Notes by the Way: Religion in Russia. (1955)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion in Russia.

One of the heads of the Russian Church, the Metropolitan Pitirim of Minsk, addressed a Press conference at Lambeth Palace on the position of the Church in Russia.

His figure of “over 20,000 churches” shows little change from the figure for 1945. (Statesmen’s Year Book, 1952, p. 1413.) 

He claimed that there are eight seminaries and two academies, at which over 2,000 young men were in training for the priesthood. “He said that 85 per cent, of Russians had remained faithful to their Church.” (Manchester Guardian, 12 July, 1955.) 

He had rather a lot to say about the funds of the Church and must have made some of his English audiences envious.

“Questioned about church finance, the Metropolitan said that it was all provided by the gifts of the faithful. Fingering a diamond-set medallion of die Virgin Mary, he added that he had several of these treasures, as well as two fine cars which had been given to him. 'By this you can judge our material position,' he said; 'it is all given by the people, who love their priests.' ”

(Manchester Guardian, 12 July, 1955.) 

The Daily Mail reported him as saying also that every clergyman in Russia is provided by the faithful with a car. 

The “Socialism” of the I.L.P.

The Socialist Leader, organ of the I.L.P., in its issue of 16 July, comes out with its proposal for the coal mines. It asks “ Why not stop paying the former coalowners?” This, it thinks, would enable the Coal Board to avoid increasing the price of coal.

It is typical of the I.L.P., now as in all the years of its history, that whenever a problem of capitalism comes up, it thinks of all sorts of solutions except the one to which it is nominally committed—Socialism. It is also typical of the I.L.P. when it makes its proposals to help the capitalists run capitalism that it thinks it knows better than they do how it should be done. Past experience gives no support even to this. When the two Labour Governments, of 1924 and 1929, were running capitalism, composed as they were predominantly of members of the I.L.P., there was nothing in their record to encourage such belief.

It is also characteristic of the naive attitude of the I.L.P. that its article on the coal situation should discover, as if it is a matter for surprise, that the Government has not put up coal prices in the interests of the mineworkers. Why should it and if it accepted the new I.L.P. proposal the same would be true. When will the I.L.P. wake up to the fact that nationalisation is State capitalism and is not in the interest of the workers, and has nothing to do with Socialism?

How High are Co-operative Society Profits?

The co-operators insist that their dividends on purchases are profit, not a reduction of prices. They do so on principle, but they also have a particular reason in that some manufacturers of proprietary articles will only supply them to Co-operative societies on condition that no dividend is paid to purchasers in respect of these articles. Co-operative News (9th July) writes:—‘The manufacturers regard the payment of dividend as a cut in price, which is pure nonsense.”

But apart from this, some Co-operators are keen to show that their stores make just as large profits as do private Capitalists. Co-operative News (14th May, 1955), published some facts about Co-operative profits. The writer showed that the Co-operative Wholesale Society last year paid out £6,174,067 as dividend; which on a capital of £27,431,064, is a rate of 25.25 per cent. He compared this with the Imperial Chemical’s distribution of a 10 per cent. dividend (but did not deal with the further profit, not distributed, which would have enabled I.C.I. to pay 30 per cent).

The writer showed, too, that on the retail co-operatives’ capital of £220,500,000 their dividend of £38,000,000 is 15.2 per cent. It looks like good Capitalist business.

Can the Workers Understand?

In the Socialist Standard of 50 years ago (August, 1905) was an article with quite up-to-date applications. It derided a furious agitation then being carried on by Labourites as being for a farcical object of no value to the workers. It went on to examine the reason given by Labourites who claimed to want Socialism, for wasting time on such trivial issues. Their explanation was one we still hear. They said that, desirable as Socialism is, you cannot expect the ordinary worker to understand it but must gain his interest by putting to him other simple immediate issues that he can understand, and thus lead him on step by step.

The writer of the article in the Socialist Standard argued that the case for Socialism was in truth simpler than the tortuous case for reforms and that these sidetracking proposals could only serve to confuse the workers and take them away from the real issue, that of establishing Socialism.

From 1905 we may jump 50 years to the recent Blackpool Conference of the Transport Workers Union. On 12th July, 1955, the delegates accepted the lead of their new general secretary Mr. A. E. Tiffin, and rejected resolutions for widespread new nationalization measures. Mr. Tiffin reminded delegates that the Labour Party had just fought an election on Nationalization and lost it, and the reason was, he said, that the workers don’t understand what Nationalization is all about.

“. . . We have to face the fact that nationalization at the present time has not yet been sufficiently explained to our fellow citizens as to convince them that further nationalization is in the interests of the whole nation."

“. . . even our own people in the industries we nationalized do not really understand what was the basic motive for nationalizing them." (Times, 13 July, 1955.)

The leaders also did not understand what they were doing and had, said Mr. Tiffin, relied on trial and error methods. “We should know precisely what we are going to do before we engaged on more Nationalization and not leave it to trial and error.” (Daily Herald, 13 July.)

So after half a century they can’t understand their own programme though Nationalization was, 50 years ago, just one of the side-tracking, time-wasting reforms advocated by Labourites on the plea that it was more easily understood than Socialism and would help us on the way.

Now let us return to another of these useless agitations, the one dealt with in the Socialist Standard of August, 1905. The article in question pointed out that this agitation had already been going on for 25 years and had never mattered. What, then was it? It was the demand for the abolition of the House of Lords! Three years later at the 1908 conference of the Labour Party a resolution demanding its abolition was passed unanimously (Report, p. 68) and this demand was reaffirmed at later conferences.

And here is an extract from a speech about it:—

"The first thing the Tories should understand is that if they tinker about any further with the British Constitution they must be informed that if we get a majority we will put an end to the House of Lords . . ."

Who made this speech and when? It was none other than the ebullient clown of the Labour circus, in one of his profound, statesmanlike moods, Mr. Aneurin Bevan. (Times, 24 May, 1955.) And it was made in 1955 after three Labour Governments had been in office and done nothing about it; showing, incidentally, how little it matters even for their purposes. All they have ever done is to fill a lot of the plush seats of the House of Lords with superannuated Labour M.P.s.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Revolutionary Proposition (1955)

From the August 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern Society is made up of the working class, the great majority, who produce but do not own and a small section (barely 10%) who own but do not produce. For the protection of the latter’s wealth and privileges against the have-nots at home and against covetous and greedy competitors abroad, the possessing class needs coercive machinery, police and armed forces, and so it is that every technical improvement in the tools of production finds its primary application to arms production. The discovery of nuclear energy is only the most recent case in point, though unique in so far as it has “revolutionized the entire, foundation of human affairs and placed mankind in a situation both measureless and laden with doom.” Churchill, who spoke these words, “had no solution for permanent peace between the nations, although,” he said, “we pray for it.” He also said that “it would be folly to suppose hydrogen-weapons would not be used in case of war.” Apparently Churchill knows his men and also his God.

Now, there is a solution, and if it is not for avowed defenders of capitalism like Churchill and the other avowed anti-Socialists to advocate that solution, honesty and consistency would require of those calling themselves Socialists to urge that solution especially since it is the only way out of the present appalling dilemma.

Though an exposé of the genuine Socialist case, i.e., the abolition of Capitalism, lock, stock and band, in other words: a fundamental' change in the constitution of present-day society, from production for profit to production of the means of life for use, on the principle: From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs, though such a proposition would fall on deaf ears in Parliaments and be promptly derided as a Utopia.

Yet, though “we are all Socialists now,” there has not been to the writer’s knowledge, any reference to Socialism as the only solution of society’s problems from any “Socialist” quarters. One is bound to conclude that actually all of them—save that of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the companion parties overseas—look upon the conversion of the means of wealth production and distribution from private or State control to COMMON OWNERSHIP and democratic control by the people as a whole, as a Utopia, just as do the Capitalists themselves. There is, for example, Attlee, saying in the debate on Defence: “There is sometimes a need for something more dramatic if a H-bomb-war and the destruction of civilisation was to be avoided. He believed that it was felt by the rulers of Russia, as well as by the President of the U.S.A., and by the rulers of France, but somehow the thing did not get moving. We were looking for an initiative.” Just as 40 years ago, at the outbreak of World-War I, another pseudo-Socialist Party, the Socialist Labour Party, confessed officially that they had been taken by a storm and “were waiting for a lead.” Attlee said he had had talks with Malenkov, for he was “a very important factor.” (That this “important factor” became only a few days afterwards a mere factotum, shows the political foresight and intellect of these Western Capitalist factotums). What a Socialist indeed, who received the praise of H.M. Government for getting the atom-bomb for Britain and who is now “looking for an initiative” to avoid the destruction of civilisation—as if he had never heard of Socialism!

Others of Attlee’s ilk talked about the “tremendous catastrophe of another war, and that a superior ideology to put over to the people had to be found.” Any ideology will apparently do for these Socialists, as long as it does not end Capitalism and the good old “transition- period" on which these leaders and job-hunters prosper and thrive.  

R.

(To be concluded next month)

This is Socialism ! (1992)

From the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism means common ownership

The means of production will no longer belong to a privileged minority class, whether private capitalists (as in the West) or state bureaucrats (as in the East). Both private capitalism and state capitalism will be replaced by a system in which all natural and industrial resources will be held in common by the whole community. This is the basis of socialism.

Socialism means social equality

With the establishment of common ownership, the existing division of society into a privileged ruling class and a majority class of wage and salary workers will come to an end. Instead, every member of society will stand equal with respect to the means of production and have an equal say in the way social affairs are run.

Socialism means cooperation

With the disappearance of classes, a common social interest really will exist. People will no longer be alienated, isolated individuals competing in the marketplace, but will be members of a real community of free and equal men and women cooperating for their mutual benefit and for the common good. In line with the nature of humans as social beings, cooperation, not today's competitive individualism, will be the prevalent social ethos, transforming all aspects of social life — work, play, education, the family and personal relationships generally.

Socialism means democratic control

The existing political structures where a government rules over people on behalf of the class that owns the means of production will give way to a fully democratic system of decision-making and administration. Decisions will flow upwards from the broadest possible base rather than from the top downwards as at present. Delegates, subject to the full range of democratic checks and controls, will carry out and supervise the purely administrative tasks that will remain once the political state with its machinery of coercion has been dismantled.

Socialism means production for use

Production for sale with its profit motive will come to an end; goods and services will be produced to directly supply needs without the intervention of buying and selling. The mechanisms of the market will be replaced by a self-adjusting system of production for use. The productive and distributive network will be geared to respond in a flexible way to information about needs, communicated to it directly as required amounts of specific goods and materials.

Socialism means free access

With the abolition of market mechanisms, people will be able to obtain the food, clothes and other articles they need for their personal consumption by going into a store or distribution centre and taking according to their own self-defined needs. Houses and flats will be rent-free, with heating, lighting and water supplied free of charge. Transport, health care, communications, education, restaurants and laundries will be organised as free public services. There will be no admission charges to museums, parks, libraries and other places of entertainment and recreation. Money will become redundant.

Socialism means the abolition of the wages system

Since people will have free access to what they need, productive work will no longer be performed for an employer in return for a wage or salary but will become a voluntary service organised on a democratic basis. The factories, farms, offices, schools, hospitals and other places of work will be administered democratically by those working in them. People will undertake this work service as their contribution to the necessary social tasks of producing the goods to keep the stores stocked with the things for people to take for their personal consumption and of running the free public services and the administration.

Socialism means a world community

Because capitalism itself is already a world system which, either in its private or in its state form, dominates the whole globe, socialism too can only be a world system. This means that socialism could not be established in just one country but only as a world community without frontiers, in which the natural and industrial resources of the Earth will be the common heritage of present and future generations. The world will be regarded as one country and humanity as one people.

Scorpion is on holiday.

Food as a weapon (1992)

From the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the ending of the Cold War. American military power is no longer sufficient to hold its real economic rivals— Europe and Japan—in check, and the three power blocs are squaring up for the battle for world economic domination in the 21st century.

The current battlefield is a scries of talks on world trade, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which have now been stalled for nearly two years, with the European and US governments hurling abuse at each other over the emotive issue of farm subsidies.

So what is GATT, and why does an apparently minor dispute over handouts to farmers threaten to bring the world trading system to the point of all-out economic war?

The GATT process is aimed at promoting “free trade" amongst the competing states of the world, tearing down barriers to imports and allowing consumers to choose the most efficient supplier of anything from banking services to hairdryers.

In reality, of course, there is never any such thing as free trade among equal players— no ‘‘level playing field". US-based multinational corporations. with the economic battering ram of vast scales of production behind them, and the military and political power of the US state in the not too distant background, are clearly going to make easy meat of the struggling young industries throughout the “Third World”, currently protected by their own governments’ trade barriers.

Trade wars

Now all this is fine with European governments as well. They too have multinationals based on their soil, only too eager to participate in the turkey shoot. In the coming months you will doubtless hear ministers extolling the virtues of Free Trade for the health of the world economy.

But when we come to agriculture. there is a slight fly in the milk churn. European farms tend to be small and “inefficient" (unprofitable), whereas their US competitors tend to be large and “efficient"—fully industrialised and reaping the advantages of economics of scale.

This, of course, would give them a significant advantage in a genuinely free market, almost certainly devastating the European farm industry, and scoring round one of the battle for 21st century economic domination to America.

And American farmers have never been more desperate for markets for grain, which regularly gluts the American market. (Of course, this does not mean that there are no hungry people in America, simply that they can’t afford to buy what lies rotting in warehouses).

In fact this is another bizarre consequence of the ending of the Cold War. since in those good old days the Soviet empire bought all Americas surplus grain and paid on the nose with hard currency.

Europe’s governments, then, urged on by the powerful farming lobby, are determined not to give up their agricultural subsidies, while the US is desperate to prise the European market open.

A few months ago. a high- level EC delegation led by Portuguese Prime Minister Cavaco Silva and Commission head Jacques Delors, visited President Hush in Washington for crisis talks, with Cavaco Silva making it quite clear how deep the rift had become. “Sometimes there is a discrepancy between the apparent political goodwill and the technical proposals put on the table by the US”, he told the European (9 April).

And that’s just about as close as a diplomat comes to calling the other side a dirty cheating liar.

Both sides only entrenched their positions at the G7 economic summit in Munich last month, with John Major suffering a major rebuff to his attempts to break the deadlock, and vowing to continue to “bully, badger and cajole" fellow leaders into living up to the undertakings to conclude a deal by the end of the year.

In fact, although the European side has offered a 30 percent reduction in protection and support for agriculture, this would be on the basis of levels operating in 1986—a real cut of little more than 15 percent (The Grocer, 23 November 1991).

In the EC’s last review of support prices in June 1991. ministers cut a modest 1.5 percent from levels of support for oilseed, and at the EC Lisbon summit price support for cereals was cut 29 per cent. "Still not enough" said Hush.

Agri-business

The Daily Telegraph issued a dire warning following the failure of the Munich summit that the world is edging closer to a menacing era of protectionism. “There is a real danger that the Uruguay round of GATT could breakdown altogether, taking us back to the unstable trade bloc structures of the 1930s” (9 July).

The point is that food production is governed by the laws of competitive production for profit. Manufactures of food only survive by selling at a reduced price against their competitors, and with a glut of unsaleable food on the world market, pressure to subsidise unprofitable, mainly small-scale European producers against their industrialised US rivals is immense.

So the EC’s subsidies pile up yet more unsellable food, and US farming corporations are forced to watch their own surplus production rot in warehouses because it can’t be sold anywhere. The GATT negotiations are therefore a trial of political and economic strength between US and European agri-business, with their respective governments fighting their corners round the negotiating table.

What insanity! Capitalism— the competitive production of goods for sale at a profit—yet again proves itself to be completely unable to cope with a world in which we could provide an abundance of food for each citizen of this planet. It is the only system that actually manages to find adequate food production a major crisis. Surely its time to establish a system where this is an opportunity. through free access to all food production, to abolish hunger once and for all.

Andy Thomas

Socialist Standard Readers Survey (1992)

From the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

An interesting innovation from the Socialist Standard editorial committee in the 1990s. The results from this survey were written up in the November 1992 issue of the  Socialist Standard. (There was a similar type survey in 1994.)

Could a similar type survey be produced today? What with the majority of readership of the Standard now being online, I'm not altogether sure but I would hope that the editorial committee would give it some serious consideration.

Promises, promises (1992)

From the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few months ago we heard the politicians of capitalism making their overblown speeches and promises, vowing they’d do this and swearing to do that when in office. And once again, sufficient numbers of gullible enough voters let them get away with it, put them back in power to run the same old system the same old way.

When they get office we witness all the usual traditional reneging and treachery, the feeble excuses and transparent pretexts for "expediency” and compromise—the same old sell-outs and U-turns on policy and supposed “principle".

All the parties of the Profit and Wages System keep on making promises they never keep. The promise to solve the housing problem, which stays as bad as ever or gets even worse no matter what any politicians say. The promise to do something about unemployment, which has gone on rising over the years in spite of every “job-creation” scheme and YTS programme. The promise to make “our” country more democratic—when more and more civil and legal rights have gradually been eroded away by successive governments of whatever political hue. And with each fresh election the promises seem to get more vivid and extravagant. Kinnock promised us the sun, moon and stars if we voted for him; the Tories promised things which a couple of years ago, under Maggie Thatcher, they wouldn't have dared contemplate for fear of invoking her Divine Wrath.

All the other parties in Britain, such as the Liberals, the Nationalists, the Greens, the SWP, and various far-Left parties, all make promises of some kind. All want power to rule and govern us just like the two main parties of capitalism. And none of them can keep their promises, whatever it is they say they can or will do. This is because the existing social system won't allow it; the profit-motive takes care of that, forbidding any significant change in the way society is run or structured.

One political party stands out for its absence of promises. One party alone doesn't make any: the Socialist Party. We don’t ask people to vote for us as leaders or for any leaders whatever. We tell workers what capitalism is all about, what’s wrong with it. and why it should be abolished and replaced with Socialism. We tell workers all about what socialism really means and how to achieve it. None of this entails making any promises, or making any extravagant claims for ourselves. This is because the Socialist Party doesn’t strive to run capitalism or solve the perennial problems arising within it; that fruitless task we leave to our capitalist opponents to deal with if they can. We are not in the business of theorising quack remedies for the social ills capitalism has created; we want rid of capitalism, lock, stock and barrel, and that’s the only item on our agenda.

Nor do we promise that socialism will be a perfect Utopia; socialists are far too realistic for that. We analyze the real world and offer ways and means of changing it so that the basic needs of the entire human race may be fully satisfied. This, we consider to be a positive step forward in social progress, not to eradicate all problems from human life—which is impossible—but to make it a lot easier to solve them when they arise.

D. E. F.

Letter: Class struggle in sport (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class struggle in sport

Mention the term “class struggle" to someone and they are most likely to recoil in terror or perhaps conclude that you are slightly mad. The John Majors of this world would, of course, have you believe that we now live in a classless society; and if you don't believe him there are always plenty of sociologists around to assure you that yes, there are classes—but it’s OK because everybody's “middle class" nowadays.

On 1 April last members of Canada's National Ice-Hockey League voted 560 to 4 in favour of calling the first ever strike by players in the NHL's 75-year history, and in doing so stuck two fingers up at those academics and politicians who are proclaiming the “death of the working class" and of socialism in general.

Now I'm not pretending that hockey players have spent the past few weeks skating around with copies of Marx’s Capital in their hands, but nevertheless there is a profound sense of awareness on the part of the players that, in the words of one of the ex-stars Tiger Williams. “we have rights just like any other worker”.

The fans in Vancouver, however. are up in arms over the strike especially in a year when their beloved team has a great chance of winning the revered Stanley Cup. How, they argue, can players whose average yearly earnings top $350,000 (about £175.000) choose to go on strike at a time when ordinary fans are struggling to make ends meet?

The facts, though, paint a different picture. The average salary is misleading in that there are a handful of players who earn an amount well into seven figures, thereby pushing the average up. The players were told recently by the owners of the NHL franchises that there would be no money available for increased wages despite a turnaround last year of over $43 million.

On top of this the average pro hockey player can expect his career to last about four years during which he will be subjected to constant media pressure, long-distance travel, niggling injuries, and the physical and psychological grind of playing and training day in and day out. a fact which is reflected in the abnormally low life-span of many professional athletes. Added to this, after his career is over he has little to fall back on in terms of “marketable skills”.

Yet perhaps more than this the strike is about “free agency", or, as described by Pat Quinn. the Vancouver Canucks General Manager, “the right for players to sell their talent to another club— which is at the moment being denied to them by the owners”.

The bottom line being, of course:

that this is entertainment, that tickets are sold for a product, that the value of that product is found in the talent of the players.(Globe and Mail, 2 April).

And summed up nicely by the CBC reporter:

This is not a sport—it is a business, built around one point—the raw talent of the hockey player.

All this goes to show that under capitalism, there exists a fundamental social antagonism between those who own the means of living and those who don’t. The exploitation of wage labour exists regardless of whether one is a factory worker, a working mother, a university professor or a professional ice-hockey player.

What all these people have in common is an interest in getting rid of a social system that has long since outlived its purpose and in establishing instead a way of living in which human talents from whatever walk of life can finally be expressed to the full.

Julian Prior, 

Vancouver

Letter: Socialist voters (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist voters

Dear Editors,

In the May issue of the Socialist Standard, Steve Coleman, in Story of an Election, claims “50,000 genuine socialist votes". In Between the Lines, he points out that £25,000 is needed to stand fifty candidates and have an election broadcast on BBC TV and radio.

This works out at 50p per person; 50,000 could easily afford this over five years, in time for the next General Election. Furthermore, if 650 candidates were to stand this would cost £325,000. Dividing this sum by 50,000 “genuine socialists” would only require £6.50 over five years. Not an impossibility surely.

T. Hilton,

Stockport

Reply:

If you are one of those who, given the chance, would vote for a genuine socialist candidate, why not start the hall rolling and pay your £6.50 into our Election Fund?—Editors.

Letter: Bicycle Thieves in Bennetts End (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Could it be that the Socialist concept of a society where the needs of the people are freely met is beginning to catch on. Going Places on Radio 4. on Friday 19th June, reported that in order to cut down on bicycle thefts the Police in Hemel Hempstead will be offering bicycles to the public free of charge. Apparently they have so many stolen ones that have not been reclaimed they will be making them freely available to the public.

George Pearson 

London SW20

Reply:

It’s true that there is no point in stealing what is freely available. Which is why this sort of crime will disappear in a socialist society—Editors.

Letter: Money & Survival (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In addition to pointing out some of its deficiencies, for which I am grateful, the criticism of my book Money & Survival in the Socialist Standard, June 1992, was valuable in highlighting for me those differences in approach which prevent my joining the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

It is true that I did not deal with issues such as the historical development of capitalism, class structure or the ownership of the means of production. but this is because they would have no significance in a moneyless society. In pointing out that financial systems inhibit scientific, social and economic progress, that they must be less, perhaps much less, than 50 percent efficient. I am attempting to show the enormous potential that would lie before a world that could free itself of such inhibitions.

The future can only be built upon experience of the past but social circumstances are always changing and our perspectives must change with them. I have no doubt that many of the criticisms of society and capitalism remain as valid today as they had done in the days of Karl Marx but both have changed. In the eighteenth century there were no transnational companies dominating the world, nor production workers with middle class values, nor was there a United Nations drawing the peoples of the world together.

Confrontation, whether in party politics or class wars, invites hostility, holds up the advancement of human society and is self-defeating. The eighteenth century concept that the poor can only be assisted by depriving the rich is derived from illusions of scarcity and exchange value, both of which, as I explained in my talk to my friends in your Bristol branch, are money-oriented concepts that have only had validity in narrow local contexts and are totally irrelevant today.

Confrontation begets confrontation and because the rich live in constant fear of losing their wealth, their power and their privileges, they are only too willing to believe that eventually, however far into the future that might be. those benefits will trickle down to the poor, and that that justifies them in fighting anything or anybody that threatens to take those advantages away. They have the power and resources and even in the unlikely event that they were defeated, another group would arise to grab the spoils.

To assume that once socialism is achieved the money system would wither away is to fail to appreciate the financial and psychological power of the money system. The reverse is true. Only when money has been eliminated can we hope to build a just and forward-looking social system.

There is no short-term solution. The dissemination of such ideas is bound to be a slow process and may never materialise before the human race destroys itself, but that is no reason why we would stop thinking and trying.

Melvin Chapman,

Bath

Reply:

We still can't see how money could be eliminated before socialism is established; nor how socialism could be established without a political confrontation with the privileged class who currently own and control the means of production—Editors.

Between the Lines: The Beggars' Tragic Opera (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Beggars' Tragic Opera

Embarrassing. Condescending. Insulting. Unentertaining. Time-wasting. Infuriating. Boring. ITV Telethon (all day, Sunday 19 July) Semi-recognisable stars sing bad cover versions of bland songs. Cut to twenty seconds on the miseries of living with Alzheimer's Disease. Soft focus; sad classical music. Cut to the man from Kwik-Fit who plays the game of seeing how many times he can say Kwik-Fit and look benevolent within twenty seconds of prime commercial time. Donation: a few thousand lousy pounds. The cost of the same length of purchased commercial space; a lot more. Children with missing limbs are shown playing basketball. The audience cheer. Facially disfigured people plead for funds. The studio audience cheer and wave cheques. Silly little proles with buckets full of pennies scream in ecstasy as the scoreboard shows that five million pounds has been collected. Michael Aspel gives that horrible little grin. Five million pounds: how much to the class who own nothing; what a piss in the wind to the class who possess everything. Cut to the phones where kids donate their pocket money and the poor redistribute crumbs to the poor. Bring on the Chippendales. Forget the suffering and think of a hen night in Scunthorpe as the solution to society's problems. Final collection: fifteen million rotten pounds. Less than last year. Don't they know there’s a recession on? Who will take a collection for the wage slaves who are broke after donating two-hundred quid after one lager too many in the No-Hope Arms? Final shot: a line-up of camera-hungry celebs singing a worn-out American tear-jerker. ’There are mountains in our way. . .' The mountains are made of profit; those in need never get to the top. Telethon hands out sticking plaster to a few of those that fall along the way. Isn't that Cynthia Payne amongst the crew of swooning time-wasters? Well as long as it's for charity—and where was the Minister of Fun? Is this reviewer alone in finding the whole performance of commercialised begging, pumping the worker's guilt and expecting the propertyless to provide for the helpless, a hideous spectacle? Fortunately not. Several disabled workers protested outside the Telethon studio, indignant at a show which makes them objects of pity to be thrown crumbs to the accompaniment of hollow cheers. Fifteen million begged-for pounds; petty cash in the world of military madness. It is when the world is free from money that such offensive spectacles will be unnecessary.

Out with the old, in with the old

Panorama (BBC 1,9.30 pm, Monday. 13 July) was about how the old Russian rulers, seeing the end of their bogus 'communist state' in sight, began setting up private companies in their own names using state funds. These parasites, long the beneficiaries of working-class exploitation under state capitalism, are now private owners of capital. These are the new rouble millionaires whose freedom to exploit we in the West are urged to celebrate as a coming of liberty. An ex-Central Committee member from the discredited Communist Party of the defunct .Soviet Union is shown driving a Merc and looking like any other pouncing thief to be found in the gentlemen's clubs of Chelsea. You won't find them in the food queues. Maybe they'll organise a Russian Telethon so that they can appear on the telly offering a few roubles to the wage slaves out of whose poverty they have carved their privilege.

Thieving Queen

Talking of privilege. The Queen of Mean (BBC, 9pm, Friday 17 July) was good for the bile. The film was about Leona Helmsley, the US millionairess who ended up in prison because she was caught not paying her taxes. The film-makers depicted her as ruthless, callous, heartless and out for nothing but money and power. Sounds like the ideal C.V. for a capitalist parasite. No wonder they call her The Queen. Why shouldn't she live like a selfish, useless, uncaring swine? Since when was there money to be made out of caring? Mind you, Aspel’s probably on his way to a knighthood and someone in the Kwik-Fit P.R. department is in for a handy little Christmas bonus this year.

Steve Coleman

SPGB Meetings (1992)

Party News from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Look Round. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Trades Dispute Act, passed by a Government “having something of a Labour Party force behind it” as one jubilant Trade Unionist has expressed it, legalised peaceful picketing. That is to say it made it quite lawful for “one or more persons acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a Trade Union or of an individual employer or firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working.”

* * *

But the question of what is peaceful picketing is of course one for the Magistrates and the Judges. In the course of a strike or lock-out, it is hardly to be expected that strikers or locked-out workers will be able to control their feelings altogether when they see their places being taken by others. The moment they get excited they can be charged under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, as was the case at the Old Street Police Court on June 6th, when two men were each fined £10 and ordered to pay six guineas costs between them.

* * *

Another Act of the present Government, the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1906, comes into force on July 1st. If a workman, after that date, meet with a fatal accident, and his relatives can afford to employ lawyers, or make a bargain with them on the “no win, no pay” system, they may get a verdict of £300 against the employer. And if the latter has not insured and cannot pay, he can make himself a bankrupt, and clear himself of all obligations. No wonder the Act has been described as one for the benefit of insurance companies and lawyers more than for workmen.

* * *

Probably many of the smaller employers will regard a fatal accident to one of their workmen as a blessing in disguise if it enables them, by means of the Bankruptcy Court, to disentangle themselves from the difficult position in which they have been forced under this competitive system.

* * *

The Stringertype is the name of a new matrix composing and casting machine recently invented by Mr. H. J. S. Culbert-Stringer. After a close inspection by a number of experts, the machine has been found to thoroughly justify the many important advantages claimed for it by the inventor.

* * *

Another factor in the problem of men v. machinery !

* * *

The chairman of Barclay, Perkins & Company, Ltd., is much afraid that “after legislation has finished with the Breweries,” the “Socialists” would turn their attention to other so-called monopolies, and the property of the Church itself will be in danger ! This twaddle about the wicked Socialists who would destroy property is part of the game played by the capitalist class. But Barclay, Perkins’ “property,” like that of other sections of the master class, may be depreciated and even destroyed in the ordinary course of capitalist development, without any “Socialist” agitation or action.

* * *

Thus at the meeting of William Cory & Son, Ltd., held on June 11th, Sir Francis Cory-Wright said they ought to put large sums to depreciation and reserve, because they could not say what in the future might take the place of coal, and render much of their assets valueless.

* * *

He went on to refer to the new invention “Coalite,” to exploit which a new company was being formed. Mr. Parker, of Wolverhampton, claimed that it was absolutely smokeless, and that its use would put an end to thick fogs, which were solely due to the smoke emitted from domestic and factory chimneys. There were good grounds for this claim, and if “Coalite” proved successful it would have a great future.

* * *

As I understand it, “Coalite” is obtained by treating ordinary coal in a particular manner. But surely it is within the region of possibility that a fuel may one day be discovered superior to coal in every respect, which would at once depreciate the value of coal mines and allied industries. Then the coal mine owners would agitate for the nationalisation of coal mines and some alleged Socialists would be jubilant at the rate of progress of their ideas.

* * *

On June 12th Mr. Bicknell presided at the meeting of J. C. & J. Field, Ltd., Soap and Candle Manufacturers. He said the year had been a disappointing one. For some years the profits had been steadily growing less, owing to heavy taxation, the increased price of raw materials, in addition to excessive competition.

* * *

When the Soap Trust was operating here, Field's was one of the firms which remained outside. And when the retailers talked of forming a co-operative concern to manufacture soap against the Trust, Field’s advised them not to erect a factory or to put down new plant, but, if they would subscribe £50,000 Capital, Field’s plant could be utilised, etc. All this, of course, was disinterested. Field’s sole desire, as everybody knew, was to help the people fight the awful Trust.

* * *

It is stated that the cause of the trouble at Vickers, Sons & Maxim’s Engineering Works at Erith, was primarily the introduction of a premium bonus system, similar in many respects to the “Rowan” system. In this connection the following extract from The Engineer-in-Charge and Works Manager for May will be interesting to readers.

* * *

Piecework.—Each engineer must decide for himself as to whether any of the work undertaken in his department can be more cheaply turned out on a piecework basis. Many engineers have to manufacture spare parts in considerable quantities, and in these cases the work can often be done more cheaply by the piece; the workman possibly earns more money, but the total cost will be less when establishment charges have been added.

The chief objection to piecework is the difficulty of fixing a fair rate ; if too high, the workman earns very large wages and the rate has to be cut down, with the result that next time a man is given a job at a high rate he takes care not to work too quickly. To avoid this system the premium system has been introduced, which has the effect of giving part of the additional earnings to the employer and part to the workmen. The method introduced by the late Mr. James Rowan has been more used than perhaps any other : by this system a man is allowed, say eight hours in which to do a certain job, and his rate is 8d. per hour ; if he does the work in six hours he will be paid his ordinary rate plus 2-8ths—2d.; therefore, in this case he will get 10d. per hour. It is obviously impossible, with this method, for a man to be paid double his ordinary rate, and the effect is to increase the man’s bonus for small savings in time and to decrease it for large, that is compared with ordinary piecework ; hence, it is unnecessary ever to cut the rate after it has once been fixed, and this system is undoubtedly useful for work for which the rate is difficult to compute.

* * *

There are no flies on the employers who adopt this system !

* * *

In the current issue of The Contemporary Review, Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., deals with the Investments of the Masses. He estimates the total wealth of the United Kingdom at £11,500,000,000, of which £10,900,000,00 is owned by 5,000,000 people, and £600,000,000 by 39,000,000 of the population. Thus about 95 per cent. of the entire wealth of the United Kingdom is owned by about one-ninth of its population. It could easily be shown, he added, that of the 5,000,000 of people above the income tax line a small proportion, about one-fifth or say, 1,000,000 people (about 200,000 or 250,000 families) own nearly the whole of the accumulated wealth of the Kingdom, and that this small group exercise the effective government of the nation by its control of the means of production. “THOSE RULE WHO OWN.”

* * *

Those rule who own. That is the position. Whatever political reforms may be secured will be useless so long as the means of wealth production are private property. Therefore the efforts of the workers for political supremacy must be directed with the object of using the power thus obtained to effect the social revolution. Private ownership of the means of wealth production must give place to social ownership.

* * *

Some societies of working men have been led into supporting the Workers’ Educational Association, which exists for the purpose of encouraging boys and girls to continue their education (of a kind agreeable to their masters) by attendance at evening schools after they have commenced to work. Last month a Conference took place between the Association and employers of labour at Birmingham, at which a committee, with the Lord Mayor as chairman, was appointed to carry out the work. The true inwardness of the movement may be gathered from the Press reports of this meeting, which conclude thus : “It was stated that the decay of the apprenticeship system had caused employers to lose that control of young people which they formerly possessed.” And, of course, by the help of Mr. Albert Mansbridge and his W.E.A., they hope to get it back.

* * *

An instance of the fallacy that only unskilled workers need lack employment in this happy land arose at the City Coroner’s Court on June 6th, when an inquest was held concerning the death of Harry G. Burrell, aged 59, a brass finisher, who dropped dead the previous Sunday evening in Whitecross-st. It was stated that the deceased was a capital workman, but had been unable to find regular employment for the past five years. One witness stated that he had known deceased since January and frequently during the bitter nights of February and March they would lie sodden with rain on one of the seats of the Embankment, only to be moved on and made to walk by the first constable who came across them. Between two and three thousand homeless “heirs to glory” went to the Embankment at night.

* * *

Of course, the jury, being “practical” men, passed the usual verdict: “Death from natural causes.” It is quite recognised by the capitalist class that it is perfectly “natural” for men, able and willing to work, to die of starvation in the midst of plenty.

J. Kay.

A Middle-Class Utopia. (1907)

Book Review from the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern Thraldom.—A New Social Gospel, by Dr. W. Hampson, M.A. London: Wells Gardner, Barton & Co. Paper covers, 162 pp., 1s. 6d. Net.

The early portion of this book describes the servitude into which “borrowed” tools, houses, and land are supposed to have thrown the “labouring classes,” the “clean clothes classes,” and also the tradesmen, small manufacturers, and farmers. The evidence in the book, however, really shows that the poverty of the workers and the crushing of the small capitalists are due to the concentration of wealth and industry into fewer hands turning increasing numbers into propertyless hirelings of the possessing few. But to put it thus involves Socialism as the solution, so our author prefers to attribute the situation not to the inevitable march of industrial development, but simply to credit in some form or other. 

The most interesting part of the book is that dealing with agriculture, where many reasons are given for the decrease in number and increase in size of farms, but where the most important reasons such as the development of agricultural machinery which cannot profitably be employed on small farms, the general economies of operations on a large scale, and the development of the machinery of transport which brings other climes into more acute competition, are missed. This, however, is of a piece with the fact that Dr. Hampson nowhere realises the force of the economic trend.

From his point of view of the small property-holder, the author is much troubled by the question of the rates, but his own evidence shows it to be a question that does not concern the workers or even the tenant farmer. He says, p. 46: —

“At the time of the great depression in land values and profits from land, it became impossible for farmers to continue paying their former rents, and a percentage was remitted in most cases, so as to bring the amount payable each half-yearly rent day just within the limits of the possible. If a season were exceptionally bad, so as to involve the farmers in inevitable loss, a larger percentage of rent would be remitted. If times improved in some way, the remission would be less. Thus when the Agricultural Rating Act was passed, to relieve the farmers of a portion of their rates, a smaller percentage of rent was remitted the next half year.”

The middle class of course has its schisms and the author tilts against modern radicalism and against that municipal enterprise which is such a blessing to many middle-class investors, and also against the officialism that provides easy positions for their sons ; but Dr. Hampson’s attitude is nevertheless essentially that of the class between the devil and the deep blue sea. He protests against rings and combines, but is specially vehement against working-class trade organisations, and states that trade union action, by restricting free competition in labour “means a reduction of wages and in the standard of living,” while on p. 28 it is further urged that:—

“All combining, negotiating, organised advising and warning, striking, picketing, and other proceedings intended to restrict the freedom of the labour market, ought to be regarded and treated as criminal, so as to restore complete freedom to the man who wants to sell labour and to the man who wants to buy it.”

There is also on p. 12 a curious defence of the exploitation of labourers—exploitation by the middle class of course. It is stated that the shareholders having the necessary plant and materials or equivalent wealth—

“Lent them to the officials and working men and women of the factory, on condition that the latter, having borrowed them and worked with them, should pay to the lenders a part of the profits earned by their labour, namely, all that was over after they had been paid a subsistence wage depending, among other conditions, on the recognised minimum standard of living in the district at the time. Now this was a perfectly open bargain, well understood by all the parties to it, and the shareholders, who in fact lent the factory and appliances, have a right to claim that they shall not have hard words thrown at them, as capitalists, because they are taking a part of the profit earned by other men’s labour.”

In the description of the Utopia that is expected to follow the adoption of the author’s suggestions there is nothing but glorified middle-class conditions, with the middle class predominant in wealth and power. It is prohibited to live in hired rooms and houses, and all credit is forbidden except the capital of limited liability companies, of which all shareholders are required to be also occupied in connection with their company, while no shareholder may own more than five times the smallest allotment of shares. A kind of Single Tax is instituted (in spite of the author’s ideal of free internal trade) in the nature of a poundage on every cash transaction. This tax (which the author says is not a tax, and which is to be levied without officials) is to enable the one man government to supply such of the citizens as have deposited £250 in the State Bank, with a further £250 on their marriage for the purpose of buying house, furniture and allotment. There are to be no boards, committees, councils or parliament. National government is to be run by an elected president and local administration by a manager ; while no one can vote unless he owns, among other things, a bicycle !

There is still to be wage-slavery in the new Utopia, but the workmen are supposed to be able to get higher wages through the absence of trade organisations, and through being forbidden to hire rooms, so having to buy a room or rooms outright. The labourer is to give six hours industrial labour per day and put in the rest of his time on the land. The thrashing, winnowing and grinding of corn is to be done at home in small hand machines because :

“However little it may cost to grind in a steam driven mill, it costs less to do it at home in the time that used to be spent in the evening at a public house. It costs nothing at all, but actually saves the money that was once spent in drinking to while away the time.”

How typically middle class ! 

Even the great domestic servant question is almost solved in this Utopia. The author says :

“And are mistresses no longer the slaves of their servants ?

In this respect also there is great improvement. We have now no large class of excessively rich, keeping large houses full of ‘pampered menials,’ and so setting before other servants a false standard of lavishness, luxury, ease, pilfering, and ‘perks.’ On the other hand the middle-class ladies, having given up imitating the luxury of the rich, have themselves become as good practical housekeepers as their husbands are practical business men and cultivators. They can, if need he, manage their houses in many cases without outside help, and so, when they have that help they know how to keep, without petty domineering, the position of mistress in their own homes.”

The Doctor’s Utopia illustrates both how completely class interests as they are recognised mould a man’s views, and how narrow is the mental vision of the middle class.

For the realisation of this Utopia an association called the Land and Labour League is to be formed and to be endowed by a few charitably disposed millionaires for the purchase of property, the tenure of which is to be sold to League members who in turn are not allowed to give any of their property as security for a loan. Leaguers will pay “no rates or taxes,” these will be paid by the League out of proceeds of a receipt stamp tax to be levied on all members.

The League, says the author, is to be a co-worker with the garden city schemes at Bourneville, Port Sunlight, York, Letchworth and other places, so it is very small beer after all.

The League will, when funds allow, put £250 to the selected member’s on his marriage for the purchase of house and grounds that are to remain technically the property of the League—a sort of glorified building society in fact that is supposed to grow snowball like, until it absorbs the whole of Society.

But what of the, working man ? How is he to save the necessary £250 in order to participate in this paradise ? The author has told us that to-day “The lowest salary which will supply the bare living must be accepted by each applicant lest another cut in and take the place,” also that “conditions make it practically impossible for an average man to rise out of the labouring ranks in which he was born.”

The odds therefore appear to be rather long against the workers being able to save the requisite £250 each, indeed, they do not stand even an outside chance. But the author of the “New Social Gospel” has a most simple plan. It is to tax immigrants heavily and put an almost prohibitive tax on imports. Then, says the doctor:

“When all the production for the English market is secured for the English producer, there will be for a time an era of prosperity seldom equalled before. Demand will overtake supply for a time. The price of labour will rise higher than ever before; the unemployed and, under such tempting conditions, many even of those who are now unemployable, will be earning money ; and the workers being rich, the prices of common articles will rise also, though not in the same proportion as wages.”

Truly a simple plan—for simpletons. The workman knows that labour-power is the last to participate in a rise in prices, so that the problematic rise in wages will not be proportionate to the rise in general prices. The worker will also see that if prices rise, then the price of house and land rises also, thus the amount to be saved rises proportionately, leaving the possibility to the workman of saving at least as remote as before.

Further, restricted immigration is no new thing, and where instituted has made no appreciable difference to the workers. It is not the alien, but capitalist development that creates the unemployed, and the same process is going on in every country ; new inventions and processes, greater concentration and more efficient organisation decrease daily the proportion of wage workers required by the masters to produce for the market. Large numbers of workers are thus thrown on the streets while the owners of the instruments and materials of labour reap the whole of the benefit.

And with regard to a prohibitive import tax, owing to the very nature of international exchange, the import trade of the country cannot be destroyed without causing havoc in the export trade and the consequent ruin (under capitalist conditions) of those producing for export. We have also object lessons the whole world over of the futility of fiscal juggling as far as the workers are concerned. Capitalist conditions breed working-class poverty everywhere, and must do so long as the workers are the hirelings of the possessing few. But even supposing that by some miracle all wage slaves managed to save £250 and so live rent free ; is it not a fact that capitalism (whether under small or large manufacturers) turns the very thrift and temperance of the workers into weapons of offence against them ? and does not Dr. Hampson himself prove this ? Speaking of allotments he says :

“Suppose the profits from a plot of land to be equal to two shillings a week. Then a man and his family can live in the same moderate degree of comfort as before on a wage of fourteen shillings instead of sixteen if need be.

It is the professed object of the promoters of improvement on these lines that the improvement shall become general. Suppose them to succeed to the full extent of their hopes. Suppose that practically all the labourers increase their wages by such means to the equivalent of eighteen shillings, so that they could, in case of necessity, continue their present style of living on an actual money wage of fourteen shillings. The farmers would not be long in making the discovery that their labourers were able to live on two shillings a week less. And the next week they would require their men to prove their ability.”

Such, indeed, is the mainspring of the welcome that has greeted the present Liberal Small Holdings Bill. And its undeniable truth destroys at one blow Dr. Hampson’s Utopia as far as the workers are concerned. Whatever cheapens the cost of living of the workman, as soon as it becomes general, reduces his wage, competition compelling him to sell himself for a mere subsistence. Yet Dr. Hampson dares to say that if the worker did not have to pay rent he would be enabled to exact a higher wage ! The small capitalist is essentially reactionary, and his only possible ideal is one that runs counter to every economic tendency. And our author, voicing the interests and ideals of this class, has reckoned without his host, the financial magnate, who now rules the capitalist roost, and without, also, the army of the workers, who can only go forward, to industrial democracy,—not backward, to the infancy of capitalist society. Unlike the middle class intellectuals, the scientific Socialist, has outgrown the Utopian stage. Our author, however, evidently imagines that men figure the society they want and then make it to order ; so he thinks that if the public find his Utopia good they will set themselves to make one like it. The scientific Socialist does not erect a fanciful Utopia, but analyses actual Society, its economics and its history, and tracing its laws of development sees whither the basic factor, the development of wealth production, tends, and derives therefrom, not a detailed picture of the future, but the broad direction of economic evolution and the essential principles of the society foreshadowed by the present. And by the study of men’s actions, motives and history, he is enabled to discover the essential principles of the action that must be taken to render the transition speedy and beneficial.

Dr. Hampson has not done this, therefore his reforms are upon all counts a snare and delusion to the middle class in their struggle against the inevitable, while to the working class they offer at best nothing but a shuffling of masters by no means to the better.

F. C. Watts

The Bakers’ Agitation. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why the Manchester strike must fail.

There is probably no “skilled” section of the working class in a more hopeless plight than the Operative Bakers. All the forces of bestialization seem to be focussed upon that unhappy craft. Withdrawn from all social intercourse with his fellows, and from home life, by the continuous nightwork system, beginning his week’s work early on Sunday evening (I have heard men sworn at for not being in soon enough to allow the boss and his family to be in time for Chapel), sweating far into the next day, he comes home exhausted, takes a fitful and feverish sleep, and repeats the process daily until Friday, when he must start several hours earlier and work several hours later in order to make bread in one night for two days. The work is not only physically exhausting, but the nervous strain is great. He sees the dough in warm weather “moving” faster than he can cope with it to keep it sweet. If the temperature suddenly falls during the night, or (as is often the case in these days of faked ingredients) the yeast deteriorates, it is “on the green side,” and he goes in fear of a “slamming” if the vans have to wait, or if the loaf has to weigh two pounds to be big enough for sale.

In the factories the hours are usually shorter, but the nervous strain is even greater. The speed is much faster and the work oftimes more laborious. The operative’s job is much less secure, at he can be discharged without notice. The wages in both cases work out at less per hour than that of the general labourer, the trade union rate, which few receive, being only 28s. per week of 60 hours for table hands. He therefore does not receive the means of subsistence for himself, a wife and family. Under such inhuman conditions it is certain that the spirit of revolt would be engendered in all those not sunk in the torpor of despair, but alas ! the operative baker’s spirit of revolt does not take definite shape. He has no money to buy books, no opportunity to confer with his.fellows ; the mental atrophy resulting from many hours of night labour in the hot, fetid atmosphere of the bakery (I have worked in an atmosphere of over 100 degrees Fah.) make him the sport of those execrable creatures, the palate-tickling, self-seeking Labour leaders.

The baker’s spirit of revolt is manifesting itself at the present time in Manchester, and there are threats of a strike unless certain demands preferred by the operatives are conceded. Let us see what a strike in the baking industry means, and why it must entail, not only the suffering incidental to every strike, but also starvation for the women and children and bitter disappointment for the operatives.

In the first place I will briefly recall the London ’89 strike as it is called, the last great strike in our industry, and which our “leaders” claimed as the most successful strike since the amalgamation of the small unions. After a long agitation the London men finally decided to come out, a manifesto was sent to the masters and copies posted on the hoardings ; and on a given date all the men handed in a copy of the union’s terms for the signature of their respective employers. If these terms were not accepted the men gave a week’s notice. Many employers gave in, and the result was that these engaged a few extra men and supplied those masters who stood out with bread for their customers in cases where a sufficiency of blacklegs could not immediately be obtained. We thus had the edifying spectacle of union men blacklegging their striking brethren. London did not lose a single day’s bread supply. The displaced operatives received strike pay for some weeks, and paraded the streets carrying “peels” draped with crepe, headed by a brass baud which played the Dead March and other sloppy sentimental drivel outside the non-union shops until the funds were exhausted, mainly through the refusal of those in work to pay strike levies, and dropping out of the union.

Meanwhile the masters were active. They immediately substituted quick-working distillers’ yeast for the old fashioned bread-sweetening but, slow-working “thick” and “compo” yeasts; the “straight” dough system was adopted in lieu of the ferment and sponge system. More machinery was introduced, factories sprang up, or were enlarged, the unemployed grew larger, with the inevitable result of longer hours and less pay for those employed. And in less than a year conditions were even worse than before, excepting in a few instances, mostly factories.

I myself, rather than submit to the conditions my pious employer tried to enforce, threw up my job and walked about for weeks looking for work, spent the accumulations of my thrift in advertising, and was finally glad to accept a job at 22s. and bed per week of upwards of 90 hours. My bed was a fifth share of a room over the flour loft, in which we cooked and smoked. One corner of the room was the office of a city gent rejoicing in the name Pierpoint & Co., and there were other occupants of the room whom we did not individualize, but referred to by the generic name of “mahogany backs.” This was six months after our “successful” strike in that year of successful strikes, 1889.

Shortly after this there occurred an incident which revealed two facts to the alert capitalist. In North London a master baker and publican was a member of the local vestry, and in his capacity as guardian of the public health, led the opposition to a builders’ sundriesman constructing lavatories in the basements of some buildings he was erecting. The sundriesman tried various ways to bring our baker “to his senses,” without avail. He then played his trump card and threatened to ruin the baker, and this is how he proceeded. He took a shut-up shop in close proximity to the baker’s, went to a local factory owner and arranged to have an unlimited supply of bread, engaged a cashier and countermen, fitted up the shop and opened it for the sale of bread at a penny per quartern lower than the lowest cutter in that “bread-eating neighbourhood.” People came from all the surrounding districts with flour bags, baskets, etc., to fetch bread for themselves and friends, policemen were stationed at the shop door to regulate the crowd, who filed in, made their purchases, and went out through the back entrance. The bakers in the factory were working at breakneck speed, at piece wages, their wrists swollen and bandaged with excessive moulding. The baker vestryman was “brought to his senses,” and many others were driven out of theirs and compelled to call a meeting of their creditors, while the factory-owner and the builder made a profit. Less than a year ago the victor, who now lives in affluence, told me he did well over the “deal.” This incident revealed to the factory-owner the number of sacks of flour that could be turned into bread per man in a week. The speed was maintained, but wages reverted to the normal night wages. The more alert capitalist was quick to see the possibilities of machinery, and that a practically unlimited supply of bread could be turned out with its aid and that of a few skilled bakers, and by drawing on the ever increasing army of “unskilled” labourers. He saw the economic advantage he thus obtained, and that the possibility of a successful strike of London bakers was gone for ever. Indeed, the improvement and development of machinery in the baking industry has proceeded at such a pace that it is well known by live bakers that a very large proportion of the work now done in bakeries could be done by unskilled labour, which would be immediately introduced should the operatives force up their wages by any means.

And in the event of a strike the general foremen with one or two blacklegs to supervise the weighing of yeast and salt, the temperating tank, the pitching of flour, etc., and with the assistance of engineers, supplied by the engineering firms, to superintend and work the dough mixers, dividing and moulding machines, regulate the heat of the ovens and draw the plate, could turn out all the bread that was required. Unskilled labour could easily do the rest. The result would not perhaps be the highly finished commercial loaf of to-day, but bread equal in quality to that at present sold. In no trade has technical knowledge been rendered valueless so quickly as in that of bread making, and the factories are fast scooping the trade. Everything is working in their favour, and a rise in wages, shortening of the hours of labour, the abolition of night work, or any other possible reform would give the factory a further economic advantage over the handicraft bakery and the operative.

In 1889 the masters were not organised as they are now. Every district has its local association, while 90 per cent. of the bakers in urban districts are in the National Association. It will be an easy matter then to get the output of the 700 striking operatives in Manchester made in the various factories and conveyed to Manchester in a little over four hours, even from London. Sectional strikes are hopeless in all trades, but in the case of the bakers are madness. There is no hope for us under the capitalist system of production. We must trust to ourselves alone, cease to look up to leaders or appeal to politicians, organise ourselves politically and industrially, not in vain attempts to palliate or relieve our conditions, but to end them.

That trade union leaders do not understand the working-class position and are not to be trusted is evidenced by their public utterances, their miserable failure in the House of Commons, the insipid twaddle with which they decorate the title pages of rule books (“Defence, not Defiance,” “For the Good of All,” etc.), their dining and wining with, and cringing sycophancy in the presence of, the enemy’s lenders. That they do not understand the position is the most charitable construction that can be put upon their conduct. If they understand, acting as they do, they must be frauds. On the other hand the capitalist does understand the economic position, does recognise the incessant class war being waged, does fight scientifically, with all the logic of brutal warfare. He gives no quarter and allows no scruples, no appeals to his humanity to thwart him in his one object and ethic, the complete domination of the working class, the securing to himself an ever increasing share of the wealth produced by our labour. I therefore appeal to the Manchester men before engaging in a suicidal sectional strike, to reconsider their position and what a defeat must mean to them, what a long fight must mean to their wives and children. Even supposing a long fight were possible, is the objective worth the struggle ? While capitalism lasts the capitalist must come out on top. Our emancipation can only come by the complete overthrow of the system of production for profit, and the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

W. Watts