The “Welfare" State (1965)

From the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is sometimes claimed that the case for socialism is now no longer relevant as capitalism has managed to reform itself through such means as universal education and factory and welfare legislation. The underlying assumption behind such claims is that socialists hold that under capitalism the owning class can only be a bunch of rapacious and selfish despots holding sway over a wretched mass of labourers who live in utter destitution amid filth and squalor. This was something like the position in the period between the rapid growth of capitalism in Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century and the time when the governing classes—then landlord and capitalist got round to tackling the situation in the interests of the further development of capitalism.

The socialist analysis of the so-called Welfare State goes back to the pioneer of scientific socialism,. Karl Marx himself. Capital appeared in 1867. By that time the institutions of the Welfare State were not very advanced. In Victorian Origins of the British Welfare State D. Roberts describes their growth in the period 1833-1854. The Parliament elected after the passing of the first Reform Act of 1832 had to deal with the various social problems which the Industrial Revolution had aggravated: growing rural pauperism, the sad state of education, the utter squalor of prisons and the working class areas of towns, the employment of women and children for long hours in the factories and mines. During this period government inspectors were appointed for factories, schools, health, prisons, mines and railways; the Poor Law and church systems were reorganised. The first Factory Act was passed in 1812; state aid to education was also first given in 1833; the first Mines Act was in 1842; the Public Health Act was passed in 1848 and housing was first regulated by an Act of 1851. By the 1850’s the governing classes had overcome their prejudices against State intervention for social reform.

Social reform came to be accepted as a necessity as conditions changed. This then was the extent of the Welfare State during the period of capitalism about which Marx wrote. Besides the employment of women and children and besides the filth and squalor in which the working class then existed Marx also described, as he says in his preface, “the history, the details and the results of English factory legislation.” Drawing an analogy with soil preservation Marx pointed out that the various Factory Acts “curb the passion for a limitless draining of labour power, by forcibly limiting the working day by state regulations, made by a state that is ruled by capitalist and landlord.” His conclusion could not be clearer: factory legislation, he wrote, was “just as much the necessary product of modern industry as cotton-yarn, self-actors and the electric telegraph.”

From about 1870 onwards the various social reforms were consolidated in a number of measures: the Education Act of 1870, the Public Health Act of 1875, the Artisans' Dwelling Act of 1875, the Mining Act of 1877 and the Factory Act of 1878. In this period also the law on trade unions was reformed. A Workmen’s Compensation Act was passed in 1897. Old Age pensions were first paid in 1909 and the National Insurance Act of 1911 introduced unemployment and sickness insurance for the first time. It was during this period that the SPGB was formed and the back-numbers of this journal contain a very useful analysis of these schemes. The issue for May 1914 explained their character very clearly:

Collective capital is expended through Government departments, with the object of placing at the disposal of individual capitalists an improved commodity on the labour market—workers whose labour will bear richer fruit in the shape of surplus value.

By this time reforms of all sorts were passed by every government whatever its political complexion. The government had now assumed the task of seeing that institutional and administrative arrangements kept pace with industrial changes. In 1925 the pensions scheme was made contributory. A number of Acts—Addison, Chamberlain, Wheatley—were passed granting housing subsidies and allowing slum clearances in the period between the wars. Poor Law assistance was however still administered locally. In 1942 appeared the famous Beveridge Report, Beveridge examined the various welfare services and advocated many changes in the interests of efficiency. The proposal which received the most publicity was that for a national minimum income below which no one should fall, i.e., the transfer of poor relief to the central government. In a pamphlet issued at the time, Beveridge Re-Organizes Poverty, the SPGB pointed out that the Beveridge proposals

will level the workers' position as a whole, reducing the more favourably placed to a lower level and putting the worst placed on a less evil level. This is not a “new world” of hope, but a re-distribution of misery.

After the war many of Beveridge’s proposals were implemented: a National Assistance Board was set up to ameliorate destitution and the chaotic hospital system was co-ordinated into the National Health Service. The much-vaunted Welfare State was complete.

Modern capitalism demands that the State spend capital on maintaining and improving the wealth—and profit—producing capacities of the working class. The NHS, the State education system and even the NAB are State capitalist organisations which work with labour power as their raw material. Although expenditure on such services is an economic necessity under modem capitalism it is not suggested that the relationship between the economy and the Welfare State is direct and mechanical. As a matter of history the present structure of the welfare services is the product of political struggles of varying intensity for over a hundred years. A great deal of idealism and devotion as well as a great deal of calculated self-interest has gone into all the campaign for education, factory and welfare measures under capitalism.

And indeed some aspects of the health and physical environment of the working class have improved considerably: infant mortality has been cut, some killer diseases eradicated, housing and factory conditions bettered. On the other hand, as well as putting more into the worker, capitalism has demanded more out of him more intense work as well as the faster pace of life generally. Aneurin Bevan used to refer to the NHS as “pure socialism” as it gave people free access to medical treatment. However there is nothing to be gained from seeing welfare services as something which they are not. They do not give the worker something for nothing. They are not free handouts.

Reforms—social, economic and political—are necessary all the time to keep the capitalist system running smoothly. They do not represent a challenge to the system or a concession from the system, rather are they demanded by the system. All such reforms, in education and welfare, have left the working class propertyless and non-owners of the means of production. They do not challenge the basis of the capitalist system which is this non-ownership of the means of production by the working class. Poverty is the negation of ownership. Thus the working class still live in poverty.

Today, proposals for the reform of the welfare services are once again being mooted. Douglas Houghton, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the present government, has been given the responsibility of reforming these services. Like Beveridge he has the task of reorganising poverty, that is, of seeing that expenditure on the welfare services is spent as effectively as possible from the point of view of the productive efficiency of the working class: no one must get too much and no one must get too little. He also has the task of working out more efficient ways of dealing with those whose labour power is either worn out or of such low quality as to be useless : those who used to be called the “aged poor" and others who live in destitution pure and simple.

The working class should not be interested in reorganising poverty. Their aim should be to end the present degrading status of those who work. Under capitalism the producers are treated as mere productive instruments. This is a necessary consequence of the ownership of the means of life by a minority, which means that the producers are propertyless, owning nothing but labour power. Only under socialism where all will have free access to the means of life will people be able to live and treat each other as human beings.

Adam Buick

Capitalism and work (1965)

From the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under Socialism the entire means and techniques that humanity has developed for producing wealth will become the common property of the whole community. The whole of Humanity’s heritage as a tool making innovator handed down from flint stone axe to electronic cybernetics will be unreservedly taken over by the whole community for the satisfaction of its material needs. This condition by itself pre-supposes democratic control and social equality within all aspects of world-wide production. Socialism will reconcile the harvesting of what the community needs with the assertion of individuality through work. Thus people will not perform work by selling their labour on the labour market for a wage or salary. Work will be the means by which people will express within the community. Socialism means co-operation, with the individual determining their contribution to society through all their diverse skills and aptitudes.

No proposition is more likely to inflame the prejudices of defenders of the wage labour system than the demand for “… a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common.” These prejudices take the form of a variety of objections frequently voiced at Socialist public meetings. Part of this prejudice is that people by their nature are lazy and have a natural repugnance for work. That production is only ever possible at all when people are forced to engage in work activity by bringing pressures to bear on them. The defenders of commercial interests and the indignities of wage labour claim that people will only work under the inducement of money incentives and when laziness is penalised by the worker being cut off from a livelihood.

It is often argued that people’s “natural laziness” rules out as impracticable any revolutionary demand for a society free from commercialism, the profit motive, class divided society, and the social coercions of wage labour. This objection is a hollow prejudice that seeks to impose a quite false and perverted limitation on humanity’s social possibilities. In order to explain the prejudice itself and why, within Capitalist society, work itself is brought into disrepute, it is necessary to place the whole question of work within modern society into its true social perspective.

The framework within which work is performed in Capitalist society is comprised of the fact that wealth is produced and distributed through the buying and selling of commodities. A small section of the population monopolise and control the means of production, the factories, mines, transport etc., and this monopoly of the means of life is used by them to extract a commercial profit from social production. From this economic basis two inescapable facts of every day life emerge. Firstly, the work performed by any category of worker, whether they be labourer, technician or professional, enhances the privileged position of a social minority; the profit that accrues to this minority class takes precedence over general community needs. Secondly, the only access to a living open to any category of worker who contributes through his or her work to production and distribution is by selling his or her mental capacities for wages or salary to an employer.

Capitalist production rests upon involving those who contribute to production in subservience and economic exploitation. Exploitation is an inevitable corollary of work in a commercial society. Work in these circumstances cannot be the fulfilment of the workers’ interests through their creative efforts, but its direct opposite, the activity by which their exploited status is maintained. The ends to which their work efforts are directed are alien to their interests as individuals and alien to the interests of the working class as a class. Work under Capitalism means selling labour power in a labour market, but in the conditions of day to day reality it is impossible to abstract the power to work from the personality of the person working. Commercialised labour involves the commercialisation of humanity itself.

Under Socialism the fact that work will be the means whereby individuals will assert themselves within society through creative activity will in itself characterise the nature of social production. The expression of individual talent will not be stultified by the crushing economic factors which operate in present day society, where the object of production is for sale at a profit. The organisation of the labour force under Capitalism is determined by stringent economic factors which are both commercial and military; it is geared to the profit motive and the military defence of the profit motive. From the viewpoint of catering for actual material needs a vast wastage of labour takes place under Capitalism. The functions of Advertising, Insurance, Banking, the Armed Forces, the Armaments Industry are all examples. This is not an organisation of Society’s resources adjusted to human needs but is one adjusted to social ends that are alien to human needs and which would under Socialism become redundant.

Under Capitalism then, work becomes an activity imposed on workers by forces external to themselves. It is the division of labour in the cause of profit that imposes itself on workers and forces them to comply with its requirements. People become the adjuncts of machines, servants of the “belt system”; workers engage in work that is physically and mentally destructive and which involves a life time of personal frustration. Workers under Capitalism must compromise their individuality, must tell lies and perfect a multitude of deceitful techniques. Like someone who sells. eternally cheerful under all circumstances, they must lead double lives, only becoming their true selves during their leisure time. Work in these circumstances cannot be a creative activity that enhances the workers’ personal sense of fulfilment; it is the hall mark of their social inferiority and merely the means of reproducing their subsistence from week to week or month to month. Work is not an end in itself but a distasteful and repugnant means to another economic end.

The division of labour in Capitalist society not only places in the name of work, a burden of economic duty on the working class, but debases work even further through the economic factors that condition it. A system geared to the marketing of commodities is pre-occupied with cheapness and saleability. The skills of carpenters for instance are bent not to the flowering of their talents, but to speed, the saving of time, skimping of material and the inferiority of the product in design and finish. The person who, in their leisure time, does carpentry for a hobby, in an atmosphere that is free from the requirements of speed and cheapness, would not dream of making an inferior joint, whilst knowing that the more elaborate joint, consuming more time, was really necessary. That person would regard such an economy as not only an abuse of the job in hand but an abuse of themselves, a self-inflicted insult to their own skill. The double standard is common in many workers. As units of labour within commodity production they must act as economic categories and accept all the priorities of Capitalist economics, including speed and cheapness. It is only when they are outside money inducements and the economic necessity of reproducing their subsistence that they are able to take pride in performing uncorrupted work. Capitalism degrades work and makes impossible what William Morris called “The expression of man’s joy through his labour”. Marx himself saw work in a Capitalist context in the same light. “… The work is external to the worker, that is not part of his nature, that consequently he does not fulfil himself in his work but denies himself… His work is not voluntary but imposed, forced labour. It is not the satisfaction of a need but only a means for satisfying other needs… Finally, the alienated character of work appears in the fact that it is not his work but work for someone else, that in work he does not belong to himself but to another person.” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.)

To ignore the social context in which work is performed and to raise people’s “natural laziness” as an objection to Socialism is to crown ignorance and prejudice with distorted pessimism. Like any other social phenomenon, the question of work can only be understood in relation to the whole social environment.

Under Socialism work will spring spontaneously from individuals themselves and the contribution that they make through Society, in whatever field they choose, will at once form the basis of social cohesion and at the same time endow their individual personality. The interests of the individual will be in harmony with the interests of the whole community.

Pieter Lawrence

The Passing Show: TV trash (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

TV trash

How often do you wash your hair? How often do you have a bath? If someone (other than perhaps your doctor) asked you those questions, you'd probably tell him to mind his own business. Such matters are considered personal enough not to discuss them generally in public.

However, that’s in the everyday run of affairs. But if there was money in it, you might well swallow your pride and tell the questioner what he wanted to know. And if the exercise were repeated often enough and lucratively enough, it’s possible you would forget you were ever annoyed and would even offer other personal but just as worthless titbits, such as the number of times you blow your nose in a day. I could go further, but I won’t.

Why am I mentioning this? It's just that one Friday evening a few weeks ago, I had the misfortune to sit through one hour of concentrated rubbish put out by I.T.V. under the title Ready, Steady, Go! As far as I could tell, it was a collection of pop groups and “ singers ” bleating, moaning, groaning and grimacing to the accompaniment of twanging guitars and the shouts of hysterical teenagers; Usually they merely mime to a background recording, but this time it was a “live” show, and having seen samples of both now, I’d say the more objectionable by a short head.

With Keith Fordyce as the compere trying hard to sound wildly enthusiastic over the nerve racking extremes of sixty minutes sheer row, and his assistant Cathy McGowan, calling everything “ fab ” and “gear”, the high spot—or punch line if you prefer—came when the Rolling Stones appeared and their Mike Jagger answered puerile questions about his bathing and washing habits. At the end of the programme, such was the frenzy of his audience, that he was saved from being devoured only by the intervention of some strong arm men, no doubt retained for the occasion.

It would be stupid of course to blame television as such for trash like this—just as logical as blaming weapons for the outbreak of war. It would be putting the cart before the horse. Like so many things in this world, T.V. has a vast potential for benefiting mankind, but is twisted and debased to suit the needs of a profit making system of society. And this applies just as much to the staid old B.B.C. as it does to the cruder and brassier I.T.V. So if there is a vast teenage demand for Beatles, Animals, Jerks, Kinks, Pretty Boys and Rolling Stones, then T.V. has to sink to the occasion. No matter if some of the characters look like Rowton House rejects; their records sell, don’t they? In their millions?

Indeed they do, and while that sort of condition obtains, all sorts of people will swallow whatever pride they may once have had, in the frantic race for the fast buck. A survey a few years back pointed out the size of the teenage market, running into hundreds of millions of pounds a year, something which certainly didn’t exist before the war. So no wonder we have manufacturers sitting up and taking notice, making things specially for the “teenage character” and changing the styles at a bewildering speed to maintain the myth of teenage exclusiveness, trying to keep the youngsters sufficiently obsessed with themselves to bolster sales.

Gramophone records are no exception to this rule. Generally the pop recordings are of poor quality, and not intended to last. Teenage restlessness in the demand for “new” numbers and boredom with the old. will be encouraged by the disc companies. It’s good for turnover and sales, but reduces the level of performance to an all time low with each new group or record to appear. Hence the spectacle of Ready, Steady, Go, Jukebox Jury and others.

The tragedy of it all is that teenagers are so unaware of all this. They really do believe that they are “different" from the rest of us and that the current hullabaloo is merely a recognition of this at last. In fact their wage status in society guarantees their “sameness” with everyone else and places similar restrictions upon them. They are being taken for a long and bumpy ride with a rubbish tip at the end of it.

Doctors' dilemma

Not so long ago there was no National Health Service in Britain. You just had to scrape the money together to pay the doctor if you were unfortunate enough to need his services. And of course, a stay in hospital meant hospital bills, although how many workers managed to pay them is another matter.

The family doctor was often held in awe and reverence—a pillar of respectability, financially very comfortable and independent. That was obviously the impression that East End slum dwellers gained, perhaps because the doctor always wore a clean shirt and looked smartly turned out. They did not realise just how great a struggle some medicos had to get by. but the going must have been tough at times, particularly in the depressed areas. A. J. Cronin gives us a glimpse of this in some of his novels.

Well, whatever delusions we may have had about the G.P.’s status before the war, there is certainly no room for them now. Most of his “ independence ” was swept away when the postwar health service was set up, and doctors in general can be seen now for what they are—and always were—working men and women. True, their income on average is still much higher than many other workers, but what of that? There have always been differing grades of training and pay under capitalism and here is an example. Their training is years long and their working hours atrocious. A Guardian article of March 9th for example told of resident hospital doctors often working a hundred hours and more a week.

And just like other workers, the doctors have to battle with their employers (the government) over wages and conditions, which is really what all the rumpus was about a few weeks back. The British Medical Association—the doctors' “trade union"—threatened to withdraw its members from the health service if the government's pay offer was not improved. This was not a strike, it was claimed, although just what other name it could be given was not stated. However, the government seems to have climbed down and granted some at least of the doctors’ demands. For them, however, the lesson of organisation has been a long time in the learning. The assiduously cultivated image of medicine being a calling rather than a job, with its practitioners’ sole aim to serve their patients, will be equally long a-dying; and this presents them with a dilemma.

To retain the all-important public support for their cause, the old picture is of help, but it can act as a double-edged weapon. The government has been quick to realise this and use it to the full in its negotiations with the B.M.A. As so many other workers have found, it is the strike or the very real threat of it, which gets things moving if they can be moved at all. And then bang goes public sympathy.

In the event, the medicos took the only course open to them and risked public hostility. Strikes are a constant feature of capitalist society—they are part of the fight which goes on all the time. And people usually get hurt in a fight, not just the direct participants but onlookers as well. It is one of the regrettable facts of capitalist life. End capitalism and you end the fight—for doctors as well as for the rest of us.

Eddie Critichfield

News in Review: Summerskill speaks (1965)

The News in Review column from the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Summerskill speaks

The indignation of Lady Summerskill was on public view recently when on television she accused the Tate Gallery of pandering to a "pseudo intellectual snobbery” when it paid £60,000 for a painting by Picasso which she claimed was “ quite meaningless.” The money, she claimed, would have been much better spent on a hospital or a new operating theatre.

We don’t doubt that Lady Summerskill sincerely feels that she has lined up her social priorities in the right order, but then choices of this kind don’t really have to be made. There is no reason why either art or hospitals should carry a price tag at all. Her indignation is diminished by the fact that she herself accepts the phoney economic limitations that Capitalism places on the provision of both these necessary facilities.

30 years after

The recent Royal visit to Ethiopia, which was front page news in the British Press for a few days, carried the mind back vividly, exactly 30 years, to the days when Abyssinia filled not only British but world newspapers. This was in 1935, when Italy launched its brutal war of conquest against this strange survival from the ancient world. The news of bombing raids and poison-gas coming over the radio, provided a sickening curtain-raiser for the world-wide tragedy that was to follow.

For a year or more Abyssinia was the centre of passionate political debate, and the subject that dominated all street-corner meetings. It was the rallying point for the “Popular Fronters’’ until the Spanish Civil War pushed it back into the shadows. One can also recall the mass of misinformation, about Abyssinia, that poured from Communist and Fascist platforms alike—from speakers who one suspected, had only just heard of the place. Perhaps the crowning irony was the spectacle of the Emperor Haile Selassie, autocrat, with a system of government that made the late Tzar look like a revolutionary, becoming the idol of the Left and a champion of Liberty.

Can it be only 30 years since these events took place? The face of Africa has changed so rapidly in the last generation, that it is difficult to realise that Abyssinia was once the only independent state left in Africa, after the great European powers had carved up the continent. Mountainous and land locked, nobody particularly wanted it but Italy, desperate for glory to impress its proletariat, and for land to dump its surplus production.

Today Africa is covered with newly independent States, and it is those which are still under European control that make news. Capitalism is advancing, behind the rash of new flags, smashing tribal economics in its path, and producing the pattern of life so familiar to us. Ethiopia, with Italy’s old colony of Eritrea thrown in to give it a sea coast, has emerged as a kind of centre for the Pan-African movement, with Addis Ababa as an African Geneva.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is the fact that the new African leaders, loud in their condemnation of Imperialism, are prepared to accept “ His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Elect of God, and Conquering Lion of Judah,” as one of themselves.

Wilson's chat

It was on the evening of 24th. February last that Mr. Harold Wilson, his silver hair carefully flattened into place, spoke to us all on television.

First, there was the little joke about Madame Tussauds, to prove that the Prime Minister is human. Then the smile, faint though it had been, vanished and Wilson piled into us.

We need, he said, a revolution (how many other politicians have said that, without actually meaning a revolution, nor perhaps even realising the import of the word?) in industrial techniques and national attitudes.

No more of the attitude that “what was good enough for grandfather is good enough for me.” No more “strikes arising from some real or imagined grievance."

No more “arguments about which of two men shall bore a hole in a sheet of metal... when "—and here Mr. Wilson's eye was level, his voice threatening— “waiting in the wings there are automative hole borers whose designers have not programmed them to argue about demarcation disputes."

The Tories watched and studied this broadcast very carefully. If the Prime Minister had said a word out of place, if he had been in the slightest bit “controversial," the Opposition would have claimed the right to reply.

But Mr. Wilson cut the ground from under their feet. The Conservatives could find nothing in his broadcast to argue with. The reason for this is plain.

No employer, no Tory, would disagree with the Wilson strictures on strikes, industrial disputes, —clock watching—even the sideswipe at expense account lunches. Indeed, some of them probably realised that Wilson attacked strikers much more effectively than the tweedy, remote fourteenth Earl could ever hope to.

In fact, Wilson ignored the minor differences between his party and the Conservatives and concentrated upon their grounds of fundamental agreement—upon their united support of the interests of the British capitalist class.

It is true that the broadcast gave the Tories one cause for concern. Wilson assiduously engaged himself that evening in building up the image of himself as what they call a national leader and therefore was, perhaps, winning votes from those workers who like to have a Big Brother at the head of their master class.

This is an apt comment on the standing of the Labour Party today. They have come a long way since the times when they professed to stand for the interests of the working class and in Harold Wilson they have found the man to bring them to the inevitable end of their journey. For now they are openly a national party of British capitalism, trying to boost British technology, British exports, British influence with no more nonsense about the class struggle.

Wilson himself made the point when he went for “ ... men pinching a few minutes here, an hour there ..." The significance of this is that men can only “pinch” time from their employer because they have already sold it to him—because they have sold to him their working ability, measured in minutes and hours.

Into Europe?

Anyone who has his nose to the ground cannot have failed recently to detect a familiar scent.

The British capitalist class is once more showing interest in joining the European Common Market.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home, addressing the Young Conservatives last February, spoke of cementing “an agreement with Europe . . . economic and political and in due course it will cover security..."

Mr. Wilson, while outwardly he cannot so quickly discard his anti-European hat, is showing signs that he is attracted by its opposite. If he decides to wear this particular hat there will be, of course, no heartburning as a result of yet another abandonment of what were once presented as inviolable principles.

Foreign Secretary Mr. Michael Stewart has recently said that Europe should be "... an equal and influential member of the Atlantic partnership."

These friendly noises could mean that the British capitalist class are once more seeking other ways out of their immediate difficulties than national and Commonwealth ones. In this, of course, their hopes are illusory; the Common Market has not solved the economic problems of its members.

If Britain does try again to join Europe, there will follow the old battle between those interests (agriculture, for example) which see their economic fortunes safest in a massive tariff wall against foreign competition and those (motor cars, for example) whose mouths water at the prospect of penetrating the European market on tariff terms equal to the German and French industries.

Then there is the brooding figure of de Gaulle, who has fashioned French policy on the resolve to build a Europe independent, as far as it can be, of American influence, with France as the dominant power. 

This policy has no place, at present, for powerful competition from Britain. Here, once more, will probably be the biggest stumbling block to any British attempt to sign the Rome Treaty.

If Britain should sign, nobody should be deluded about the motives for it. An attempt to join the Common Market will doubtless be heralded by numerous politicians as a step towards human unity and the brotherhood of man.

When we have discarded this frill of lies, we shall see that a revival of interest in Europe is due, as The Economist put it, to ". . . realities, not sentiments . . . powerful pressures . . ."

They might also have added that the realities and the pressures are those of the balance sheet. The British capitalist class will try to get into Europe only if they are convinced that their general interests, in terms of profit making and maintaining, are safer that way.

Whether they are right or wrong in such assessments is beside the point. What is very much to the point, however, is that the people who make the profits, and who are exploited and degraded in the process—the working class—should for once not be misled by the frills and should face the realities.

Malcolm X

According to his autobiography, Malcolm X expected to die violently, but probably most people expected that, if this happened, it would be by the hand of a white man.

The assassination provoked an outburst of hysteria and apprehension—even regret from people who were only recently denouncing the doctrines which Malcolm X had expounded.

The murdered man moved in a world of violence. His mother, he said, was conceived after a white man had raped his grandmother. His father was also murdered, his skull smashed in and his body flung under the wheels of a street car.

It was only after the seemingly inevitable career of crime and drug addiction that Malcolm X became interested in the Black Muslims—an event which, he wrote, gave him “a little feeling of self-respect."

He soon became prominent in the movement, attracting a lot of publicity with his teachings that the Negro should be strong, disciplined and ready to answer violence with violence. A few months ago he came to the Oxford Union to defend his own interpretation of Barry Goldwater's famous remarks on extremism.

It is perhaps surprising that there was not a Malcolm X before. The oppressions and indignities to which the American Negro are subjected are so extreme that it was predictable they should develop their own, counter-extremist, organisation.

If history is any guide, it was also predictable that this organisation should split, and that the struggle between the two factions (the Black Muslims and Malcolm X’s Organisation of Afro-American Unity) should be as bitter and as ruthless as that against their common adversary.

We have seen this before. We have seen it in Cyprus and in Algeria and many, many times before that we saw it in Ireland, in the days when Michael Collins was shot down on the far South road from Skibbereen to Cork.

In many ways, the United Slates today is a cauldron of savagery and hatred. In an ugly situation, the Negroes themselves offer scant hope. The summit of their ambition is in fact to be exploited on equal terms with the white wage slaves who now stand just a little above them on the social scale.

There is no reason to believe that, if the Negroes got the vote, and won full civil fights in the United States, they would use their new opportunities to end the social system which degrades workers of all colours all over the world.

The Negroes are desperate, and in their desperation they have turned to organisations which sometimes are little better than a black Ku-Klux-Klan. They show little interest in the fact that race prejudice is only one part of the monstrous wall of ignorance which shields and supports the oppressive capitalist system.

As long as this continues, there will be small comfort in the American future. The shots which killed Malcolm X signalled that the Negro movement in the United States has served some sort of apprenticeship, and is now ready to go out into the world and shed blood in earnest

SPGB Meetings (1965)

Party News from the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Party News (1965)

Party News from the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manchester area and North West England

Owing to various circumstances, Party organisation and activity in this area has lapsed over the past few years. We now hope to be in a position to review the situation and try and get something going. What we have in mind is a one day Conference in Manchester within the next month or so. to assess our strength and fully discuss what activity can be arranged.

All members of Central Branch will receive a circular in due course. I would however, like all sympathisers and readers of the S.S. who would be interested in Socialist activity to write to me c/o Head Office. Any suggestions of what you have in mind would be very welcome to enable me to prepare a full report.

Cyril May, 

Central Organiser.

Glasgow

Readers of the Socialist Standard in the Drumchapel area can obtain their copies from Menzies, The Main Shopping Centre, Drumchapel.

Socialist Party campaigns (2002)

Party News from the April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

London borough elections

South London Branch will be contesting the Clapham Town ward of Lambeth Borough Council in the local elections on 2 May. Anyone interested in helping out can contact the campaign team via Head Office.

University Challenge 2002

Twenty minutes of effort on your part is all that is needed to help with the Socialist Party’s “University Challenge” 2002 campaign. The campaign is an open invitation to student political groups/societies to hear the world socialist case at one of their meetings. This campaign has been successfully run previously and resulted in a number of very positive discussion meetings, putting the distinctive case for a world of free access in front of interested minds. So this year we want to really try and get as many meetings as possible.

Don’t be put off if you don't want to be a speaker yourself - a local speaker can be found. All we need at the moment is for you to contact your local college or university (via their general telephone enquiries) and get the address for the student association or main society’s body.

The Campaigns Department has produced a range of standard letters to be sent out to different types of interested student groups (Third World First, Labour Students, Greens etc). These can be obtained in Word 6.0 format from gardner__brian@hotmail.com. You can amend the letter for it to be returned to yourself, or to Head Office whichever suits you.

Editorial: The Cry of the Workless. (1905)

Editorial from the April 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the November issue of the Socialist Standard we showed that the unemployed problem could be solved only by the getting rid of the capitalist system of society, and that any attempt to solve this problem within the limits of the prevailing system of industrialism was so much wasted labour.

We offer no apology for again reverting to this question. The whole course of events since our article was written has more than borne out the strength of our contentions, and we are more than ever convinced of the uselessness of trying to combat the economic forces which make for an increase in the number of the unemployed by seeking the assistance of a capitalist government.

Unfortunately for the development of our views on this matter there exists a large number of men who, while admitting the cause of unemployment which we have adduced, viz., the development of machinery and the consequent concentration of capital in fewer hands, yet think that they can secure some amelioration of the life-condition of the workless working-men by trusting to the Government of the time.

With us they are aware that the introduction of more highly specialised machinery is permitting within the factory the liberation of many men formerly employed, and the substitution of women’s labour for men’s labour. Such a result is viewed as highly desirable by the capitalist who constantly scrutinises his wage-bill with the idea of reducing it, but for the worker the result is less desirable. For the latter it means a curtailment of his supply of food and of the other necessaries of life ot himself and his family. His wages being, on the average, limited by the cost of maintaining himself and his family, any stoppage of his wages means a stoppage in his maintenance.

The extent to which the machine has ousted the worker may be ascertained by a glance at the census returns. Comparing the figures of 1891 with those for 1901 we find that there has been a great reduction of those employed in the textile industries at the same time that there has been a great increase in output. In the cotton trade there has been a great reduction both of men and women ; so also in woollen and worsted, linen, silk; while in the lace industry an increase in the number of women has been nearly compensated by a reduction in the number of men employed. Again we must remember that, in the various trades, not only has the number of those employed diminished, but the work of those employed has become more intermittent; out-of-work and short-time workers being on the increase.

These results arise naturally from the conditions of employment to-day. The owners of property are ever on the look-out for means of augmenting their possessions. They employ their capital in industrial operations simply for the purpose of deriving from its use profit or interest. So long as they get their profits increased they care little for the conditions under which the work in their factory, in their mine, or on their railway is carried on. They never seek to know whether those working for them are living happy and contented lives. For them the worker is an abstraction—the materialisation of some portion of their capital in exactly the same way as another portion of their capital shows itself as raw material, as auxiliary material, as factory building, or as finished product. He sees the worker figuring on his periodical balance-sheet as “Wages,” and cares nothing that “Wages” means so many sentient human beings capable of thinking, loving, functioning even as he does.

Why then should he hesitate, when the markets are glutted, when his wages have been transformed into more goods than the market can consume, when goods cannot be sold because hungry men and women have not the wherewithal to buy food, when ill-clad children cannot have clothing provided for them because there is too much in the shops, to turn adrift those he no longer wishes to employ because they are no longer profitable ?

And the result is invariably that, during periods when the markets are teeming with food and clothing, the workers are sent adrift and cannot purchase the things of which they are so sorely in need.

The only solution to this state of affairs is to abolish Capitalism. The whole trend of events is in the direction of Collectivist production and the inquirer into things political and economic can see that the capitalist, having ceased to be useful, is using the whole governmental machinery to safeguard the interests of his class.

The worker must learn that he has to look to himself and his fellows to work out the emancipation of the working-class. Only by combining to capture the political machinery and to use the power thus acquired for the overthrow of Capitalism can he hope to obtain, once and for all, a full and complete solution to the unemployed problem.

What then are we to think of those who admit these facts and yet inveigh against the Government for not dealing with the unemployed ? The fact that the Government, and the class represented by the Government, have everything to gain from the existence of the unemployed ought to have prevented those people from begging for an autumn session to deal with the unemployed. By such an action they lead people to think that the unemployed problem may find its solution by trusting to parliaments composed of members of the middle-class.

This is the charge we make against those who, while pretending to lead, to organise, to direct the unemployed, believe that no solution of the problem is possible within capitalist society. They lead the workers to think that a solution is to be found without the change from Capitalism to Socialism which we have shown to be necessary. They lead them to think that Government, by holding autumn sessions to discuss the question, can take steps towards its solution. They befog the class-issue in which they pretend to believe. Mr. Keir Hardie refuses to raise the issue in the House of Commons because the Government have decided to shelve the matter by including a pious phrase in the King’s Speech.

We can only believe that those who are engaged in this so-called organisation of the unemployed are doing so in order to make political capital out of it. They have no hope or belief that the unemployed workers themselves will prove valuable recruits to their movement but they think that there are others among the employed who will mistake their efforts for the genuine zeal of those who are in earnest, and who will join their party in consequence.

We have no faith in those beliefs. We do not think the efforts for the unemployed are sincere, and we believe the efforts now made will prove as futile to-day as they have always hitherto done. The unemployed will not be converted by them. The employed will not be befooled by them. They will not gain their political capital.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain stands out as the only party which has not tried to make the unemployed believe that they must trust to parties outside themselves. The unemployed—and every worker is every day more likely to fall within that category—must look to themselves and to their fellow-workers for the redress of their ills.

The poverty of their lives, the misery in which they dwell, can only be removed by a steady effort in the direction of proving to them that the unemployed question is but a phase of the social problem, and that the social problem is to be solved by removing the cause of the poverty and the misery, and the degradation of the working-class —the class-ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth.

Workers, employed and unemployed ! Rally round The Socialist Party of Great Britain and make it your party through which the change is to be brought about which shall secure to you and yours the guarantee of health and comfort and plenty.

A Look Round. (1905)

From the April 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

“No doubt,” says a correspondent,” you have readers who are interested in the affairs of Messrs. Kidd, McAllen, Burns, Curran, etc.,but for me they are unimportant.” Well, much depends upon the point of view, and from ours they are very important.

* * *

The Socialist Standard is not issued with the object of providing a livelihood for professional journalists, or to boom certain persons who think, rightly or wrongly, that good will result if, by becoming Councillors or M.P.’s, they can enhance their reputations as “leaders” of the working-class. It would be easier, and doubtless produce better financial results, for the conductors to devote the paper to cycling, theatrical and anti-theological matters, with Socialism as a side-line. But it is the official organ of a militant Socialist Party, not existing to induce folks to believe in Socialism as a “pious opinion” but as a necessary and desirable revolution which they shall organise to accomplish. The Party holds very definite views as to the tactics of the Socialist Army and was founded because these tactics were not being pursued by any existing body.

* * *

In promulgating their views concerning the establishment of the Socialist Republic and the basis of organisation of the Socialist working-class, the members of The Socialist Party of Great Britain are inevitably brought into conflict with other bodies claiming to be Socialist as well as with capitalist politicians. It is necessary to show how not to do it, as well as how to do it. It is claimed that the L.R.C., S.D.F., and I.L.P., are examples of how not to do it, and it is therefore necessary to criticise and to oppose them, quite as much as the orthodox politicians. In this connection, however the aim has always been to be as vigorous and as critical as circumstances demand, but not caustic or abusive.

* * *

A case in point. Class-conscious Socialists must oppose capitalist candidates because the latter stand for Capitalism as against Socialism, for the perpetuation of the class war by the perpetuation of classes, for the interests of the exploiters as against those of the exploited. These reasons should always be stated on the platform and in the press. Yet only last month, at a meeting called to promote the candidature of Major Jameson for South West Ham, Councillor Davis (I.L.P.) moved, and Councillor J. Jones (S.D.F.) seconded an amendment declaring that because Major Jameson had been indifferent to his Parliamentary duties during the present Parliament, and knowing that he was elected for West Clare as an Irish Nationalist and had now changed his politics, he was not a fit and proper person to represent South West Ham. Now the reasons given here might be good ones from the point of view of one set of capitalist politicians opposing another, but they are not Socialist reasons. The policy here pursued was not a “straight” one ; the tactics were those of suppression and confusion.

* * *

It is easy to multiply instances of the contradictory and confusing tactics of the S.D.F. W. C. Steadman is the London Trades Council and Liberal candidate for Central Finsbury, vice-president of the Central Finsbury Liberal Association, president of the Stepney Liberal, Radical, Labour, and Progressive Association, and Progressive member of the L.C.C. for Stepney. At the February meeting of, the London Trades Council, presided over by H. Quelch (editor of Justice) the question of Steadman’s refusal to sign the L.R.C. constitution was raked, and Quelch pointed out that it had been understood all through that Steadman had the support of the L.T.C. His failure to conform to the rules of any other body made no difference to their attitude. They supported him before the L.R.C. was formed. Now, not only the chairman, but the secretary, and also very many of the delegates to the L.T.C. are members of the S.D.F. They are supporting Steadman, although in Justice for May 22nd, 1897, H. Quelch wrote: “The non-Socialist trade-unionist is the type of labour representative which is fashionable in the House of Commons and in other representative assemblies in the kingdom. We had better have none at all. Flunkeys and sycophants, they ape the airs of their masters, while they contemn and misrepresent the class in whose name they claim to speak” ; and in the same paper a fortnight ago Steadman was described as a “Liberal decoy-duck.” Undoubtedly he is, and as such is supported by the S.D.F.

* * *

“Is it true that Lady Warwick has become a Socialist ?” asks a comrade in Bulgaria, on a postcard written in Esperanto. The long reply which has been sent to him in the same language will give him an up-to-date idea of the condition of the Socialist movement in this country. According to her ladyship’s own statement she is now a “proud and convinced member of the S.D.F.,” but it does not follow that she is therefore a Socialist. To a representative of the Daily Chronicle she quoted details of the S.D.F. programme with which she is “wholly in agreement,” but it is not at all necessary to be a Socialist to agree with the items to which she refers. Moreover, she takes exception to the abolition of the monarchy, and it is quite evident that she has still a very great regard for the pomps and vanities connected therewith. To believe in the establishment of the Socialist Republic and object to the abolition of the monarchy is like endeavouring to make the Socialist omelet without breaking the capitalist egg.

* * *

One wonders what is the real significance of the booming of the Countess of Warwick in the capitalist press, especially since the banquet to “Labour” M.P.’s and candidates at which she told of her “little scheme.” “I have been saving up my money” she said “for ever so long, and I have bought a forty h.p. motor car to be at your service. It is to be painted red and some of us are going in it to visit every constituency for which a Labour candidate stands, from John O’Groats to Land’s End. We shall leave no stone unturned, when the great struggle comes, as come it will very soon, to put Labour members into Parliament.” The italics are ours ; so put because of the obvious attempt by “H. W. L.” in Justice to lead us to suppose that this is not the object of the tour.

* * *

Whether she understands Socialism or not, it is apparent that the Countess does not intend to “come out from among” that Society which “either bores or is bored,” “There are few sights more impressive,” says Vanity Fair, “than the entrance of the King and Queen into the House of Lords on the opening day. . . Lady Warwick was in vivid green, with her hair dressed in high Empire curls, which showed above her crown of emeralds and diamonds.” From the same journal we learn that ”the Queen had a great day on Friday. . . The meet was at Melton Mowbray, in the Countess of Wilton’s grounds.” Besides the Countess of Warwick, there were present Dukes and Duchesses, Earls and Countesses, Lords and Ladies, Baronets, and even a Marquess and a Prince. We must confess that the presence of an “avowed Socialist” at such functions as these is distasteful to us because they are outward and visible signs of the domination and degradation of the wealth-creators by the monopolists and their parasites.

* * *

No report of the Countess’s dinner to “labour” candidates appeared in Justice, although the editor himself was present !

* * *

Speaking of motor-cars, what has become of “Tattler’s” crusade against those, “infernal machines invented by the classes for the purpose of maiming and killing the masses” ?

* * *

Some branches of the I.L.P. wish to incorporate the word “Socialist” in its title. London City, diplomatic and probably inspired, wish the N.A.C. to report upon the matter at the 1906 Conference. This is the Royal Commission method. Derby would like the name to be “The Socialist Party.” The Socialist Party of Great Britain would be imitated and ought to feel flattered. With Shakespeare we can say “Who steals my purse steals trash.” As ours is the straight Socialist Party, the man with the bag is not weighed down by its ponderosity. But when it is suggested that the I.L.P. should “annex” our good name, we must protest; although we do not anticipate that the proposal will receive much support. The leaders, at any rate, prefer to keep their Socialism in the background, or to confuse it with references to Christianity and Labourism, or like the S.D.F., to support its enemies. A party must be judged by its actions, and these have proved that the I.L.P. is the enemy of uncompromising Socialism.

* * *

A Walthamstow comrade, who finds it exceedingly interesting and instructive to read back numbers of Justice and compare them with present issues expresses his surprise at the very great change that has taken place. He says that in September, 1894, the leading article declared that the object of the I.L.P., in common with that of other working-class organisations, whether they had accepted collectivist theories or not, was to secure better rations for the wage-slave, but that that was not the object of the S.D.F., which was striving for the abolition of wagedom. Seeing that the energies of the S.D.F. are now devoted to the advocacy of two palliatives, viz., relief works for the unemployed and free meals for the wage-slaves that are to be, he asks what has become of the object of 1894. As we have so often pointed out, the S.D.F. has ceased to be a revolutionary body, and is now a mere reform society, like the I.L.P. and other bodies which it so freely criticises and condemns.

* * *

This comrade calls to mind the condemnation of Tom Mann which appeared in Justice in June, 1896, for allowing a joint committee to delete from his election address the words : “I am a Socialist,” and otherwise modifying and moderating it. He questions the official announcement that the Walthamstow branch of the S.D.F. are running G. Bailey for the District Council, because the Walthamstow Trades and Labour Council are running him with others as pure and simple “Labour” candidates. In support of this he forwards a copy of Bailey’s election address. It is true that on the front page the candidate is described as of the “Navvies’ Union and S.D.F.,” but in much larger type the candidates are referred to on the same page as “the only Labour Candidates selected by the Walthamstow Trades and Labour Council.” The address itself contains no statement of the principles of Socialism and no reference thereto. It speaks of the “need of independent labour representation.” One item of the education section is purely individualistic and the whole of the programme could be subscribed to by any municipal “reformer.” In conclusion it is signed by the candidates for all the wards, and even the letters “S.D.F.” have been omitted from Bailey’s name, who is simply “Secretary, Navvies’ Union.” And our correspondent again refers to Justice of June, 1896, which stated that it was of no consequence at all to get Socialists elected unless they were elected as Socialists. That, of course, was and is the sound position. All that has changed in the policy of the S.D.F. It was because of this change that many of us, convinced that the intransigeant, uncompromising policy is the only sound and honest one, were compelled to resign our many-years’ membership of the S.D.F. “The policy of ‘no compromise’ must necessarily be defeated again and again before it wins. But when it does win it wins unconditionally, and is unhampered by restrictions, arrangements, or intrigues.” That holds good as much to-day as when it was written, in the name of the S.D.F., nearly twelve years ago; and in this country those who, having accepted the principles of Socialism, agree with the policy of “No Compromise,” agree with Wilhelm Liebknecht that “the separation of the Socialists from all other parties, this essential difference which silly opponents take as a reason or pretext for declaring us political outlaws, is our pride and our strength,” should join the only party which is organised upon these lines, The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

J. Kay

Socialists & Capitalist Hospitals. (1905)

From the April 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why “capitalist” hospitals? the non-Socialist will ask. Because the diseases and injuries there treated are caused, almost entirely by the unhealthy conditions of life of the workers, imposed upon them by the capitalist system, or negligence of the employers to provide accident preventing appliances. Because, also, as consistent Socialists have always pointed out, the patients, mostly of the working-class, are used to experiment on for the benefit of the propertied class.

“The hospitals, it should be remembered, are the training schools of the medical profession,” wrote London’s Lord Mayor in 1899, “and for that reason deserve grateful recognition and adequate support.” The treatment meted out to the “subjects” is detailed by a medical practitioner in the Grand Magazine in the course of which he declares that although medical students must learn their business, patients also have rights—but the poorer class of these, especially women, are treated as if they were destitute of human feeling. He asserts that in every hospital recognised by the Medical Council as a place of instruction for students the treatment of the patients is entirely subordinated to the instruction of those students and that it may be said with perfect truth that the girls and young women who attend the public hospitals gain the possible healing of their bodies at the expense of mortal injury to their souls. What, he asks, must be the moral effect on a modest girl who goes to a hospital complaining of some trivial ailment, and is stripped naked to the waist, and subjected to the salacious scrutiny of some dozens of youths who lay hands on her and maul her about to their hearts’ content? It is immaterial whether she complains of or has anything the matter with her chest or not. She, in common with her sisters in misfortune, is utilised as “material” for the instruction of students. At one time he saw 14 young women of ages from 12 to 25, all standing stripped in this manner. One girl, aged 18, told him she had been attending the hospital nearly every fortnight for over three years. Imagine how much modesty would he left in her after exhibiting herself in this fashion for years to many hundreds of students. There was not the slightest hope of cure or improvement, so that this girl was regularly exposed in this manner merely because she was an “interesting case.” Eighteen months ago he was the unwilling witness of an even greater atrocity. A woman was dying of malignant disease of the stomach, and the physician under whose “care” she was was delivering a clinical lecture, taking the unhappy woman as his text. In the course of his remarks he mentioned various ways of ascertaining the extent of the stomach, amongst them the method of inflating it with gas, and then by percussion mapping out its boundaries. A student inquired precisely how it was done, and the physician said he would show him. The patient was thereupon given a solution of bicarbonate of soda, and this dose was immediately followed by one of tartaric acid. The effect on the poor woman was pitiful, as one can readily understand, for the stomach was instantly distended enormously, which would have been extremely painful had it been healthy; how much more so when eaten out with cancer? She was hours recovering from the effect of this unnecessary experiment, and she died the next day. Is it fair, or just, or even reasonable that, in addition to the pain and worry of her disease, a young woman should be compelled to sacrifice her modesty by stripping herself to the gaze and handling of dozens of men? No medical man would dream of treating a private patient in such an unseemly manner. Why, then, should advantage be taken of the poverty of less fortunate women ?

Of course, there is nothing new in all this. Such practices have assisted Socialists in their opposition to attempts to persuade the workers to contribute to hospital funds, or to take part in friendly society, trades union and other like parades, and street collections. Moreover, the voting of subsidies by public bodies has, until recently been strenuously resisted. We know that this attitude is unpopular, because the workers have been bamboozled into believing that the hospitals exist for their benefit, but it is none the less the correct one for the Socialist, who sees in the failure of the capitalist-class to support them, an opportunity for the people to provide, own and control such places in the interest of and for the benefit of all.

In view of recent developments, it would be too much to expect S.D.F. members and other “labour” representatives to support such a vote-spoiling, “inopportune” attitude. On the contrary, they must “use every means” to get and keep seats. We seldom hear of the anti-hospital Sunday demonstrations we knew in the old days. We do occasionally hear of so-called Socialist councillors and other elected persons appearing at dinners organised for the purpose of raising funds for hospitals and learning to use the tooth-pick with the best of them. But it is left to an S.D.F. councillor of West Ham to propose an express speed down-hill policy in this connection by placing the following resolution upon the agenda for a recent meeting of Council. “Councillor Mayday will move: 'That the Council do approach the trustees of the West Ham hospital for the purpose of entering into an arrangement by which upon payment by the Council to the trustees of the annual sum of £1,000 the latter will, from time to time, receive into the hospital such number of sick inhabitants as may be nominated by the Council.'” As we have seen no report of its being discussed or voted upon we presume it has not been reached and stands postponed. Meanwhile the West Ham branch of The Socialist Party of Great Britain have sent a letter of protest to the Council, setting forth their reasons, and we trust their action will prevent public funds being voted to private institutions where the bodies of the working-class are utilized as experimental objects for the benefit of the rich.

W.

Property and Crime. (1905)

From the April 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Nearly our whole criminal code is made up of what may be called property crimes. The jails and penitentiaries of the world are filled to overflowing with men and women who have been charged with committing crimes against property. But where is the property that has been the subject of these dire assaults ? No matter where you turn your eyes in the world, the whole property is in the hands of a chosen few, and the so-called owners of all this wealth—created by the labour of man and the bounty of nature—these so-called owners have committed no crime against property. The statement of the fact is sufficient to show the inequality of the whole system under which the fruits of the earth are kept in the possession of the few.

As a consequence of his desire for life and the means that make it certain and pleasant, man has ever turned his attention to the conquest of nature, reducing vegetable and animal life to his control. But his conquest does not end here. Ever has man enslaved his fellow : he has sought to make his own career upon earth pleasanter and more certain by compelling others to toil for him. In its more primitive stages slavery was enforced by the ownership of the man. In its later and more refined stages it is carried on by the ownership of the things from which man must live. The rulers no longer have the right to buy and sell the man, to send him here and there to suit their will. They simply have the power to dictate the terms upon which he can stand upon the earth. With the mines, the forests, the oil, the harbors, the railroads, and the really valuable productive land in the rulers’ hands, the dominance and power of man over his fellows is absolute and complete.

The rulers make penal codes for the regulation and control of the earth and all the property thereon. Not only do they make these rules for their brief, haughty lives, but they provide that it may pass from hand to hand for ever. The generations now living, or rather those that are dead and gone, fixed the status of unborn millions, and decreed that they shall have no place to live except upon such term as may be dictated by those who then controlled the earth. To retain all the means of life in the hands of the few and compel the many to do service to support these few requires the machinery of the state. It is for this that penal laws are made.

The criminal statutes forbid extortion and swindling, and yet the largest part of business is extortion, and much of the balance is swindling. Real extortion is taking for any service more than it is fairly worth by means of agencies created by the extorter to despoil his victim and this is the business of the business world. . . The law forbids swindling, at least in certain ways, and yet a large part of business consists in making the public believe that they are getting more value for what they give than the tradesman can possibly afford. . . . All our merchants and tradesmen frantically call out their lies in every form, that they may sell their wares for a larger price than they are really worth. And yet to all of this the criminal code has no word to say. The man who can buy the space of a great paper to tell the wondrous qualities of the wares he has to sell is not the sort of man to come within the meshes of the penal code.

Remove dire poverty, as could easily be done with a tithe of what is now spent on force : let organised society meet the individual, not with force, but with helpfulness and love, and the inducement to commit crime could not exist. Let society be the friend not the tyrant, the brother not the jailor, and the feeling will be repaid a thousandfold".

Clarence S. Darrow in “Resist not Evil”

Rural Poverty. (1905)

From the April 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recently published transactions of the Sociological Society in a volume of “Sociological Papers” (Macmillan, 10s. 6d.) contain an interesting addition to the investigations of Booth and Rowntree which should prove useful to the Socialist propagandist. An investigation into the conditions of “Life in an English Agricultural Village,” by Mr. Harold H. Mann, discloses a condition of life among the rural proletariat that is sufficient of itself to condemn the proposals of certain superficial reformers to solve the unemployed problem by sending the unemployed “back to the land.” The 30.1 per cent. of the population of London on or below the “poverty line ” ; the 29.8 per cent. of the population of York at or below the standard of “physical efficiency” ; and the 34.3 per cent. of the population of this typical English agricultural village of Ridgmount in Bedford in a state of “primary poverty,” present a problem that surely merits the attention of everybody, and particularly requires the consideration of the working-class who have to do all the suffering as well as all the work.

The village is a purely agricultural one, and is chosen as being most typical of the surrounding country, and almost all the population are engaged in agricultural pursuits. The Duke of Bedford is the greatest landowner house-owner, and employer in the district. Mr. Mann finds after a careful consideration of the prices of commodities in the village, that the minimum required to maintain an average family of husband, wife and three children, is 18s 4d. per week. “‘Primary Poverty’ is here taken to be that poverty caused by an insufficiency of earnings, even when most economically applied, to provide for physical efficiency. ‘Secondary Poverty’ is here taken to be that due to an uneconomical application of earnings.” Having found the minimum necessary and investigated the actual income of each family in the population, the author submits in a table the results he is driven to, as follows : —

Total population                           407

Total Working-Class Population   390

Total Families                                   127

Total Working-Class families           104

                                                                    Pr.ct. of total Pr.ct. of working-class.

Families in Primary Poverty           40        31.5                    38.5

Population in Primary Poverty 160        34.3                    41.0 

“The conclusion to which we come from a consideration of the figures, after every allowance has been made for subsidiary sources of income, is that no less than 34.3 per cent, of the population of a typical agricultural village in Bedfordshire do not obtain the necessary amount of money to enable them to remain in physical health. This percentage rises to 41.0 when the working-class alone is considered.”

Following this comes another table showing the proportion living within 2s. and 6s. of the minimum, which I will repeat, as follows :—

                                                           Pr. ct. of Wage Earners Pr. ct. of Total Population

Persons below Primary Poverty Line 160               41.0                     34.3

Less than 2s. per wk above line         213               54.6                     45.6

Less than 6s. per wk above line         284               72.8                     60.8

When this 6s. is added to the minimum it is only 24s. 4d. per week for a man, his wife, and three children, and 72.8 per cent, of the workers are below that standard of living.

Following that statement comes an investigation into the causes of Primary poverty under six different heads, and the results are submitted in a comprehensive table, as follows :– –

A detailed consideration is then given of specimen cases under each of the above heads, and if a bald statement of the normal condition is not sufficient, I will quote a few detail cases. Under head No. 2 is a case of “an old couple, the man deaf and quite incapable. The woman works at lace-making and cannot earn much more than about 2d. per day.” The rest of the small income is due to parish relief.

The author explains the absence of unemployment at that period of the year at which the investigation took place : “If these figures had been obtained a month or two earlier (than October, 1903) they would probably have shown a considerable number out of work.”

Another case merits particular notice. “A spinster makes her living entirely by lace-making, and works 10 or 12 hours per day for an income of about 3s. 6d. per week. The guardians refuse poor relief as she is a middle-aged woman ; but heavy work is impossible to her and as her sight is failing it is not likely she will be able to keep up the present close work long.”

The total deficiency works out as follows : —

                                 Secs 1-2  Sec. 4   Secs 5-6 Total

Under 16                       14     13  56           83

16-25                         1       4    7           12

25-55                         7       6   23           36

Over 55 23 4 2 29

Secondary Poverty is necessarily more limited here than in the towns, and the following are the statistics :—

Persons in Secondary Poverty                     33

Families in Secondary Poverty                     10

Percentage of Working Class Population    9.0

Percentage of Total Population                    7.1

No. of Individuals per Family                            3.3

Of the ten families in Secondary poverty, five are given as due to “the drink habit and its associated vices” ; three to bad management at home, which bad management is given as “sometimes through the overwork of the head of the household in getting a living” ; in one case to uncertainty of work; and the remaining one to the wage-earner not working regularly. The total poverty, both Primary and Secondary, is summed up as follows :—

The wage earners not in poverty are classified as follows :—

Total numbers of persons            197

Total number of families                      54

Average size of families                   3.71

Average family earnings       23s. 7½d.

Average rent                             1s. 6½d.

Per cent. of population                   42.1

The author warns you not to forget that every penny earned by every member of the household is here counted, and cases of adult sons earning full money and living at home help to bring the average up. The next table shows that the number of young wage earners living with their parents and helping to swell the family income is an important factor, and their influence in keeping the family above the poverty line can be seen as follows :—

                   

                  Primary Poverty pr.ct.   Secondary Poverty pr.ct.    Not in Poverty pr.ct.

Under 16         51.9                                   30.3                          26.0

16-25                 7.5                                   15.2                          14.2

25-55                22.5                                   39.4                                35.5                        

Over 55                18.1                                   15.2                          23.4

showing that the relative position of the family with regard to the poverty line is largely influenced by the age of the children. So powerful, indeed is this factor of the help supplied by children’s wages, that without it “a vast proportion” of those at present over the line would be below it. Out of the 54 families of the workers over the poverty line only 40 would be above it if only the head of the family were earning wages, i.e., 25.9 per cent, of this group are dependent on the supplementary wage earners.

The trading and upper classes, we are told, are well over the poverty stage. Certainly we must expect that under Capitalism, the non-producers should be rich, and that the wealth-producer, the worker, should be poor !

The average weekly wage for the labourer, according to Mr. Mann’s investigations, is 13s. 7½d., and including extras from allotments, &c., is 14s. 4d. : while if foremen and others are included who earn considerably more than the labourers, the average only rises, including extras, to 14s. 11d., a sum considerably lower than that obtained by Mr. Wilson Fox for the Agricultural Commission.

He concludes with two caustic paragraphs, which I will quote in full:—

“Taking the actual figures obtained, it appears clear that a man earning the average rate of wages and the head of a household, must descend below the Primary poverty line so soon as he has two children, unless he is able to supplement his income by an allotment, by fattening and breeding pigs, or by other means. It is also clear that he will remain below the poverty line until the eldest child leaves school and begins to earn money, and that, even if he has no more than two children, his only chance to save will be in his later life when his children are grown up and are earning money, or have left home. This is the most favourable case : if there are more children the period of poverty is longer, and the chance of saving less. In any case, during life it is a continual round of poverty. During childhood, poverty conditions are almost inevitable. As a boy grows up there are a few years intermission till, as a young man, he has two children; then poverty again till these children grow up ; and finally, at best, a penurious old age, barely lifted above the poverty line.

“I do not wish to draw conclusions in the present paper, but one thing I must say. The cry of ‘back to the land’ has a curious commentary in the results I have obtained. As at present existing, the standard of life on the land is lower than in the cities, the chances of success are less and of poverty are greater, life is less interesting, and the likelihood of the workhouse as the place of residence in old age the greater. It is evident that the cry against the depopulation of the country and the concentration of population in the towns must remain little more than a parrot cry until something is done to raise the standard of life and hence the standard of wages in our purely agricultural districts —to increase the chances of success in life, to make life more interesting, and to bring about a more attractive old age than at present, when, under existing conditions, the workhouse is apt to loom too large on the horizon of the agricultural labourer.”

I must remind the reader that this condition obtains now, when the power of wealth-production is greater than ever before, and that the conditions depicted affect that class that alone produces the wealth and makes the land fruitful. So long as the land and capital remain in the hands of a separate class, whose interests are thereby antagonised to the interests of the wage-worker ; so long as the workers are forced to compete for a wage, the tendency will naturally be for that wage to fall to the lowest subsistence level. Wages, as wages, cannot be raised by any artificial means as the author appears to suggest, and the only remedy for the poverty problem in the country, as in the town, is the restoration of the worker to the land and to the tools necessary to wealth-production, and this will necessitate the abolition of the class-ownership of the means of living and the opening up of a new era for humanity by the establishment of the Socialist Republic.

Dick Kent