The Stage of the Wage-Slave Market. (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Board of Trade returns show that employment in July was worse than in June. As compared with a year ago a general decline is shown. In the 270 trades unions, with an aggregate membership of 568,272 making returns, 34,494 (or 6.1 per cent.) were reported as unemployed at the end of July, as compared with 5.9 per cent, a month earlier, and 4.9 per cent in July, 1903. The mean percentage of unemployed returned at the end of June during the ten years 1894-1903 was 3.8.

The returns also show a net decrease in the average rate of wages of a limited number of workpeople for whom returns are available of about 6d. per week per head. This must mean a net loss to the workers of at least £200,000 per week, if the mass of the unorganised workers are in as bad a position as the Trade Union members making returns.

As Lord Stalbridge, presiding at the annual meeting of the London and North-Western Railway Company, estimated the loss of that one line as about £21,000 during the Easter and Whitsuntide holidays alone—”principally owing to the decreased spending power of the workers“—this rough calculation seems not unlikely to be near the mark. This is the loss of the “lucky” workers, who remain in work. Add to this the total loss of wages of, at least, half-a-million unemployed wage-slaves—and then, hurrah (!) for the senseless ”system” of Capitalism, which involves all this unnecessary waste and misery.

——-

The real wage of the worker as measured by its purchasing power has, since 1900, been reduced by 10 per cent.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain. (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

The greatest problem awaiting solution in the world to-day is the existence in every commercial country of extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth. In every land where, in the natural development of society, the capitalist method of producing and distributing wealth has been introduced, this problem presses itself upon us. Not only so but the greater the grip which capitalism has on industry the more intense is the poverty of the many and the more marked are the riches of the few.

In observing the conditions of this problem, the fact is quickly forced under our notice that it is the producer of wealth who is poor, the non-producer who is rich. How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig the mine, who manipulate the machine, who build the factory and the home, and, in a word, who create the whole of the wealth, receive only sufficient to maintain themselves and their families on the border line of bare physical efficiency, while those who do not aid in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to supply their every necessity, comfort, and luxury?

To find a solution to this problem is the task to which the Socialist applies himself. He sees clearly that only by studying the economics of wealth-production and distribution can he understand the anomalies of present-day society. He sees, further, that having gained a knowledge of the economic causes of social inequality, he must apply this knowledge through political action – through the building up of a Socialist organisation for the capture of Parliament and the conquest of the powers of government.

To every sober observer of social facts it is patent that the life condition of the workers is one of penury and of misery. The only saleable commodity they possess  – their power of working – they are compelled to take to the labour market and sell for a bare subsistence wage. The food they eat, the clothing they wear, the houses in which they live are of the shoddiest kind, and these together with the mockery of an education which their children receive, primarily determine the purchasing price of their labour-power. By organising in their various trades they may force their wage a little above this normal value, but taken on the average they are bound to sell their activity – physical, mental and moral – for the bare cost of their subsistence.

In return for this wage they create, by the conversion of raw material into manufactured products or by other means, a value far in excess of the value paid them as wages. The difference between these two values is taken by the employing class, and constitutes the source of profit, interest, and rent. These three forms of exploitation are the result of the unpaid labour of the working-class.

So long as this lasts – and it will last as long as the capitalist system of society – it will not be possible for the workers by any Trades Union organisation to more than slightly modify their condition, and their power in this direction is becoming every day more limited by the combinations among employers to defeat the aims of the working class.

Then, too, the magnitude of industrial operations, ever tending to increase by the inherent tendency under free competition of the large producer to crush out his smaller trade rivals – the joint stock company takes the place of the large individual, capitalist, the trust the place of the joint stock company. The worker is thus brought face to face with an ever greater foe.

The Socialist can calmly view this struggle, knowing that ultimately the victory is with him. In the meantime, however, he has to show the workers that while their organisation in trades will  prove an invaluable aid in the transformation of society by facilitating industrial reorganisation, yet at present they can best help to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of wage-slavery by recognising that in their class struggle with their exploiters they can be most certain of success in the political sphere of action.

Such political action will, however, be quite futile unless carried on by a class-conscious party with definite aims. Such a party must recognise that in the class-war they are waging there must be no truce. They must adopt as their basis of action the Socialist position, for in no other way can their ills be redressed.

To neither of the two historic parties can we look with any hope. The Liberal Party, like the Conservative Party, is interested in maintaining the present class society, and cannot, therefore, be expected to help in its transformation from capitalism to Socialism.

The National Democratic League and the Labour Representation Committee are also to be avoided. The former has a programme of purely political measures, each of which is found in the constitutions of France and the United States of America without the working-class being in any way benefited. The latter organisation has no programme whatsoever, and its members possess no principles in common save the name “Labour.” As soon as any question of constructive legislation is brought before it its component elements will break part, being unable to agree among themselves. Unity is only possible among those who possess common principles. Unity can not, therefore, be secured for any length of time by the members of the Labour Representation Committee, but even if it could, the body is not based upon Socialist principles and should not receive the adhesion of working men.

We, as Socialists, venture to assert that the party which is ultimately to secure the support of the rank and file of the working-class must be a Socialist party. Such a party must be ever prepared to further the realisation of a Socialist Society. It must proclaim the fact that this realisation can be achieved by the members of the working-class using their political power to return to Parliament and other public bodies only those who are members of The Socialist Party.

In the past two bodies of men have put forward the claim to be Socialist parties, viz., the Independent Labour Party and Social Democratic Federation. We who have for many years taken a share in the work of the latter organisation and who have watched the progress of the former from its initiation, have been forced to the conclusion that through neither of them can the Social Revolution at which we aim be achieved, and that from neither of them can the working-class secure redress from the ills they suffer.

The Independent Labour Party, founded for the ostensible reason of forming a half-way house to Socialism, was fated to meet with the reward of every party founded upon a compromise. With a membership of those who were sympathetic with Socialism, but who were not Socialists, they were bound to drift nearer and nearer to the Liberal Party. Having neither the courage to proclaim themselves Socialists nor to disavow Socialism, they are to-day coquetting with that working-class wing of the Liberal Party – the Labour Representation Committee. When the question of Socialism was raised on the committee, their chief representative declared that was neither the time nor the place for such discussion. With a party of this kind, which, in the words of their president, “is independent to support, independent to oppose” the two historic political parties, the working-class should have nothing to do.

The Social Democratic Federation formed to further the cause of Socialism in Great Britain, has, during the last few years, been steadily following the compromising policy adopted from the first by the Independent Labour Party. So much is this the case that to-day, for all purposes of effective Socialist propaganda they have ceased to exist, and are surely developing into a mere reform party, seeking to obtain the provision of Free Maintenance for school children.

Those Socialists who, within its ranks, sought to withstand this policy, have found the task to be an impossible one, and have consequently seceded and formed themselves into the Socialist Party of Great Britain – a party determined to use its every effort in the furtherance of Socialist ideas and Socialist principles.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is convinced that by laying down a clearly defined body of principles in accord with essential economic truths, and by consistently advocating them, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, but marching uncompromisingly on toward their goal, they will ultimately gain the confidence and the support of the working-class of this country. once this is secured it is a small step to the organisation of a Socialist Parliamentary party. When this is accomplished all is gained.

The first duty of The Socialist Party is the teaching of its principles and the organisation of a political party on a Socialist basis. The party becoming strong will capture parliamentary and other governmental powers. When these powers – legislative, administrative, and judicial, are wrested from their present class holders, they way is clear for the building up of the industries of the country upon the principle of collective production and collective distribution, and for the establishment of the Socialist Republic.

Men and women of the working-class, it is to you we appeal! To-day we are a small party, strong only in the truth of our principles, the sincerity of our motives, and the determination and enthusiasm of our members. To-morrow we shall be strong in our numbers, for the economic development of capitalist society fights for us, and as, through the merging of free competition in monopoly and the simplification of industry, the personal capitalist gives place to the impersonal trust as your employer, you will be forced to see that the welfare of the people can best be guaranteed by the holding of all material wealth in common.

We ask you, therefore, to study the principles upon which our party is based, to find out for yourselves what Socialism is and how Socialism and Socialism alone can abolish class society and establish in its stead a society based upon social equality. When you have done this we know that you will come with us and, by enrolling yourself a member of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, help to speed the time when we shall herald in for ourselves and for our children, a brighter, a happier and a nobler society than any the world has yet witnessed.

Physical Deterioration (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

 It is a necessary deduction from the principles held by Socialists of the Marxist school of thought that the physique and the mental capacity of the working-class in every capitalist country are deteriorating. If the Socialist view of social development is, as we believe, a correct one, this deterioration is due to temporary economic causes which are remediable by combined human effort.

To the Socialist the question is fundamentally economic, and is to be answered only by an elimination into our modes of satisfying material human needs. One of the first things discovered on making such an examination is that the methods of producing and distributing the various means of living are different to-day from what they were yesterday, and that there is reason to assume that they will be yet again different to-morrow. The capitalist method of production by the wage-labourer under the control of the machine for the purpose of furnishing profit for the employer came into existence only in the last third of the eighteenth century.

The immediate result of the introduction of machine industry was the displacement of labourers. The old handicraftsmen were unable to compete with the new machine industry, and were consequently forced out of employment. At first the machine by cheapening commodities and extending the demand for them was able to absorb nearly as many men as it displaced. That day has, however, gone by. Machines are themselves produced by machinery and the markets for manufactured products are practically conterminous with the world’s surface. Hence, each improved machine introduced, every conquest over Nature made by the inventive genius of man, throws more of the workers out of employment, and renders more irregular the employment of those in employment.

Again, the machine necessitates the co-operation of many men in the carrying on of any manufacture. This combination of effort allows the specialisation of the various detail operations intervening between the raw material and the finished product, and distributes these operations in such a manner that each worker employed in the industry is bound throughout the whole of his life to the monotony of a single routine occupation. The harder work is also differentiated from the easier, and women and children become a feature in the industrial life of the capitalist era.

Another cause for the displacement of men’s labour besides the introduction of improved machinery and of women and child labour, is the speeding up of the machine whereby each individual worker is required to tend a larger number of spindles or looms or to work the same machine at an increased speed. Thus labour is generally intensified and tends to rack the nervous system of the worker.

In return for this expenditure of his activity the worker is paid a wage which is fixed on the labour market and is determined by the cost of his subsistence as measured by the standard of comfort of the workers in his trade. This standard of comfort is kept down to the limits of bare physical efficiency by the existence of the unemployed industrial reserve population created, as we have seen, by the extension of the sphere of the machine in industry. The men out of work are prepared to accept a lower wage than that given to those in employment and thus palliate their own miserable condition. This competition for employment presents itself as an unceasing tendency towards lower wages. The final result of this competition between the workers is, that the wage of their labour power fluctuates on either side of the line of “bare physical efficiency.”

Looking at industry again, but this time from another point of view, we find that in the distribution of the commodities produced there is free competition between the various manufacturers in the markets of the world. Each manufacturer seeks to secure for himself as large a share of those markets as possible. Hence in periods of commercial prosperity he produces as rapidly as he can, and places his goods for sale, his rivals in trade do likewise. A glut of the markets follows upon this anarchic method of distribution. The manufacturer, finding the market suffering from glut and finding it necessary to transform his commodities into money, to be able to discharge his liabilities, endeavours to find a customer at reduced prices. His goods are usually purchased by one of his trade rivals who is possessed of more capital and longer staying power, and who thus augments his business. Thus we see as a result of free competition that large capitalists are crushing out small capitalists, and as this progresses monopoly ultimately results.

In America we see monopoly reaching its final and most logical form in the trust. When the trust is formed, it immediately discharges its commercial travellers, because, having a monopoly of the industry, the trust is the only available source of supply to the retail trader ; the small factories and the factories equipped with inefficient machinery are closed and the workers in them discharged ; the price of the products as well as the wages of those employed, are within the entire control of the all-conquering trust.

We have not as yet, however, reached the stage of the trust in every industry, and have, therefore, to consider the effect of the individual-capitalistic and the joint stock company industrial conditions upon the health of those employed.

We have seen the worker divorced from his tools by the introduction of machinery ; the introduction of women labour and child labour; the building up of the machine industry manifested to us in the modern factory ; the throwing men out of employment: let us see what is the effect upon the condition of the working-class of the present industrial system.

We see that in England the development of modern industry was at first in advance of its development on the Continent. From a number of well understood causes into which we need not now enquire, England obtained for a period the monopoly of the markets of the world. The produce of her manufactures were sent to every country, and had to be exchanged against the raw produce of those countries. At the same time, the agricultural workers of this country thought that it would be to their advantage to engage in the new industries that were everywhere springing up. They, therefore, began to flock into the towns, and thus commenced that rural immigration towards the great cities which has not yet ceased.

As detail operations in trades were specialised within the factories, so were the various industries of the country specialised and localised within the nation — Lancashire becoming the principal seat of the cotton, Yorkshire of the woollen industry. Round these specialised industries great cities sprung. Built upon no settled plan, the individual greed of the possessor of building land rather than the health and needs of the community being the determining factor, problems were created which remain still without solution.

Crowded together in insanitary areas, the air befouled by the smoke from the many factory chimneys, disease and vice and crime were germinated to an unprecedented extent. We find that the general condition cf the life of the wage-worker is one of extreme poverty and misery. Receiving a low wage, he can maintain only a low standard of comfort — maintaining a low standard of comfort, his competition with his fellows provides him with a low wage. Thus runs the vicious circle.

His food is of the cheapest description, usually adulterated ; his clothing is shoddy ; he lives in overcrowded and insanitary areas ; the air of the factory in which he works is befouled ; the atmosphere of the rooms in which he lives is vitiated ; his wife in many trades has to find employment and the family wage is little higher than when he was the sole breadwinner ; his children are neglected and go breakfastless to school ; the mother of the family is often employed to the time of child-birth ; alcoholism is engendered by unhealthy surroundings : these are but a few of the conditions of working-class life directly due to the class ownership of his means of livelihood. These being the facts is it to be wondered at if we assume that their result must be a lowering of the stamina and the physique of the working-class section of the community?

I do not think that any will gainsay that nutrition is the first essential to the building up of a healthy physique. Without the provision of a sufficient supply of good, wholesome food any attempt at arresting deterioration will be futile. We are told that over 100,000 school children in London alone go breakfastless to school. For them there is little hope for a sturdy manhood. Arrest the progress of physical deterioration amongst the children through the provision of meals by the State to all school children and you will do much to strengthen the physique and stamina of the race.

I have before me the Report issued by the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, and I have looked through its pages to see whether my a priori views on physical deterioration are borne out by the investigations of the Committee.

It is to be observed that it was not from any desire on the part of the governing class to improve the lot of the working-class because they were physically deteriorating that this Committee was appointed, but because of the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of recruits for the army. The government of every country is founded upon force and depends upon the organised force of the army for the maintenance of its stability, and any falling off in the efficiency of the worker viewed as raw material for the army is, therefore, a matter which they deplore. When, therefore, they find that in spite of repeated reductions in the physical standard for recruits there is maintained a percentage of rejections ranging from 40 to 60 ; when the worker presenting himself for enlistment is designated as “rubbish” by General Borrett, the late Inspector-General of Recruiting; when of those accepted nearly two-thirds have to be subsequently weeded out: then the governing class considers it high time to make enquiries into the physical condition of the people.

I do not propose to quarrel with the Committee because of this, neither am I in any way sanguine that the recommendations of the Committee so far as they would tend to benefit the workers, will be carried into practical effect. Even it Parliament carries through legislative reform, there is no reason to believe that the class that has control of the administrative machinery will let it be other than a dead letter. Indeed, in this very Report instance after instance is given where the very people against whom the Acts are ostensibly directed are to be found administering them on the judicial bench. Let one instance suffice. The evidence given before the Committee by a Miss Garnett is to the effect that—

“The local authority in the Potteries was as inefficient as you could find anywhere. Most of the bad houses are owned by members of the local bodies and the sanitary inspectors are too much in awe of their employers to carry out their duty.”

The general finding of the Committee is that there is not sufficient data from which to determine whether there is going on continuous physical deterioration among any section of the community. It may be mentioned in this connection that in the discussion on the subject by the Anthropological Section of the British Association, the existence of such deterioration was taken for granted by many of those who discussed the subject. It was not, of course, to be expected that the Committee would search too deeply into the economic conditions of production to find whether there they might discover a sufficient cause in the very basis of present day capitalist production itself tor the deterioration. Their enquiry only scratched the surface of the subject.

I may have occasion, in a future number of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, to return to this matter. By then Vol. II of the Committee’s proceedings, containing the detailed evidence, and Vol. Ill, containing several important appendices, will probably be available. Meanwhile I content myself with selecting a few pertinent passages and trust that all Socialists will read through the Report, which contains, in spite of all its limitations, much valuable propagandist material. Dr. Neston, ot Newcastle, says:

  “There is undoubtedly great deterioration in the physique of our City population, and that is attributable to two chief causes; first, a decadence in home life, which entails improper food and clothing, irregular habits (drinking and gambling), absence of order and thrift; second, the miserable housiug and high rents which prevail; overcrowding with its consequences, is, an important factor in physical and mental deterioration.”

Dr. Eichholz, who draws a distinction between physical degeneracy on the one hand and inherited retrogressive deterioration on the other, says:

  “There is every reason to anticipate rapid amelioration of physique so soon an improvement occurs in external conditions. particularly as regards food, clothing, overcrowding, cleanliness, drunkenness, and the spread of common, practical knowledge of home management. In fact, all evidence points to active, rapid improvement, bodily and mental, in the worst districts, so soon as they are exposed to better circumstances, even the weaker children recovering at a later age from the evil effects of infant life.”

The Committee says:

 “There is reason to fear that the urbanization of the population cannot have been unattended by consequences prejudicial to the health of the people, and these have been considered under the three heads of (I) Overcrowding, (II) Pollution of the Atmosphere, and (III) The conditions of employment.
 “The general death-rate in these tenements (one room) in Glasgow is nearly twice that of the whole city, and the death-rate from pulmonary tuberculosis is 2.4 per thousand in one-roomed tenements, 1.8 in two-roomed tenements, and .7 in all the other houses.

In Finsbury, again, where the population of one-roomed tenements is 14,516, the death-rate per thousand in 1903 was 38.9, yet the rate among occupants of four or more rooms was only 5.6, and for the whole borough 19.6.”

”I should trace much of the anaemia (in Manchester) to the deprivation of sunlight and to the lessening of the vivifying properties of the air.”
“Factory labour is mentioned as a predisposing cause ” (to alcoholism among women of the working-class).”

Describing the life of a boy of fourteen in a textile district, who has probably been bred in unwholesome environment and nourished on unnatural food, Mr. Wilson, H.M. Inspector of Factories, said :—

  “The hours will be long, fifty-five per week, and the atmosphere he breathes very confined, perchance also dusty. Employment of this character, especially if carried on in high temperatures, rarely fosters growth or development; the stunted child elongates slightly in time, but remains very thin, loses colour, the muscles remain small, especially those of the upper limbs, the legs are inclined to become bowed, more particularly if heavy weights have to be habitually carried, the arch of the foot flattens, and the teeth decay rapidly.” 

He continues :

  “The girls exhibit the same shortness of stature, the same miserable development, and they possess the same sallow cheeks and carious teeth. I have also observed that at an age when girls brought up under wholesome conditions usually possess a luxuriant growth of hair, these factory girls have a scanty crop which, when tied back, is simply a wisp or rat’s tail.”

I think, then, that the Socialist is justified in his belief that there exists sufficient evidence to verify his conclusion obtained by deduction from Socialist principles. Man is a creature of his environment, susceptible to its every change. In present day society the multiplicity of wealth which he creates keeps him in poverty, and the conditions of poverty are conditions of an inferior standard of comfort. An inferior standard of comfort engenders an inferior physique. Improve the standard of life of the people and you remove every tendency to deterioration. Such an improved standard of living is prevented only by the maintenance of a class-owned method of wealth production and can be secured by the working-class using its voting power to the end that all the things necessary to the welfare of the people shall be owned and democratically controlled by the people in their own interests.

Under a society in which individual private property is replaced by social property, when each unit of society shall aid in the production of social necessaries, there will be laid the physical conditions which shall ensure a healthy subsistencr under healthy conditions for each man, woman, and child in the community, and by guaranteeing to each a healthy physical organism will present those conditions most necessary for the mental and moral development of the race.

Robert Elrick

* * *

“As a preliminary to any further legislation on the subject of hours of employment, particularly employment of women and children, it is, in the view of the Committee, (on Physical Deterioration), highly desirable that there should be a strictly scientific enquiry into the physiological causation and effects of over-fatigue.” Meanwhile, the women and children are crushed down by over-work!

* * *

“Poor in physique as they all are, and poor in mental capacity and power of application as many of them must be, what becomes of them? Many of them probably marry girls as weak as themselves, and have children, some of whom go to swell the lists of infant mortality, some to join the criminal classes, while others grow up more weak and incompetent than their parents.” —Sir Lauder Brunton, on certain setions of the working-class.

Coventry Cycle Trade: Female Wage-Slaves Oust Males. (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who know Marx’s assertion that improved machinery leads to the employment of an ever lower strata of labour, will read the following from a Capitalist paper of Aug. 31, with interest :

  “More men are out of work in Coventry at present than for many years past, having been displaced by female employees, who have even been set to work upon small capstan lathes and wheel building. The greatly extended use of automatic machinery and the standardisation of patterns has simplified much of the detail of cycle manufacturing, and the prices cf piecework have fallen accordingly. The amount of unskilled male labour in the cycle trade has been reduced to a few hands. The skilled mechanics are now feeling the pinch, many having been out of work all this year.
  “The price-cutting war has made it absolutely necessary to reduce the cost of production.
  “Girl’s average wage is 15s., and as the watch and silk trades have greatly fallen off, girls are plentiful.
  "A local manager says extended female employment gives satisfactory results and will be further developed, there being a number of parts upon which they can be profitably engaged. For male labour the outlook is very gloomy.”

Capitalist Morality and Cheap Labour (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is has been sometimes alleged by ignorant or interested persons that Socialism would promote immorality, and particularly that it would “break up the family !” Certain admissions made by the learned upholders of Capitalism at the recent meeting of the Economic Section of the British Association throw a really brilliant light upon the canting hypocrisy of these contentions. The fact is Capitalism promotes and forces what is termed “immorality” upon large sections of the people, and breaks up the family –even destroying the most natural and common human affections.

Mrs. Bosanquet (author of ”The Strength of the People“) has had the impudence more than once to attack, without comprehending, Socialist science. In the course of a paper read by her at this meeting, she asserted that—

  “The disintegration of family life in town resulted in an alarming increase of unstable families, who quickly lost due sense of home affections and responsibilities, and did not earn so much where families were stable.”

So here is a plain admission from a defender more of capitalistic robbery of the workers, that CAPITALISM destroys the family. How anxious this goody-goody capitalist is to preserve the family! And notice what good capitalist reason she has for it! The sting of this quotation is, scorpion-like, in the tail: stable families earn less than unstable disintegrated families. So the capitalist professes anxiety to preserve the family—in the hope of cheaper labour!

Another speaker asserted that “where family life is preserved, morality is very high.” And he continued :

  “Our infant mortality is now greater than in India and Japan, and the employment of married women in factories is an appreciable cause.”

What a condemnation of the infamous capitalist system. The employment of married women in factories certainly tends to break up the family, and this capitalist advocate admits that it is responsible for the wholesale slaughter of innocent infants. But the labour of married women is cheap, and men, women, and children alike must be sacrificed in order that Capital— “that monster without a heart “—may be satisfied. Only by the Social Revolution can this system be ended. Palliation is impossible and absurd. Leave it to capitalists to cant about morality, which they neither understand nor care for, and to tinker with the effects of their villainous system. It is for the wording-class to organise for its complete overthrow.

H. J. Hawkins.

Seriously pretending (1994)

From the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

For a very serious reason, we would ask you to pretend for a moment. Just allow your invagination to take a short journey from where you are now and look at how your life would change if what you are pretending actually happened.

You are living in a world where money does not exist. When you want something you go to the store and take it. There isn’t someone to tell you what you can take or when you can take it; that decision is yours. And everybody else has the same right to avail themselves of what they need as you — so there are no criminals wanting to rob you.

Of course, all the things that people freely avail themselves of have to be produced. Food has to be grown and processed; things have got to be made and houses and other buildings have to be built; a thorough and efficient health service has to be run as well as emergency and other services. In the world where you are pretending to be there is plenty of work to do.

But because money and all other forms of ration tokens do not exist, millions of jobs that used to use the skills and energies of people no longer exist. There is no need for banks, insurance offices, advertising and promotion services, sales people of all the different sorts, mortgage services, dole clerks, security personnel, judges, lawyers and criminals. The list is a very long one and includes armed forces and all those munition workers, scientists and others employed in the killing industry — as the competition for markets, trade routes and other material interests that cause wars and conflicts would have disappeared. All in all, it would be safe to say that, in the world in which you are pretending to be now, there would be at least three times as many people to do the necessary work as there are in the world you are pretending to have left.

In the pretend world there is no government because there are no conflicting interests and no need for people to be controlled by a coercive state. Instead, there are democratically-elected bodies at local, regional and world level whose function is to organize production and distribution. You may be elected to one of these bodies. If you are you will not receive any special favours — of course, you won’t need to for, like everybody else, the things you need are freely available to you. Those elected to carry on public administration can be recalled by those who elected them and no-one is coerced into fulfilling any task.

In this pretend world, neither you nor any other person will ever endure poverty or insecurity; you will never be homeless or badly housed; you will not die in warfare or civil conflict for the basis of these evils will have been abolished and, since there is no need to steal, crime and offences against the person do not now exist. Automation and new productive processes, instead of creating unemployment, simply make necessary work easier for all and, like the fact that all the wasteful occupations of the old world have been abolished, give more leisure to those who wish to travel in a world where frontiers do not exist or to pursue other work, hobbies or interests.

Back to reality

Let’s stop the pretending there and deal with "reality”! Because reality is a world where everything carries a price tag, where millions die annually of hunger, millions more simply "get by" and only a relatively few people are wealthy or enormously rich, we think of this terrible and frightening reality as the natural order of things, as natural as the seasons.

In fact, we are told that this awful reality reflects our "human nature" and that this nature would not permit us to live in a world such as you were just now pretending to live in. In other words, that because we are human we cannot all have free and equal access to the abundance of everything that it is now possible to produce. On the other hand, despite us being human, we can accept a reality where the members of a minority class can freely avail themselves of their needs from the wealth we produce. It is not too difficult to see why the ruling class, who control our "education" and our social conditioning, tell us that our "nature" would not allow us to cooperate in the sane organization of society.

There exists now the economic potential to create a world where everyone has free access to their needs without wages, money or any other form of rationing. Unfortunately, the political will to establish such a world is absent largely because we have been conditioned to believe that the present capitalist system is, as we have observed, the natural order of things, despite its endemic problems and that there is no alternative to capitalism.

The world we asked you to pretend to be living in at the outset was the world envisaged by the early socialists. Unfortunately, that vision was deliberately corrupted by politicians acting in ignorance or in the interests of the ruling class. Thus, state capitalism, a brutal and anti-democratic form of capitalism operating in so-called communist countries, was claimed to represent the ideas of socialism as were the failed reformist policies of Labour parties.

But socialism has not failed; on the contrary, it has never been tried and the growth of a genuine movement to bring it about has been deliberately frustrated by Establishment lies and misrepresentation. It is because the case for socialism is so overwhelmingly logical that those who oppose it out of narrow self-interest use their wealth, their power and their privilege to distort its meaning and to deny valid arguments about its nature and its feasibility a place on the political agenda. These are interests that have successfully pretended to you that you have to put up with capitalism and its disgusting abuse of humanity because there is no alternative to that system.

Because socialism and democracy are indivisible, the task of the Socialist Party is to build the political means of convincing a majority to opt for Socialism. We do not pretend that it is an easy task but, confronted with capitalist reality, it is an urgent and essential one.

Richard Montague

Go for a million (1994)

Party News from the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationwide, the Socialist Party is putting up four candidates in the European Elections in May and June. This is unprecedented. Not many have heard of us; fewer will know what we stand for.

What we aim for is a practical — and ecologically viable — alternative to the market and the state, a new way of living in which we can all give according to our abilities, and take according to our needs. The means to achieve this must be in harmony with the end itself: democratic, peaceful and without leaders trying to run society on our behalf.

The fact is present-day society cannot be run in the interest of the great majority. It does not matter what government we choose, they must dance to the tune of capitalism. The problems they grapple with are self-evidently endemic to the system itself. They are normal and necessary features of how it operates. Why else are people homeless while, in this country alone, over 600,000 homes remain empty? Why else do people starve in shadows of the global food mountain?

Present-day society is massively wasteful and inherently destructive — not just of our environment and resources but of our hopes and aspirations. It is time to organize for a real alternative. Why not join with us to make this a reality?

The amount in our Election Fund is now £19,084. If you have not yet contributed please send your cheque (made payable to "The Socialist Party of Great Britain") to: Election Fund, The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

Letter: Profound Disequilibrium (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Profound Disequilibrium

Dear Editors.

The article “World Recession Closes in Quickly” (October) makes the undeniable point that "the capitalist economy is in a period of profound disequilibrium". However, I feel that coupling this with the statement that it would get better may suggest to some readers that the Socialist Party holds the mistaken view that equilibrium is the normal state of a healthy capitalism, that is, one of boom.

Traditional bourgeois economic theory leans heavily on the concept that production serves consumption, and that equilibrium is achieved as all factors of production receive their just recompense in the market, which is supposed to regulate technical/organisational decisions necessary for this alleged balance.

Marx’s value theory demonstrates that capitalism's normal state is, in fact, disequilibrium. Quite apart from the anarchy of production, this arises from the fact that on the level of the whole economy capital accumulation can proceed only through the realisation of surplus value by reinvestment in new means of production, capitalists' and workers’ personal consumption being met out of the remainder of surplus value and by wages respectively.

This reinvestment is made by individual businesses under competitive pressure, and in anticipation of a market demand over and above that currently existing. It must bear a favourable relationship to the mass of capital already accumulated if the economy is to expand and they are to stay in business. Whether the rate of profit is maintained, and slump deferred, depends firstly on whether this new investment enables a corresponding increase in surplus value production. But this competitively-compelled investment in new means of production is a permanent feature of disequilibrium normal to capitalism, driving it forward beyond current market bounds and ultimately to a period of over-investment, declining profits and slump. Incidentally. I believe that it is only in this sense that Marx’s contentious reference to crises being ultimately caused by the restricted consumption of the masses can be seen as relevant.

As capitalist production is essentially production of and for capital, it is enabled to proceed only when it can produce enough surplus value to satisfy its accumulation needs, and ceases when it cannot. No equilibrium state is involved.

W. Robertson,

Brighton

Reply:

We didn't really suggest that equilibrium is the normal slate of the capitalist economy, did we?

Editors.

Is this the end of Socialism? (1994)

From the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The demise of national 
state capitalism as a 
credible political
 programme doesn’t affect 
the case for genuine
 socialism.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 the American political thinker Francis Fukuyama proclaimed "the end of history". History, he argued, had now come to an end with the establishment over most of the world of a society based on a free market and liberal democracy. Apparently, this was the goal towards which we humans had been travelling ever since we first came down from the trees.

That a money-grubbing rat race run by businessmen and career politicians was the rational society to which some 19th century philosophers had thought History (with a capital H) was heading was never really a serious proposition. How could a society where some are privileged while others are deprived, and geared to making profits rather than meeting needs, even be considered as a possible rational society?

Deepest slump

Unfortunately for Fukuyama, at about the same time that the Berlin Wall came down the world capitalist economy entered its third, and deepest, slump in the relatively short twenty-year period since the long post-war boom came to an end in the early 1970s. Factories were closed, machinery was scrapped, food was dumped, millions more workers joined the ranks of the unemployed. Not because people’s needs for what these workers could produce had been met. but because the rate of profit had fallen. The supposedly rational market economy had once again created the irrational situation of poverty amidst potential plenty, of idle factories and workers alongside unmet needs even for basics like housing, food and health care.

In Russia the achievement of Fukuyama’s "end of history" has brought about the emergence as a serious contender for political power of a Hitler-type demagogue. As in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s the aggravated failure of the market economy to deliver what it promised has led to people blaming not capitalism but the liberal democracy that Fukuyama sees as its ideal political framework.

Apologists

Fukuyama’s "end of history" claim was an expression of the triumphalism of capitalism's intellectual apologists over what they saw as the defeat of socialism, their main ideological enemy. But it wasn’t. What had been defeated was not real socialism but a version of capitalism in which the state was all-powerful. Totalitarian state capitalism not socialism. Unfortunately, two generations of propaganda, by opponents and supporters alike, has misled many into identifying socialism with the old regime in Russia. As a result there is a widespread popular misconception that the collapse of totalitarian state capitalism in Russia represented the collapse of socialism.

The mistaken idea that socialism had collapsed was reinforced by parties in the West such as the Labour Party abandoning their paper commitment to achieving a state-run economy by democratic and constitutional means rather than the dictatorial ones used in Russia. They gave up proposing this even in theory as an alternative to the market economy and in fact accept the Fukuyama thesis that there is no rational alternative to the market. With the collapse of totalitarian "socialism" in Russia and of democratic ’’socialism" in the West no wonder the ideologists of capitalism felt so self satisfied and triumphalist.

There has indeed been a shift of opinion but the shift has been against the project of a state-run national economy as a solution to the problems created by capitalism. Which, if it had not been perceived as the rejection of socialism, we could wholeheartedly welcome. Since, for us, a state-run economy has never been the goal, has never been what we meant by socialism nor what we have seen as the alternative to capitalism. In fact, far from being an alternative to capitalism it was in our view merely a different, and not particularly desirable, way of running capitalism.

We have always held that socialism could not be established just within the framework of a single state, but only on a world basis. This was not because "socialism in one country" was necessarily a bad aim in itself, but because the development of a world economy under capitalism had made it a practical impossibility. Once capitalism had become an economic system dominating the whole world — as it did in the age of imperialism that culminated in the significantly named first world war — then the only kind of socialism that was possible was a world socialism.

Even within the context of world socialism we did not see a role for states, certainly not as coercive political institutions but not in the economic sphere either. There would indeed be a need for administrative and decision-making bodies at what today is called the national level, but these would not be "states” in the sense of a body exerting coercive political authority over a territory and its inhabitants. They would not be institutions ruling over people with the coercive force to impose their own will, but would be part of the institutional structure that would allow people to participate on an equal basis in the democratic running of their common affairs including the production and distribution of wealth. In short, genuine democratic control would replace rule by states.

The association of a state-run national economy with the idea of socialism has been one of the greatest illusions of the 20th century. Despite the protests of genuine Socialists like ourselves the word socialism came to be used to describe what was a real enough development in the capitalist economy: the increasing role of states in its operation at national level. The correct term for this would have been "state capitalism".

Now further developments within the world capitalist economy (the emergence since the last world war of a global manufacturing system dependent on the world market both for its inputs and its sales) are to a certain extent reversing this trend by limiting the scope for the state direction of the economy, and people are talking about the "end” or the “decline” or the "irrelevance” of socialism.

Genuine Socialism

But this demise of national state capitalism as a credible political programme doesn’t affect the case for genuine socialism. It does not mean that all we are left with, as the way of organizing the production and distribution of goods and services, is private enterprise, free market capitalism. Socialism — real socialism — is still on the agenda and, as a classless community of free and equal men and women cooperating to produce what they need on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s productive resources, has a much better claim to being the rational society the 19th century philosophers hoped would be the goal which human history was moving towards.

Adam Buick

Letters: After Bulger (1994)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

"After Bulger"

Dear Editors,

A lot of what you say nukes sense. However, I’m afraid I disagree strongly with Steve Coleman in his article "After Bulger" (Socialist Standard, January), when he says that the British tabloid press are worse than James Bulger’s killers. As far as I know, the Daily Mirror and Daily Star have never abducted or killed anyone.

Steve Coleman writes "The boys played video games for hours.” Well, so did I when 1 was ten, but I’m not a murderer.

Don’t get me wrong, what you say about the capitalist system is quite true, but I think you’re wrong to try and make excuses for those two bastards. Being "confused and anti-social" is no excuse for murder.

And finally, I don’t understand why, under socialism, you would abolish the police, courts and jails. Surely, that would lead to lawlessness and anarchy?

Ivan Peters, 

Stockport

Reply:

In saying that we cannot endorse punishing those whose foul actions are a direct result of being brought up under this system, we are not making excuses, as if to suggest that it was acceptable for two boys to murder a smaller boy. In fact, our article stated clearly that we refuse either to blame or to excuse.

What we are saying is that these awful kinds of behaviour will inevitably happen in a social system which glorifies violence, gives medals to killers, corrupts the social environment in which young people grow up and denies us the right to be innocent by dragging us at an early age into the sordid priorities of an oppressively anti-social system. Attacking the effects might satisfy the anger which our correspondent is not alone in feeling, but only by eradicating the cause will we prevent it from happening again . . . and again

Police, courts and prisons are products of an oppressive social order which regards punishment as being the only response to wrongdoing. The problem is that the very laws which our correspondent is concerned about are only there to defend property relationships. Abolish property and we will not need laws; we can live co operatively as equals in a lawless society.

What about anti social behaviour which is not property based? In fact, much of that is really property related when it comes down to it: for example, rape is essentially about the right to take for free what is not yours; many murders occur in possessive relationships.

But even in those cases of inexplicable viciousness and sadism, what evidence is there that prisons do anything to cure such behaviour? Surely it would be far better for such people, should they exist in a socialist society, to be given help to understand their anti-social behaviour and to feel remorse for any harm that they caused others. Police and prison screw's don’t help that process.

Rather than put the pictures of these two boys on the front pages of the tabloids and call them names, would it not be more sensible for society to devote its efforts to teaching them to behave co-operatively? Of course, people need to be protected from those who are anti-social, but prisons only make the prisoners more resentful and anti-social.

In a capitalist society punishment is the cheapest response. Only in a socialist society can we not only remove the cause of gratuitously violent behaviour, but deal with the effects of it if it occurs in a way that is humane. 

Editors.

"When I was very young . . ."

Dear Editors,

When I was very young, I overheard the owner of an apple orchard say, "I’m letting them rot on the trees, it doesn't pay to pick them”. The year was 1922. I was bewildered, all those acres of luscious apples . . .

When I reached the age of 16 my father sat me down and tried to explain something that was apparently bothering me. He told me that he worked eight hours a day and only got paid for two hours. Once again 1 was bewildered. I could not understand why people agreed to do such a thing. I was told, of course, that they were not aware of the robbery.

In 1929 there was another event that was puzzling. The stock market crashed. Rich folks lost all their wealth overnight and some solved their problems by jumping out of windows located on the 10th floor.

Today, we read about millions of people dying of starvation because they cannot buy food. The owner of the apple orchard goes broke because he cannot sell his apples, at a profit.

Today there are mini-wars springing up all over the globe. In Russia they have not yet decided who is going to be top dog. It may end up in a civil war ... then there would probably be intervention by other nations?

There are people who have extreme wealth. They own private jets, fabulous homes all over the world and perhaps a large yacht in some secluded cove . . . Other folks are hunkered under an overpass for the night.

The culprit of course is the profit system, capitalism. The reason that it still exists is that folks just don't realize that the solution is Socialism.

Have a nice day. 

H.W.

Fascism

Dear Editors,

May I be allowed to respond to your reply to my letter, published in the December issue, on the subject of the emotional plague of fascism.

Confirmation of your fixation on "Economic Man” is verified (as with your general approach to other matters) by your vulgar interpretation of Marxism that purely socio-economic factors are responsible for fascism.

It is essential to repudiate that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality or of any ethnic or political group and to strongly deny that it as an exclusively socio-economic foundation. But to understand that fascism is the expression of the irrational character structure of the average human being whose primary biological needs and impulses have been suppressed for thousands of years.

The social function of this suppression and the crucial role played in it by the authoritarian family and the church should be carefully analysed. Every form of organised mysticism, including fascism, relies on the unsatisfied orgastic longing of the masses.

The human character structure that creates organised fascist movements exists, dominating our present social conflicts. "Fascism" is not a political party but a specific concept of life and attitude towards man, love and work. Who has not met the black, Jewish, Indian or Oriental fascist and racist? Who has not met the materially comfortable and financially secure racist? Or the “red fascist"?

Who docs not remember the scenes of the 1930s of countless millions of workers overwhelmed with fanatical zeal with racist and fascist madness?

Who can ignore the mindless adoration of Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin?

Once again we are witnessing that fast growing onslaught of the "fascist" emotional plague — worldwide.

The previously mentioned work by Dr Wilhelm Reich of The Mass Psychology of Fascism will help to reinforce the facing of the tasks, to combat these dangers, for today’s Marxists. We must all understand the emotional plague.

Lionel Rich, 

London NW6

Reply:

You keep saying we are "vulgar Marxists" and partisans of "economic man”, but what about our articles that take into account Marx’s theory of alienation (see previous reply and last month’s article)? 

Editors

Abortion

Dear Editors,

Unlike Ali Browning (Letters, December), I don’t think that abortion and contraception are completely separate issues. How about the IUD which prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the wall of the uterus? What about the ‘morning after"pill? Are these contraceptives or early forms of abortion, or both?

Also, for the women facing an unwanted pregnancy, when contraception has failed, or simply wasn’t used, abortion is one important option.

Ideally, there would not be any unwanted pregnancies, but there are, and I think that there will be, even in a Socialist world, with all the best sex education, access to contraception etc.

In the case of an unwanted pregnancy (distinct from "unplanned"), the woman should take into account the wishes of her partner and the advice of her doctors, but in the end the woman herself should have the final say. Not priests, doctors, nor even her partner should have more rights over her than she has herself.

As medical technology gets more and more sophisticated, and younger and smaller babies can be saved, are we to say that abortion should only be performed earlier and earlier in the foetus’s development?

I think that abortion should be performed ‘as early as possible and as late as necessary". I believe, as most Socialists do, that people should have a choice whether they want children or not. Thus I condemn the system in China, which limits family-size to one child and tries to force women expecting a second child to have an abortion, as much as I condemn LIFE and SPUC for trying to prevent women from having an abortion.

Perhaps it is best summed by by saying that I believe in choice. For Socialists still pondering the rights and wrongs of abortion, I found The Socialist Feminist by Janet Richards very helpful.

Veronica Clanchy, 

Poole

Between the Lines: A Question of Thought (1994)

The Between the Lines Column from the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Question of Thought

1994 brought the news that the BBC has decided on a replacement for Peter Sissons as host of its flagship current affairs programme Question Time. The job has gone to David Dimbleby, the BBC's Election Night host and brother of Jonathan, chair of Radio 4’s Any Questions'? There’s nothing like keeping it in the family.

Though Sissons finished his stint on Question Time in a more assured style than when he started, he proved to be a rather tetchy host at times, bringing all the elan one would expect of a dour newsreader. He was certainly different from Sir Robin Day, though not necessarily better. Day himself was a generally rude and bad-tempered chairman who was saved on TV by his many idiosyncracies which made him appear to be more interesting than the politicians, something that shouldn’t have been too difficult. Sissons had little such advantage and tended to blend into the set rather than create his own distinctive style of chairmanship. Dimbleby could go the same way, though his previous experience of the format and his performances on Election Nights suggest he won’t.

The real key — as with Dimbleby’s producers — will be not just how he treats the politicians, but how he interacts with the audience. If the mood took them both Day and Sissons could stop the audience from questioning the politicians and their motives too closely, as some Socialist Party members found out. "Yes, that’s enough of that . . . now to the lady in the blue rinse" was not an uncommon reaction, particularly when dangerous words like capitalism and socialism were mentioned.

Intimidating a TV audience is not difficult for an experienced host, and as Ben Elton would say, it’s not big or clever. Day and Sissons both seemed far too satisfied to be up on the big table with the assorted "statesmen" to be seen to give the underlings much of a say. At times, the audience participation in Question Time has been reduced to the level where members of the public are invited not so much to think for themselves but simply to agree with the pronouncements of the various politicians: yea or nay. Conversely, the best editions of the programme have been those occasions when the studio audience has been able to get on the back of a particular politician and then pepper him or her with focused comments, questions and suggestions that the chair has been powerless to stop.

A Licence to Kill 

Sadly, the candidate for the Question Time post who would have proved the most interesting of all didn’t get the job — namely Jeremy Paxman, from BBC2’s Newsnight. Paxman is foremost among the rottweiler school of political interviewing, and his "yes, but isn’t that just complete bollocks" line of questioning has brought him a certain degree of admiration from those who consider themselves "anti-system" and a fair amount of disdain from those who are very much a part of it. With Paxman, politicians get away with relatively little. The big question mark would be over whether he could restrain his aggressive style with an audience. Paxman can sometimes resort to sneering, and that would be no use at all on a programme like Question Time. Indeed, it has been noticeable that when Newsnight has involved an audience panel the laid-back Francine Stock or Peter Snow usually make a better job of it than Paxman. who seems less effective when unable to directly bait politicians.

For whatever reason, viewers of Question Time are stuck with Dimbleby, but never fear, socialists can point him in the right direction. For one thing that would definitely improve the programme would be the actual presence of socialists. Given the BBC’s past record, a socialist member of the panel might be too much to hope for (though we note that the confusion-mongers of the SWP have had members on more than once). So "Between the Lines" recommends that readers of this column write in to the BBC for tickets to the new series of Question Time so as to make the genuine Socialist case heard on TV. You never know, we might at the same time be able to help turn Question Time from being a forum for posturing and prattle into a Programme for public information.

Dave Perrin

A Look Round. (1904)

From the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

The article upon the "Futility of Reform," which occupied the leader columns of our last issue, has not met with the complete approval of all our readers, and several have expressed their disagreement with our contention that the capitalist class will introduce reforms when the exigencies of commercialism demand them. But we would recommend our critics to read the correspondence which has passed between Kenric B. Murray, writing on behalf of the manufacturers' section of the London Chamber of Commerce, and the Board of Education. If a word to the wise is sufficient, then those who possess the necessary wisdom will appreciate the position of The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

* * *

In his letter Mr. Murray states that the manufacturers have passed the following resolution :—

  "That, in order to retain our industrial position and to introduce into this country such further industries as may be profitably developed, this section is of opinion that it is absolutely necessary to raise the standard, and, if possible, cheapen the cost of technical and higher technical education, and that representations be made to the Board of Education in this sense."

Note, that the object in view is the "profitable" development of industries, not the education of workers for education's sake.

The letter further illustrates two points—the readiness when "profitable" to the capitalist class to invoke the aid of the State in industrial matters and the admission that British manufacturers have lost ground in the struggle for the World's Market, not simply because of fiscal conditions but because

  "up to the present time manufacturers in this country have not in many cases sufficiently realised that there is a scientific aspect to every branch of manufacture requiring study and attention in order to attain the highest results."

If for "highest results" is substituted "greatest profits," one can easily understand why

  "manufacturers, therefore, would welcome the support of the Board of Education and of the existing institutions engaged in teaching work in developing this valuable branch of education on lines which will place British manufacturers and their employees on an equality with their foreign competitors."

* * *

In the reply of the Board of Education present day capitalist methods are condemned :— 

  "The Board recognise the great advantage accruing from the concentration of interest, which is possible only when the student is in a position to make study his single aim —to devote his whole time to education."

It is of course possible that the student could do this under capitalism, but very improbable, except for the privileged few. Under Socialism it will be the rule.

* * *

Conferences may come and conferences may go, but the unemployed stay on for ever—as long as competition prevails. It was not to be expected that Mr. Walter Long, who draws £40 a week as salary for the services he is supposed to render the people, with the right to claim a pension when he loses his job, would consider that things were sufficiently serious to demand serious measures. The hardy annuals of relief works, afforestation, emigration, labour bureaux, "back to the land" via small holdings, and the like are being discussed. One of our correspondents somewhat sarcastically writes :— 

  "If the unemployed want to get 'back to the land' here are acres and acres out of cultivation needing their labour—only the owner may object. From where I sit I look over a large farm and see nothing but grass fields, and poor ones at that. In the foreground is a cottage where, if the inhabitants wish to descend to the kitchen, they can drop through the holes in the ceiling, and so save the wear and tear of a staircase ! Yet the man ought to be contented. In a very good week he sometimes get 17s. ! Certainly often in winter he gets nothing, but he can save during the prosperity of summer ! Besides, he has only seven children, and two of these (boys of 14 and 16) leave home at 5 a.m. and return at about 8 p.m., and get 4s. and 6s. a week. He ought to be a drunkard, but instead of that he is a teetotaller and very industrious, working hard all day, and at night returning to slave in his bit of garden which supports them occasionally in nothing-a-week times. He's going to be kicked out soon, and there's no house for him to go to, save a model dwelling at 6s. a week, his average wage being 12s. And then he'll lose his garden, too, but no compensation for him. Oh ! the joys of a country life ! Come back, ray friends, to the land !"

* * *

When we go back it must be upon a basis not yet thought of by those who pose as "Social Reformers." Not to ''labour at a loss for the profit of a boss" but to produce for ourselves the things which we need. "Advanced" politicians like Mr. George Lansbury (who left the Radicals to join the Social Democratic Federation), W. Crooks, and others have sent to the Press a "Note of Warning," in which they urge that whatever work is provided by municipalities for the unemployed it should not

'' release workers from the stimulus of having to satisfy an employer." 

Send your victims to labour colonies, place over them some well-hardened taskmasters, credit them with 6d. per day, give them plenty of sermons and prayers, and all will be well.

* * *

The editor of Reynolds's Newspaper, who has for some months patted the S.D.F. on the back, because it has suited his purposes to do so, writes the following respecting that body's "demand" for an autumn session:

  "It is equally comical to hear suggestions about an autumn session of Parliament to consider the question coming, too, from Socialist organisations, who are always saying that Parliament is 'no good.' Such amateurish fooling makes one despair."

* * *

The annual report of the Asylums' Committee of the London County Council for the year ending 31st March last has just been issued and shews that there are 23,948 certified lunatics in London alone, an increase of 996 over last year. This is the largest annual increase ever recorded and, according to the report, the prospect of any diminution in the increase appears to be most problematical. The average weekly cost of each patient in London County Asylums is 11s. 4½d. If as much as that were spent each week in maintaining those out of asylums there would be less need to celebrate our "progress" periodically by providing further accommodation for our lunatics.

* * *

There exists in Holland a Union of Socialist Teachers, founded ten years ago. Its program

states:—

  "That the popular school, called into existence by the possessing class under the cry 'cultivation of the people by teaching the people,' has proved to be in their hands only the means of doling out to the children of the people that minimum of knowledge which has become necessary to supply the capitalist want of more or less educated labourers, besides being the means of impressing upon them so-called Christian and social virtues, which, in reality, are nothing but notions conducive to the maintenance of capitalism; that the non-possessing class, too, being insufficiently taught themselves, deprived of all influence on school education and therefore not inspired with genuine interest in it, see in the popular school only the way that enables their children to earn their bread afterwards ; that, moreover—partly in consequence of the causes given above all education which rises above the level of what capitalism demands, is doomed to sterility for the young proletarian because of the bad conditions."

That this is just as true of Britain as of Holland, or, for that matter, of every other country, is only another proof of the international character of the social problem. As the principles of the Union declare :

  "The social vocation of the popular school is to educate the growing generation in such a way as to develope body and mind harmoniously," but ''only the political and economic emancipation of the people will fully secure the emancipation of the mind." 

Those who really desire that economic emancipation must enrol in the Army of International Socialism, the British Section of which is The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

J. Kay

An Open Letter to Mr. George Lansbury (1904)

From the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir,

On Sept. 13th last at Toynbee Hall you delivered an address on the question of the unemployed. At the conclusion of your address I expressed my opposition to the proposals suggested by you, but the time at my disposal was not sufficient to enable me to fully demonstrate that not only were your suggestions worthless but that the policy advocated would ultimately result in effects disastrous from the point of view of the organisation of the working-class.

The whole tone of your address was pessimistic. You commented on the ignorance, apathy, and indifference of the working-class. You even went so far as to express a feeling of being tired of talking to them, attending conferences to discuss questions, while at the same time the people outside those conferences gave no thought to their own condition. Unfortunately, a good many others by adopting the process of reasoning employed by you have also been made tired, and the wonder is that more have not grown weary and fallen by the wayside, taking into consideration the fact that the working-class has never been taught to act consistently and logically in the political field in accordance with their industrial and social position in society.

I have not space enough to enter into all the inconsistencies and contradictions to which you gave utterance on that occasion; but certainly some of your observations if pursued to their logical conclusion, would place you in a position far different from that which you occupy at the present time. For instance, you stated in relation to the problem of working-class unemployment, that if anything is to be done only the workers themselves can do it. Assuming you mean that whatever action they take should be political, I cannot but agree with you. Where, however, you did not express yourself clearly, and where we differ is that any effort, either for the immediate alleviation of suffering and distress arising out of the present constitution of society, or in the direction of the total abolition of these evils, must be the conscious action of those who are suffering, viz., the working-class.

Posing as a Socialist as you do, you are of necessity forced to fall back on the Marxian explanation of the cause of unemployment. This you substantially did by showing that the application of science to production, the invention, development and speeding up of machinery, used for the sole purpose of creating profits for the possessing class, must inevitably result in the displacement of hand labour and the throwing on the labour market of increasing numbers of unemployed workers. You further pointed out that the evil of unemployment, arising as a consequence of this process, is growing to such an extent that thousands of workmen are forced to eke a precarious existence by either cadging or living on their friends, a condition in which they lose their manhood and drift into mental and moral degeneracy. In all this I am in agreement with you, and could, if space permitted, go further into this aspect of the Social question; but, Sir, what I wish to call your attention to is the fundamental constitution of society itself, and to indicate how all efforts at changing the effects of a system must be abortive as long as the system itself remains unaltered.

Throughout civilisation to-day, notwithstanding national and political differences, the basis of the social system in every country be it a republic or a limited or unlimited monarchy, is the ownership by a class of the means whereby the people live. As long as class ownership exists the people will be confronted not only with the unemployed problem but with the thousand-and-one evils that afflict the social existence of the working-class at the present time.

While the workers possess nothing but their physical and mental energy ; while that energy is bought and sold in the Labour Market, subject to laws which dominate alike the capitalist and the worker; while the operation of these laws involves a continual decline in wages, the price of labour power, so long will the working-class suffer from poverty accentuated at intervals by sickness and unemployment.

The Capitalist form of society, that is, Capitalism, does and can only exist to the detriment, degradation, and demoralisation of the working-class. The capitalist-class has its representatives in the Government, local and national, and uses the legislative and administrative boards as pliant tools for the protection and promotion of its class interests, for the maintenance and extension of class domination, and for the further robbery and enslavement of the working-class. If, then, this is the economic function and political role of the capitalist class, what have the workers to expect from the present-day rulers of society ?

You, Sir, and those who think with you, in directing the attention of the working-class to the political representatives of the master-class for relief from the misery which is crushing them, in holding out to them the prospect or possibility of amelioration through the good grace of the ruling faction, are incurring a serious responsibility. Promising the working-class something that must inevitably fail is the fruitful source of that apathy and indifference in which the workers are sunk to-day ; telling the workers they have gained victory when it is only a victory for the capitalist-class, entrenches the ignorance of which you complain; and calling upon the capitalist governments to undermine their own position, which must be the case if any measure of material value to the working-class is put into operation, creates that pessimism in the minds of the workers that you so much deplore.

Now, Sir, The Socialist Party, of which by the the way you are not a member although calling yourself a Socialist, exists to teach the workers their true position in society, and to create the political weapon whereby alone that position can be altered. The mission of The Socialist Party is to show the workers that Capitalism lives on their wretchedness and prostitution, and that, if their emancipation is to be accomplished, they must adopt a political attitude necessarily hostile to all other political parties. Outside The Socialist Party, the Party of unqualified Socialism, the Party of the Working-Class, all other political parties uphold and safeguard the interests of the capitalist-class and the continuance of the wage system which is responsible for not only the unemployed but the other evils that afflict society. The Socialist Party is the political expression of the material interests of the working-class for whom there can be only one policy and one programme, that is the control through public ownership of the tools and machinery for producing the necessaries and comforts of life, to be achieved by the political action of the working-class, cognisant of of the causes of its suffering and wretchedness and conscious of its material interest and historic mission.

The time is fast approaching when the working-class of Great Britain will recognise the value of the political machine as an instrument of offence and defence in class warfare, and when that time arrives the working-class will use that weapon conscious of its power and conscious of its use. The working-class will no longer be humbugged as The Socialist Party is spreading the enlightenment which will dispel the confusion existing in the minds of the workers, and its fearless advocacy of the cause of the disinherited will succeed in stimulating the intelligence and arousing the enthusiasm cf these who are apathetic and indifferent to-day. Any other policy, that, for instance, pursued by you, can have only one result, the division of the working-class into two sections, one of which,, like yourself, saturated with pessimism, is driven into the camp of Liberal reaction, and the other possessing only an inkling of the truth, gravitates in the direction of anarchism, a result in either case disastrous to the organisation of the working-class.

In conclusion, Sir, let me say that I give you credit for being honest, an opinion which I would hesitate to express regarding most men known as "Labour Leaders." But honesty without correct thinking, is of no use to the working-class, and if you can see no policy other than that which you are advocating at the present time, I say in all sincerity, lay down your arms, and acknowledge defeat, for in my humble opinion you will be doing more by remaining silent than by carrying on the conflicting and confusing propaganda your discourse of 13th September.

I am, Sir, 

William Woodhouse

East London.

Since writing the above I have seen the report of the conference held with Mr. Walter Long from which, as might be anticipated, it does not appear that the promise held out by the President of the Local Government Board is very encouraging to you and those who went with you. I see that Will Crooks, who in the House of Commons advocated reafforestation and reclamation of waste coast line to teach the unemployed a sort of agriculture and to fit them for subsequent deportation to Canada, could only express his gratitude to his capitalist masters by moving a vote of thanks to Mr. Walter Long for condescending to come and confer with the public bodies represented at the meeting. What occurred at this conference will occur at any others that take place, and the only result will be that you and others will get tired of attending them. "Hope deferred maketh the heart sick"

 —W. W.