The Source of Value (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

This article was first printed in the Socialist Standard in 1910

The proofs adduced by Marx in support of his contention that the origin and rise of capital can be traced, distinctly and indisputably, to robbery, fraud and violence, form only a small part, and by no means the most important one, of his profound investigations into social wealth production. The portions of his work describing so lucidly the process of the reproduction and accumulation of capital are for the purposes of proletarian enlightenment of even greater value.

Marx’s evidence as to the reproduction and accumulation of capital bears out completely his theories of Value and Surplus-Value. According to them only two factors exist in wealth production – natural objects and social, co-operative labour. 

Capital is part of the social wealth, of which the workers have been robbed and which is invested by its owners for the purpose of further robbery. Social, co-operative human labour applied to natural objects being alone necessary to produce wealth, it follows that the reproduction and accumulation of capital – a portion of social wealth – can exclusively be traced back to the exploitation of human labour.

The development of capitalist production causes ever-extending co-operation and productivity of labour, resulting in a gradual cheapening of human labour-power. Hence the proletariat, who alone produce all wealth, grow increasingly poorer, since their sole source of income is the sale of their labour power; while the idle owners of the means of production are accumulating more and more social wealth. 

So soon as it is conceded that to-day social labour applied to natural objects is the only source of wealth, the claim to the means of production – capital in present-day Society – by its capitalist owners can only be sustained on the ground of heredity or privilege.

Now whenever the possessing class find themselves in the dilemma of being faced by the irrefutable facts of history or economics, they mostly succeed, by means of their wealth, in getting the services of the strongest and most cunning of economic and political prize-fighters. But with the growing enlightenment of the toiling masses the attitude and methods of these “intellectual” pugilists undergo continual change.

Until a few years ago it sufficed for the capitalist class to oppose to the Marxian theory of Value (that labour applied to natural objects is the source of all Value) the utility theory of Jevons – according to which the value of an article depends upon its final utility, that is, upon how useful to the community another article of the same kind would be.

But as this final utility twaddle was exploded by Marxian writers and speakers, the theory was superseded by another utility theory – that of the Austrian school – the theory of marginal utility, according to which “the value of an article is fixed when one is debating whether it is worth while to obtain it or not, the decision arrived at indicating the utility of an article on the margin of production, viz., on the margin of doubt whether it be worth while to produce it or not”.

These two value theories of utility have, however, with the aid of the Fabian theory of “the rent of ability”, fully blossomed out into the “directive ability” so crudely championed by the capitalist economist Mr. W.H. Mallock, (A Critical Examination of Socialism).

Now while Marx in his Capital (p. 322) shows that “directive ability” is only “a special kind of wage-labour”, the Fabians agree with Mr. Mallock that it is an entity apart from wage-labour, possessed by a class of “great men”. Mr. Mallock considers that class to be the capitalist class. The Fabians hold that this ability is possessed by another (strange to say a third) class in society.

Mr. Bernard Shaw in The Times (2.2.1910) made an absurd onslaught on Mr. Mallock because of the latter’s alleged distortion of the Fabian “rent of ability theory”. Shaw, ignorant of economics, cuts a comic figure when he endeavours to instruct others on the subject. But this time he out-Shawed Shaw. Here is one of his “up-to-date pearls of wisdom”, taken haphazard:

  This is not a question of the difference between the Socialist and the anti-Socialist: it is a question between the gentleman and the cad. Lord Landsdowne has not asked for the hundred millions he saved Europe by making our treaty with Japan, and Lord Charles Beresford, if the German fleet attacked ours, would not refuse to conduct our naval defence unless the country were to be given to him as prize-money when he had saved it.

In order to flatten Mallock, Shaw hashes up his old balderdash, “Socialism and Superior Brains” in pamphlet form, and therein (p. 57) he gives the following definition of the Fabian theory of the “rent of ability”:

  He (your skilled economist) does not romance about capitalists inventing Atlantic steamers: he shows you the capitalist and labourer running helplessly, the one with his money the other with his muscle, to the able man, the actual organiser and employer, who alone is able to find a use for mere manual deftness or for the brute strength or heavy bank balance which any fool may possess.

So ignorant is Shaw that he does not realise that his criticism of Mallock amounts only to the pot calling the kettle black, and therefore tends to still further confuse the issue between Socialist and anti-Socialist.

Now Mallock states his conception of the theory of “directive ability” (A Critical Examination of Socialism, p. 40) as follows:

  “Though labour is essential to the production of wealth even in the smallest quantities, the distinguishing productivity of industry in the modern world depends not on the labour, but on the ability with which the labour is directed, and in the modern world the primary function of capital is that of providing ability with its necessary instrument of direction”.

All this confusion as to what are the factors operating in wealth production and the functions of the capitalist, or whether “directive ability” is an entity apart from the labour-power of the working class, is dispelled, and the issues cleared up by Marx in Capital, particularly in those chapters dealing with “Co-operation, Machinery and Modern Industry”.

The main reason so many seekers after Socialist knowledge remain reformers is that they do not realise that man is a social product and that wealth production throughout human history has been based on co-operation. With a thorough grasp of these primary Socialist principles no proletarian can remain in ignorance of the meaning of social evolution and revolution. In his efforts to trace the history of man as a social product he will discover the fact that society is an organism with its own laws of development and that the various stages of such development are determined by the evolution in the tools of production. And in his endeavour to gather evidence of the existence of the co-operative principle in human society, the worker will learn that the condition of the wealth producers depends entirely upon the ownership of these tools of production, that is, upon whether they are owned by the users, or by another class, to whom such ownership gives the power of exploitation and domination. He will also come to realise that a change in the ownership of the means of production cannot be brought about by any evolutionary process, but, on the contrary, must be accomplished, by the propertyless class, by a political revolution.

In order to be able to show that “directive ability” does not exist apart from wage-labour it is necessary to briefly summarise and illustrate here what Marx has so minutely and exhaustively propounded in Capital, particularly in the chapters on “Co-operation, Manufacture and Modern Industry”. 

In perusing such classical writings as Ancient Society by Lewis Morgan, The Origin of the Family by Frederick Engels, The History of Politics by Jenks, and other works by avowed bourgeois authors we learn that the principle of co-operation has throughout history – under savagery, barbarism and civilisation – prevailed in the production of human sustenance. Already in primitive communist society – among the red Indians who lived mainly by the proceeds of the hunt, in the Indian village community that pursued principally agriculture for its maintenance, and in the patriarchal peasant family which produced its own means of subsistence – labour was organised on co-operative lines. Under chattel slavery, where the slave rendered personal service to his master, under feudalism, where the serf was attached to the land and worked part of his time for the maintenance of his master and the other part for himself, and under handicraft, when each handicraftsman used a set of tools of his own to produce an article right out, the principle of co-operation was not obliterated but concealed.

As each producer was only able to produce a particular article of wealth, but required a variety of such articles for his sustenance, exchange of commodities was necessary, and though the principle of co-operation was hidden in the process of production, it was clearly brought to light in the process of exchange. After all, each commodity was the embodiment of one man’s activities, and therefore by the exchange of one commodity for another the exchange of men’s activities was continually taking place.

A close examination into the history of wealth production convinces us that Mallock and his supporters are speaking altogether contrary to fact when they assert that with the development of modern Industry, the capitalists, the owners of the means of production have developed a new factor, possessed by them, namely, “directive ability”, to which can be traced the origin of the greater amount of wealth produced. The records of history prove just the contrary. 

Whether we take the evidence supplied by Marx and Engels on the one hand, or by Adam Smith, Thorold Rogers and De Gibbins on the other, we find it all supports the contention that the owner of the means of production is only performing the function of superintendent in production while the same is in its infancy, that is to say, while it is in the stage of manufacture, where production is carried on with small primitive tools and by means of ever growing division of manual labour. And the aforementioned historians and economists further agree that as soon as machinery, steam and electricity are introduced into production, resulting in what we term “Modern Industry”, the capitalists engage their superintendents of labour in the same way that they purchase ordinary labour-power. In the modern factory, workshop or other place of production, the average superintendent is not a capitalist but a wage-worker, commonly called a salaried official, who, having as a rule no property, is compelled to sell his labour power to the capitalist. It is true that the salary paid to such official contains not only the price of his labour-power as superintendent of production, but often includes his pay as “hustler”, of the producers.

Marx, far from denying the need for a directing authority in modern production, emphasises the fact of its indispensableness. He writes in Capital (p. 821):

  All combined labour on a large scale requires, more or less, a directing authority, in order to secure the harmonious working of the individual activities, and to perform the general functions that have their origin in the action of the combined organism, as distinguished from the action of its separate organs. A single violin player is his own conductor; an orchestra requires a separate on.

But wisely Marx does not ascribe the ever growing productivity of co-operatively used labour to the directing authority, which, after all, is only a single organ of the social organism, and like all others, a social product, which society has nourished, clothed, taught and trained for the position it occupies.

And on the other hand, Marx does not ascribe the increasing productivity to manual labour alone, but proves that all activities, physical and mental, combined in one social co-operative mass, contribute to the production of wealth in society. To single out individuals – even the cleverest and most capable – amounts to an allegation that a man can exist apart from and independent of society. These points are brilliantly explained in the following passages in Capital. On page 311 we read:

  “Capitalist production only then really begins, as we have already seen, when each individual capital employs simultaneously a comparatively large number of labourers; when consequently the labour-process is carried on on an extensive scale and yields, relatively, large quantities of products. A greater number of labourers working together, at the same time, in one place (or, if you will, in the same field of labour), in order to produce the same sort of commodity under the mastership of one capitalist, constitutes, both historically and logically, the starting-point of capitalist production.”

On pages 315-316 we are told:

  “Just as the offensive power of a squadron of cavalry, or the defensive power of a regiment of infantry is essentially different from the sum of the offensive or defensive powers of the individual cavalry or infantry soldiers taken separately, so the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same undivided operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch, or removing an obstacle. In such cases the effect of the combined labour could either not be produced at all by isolated individual labour, or it could only be produced by a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the collective power of masses.”

And on page 319 Marx says:

  “The combined working-day produces, relatively to an equal sum of isolated working-days, a greater quantity of use-values, and, consequently, diminishes the labour-time necessary for the production of a given useful effect.”

and further on:

  “When the labourer co-operates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.”

A cursory glimpse at capitalist production in modern times convinces us that the capitalist – the receiver of interest, profit and rent – has, as far as production is concerned, long ceased to fulfil any useful function whatsoever, and it is no exaggeration to allege that even the work of gathering in the interest, profit and rent is nowadays performed by paid menials – clerks, collectors or private secretaries. And if we occasionally find a capitalist seemingly engaged in work, closer enquiry always shows that his “work” amounts to nothing more or less than scheming how to more successfully exploit the workers. We possess, apart from the statistics of the enemy, practically no figures to prove how much surplus-value the capitalists are wringing from the toilers. The most recent census of production (1907) was taken deliberately to ascertain only the values produced and the number of workers employed in various trades. The Census Act particularly provided that salaries and wages were not to appear in the returns. But taking roughly the underestimated figures of capitalist statisticians for guidance, the surplus-value wrung from the workers in this country approximates 75 per cent of the wealth produced by them.

Now when we consider that the capitalists are not only useless members of society, but the worst of parasites on the social organism, with the result that millions of workers are either steeped in direct poverty or are on the brink of it, we see that the time has arrived when the toilers, realising their tremendous collective power both in the economic and political field, must consciously and revolutionarily organise for the overthrow of the parasite class and their own emancipation from wage slavery.

Hans Neumann

From the Socialist Standard, April 1910.

By the Way (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In effect, a Labour Government has decided not to do much about the poverty in our midst. (Professor Peter Townsend in a letter to The Times 28.7.67).

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As far as the United States is concerned the search for peace in South East Asia never ends. (R. McCloskey, State Dept., spokesman, Washington 2.8.67).

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Soviet economists have in recent years worked out a theory of price formation for the present stage of our country’s development, and while much more has still to be done, already triumphant in the new prices is the scientific principle of the so-called socialist price of production. It embodies, besides cost price, labour inputs, depreciation of assets and capital investments. (Anatoli Klinsky, Learned Secretary, Economic Research Institute of the USSR State Planning Committee, The Times 2.8.67).

The Pace That Kills. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Modern Street Traffic Problem Discussed.

A Philosophy in a Nutshell
“Hurry on, please!” is the catch phrase of the day. It expresses the salient characteristic—with or without the please of every modern industrial centre, just as “Get on or get out!” sums up its brutal philosophy. In the roaring traffic of the highway, indeed, we have a vivid yet typical example of this “non-stop” age.

Take modern road traffic, then, as a case in point. It illustrates the rapid yet enormous changes forced upon society by economic development, and it shows unmistakably how little the hireling worker profits by the wonderful mechanical progress his physical and mental labour has made possible. The ubiquitous motor has made the dweller in the most distant hamlet familiar with its dust and dangers, but in London’s streets the “motor peril” now reaches its apotheosis.

Truly the motor is everywhere, but on the crowded roads of the metropolis its presence and speed have raised a problem for which the multitudinous highway authorities seek in vain a solution.

The streets are turned into slaughter yards, and it is no crime in the eyes of those who administer the law, for the motorist to slay the harmless passer-by. It is by far the cheapest form of murder, for it is scarcely too strong a statement to say that the motorist has practically been granted the right to slaughter any who dare to cross his path.

At inquests the motorist is almost always exonerated from blame—particularly if it is pointed out that he was sober. And even in those rare cases where this does not happen the penalty is a puerile censure, or a punishment ludicrously disproportionate to that which is inflicted when the murder is done other than with the aid of a motor.

Way for the Road Hog!
Above all the conflicting and hysterical statements anent the modern highways problem one thing is clear: that high speed is the chief bugbear. “It’s the pace that kills.” Exceeding the speed that is safe in the particular circumstances is the cause of most of the maiming and slaughter. Indeed, the law, ass though it is, nominally establishes a speed limit. Yet motorists habitually exceed that limit. In fact, travelling at the legal limit is stigmatised as a “mere crawl”. Moreover, it is not for the safety of the public that corners are rounded and roads widened and strengthened, but simply to allow greater speeds to be attained—with the inevitable consequence of a longer casualty list.

It is, further, an understood thing that the police never prosecute for exceeding the speed limit unless it is exceeded by over five miles, and very rarely even then. The car owner’s most frequent boast is of the speed at which his motor travels, and the rare fine is regarded as a certificate to the quality of his engine, and is a tribute to his childish vanity.

Despite the fact that most of those killed and maimed on the highways would still be safe and sound if a rational speed in the circumstances had been adhered to, representatives of motor associations fatuously assert that not high, but “low” speeds, are the concomitants of accident! And as though to support this risible doctrine, almost every motorist in the courts, contemptuous of the law relating to perjury, states his speed to have been at the time of the smash, between five and twelve miles an hour! That is the homage that vice pays to virtue!

Motoring magistrates are ever ready to condone the recklessness of the motorist, and sometimes even lecture pedestrians and cyclists on the nuisance and danger their existence on the road presents for the man behind the “petrol gun”! They reserve the vials of their wrath, however, for the urchin on a bicycle, whose crime was in enjoying an innocent “coast” down an incline at little more than half the legal speed limit for motors!

The Hog’s Grunt Translated.
To such a pass have things come that the attitude of the average motorist is practically that the roads are his property, and that all others are trespassers, to be hooted off. “Get off the earth or I’ll push you off!” is the sentiment expressed in the imperious howl of the motor syren.

Besides being the capitalist’s instrument of profit, the motor is now his chief toy—or at least it runs his “blonde” or his “brune” very close for pride of place in this connection—and to the arrogance engendered by the possession of the most powerful and speedy thing on the road is added the arrogance of wealth and class. The result is a growing contempt and intolerance on the part of the motorist toward the weaker users of the road, mitigated only faintly by spasmodic reprisals and agitations on the part of the latter.

But why go on? It is neither necessary nor advisable to recount at length the manifold abuses of the motor vehicle—the simplest statement of fact suffices.

Yet the petrol engine is a marvellously efficient instrument, and in its further development its possibilities are great for humanity. The simple question to be emphasised then arises—why should an undoubted mechanical advance spell greater discomfort, toil, and danger to the workers? It would be quixotic, or worse, to attempt to stop the development of motor traffic, and it would be equally futile to drag the red-herring of the individual “reckless driver” and the exceptional “road hog” across the trail. The trouble has deeper roots.

The chauffeur, for example, must obey his master or be supplanted by a more obedient servant. The taxi-driver must keep up the earnings of his cab or lose his livelihood. The employee of the motor-bus trust must keep carefully to his schedule times and maintain the earnings of his vehicle—indeed his wage depends on the number of miles he can run. Thus it is that other road users suffer who are too weak to cope with the powerful motor.

Inciting to Murder.
Among the weakest of road users is the cyclist, and, it so happens that the cycle is, above all others, the workers’ vehicle; and those who employ it as a means of getting to and from their daily toil, know full well how the danger grows. But the bus driver, held by the trust to an inelastic time table, with his livelihood endangered if the takings of his vehicle and its daily mileage fall, is economically compelled to make unscrupulous use of the power his motor gives him, to the detriment of others. Self-preservation makes him regard the slowly moving cyclist and pedestrian as obstacles to his livelihood, hindrances to the keeping of his time schedule, impediments to his speed in getting first to paying points on the route.

The type of mind engendered by such an economic position may be gauged from the complaint of a motor bus-driver, at a South London inquest on a victim, with regard to cyclists, that “he frequently had to give way to them”.

Not always, evidently. Indeed, when pedestrian or cyclist is killed, well, “accidents will happen”, and there is an obstacle less on the road, while after all, coroners are indulgent. If a cyclist is scared off, he becomes a passenger the more for the bus, and another source of profit for the trust—a trust which, by the way, has the sublime effrontery to pose, in an official letter to the Press, as jealous of its “reputation as the guardian of the public safety”. Gordelpus!

Of course, if every human being killed or injured by their agency was made to cause such a heavy monetary loss to the transport companies that it outweighed the profitableness of high speed and reckless driving, then the massacre would cease. But is anyone so simple as to believe this will be done? Can thugs be relied upon to prohibit murder? It is motor owners who legislate. What avails human life when put into the scales against dividends. Indeed, the attempt to make human life of more account than profits would be howled down as a dastardly, senseless, revolutionary attack upon the sacred rights of property.

A Profitable “Remedy”.
No. Whatever “reforms” may be inaugurated will not diminish, but may increase, profits. A limitation of further bus licences is already semi-officially foreshadowed, and worked for. This would mean the granting of a permanent monopoly against the public to the existing trust, and the exclusion of fresh competition, without any guarantee for public safety or convenience.

But is this question of the killing and maiming by motors the only one, or even the most important? Obviously it is not; and it is only dealt with here because it is but a symptom. It is true that nearly 150 persons have been killed outright by the motor-bus trust in the metropolitan area alone during the past year. That is terrible enough; but have not equal numbers of workers being sacrificed at one fell swoop in preventable colliery disasters—not this year alone but every year? And should we have heard so much about the motor-bus slaughter had it not suited the purpose of a set of officehunters to make political capital out of it, on behalf of that cheerless piece of humbug, “the people’s trams”?

There is, however, no need to belittle in any way the facts relating to the motor peril. They are appalling. But the rest is more terrible still. The one is but the manifestation of the greater evil, for the sinister result of modern traffic conditions has a deeper meaning than is realised or expressed by commentators in the Press. It signifies the growing pace and intensity of industrial life, the universal acceleration of production, and the decreasing value of the life of the worker when put in the balance against the pleasure or the profit of the class that owns the country. The huge and increasing size of industrial centres, and the greater distances between the workers’ home and the factory, the need for more quickly transferring labour, the greed of the rack-renter of the central districts, the knowledge that the workers’ “time is money” to the capitalist, the rush for profits of a transport trust, and the all-pervading atmosphere of hustle, recklessness, and speed that is engendered by capitalist greed and the ever-increasing world-wide competition—all these are symptoms of the deep-lying social malady.

It is not very long ago that miners were entombed in a burning mine by bricking up the mouth of the pit in order to save the property! No! the sacrifice of human life on the road is not an isolated phenomenon. The drowning of seamen for the sake of a few extra tons of cargo consequent on the raising of the load-line by a Liberal Board of Trade; the killing and maiming of an enormous and increasing number of workers in mine and factory for the sake of extra output and extra profit; and the toll of life taken on the highways for the sake of the profit or pleasure of accelerated transport, are all phases of the same fact. Men are the slaves of the machines they have created.

Modern machines, in their marvellous precision, complexity, and swiftness, bring with them the possibility, the material groundwork, of greater leisure, and the provision of the good things of life in ever-increasing abundance. Yet the only reward of those who toil is more intense labour, a less secure position, greater hardships and dangers, and a shortened life. Out of good cometh evil? Why? Because those who work are hirelings, while those who toil not own. The machine supplants the hireling, makes him redundant, and starves him instead of feeding him. The new machines and higher speeds only increase the wealth of the parasitic owner, enabling him to discharge more wage-labourers, reduce wages, and intensify toil. Thus it is that instruments capable of dispensing wealth and leisure to all, impoverish and overwork the many. Thus it is that the triumphant advance of technology has only carried our class on to ever more painful labours. We are victims of the machine only because we are the hirelings of the class that owns it. The evolution of industry leads us on, and we struggle painfully to adapt ourselves to its steps. Hitherto the workers have neglected the one needful step—the democratic ownership and control of all industrial machinery.

Speed and concentration are the order of the day. But the London transport trust, while it provides the example of the disease, hints at the only remedy. Industry after industry has developed to the trust stage, and has shown us plainly that since those who produce now run the machinery and organise industry—for absentee shareholders—they are demonstrably capable of running production for themselves! Surely the time when they will do so is near at hand! The need, the possibility, and the economic foundation of Socialism are manifestly present.

Industrial advance places the means of socialised production within the workers’ reach, and their daily trials and difficulties must open their eyes to the supreme need of realising that possibility, and of wresting the power to control from those who now usurp it. Then they will resume control of their means of life, becoming the masters of the tool of production instead of remaining enslaved; and will for the first time be able to utilise technical progress humanly and intelligently, to provide more leisure and a completer life for all.

But so long as class ownership remains, for just so long will the long list of killed and maimed continue to grow, and all remediable measures fail to keep pace with the break-neck speeding up of our daily tasks. Already we are becoming inured to the motor murders as to the butchery in other spheres of industry. The sudden development of the road motor “within the memory of a schoolboy” has struck the popular imagination, leaving scarce heeded other and more deadly fields. But soon this too will pall, and the great problem as a whole will only press more surely for solution.

Hustle and worry, then, will continue to be the worker’s lot; danger, suffering, and want dog his footsteps ever more closely, until, in the fullness of time, the scales shall fall from his eyes and he shall see how frail his fetters are. And when he feels his mighty strength, and at long last sees its obvious use, woe betide the parasites who have battened on his sweat and blood in the long night of his blindness and ignorance!

F. C. Watts

Socialism and "Science." (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spencer and Huxley, Tyndal and Lewes, Darwin and Buckle, are names coupled with science in the fighting stage, battling against the learned champions of ignorance, the clergy, and the Church. But Science to-day is in a bad way. She no longer battles for her existence against a militant clergy, but sleeps beneath their caresses. The progressive materialism of an earlier time has gone out of fashion, and our scientists now talk mysteriously and darkly about thought-waves and telepathy, discarnate souls and such immaterial subjects. Witches and magic, demons and angels, that we had confidently supposed had been laid for ever with the other ghosts of popular superstitions, have cropped up again under the patronage of “scientific” men. The immortality of the soul is said to be established on evidence sufficiently strong to satisfy the scientific mind, and doubtless hell will flare up again, if only to illumine the same “scientific" minds.

The connection between the clergy and the ruling class is too historically obvious to need elaboration; the partnership of the parson and the squire in the government of the country belongs to history. The attack on the clergy by the scientist was simultaneous with the attack on hereditary privilege by the capitalist The political struggle and the intellectual struggle arose from the same set of economic circumstances. The thing preceded the idea; the actual power achieved by the capitalist class on the economic field had to be accompanied by political recognition and intellectual sanction.

The same movement of economic forces explains the present reaction of science. Capitalism has achieved its mission: it is the predominant power in the State. In the main it has absorbed the aristocracy, its erstwhile enemy. Being at peace with the landlord, it is at peace with the parson.

The capitalist having absorbed the landlord, the Whig and Tory being transformed into the Unionist, the scientist and the theologian have also called a truce. The whole force of united rulers are therefore able to show a single front to the working class pressing upon them. The side-tracks of the patriotic and political order are still useful in some quarters, and the mysticism of the scientist-cum-theologian is equally useful in others. The possibility of conversing with the spook of a departed friend, or the possible influence of the planets on the individual character, may have as much fascination as a game of whist or a visit to St. James's Hall, bat that they are established as ready for the acceptance of “scientific” minds is beyond credulity. They are still useful as will-o’-the-wisps to set the more curious of the workers chasing instead of looking into the things that matter in their own lives. The New Theology and Christian Science, with a hundred and one forms of occultism and mysticism that are fashionable in some quarters point out the trend among our intellectuals.

All this would not matter if it were not that Socialism—the social philosophy of Materialism —is dragged into it by some of its alleged votaries. R. J. Campbell, who, it is confidently asserted, is controlled by the spirit of Jesus Christ, is a member of the I.L.P. Bernard Shaw, who is said to believe in the Yogi Rama seeing with his eyes blindfolded, in spite of a scathing exposure of the performance, is a Fabian. Others might be mentioned who are both pseudo-Socialists and occultists ; while the effort of advanced churchmen to nobble the Socialist movement is a recognised phase of the workers’ struggle by the really class-conscious ones among them.

Fortunately, the S.P.G.B. stands clear for Socialism alone. The attractions of the higher life or the call of the spirit leave us Socialists all the time. The bread and butter question is first for us. The struggle for working class supremacy has first to be fought out. Given the success of Socialism, there will be time enough to investigate with a far greater degree of dispassionate and clear-sighted enquiry, the claims of the new science, new theology, theosophy, spiritualism, and what not, to separate the grain of truth there may be in the mass of commercial charlatanism that passes now under the various titles of psychic mysteries.

Socialists at this time of day have no business with Psychical Research, however attractive the “search for truth" may be made by those who have nothing better to occupy their time and minds with. Sufficient economic and social science is incontrovertibly established to enable us to know, even if we did not know by rougher and more empirical methods, that food, shelter, and clothing, the prime necessaries of existence, can be had in abundance by all when the cornerstone of capitalism is dislodged and the workers control industry for their own ends. Until this is done nothing else matters.

The education and organisation of the workers for this great purpose is the work of Socialists. No “saviour from on high" will help us. All the “saviours" of the past, and their current representatives, are on the side of the powers that be; and there is no reason for supposing that the future will differ from the past in the part the priesthood, in its widest sense, will play in the social straggle. That science—or rather, the scientists, with some commendable exceptions— are hobnobbing with the mysticists is but another indication of the union of the forces of capitalism in every field, that points to the rapidly approaching time when this consolidated forces of organised class-conscious labour will meet the existing order for the last bout.

Then will be required all the strength of the Socialist demand. The more Socialism is overlaid with excrescences and absurdities the more chance is there for Socialism to suffer. The more simple the Socialist demand is kept the greater is the concentration on the essential point. Against the central citadel of Socialism all the thunder of capitalism’s politicians, preachers, and wizards will break in vain.

"Eugineer."

The "War" Against Poverty. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who has followed the Press during the last few weeks will have been struck by the reiteration, day after day, of certain articles in bold type, announcing to a more or less interested world, the fact that we are in the midst of a “Great Trade Boom," and that we are also engaged in a great “War Against Poverty."

As is usually the case, the capitalist newspapers have tumbled over each other, as it were, in their efforts to prove to all and sundry what a glorious condition of prosperity the workers are enjoying. They hare also been ably assisted in those efforts by journals professing especial sympathy with labour, which is a gratifying feature—to the capitalists.

Among others, Mr. Chiozza Money and the “Daily News" have been at great pains to show what wonderful records have been created, both in imports and exports, with a consequent increase in wages.

This may appear all right to the "man in the street," who doesn’t trouble to analyse these statements, but simply reads his daily paper and swallows all that it dishes up.

As a matter of fact, however, during the last fifteen years, wages— that is, real wages— have actually decreased seven per cent. The average income of those "who toil not" during the same period has increased by over four times as much!

According to Mr. Money “the worker is getting a share of the increased product of industry.” Maybe! But Mr. Money omits to point out that, relatively to the cost of living, the workers are worse off than they were twenty-five years ago. Instead of the workers being more contented and looking brightly forward to what Mr. Money terms “the good new times,” their outlook is blacker and their condition more, precarious than ever.

The “Daily Mail” (3.12.12) endeavours to explain the cause of this “boom” in trade. “The growing output of gold,” they say, “the increase in credit which has accompanied it, and the advance in production with the help of the modern application of electricity, are probable and practical factors.”

Now, if anyone had asked the writer what, in his opinion, was the cause of the increased misery of the workers, a better explanation could hardly have been furnished than that supplied by the “Daily Mail” to explain quite another point. The only difference is the point of view. Whereas the “Daily Mail” seeks to show that the “boom” benefits everybody, this is not really the case. Only the capitalist class is benefited. Gold production has increased enormously during the last half-century, due to improved methods of production. As a consequence of this the value of gold has fallen. Thus gold being cheaper, more of it is required in order to exchange for any given commodity than formerly—assuming, of course, that the value of other commodities remains the same.

This depreciation in the value of gold means high prices, hence a decline in the purchasing power of money. On the other hand, owing to the constant improvement of machinery, with its inevitable resulting army of unemployed, it cannot be said that “booms” in the long run benefit the workers. Cases there are where workers have been put on overtime, and others given jobs, in order to cope with a rush of trade, but trade “booms” are at the best only temporary, and are invariably followed by periods of depression due to over production. Even at the time of writing indications are not wanting that portend an early breakdown. This, of course, will mean a further augmentation of the unemployed army.

The inability of the workers to buy back that which they have produced results in a glut of the market, and we have the spectacle of thousands of men, women, and children going hungry and ill clad, simply through having produced too much! This apparently involves a contradiction, but to the student of social conditions its truth is terribly plain. And this condition, I might point out, is inevitable under a system wherein goods are produced for profit instead of for use.

These are facts that the average social reformer doesn’t trouble to enquire very deeply into. He believes that by pressing for legislation to the capitalist class, who control and administer the political machinery in addition to controlling the machinery of industry, we can gain immunity from the depredations of that class!

All the so-called remedies for the elimination of poverty that are at the present time being shouted all over the country by the "war against poverty” campaigners and others, betray the deplorable fact that even the “leaders" themselves don’t know the commonsense principles upon which a working class movement should be based. This is inexcusable in view of the fact that the real solution of the poverty “problem” is as easy to understand as falling off a log. The solution lies in Socialism. This, as a rule, is outside the vocabulary of the average labour leader, who generally has some axe or other to grind.

Let us take a glance at some of their so called remedies.

There are several reform parties in the field, and prominent among them is the I.L.P., with its cry of “War Against Poverty!” They in turn are assisted by the B.S.P., Co-operative Unions, Women's Guilds, and other freak organisations—in fact, anybody and everybody so long as they keep Socialism obscured.

One of the points aimed at is the establishment of a legal Minimum Wage. Will this alleviate poverty in any degree ? Let us see.

Money, being a commodity, is subject to the same laws as any other commodity. Its exchange-value varies. As its value increases or decreases its purchasing power is higher or lower as the case may be. Given a legal Minimum Wage of a fixed amount of money, and the continued rise in the cost of living, and in a short time the minimum would represent s greater depth of poverty than unrestricted wages give to-day.

It is true that the reformers at their various meetings have added amendments to the resolutions, calling for a rise in the minimum if the cost of living rose, but one can hardly conceive any government establishing a minimum wage that had to be periodically adjusted to rising or falling prices.

But even if they did, the operation of economic law (as has been shown in the columns of this journal) must inevitably defeat the object of the reform. Substantiation of this comes from Australia, where the establishment of a Minimum Wage has led to the wholesale dismissal of men who are no longer young and active, and has intensified the struggle all round.

The Minimum Wage is a snare and a delusion, intended to lure the working class into supporting the Liberals. It is unscientific and calculated to lead the workers into the bog of false economics.

The B.S.P. are in the same boat as the I.L.P., for they claim that “the legal enactment of a Minimum Wage for all adult workers, a maximum working week, and maximum prices of commodities are proposals advocated by the (then) S.D.P., which clearly indicate the revolutionary nature of their policy.” (“Justice,” 22.7.11.)

Just how far such a policy is revolutionary may be judged by the statement of Sir George Askwith (known as “the strike-breaker”) at a meeting held by Mr. Harold Cox only the other day. “In a comparatively short time,” said Sir George, “we might be face to face with the grave consideration of the question of a general minimum wage.” So, whether we “demand ” it or not, it is quite conceivable that we shall be forced to have it—in the interest of the master class.

Another “demand’’ is for an Eight Hour Day. This needs very little examination in order to show the “benefits” accruing from it. The speeding up that has resulted from its introduction in such places as Brunner Mond’s, Nather & Platt’s, and various municipal bodies is well known. Such firms afford fine examples of the hours being reduced without in any way curtailing the output.

Any worker engaged on an eight hours a day job will testify as to who benefits by the restriction of hours. Only recently the hours on the Birmingham Tramway System were reduced from 60 to 54. This has since been nullified to a great extent by “speeding up” the journeys, and the men complain that they are as badly off as before. Cases could be quoted where hours have been reduced from 10 to 7½, and yet the actual output has been the same.

In 1911 151, 056 workers had their working time reduced, yet we find that the total production was greater than in 1910. Clearly an eight hours day will not benefit the mass of the workers.

"Provision for School Children” is another item which provides an example of tinkering with effects without removing the causes. How much better would it not be to eudeavour to understand the cause of child misery, and work for its removal, instead of advocating fatuous reforms that have only the effect of blinding the workers with false hopes! Instead of applying salve to the social boil, why not purify the system, and thus eradicate disease?

Children should be well fed, and well clothed too, but is it to be expected that the capitalist class will abolish poverty when such a condition is absolutely inseparable for their position of social dominance.

When the workers can be got to recognise that the cause of all poverty and social misery is the control by one class over the means of life of the other, the end of poverty will be in sight. Poverty has no need to exist, but until the working man ceases to vote his master into political power, so long will it continue.

Any of the reforms enumerated above can be applied without in the least effecting any permanent improvement in the lot of the workers. They are essentially capitalistic, and as such should be emphatically denounced by the Socialist. who sees in Socialism the only remedy.

The opportunities for studying Socialism are open to everybody, and when we find so called labour leaders heading in a different direction, we are forced to the conclusion that it is against their interest to abolish capitalism. Indeed, they aim only at propitiating it, for they claim that they wish to get ‘'the best” out of the system. We have continued to point this out, and experience has verified our judgment. Such a policy has no place in the propaganda of a Socialist party. The issue— freedom or slavery —is too clear for that.

Both the B.S.P. and the I.L.P. believe and teach that capital would exist under Socialism, and also that wages would be paid and that government would continue. No wonder the “rank and file” are politically blind, when they are taught to believe that the conditions essential for the introduction of Socialism are identical with those necessary to capitalism.

The strewing of the path with these red herrings, fouling the trail, as it were, of Socialist propaganda, renders the work of the Socialist more difficult, but whilst it may, in a small sense, retard the ultimate realisation of Socialism, it cannot expunge its principles or prevent its final triumph.

There is only one party that is engaged in a real war against poverty— that party is the Socialist Party. Being a Socialist Party, all our efforts are logically centred upon Socialism. It is to the interest of the workers to rally under its flag, and help to speed the day when we shall have gained the right to live, when those who create the wealth shall enjoy it, when every man, woman, and child shall have the opportunity to develop to the fullest extent their human powers, and thus, for the first time since the dawn of history, realise the true meaning of life.

Tom Sala

Truth or Libel? (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

On a previous occasion the men on the North Eastern Railway kicked over the traces. They were induced to return to work on the masters’ terms against their own wishes, through the negotiations of their leaders. They protested they had been sold. We said in the columns of the Socialist Standard that they had been sold, and were sued for libel in consequence.

On this occasion the men of the N.E.R. are induced to return to work after being fined for the days off they have had without leave. This time the “Daily Herald” says they have been sold, and adds “as usual.” Will there be another libel action, or is the “Daily Herald” not taken as seriously as the Socialist Standard?

The Latest Railway Treachery. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

After repeated unsuccessful efforts to gain redress for some of their grievances, the Railwaymen, sick of the fraudulent Conciliation Boards, have, as a gage of defiance to the unholy crew who boss the N. Eastern system, once more resorted to the weapon of the strike.

The ostensible cause of the trouble was the insolent attempt of the masters to victimise a man against whom they had a grudge, but the real cause was a bitter resentment against the sinister attempt of the capitalists to regulate the leisure, as well as the working hours, of their men.

As is always the case when the working man chafes against the chains of his slavery, the paid liars of the Liberal and Tory Press have indulged in an orgy of insinuation and vituperation. The "Standard," shrieking in simulated indignation, declared it “a strike for the right to get drunk”; the "Pall Mall Gazette," anxious to contribute its quota of dirt, purloined the war whoop of the "Standard” ; the “Daily Mirror’’ mirrored its own dirty soul in a filthy cartoon; the "Daily Mail," aping the characteristics of its lord and master, asked in a tone of unctuous hypocrisy, "Do the trade unions of this country stand up for the right to get drunk ? "

The Liberal Press, not to be outdone in the use of the muck-rake, rose equally to the occasion, asserting that the strikers were “practically fighting for the right of the railway workers to endanger the safety of the public," and so on.

In every case the suggestion was that the men were blatantly in the wrong; that they knew they were wrong, and were simply trying to bluff through it; that an irresponsible mob were determined to upset everything until the right to get drunk was conceded; and that they had chosen one of the busiest times of the year to irritate and annoy a long-suffering public as much as possible.

We are not concerned here as to whether a man may get drunk or not. What we are concerned with is, first the sham pretence of safe-guarding the interests of the public offered by the railway company, as an excuse for their summary action in regard to Knox, and secondly the lesson to be learned from this latest manifestation of industrial unrest.

We are always told, on the occasion of a big strike, that the "public" must be considered. In the railway strike of ’11, in the Transport Workers’ strikes and during the Miners' strike, the capitalist Press at once struck this note, and used it to smash the men. It is always the "public" that have to be considered, and never the men on strike; and if one thinks for a moment one will find it a pretence reeking with hypocrisy. and deadly dangerous to the working class.

Why should we consider the “public" ? When have they ever considered us? When we were bullied and browbeaten, when we toiled in dangerous occupations, suffering daily loss of life and limb, when we sold the last stick and our little ones cried to us for bread, did the "public" help us? Did they think of us? Did they try ever so little to visualise for themselves our daily lives, or weigh in impartial scales our statements and our demands? Did they not, on the contrary, prejudge us from the statements of our enemies, and lose no opportunity to sneer at our attempts to improve our position? Why, then, should we consider the public about which the unclean Press is so deeply concerned, and which is in reality the master class itself, with its myriad soulless, toadying legal, political, and clerical hacks.

The real public, the 15 millions of workers, are never considered at all. If it is true that the railway magnates are so deeply concerned with safeguarding the interest of the real (as distinct from the newspaper) public, why don't they make a start with their own employees? One can see how little the railway capitalists are concerned to safeguard the interest of that large section of the real public it has under its immediate control, when one considers the number of preventable "accidents" which occur amongst railway employees. These have averaged nearly 500 (fatal) per annum during the last ten years, while the number of non-fatal "accidents" increased from 13,642 in 1902 to 27,848 in 1911.

It is common knowledge that this increase is due to the worsening of the conditions under which this dangerous occupation is carried on, and the murderous method of coupling and uncoupling. For over twenty years the railway companies have had at their disposal an automatic coupling which would reduce almost to zero the accidents under this heading, but they prefer to murder men wholesale rather than minimise their blood-stained profits.

Again, the net profits of the railway companies during 1910 were £47,356,000, and in 1911 they increased by another 1½ millions. During the time the wages paid by the fifteen principle companies to all their employees was £23,425,000 annually, so that while they publish figures showing that they can only pay a dividend of some 3½ per cent. (omitting the fact that this is on inflated capital), yet the actual rate at which the workers are robbed in this industry is 200 per cent. And yet when the men kick against the pricks the liars of modern journalism denounce them and use every weapon they can invent for the purpose of injuring their cause.

Another aspect of this matter is that, in spite of the spirit of comradeship and determination, the men have lost. They lost because. not having gained the knowledge they should have gained from the experiences of 1907 and 1911, they allowed the bosses of Unity House, the "leaders" who always lead to disaster, to take the conduct of affairs out of their heads. These “leaders,” annoyed that their requests had not been complied with, declared to the capitalist Press that the strike was "unauthorised and unrecognised," and while giving this information to the men's enemies (who naturally at once used it) they and their local understudies met in solemn conclave, and refused to give the men any information until the "settlement" was reached, when once again it was found that the men had been handed over to the masters bound and helpless.

True there was a Pyrrhic victory over the reinstatement of Knot, but that the men were thus justified in their action only completed the victory of the masters.

Let us look at the strange document the men's "leaders" have bound them to observe.

Clause 3 binds the men "to work amicably with and not molest non-strikers." Here you have officials paid to defend the principles of Trade Unionism, deliberately betraying them by insisting upon amicable working relations with the very men who render futile the efforts of other men to improve their position.

Clause 4 is even more dastardly. In this the "leaders" have deliberately agreed, without the slightest reference to the men themselves, to allow the company to penalise the men a week's pay for defending a cause that was admittedly just. Moreover, not content with this, they actually proceed to insult the men, telling then that they should not strike without giving legal notice to the company, refusing strike pay for the period of the struggle, and giving their personal undertaking that they will use their influence to prevent the men from striking. In a word, they agreed to every insult formulated by the masters, mindful of nothing else than humbling those who had dared to strike without their permission. If this is not one of the foulest betrayals in the history of Trade Unionism, then words have no meaning.

And this is the thing called a "settlement." No wonder the General Secretary of the A.S.R.S. expressed himself "greatly satisfied"! No wonder the men declared they were "sold again"!

How long are the men going to stand it? Are they going to take this kind of thing lying down? We hope and believe not. But while this is our hope, while we welcome every manifestation of antagonism by the workers against those who exploit them, yet we would ask them to remember that decisive victory does not lie in the direction of strikes, whether sectional, spasmodic, or general—the masters are for too powerful for that. For the forces placed in their hands by industrial development, the terrible army of the unemployed, the power of a menial Press, and the whole might of the armed State, always at their disposal if required, places strict limits upon the success of the strike. The weapon of the strike may gain a concession here and there, but not only is the advantage soon counteracted by the operation of economic development, but the strike itself never seriously jeopardises for one moment the system of exploitation, tyranny, slavery, and oppression pressing so heavily on the world’s workers to-day.

What, therefore, the railwaymen and all other workers must do if they hope for freedom, is to understand their position, to obtain a clear knowledge of the forces that keep them in slavery. When they understand this, when to this knowledge there is allied the determination to wrest from the hands of the masters the power which alone enables them to rule and mould men's lives to their own unholy purpose—the political power—then will the necessity for the strike cease, for the cause will have vanished.

And that cause, against which the workers must show a united purpose and a pitiless determination, is the domination of one class, an idle, useless, and vicious class, and the consequent degradation, poverty, and servitude of the useful workers.

Frank Vickers

1913. January the First. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again we reach the First of January. Once again we are deluged with the hypocritical cant and humbug of the phrase "Peace and Goodwill." As in the past, our ears are greeted with “A Happy and Prosperous New Year.” The whole world, from duke to dustman, mouths the meaningless nothing.

What are the prospects of a happy New Year for the working class? What room is there in capitalism for peace and goodwill, when the very prosperity of the one depends upon the ruin of some other? Happiness cannot come with hunger, and many must be without food. And why are not you one of these ? It is simply because circumstances have decreed that some other shall be idle instead of you.

The best that can happen for the underpaid clerk—his one hope of prosperity—is the death or discharge of his fellow employee who receives the higher salary he aspires to. The best that can befall the struggling tradesman is the failure of the man across the road who halves his trade and cuts his prices. During the season’s “boom” the factory has been working full time, and producing a vast store of goods, much of which will not be disposed of. After the "boom” someone must go, and each looks at the other with the good wishes on his lips, hoping against hope that it is the other man who will be discharged.

And we wish each other a prosperous New Year! What cant!

What have the workers to look forward to in 1913? Great increases in wealth production, doubtless, and the consequent unemployment that "over production” brings in its train. “Trade has been phenomenally good” our masters’ journals tell us. But how stand the producers of the wealth?

The Thames Iron Works closes its gates on the eve of Christmas, and thousands of families that arey always "on the verge” are pushed into desperate poverty. With all our growing prosperity and our "strength as a nation,” the workers —those who produce all things and who make the strength of the nation—are incapable of withstanding the smallest disturbance. The "resources of the nation’’ are practically without limit, but the resources of the toilers—"the backbone of the nation” as the political aspirant loves to call them, are nil.

"In the social world,” says one restless editor of the capitalist brand, "there is a growing consciousness of the duty of society to provide for those members of the community who, for some reason or another, have found it impossible to win a secure means of livelihood for themselves and their families.” It may be perfectly correct that the “social world” is growing conscious of its "duty,” but then what constitutes this "social world,” and what is its duty?

The "social world” of the writer whom I have quoted is the capitalist class, and the society to whom they owe any duty is—themselves. Society, in their conception, is the taxpayer and the business man, who are as distinct from the worker of England as is the "heathen Chinese.” The "social world” does not understand the proletariat, and cannot legislate in its interest, neither does it desire to do so. What is happening is simply that our "social world” is realising that there is an unmistakable stirring within the mass that the "social world” lives upon ; that the “mob," hitherto so easily suppressed, is striving to find a way out of its horrible conditions of existence. Toe "populace” is calling for light in its abysmal darkness; and our "social world” is not desirous of helping it to see, is not in the least in sympathy with its demand for illumination. Our "social world” is uneasy and afraid—afraid of something incomprehensible, and afraid largely because, not understanding that which they fear, they do not know what to do.

Their pastors and ministers and others who batten upon their fears, are holding aloft the the misery of the mass, telling of the desperation of the starving multitude, in order to wring from them donations for the soup kitchen, the missions, and the Church. It is upon these and similar institutions that the parsons and their pals get their fat and easy living. Pro Salvationist and anti-Socialist turn out their begging letters by the million, using the "coming revolt” as a bogey wherewith to frighten the “prosperous citizen.”

These donations are regarded by the panniky bourgeoisie as being in the nature of “good investments.” It is the modern obedience to the ancient injunction to "cast thy bread upon the waters.” For the well to do are told by the bishops and the smaller fry of the Church, what is the undoubted truth, viz., that “the East End would not take things so quietly were it not for religion,” and that these institutions are a “strong 'barrier” against the "Godless Socialism” they so much dread.

The lot of the artisan and the labourer is no better to-day than it was ten or twenty years ago. In the words of Mr. Bonar Law: “In spite of a vast increase in the wealth of the world and of the United Kingdom, the condition of the workmen in this country has not improved. It has grown worse.” (Glasgow, 22.5.12.)

From all sides we get the admission, not only that “wages have not increased at all between 1900-1910, but that, indeed, they have suffered a depression in the interval.” (“Daily News.”) The “Daily News,” which represents the view of the party in power, tells us in a leading article (17.9.12) that, despite the glories of Free Trade, they are forced to “arrive at the disquieting fact that the net result to labour of an industrial prosperity which is unexampled is that the working-classes are substantially worse off than they were in 1900.”

This significant conclusion arrived at by such defenders of capitalism as Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. Lloyd George, the “Daily News,” and other prominent people and leading papers too numerous to mention, does not take into consideration an all-important condition that must be taken into account. That is that during the period mentioned, those who have been engaged in actual production have had their labour vastly intensified. Year by year new machinery has been introduced to compete with and speed up the labourer. Year by year new methods are taken up with the object of eliminating those rapidly diminishing moments of rest which the workers are able to snatch from their toil. Day by day the machine is driven faster, and the result has been that a gigantic amount of energy is sucked out of the worker in a shorter working day.

Even such a defender of "reformed" capitalism as Mr. Thomas of the railway servants, is compelled to admit that "more passengers and goods traffic could now be handled in eight hours than formerly could be handled in ten."

To keep up this mad and increasing pace a greater amount of food and leisure is rendered necessary in order that the worker may be able to maintain himself in the required state of physical and mental efficiency. Some recreation is necessary in order that he may keep sane. The worker is to-day being burned out faster and more ruthlessly than ever he was. The pitiless, insatiable maw of the capitalist Moloch is ever grasping for more profits, and the blood of the toiler, it is very certain, will be even more greedily sucked in this new year now opening than it has been in the past.

And even though those benighted wights, the Labour reformers, with their multitudinous drops and pills and ointments, were both in power and in earnest the evil could neither be reformed out of existence nor held in the leash. It grows too fast for the first; it springs too irresistibly from the foundations of the prevailing system and method of wealth production for the second.

Is there, then, no hope? Can nothing be done to stem the tide of wasted life and labour? Is there no way of escape for the struggling wage slave, befogged and befooled by notions of trade and tariff? Stern necessity compels the answer—NONE. The very first step most be to clear the worker’s mind of the cobwebs— of every befogging capitalist notion.

“You cannot redeem those below except by the sacrifice of those above.” Thus spake Mr. Lloyd George not a great while ago. The words are true—let us adopt them, for in them lies the workers only hope.

SACRIFICE THOSE ABOVE. Pull them down. Overthrow their stronghold and trample on their privileges. Turn out the capitalist liar and fool, knave and bully. As a capitalist he must go. While he is above he will feed on those below, and. fellow workers, WE ARE “THOSE BELOW.”

The only hope for the wage slave is to abolish the wage slavery, root, branch and twig, and to take control of the things that are necessary for the lives, comfort, well-being, and happiness of those we hold dear. So lend a willing hand, fellow wage-slave, to this imperative task, in the year 1913. Learn to give intelligent utterance to the “unlearned discontent” that is within you, for only those who KNOW can ever hope to remove the barrier which alone bars our progress toward freedom, a full life, and happiness.

The determination to acquire the knowledge essential to this undertaking, to befit oneself to be an instrument for good in the great struggle for human emancipation, to make oneself an efficient and capable judge in the day when the whole future of humanity shall depend upon the wisdom of the working class, is the best of all possible New Year resolutions for working folk.

T. W. Lobb

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Housing action groups have criticised the new law against squatting this week, saying that it would lead to more homeless people living on the street. But Justice Minister Crispin Blunt defended the law, pointing out that homelessness was at the lowest level for 28 years: ‘Two harsh winters have seen to that. Another big freeze this winter and there won’t be any park bench wino dossers left alive at all.’ He added that the government was spending £164m to bring 10,000 empty homes back into use: ‘Put bars on the windows and one-way locks on the doors and bingo, prison overcrowding also solved. Ker-ching.’

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South African prosecutors have provisionally dropped murder charges against 270 miners whose colleagues were shot dead by police. The State Prosecutor admitted in a statement that it was patently absurd to shoot people and then charge their friends with causing their murder: ‘We’ll prosecute the dead miners for committing suicide instead. They don’t have a leg to stand on as they’re dead.’

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Gottfrid Warg, one of the founders of the file-sharing website Pirate Bay, has been arrested in Phnom Penh after an international warrant was issued against him. The website immediately issued a press statement saying that this would not affect operations as there were already proxy copies of Warg on 78 mirror sites in six continents.

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Hollywood actors, directors and scriptwriters went on the rampage last week, burning down a number of cinemas, phone booths and magazine stands in protest at the anti-Islamic film ‘Innocence of Muslims’. Speaking on behalf of the film industry, Steven Spielberg said: ‘Hollywood is united in deep disgust at this film, with its shoddy production values, acting, dubbing, backgrounds, plot and script. This is not the American way. If we decide to piss Muslims off we’ll do it with a hundred million budget and Mel Gibson.’

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British newspapers rushed to condemn the publication by a French magazine of topless images of Kate Middleton as being a ‘grotesque and outrageous invasion of privacy’. The Daily Mail fulminated in a front page editorial: ‘We were offered those pictures too, but honesty, integrity and a profound respect for our wonderful Royals made us turn them down.’ A spokesman for the French magazine Closer retorted: ‘Bolleaux to the Anglais Press. They do not care about privacy and decency, they are merely shitting les briques a cause du Leveson Enquiry and are furieux that nous avons le scoop instead.’

Capturing the Smoke (2012)

Beat Girl with Kitten 1960

Exhibition Review from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another London – International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980 – Tate Britain

The 180 photographs in the Another London exhibition are selected from the collection of 1,400 photographs of the Eric and Louise Franck London Collection. The 41 photographers in the exhibition were all from abroad, visiting London as tourists, or as part of their employment, or were refugees from Nazism and eventually settled permanently in Britain. The photographs are evidence of a rich tapestry of life in ‘The Smoke’ during the twentieth century.

‘Class’ is a significant factor portrayed in these photographs from Brandt’s Housewife – Bethnal Green 1937 and Suschitzky’s East End Street 1934 to the series of photographs of the working class in Brick Lane, Spitalfields 1976-78 by Luskacova.  People in the Knave of Clubs Pub, Club Row 1976 is revealing in its depiction of East Enders sense of camaraderie although at first glance the photograph could be from the 1930s. The various changes in capitalism in Britain in the intervening 40 years had done little to change the economic status of working class in the East End.

Photographers also captured the ruling class at work and play in Hoppe’s 1937 London Stock Exchange – Typical Young Businessman to the military in The Queen’s Guards 1960 by Erwitt. The photograph of the 1959 Queen Charlotte’s Ball by Cartier-Bresson is of the Débutante’s Ball where daughters of the Aristocracy ‘came out’ at the end of the ‘Season’. ‘Debs’ were presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace right up to 1958 when it was deemed an archaic social practice. The ‘Debs Ball’ ended in 1997 but since 2009 has been re-established for the daughters of wealthy capitalists as well as the Aristocracy.

Brandt’s Housewife – Bethnal Green 1937

Erwitt’s photographs of British Railways Logo on Train and Male Passengers in 1st Class Compartment (1950’s) highlight the fact that although the railway was nationalised in 1948 BR still operated a ‘class system’ of compartments for first, second and third class passengers. Third Class was abolished in 1956, and second class was only re-designated as Standard Class in 1985.

There is an evocative photograph by Willy Ronis of Gaston Berlemont’s Pub, The French House, Soho 1955 which reeks of tobacco smoke, booze and bohemianism (well-known poets/artists and drinkers Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Francis Bacon, and Malcolm Lowry frequented the hostelry). The iconic photograph of the Beat Girl with Kitten 1960 by Bruce Davidson conjures up the mysteries and delights of youth on the cusp of adventure at the beginning of the ‘swinging sixties’.

Neil Kenlock’s photographs of the Afro-Caribbean community illuminate a radical political side to the black British experience: Demo Brixton Library 1972 shows placards stating ‘All Police are Pigs’ and ‘Off the Pigs’ while the 1970 Black Panther School Bags portrays just that.

Davidson’s Conductress 1960 epitomises the period covered in the exhibition. This world of the sounds of ‘slam door’ trains, Solari departure boards at rail stations, Routemaster buses, and Gibson ticket machines is gone forever.

Steve Clayton

Action Replay: Pressure to Compete (2012)

The Action Replay column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lance Armstrong was never actually caught taking performance-enhancing drugs. Rather, the cyclist simply gave up fighting the allegations that he had done so. Regardless of the truth of the situation, this latest development is a reminder of the role of drug-taking in many sports.

There were plenty of earlier examples, but large-scale taking of drugs to improve performance probably goes back at least to WWII, when many soldiers took amphetamines and anabolic steroids to boost their alertness and aggression. It did not really become an issue in sport until 1967, when the International Olympic Committee began to ban drugs, though full-scale testing only started in 1972. In the former state capitalist countries of Eastern Europe, doping had become a kind of standard procedure.

Of course, you might well ask the question, what is wrong with doping? And how does it differ from following an appropriate diet, consuming energy drinks, using the very latest kit and clothing that are intended to make you run faster, and so on? The official answer is that, quite apart from wanting sport to look ‘clean’ for spectators, many drugs are dangerous. Cycling, which as an extreme endurance sport is particularly open to doping, has seen a number of deaths from taking erythropoietin, which increases the red blood cell count. Anabolic steroids can have side effects such as acne and impotence in men, and hair loss in women. Some Paralympic athletes actually give themselves electric shocks to boost their blood pressure. However, even legal gym supplements that boost your protein may lead to kidney damage.

As for why athletes risk their health and even their lives by taking drugs, the answer lies in the money and the fame, not to mention the pressure from coaches and national associations. There is an ongoing race between those who organise doping and those who devise new testing procedures, with neither side able or willing to stand still. The priorities of a system based on competition speak for themselves. And, as so often, human intelligence and ingenuity are put to ultimately pointless uses.

Paul Bennett

A Future That Works? (2012)

From the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The market system works. But not for us. It works for the handful of people who own industry or land. Most of them are doing well and getting richer. For them, the present system works, through our hard work.

For us, the workers, it doesn’t. The real value of wages has shrunk. Housing is becoming more unaffordable for many, rents are rising and benefits are being cut. Unemployment is at staggering proportions, especially among young people.

The truth is being revealed across the world: that the system is run in the interests of those who own it. For governments, repaying debts to those who got wealthy from our work is more important than us receiving education or health care.

For us, the future won’t work so long as we depend on an economy based on the market with the private or state ownership of the means of living.

In our workplaces we co-operate. We don’t charge our colleagues for our time: we work together. It’s just that we work together for our employers. If we owned the land and all the places of work ourselves, we could work together to make all the things we need, without buying and selling and without an employing class.

The alternative is voting for parties that support the market system: parties that inevitably have to accept the existence of poverty and unemployment.

While we build a movement to bring about a better future, it’s important that we use trade unions to defend ourselves and get the best deal we possibly can under the present system. We must ensure democratic control of trade unions, and not follow charlatans and adventurers to glorious defeat. We should rely on ourselves, not leaders.

If we want to transcend the defensive position forced upon us by the pressures of the profit system then a vision beyond capitalism has to be on the agenda.

That future we call Socialism, a future where we would have common and democratic ownership of the resources of the world. A future that will work if the majority of us want it and are prepared to work for it using democratic struggle to create a world of common wealth.

– leaflet for TUC demonstration in London on 20 October. For copies to distribute, write to the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

Obituary: Cyril Brown (2012)

Obituary from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manchester Branch are sorry to report the death in August of Comrade Cyril Brown, at the age of 79. Cyril was a latecomer to Socialism, having joined the Party in 2008. He was a regular attendee at Branch meetings, and we will miss his quiet, wise and always sensible counsel.

50 Years Ago: Man: Ape in Wolf’s Clothing? (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps the most famous of scientific frauds was the fake Piltdown Skull of 1910, a “missing link” fabricated by a person unknown. That anonymous joker put together an ape’s jaw with a human skull. Desmond Morris has grafted the most ignorant fairy tales about human society onto a body of basically sound ideas about human biological evolution. The Naked Ape is a barefaced hoax.

As a gimmick, Morris pretends to describe the human animal just as it would be pictured by a zoologist if it were a newly-discovered species. “Naked ape” is a clinical term (like “black-footed squirrel”) which is supposed to denote men’s most noticeable characteristics: their lack of fur. But evidently, Morris has become a rich man because to millions of his readers, nudity is a novelty. It should be obvious that the most important thing about human animals is not that they are naked, but that they are clothed. In other words, they produce what they consume; they turn the artificial into the necessary, and (like Morris) sometimes confuse it with the natural.

His book is a hymn of praise to modern capitalism. All the current practices, preoccupations, superstitions, myths and manners are, according to Morris, highly admirable. Furthermore, they are natural because they stem from man’s past as a wolf-like, monogamous, predatory killer.

(Socialist Standard, September 1969)

Game of Thrones: Medieval Clichés (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

(From “Living the Dream’, publication for this year’s Socialist Party Summer School.)

Game of Thrones, the telly series, has finished. Mercilessly hyped on media and billboards, it was, for eight seasons, a cultural phenomenon. It broke out of the normal nook the fantasy genre occupies, and became a smash hit. Part of its attraction was the fact that its creator, George R.R. Martin, used the real world history of the English ‘War of the Roses’, and bloody incidents in Scotland to shape its narrative.

What it meant was that millions of people enjoyed the depiction of a libidinous, transgressionly incestuous and ruthless violent medieval world. It was, in fact, merely another piece in a long line of fictional depictions of feudal life that stretch back as far as Shakespeare. For Shakespeare, it was Spain and Italy that were the imaginary bastions of the by-gone era of Catholic superstitions, lusts and excessively passionate ways. For Game of Thrones, it is a fantasy world with real dragons. For the capitalist class, it is the past.

The secret history of the revolutionary ways of the city dwellers, and how they overcame the martial classes of the feudal nobility lives on primarily in these fictional displays. Official history is one of gentle and reasonable progress: enlightenment values overcoming the dark superstitions of the medieval world revealing the natural order of good commerce and individual aspiration. The memory of the events that inspired the modern world, the ideas, practices and institutions against which the modern ideology defines itself live on in fiction.

Indeed, and . . . spoiler alert: the series ends with the end to the Game of Thrones: the Iron Throne is melted, and the Lords of Westeros agree to elect a ruler from among their own number, rather than have the hereditary King. This is the liberal fantasy, a revolution without mass participation with just enlightened realisation of rulers that merit matters more than birth. That it leaves the existing elite in place is an added bonus. It is this denouement that is the fantastic core of the series, more than the magic and the dragons.

In much of the world’s imaginary, today, ‘medieval’ is a synonym with brutality, lawlessness and bloodshed. In Martin’s world, rulers deal out immediate bloody justice with swords. Much as, in the real world of today, many Arab and Islamic states retain the rough and ready systems of recently feudalistic/tribal arrangements. For some on the right, that is why Islam fitted neatly into pre-existing prejudices as a sort of feudal mirror image to define themselves against, to continue the fight that began so many hundred years ago.

The memory of capitalist revolution does not just live on the right, though. The left remembers the revolutions, and those memories structure what is expected of a revolution: mass crowds on city streets, barricades, committees of public safety. The battle remains against kings and courtiers. The intellectual equipment of the modern revolutionary is geared towards fighting the last war, not the future one.

The socialist revolution won’t be the same as the capitalist (bourgeois) ones, we are sure of that: we can’t simply lop off a crowned head to win our victory. We need to help protect ourselves by dispelling the ghosts of feudalism. Firstly, by looking for, and at, how the class struggle worked under feudalism not as partisans for the then contending classes but as partisans of the working class. The bourgeoisie’s (broad sense) fight against lords and kings is not our fight. Simply ridding the picture of the medieval world of caricature and understanding how the people who lived then were like us – rational human beings living in particular economic and social circumstances – is a big step to getting rid of ideological shackles.

Millions of people, for centuries lived quiet and orderly lives in feudal society, the cherry-picking of the massacres and murders that punctuated that world plays a large part in how the modern capitalist class and its apologists define themselves against the feudal world.

Violence was common, after all, society was ruled by a martial class (and it is arguable that peasants also could be viewed as a martial class, given how many of them went to war for excitement and largesse). The bourgeoisie, were decidedly not a martial class. As David Graeber notes in his book Debt: the First 5,000 years, capitalism emerges as a social form through the alliance of the martial and commercial classes (in the form of colonialism and mercantilism). When the bourgeoisie first tried to rebel, they found the vigorous feudal lords waiting on the battlefield to slaughter them.

Taking a sideways step allows us to see the bourgeoisie’s class struggle, and its methods as being part of their situation and time, and allows us to pick at our differences in situation to see how our revolution will be different.

This is not to repeat the old mechanical schematics of one class surpassing another until the inevitable end of history comes into play, but, rather, to look at how one set of struggles against oppression and exploitation lead to new circumstances and new forms of exploitation. This is the approach William Morris took in his novella A Dream of John Ball. He imagined himself back in the time of the Peasants’ Revolt, and drew out the commonalities between the struggle of Wat Tyler’s peasants and the workers of his own day. It is not the inevitable end point that matters, but the constant human character and yearning for self-development and identity in the differing material circumstances.

At the moment, socialism and socialist revolution are fantasies, fantasies that are as much in dialogue with history as they are with the circumstances of the world around us. We cannot begin to free ourselves, until we know what we want: and fantasy helps define that. We need to know what our fantasy is, so that we can begin to try and make it a reality, and some future George R.R. Martin or some future William Morris will write in turn about our dreams. The Game of Votes, perhaps?

Pik Smeet