Analysis of Wealth. I. Value. (1916)

From the June 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although from time immemorial the mass of objects which we term wealth has formed the basis of humanity’s existence, it is only of recent years that a scientific investigation of the conditions of its production and distribution has arisen. This is indicative of a development of these conditions, for if there was in the past a lack of effort to solve economic problems, this can only be because these problems existed, if at all, in an obscure, immature fashion. In the days when small local communities were practically self-supporting and articles only rarely exchanged on their borders, it was obvious enough that wealth was the direct product of labour for individual consumption. Likewise in the earlier stages of production for exchange the seller of commodities knew them to be his personal products and attached no miraculous import to the money for which he sold them and with which he purchased the products of men likewise known to him. With the complexity of full-blown capitalism, however, the workers become separated from the commodities produced by them, which acquire a mysterious knack of realising more in their sale than what was laid out in buying the necessary factors for their production. Henceforth wealth seems to spring from nowhere—money makes money; and problems present themselves for solution.

Founded upon the very conditions which give rise to the problems, however, is the power of the capitalist class, who have a pretty sure instinct that a real economic science is inimical to their interests since it unavoidably exposes their parasitical position in society. It can readily be understood, therefore, that prior to critical revolutionists like Karl Marx developing the science in working-class interests, only a few isolated truths were revealed by the studies of honest, if orthodox, inquirers likewise few in number ; while the mass of so-called economic literature became of an apologetic character seeking to obscure, in capitalist interests, the very problems it pretended to elucidate.

Members of the working class, having nothing to fear from criticism of a social order which entails nothing but poverty for them, may find in the writings of Marx a clear, if elaborate, analysis of the facts of their existence. Time spent in their study, snatched though it be from scanty leisure, is repaid by the acquisition of an undying purpose in life and the joy of knowledge with which to carve the road to power. If in the following paragraphs the writer can outline the main points of Marx’s economic theory in such a way as to arouse interest in some hitherto apathetic or hostile mind, his immediate object will be served. If the inquirer be worth his salt he will not rest till he is intellectually equipped for the conflict with capital.

The unit of modern wealth is the commodity, which has three essential features. Firstly it must satisfy some human want ; be useful. Secondly it is a product of human labour, a conscious adaptation of nature ; while lastly it must be exchangeable for other useful labour products. It must find its way into the social market else it is no commodity.

Thus a commodity is a combination in an object of utility and exchangeability, or in other words, of use-value and exchange-value. The former is due to its natural qualities (physical, chemical, etc.,) and also distinguishes it from any other commodity. It is this difference in usefulness which leads to the exchange of commodities, although it by no means determines the ratio in which they are exchanged. Any given commodity vendor does not exchange, say, boots for boots, but for some article of wealth which has different properties. On the other hand it would be absurd to say that boots are as useful to him as the commodity he receives in exchange. Any attempts, therefore, (and there have been many), to explain exchange-value through utility are futile. Exchange-value is a relation of equality, while a comparison of the use-values of commodities simply reveals their differences or inequalities. What, then, is exchange-value ? If we take a pair of boots and a ton of coal, each selling say for £1, we have three commodities (including the sovereign) of equal value. Compare as we may their relative weight, colour, smell, size, or any other tangible property, we can discover no equality between them. Their uses are different and it is highly improbable that the relations of supply and demand in coal and boot markets respectively are identical at any given moment. We are thus left with only one feature common to all these commodities, viz., they are products of human labour, they embody human energy. In this respect they may be compared and an equation between them arrived at if we measure the energy embodied in them by the time occupied in its expenditure. If, then, our imaginary pair of boots and ton of coal are equal in value, it can only be because they contain equal quantities of labour or. in other words, have taken an equal length of time to produce.

It is important to remember here that commodities are social products and presuppose the division of labour in society. Producers of coal and boots or of any other special product cannot exist on their commodities alone ; they exchange as a matter of necessity. In consequence they seek to minimise the length of time taken in producing any given commodity in order, by the cheapness thereof, to secure a certain sale. If, therefore, someone takes up unnecessary time in the production of a commodity its value in exchange ia not enhanced thereby. It is the socially necessary labour-time alone which forms value.

Another result of the division of labour is the difference in quality of the forms of labour which produce different commodities. Certain occupations exhaust more nerve and muscle in a given time than others. Their products therefore contain more value in proportion to the intensity of labour in excess of that embodied in other commodities. This, however, by no means affects the fact that they are reducible to one common element, simple labour-power ; the more intense or skilled labour simply counts as a multiple of ordinary labour. Labour remains the factor which determines value.

This fact in the key to the door of economic mystery. Ignoring this, the professional “political economists” have endeavoured to lead us down one blind alley after another, beguiling us the while with romantic yarns concerning the awesome and unapproachable majesty of Money arrayed as Capital, embodiment of all the attributes of God, before whom the knees of men must bow for ever. Let us try to use the key and enter the holy presence. Mayhap ’tis a gilded skeleton, after all with which they would scare us.

Value (by which we continue to mean exchange-value) does not exist apart from material, valuable objects, any more than weight exists apart from things which are heavy, or heat apart from hot things. In measuring or expressing the value of a commodity we are, therefore, compelled to use some other commodity as an equivalent.

In common practice we use gold and say, for instance, 1 pr. of boots is worth 1 sovereign ; but if 1 ton of coal is also worth £1, then we might just as well say, 1 pr. of boots is worth 1 ton of coal or any other commodity which exchanges for £1. £1 serves as an expression of the value of the boots only because, like the boots (and the coal), it contains a definite quantity of human labour, and is in this respect equal to them.

There is, therefore, nothing mystical about the function of gold as money more than there is about the use of mercury as a measure of heat, or iron weights in a greengrocer’s shop. Gold measures value only because itself is valuable, as mercury has a temperature and iron is heavy. As coin gold becomes symbolic and may be replaced by tokens bearing a nominal value only, but said tokens must not diverge in nominal value from the real value of the gold which would otherwise be used. Likewise the amount of depreciation in weight and therefore value which a gold coin is allowed to suffer and yet remain in circulation, is limited by law.

The quantity of gold for which a commodity will exchange we term its price. This price is broadly determined by the commodity’s value, which is liable to fluctuations as the time taken in production varies.

The price, however, does not only reflect these variations. The velocity with which it is disturbed from time to time carries it now above, anon below the actual value of the commodity. On the surface these minor disturbances appear to be caused by supply and demand, and this is indeed so ; but the relations of supply and demand are themselves subject to the changes in labour-time. Assume, for instance, that the time occupied in producing a given quantity of boots is decreased by some new invention or pro­cess, then there will be a tendency to increase the output beyond the power of the market to immediately absorb, followed by a fall in price. The excess of boots remaining unsaleable, pro­duction is restricted till prices rise, probably above the new value, afterwards falling to approximately the correct level, when production, is resumed. The process may be compared with the oscillations produced on a pair of balances when the weight on one side is disturbed. Owing, however, to the continual alteration in the values of commodities due to improved methods of production, prices hardly ever come to rest at an exact coincidence with value. Nevertheless, it must be an approximation of price to value that takes place, for money is under the same necessity to express its value in the form of other commodities as these commodities are to express their value in the form of money. The state­ment that a sovereign is always worth a sovereign teaches us nothing.

Gold as money, then, is a transformed commo­dity. In addition to its own use (mainly luxurious) it has acquired the functions of universal equivalent—equivalent for all other commodities. Alone of all of them it is directly exchangeable for any of them by reason of its fitness to serve at once as a measure of value and a means of exchange or medium of circula­tion. Like all other commodities, it originates in a form of division of labour in which the means of production are private property and the product also; in which, moreover, production is not for direct use but for exchange.

The self-supporting peasant family of the Middle Ages had little use for money. Its various products were consumed by itself. The labour of each member was obviously part of the family’s labour. Consequently products were not exchanged within it but were considered the family property. Long ages before civilisa­tion tribal mankind produced forms of wealth which were used without going through the process of private exchange. They too needed not money.

The existing order of society, in which goods are produced for the market, is not immortal. It has not always existed ; nor will it continue for ever to exist. When the vast means for producing wealth have been converted from private into common property ; when the labour of society becomes consciously organised and its products distributed directly for consumption ; when, in short, Socialism has been established, money will disappear. Labour products will cease to be commodities. Their social character will be obvious at first sight and will need no translation into mystical terms of gold.

As it is at present, when we express the values of commodities, we do but state in a round-about way that they are products of so much social labour, in a word, our products. Money conceals the fact but does not alter it. It is itself a social product which has the power to command social labour. Accumulated in the hands of private individuals it enables them to exploit masses of their fellow men, in short, it becomes capital. Precisely how it does this will form the subject matter of a future article.

Eric Boden

[To be continued.]

By the Way. (1915)

The By The Way Column from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent issue of the “Daily Dispatch” a writer deals at some length with the M.P.’s who had the temerity to vote against the National Registration Bill. He says :

“It was a motley group which challenged a division on the Registration Bill last night, and its composition furnishes an interesting indication of the character of the opposition which the National Government will have to meet. . . . There were gathered together ‘all who were discontented,’ and it was a quaint collection of disappointed ex-ministers, radical purists, cranks and anti-British Socialists.”

The writer goes on to describe this “motley group” as “Strange Bed-fellows,” and makes the mistake of calling these labour fakers Socialists. Moreover, this gentleman overlooks another contributor to the same paper, Mr. H. M. Hyndman—the “Revolutionary Socialist”—holding the same views as avowedly capitalist writers to the ‘”Dispatch.” And what of the Liberal and Tory coalition with a mingling of Labourites !

Perhaps it would not be amiss in the circumstances to take a peep at the division list to which the “Dispatch” scribbler refers. We find that the ‘”Socialists” spoken of includes Messrs. W. C. Anderson, C. W. Bowerman, J. F. Jowett, J. R. MacDonald, P. Snowden, and J. H. Thomas. The remainder of that hotch potch known as the Labour Party voted for the Bill ! If the “Dispatch” derives any satisfaction from their reference to these “strange bedfellows,” it at least gives us the opportunity of repudiating the claim of these latter to the title they usurp whenever and wherever it suits their purpose to do so—the claim that they are Socialists. A careful study of the antics of those gentry in and out of the House of Commons will suffice to prove their worthlessness to the working class.

* * *

Lord Kitchener, in big speech at the Guildhall on July 9th, made a passing reference to the object of the National Register. He delivered himself as follows :

“When registration was completed they ‘would be able to note men between nineteen and forty not required for munitions and other necessary purposes, and therefore available, if physically fit, for the firing line. Steps would then be taken to approach them with a view to enlistment, unmarried men to be preferred.” “Reynold’s,” 11.7.15.

* * *

Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the “father of English Socialism,” recently contributed an article to the “Daily Dispatch” (7.7,15) on the subject of “National Registration and National Liberty,” in which he endeavoured to show how the first will safeguard the last. Throughout the article we find him mouthing the usual capitalist prattle, such as “many valuable ships of war have been sunk, and our mercantile marine is suffering from systematic piracy.” A little admonition is dealt out to “our rulers, who for months on end refused to recognise that we “were face to face with relentless enemies organised for the purpose of crushing our allies and ourselves.” He goes on to say that “such organisation, prepared and matured during at least forty years, can only be successfully encountered and overcome by equal organisation voluntarily accepted,” and “whatever may be urged against certain clauses of the War Munitions Act, no such criticism can be fairly levelled at a measure whose object is to put directly at the national disposal the whole of the power of the nation as represented by its entire population for work or for war.”

Doubtless the phrase “national disposal” should read the disposal of the master class, in whose interest the war is being waged, as the working class were not consulted in the signing of any treaties beforehand or the reasons for entering the war. Not a word do we find about “secret diplomacy” which led to war and used to be his pet hobby horse.

Mr. Hyndman further informs us that “nothing for which the masses of our people have ever striven is more important than that they and all of us should win in this tremendous war against the ruthless military caste—happily the last left on the planet (!)—that menaces the rights and freedom of mankind.” And again: “If the Kaiser succeeds in his great endeavour to dominate Europe what chance have we English, or any other nationality, of working out freely and peaceably our own economic and social salvation ?” So Socialism depends upon the whim of the Kaiser, eh ? It depends not on economic circumstance but on dynastic circumstance—according to this blind leader of the blind.

In conclusion he adds that it is “our duty to marshal our entire forces … to ensure safety for ourselves and security for our allies. If for the purpose of achieving this result we are all obliged to submit ourselves to national discipline . . . then the temporary sacrifice of personal liberty will be well rewarded in the end.” Mr. Hyndman at the same time points out that ‘this suppression of our individual liberty” should be “duly safeguarded against bureaucratic tyranny.” But who can guarantee this ?

Doubtless these outpourings will obtain for this “oldest Social-Democrat in Great Britain” the “well done, thou good and faithful servant !” of the masters. (Italics mine.)

* * *

A series of questions were recently asked in the House of Commons touching the matter of whether it was not possible to grant the troops in the new armies facilities for visiting their homes for the purpose of bidding good-bye to their families. It was said that:

“The fare from Salisbury to Lancashire and Yorkshire was a sum beyond the means of many of these men to spare out of their pay ; and whether the Government would undertake that all who obtained leave before going abroad should be enabled to visit their homes free of cost ?”

And it was further asked :

“Whether the War Office would bear in mind that many of these men gave up remunerative posts in order to join the Army, and that their being prevented from seeing their relatives before going abroad through not being able to pay the fare would be a great hardship ?”

The official reply was that the question was being considered.

The remunerative nature of the positions that have been given up may be judged from the fact that those who have given them up have no reserve funds to pay their own railway fare home ; and on the other hand, what is to be said of the measliness of the country they are going to protect, that refuses to let them travel over the “Statized”‘ (temporarily) railways free ? Such paltry niggardness before the “happy warriors” have saved their masters’ bacon augurs well for the open-handed generosity of a traditionally “grateful country” when the maimed and battered remnants of “glorious humanity” are brought home after the struggle.

* * *

The Suffragettes are doing their best to keep their movement before the public. These people, who only a short time ago were busily engaged window smashing, church burning, and picture ripping, are now hailed as law-abiding citizens, whose services are to be used in order to free men from productive processes so that the latter may be driven into the trenches. These ladies, as they took very great care that all the world should know, recently organised a procession to send a deputation to Mr, Lloyd George to “demand the right to serve.” We are told that in the procession “peeresses walked shoulder to shoulder with shop girls and factory lasses.” The ulterior object is seen in the wording of a telegram received later by Mrs. Pankhurst from Mr. Hall Caine. It was given in the “Observer” (18.7.5) as follows :

“After to-day’s thrilling patriotic procession the Women’s Cause will triumph as surely as the sun will rise and the sea will flow.”

* * *

In all our (masters’) newspapers we are told to economise. Government organisations like the Parliamentary War Savings Committee take up the tale with all manner of blandishments. And now along comes Canon (I believe) H. D. Rawnsley pointing out that there is plenty of accommodation in the Lake District for holiday makers. He writes :

“It has come to my knowledge that some who were intending to come to the Lake District for their holiday have been put off by hearing that, in consequence of the war, the holiday makers who would otherwise have gone to the Continent or to the East Coast have thronged the district, and that accommodation is not to be had. I wish to give an emphatic contradiction to the rumour.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” 16.7.15.)

With Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and other great patriots urging Plunger Sniff the dustman and Sooty Sam the chimney sweep to economy, it is surely doing a disservice to the State on the part of Mr. Rawnsley to try to tempt them to find in the English Lake District a substitute for the lost charms of the Riviera and the pleasures of shove-ha’penny at Monte Carlo. For shame, sir ! You will not let our corduroy prodigals come to the rescue of their bleeding country through “retrenchment and reform” even when they want to.

* * *

At a time like the present, when we are hearing so much about our “liberty,” perhaps a few “rules” from a certain motor works would not come amiss. After having affixed his number and name on the front page the new wage-slave is informed that :

“Each employee must personally register in the time clock when he commences and ceases work.

“Employees ringing in late will be paid from the nearest half hour following the time rung in, and must begin work at once on entering the shop.

“The bell will ring in the morning, and after the luncheon hour two minutes before the time to commence work, so that all employees may have a chance to reach their respective places before the starting bell rings, when everyone must be in his place with his overalls on ready for work. Just entering the building on starting time will not be satisfactory.

“Receiving visitors, lunching, eating or reading is not permitted during working hours,

“Smoking or lighting cigars, pipes, etc., is absolutely prohibited.”

I will not not extend the list any further, sufficient being quoted to discover the need for a microscope to reveal our much-vaunted liberty.

The Scout.

“A Whiff of Grape.” (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the face of such a predicament as faces our lords and masters at the present moment the so-called labour problem assumes a visage that to the Socialist is both significant and humorous. The “patriotic” masters, in spite of the great need of the State for the good-will of their slaves, at least in the workshops, mines, factories and other and suchlike places where the slaves assume any importance at all, adhere with the tenacity of limpets to their old and natural policy of grinding the faces of those they have on the economic grindstone. However dire the need of the country that really, in substance and in fact, is theirs may be, their leech-like proclivities are only unleech-like in that they cannot gorge themselves to satiety.

The Welsh coal owners provide a typical example. In spite of the fact that, as Mr. Lloyd George says, “coal is everything for ‘us,’ and we want more of it to win victory.” “It bends, it moulds, it fills the weapons of war” ; in spite of the fact that their war fleet depends for its very life upon Welsh coal, the owners of the Welsh mines would not release in the smallest degree their clutch upon the throats of their wage-slaves. They could not realise, it seemed, that the whip which had driven the miners into the pits under the pre-war terms and conditions no longer had the power that it had in those days. The needs of the master class were too great and too urgent to permit of a resort to the old dodge of trying to starve the miners into submission. But the mine owners either were blind to this, or they counted upon the “patriotism” of the men to take the place of the whip of starvation. Anyhow, they drove the miners beyond the limits of patience before they abdicated, only showing their patriotism by placing themselves in the hands of the Government when they had lost the move.

This sort of thing has been going on all over the place. Everywhere the workers, faced with an increase of some fifty per cent. in the cost of living, have had to struggle bitterly to gain an advance of wages equal to but a fraction of the increased cost of living. And when they have been compelled to resort to the final step—the strike, what a howl of astonishment, indignation, and righteous (!) wrath has gone up from our masters’ Press !

Who does not remember what an “indelible stain” besmirched the “patriotism” of the Clyde shipyard men when they were guilty of refusing to let their masters have their labour-power on their own terms ? Who forgets what scoundrels the L.C.C. tramwaymen were for daring to put forward demands and taking the only action that counts for much in the way of supporting those demands ? And now it is the turn of the miners to be upheld as men who broke pledges—pledges which they had not given ; who had disobeyed their leaders—leaders whom the men pay to obey them ; who were murdering their comrades in the trenches—as if it were miners and not the masters who had sent them there.

Of course it could not be expected that the prostitute scribblers of the prostitute Press should remember that there are two sides to a disagreement as well as to an agreement. That the masters had deliberately chosen to sacrifice the efficiency of their own fleet and imperil their own forces in Flanders rather than relax a little the hard terms upon which their slaves could go down into the pits and tussel with Death for coal, was a facet of the position that the capitalist penmen would not be expected to have eyes for. Holders of any other commodity—any of the multitudinous products of labour—were to be permitted to push up the prices of their goods to the highest limit the unique situation gave them the opportunity to, and, no matter how necessary those commodities were, or how much misery their dearness brought upon immense numbers—of the people who don’t count, the working people—no word of stricture fell upon them. In the early days of the war, when it was claimed that only State control of the drink traffic could solve the problem of the shirker, the Government attempted to secure such control, but the brewers and distillers and other gentlemen of The Trade kicked up such a rumpus that the Asquithian courage oozed out and the project fell through—yet of all those newspapers who had shouted from the housetops that drink was lessening the output of munitions and killing the men in the trenches, not one ever applied to the brewers and distillers who refused to permit the drink to be placed beyond the reach of the “drinkers and shirkers” (and not, be it said, out of any love of the liberty of these latter) even the least of the filthy epithets they showered upon the men who had dared to claim a larger share of the wealth which they and they alone produced.

It was the sycophant claim of our masters’ Press that the miners should have continued to work while still negotiating ; but those who best know the master class in general and the mine-owners in particular, know very well that had they adopted this course they might have followed it to the end of the war—when the dispute would probably have been settled with the aid of policemen’s truncheons, as in the pre­-war days. But as a matter of fact the men had tried this plan of negotiating while continuing to work, like men who were afraid to fight for what they were demanding. They had had a bellyful. Their leaders had played into the masters’ hands and were treacherously advising the men to accept their exploiters’ terms. In any case where procrastination means that the the masters are escaping, even if only for the moment the heart-rending necessity of having to part with a share of their plunder, negotiation is the slowest coach upon the road ; but when the masters have get the men’s leaders on their side, then, indeed, the coach properly breaks down.

Those people who talk so glibly about negotiation seem to base their contention upon the pretention that all the employers want in order to induce them to meet the men’s demands is to have their ears tickled with sweet reasonable­ness. They know, however, that this is entirely false. They know that the only argument that ever touches the masters as such is the argument of force. There is no other effective appeal either to their reason or to their feeling. So long as they thought that the patriotic fervour of the men or the cajolery of the leaders would avert a strike negotiations brought the men no nearer the satisfaction of their demands. But look at the effect that was produced by the positive action of ceasing to work !

At once the Government, who showed a very mild interest in the terms and conditions under which coal came out of the mines so long as it did come out, was galvanised into the most acute interest and vigorous action ; at once the masters, finding themselves, in the absence of an army of blacklegs to fall back upon, utterly licked, retired from the contest, left the matter in tie hands of the Government, and expressed a very patriotic willingness to do whatever the Government told them. In a week the men were back at work again, in the enjoyment of the substance of pretty well all they demanded, if not the shadow, instead of the usual reward of negotiation, the capture of the shadow with the merest integument of the substance, or none.

This result was the fullest justification of the action the miners bad taken. This fact, however, did not save them from almost universal abuse, amongst which not the least venomous was that of their (so-called) leaders. These men, of course, who had struggled so hard to make them submit to the terms of the mine-owners, found that the victory, gained without their help, against their advice, in opposition, even, to their endeavours, placed them in a peculiar and unenviable position. That they fully appreciated this is amply shown by the utterances of one of their number, Mr. Vernon Hartshorn, as reported in “Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper” for July 25th. According to this report Mr. Hartshorn said :

“I am guilty of no exaggeration when I say that last week-end the very existence of the federation as a trade union organisation hung in the balance. Public opinion was against it because of the refusal to give the Government a little more time. It stood abandoned by the whole of the labour movement of the country. The occasion was a unique opportunity for a bold, bloodthirsty reaction.

“Public opinion, rendered nervous, savage, and ruthless by the present national dangers, would have approved the course taken, and, apart from sentimental resentment, the organised labour movement in the country would, perhaps, have acquiesced. I say emphatically that no leader has a moral right to lead his organisation into such a perilous impasse, and no leader with a proper conception of industrial strategy or of the tremendous powers which can be arrayed against labour when it makes a tactical slip would dream of doing.

“A few more days of restraint would have given the Government the chance to rectify its undoubted errors, and would have immensely strengthened the position of the federation with the public. But the opportunity was not given, and last week-end the sword of destruction, though the men as a body did not knew it, was banging over the federation.

“During those critical days the Government were tempted—there is no doubt about it—to deal with this isolated and sectional problem by the savage and crude old method of a whiff of grape shot, which has in many of the troubled periods of history destroyed the rising hopes of democracy and heralded a long reign of reaction and repression.

“What saved us and the country from such a disaster ? It is only fair to acknowledge, without reservation, that we were saved from that disaster not by any strength of our own but by the wisdom, generosity, and restraint, with which the ultimate crisis was dealt with, the Coalition Government.”

These, it is quite easy to see by anyone who has a fair knowledge of the facts of the case, are the words of a man who is under the necessity of rehabilitating himself in the eyes of those with whom it is important that he should stand well. The implication, however, that the fools who rushed in where such angels as Mr. Vernon Hartshorn dared to tread brought the miners so near to such dire perils as indicated is quite without foundation. A whiff of grapeshot, indeed ! The sword of destruction, by gosh ! It would be interesting to have Mr. Hartshorn’s authority for these statements.

The fact is that the whiff of grapeshot and the sword of destruction were quite “outside the range of practical politics,” as the capitalist critics so fondly say of Socialism. The mere fact that the mine owners recognised that the game was up and retired behind the Government shows this. If it is ever true that Governments take the line of least resistance, it is true at the moment when they have got more than enough trouble on hand in other directions. The line of least resistance was certainly not the line that might be cleared by whiffs of grapeshot. Mr. Hartshorn, even, had not the courage to state that the organised labour movement in the country “would have acquiesced” in the grapeshot treatment without that saving “perhaps.”

When Mr. Lloyd George took his “silver tongue” to Wales it was to talk a good face on the matter from the Government point of view. A certain prestige had to be maintained if possible. The “organised labour movement in the country” was not to get the idea that it had only to cease working in order to be granted anything that it wanted. The face of labour leaders, who had promised that, in return for being left out of the Munitions Act there should be lamb-like submission in the Welsh minefields, had to be saved as far as possible. So the miners were penalised by being brought under the Act which is absurdly useless as against two or three hundred thousand miners, though, it may suffice to deal with a couple of score of coppersmiths. The “silver tongue” had only the task of persuading the men to swallow this “bitter” pill, of disguising the completeness of the men’s victory, and throwing over the affair just that appearance of “wisdom, generosity and restraint” which their hack, Mr, Hartshorn, attributes to the Coalition Government. But as for whiffs of grape and swords of destruction, they are the mere invention of a discredited labour leader, of a would-be trade union boss who aspires to ambitious heights under the patronage of the workers’ enemies by assuming the role of dictator, and who is mortified in spirit by being flouted by those he would control, and jeopardised in fortune by the success of a course taken in defiance of leaders.

Let the workers understand their own affairs, shake off their “leaders,” and victory is theirs.

A. E. Jacomb

Book Review: Is Revolution ahead? (1915)

Book Review from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Social Problem by Chas. A. Ellwood, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology in the University of Minnesota. New York: Macmillan Co. 235 pp. 5/6 net.

“Nothing can prevent a war throughout Western civilization between the possessors and the dispossessed—a war infinitely more horrible than the present one—nothing except the dominance in the mass of individuals, or at least in the leaders of both classes, of intelligence and of the ideals of peace and brotherhood.” (p. 223.)

This is the burden of the book in a nutshell. The “Social Problem” according to the author, is to harmonise the warring factors that are wrecking civilization. Of these factors he claims that the one to be relied upon is the “spiritual.” He says:

“If the governing class will keep in touch with all classes; if those in authority in law, in industry, in education, in religion will seek first the public good ; if all classes will seek to keep open the means of understanding and sympathy with all other classes, there will be no more need of revolution as a means of social progress than there is of children’s diseases in individual development.” (p. 231.)

We have it, on the best authority that there is much virtue in your “if.” And the professor has by no means exhausted its possibilities. For example, if———, But why go on? The labouring man is learning in bitterness how utterly futile is the expectation that those in authority in industry, law and all the rest, will ever “seek first the public good.” Therefore from the facts upon which the learned professor bases his case we know that revolution is inevitable. Not only is it inevitable, but the professor himself tells us that it is also justifiable, for he says (p. 100) :

“The sacrifice of life through industrial accidents and disease, through overwork and underpay, through unsanitary dwellings, through commercialized pandering to men’s vicious appetites, we must cease to tolerate among us if we are to progress either morally or physically. The evils of war are great, but they are no greater than these evils of peace which we have tolerated too long.”

It appears, however, that it is not so much the evils of today which move the professor, as the fear of revolution. He indicates with apprehension (p. 83) that the industrial system generates class antagonism ; that class conflicts increase ; that class interest has become a war cry ; that class hatred grows ; and that a gulf, in social conditions as well as in feeling, develops between the fortunate and the less fortunate: “a gulf which the sympathy and understanding necessary for social solidarity finds it difficult to bridge,”

And how does the author set about his diffi­cult task ? In the first place by defining the social problem as “the problem of humans living together.” The definition is significant. It implies that a means is to be found of softening the antagonisms so that capitalist and labourer can peacefully live together. It leads him naturally to a gospel of social harmony by means of reform and mutual concession. Above all he abhors revolution. It is the end of all things. Like practically all of capitalism’s salaried intellectuals, he fears the working class far more than he dislikes his present masters ; and there is nothing he dreads more than a working-class dictatorship. Like most of his brethren, also, he agrees with all progressive thought—to a certain extent, and there are few advanced movements that do not get a kind word from him. But what he thinks the world really needs is a “new soul,” even more than a new economic system.

On the professor’s own showing, however there is little hope for his solution. He acknowledges that the gulf between the classes widens ; that the rulers are deaf to humanity ; and that the workers are without “soul.” He laments that the machinery for national and social peace inevitably breaks down, Yet he hopes by religion, by moral education, and by social reform to reform that growing social antagonism which these things have not only failed to arrest, but have tended to foster.

He grants that material conditions mould at least the framework of “our” civilization, and that these conditions tend to sharpen social contrasts and defeat his aims ; yet he claims, in effect, that out cf the minds of trained leaders, despite the hostile influences of economic forces as a whole, an intellectual force will be made to flow which will check these dangerous influences and divert them into harmonious streams.

Thus Professor Ellwood finds it necessary to reject the materialist conception of history and seek help from a dualism which relies mainly on the idea of free will, the immortal soul, and that god-given moral force by which any man can rise superior to, and dominate, his circumstances whenever he cares to exercise the will to do so. In short, the writer of the book takes sides with the priest, the Christian-scientist, the charlatan, the ignoramus and the metaphysician, on this important issue. Since, however, few will take up a logical position on that side owing to the very obviousness of most of the facts against them, a refuge is sought in a catholic eclecticism, the confusion of which makes it extremely difficult to nail down the basic error.

The professor is, nevertheless, for all his eclecticism, clear-headed enough to see where the chief danger to his position lies. He devotes considerable space to a discussion of the materialist conception of history. He admits practically all that is contended for in that philosophy ; but since he must find some way of escape, he does so by misunderstanding or misrepresentation. He

“cordially acknowledges the complete dependence of civilized man upon the economic system under which he lives ”

and goes on to say that

“the dependence of man upon economic conditions increases as civilization advances “But,” he adds, “when we have conceded that modern industry has shaped the main outlines of our civilization, that is not sufficient warrant for concluding that our industrial system determines every thing in our social life. On the contrary, it needs but little investigation to show that there are many intimate personal relations which are very far from being determined by the economic system under which we live. Men still think and feel and act in these intimate relations not so differently from what they did long before the present economic system was born. Many of the ideas, ideals and values by which men live, in other words, far antedate our present economic system, and will probably survive it long after it is dead. It is not true, therefore, that the spiritual elements in life, and especially not those contained in moral, religious and artistic ideas and ideals, are determined by methods of producing and distributing wealth.”

In other words, because all men’s ideas and acts are not entirely explicable from the present economic system alone, therefore the materialist conception of history is an error. The professor’s misrepresentation is obvious. Whence come those ideas for which the present system cannot account ? They do not come from God. They cannot be uncaused. We know them to be accounted for by past social conditions. Many intimate acts and relations of men antedate all historical forms of society, They are the outcome of the primitive struggle for survival over other animals. Other customs and ideas originate at various economic stages in mankind’s advance towards what is called civilization. It has never been said that the existing system alone accounted for everything in man’s ideas and acts. That is a fiction of the professor’s, and shows to what he is reduced in order to make a case. Ideas that are the outcome of past social conditions tend to persist, and are altered or modified where they come into conflict with succeeding social orders. This is notoriously the case, as shown in the pamphlet published by the Socialist Party, in the matter of religion to which the professor refers. The modifications that have taken place in this phase of ideology reflect in an obvious way the changing needs of changing social conditions.

For the rest, as the author of the book under review rightly surmises, revolution is inevitable in the event of the failure of his panacea. Neither in the working class nor in the ruling class can the soulful humanitarian ideals upon which he relies become dominant. Our social circumstances destroy them. Present economic conditions sow hate, not love. Figs cannot grow on thistles. If it were necessary to wait for a complete moral regeneration of the working class ; if the mass had first to overflow with love and charity for our oppressors, our case as well as the professor’s, would be utterly helpless. Fortunately it is not so. Economic development is with us. On it our essential case rests. The propaganda of revolutionary socialism is a direct effect of existing social conditions. Capitalist conditions indelibly stamp the ruling class with the selfish, cruel and hypocritical qualities of the exploiter ; and we know what a little part sentiment plays in the struggle. Therefore are we undismayed, even at the prospect of a ruthless and hate-inflamed proletariat battling desperately for the destruction of the present hellish system in order to make at last possible that development of society which shall, through social co-operation and mutuality of interest make realisable for the first time since primitive communism, the ideals of social harmony and human brotherhood.

F, C. Watts

Book Review: Ropes of Sand. (1915)

Book Review from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A way to Prevent War,” by Allan L. Benson. 180 pp. Cloth, 1 dollar. Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, U.S.A.

“If the people were in favour of war, the way to end war would be to convert the people to peace. This book is devoted to the task of showing that since the people are opposed to war the logical way to end it is to take the power to declare war from minorities who misuse it and vest it in the people who may be depended upon not to use it at all.” Thus does the author of the volume under review open his preface.

The busy reviewer who takes up a book for the purpose of criticism, and finds the key to his labours in the first paragraph, is a lucky man. “Since the people are opposed to war” ! “What an assumption to build up a 180 page tome upon ! Had the writer lived in England in August 1914; had he taken part in the perils of our outdoor propaganda soon after the outbreak of hostilities ; had he mounted the public platform in any of the belligerent countries last autumn, when the British bulldog was a gnashing of his teeth, and the French poodle and the Russian bear were tying themselves up in true lovers’ knots in their patriotic frenzy, and the German two-headed eagle was doing the porcupine act with his neck feathers, and only the Dutch cheese maintained his customary sanity (because he wasn’t a belligerent)—had he, the author of “A way to Prevent War,” taken the platform then and tried to tell the people that they “are opposed to war,” he would have experienced experiences that might have prevented him rushing into print on such a flimsy ground as the conception that the people would never use the power to declare war at all.

Mr. Churchill has told us that there are worse things than bloodshed, and it is true. Mr. Churchill, of course, meant that there are worse things than the shedding of other people’s blood, and thus put even fewer dissentients will raise voice against the statement. But if we are to believe Mr. Benson, there are no conceivable circumstances, no wrongs and oppression, which could urge the people to resort to arms if the option of peace and war lay with them.

Well, I for one say not so, and fervently hope not so. Bad, indeed, as this welter of blood is—and its horror vibrates not less strongly through the Socialist fibres of the reviewer than through the reformist fabric of his author—it is not so bad. by a very long chalk, as that the working class, if the power to make war was vested in them, could “be depended upon never to use it at all”—merely because, under Mr. Benson’s scheme, those who voted for war would be the first to be sent to the front.

The present futile and deplorable struggle, with all its appalling waste of life and all its stupendous agony and suffering, is not so bad as that other condition because it indicates that the workers are not lacking in the “animal” courage necessary for the achievement of their emancipation from wage-slavery, while on the other hand, if they would never resort to armed conflict at all under the condition that those who voted for war would be the first to be called upon to serve, that would simply indicate that they have not the courage to strike the blow which they must strike in order to set themselves free.

Mr. Benson says : “The world is tired of war.” This may be true enough now ; and anyway it is pretty certain to be true before the war is finished. That does not mean, however, that in a decade or so the world would decline to resort to force of arms again should circumstances similar to those which caused the present conflagration then obtain. No one, in all probability, will be more heartily tired of the war before it is finished than the capitalist class, who have got to pay for it ; yet even our author would not deny that it would be idle to expect the capitalist class to abolish war. Anyway he says that his program “will not be installed by the capitalist class,” (Page 4.)

What better reason has Mr, Benson for maintaining that the people (by whom he seems to mean the working class) need but the referendum on war in order to abolish war ?

The bottom of the argument is knocked out by the author’s own admission (p, 77) that “It is unfortunately true that scheming diploma­tists and jingo journalists have the power so to inflame peoples that they desire war.” What, then, is the use of talking about giving the people the “direct vote on tha war” ? To bam­boozle them into desiring war is to bamboozle them into voting war ; and to lay the voter under the penalty of having to fight if he votes for fighting is simply to challenge his courage. These things are patent to everyone save the crank who thinks he has discovered a short cut to the millenium.

The very fact that it is true that “scheming diplomatists and jingo journalists have the power to so inflame peoples that they desire war” shows that it is not so much the referendum on war that the people need as knowledge. Knowledge alone can save them from the wiles of the “scheming diplomatists and jingo journalists” interested in stirring up race hatred and exploiting the cowardice of those who have not the courage to face the charge of the white feather lancers. Granted that Mr. Benson, as a part of his scheme, provides the same penalty for those who advocate war through the Press or on the platform as for those who vote for it in the ballot, but the capitalists, with their unlimited means of inducing men and women to take personal risks (as witness the system of espionage existing in all capitalist countries) would find this very little deterrent to the people being so inflamed as to desire war.

Knowledge is the only safeguard against the workers being dragged into wars that do not concern them—knowledge that is, which has found its consummation in the capture of the machinery of government. This knowledge must be Socialist knowledge. It must be knowledge of the unity of interest of the workers of all countries, and the antagonism between that interest and the interest of the capitalists of all lands.

And mark this, that knowledge itself, while it precludes the possibility of the workers being inflamed for capitalist war, must on the other hand inflame them against the capitalists in the bitterest of all wars—the class war. As opposing interests are the cause of all wars, unity of interest is the only absolute safeguard against war. The Socialist recognises this and acts accordingly ; the pseudo-Socialist does not recognise it, and he acts accordingly also.

Hence we find Mr. Benson telling us (p. 101) “The advocates of the war referendum plan declare that if diplomacy were democratized and the war-making power vested in themselves, no war could be begun for which the people had not voted”—which, of course, is not less fatuous because it is true, if the people can be inflamed to desire war.

And hence also we find Mr. Benson arguing the question (p. 102) “whether the Socialist plan of ending poverty and war or the war-referendum plan is, in its nature, most likely to lead in mak­ing its way into the public understanding” and deciding (as a Socialist !) against the Socialist plan.

Another mistake of the author which residence in any of the belligerent countries might possibly have prevented him from making is the claim that women, if given the vote, “would vote overwhelmingly against war.” One who proclaims that “We Socialists take nothing for granted” might at least have spent some pains upon substantiating this claim. He might have endeavoured to show that the Socialist theory of the domination of material interests over human actions applies only to the male sex.

There are many other points of error in Mr. Benson’s book, only one particularly grave one can be mentioned here. This is the statement that the power for peace and war rests solely in the hands of a few politicians. Says our author: “134 men in Congress and one man in the White House have all of the power . .” (p. 11). This exposes a lamentable ignorance of the true facts of the case. The politicians are the servants of the master class, acting in their interests under such cloaks of hypocrisy and cant as they can devise.

The book is not without one merit. It brings before the public notice many of the wiles with which the diplomatists and politicians have carried out their masters’ work. The Bismarckian instances are very interesting reading though not altogether new to English readers. The events leading up to the Spanish American War are also worth perusal, and in particular the story of the “Maine.” How the American Government resisted for ten long years every demand to have the sunken warship raised from the slime of Havannah Harbour, and how it was eventually raised, taken out to sea, and sunk in order to destroy for ever the evidence of the falsity of the pretext for war which ten years previously it had provided, tell their own tale of Cultur, as unmistakably as certain other incidents related tell theirs of Culture and Kultur.

A. E. Jacomb

Jottings. (1915)

The Jottings Column from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Silver Ballets” leaflet issued by the Parliamentary War Savings Committee provides some very interesting reading.

We are told that if our 45 million people each saved on an average half-a-crown a week, we should save nearly £300,000,000 a year. Now this 45,000,000 people comprises nearly the whole population of the United Kingdom, and half-a-crown a week from each person in an. average family of five persons—man, wife, and three children—would mean twelve shillings and sixpence per week to save. Ye gods, this from a population estimated in 1903 by Sir H. C. Bannerman to include over 12,000,000 “living in the grip of perpetual poverty” !— A population of whom Mr. D. Lloyd George (when booming his insurance scheme) said: “You have got, side by side with the most extravagant wealth, multitudes of people who cannot consider even a bare subsistence as assured to them. . . . The wolves of hunger prowl constantly round millions of doors in the land.”

Similar remarks coming from persons now “kidding” workers to save, what time the workers are receiving in some cases war bonus to meet the increased cost of living—run up by patriots—only show how their maintenance of political supremacy depends upon a lack of memory and want of understanding, among the working class, of their class status within the society of to-day. The work of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is to refresh workers’ memories on such points, and, primarily to put facts before them which, given intelligence to understand, they will proceed to act upon.

We wonder what one member of the Government (Mr. J. M. Robertson) thinks of his “Fallacy of Saving” in the light of the Parliamentary War Savings Committee’s appeal ?

* * *

Mr. Lloyd George in his speech at Manchester said in reference to being prepared for this war:

“When we appear at the great judgment seat of history as a nation and as a people, and this war with its terrors, with its tortures, with its suffering, is brought up against us, we can say, the proof that we are innocent of this crime is that at any rate we did not prepare, we at any rate did not organise for that war. We had not organised great forces for the purpose of conquering Germany or Austria, or trampling upon the liberties of any other nation.”

But that was only the “swank” as showing how it could be organised, now he had taken over the organising of munitions for war.

Listen, however, to “Winnie” of the ineffable smile justifying his work at the Admiralty. At Dundee on June 5th he said :

“I was sent to the Admiralty in 1911, after the Agadir crisis had nearly brought us into war, and I was sent with the express duty laid upon me by the Prime Minister to put the fleet in a state of instant and constant readiness for war in case we were attacked by Germany.”— “Reynolds,” 6.6.15.

J. B.

Book Review: An Economist on Marx. (1915)

Book Review from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Historic Materialism and the Economics of Marx, by Benedetto Croce. Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. 5s. nett.

One of the advantages of being a University Professor, or a Lecturer at a College, is that one may write arrant nonsense and pass it off for great wisdom on the uncritical reader.

The net result of the various essays forming the above volume is to leave the student with the conviction that the elder Weller’s statement can still be applied with force when he asked whether “it was worth while going through so much to learn so little.” Words, words, words, my masters, but little of real ideas or thoughts represented by these words and still less of any real criticism of Marx’s works.

The essays dealing with “Historical Materialism” are in the main an attempt to criticise Labriola’s writings on this subject. Labriola has replied to some of them in a new edition of his work, Socialism and Philosophy, so we need not cover the same ground here.

In their attempts to answer certain questions, Marx and Engels found that all the old theories and explanations taught at the Universities failed to give any satisfactory reply. Hence they were forced to re-examine the basis for themselves. And note the result. For this re-examination compelled them to abandon all their early training in philosophy, including their Hegelianism, as these furnished no answer.

It was in the facts of history they had to look for, and finally found, the answer to their questions. This was that the conditions of production and distribution of wealth formed the basis of, and gave the explanation to, the general form and structure of society. Now it should be evident that if there is a “structure of society” on a given basis, the factors of this structure will have a modifying effect upon the direct movement of the base. Perhaps an illustration may make this clear. Due to the fact of Gravity water will descend from a hill-top to a valley. The Gravity is the basic factor. The actual path will depend upon the kinds of soil, and obstacles met upon the way down. The stream seldom follows a straight course, but it still remains true that the only explanation of the water’s main movement is the force of Gravity.

In the case of social development the matter is of course not only more complex in itself, but we are far more ignorant of the factors and their properties than in the case of the soils in our illustration. The interest of the ruling class in hiding or falsifying certain of these factors is no mean stumbling-block in our way.

The discovery of Marx and Engels was independently rediscovered by Lewis H. Morgan from the Ethnological side. But in neither case was it pretended that it gave an automatic answer to every petty little incident in history. At best  it only supplied the answer to the question of fundamental changes in society, and as Lafargue pointed out, it became a splendid instrument of research into history, not a ready answer to little puzzles. Marx himself applied the discovery twice with conspicuous success—first in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon III, and secondly in the pamphlet on the Commune of Paris, called The Civil War in France. But Marx was at a serious disadvantage compared with our ”professors.” He had to work for his living—often a poor one—in the midst of his other labours. Hence the incompleteness of many of his writings, particularly on this subject.

Yet how do his critics deal with those writings? At first they ignored them. Then it became the fashion to treat them as nonsense easily disposed of by a sneer. Unfortunately for these beautiful methods the working class is taking up the study of Socialism in steadily increasing numbers, and, despite the admitted difficulties of the form in which Marx wrote, are more and more reading his  books.   So the “latest and lovliest” method is to adopt the attitude of “revising” and “improving” Marx. It is now admitted that he was a giant intellect—hence the greater credit in “putting him right”—and that his works are important contributions to our knowledge—or rather they will be when properly “revised.”

Just here, however, the student finds himself laced with a pretty problem. No two of these “critics” are agreed upon what is wrong in Marx’s writings, if we leave out the question of value for a moment. Who is he to follow ? Many of these “critics” are Professors or Fellows of Colleges. They have written in some cases ponderous tomes, more difficult to understand than Marx and for a sufficiently obvious reason. In the volume under review the author claims that “Historical Materialism” is a “mass of new data, of new experiences, of which the historian becomes conscious.” (p. 12.)

Indeed! what are these “new experiences” and “data” thus supplied? Croce cannot tell us because they don’t exist.  On page 77, however, he tells us “Historical Materialism if it is to express something critically acceptable . . . must be simply a canon of historical interpretation.” This “canon” he describes as an aid in seeking results—an utterly nonsensical definition to English readers, as they understand the word  “canon” to mean a standard  for measuring or comparison.

By far the most audacious claim of this Italian critic is his discovery that Marx was really a metaphysician and idealist! True! this was charged against Marx when his Critique of Political Economy first appeared, so let us look at Croce’s grounds for this claim.

On page 50 he says: “the capitalist society studied by Marx is not this or that society, historically existing, in France or in England, nor the modern society of the most civilised nations, that of Western Europe and America. It is an ideal and formal society, deduced from certain hypotheses, which could indeed never have occurred as actual facts in the course of history.” If it were not for the fact that the phrase might seem discourteous we should feel inclined to call this statement an absurd fabrication; instead we merely remark that every line of Marx’s works flatly contradicts Croce’s claim.  Indeed, on page 79 he says “Marx was addicted, in short, to a kind of concrete logic”! ,

His general view may be stated as that Marx only examined one fact in history and this is so overlaid and interconnected with other facts that though it may be important it is not a dominant one.  It may be “rich in suggestion”; it may be the road “along which the solution must be sought of some of the greatest problems of history,” but it is only a metaphysical abstraction. From his high and pure position he can look down and smile at both the Marxians who regard the research into so-called “pure economics” as absurd, and at the various critics who have all failed to see in Marx what was left for Croce to discover.

If it were possible the essays dealing with’ .Marx’s economics are worse than those dealing with historical views. Once more the “abstract”  and “metaphysical” charges are made without the slightest evidence to support them. Croce agrees with the “utility theory” of value formulated in its modern form by Jevons and appropriated by the so-called “Austrian School” without, apparently, being aware of how completely the theory was crushed by Marxian criticism, in the land of its birth. In the only chapter in which Croce attempts to come to close quarters with Marx’s economics—the one on “The fall in the Rate of Profit,” he attempts to build up a case by maintaining that, according to Marx, when a number of labourers are displaced by improved methods of production, they are not discharged but kept on and production increased accordingly. Croce says that usually the production remains the same, the men are discharged and therefore profits rise with the alteration in the composition of capital. As the base of his criticism is false—for of course Marx has worked out the result of such a condition— his house of cards collapses.

According to the publisher’s note, a Mr. A. D. Lindsay has written an “illuminating introduction.” The thing most illuminated by this introduction is Mr. Lindsay’s ignorance of Marx’s writings. For he refers to “the laws of supply and demand which alone affect all things that have economic value” and says that the pure economist “finds little difficulty in refuting Marx’s theory,” in complete ignorance that Marx had shattered the so-called “Law of Supply and Demand” in Value, Price and Profit as well as in Capital. His reference to Socialism as an “automatic working out of economic laws” is too childish for farther consideration to-day.

However, as he admits at the end of his introduction that his knowledge of Marx and of economics is too small to allow him to judge Croce’s appraisement of Marx’s work, we may be thankful for small admissions.

Despite Croce’s attempt to forestall the criticism he feared would come when he states (p. 64) that he does not consider an explanation adequate and appropriate “which resolves itself into accusing a large number of students of allowing themselves blindly and foolishly to be overcome by passions alien to science; or, what is worse, of knowingly falsifying their thought,” it still remains the only explanation of these various falsifications of Marx under the cloak of “criticising” or “revising” his works. Unless, indeed, he would desire us to flatter their honesty at the expense of their intellects.    

Jack Fitzgerald

Caught out. (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The coalheavers of Liverpool are on strike, miners in Scotland are tendering their notices, the engineers in Grimsby are asking for a rise of three shillings. The movement is traversing the whole country and affecting every trade. That is inevitable, for the whip which is lashing them on is falling on the shoulders of all workers. It is the whip of high prices, and what is being demanded or fought for is not greater material prosperity by the workers, but a restoration of the standard of life which was labour’s before the war.” (“Daily News and Leader,” 3.3.15.)

“There is an unprecedented redistribution of wealth in operation. The working classes are receiving money in a measure without parallel. The more that money is saved the more will be the resources of the State, and we hope that Mr. McKenna will, as we have suggested in the past, take steps to make thrift on the part of the working classes easier.” (”Daily News and Leader,” 13.6.I5)

Unless the “Daily News” can prove that there has been an unprecedented reduction in the price of necessaries, or that there has been an unparalleled rise in wages during the period that elapsed between the above two dates, those responsible for the leading articles of that paper have inadvertently contradicted themselves.—Liars need good memories.

F. Foan

Correspondence: Next one please. (1915)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

To The Editor.

The S.LP. of A., in dealing with the criticism of A. E. J. in the “Weekly People” dated the 6th of March. They say: Pure and simple politics fail and always will fail the workers because they fail to attend to the one Source of Power which the workers possess, the economic power, that is, that power which the workers daily have in their hands when they are in the workshops—the power over industry.

A. E. J., in the “S.S.,” April issue, in the course of his remarks on the above criticism says: The idea that the workers have power over industry is exquisite foolery. What conceivable force gives them any such power, etc. In your July issue you tell the workers to use its supreme economic power for the liberation of human kind from wage slavery. Is that not a contradiction of A. E. J.’s remarks which you have endorsed by the fact that you gave publication to. What is economic power ?

Yours truly,

T. W. Creswick, 

Kennington, S.E.

———————————–

If Mr. Creswick had given the matter a moment’s thought he would have saved himself the labour of writing. The contradiction only exists in his own mind.

We may take the definition given in his own letter. That definition is narrow, but it will suffice. Economic power is power over industry. It is, as stated by A. E. J., exquisite foolery to say that the workers have this power in their hands when they are in the workshops. It is as absurd as it would be to say that the slave who lugged laboriously at an oar in a Roman galley under the lash of the slave driver had economic power in his hands. The differences between the chattel-slave and the wage-slave in this respect are due to the political rights of the latter, which are in turn the outcome of economic necessity.

In the leading article of the July “S.S.” the statement occurs, referred to by our correspondent, of the need for the working class to “become masters of the State, and use the supreme economic power for the liberation of human kind from wage-slavery.” This, of course, is the very reason we are a political party. It is because the State has supreme “power over industry.” The article in question showed how the State was rapidly becoming more and more the direct exploiter of industrial undertakings. The political State, with its armed forces and machinery of government, is ever more obviously the supreme “power over industry” that must be captured by the working class. Until the workers control it, they are themselves controlled by it both economically and politically, that is to say, both by government and by private capitalists.

The essential difference, therefore, between economic power and political power, in this connection, is that the political power is the supreme economic power. Individual capitalists only wield economic power by virtue of their political control of the State, which guarantees, enforces, limits or extends their economic power.

This simple fact, that the political State is the supreme economic power, is always overlooked by Syndicalists. It enforces the need for political action above all, as the coordinate and culmination of the organised wages struggle ; and it shows how entirely correct was A. E. J. in his stricture upon the S.L.P. of A.

Ed. Com.

“Pulling Ben’s leg.” (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ben Tillett, the hero of Tower Hill, has been having a truly great time in France. He has actually lunched with Sir John French and conversed with a high authority—a general— regarding the way in which the operations must be carried out. One does not like to tell, without blushing, how the latter “gassed” the idol of Dockland, so perhaps it would be better and in the correct sequence of things to let “old Ben” tell it himself. He says (“Daily Express,” 17.6.1915): ‘”Do you see what I mean?’ this general went on; ‘you must take home this simple picture of what we’ve got to do. We have to go on firing high explosives till there’s nothing living left in front of us. Then the men go forward and fight, and clear up details, and the guns are dragged up and we begin all over again.‘ ”

(Ben loses consciousness, while the General falls on his sword and dies—-a-laughing.)

B. B. B.

Our War Volume. (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attention of readers is drawn to the probability that, on account of the number of Party manifestoes on the war it contains, there will be an exceptional demand for the volume of our Party Organ which closes with this number. Those who desire to obtain the volume should place their orders early.

Corrections: "The Menace of Aerial Warfare" (1936)

From the October 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. L. G. Savage, the writer of this series of articles, asks us to point out that the instalment which appeared in the August issue contained two errors. In column one, page 123, last paragraph, "magnetic or coil" should read "magneto or coil."

The figures in the last paragraph, column one, page 124, are incorrect. 27,000 square yards is not 15 square miles, but only a small part of a square mile. It will be observed, however, that 27,000 square yards is the area likely to be contaminated by liquid mustard gas, and bears no relation to the area likely to be affected by gas in vapour form.

Ed. Comm.

The Menace of Aerial Warfare - Part 3 (1936)

From the September 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

In 1923 the League of Nations arranged for an authoritative investigation of the possibilities of bacteriological warfare. The result of the investigation is summed up in Victor Lefebure's “Scientific Disarmament."

Open the book at page 215 and skim the pages which follow: —

. . . they referred to the use of cultures of cholera and typhus, mainly by infecting water supplies. Professor Pfeiffer, although pointing out the obstacles in the way of successful use by infecting the supplies of larger towns, stated, “There are, no doubt, other possibilities. Infectious germs might, for instance, be thrown from aircraft direct into pure water reservoirs. In such a case filtration would be ineffectual.” He refers to the possibility of inoculation, but goes on, “An epidemic whose very name recalls the horrors and devastations which it caused in former centuries, and which is, therefore, particularly likely to spread terror and dismay, is the human plague. The most likely way of spreading an epidemic of plague would, no doubt, be the scattering of plague-infected rats, which might very easily be achieved with the help of aircraft. In this way an epidemic of bubonic plague might almost certainly be brought about in the trenches, which in any case are alive with rats; in the interior of the enemy country, also, the dissemination of plague germs on a large scale would be possible, resulting undoubtedly in the formation of centres of infection. . . Professor Pfeiffer also deals with artificial infection of projectiles with . . . anthrax, glanders and perhaps rabies. . . . Professor Cannon comments on crop attack. . . . Professor Madsden gives a balanced view of the possibilities as to the present and the future. . . . The means which bacteriology possesses in its present state of development would certainly suffice to give rise to epidemics of greater or lesser extent; airmen or persons with a knowledge of the topography of localities might infect the central sources of the water or milk supply of a big city, and thereby propagate epidemics of typhoid fever, cholera or other intestinal diseases. Epidemics of this nature might even be fairly serious.

Major Lefebure continues to point out that, although Professor Madsden and some others believe that epidemics could be got under control without much damage being done, they obviously are not taking into full account the special circumstances of war and the fact that diseases would be propagated on a far larger scale than is usual under peace conditions.

He says, quite rightly: —

Now if an attack of this nature were to be made producing hundreds of thousands of casualties requiring (special) treatment quickly, it would take us far and away outside our normal medical facilities both as to appliances and personnel. (The word (special) here replaces a phrase of the same meaning to reduce the necessary quotation to a minimum. L.G.S.).

In addition, resistance to a particular disease is not nearly so high if the population is not exposed to the bacteria of the disease in normal life. It would, therefore, be very unsafe to prophesy the possible rate at which an epidemic of (say) Bubonic plague would spread, since Europeans have not been exposed to this bacteria for several hundred years.

The position at the present time cannot be calculated, but I think it cannot be denied that bacteriological warfare is an additional menace to the security of civilian populations as well as to combatants. Its possibilities we shall learn if we experiment, although the value of such an experiment is yet to be established, but it is certain that expert opinion is firmly convinced that, be the damage great or small, bacteria are definitely an addition to the armoury of destructive weapons.

The quotations I have used were taken from a report made in 1923—it is now 1936.

Protection

There is, and can be, no possible protection whatever for civilian populations against chemical warfare from the air—(Major-Gen. Jackson, ex- Assistant Director, War Office).

There is no protection for the civilian against aerial attack.

Nowhere must this be better realised than in Government circles which have access to knowledge denied to the general public, and the services of experts in all departments of warfare and technology.

They suggest, as a precaution, that the people be instructed in methods of protection, when they know quite well that there are none.

The very best that can be done is to arrange and organise essential services, such as power-stations, fire brigades and doctors, so that they can function and perhaps relieve some part of the suffering with a minimum of interference. That this much is possible, if only gas be considered, is admitted, but high-explosive, thermit and the inevitable stampede of the people, we have not even begun to take into account.

The Government plans decontaminating centres, i.e., receiving stations where the injured can be medically treated and have their dangerous clothing destroyed or made safe for use. It plans to make respirators available for the essential services, and, possibly, a modified form of mask for the civilian population which would afford partial or temporary protection for the lungs, the assumption being, presumably, that this latter type would be used as a subsidiary protection.

The cost of an efficient respirator at the moment is about £4, but mass production would probably result in a considerable drop in price—to (say) 30s. if the manufacture was unsubsidised. Taking war-time production as a basis for calculation, about six months would be required to manufacture 10,000,000 masks. This does not take into account the special needs of young children or aged persons, for whom respiratory protection is a very difficult matter. It has been suggested that very small children might be placed in a sack of some gas-proof material, the air to be supplied by a pump through a filter, but the efficacy of the idea is doubtful, and no useful suggestions have yet been made to overcome the fact that a gassed or injured parent would be unable to continue pumping. Presumably, too, it would be necessary to anaesthetise the child before inserting it into the sack. Otherwise it would probably act in the same way as a cat in a bag—struggle furiously to get out.

To the suggestion of gas-shelters I oppose the following facts and figures. If bomb- and gas-proof shelters could be constructed to house (say) 500 people, and such large shelters present a considerable engineering problem, about 10,000 would be required as a minimum to house the population of London in immediate danger.

These shelters, which at present exist on paper and in the minds of optimistic speculators, would take months, if not years, to build. They would need a reinforced concrete roof 13 feet thick, or to be sunk to a depth of 80 feet underground to provide reasonable safety from high-explosive. The walls, if the shelter was built above ground, would need to be strong enough to carry the roof and to withstand the shock of high-explosive on the roof or the side-thrust on the walls if it dropped in the immediate vicinity. Such shelters would have to be constructed to admit no air whatsoever except through special filters. Apart from the fact that no device is known that will go on filtering indefinitely, and, therefore, if intensive attacks were carried out over a period of several days the filters would probably release the gas in ever-growing quantities into the chamber, the smallest crack in the structure would admit air directly from outside and make the filters useless.

Chimneys could be used to draw pure air from above the gas-cloud, but to be reasonably safe they would have to be constructed to a height of at least 150 feet—an excellent target for high-explosive. The following facts should demolish any arguments in favour of chimneys: —

A 500/1,000 kg. explosive bomb can demolish a whole block of houses, even if it only explodes in the vicinity.

A 100/200 kg. explosive bomb can destroy a house of several stories.

A 50 kg. explosive bomb can cause serious damage.

(General Von Haeften.)

The chimney that could withstand the explosive force of a 100-200 kg. bomb planted reasonably near the base cannot be built.

Water would be a serious problem since mustard gas, in particular, sinks to the bottom of reservoirs and renders water drawn from such a source undrinkable.

Food supplies would have to be rigorously protected from mustard and lewisite, and as attacks on docks and wharves with high-explosive, thermit and mustard gas would be an enemy's certain course of action, it is difficult to see how it could be done.

If an air-raid on London was signalled, the city would be plunged into total darkness. At the same time the public would be told of the impending raid in some way or another, and, human nature being what it is, would attempt to evacuate the city. Almost the whole of London’s private car traffic would be thrown, in pitch darkness, on to roads already incapable of providing for normal traffic. Buses would leave their routes and head for open country. People would make for the country on foot, by cycle, lorry or any kind of transport they could commandeer. The rate of evacuation would not, perhaps, be very great until the raid commenced, but when the dead and wounded and fires springing up in every direction became an actuality, then it cannot be doubted that something {in the nature of a stampede would commence. Necessarily, thousands would be killed in the raid, but the problem would take on its most serious aspects when the question of food, shelter and sanitary arrangements for several million panic-stricken people became of urgent importance. It is more than possible that famine and epidemic diseases would have to be dealt with.

If it is thought that I exaggerate possibilities, here are the words of the military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph: —

It has been suggested that in the event of severe air attacks, 40 per cent. of London's population would leave the city within the first 48 hours, and 80 per cent. within the week. Such an estimate may be exaggerated, but it is, nevertheless, essential to consider ways of controlling any such mass evacuation and of feeding and housing refugees. 

Gerald Heard has expressed much the same opinion recently, and from occasional items of news it is permissible to assume that the Government are awake to this probability.

Even if efficient gas-shelters were in existence, it is mere likely than not that their protective capacity would be doubted and an evacuation take place on nearly as large a scale.

The imagination refuses to function except in vague generalisation. To fill in details would be beyond its scope.

For man, woman or child there is no sure protection.

Summary

War would inevitably lead to destructive air attacks on the cities, not only of England, but of all belligerent countries, with effects very much as I have described.

Modern warfare is, above all, a battle of productive capacity, and a necessary condition of the factory operative being able to function is that he shall be reasonably free from attack. It is therefore very much to a country’s advantage to harry its enemy’s centres of production and distribution.

It is more than possible that, after simultaneous raids on the capital cities of all the belligerents, the effects would be so grave that an immediate armistice would be sought by ail parties. The vulnerable spots in any country are its great centres of population and production, but without such centres it is impossible to wage war on a modem scale with modern weapons, and, in spite of opinions to the contrary, there can be little doubt that the full possibilities of unrestricted warfare in Europe are well-known to all European Governments and military experts. The present spectacle qf elderly statesmen trying to adapt the diplomacy of Metternich, the Napoleonic wars and the fin-de-siecle to modern conditions, would be amusing if it did not carry within itself the germs of gigantic tragedy.

We may observe the fear in action in the bluff and counter-bluff that has characterised the dispute between Italy and England. There is no doubt that Italy's action threatened British capitalists' African and Imperial interests, and, in pre-war days, strong military action would have been taken at the commencement of the dispute. Now the case is altered. By using the League of Nations to declare an economic siege against Italy, Britain hoped to protect its interests without resorting to that unknown quantity—war. Mussolini had already made tentative arrangements to evacuate Naples, but it is doubtful if his advisers would have allowed him to declare war.

It would be a very bold speculator indeed who would dare to predict the future, but the possibility of war will be more remote when its dangers are more widely realised.

L. G. Savage

[Concluded.]

This Month's Quotation: J. F. Bray (1936)

The Front Page quote from the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

"For popular revolutions to be effectual, conviction must always precede force; for force may establish, but it cannot always preserve."

J. F. Bray

This Month's Quotation

The quotation in the panel is from "Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy," 1839, by J. F. Bray.