, S.D.P., chairman of a Demonstration platform, that the S.P.G.B. stand be shifted, went on to show (says the local Express and Advertiser) how the S.D.P. went in “for the palliation of Capitalism,” and why it was “nothing more than a mere reform organisation.” Good literature sales were effected.

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In the debate at Bury between Comrade Fitzgerald and McDavis (S.L.P.) the latter was compelled to the significant admission that the S.L.P. was a political party out to capture political power, in order to get control of the fighting forces to protect the Industrial Unionists working in mills and factories. If this is the official attitude of the S.LP., a lot of literature has been wasted in explaining that it isn’t.

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Resolutions for the Agenda of the Party meeting upon Municipal Action to be held shortly are due by Sept 28th. Branches please note.

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F. McCarthy, in resigning from the Ardwick S.D.P. and applying for membership of our Manchester Branch writes that lie has come to the conclusion that the reformist attitude of the S.D.P. is absolutely wrong. The last straw in his case was “the treacherous action of Herbert Burrows.”

Stupidus and Sapiens (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Reprinted from the Western Clarion, Official Organ of the Socialist Party of Canada, July-August; 1925.)

The vista opened out by the patient research of the archaeologist, the ethnologist, and the biologist in the attempt to unravel the unwritten history of man is one in which the most exuberant fancy can revel endlessly. Gradually there has been unfolded to us picture after picture until we see, far in the past, beyond even the earliest tradition, man first emerging from the forest gloom of primeval days. Low of brow, long of arm, short legged, huge muscled, grim of aspect, the direct forbear of the human race, yet lacking all vestige of aught we are accustomed to associate with humanity. Dwelling as the beasts of the forest, wandering through the day in search of food, grubbing for roots, climbing for fruits or nuts, crouching at night in a cave or on the limb of a tree; mating as the beast. A beast in all things, naked and unashamed. Where do we find in him any of that human nature we speak of so glibly? Where any conception of good, or evil, of decency, of morality, of faith, hope and charity? Where the soul that has been the source of so much anxiety to his posterity? Where the habits and customs, where the laws, human and “ divine”?

As says our Haji:

“What reck'd he, say, of Good or Ill,
Who in the hill hole made his lair;
The blood-fed rav’ning beast of prey,
Wilder than wildest wolf or bear?
“How long in man's pre-Adamite days
To feed and swill, to sleep and breed,
Where the Brute-biped's only life,
A perfect life sans code or creed.”

Yet, this is man, blood of our blood, bone of our bone. Our relationship to him is undeniable, and its closeness a mere matter of a few hundred thousand years. A long time? Not it! A mere turn of the glass compared to the ages between that ancestor of ours and his far-away forbear, the slimy, formless amoeba.

That man, urged onward by the same mute irresistible forces that have brought him to the threshold of manhood, passes over that threshold, and, generation by generation, approaches us of to-day, just as we are pressed onward to the morrow we know not. At the stern mandate of necessity he adapts himself to new conditions, devises new means of gaining his livelihood, creates tools and weapons, and ever improves upon them.

“Yet, as long ages rolled he learned
From beaver, ape and ant to build
Shelter for sire and dam and brood,
From blast, and blaze that hurt and killed.”

Age by age we can trace the march of our fathers towards us, ever, as they come, proving painfully and slowly by the accumulated experience of past generations; growing in knowledge, growing greater in brain and less brutish in body. Ever impelled by the stern necessity of obtaining a better hold upon the means of life. Improving their dwellings, their boats, their clothing, their tools and weapons. Discarding the rough stone weapon for the polished, that for the flint, thence to copper, to bronze, to iron. 

Free, wandering, warring, hunting, lawless, propertyless, “ignorant” savages. Living thus for nigh three hundred thousand years before the first dawn of barbarism even. Then, finding a new source of food supply in the cultivation of the soil, swinging open the gates of Eden and passing out on the way that led to labour and to slavery, to progress and to civilisation.

That ancient forbear of ours, the child of the man-ape, the scientists call “homo-stupidus”— stupid man. Us they call “homo-sapiens”—wise man. Oh, fond conceit! Wise man! We who revere the antiquity of a civilisation barely ten thousand years old, and that with lapses. Who invest with a halo of heaven-born sanctity a mushroom system of property of little better than a century’s growth. Who bow before the altars of “eternal” deities discovered but yesterday. Who crystalise our miserable modern characteristics as “human nature”—as it was in the beginning and always shall be. Who elevate to the ludicrous dignity of divine law an upstart moral code coeval with shopkeeping. Who conceitedly plume ourselves upon the possession of a higher ethical sense than our rude forbears, and daily and habitually stoop to practises which the most untutored savage would abhor. Who lie, and cheat, and thieve, and prey upon one another. Who rob, ravish and oppress the weak and cringe before the strong; who pander to lust and prostitute for a pittance; who traffic, traffic, traffic in all things— in manly “honour,” in womanly "virtue,” in childish defencelessness, in the flesh and blood of kith and kin, in the holiest of holies or in the abomination of abominations; who crown our achievements by pouring over the festering heap of our iniquities the leprous, foetid slime of hypocrisy.

Wise man! Wonderful creature! Lord of creation! Hub of the universe! For whose uses all things, the quick and the dead, were especially created; the stars and the planets, the sun by day and the moon by night to light him; the earth, the seasons, the wind, the rain, the waters, the lightning, the metals, the mountains, the plains, the valleys, the forests, the fruits, the beasts, the birds, the fishes, the fleas and the flies—and corned beef and cabbage.

D. G. McKenzie, S.P.C.

The "Standard" in America (1964)

From the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was in the year 1909 that I joined the old Socialist Party of Canada, in Vancouver, B.C. All I knew of the philosophy of Socialism at that time was restricted to the fact that I was a wage slave, disillusioned by my contacts with capitalism, and firmly convinced, by listening to lectures and reading Socialist papers and pamphlets, that Socialism was the only solution for working class problems. This was enough to go on at the start

At our headquarters, which were open day and night and at our propaganda meetings, which were held regularly inside and out there were two papers which were always sold and read. These two were the Western Clarion and the Socialist Standard.

It is natural that in a Party that had adopted it as the official organ, the Clarion would be regarded as the more important. Its distribution was advocated by the Dominion Executive Committee, and faithfully carried out by the general membership.

In our study classes we closely examined the material in both papers, and some of us became aware of the fact that, while the main objective was similar, there were differences of a serious and material kind. In the platform of the S.P. of C. was the paragraph: “The irrepressible conflict of interests between the capitalist and the worker is rapidly culminating in a struggle for possession of the reins of government—the capitalist to hold, the worker to secure it by political action. This is the class struggle."

Our reading of the Socialist Standard led us to conclude that this definition of the class struggle was not correct. That the struggle also included the workers who were selling labour power in exchange for wages. Some of the pioneer members even went so far as to contend that there was a commodity struggle as well as a class struggle. But the Socialist Standard explanation was accepted by the younger members as correct.

Again, in the S.P. of C. platform was a declaration of what the Socialist Party would do concerning legislation when in office. This, with the aid of the Standard, we fought so strongly that it was later deleted from the platform.

Here in the United States, the Socialist Standard has always been distributed as widely as possible by the World Socialist Party, and the members continuously advised to read and study the contents. The results have been reasonably satisfactory. It has furnished us with a picture, on a broader canvas, of which the Socialist movement means on the international scene, and the mode of activity in which it is carried on.

Even more important, perhaps, is the stabilizing influence it exerts on the members, particularly on the new recruits who have had no experience, or the wrong kind of experience, before making application for membership in the Party. Our problem with the inclusion of new members is greater than that in Britain, due to the large area in which we operate. In Britain it is feasible to invite the applicant to headquarters, or to send a committee from the branch to his home, to examine his past political connections, his present attitude, and his qualifications for becoming a member.

Here, due to the distances between the applicant and the National Administrative Committee Headquarters or the local, the contact with workers who show a desire to join us has to be made mainly through the medium of the mail. A set of relevant questions are sent. He ponders their significance, makes inquires as to what such and such a query means, a further explanation is given, so that in the end we have just about told him how to answer the questions in order to be eligible to become a member.

It is in such cases that the value of papers like the Socialist Standard and the Western Socialist can be seen. There are articles in each from time to time dealing with every phase of socialist philosophy. In these the applicant can see beyond the matters touched upon in the questionnaire, and they open up a new intellectual area that provides the opportunity for more and deeper research.

In recent correspondence with a young man interested in our work, and anxious to know more about it, I was asked about the import of the Negro movement towards attaining what they consider to be their “civil rights.” He stated that he thought the Negroes’ desire to acquire the franchise should entitle them to our support, as their membership was largely made up of working men and women.

In addition to my own endeavour to negate his theory, pointing out that the great majority of the members in all parties and movements belonged to the working class, and that this fact in itself was not sufficient to warrant our participation in their efforts, I happily dug up a copy of the Socialist Standard, published back in the days when the Pankhurst family were engaged in smashing windows, and going on hunger strikes in their demands that votes be given to women.

The writer of this article, in clear and simple terms, analysed the suffragette movement. He explained the capitalist character of the movement, its lack of recognition or understanding of present society and the social forces tending to its abolition, and ended up with the affirmation that our movement would not be interested in supporting any part of it. I sent this copy to my correspondent. The next time I heard from him he conceded that he had overlooked the real points of the issue, and that the Socialist Standard had set him straight.

Jack MacDonald

A Socialist International. (1916)

From the June 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the April No. of the "Western Clarion," the official organ of the Socialist Party of Canada, the following welcome note occurs :

"Our comrades in Great Britain are having a very strenuous time in face of the present crisis ; but they are nobly upholding the WORKING CLASS POSITION in spite of "Prussian Militarism," and jingoistic sneers.

It is times like these that draw the revolutionists of every country closer together for united action against the COMMON ENEMY ; and may we, in the near future, be united together with the revolutionists of other lands who have expressed the aims and principles of that part of our class, who, realising that they are slaves, express a desire to be free, in an INTERNATIONAL which, founded on the firm rock of PROLETARIAN SCIENCE, shall withstand all the storms that may assail it.”

And in the report of the Dominion Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Canada, printed in the same journal, the further statement occurs:

"We are all heartily in accord with the attitude of the S.P.G.B., and hope that before long we will be affiliated with them in a new "International.''"

Comrades, a toast! Here's to the coming Socialist International!

ED. COM.

Strange ! The heroes of the British capitalist Press are the German Socialists who are opposing the war, while the British Socialists who are taking a similar course of action are traitors and skunks, according to that same Press. It is quite consistent with the hypocrisy that decorates one man for risking his life for a kitten, and another for butchering his fellow-man.

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Two hundred and fifty thousand men must be torn from their homes and families and driven into the Army in order to provide 200,000 officers with servants and grooms. Who said the workers are not slaves ? What, Henderson ? Military necessity ! Ha, ha !

Impossibilism in Canada (Part 2) (2004)

From the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The second, and concluding, article on socialist ideas and organisation in Canada. Next month we move on to the United States

On August 4, 1914, Great Britain declared war on Germany. The Great War had begun. Two days later, the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Canada issued its Manifesto to the Workers of Canada. It stated that, in the modern world, wars have their origin in the disputes of the international capitalist class “for markets in which to dispose of the stolen products of labour”, and that the anticipated struggle would be of no real interest to the international working class. The Manifesto ended with Marx’s words: “Workers of the World, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains: You have a World to gain”. Many of the Party’s members suffered repression for their opposition to the war in general and conscription in particular. The only war that the Socialist Party of Canada supported was the class war.

The war caused considerable problems for the SPC. The repression did not destroy the Party, but it seriously weakened it. The so-called October Revolution, the Bolshevik coup d'état did not help either. As elsewhere, the workers in Canada did not really know what was happening in Russia. Officially, the SPC, and most of its propagandists, were aware that  a socialist revolution had not occurred in Russia, and that such a revolution was not possible. However, a quite considerable number of its (largely younger) members enthused over and, at least for a time, supported Bolshevism. Ultimately, some of them joined the Communist Party. Other members of the SPC were in favour of the party affiliating to the Communist International, the Comintern; but, as with the Second International previously, the Socialist Party of Canada refused to join. Furthermore, the party’s journal, the Western Clarion, was banned by the government in November 1918. The ban was not lifted until January, 1920. By this time, many members of the SPC were scattered all over Canada, as well as the United States and Australasia. Even travelling orator Charlie Lestor returned to England for a while.

The General Strike in Winnipeg, in May 1919, also had a traumatic effect on the Socialist Party of Canada. The strike began with the building and metal trades’ employers refusing to negotiate with the workers. By May 15, more than 25,000 men and women were on strike. Within a few days, thousands of workers throughout western Canada came out in sympathy The SPC as such was not responsible for the strike, although it supported the workers, and many of its members were actively involved and five of the eight jailed members of the strike committee – George Armstrong, Richard Bray, Richard Johns, Bill Pritchard and Robert Russell – were also members of the Socialist Party. Many members of the SPC, including Armstrong, Johns and Pritchard, were instrumental in forming, the same year, the anti-craft union,  One Big Union.

Nevertheless, as Jim Milne wrote in his unpublished History of the Socialist Party of Canada, “the Party had taken a battering”. Indeed, by 1922, its many enemies had largely destroyed the SPC. With the beginning of the postwar slump and the emergence of mass unemployment, most Canadian workers looked to reformist parties for their “salvation”. The Western Clarion ceased publication in July 1925. And the same year, the SPC also ceased to exist as a properly-organised political party. It seemed to be the end of the road for the socialist movement in Canada. But not quite.

A number of groups of former members of the old Socialist Party continued to meet; a “Proletarian Club” came into being in Vancouver, and a “Science Study Club” in Winnipeg. And in June, 1931 a number of former members of the SPC, including George Armstrong, and Alex Sheppard who had been living in Chicago, came together in Winnipeg and formed, or re-formed depending on various viewpoints, the Socialist Party of Canada. After some discussion, they decided to adopt the object and declaration of principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, rather than the old Platform as they felt that it was a better statement. The Party soon rented a hall, and started holding public meetings.

In Vancouver, in 1932, the Independent Labor Party, a reformist organisation, decided to change its name to the Socialist Party of Canada, despite the fact that it was aware of the existence of the genuine Socialist Party of Canada, based in Winnipeg. Because of its name, some ex-members of the original SPC decided to join the bogus Socialist party, as “entrist” revolutionaries. After a while the revolutionary group persuaded a majority of the Vancouver local of the spurious SPC to secede and become the Vancouver local of the Winnipeg-based Socialist Party of Canada. They even managed to take over the hall and furniture of the bogus SPC which, some time later, founded the British Columbia section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and, much later, the New Democratic Party of Canada.

In October, 1933 the Socialist Party of Canada began publishing its official journal, the Western Socialist. Throughout the 1930s, the SPC came into conflict with the Communist Party, many of whose members attempted to attack and break up Socialist Party meetings, and it clarified its analysis of the Soviet Union as being not socialist or communist, but a dictatorial form of state capitalism.

In September 1939 war again broke out in Europe. As with the SPC in the first world war, the Socialist Party of Canada opposed the second. On September 3 1939, the day that Britain declared war on Germany, the Dominion Executive Committee published its manifesto “on the war”, in which it quoted clauses one, two, three and six of its principles, and then stated, as in 1914, that:

“The Socialist Party of Canada further declares that no interest is at stake in this conflict which justifies the shedding of a single drop of working class blood, and it extends its fraternal greetings to the workers of all countries and calls upon them to unite in the greater struggle for the establishment of socialism, a system of society in which the ever-increasing poverty, misery, terror and bloodshed of capitalism shall be forever banished from the earth.”

As the SPC heard rumours that the Canadian government intended to suppress the Western Socialist, it decided to move the journal to Boston in the United States, where it continued to be published throughout the war, In June, 1941, however, the Canadian government’s press censors banned the Western Socialist from the country because of anti-war statements in a number of articles.

Writing around 1969 in his History of the Socialist Party of Canada, Milne concluded:

“The party has carried on with the message of socialism through the years, exploring all avenues in spreading its views. Meetings indoors and outdoors have been held. Radio talks have been arranged. On rare occasions it has managed to be on television. It has contested elections, funds permitting, in Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria. It has steadily circulated the Socialist Standard and Western Socialist and published, including a sixth edition of the Manifesto of the SPC, the name changed to The Socialist Manifesto. It has also published many leaflets, a series of these during 1957 and 1959 being produced in hundreds of thousands . . . In recent years the head office was moved from Winnipeg to Victoria.”

Since then the Socialist Party of Canada has had its ups and downs, including the formation in the 1960s of a short-lived, breakaway World Socialist Party of Canada. Between 1968 and 1984 the SPC again published its own journal, Fulcrum, and in 1973 began the publication of a journal in French, Socialisme Mondial, 13 issues of which were produced in Montréal until 1980 when publication was transferred to Europe. The SPC’s current journal is Imagine (viewable on line)

Peter E. Newell