The Purpose and Method of Colonisation [5] (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last issue.)

Whether the “Study of British Methods,” in which certain European capitalist politicians seem to indulge, is also responsible for the incident which initiated the ghastly human slaughter now in progress, and which incident it greatly benefits the master class of this country to use for the purpose of hiding their own mercenary objects, it is not in our province to investigate. Anyhow, in reviewing the history of the component parts of the British Empire, no one will be at a loss to find precedents enough and to spare for any violation or outrage, however infamous and however revolting, that may have been committed in Belgium. The “glory and greatness of the Empire” is in fact made up of a long series of piratical conquests in which the sole right of Might has been everywhere proclaimed from the housetops, and in which the freedom and independence of millions of people have often been respected less than “scraps of paper.”

How the “indisputable right” over some of the millions of square miles in Africa, for example, has been secured, is in living memory; although it must not be supposed that the sordid history which centres round the gold and diamond fields exhausts the resources in the art of brigandage and massacre that the British “haute finance” is capable of commanding. In such books as “With Kitchener to Khartoum,” “The Unveiling of Lhasa,” etc., etc., typical instances are abounding of how the British “protectors” impose themselves and their “culture” upon small and relatively weak nations. Says the author of the last mentioned account of a Tibetan expedition, speaking of the “strange people we fought and conquered” : “We killed several thousand of the simple, brave, and ill-armed men; I was sorry for these Tibetans. Their struggle was so hopeless; . . . Here was all the brutality of war, and none of the glory and incentive. These men were cheerful, jolly fellows—and I have seen their crops ruined, their homes burnt and shelled, the dead lying about the thresholds of what were their homes, and all for no fault of their own—only because their leaders were politically impossible.” But what matter the lives of these people, if the “freedom of trade,” or trade-routes, in short, the freedom of Capital, is at stake ? As the writer adds with regard to these leaders: “Fortunately, however, this slaughter was beginning to put the fear of God into them.”

In the face of our present daily records of what “white against white,” Christians against Christians, can do, it will easily be granted that the deeds by which resistance to British expansion by the “so much inferior coloured heathen races,” has been crushed, not only equal any tale of brutality that is to-day laid to the charge of “the enemy” with regard to Belgium, but certainly outdo the latter in cowardice when we bear in mind that the unfortunate registers of “the invincible forces of civilisation” and Christianity did not dispose of anything like the modern efficient instruments of murder.

And if those who have laid thieves’ hands on so great a part of the world’s surface and have thereby flouted the independence of millions of people in the past; if these who are responsible for such barbarities as will ever be connected with the establishment of British dominance whether in Africa, Asia, Australia, or elsewhere if those who have never tolerated any interference with the “rights of free trade” (i.e.,, free robbery) and have carried out more “punitive expeditions” and burnt more villages of innocent peoples than the rest of the coloniz­ing nations put together ; if those who could stand by, incapable of shame, when recently hundreds of unarmed men and women were done to death or wounded in the blood-stained streets of Johannesburg ; if those who range themselves now on the side of these human fiends and very embodiment of oppression and tyranny, whose crimes vary between “Bloody Sunday” and exiling of innocent men and women to the icy dungeons of Siberia : if those now accuse their Continental rivals of savagery and violating the independence of small nations, while at the same time posing as the “trustees of freedom and good conduct,” even we—knowing their achievements in hypocrisy—feel bound to admire their insolent audacity in treating the public to this masterpiece of nauseating cant.

Of course, just as the vandalism and beastly deeds, committed by order of the German military authorities, figure in the official chronicles and school-books of the Teutons as heroic achievements, so the merciless usurpations, rapes and massacres which have marked the acquisition of “our” colonial dependencies are gloried in and impressed upon the children of the Empire as examples of British manhood, pluck, and enterprise.

Although to some extent outside the present subject, the foregoing will nevertheless serve to emphasise again the fact that the acquisition of the Colonial Empire is distinguished by the application of the most brutal, up-to-date methods that the machinery of militarism, and law and order is capable of bringing into play. But let us now revert to the subsequent economic policy of our colonial pioneers of “education and native advancement,” and see what the cultural trust imposed upon the “more advanced peoples” comes to.

Authority having once gained a footing, that is to say, the Right of Might having been brought home to the “uncultured heathen,” every subsequent activity of the Colonists is subservient to the process of converting all things capable of satisfying human wants and desires into what Providence intended them to be, namely, Commodities, so that they might at last take their proper places, as holy values and sacred property, in the temple of Mammon. The extent of the success of this process is the measure of the “prosperity” and “loyalty” of the Dominions. It goes without saying, that since all things have to become marketable values, this process involves the expropriation of the natives from all nature’s gifts—which brings the first virtue : Abstinence. And it is equally plain that only when the native’s life is hedged with notices such as:

“No admittance except on business”

“Trespassers will be prosecuted,”

will they lend themselves, or rather be forced, in order to live, to sell and apply their energies in the service of Capital— which brings a further virtue: Industry. This is so self evident that we could only describe as child-like naiveté or gross stupidity, Lord Curzon’s remark that “he greatly deplored, and had tried his utmost to discourage, the settling of Europeans in an in­digenous country with the object of extracting from it the essence which should serve to the natives as means of subsistence.” But where would abstinence come in ? And what, one may ask, are the Colonists to deal in and export if not the produce they have stolen from the natives ?

When, for example, the Chartered Company, who hold immense concessions in Africa, lease (as they have done last year) 1,000,000 acres of land (selected areas to be chosen throughout Rhodesia) at the rental of 1s. an acre, to an enterprising international firm, it is obvious that the latter mean to extract and export the resources of the territory ; in other words, these resources no longer belong to their former owners, the aborigines of Rhodesia, who will shave to look to the new proprietors (their expropriators) for their means of subsistence, unless they are prepared to quit. Such transactions necessitate, consequently, the absolute disregard of the natives’ interests and customs, seeing that if their most vital custom of all were to be observed, namely, the communal ownership (as distinct from private ownership, as in Europe) of all the land, the very object of any capitalist enterprise and colonisation would naturally become illusory. Which is surely more than a Colonial enthusiast, like Lord Curzon, could wish for. Indeed, this deprived of the native of his primitive means of living and own conditions of labour, is the very basis of all colonization; it is only hypocrites of the type of Curzon or His Excellency Dernburg, who pretend to be ignorant of the fact that in first completely disinheriting the mass of the natives, or, in Dernburg’s own terminology, in first “fulfilling the cultural trust” is the key to the “great question of how the white man is to retain his hold and domination over mankind of darker colour.”

Unfortunately, the proclamation of “Protectorates” here, and the annexation of large territories there, in short, the theoretic monopoly of the land and the granting of concessions to trading firms, on the one side, does not always automatically transform the native population into full-blown, wage-workers on the other. However desirable it may be to extract the maximum of surplus-value from this “economically most valuable motive-power,” the vastness of the territories and relatively thin population (the Colonies comprising, as a rule, disproportionately larger areas than the respective mother countries), also the widely different climatic conditions—these two main factors render difficult and protract the establishment of an effective, all-embracing control over, and exploitation of, the natives. Hence, the necessity for the professional labour-recruiting agencies ; the application of direct force (slavery); the importation of foreign labour: all of which methods have been shown to be practised on a large scale at the present time, as a temporary, if unsatisfactory, solution for the annoying “labour problem.”

In the meantime, the mills of economic development are grinding ; no sections of natives, hitherto secluded, are to be deprived of the blessings of civilisation and the comforting security it affords. Railways and extensions of railways are constantly opening up new districts and announce to previously obscure tribes the arrival of—the tax-collector; an indispensable means of bringing the native idlers to their senses and to their toil. “If one considers,” says deploringly a correspondent in an East African organ, “that there are about 3½ million of people living in the district of Ruanda and Urundi, who, in consequence of the seclusion of their exceedingly rich homelands, still enjoy, at this time of day, complete freedom from tax-paying, the necessity for opening up, through a railway, will at once become obvious.” And the “Usambara Post” (27.9.13) stated in support of a railway from Tabora to the Kagaraknie, that “such a railway would open up extraordinarily valuable districts, and that the introduction of the poll-tax there would alone make the railway pay its way.”

“No doubt it will cost thousands, but it will bring in millions”—such is their assurance. Railways in particular are powerful levers of “native advancement”—hence the great activity in this direction. They not only open up, and enable the easy transport of the produce, but of the “human material” as well. The Ovambo and Amboland railways in South-West Africa, for example, were built for the specific purpose of “serving the regular and increased supply of workers for the diamond mines.” And during a discussion (4.6.13) of the Government Council in East Africa the following was pointed out: “The idea of a continuation of the North railway up to the Lake Victoria did not originate so much from the endeavour to open up the mystic country of the Squatters and to enter into competition with the Unganda railway, but rather was the plan involved by the desire to confiscate the masses of workers living in the districts of the Lake Victoria.” This does not, of course, prevent our colonisers from pretending at the same time that the railways are built in the sole interest of the travelling workers. Indeed, what would a Christian employer not do for the welfare and amenity of the native ? ” Every friend of theirs,” he says, “must advocate the building of railways, seeing that the worker is exposed to many dangers and risks while en route for weeks and months” to the elevating occupation in the death pits of the diamond mines ! In the face of the comparative scarcity of workers it would, of course, be deplorable that these arms and “hands” should meet with accidents before having been drained of the “milliard values slumbering in them.”

And so, in accordance with the law of development of capitalist production, every activity that the enterprising European traders command in the Colonies, tends to separate the means of production more and more from the native and to concentrate the scattered means more and more under a few controlling concerns, thereby gradually closing to the natives all avenues outside of, and disciplining them for,—the wage-labour market. The exacting of hut-taxes, poll taxes, grazing-dues, etc.; permits for hunting and fishing ; the enclosure of large tracks of land either for cultivation or cattle-breeding ; the construction of railways and other means of transport and communication, water and irrigation works—these are only a few of the things which supply the precious “indirect pressure” and restrict more and more the liberties of the natives, until eventually they will find no other way to live than by selling their labour-power to their foreign masters. The “labour problem” will then be solved.

Naturally enough, this transition, far from being regarded by the natives as a normal economic development, or from benefiting him, is mostly looked upon as an act of aggression, of conquest—an arbitrary charge wrung from him in bitterness, and leaves behind a deep sense of injury. This resentment has undoubtedly been the cause of most colonial wars and rebellions since the first presence of the white man there, but the fact that the “superior” whites (superior, undoubtedly, in weapons) ever emerge victorious from the fray, again proves that Might is Right.

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued.)

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation [4] (1914)

From the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last issue)

Attention has already been drawn to a good deal of conclusive evidence exposing the humbug and hypocrisy of the assertion that the “civilised” white man’s effort in the Colonies is in any way disinterested, and prompted by a desire for the amelioration and uplifting of the status of the natives. The Socialist’s suspicion is, of course, immediately aroused by the simple facts that (1) the missionary is ever closely followed by keen business men and concession hunters, and that (2) the boasted “inherent superiority” of the “imperially thinking,” white saviours frankly and emphatically discount any relationship other than domineering distinction from the teeming millions of coloured, and especially black subject races. For our prejudiced opponents, however, it will be necessary to enquire more into the ways in which the interests and affairs of the natives are safeguarded and handled by the white intruders, to perceive the real objective of colonisation. Before entering into more details as to the methods employed, we will, however, take the opportunity to show that the aforementioned “fine qualities” of our masters and their apologetic agents are coupled with a colossal amount of impudence and effrontery. A few examples will suffice.

Among the pretexts which our “disinterested” pioneers of civilisation use in justification of their missions and interference in the natives’ affairs, we find the former “deploring,” and asserting that they are out to “eradicate,” such evils as the precariousness and insecurity of primitive man’s conditions of existence, their inter-tribal warfare, their ignorance, superstitions, etc.

Now, it would no doubt be a highly laudable action for anyone to endeavour to bring light and leading to such tribal societies as are actually afflicted with a similar state of things. But, how should we describe, if not as a piece of colossal impudence, such pretence of remedying and uplifting coming, as it does, from a quarter where men have long been at their wits’ end to know how to grapple with the “gigantic problems” of ever increasing poverty and misery, unemployment and disease, which perplex Europe to-day ? How should we name otherwise than as gross insults, such pretensions coming from quarters where even “ever grinding labour does not always guarantee sustenance or security ; where you still have oppression of the weak by the strong, and where you have a condition of things which, at any rate, was foreign to the barbarities even of darker ages” ? (Vide Lloyd George’s statement at Cardiff, 30.12.11.)

Tribal warfare ! There, no doubt, the savage and the barbarian have something to learn from their superior brethren, provided, of course, they have not yet had a sample of “white superiority” by having their villages burned to the ground by the most up-to-date methods of modern militarism, and finding themselves forced into increasing toil on the plantations of Christian exploiters.

Were a party of African or other aborigines to arrive in these days on the “highly civilised” continent of Europe, their own achievements on the battlefield would certainly and rightly appear to them mere childsplay as compared with the orgies of blood, fire, and rapine that “our” chiefs are capable of engineering, not only on land, but on the sea and in the air. As far back as 1838, William Howitt wrote in his “Popular History of the Treatment of the Natives by the Europeans in all their Colonies” :

“The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth.”

Apart from the unceasing class-war that is raging inside every civilised Christian nation between the confiscators of the means of life and the disinherited masses who can only exist by selling themselves, body and soul, to the former appropriators, the agents of our “piece-loving” masters and “great intellectuals” have to admit that, as a rule, peace (i.e., the peaceable division of the pieces) between the different nations can only be preserved on condition of being armed to the teeth, and applying every new technical discovery, as fast as it is made, to the instruments of destruction. Nay, so brilliant and beneficient are the results of “our education” and of the gospel of the Prince of Peace, that—as the experience in Ireland, for example, has shown—even the folk of one and the same community can be persuaded to drill and arm against one another !

And from such quarters comes the pretence of concern about the evils of tribal warfare existing in continents thousands of miles away, amongst peoples who are despised and held in utter contempt by the Christian nations ! The unblushing effrontery of it ! Just imagine those who do not care a rap about the welfare of their fellows at home ; imagine those who could stand by in perfect composure, during the recent Balkan atrocities, hearing week in and week out the poignant tales of the wholesale devastation of innocent peasants’ villages; imagine those who are to day responsible for :

“Battlefields Covered With Dead”

“Brilliant Bayonet Fighting”

“Great Slaughter of Germans” ;

imagine, if you can, those intellectually bankrupt and morally decrepit apologists for the powers that be, to be capable and anxious of decently educating or bettering the lot of anybody, let alone obscure savages !

Also the ignorance and superstitions of primitive peoples have long worried our masters. Hence, with their almost proverbial disinterestedness, missions were organised and are now tumbling over one another in an endeavour—well backed by guns and bayonets—to enlighten the ignorant on these points and to teach them reverence for, and awe and worship of the “unknown” and the “unseen” which, rightly interpreted, mean—the Christian Capitalist.

Probably the interpretation which we place on this claim of “enlightenment” will not be seriously disputed by its authors or our opponents, and therefore we say no more about it. Who, indeed, could take seriously or see anything but humbug in such a claim, coming from a quarter where the mass of the people are steeped in profound ignorance and obsequious superstitions ? What detrimental superstition is there amongst savages that does not find its corollary amongst the so-called civilised white peoples of to-day ? Think only of the present European war with its manifold tragic phases and consequences to the age-long dispossessed “labouring poor”—horrors which would be inconceivable in any sane system of society where actual science could be diffused among the people, instead of that abominable apology that goes to-day by the name of education.

Of course, the necessity for the deliberate inculcation of the conventional lies will be sufficiently clear when we realize that the wealth and power of the bourgeoisie are bound up with and dependent upon the ignorance and superstition of the mass of wealth-producing people.

But the bluff which veils the real intentions of the colonisers is not the worst of the evil. Just as this civilisation, based, as it is, on the capitalist mode of production, has the inexorable tendency to more and more impoverish and degrade the white peoples, in the same way many, and certainly not the mere imaginary evils afflicting the coloured races to-day in tropical and sub-tropical countries, are directly due to the contact with the civilised European who “means business.” Whether we refer to the abominations of the caravan and carrying system, which condemns thousands of blacks, including women and children, to carry heavy burdens of colonial produce over tracks of hundreds of miles ; or to the revolting labour-recruiting methods, by which the unsuspecting natives are practically forced to work on plantations or in mines, often in deadly climes thousands of miles from their homelands (under conditions of which they had not the slightest notion) ; or whether we refer to the flourishing slave-traffic, pure and simple, it is obvious that those horrors were unknown in the Colonies before the advent of the rubber speculators, cocoa and tea-planters, soap-boilers and influential Christian bootblack dealers.

With regard to the last mentioned evils, we have it on the authority of, amongst many others, the British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, that the exercise of force to secure labour for the colonies is increasing. In an official letter to the “Daily Chronicle” (23.7.14) the said Society stated :

“An Official Definition of Slavery

“To The Editor Daily Chronicle.

“In view of the increase in the exercise of force to secure labour for tropical regions, serious developments in the South Seas, and proposals now being made in British East Africa, the committee of this society appealed to Mr, Harcourt to declare publicly that in the opinion of his Majesty’s Colonial advisers forced labour for private profit is a form of slavery and will not be tolerated within the British Dominions.

“Upon this important issue Mr. Harcourt has given us permission to say that, in his opinion, the proposition contained in the society’s letter ‘that forced labour for private profit amounts to slavery appears to him to be self-evident.‘

“This eminently satisfactory reply brings the Colonial Office into harmony upon this cardinal issue with the Foreign Office, for to Sir Edward Grey is due this definition of modern slavery.

“At the same time we beg to point out that not only in foreign territories, for which we have treaty obligations, but even in certain British territories forced labour for private profit appears to be increasing.

“Travers Buxton, Secretary.

“John H. Harris,

“Organising Secretary. 

“Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, July 21, 1914.”

It may be left to a future occasion to record some of the ugly and harrowing revelations that have recently been made concerning the slave-traffic in various dominions, amongst others Angola, British New Guinea, the New Hebrides, and East Africa. We will only say that advertisements “seeking to buy and sell labourers” appear as freely in the Colonial Press as for any other merchandise. Mr. Cadbury, according to a statement in the “Daily Chronicle,” actually received an offer of a cocoa plantation, the “assets” of which included “200 black labourers £3,555,” and at the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, Sir Geo. King-Hall said that “the state of affairs in the New Hebrides was scandalous and disgraceful. . . . Acts had occurred in the Islands which were a blot and a slur on a chivalrous nation.”

So far, then, is the white man’s mission from improving the conditions of the backward races, that the latter’s real misery and degradation only begins at the contamination with the civilised. Indeed, the springing up of “protection societies” points to the fact, alarming to the exploiters of the Colonies, that in many districts, especially in Australia, the havoc caused through such contamination is so great that “preservative” measures form to-day a good deal of controversy.

Direct slavery, properly so-called, is, of course, not the desired ultimate aim and end of our Colonisers ; imbued, as they are, with a keen sense of responsibility in carrying out their “cultural trust,” our masters have always had an “angelic” antipathy against the exercise of force in connection with the “labour question.” The “civilising mission” will not be terminated, and the “native problem” will not be considered to be satisfactorily solved, so long as the ideal wages-system, under which the Christian nations so harmoniously and gloriously thrive and prosper, is incomplete in the Colonies.

However, we will next confine ourselves to deal with some of the methods employed for the purpose of bringing about the desired result, or—as Dr. Dernburg, the late German Imperial Secretary for the Colonies, on 22nd June last, at a visit to the London Chamber of Commerce, said : “The great question of how to deal with all mankind of darker colour ; how the white man was to retain his hold and domination over them whilst at the same time fulfilling the cultural trust imposed upon the more advanced peoples to improve the condition of the backward races.” And to set at ease these who might shrug their shoulders at what has been and what will still be said about the methods of the foreigner (as if the same did not apply to the British Dominions) Dr. H. E. Dernburg’s assurance that “whenever he was in a difficulty as to how a certain Colonial problem ought to be handled, he had found a solution in the study of British methods” will suffice.

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued)

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation [3] (1914)

From the August 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last issue.)

“The great beauty of capitalist production,” said Marx, “consists in this—that it not only constantly reproduces the wage-worker, but produces always in proportion to the accumulation of capital, a relative surplus population of wage workers. Thus the law of supply and demand is kept in the right rut, the oscillation of wages is penned within limits satisfactory to capitalist exploitation, and lastly, the social dependence of the labourer on the capitalist, that indispensable requisite, is secured.” (“Capital,” p. 794)

In such “highly civilised” countries as England, France, or Germany, the organisation of wealth-production for profit, e.g., to the glory of capital and consequently in the sole interest of the possessors thereof, the capitalists, is to all intents and purposes complete. How “the poor,” that is, the members of the working class, have been made, and are being made, to view as part and parcel of their “inevitable fate” the awful consequences, and notably the constantly harassing insecurity, resulting for them from such production ; the apathy with which the male workers can see their manhood destroyed by suffering their wives and children to endure the most cruel privations and humiliations, especially in times of unemployment; the dull resignation with which they look forward to their “evening of life” and “honorable ease”—in the workhouse, if unable to depend on friendly or children’s aid; in short, the readiness with which they accept their degradation and misery in the face of the most ostentatious display and squandering of the wealth they have produced ; the success, on the other hand, with which the chloroforming fetishes and superstitions of patriotism, religion, hero-worship, etc., are inoculated ; also the respect shown to the “strong arm of the law” and the rest of the foul institutions of oppression: all these things, which clearly demonstrate the “superiority of ‘our’ working class,” must constitute a source of great gratification and felicity to our masters.

It would almost seem that, unlike all preceding stages and forms of human co-existence, the capitalist system is to last for ever and ever, were it not for the discontented and strife-stirring Socialist. Only the latter, indeed, will not see that property and profit are far more sacred than human life, and will not recognise that without capitalist “enterprise” the working class would be in a worse way.

No wonder that, with such queer notions as these, we are also credited with being unqualified to duly appreciate the great Christian work of systematic up-“lifting” organised by our pious masters, under great difficulties, in the colonies. Nevertheless, we realise at least the difficulties of their task, knowing, as we do, that man has a rooted objection to being robbed. 

It is notorious, and has already been referred to here, that the arrival abroad of the enterprising pioneer of civilisation has been marked everywhere by obstinate resistance on the part of the “uncivilised” natives, and that, more than at home (where the conditions satisfactory to capitalist exploitation are already at hand), the “necessity” for wage-labour has to be constantly demonstrated by the display and frequent application of the full strength of the arm of the law. Brute force, in fact, plays the chief part in the process of “converting” the natives to serve God Capital, in other words, into wage-slaves. The missionary, as already said, forms only the cloak, the avant-garde of the bourgeoisie, behind which lurks, an agent a thousand times more powerful and convincing than the silly “Word of God,” to wit—the gun. By blood and infamies, deceit and vile trickery, in which the agents of the bourgeois parasites are well versed, the separation of the natives from their own conditions of labour and means of subsistence is effected, and thus is secured the exchange of their liberty for that ominous capitalist “freedom,” which is so well and so “profit”-ably (to the capitalists and their hacks) established at home, and which only the wicked Socialist does not enjoy.

It will not be necessary for our purpose to refer here to more than the previously mentioned bloody expeditions to one of the continents oversea, namely Africa, and it will also be sufficient to quote from only a few of the colonial capitalist mouthpieces to prove our contention that the object of colonisation is, besides confiscation of the natural resources, the forcible subjection and exploitation of the natives. Moreover, the history of one colony only reflects what, in the main, has been and is going on in the rest of the capitalistically backward countries, so soon as they have been discovered to possess things convertible into exchange-values, and men ignorant of, and uninfected with, the blessings of civilisation and Christianity. And since enough is known in these islands about the dirty work that its greedy millionaire Empire-builders have accomplished abroad, the experience in colonies of their rivals, the Germans, may serve as evidence in support of our foregoing statements.

Although with Bismarck’s “blood and iron policy” before them, and in spite of the sacrifice of at least 150,000 innocent human beings (as stated in the German Reichstag on 4th March, 1913) on the altar of “Kultur” and civilisation since the arrival of the German “Kulturtrager” in Africa a generation ago, the organisation of capitalist production there is as yet very incomplete. In the vast tropical territories of Africa, which the German has set himself to open up and colonise, the control over, or—in bourgeois terms—the “freedom” of, the native workers is still far from being in the right groove ; these men are scattered about and can still escape from dependency on the capitalist for their, means of subsistence—to mention only one difficulty. It is doubtful whether even the genius of Lloyd George could devise a scheme delivering those men more speedily and inexorably into a better grip of the Christian employers.

Unlike the modern proletarian, many of those natives can still manage to return to their wonted mode of living, and so disappear from the labour market, to the great chagrin of the colonist. Hence, the great controversies raging in the colonial Press, in the Reichstag, and elsewhere, around the “labour-problem”—the problem being, of course, to secure a greater and more regular supply of those wonderful men, who,—as the learned Dr. P. Rohrbach has discovered (Luderitzbuchter Zeitung 27.3.1914) “possess a large amount of labour-power—in fact, FAR MORE THAN IS USED UP, ON AN AVERAGE, FOR PROVIDING THEIR ORDINARY AND VERY PRIMITIVE REQUIREMENTS OF SUBSISTENCE.” (From the connection in which the above words appear, it is evident that their author is entirely unconscious of the fact that he is referring here to the greatest of all human discoveries, seeing that the bourgeiosie owes its existence, and capitalist enterprise its stimulus, to this same surplus labour. This is certainly fortunate for him, bearing in mind the fate of one economist for putting in almost the same formula his discovery of the sole source of—PROFIT.)

More direct compulsion and recruiting is, according to some colonial experts, necessary, while others clamour for more indirect pressure to make the natives yield their precious surplus labour-power. “There must be no fake weakness,” says Rohrbach, while numerous other learned toads are equally loud in their denunciations of “misplaced humanitarianism in connection with the labour question,” and the justification given for advocating such direct constraint is that: “In Europe and all other advanced countries everybody (meaning naturally the working class) is compelled to surrender their full energy to work and a great many must toil beyond their physical capability.” (Luderitzbuchter Zeitung 27.3.1914). This after centuries of civilisation and “progress” !

Professor Anton, in an article on the “Labour Question,” which appeared last April in the “Koloniale Rundschau”—the organ of the German Association for the protection (!) of the Natives—and was widely circulated in the Colonies, says that “Since the colonising people cannot wait until the higher requirements, or over-population and hunger, induce the natives to constant work in the service of others, there is no alternative but to substitute direct compulsion for the unwillingness of the natives to do work for their foreign masters.” As Anton admits, on the same occasion, “free labour” is “besides by no means an exclusive condition to­-day in the tropical colonies, … as all colonial authorities avail themselves of direct compulsion on an extensive scale.” In fact, where necessary, the Divisional Magistrates in certain districts of East Africa compulsorily procure workers for plantations, as can be proved from a confidential circular to planters’ associations, which says in effect: “The Authority is prepared, as hitherto, to procure, through the medium of the native chiefs, to every European enterprise as many workers as possible from the neighbouring native communities.” (“Usambara Post,” 16.5.14.)

Besides the existence of direct compulsion, there is in most of the tropical countries the unscrupulous professional labour-recruiter, and it is obvious and has repeatedly been admitted, that the recruiting does not always take place of the natives’ own accord and free will, but that thousands of defenceless and ignorant blacks fall victims to the cunning, fraudulent, crafty, underhand expedients of those ignoble “procurers.” Small wonder, then, that when the so deceived natives discover what has happened, and become troublesome or run away, they fall from misfortune to misfortune, and thus provide the gutter-Press at home occasionally with the means to work up a circulation at the expense of their sufferings.

To meet half-way the above mentioned apostle of over-population and hunger, Herr Eduard Woermann, the wealthy Hamburg financier, who is “largely interested in the colonies,” has given a sum of 6,000 Marks as a prize to the Colonial Institute for the best treatise on the following question :

“Through which practical steps can the German Colonies obtain an increase in the birth rate and a decrease in the infantile mortality amongst the native population—THE ECONOMICALLY MOST VALUABLE MO­TIVE-POWER of our colonies? ”

The result of the competition, which is to be published next year, will no doubt provide us with more details of what is to constitute those people’s increased happiness. Meanwhile we can appreciate the modesty of this shining light of capitalism to have kept silent about the necessity of the capitalist in the process of wealth-production. Or could it be that Herr Woermann has nothing to learn from the modern “economists” ? What about Directive Ability ?

The majority of our colonial enthusiasts, of course, would rather see more indirect methods, notably hunger, permanently established amongst the natives, and so get the (sufficient) supply of “motive-power” (at home known as “hands”) into that automatically working way which, as Marx says, is the great beauty of capitalist production. They know that direct and legal forms of compulsion are “attended with too much trouble, violence, noise” and, last but not least, expense; while hunger, for example, is a “peaceable, silent, unremmitted pressure,” just as Woermann realises what a great blessing is the existence of a large industrial reserve army.

And lest there might be any doubt about the motive underlying all efforts and controversional proposals, whatever their nature or source, we give room to the declaration of the “Deutsch Ostafrikanische Zietung” which appeared prominently in their organ (4.6.1913) as a statement of their position and policy in the matter of the “labour problem.”

It says literally :

“It may be briefly recalled (but the policy of our friends in the North had caused a renewed flaring up of the rising of 1905-1907, which has only just been suppressed with great sacrifices in blood and money. It must now be openly admitted that the insubordination of the Warnwera and Wandonde tribes, the general rising of the Wamakonde and Wamaraba, . . . had been caused through the preliminary steps taken by the Government in compulsorily recruiting natives as plantation workers. . . . We do not advocate general compulsory recruiting of workers through the Government, because it is impracticable, but demand instead the exercise of a persistent indirect pressure—differentiated according to the individuality of the particular communities— A PRESSURE WHICH WILL MAKE THE MILLIARD VALUES SLUMBERING IN THE INACTIVE ARMS OF THE NA­TIVES, ACCESSIBLE TO THE GERMAN NATIONAL WEALTH.”

For national wealth, read—capitalist class.

There is the truth about the hypocritical cry of “Kultur” in a nutshell—”Kultur,” indeed, if thereby they mean exploitation and robbery, naked and unashamed !

It is proposed to deal subsequently more in detail with some of the methods in operation and advocated, which supply, and are intended to supply, the pressure necessary for the “education” and accelerated “advancement” of the natives into the abyss of wage-slavery.

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued.)

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation. [2] (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last issue.)

Every analysis of, and enquiry into, the conditions of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of Christian civilised countries will and must reveal the fact that, so far is this civilisation from giving or promoting genuine joy in life, there is a very real justification for the common reference to this existence as “the burden of life,” if not for the necessity of having “to bear the cross” in silent resignation. Surely, then, it is anything but desirable or justifiable to inflict such “burdens” upon other peoples who live in happier circumstances—free to enjoy the natural bounties surrounding them, and above all, the fruits of their labour.

The records of many individual missionaries, explorers, travellers, etc., besides being almost invariably full of praise for the physical beauty and soundness of the greater number of more or less primitive peoples, and paying high tributes to their skill, moral qualities, etc., such records with equal frequency depict the free and happy existence of the “uncivilised” as compared with the sordid “struggle (!) for life” of civilised man. In a recent number of the “Samoanische Zeitung” for instance, the following appeared:

“In this sunny climate with glorious scenery around us, we forget the squalid, sordid atmosphere which envelops all great European cities, and the fierce, stone age struggle for a bare living in which hundreds of thousands of men and women there are piteously involved. When we compare the happy condition of the Samoans and other Central Polynesian natives with that of the abject poor in England, America, and Russia, we feel sorry for the latter. . . . Let us not, then, over educate the native, and especially let us not instil into his mind the belief that cash is the main chance. For many of us it is, but not for him.”

And from an East African paper I extract the following, written by an experienced traveller:

" . . . On broad well-kept roads . . . the villages and huts of the Washambaa people and other native tribes can be reached ; there one can observe them tilling their fields, feeding their children, collecting the milk from their herds, and one cannot help a feeling of envy at the leisure which they can enjoy in these proceedings. They live simply, and without a care in the world—not tilling much more than is required—most of the food practically grows into their mouths, but they are almost too ‘lazy’ to grasp for it. Black children with dark clear eyes and well-fed little “tummies” are hurrying through rich banana-groves and break down the fruit ; if it is ripe they eat it, if not, it remains on the ground to rot.

“During my travels there I was often reminded of other parts of the world I had visited and I drew comparisons. Thus, many a landscape made me think of Italy ; there, for example, between Amalfi and Sorrento (Italy) with its disrupted mountains and high plunging brooks, an industrious people wrings treasures from the soil. On the mountainsides there are teeming vineyards, whose yield, however, the hungry, begging multitude of children, who imploringly stretch out their meagre fingers at the approach of the visitor, can never enjoy !”

Apart from the absence of anything that modern society, as at present constituted, could offer to other leas advanced races to guarantee the latters’ enhanced welfare and happiness—supposing for a moment that the bourgeoisie, of all human societies, were capable of such an altruistic feeling—there is the indisputable and glaring fact that the Bourgeoisie utterly reject any idea of association with, or relationship other than unconditional distinction, from the colored, and especially the more or less primitive black races—not to mention their abhorrence for such notions as “equality” or “brotherhood.” This fact, then, would also constitute a queer explanation for the Bour­geoisie’s keen interest in colonizing and their support of missionary effort. Not only the Colonial Press, but writers and politicians at home take every opportunity to lodge their pro-tendencies. “We will not have any equality or test against any what are called “negrophile fraternal relation with those African races !” vituperate those superior, if conceited, Sons of God. “Assimilation of our high-standing working class (c’est bon !) with the detestable, lazy rabble of Africa ?—Never!” they rave. One feels it necessary to remind the enquirer, that the coming of the vulgar “civilized” has no more been invited by the “detestable, lazy rabble” than the presence of the bourgeoisie is appreciated. What, then, one may ask, is the incentive—the purpose of the missionary effort ?

Now, although the disinterested apostles and propagandists of Christianity, and the rest of the vulgar satellites of the bourgeoisie, often let the cat out of the bag by themselves boasting of the commercial value (to their paymasters) of their missions, there are none the less the assertions of their more hypocritical, or shall we say ignorant, brethren affirming pompously that the object of their “missions to the heathen” is their great concern for the education, moral and intellectual uplifting, and general welfare of the natives of foreign “uncivilised” lands. Childish as this assertion may seem at this time of day, even to the non-Socialist, it is nevertheless the officially declared and avowed object of missionary organisations, besides being frequently used by those following on their heels.

It will, therefore, not be superfluous to have on record in the “Socialist Standard,” fresh evidence from Colonial mouthpieces of our Christian promoters of “civilisation,” that the sole object of the colonization and opening up of foreign “uncivilised” countries, is first of all the forcible appropriation of their natural riches (wealth), which the native, of course, never dreamed was by the Will of God ordained to serve a purpose far higher than that of being merely enjoyed as means of subsistence.

Further, and necessarily, the forcible subjection and exploitation of those peoples for the benefit of the cosmopolitan clique of capitalists and concession hunters, since for the purpose of success in the piratical enterprise of appropriation it is necessary to have the co-operation of the natives themselves. And it is here the “good offices” of missionary societies come in. They offer the cloak behind which to hide the brutalities connected with the conversion of the native from an owner of his land and independent conditions of existence into a propertyless wage-earner—the element which is as indispensable to Capital as is the stomach to the human being. All the talk of education, moral and intellectual uplifting, etc., simply resolves itself into an effort to imbue the native with the due respect for that mysterious quality of all things known by the “civilised” as Value and Price, and the inestimable virtues of industry and abstinence.

It is, besides, a matter of history how the various peoples, who to-day “enjoy” the company of “cultured civilised man,” have been and still are being “educated” and “guided.” The Putumayo horrors still haunt the memory and are in themselves sufficient to prove how far from the truth is the impudent assertion that the concern of the “pioneer of civilisation” is the welfare of the natives. Indeed, the blood of thousands of innocent men, women and children cries out aloud against such a lie as this.

A glance over the map of Africa, for example, which has in later years in particular received the attentions of the Gospel merchants and their “followers”—the concession hunters—will prove to the world in whose service the former are, and will provide for posterity a lasting example of Christian love and brotherhood.

The governments of Germany, England, France, Belgium, Italy, etc. have vied with each other in their disinterested desires to help on the work of “education” and “uplifting” pre­liminarily started under the auspices of their sky-pilots, while the factory hells of Krupp and Maxim and other murder-instrument makers have been kept busy supplying the wherewithal to furnish the recalcitrant with a dose of the eternal bliss promised by the missionary. Almost each designative name on the map recalls the cold-blooded slaughter of numberless innocent human beings in the most cowardly and fiendish manner, although the whole extent soldiers will, of course, never be told. One has of the horrors perpetrated by the Christian to be satisfied with what filters through, and can only gather from one’s knowledge of the all-pervading greed of that sinister and dehumanised 20th Century product, the modern capitalist class, what the innocent multitudes of the natives can expect once they come into the clutches of our masters.

Who of us, who are Socialists, can forget the Congo or the Tripolis atrocities, the wholesale slaughter in South Africa, the massacres in Egypt and in the Sudan, the butcheries in Algeria and Morocco, the systematic murders in German East and South-West Africa ? All of which have been perpetrated, and are still being perpetrated, in order to obtain access to, and confiscate the riches of the land, and by the same token force the natives into the labour market !

As a rule, after the chiefs of the staff in the human slaughterhouse have had their day and their “purse” for successfully establishing their masters’ authority abroad, the equally deadly, if less noisy and often more deceiving, weapon of legislation completes the work of brigandage and the consequent impoverishment of the subdued peoples. Thus, last year’s “Land Act” assigned to the 4 millions natives in the South African Union, 11,000,000 morgen land out of the total area of 142,000,000 morgen, the remaining 131,000,000 morgen being in the occupation of 1,250,000 whites. The provisions of the Act are, of course, such as to prevent the natives from acquiring land outside the scheduled areas, and to leave them no alternative but the wage-labour market—no escape from the dependancy on the “profiteer.”

It is obvious that so long as a man can find his means of subsistence freely provided by nature, e g., so long as he owns means allowing of the production of the things whereby he lives, he need not and will not sell himself to another man ; in other words, he is not fit material for capital. This fact alone is sufficient to indicate that expropriation of the native is an indispensable condition. And just as the history of the rise of the bourgeoisie in Europe is marked by a series of revolutions and wars ending, as it did, in the complete dispossession of the great mass of the people of every vestige of independent property, so the natives of “uncivilised” Africa have to go through this metamorphosis as soon as they have the misfortune to come in contact with the modern bourgeoisie. Capital, the demon inseparable from the bourgeoisie, is as we know, not a thing—it is a social relationship and requires the existence of a huge class of men and women deprived of all possibility of producing their own means of subsistence. The crucial point in the Colonies is, therefore, to ensure the separation of the natives from their own conditions of labour and their root, the soil; and thus create there that “high-standing” artificial product of modern society, the proletariat, which is synonymous to saying—”the poor.”

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued.)

Editorial: The Passing of De Leon. (1914)

Editorial from the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The death of Daniel De Leon in America recalls the controversy over so-called Direct Action by the working class. Joining the S.L.P. when it was nominally, as well as actually, a reform party, De Leon also affiliated with the corrupt Knights of Labour, and as a result of the secession of some elements the Socialist Trades and Labour Alliance was formed to act in co-operation with the S.L.P. But a union of opposing elements could not succeed. In spite of the claim that by economic unity political unity would also be established, a split soon took place, and the Socialist (!) Party of America was formed.

In 1905 “Industrial Unity” was again the cry, and once more it was urged that by uniting economically, political harmony would be secured.

De Leon, Debs and other political enemies came together in the I.W.W., which taught that Industrial Unionism would establish Socialism. Politics was but a reflex or an afterthought, so to speak. Anarchists as well as “Socialists”, reformers as well as others, came together in the Industrial Workers of the World. Some of them believed in politics, while others did not.

Such fictitious unity could not last, and soon it was found that, instead of uniting, it made those it embraced more divided than ever. It was not long before Debs and his “Socialist” Party friends were outside the I.W.W. Soon arose the question of what Industrial Unionism meant, some contending that politics were unnecessary and others that they might be useful, and so on.

The arrival of Wm. Haywood from jail soon caused a split among the unity-hunters of the I.W.W., and we were faced with two I.W.W.’s – one forced to give some vague recognition of the value of political action, and the other, embracing Haywood, Bohn, Ettor and Giovannitti, yearning for sabotage, physical force, and such moonshine.

The closing years of De Leon’s life were practically a sea of troubles on this “industrial action” question. One after another his lieutenants went over to the so-called Socialist party, or to the rival I.W.W. Frank Bohn, James Connolly, Trautmann (who has now come home to the I.W.W. fold), and even his own son, Solon De Leon, making tracks for that ark of confusion, the S.P. of A.

Verily the Industrialist rubbish spelt Nemesis for the S.L.P.

There is a lesson for the workers on this side of the Atlantic to leave the suicidal policy of Industrial Unionism severely alone.

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation. [1] (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some time ago the Bishop of Hull, speaking on the relation of Christianity to Social problems, referred to the decision of the Japanese people, not to make Christianity their national religion, and said:

“This was because the shrewd Japanese had known too much about the lives of professing Christians. During the time when the present Archbishop of York was labouring in Stepney, a Japanese traveller called upon him and asked to be put in the way of seeing the real inner life of the people of the East-end. The clergyman did not refuse, bat he said he could only pray that the Japanese visitor might forget as soon as possible many of the things he saw . . . The Japanese could not fail to perceive that as a people we were hopelessly divided, class against class . . . squalid poverty at the one end of the scale and stupid luxury at the other.”

It would appear that even the Bishop felt that Christianity was not playing a very creditable part in the sordid tragedy of this much belauded civilisation, although we have no doubt that he would not publicly endorse the charge of the Socialist that religion is always to be found on the side, and, indeed, is the active ally of the forces of oppression.

In the face of the hideousness and injustice of the social conditions obtaining in Christian countries—”the terrible social difficulties,” as one eminent prelate said—the purpose of missionary societies, who go to great efforts and spend enormous sums in bringing this 20th Century civilisation to the “heathen,” might well puzzle those who, although not Socialists, will readily agree that the conditions of existence in modern society not only leave much to be desired, but are in fact paradoxical in the extreme.

The all too apparent and ever increasing poverty of the great mass of the people, which means their shortage not only of those means, opportunities and healthful environment which afford culture and minister to a high development of one’s physique and intellect—the only guarantee for the real enjoyment of life and therefore the road to happiness—but their shortage even of the barest and crudest necessities of existence, side by side with undisputed abundance of all those things, or “unparalleled prosperity.” The paradox of increasing insecurity and harder toil, owing, not as one might suspect, to the failure or misunderstanding of nature, or the difficulty of producing the means of subsistence, but in spite of or contrary to the continuous advance in understanding, mastering and utilising the forces of nature, and more insecurity and harder toil as the result of ever greater facilities to produce.

Neither of the above mentioned instances of glaring inconsistencies and cruel ironies, which could, of course, easily be multiplied, will be denied. Nor is there, so far as the non Socialist is concerned, any remedy for, or any escape from, that condition of things. It is easy to get their admission that unemployment with all its attendant evils is inevitable, and that it exists side by side with excessive toil oa the part of those “in work.” It is common knowledge, “but cannot be altered,” that overcrowding, slums, homeless and shelterless exist side by side with spacious, comfortable and healthy empty and half empty houses; it is equally common knowledge, “but cannot be altered,” that there is preposterous waste of all sorts of commodities side by side with the most pressing and bitter want. Foodstuffs, especially of easily deteriorating nature, such as vegetables, meat, fish, etc. are rotting and perishing in markets and stores in enormous quantities, while uncounted workers with their families are suffering the pangs of hunger. Fuel, such as coal for instance, is being uselessly destroyed to an incredible extent alone in keeping battle ships continually “prepared,” while in cold days the lack of the same precious fuel accentuates the gloom and squalor of innumerable dreary habitations and causes sickness and death due to insufficient warmth.

Anyone reading, for example, the records of such institutions as the Salvation Army, or the Church Army, Dr. Barnardo’s “homes,” etc., etc., the signposts of “civilisation,” or their soul stirring appeals on behalf of the thousands of destitute men, women and children reduced to implore the humiliating, degrading and demoralising help of such charities ; or anyone having perused the facts in Seebohm Rowntree’s “Poverty: A Study of Town Life,” or “How the Labourer Lives,” or Sir Charles Booth’s “The Life and Labour of the People of London,” or Dr. Wallace’s “Social Environment,” or the eloquent comparisons in Chiozza Money’s “Riches and Poverty,” or any other of the numerous similar enquiries, again might fail to detect the reason for the enthusiasm of missionary organisations in transplanting a system such as produces the crying evils and glaring inconsistencies surrounding us.

“In London”—so ran a whole page appeal in the “Daily Telegraph” in the cold month of February—”at this moment there are thousands to whom each degree’s fall in the thermometer is so much additional agony. Men and women feel it keenly, acutely, and to the hapless children it means suffering untold. Think for a moment of some of its phases. There is no money to buy coal, the grate is fireless, . . . and there is nothing but a bit of hard, dry bread. Even the solace of a cup of tea becomes impossible then . . . the pangs of hunger are felt with tenfold force, and the emaciated mother and the shivering children huddle together in the gloom of their bare room. . . . The poor, thin rags that serve as an apology for clothes; the broken boots, through which toes and heels protrude, no warm blankets at night. . . . You cannot—you dare not say you do not see these sufferings. No one can go a walk or drive of half-a-mile in London without passing them:

Women, children, young and old,

Groan from pain and weep from cold;

From the haunts of daily life,

Where is waged the daily strife,

With common wants and common cares

Which sow the human heart with tares.

For we know the long drawn-out misery is there—on our right hand and on our left in this great, proud, wealthy Capital of the Empire.”

“No food, no fire, no home.” “Work for starving women,” etc., etc. Such are other head lines to advertisements in the Daily Press of civilised Christian countries !

Besides this, eloquent figures can be quoted from capitalist economists and statesmen, and a long row of Bluebooks produced, which go a long way to explain a good many of the social anomalies surrounding us.

1,400,000 persons in the United Kingdom, for instance, appropriate between them some £634,000,000 whilst 39,000,000 other people share between them £935,000,000. 30,000,000 people of the United Kingdom own no land, whilst 7 landlords draw £14,640,000 per annum in ground rent!

Is it a wonder that there are 13,000,000 continually on the verge of hunger and that the great majority of the people are at the mercy of a small minority ? And is it a wonder that this stupid disproportion of wealth-distribution should produce anarchy ?

And the same tale of chronic poverty and consequent degradation can be told of the overwhelming majority of the peoples of Germany, Austria, France, America, and the rest of those countries where His Majesty King Capital reigns supreme, and where, consequently, Their Worships Profit and Prostitution, male and female, are the pillars of civilisation. Any native from an “uncivilised” land who had been shown through the factory hells of Continental or American industrial centres and brought into contact with the “life” of the workers there and their “homes,” might well be excused if not rewarded, for bringing to an abrupt end the career of the missionary babbling to him about the blessings of civilisation.

Chronic strikes, bread riots, sordid tragedies of strife, misery and want, police and military brutalities, are evidence that there, as here, millions do not receive a “living wage,” and that there, as here, they are, as the Bishop said, hopelessly divided—class against class.

If then, as can be done, overwhelming evidence can be brought that the system of human co-existence in the so-called civilised Christian countries is “rotten from top to bottom”—as one great apologist for the system has put it—if besides, the worst that can be said by the Socialist is being repeatedly admitted and substantiated by capitalist economists and statesmen, and if, in spite of the struggle with nature having been won by “civilised” men, the great majority of them have still to live from hand to mouth and, not having any property, have to eke out this existence of perpetual penury and insecurity with the spectre of starvation haunting them, it would certainly seem strange that the contamination of the pure atmosphere of the “uncivilised” with our system and institutions should tend to produce there something different from what it produces here—that is, anarchy and social idiocies.

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued.)

A Useful Volume Reviewed. (1914)

Book Review from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour in Irish History. By James Connolly. Paper covers, 1s net. Published by Maunsel & Co. Ltd., 96, Mid Abbey St., Dublin.

Home Rule and Carsonism are filling the columns of newspapers. Wild and furious threats, accompanied by more or less genuine spasms of gun-running, are thrown out as to what will happen if Home Rule is established, and thousands of workers both in England and Ireland are quite excited as to the result of the conflict.

At such a time much good may be done by drawing attention to certain historical evidences for the fundamental facts so important for the workers’ consideration.

And this book will largely help in such a desirable end.

Written by one who has made some study of the Marxian analysis of society, it cuts through the sham superficialities of the struggle between Home Ruler and Ulsterite, Catholic and Protestant, and shows how in Ireland, as everywhere else where classes exist, the real fight, the fundamental antagonism, is between those who own the means of life and those who have nothing but the sale of their labour-power to depend upon for an existence.

The development of the worker in Ireland is traced from the days of the Williamite wars to the present day, after a short account has been given of the previous conditions.

A particularly useful part of the book, in face of the many romances dealing with the time, is the description of the period preceding and covering the “Act of Union” between England and Ireland. The analysis of the various “revolutionary” leaders and their movements, with the exposure of frauds like Grattan, Flood, and O’Connell, is well worthy of study. Above all the fear and hatred of the working class by the wealth owners is shown by their slimy scheming to disarm the volunteers at that time.

These consisted of three sections—the Liberty Corps—working class; the Merchants’ Corps—capitalist class; and the Lawyers’ Corps—members of the legal profession.

As the author puts it:

“The Government [Irish Government bear in mind] had to use force to seize    the arms of the working men, but the capitalists gave up theirs secretly as the     result of a private bargain . . . and the lawyers privately handed their guns over     to the enemies of the people.”

    

“The working men fought, the capitalists sold out, and the lawyers bluffed.”    (p. 58).

An interesting account of a co-operative colony founded at Ralahine, County Clare, in 1831 is given, but the reader will tend to gather the impression that it is by such means the workers will emancipate themselves—an impression distinctly reactionary in face of the growth of the Social forces and the power needed for their economic manipulation.

There is one part of the work, however, to which distinct exception can be taken. This is the section dealing with the first Irish Socialist. One is here curiously reminded of the same attitude taken up by Miss Beatrice Potter (now Mrs Sidney Webb) in her book on "Co-operation".

The attitude is one of suggesting a thing without actually saying it.

The author claims that the great forerunner of Marx—standing between the Utopians and the latter—was an Irishman named William Thompson, who, among numerous notable statements, laid bare the source of value in his work entitled, An Inquiry into the Principles of Wealth most conducive to Human Happiness, etc, published 1824, where it is laid down that all labour can be reduced to unskilled labour of the average kind at a given time.

Miss Potter says Marx took his notion of “homogenous human labour” from Thompson and incorporated it in Capital.

The author says “In the English speaking world the work of this Irish thinker is practically unknown, but on the Continent of Europe his position has long been established” (p. 115).

Now what is common to both Connolly and Miss Potter is the curious fact that neither of them state who established Thompson’s position and made him known on the Continent. The uninstructed reader may learn with surprise that the person responsible was—Karl Marx!

Many years ago Dr Aveling pointed out in a little book called Darwin Made Easy, that the various “objections” by ignorant Christians and parsons to Darwin’s work were all first formulated by Darwin himself in the Origin of Species, and no opponent had ever brought forward any other. So with Marx. All the opponents of Marx who are so loud in their claims to have discovered “forerunners” of his work and ideas are all of them—German, English and Irish alike—indebted to Marx, who first discovered and gave full credit to them in his various works, particularly in the Poverty of Philosophy and the Critique of Political Economy.

And among others he points out that Benjamin Franklin had already in 1721 stumbled on the secret of undifferentiated labour as the source of value, though he (Franklin) did not work the idea out to any extent.

However, it is the fashion to-day among the shallow critics of scientific Socialism who are unable to refute the case or show a flaw in the arguments of Marx to pretend to demolish that genius by finding someone who “anticipated” him, and keeping “gradely dark” the fact that the very person they are indebted to for such discovery is Marx himself.

Jack Fitzgerald

A Socialist Survey. (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lloyd George’s Budget certainly got the welcome he knew it would get from the “Labour” movement. The only feature to be regretted, from their point of view, is the forgetfulness of the Chancellor to acknowledge its source. Apart from that, it is hailed as being “on the right lines,” “a step on the way,” etc. Although Mr. Lloyd George doesn’t see his way clear to “relieve the working classes of the amount of taxation which they were called upon to bear” (vide Mr. Philip Snowden), it yet was comforting to know that a beginning was to be made in the way of doing something to relieve the heavy burden on local rates!.

* * *

On somewhat similar lines is the election manifesto of Mr. Jas. Martin, Labour candidate for N.E. Derbyshire. He goes “straight for the abolition of food taxes.” He favours also the “nationalisation of the mines and railways, which would not only cheapen coal and travel, but [mark this] provide revenue for the Exchequer” !

As if that was not enough to stamp Mr. Martin as a full-blown Liberal, he proceeds to give us the full Liberal programme with all its trimmings. He believes in Free Trade, Home Rule, and Land Reform—in fact, all that a respectable Liberal stands for. Strangely enough, he is opposed by another Liberal candidate. This, I believe, is due to some misunderstanding which has caused a split in the “Progressive forces.” Mr. Martin’s candidature is endorsed by the Miners’ Federation and the Labour Party. Though he was standing with the assent of the Derbyshire Miners’ Association, yet a large proportion of delegates at the adoption of the orthodox Liberal were members of that body. I don’t blame them : they couldn’t tell t’other from which.

The Labour election agent, Mr. A. Peters, declares that the miners have spent £10,000 within the last few years in order to maintain their position in the county. Can you wonder ?

* * *

One thing stands out clear in the diverse reports that reach us concerning the trouble in Mexico. That is that both General Huerta and General Carranza have given assurances that oil wells shall be protected during the fighting. Why ? Because these wells are chiefly the cause of the trouble. Ask Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Trust. Ask any of the greedy sharks in this country whose eyes are glued on Mexico. Huerta, representing Mexican interests, wants to preserve the oil wells for Mexico; Carranza, representing British and American capitalists, wants them for his masters.

Mexico is one of the richest mineral countries in the world—that is why all the world wants it. When oil was discovered during the Diaz regime, it was not long before the far-off nostrils of the capitalist wolves scented it. Then commenced the trouble. Diaz wouldn’t “sell out,” so means were adopted to make him “get out.” His successor looks like traversing the same road. Thus are the “rights” of capital vindicated.

Smug respectability, sitting at home in England, wonders what it is all about. “Why the devil don’t these fellows set to work instead of fighting each other, and let us earn our dividends ? This sort of thing lowers the rate, don’t you know !”

* * *

Yes, we know. In Colorado, for instance, it is lowering the rate—of the population. They call it “Rockefeller’s war.” It is a typical industrial war—all one-sided. The capitalists have the full forces of the country at their disposal. The miners—only dogged determination and what few arms they are able to get hold of. Men, women, and children have been shot or sabred that shareholders may have their dividends. Women and children, have had to tramp the streets because their homes had been burned over their heads, in order that investors should have a “fair return” on their capital. And we are told there is no class war !

* * *

May Day in this country seems to have resolved itself into a sort of rounding-up of recalcitrant and other sheep, into the Labour fold. As usual, the Labour Party were out in full force. Everywhere the same note was struck—emphasis on the importance of joining a trade union, electing leaders, sending them to Parliament, but, above all, being “loyal” to them. You see, the more members the bigger the unions ; the bigger the unions the more “leaders” required, and incidentally, the more soft jobs for the professional spongers.

We, on the other hand, don’t believe in making a hullaballoo once every twelve months. Instead, we engage in a steady, persistent propaganda of Socialist principles on every day in the year. One can understand these job-hunters not liking us and our work. Whereas they believe in the retention of the capitalist system, we work for its abolition. Its abolition would put them out of business.

* * *

Old Age Pensions have proved a grand thing—for the capitalists. Recent returns relating to pauperism in England and Wales issued by the Local Government Board show that since 1909 there has been a decrease of more than 200,000. That this is due in a large measure to the introduction of Old Age Pensions is proved by the fact that in 1906 the number of paupers over 70 years of age was 229,474, whereas at the beginning of 1913 the number had fallen to 56,770.

This means that whilst formerly it just about 13s. 8d. per head to keep paupers inside a workhouse, they can now get them completely off their hands for the modest sum of five shillings. On this the pensioners have to subsist as best they can—usually with assistance from friends and relations, thus contributing directly to the further impoverishment of those who are already poor.

Old Age Pensions having fulfilled their mission of getting the aged people off the hands of the capitalists, the Poor Law authorities are now looking round for some device to rid themselves of those under 70. The Lambeth Board of Guardians have, so far, been the most successful. The experiment they tried was to send the inmates to look for work ! All they had to do was to go out and get a job, come back for the missus and kids, and—there you are ! Goodbye ! Simple, isn’t it ? At this rate there soon won’t be any Poor Law for Mr. Sidney Webb to worry about.

* * *

Here is an example of the effect the above system has upon people who try to remain outside the Poor Law. It was brought to light at a Westminster inquest recently, and showed the hopeless struggle of an aged couple who tried to live on 12s. a week, of which 4s. 6d. had to go for rent. The victim of this hellish system was Mary Ann Russell, aged 72, of Pimlico, who was found with her throat cut.

Her husband, a grey-haired labourer of 67, said he had been out of work for thirteen weeks, and his wife had been much depressed in consequence. Their income consisted of 7s. from his National Insurance payments (which expired the week after the inquest) and 5s. her Old Age Pension. They owed rent, and it was more than the old lady could face. “We lived very happily together, sir,” said the old man, with tears streaming down his face, “but it’s too much to bear.”

Tom Sala

En passant. (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

An editorial in the “Daily Sketch” of May 7th runs as follows: “But a more dangerous sort of interference with parental authority will be confirmed by the passing of the Defective and Epileptic Children Bill. Defective children (of the poor people) are to be sent to residential schools, and Mr. Josiah Wedgwood moved an amendment for the purpose of making it clear that such children should not be removed from their homes without the consent of their parents. The amendment was negatived by a decisive vote.”

Leaflet No. 45 of the Anti-Socialist Union bears the following bright gem :

Infant Gatherer [who is the State Nurse existing under an impossible Socialist State]: “I’ve called to take your baby to the State Children’s Home.”

Mother : “But you will let him say ‘good-bye’ to his father ? ”

Infant Gatherer : “Father! There are no fathers now. The State’s his father.”

It has often been pointed out to the intellectuals of the Anti-Socialist Union that the bogey they attack is not Socialism but State capitalism. But it is easy to apologise for not hearing after you have stuffed your ears.

Today, under capitalism—”the best of all possible systems in the best of all possible worlds”—you must not be born without the State knowing; you must not “shuffle off this mortal coil” without the State being informed of the fact; if you are on the panel you cannot be ill without the State being aware of your malady. Under tyrannical Socialism the only added danger could be that the privacy of the bath-room might be invaded.

* * *

To turn from the Anti-Socialist Union to members of an Anti-Socialist Party, the appended statements are enlightening.

Mr. Philip Snowden, in the “Labour Leader” of April 30th: “If we take the Liberal Party at its best to-day and accept its professions at their apparent value, and if we compare its programme with that of a labour party which is not Socialist, then there is no doubt that Mr. Asquith’s statement that the differences are trivial and unimportant represents the actual facts.”

Mr. Jowett, in the “Labour Leader,” April 16th : “On one occasion the Labour Party had declined to introduce an Unemployment motion because the Government had to be kept in office, and often it had been difficult to defend the votes which the Labour members had given.”

Two minds with but a single thought; two mouths that bleat as one.

These extracts may be used as supporting an argument in re Philip sober. P. Snowden, “Labour Leader” 30.4.14.: “The irony of Social Reform within the present economic order is that every reform which improves the health and intelligence of the workers benefits the capitalist still more.”

The same Snowden—the summit of conceit— in the House of Commons (7.5 14), on Mr. L. George’s Budget: “The taxes on the rich provided revenue to be used for social reform purposes and must economically benefit the landlord and the employing class.”

Yet again, the same Philip, in the same speech: “If the Chancellor of the Exchequer was prepared to continue to use taxation not merely as a means of raising revenue but as a potent, if incomplete, method of social reform, he would be prepared to give him support.”

There, what base knave dare deny that one Philip, of Blackburn, is a Socialist. To all anti-Socialists he is a revolutionary of the most rabid type, because they do not understand Socialism.

* * *

This extract is not from an old file of the “Socialist Standard.” Mr. Arnold White writes a weekly article for the “Daily Express” entitled “Looking Round.” Sometimes he squints and sees “wisions,” yet on other occasions he sees things in their true perspective. In the issue of that organ of mal-education for 11 5.14, he says “Mr. Lloyd George’s scheme to provide aid from taxation for the feeding of necessitous school children appeals to warm hearts and soft heads. The plan is as old as Rome. To make the community help manufacturers to pay wages necessarily implied reduction of wages the limit to the fall of wages is automatically determined by the cost of bare maintenance of the labourer and his family. If the average subsistence rate of the lowest form of slum worker is £1 a week, and the average number of children is three, the labourer must be paid a pound a week, since he cannot exist on less. If, on the the other hand, the State steps in and helps to feed the children of unorganised labourers, the cost of subsistence will be less. Being subjected to unrestricted competition, the labourer, if he can live on less than £l a week, will take less.'” A Socialist could improve that very little.

Some people have heard of the London City Mission, a body, presumably of human beings, which held its 79th Annual Meeting on May 8th. During the course of the meeting, the Rev. T. S. Hutchison, M.A., must have felt relieved when he got the following off his chest: “Socialism, of a godless type, was said to be spreading rapidly among the working men, even to some extent among employees where the cooperative system had long existed, and where, but for the agitators, the men would be happy and contented. The result was the growth of discontent and unrest.” Dear readers, please shudder to oblige our dearly beloved vicar. Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the columns of the “Times,” that we, the feeble band, the few, are the cause of the great totality of wretchedness and discontent at present existent. Sir George Askwith is wrong when he attempts to settle strikes (in the masters’ interest) by haggling over wages and hours of labour. How much could he not learn, would he only sit at the feet of this far seeing disciple of the Prince of Peace ?

* * *

You have a working man earning a quid a week, and he is satisfied. His town house in Stepney and his country seat in Victoria Park provide delightful changes of scenery and atmosphere, guaranteed to revitalise any constitution accidentally undermined by the pure air of the sweat shop. So I could continue to describe the idyllic existence of the working man. To suggest any improvement would be to attempt to paint the lily. But stay, into the picture of contentment, slyly creeps the strife stirring Socialist. Without him all would be well. He can even surmount the protective barriers of co-operation and co-partnership. He seems all-powerful and he is of the godless type. If he believed in a god or worshipped a tram-ticket he might be tolerated. As he is, he is anathema.

Christian, Ragtime “Reynolds” here comes in useful. In its issue for 1.2.14 it said : “We should have thought that no man capable of two consecutive minutes’ thought still held the antiquated notion that strikes are due to the ‘agitator.’ The whole of the British unrest of the past three years has shown that the agitator is powerless where men have not genuine grievances.”

The missioner’s speech prompts me to ask, what was the cause of discontent before the godless Socialism existed? I could continue with questions, but the harrowing of Hutchison is too pitiful to contemplate. Besides, I might trouble him and make him discontented. And, I am a godless Socialist. Grrrh !

* * *

The manufacturer threw a belligerent chest. “arrest ’em,” he said. “If I had my way, I’d arrest every blighted Labour agitator.”

A gaunt figure, with a skull in place of the head, rose exultantly. “Then arrest me,” it cackled, capering. “I am the original stirrer up of those who do hard labour. I am the ancient breeder of discontent, the father of Socialists, the agitator of agitators. Arrest me.”

“But who are you?”

“I am Hunger.”

“Tut! tut!” said the manufacturer pleasantly, “Why should I arrest my best and chiefest Labour agent?”

Poor Hutch!

A. L. Cox.

A snippet. (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

It ain't only a barrer that wants pushing; the "Socialist Standard" for instance. Not 'arf.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For June. (1914)

Party News from the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard