Editorial: Russia and the Straits. (1916)

Editorial from the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

That element of comedy which relieves almost every tragic situation, appears at last in the ultra-tragic situation on the Continent. For generations the British policy of preserving the “balance of power” in Europe has led our chivalric masters to adopt an attitude of protection and support toward certain ”small nations,” which wet-nurse attitude has afforded fools and sycophants a splendid opportunity to erect and nurture a theory of British love of “right” and “justice” that has precious little foundation in actual fact. What monumental sacrifice was undertaken in our grandfathers’ time (and at our [the working class] grandfathers’ expense) to argue Russia into a right state of mind concerning the sacredness of Turkish soil, and what farce has since been played, over the reeking graves of butchered “small nations,” to maintain in his pestilential power the “sick man of Europe,” whose rotten carcass happened to bar the way of Russia to the Mediterranean ! And what British blood has deluged the plains of Flanders and the Low Countries to maintain their “inviolable rights” (in fiction) because (in fact) their acquisition meant a disturbance of power, military and commercial, that did not recommend itself to British chivalry !

And now Time, like the corner-men in the Nigger minstrel troupe, supplies the comic relief without which both the “Spanish onion” song and the high tragedy of international politics are insufferable. British policy is on the horns of a dilemma. Cherished traditions come in conflict. The Russians want the Straits of Gallipoli and the Germans want Belgium. It is deucedly awkward, don’t-ye-know, and if that wild scramble to the Peninsular had only succeeded the situation might have been saved. The Turks might have capitulated on terms that would still have left them masters of their fate, guardians of the “holy places,” benefactors of the Armenian and other poor devils who would be so much better off under the rule of the gentle Russian. But the Churchillian “gamble” fell through. The paeans which eulogised the marvellous way in which the British caught hold of the turkey at Gallipoli were outdone by the chants praising the clever way they let it go again, and the attempt to save the “sick man of Europe” from himself and the Russian bear collapsed. And now British chivalry has had to decide between Germany and Russia.

The problem was brought within reach of the minds of British statesmen by one or two existing facts. In the first place, Germany, the enemy of the moment by reason of her superior industrial development, had already gained such ascendency in Turkey as rendered her conquest eventually of the historic sea outlets a foregone conclusion—and better Russia than Germany. On the other hand opportunity was ripe for Russia, who found herself provided with both the excuse and the means to carry out her long-cherished aspirations. She had only to divert her strength to the purpose, leaving the other occupants of the cockpit largely to fight themselves to a standstill, and she would soon have accomplished what her great love for Christianity has impelled her to essay more than once before. The knowledge of these things, no doubt, helped to maintain that united front, that common effort on behalf of international freedon, those bonds woven out of love of honour and justice and the rest ; but that delegates should find it necessary to come from Russia in order to make bargains in the matter of plunder speaks volumes concerning the real nature of those bonds and the difficulty of keeping them intact.

Editorial: Our Forgetful Pressmen. (1916)

Editorial from the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers may remember that in the early days of the war we were moved to hilarity by the attempt of the Press to convince the workers that the Russians were fighting to liberate themselves from the German influence which prevented them from becoming a free and democratic nation. All that savage tyranny which may be symbolised in Siberia and the knout was laid to the door of German influence, and the picture was conjured up of that winged seraph the little white father, and all his attendant fluffy, gurgling cherubims, cheerfully sousing themselves in blood, and actually giving up their booze, in order to shake off the German hand that, prevented them giving their beloved peasants the corner seats in their ingle-nooks and the first pull at the liquor.

We laughed.

This tosh appeared in the columns of the “Daily Chronicle,” in whose pages we now find a sort of sequel in a comment upon the resignation of Mr. Sasonoff, the Russian Foreign Minister. The editor writes (July 25) :

“The past 11 months have seen a steady and uniform weeding out of the Ministry of all Ministers liberal enough to be in sympathy with the not ultra-liberal Duma. Mr. Sasonoff was one of the last two left. Moreover, his resignation has been followed by the accession to the Cabinet of two very noted reactionaries—Mr. Makaroff, well-known for his severity in the course of the repression which followed the Russian revolution, and Mr. Khvostoff, not the ex-Minister of the Interior but a near relative of his with a reactionary record.”

The struggle of the Tsar and his statesmen to free themselves from the German influence seems hopeless, for the more they beat the Teutons on the battle-field the more Germanism beats them in their own Cabinet. It is a very strange world we live in, in spite of our Press prostitutes and our prostitute Press.

Graveyards. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whether we look at the manifestations of the capitalist system of society from a historical standpoint, or view the effects of its workings at the present time, there is every reason why the system should be abolished. Apart from the fact, that it has given birth to and developed the means of production so that it is possible to produce wealth in abundance, capitalist society has since its inception a record worse than which it would be almost impossible for the human mind to conceive. For years now the workers, who alone produce the world’s wealth, have had a greater struggle to exist, in spite of the marvellous increase of wealth production due to improved machinery and methods. Not only is it true that the workers are in greater poverty relatively to the amount of wealth produced, but they are beaten, broken, and done to death in their struggle for a dull, monotonous existence. Factories, mills, mines, and the like are veritable death-traps, “accidents,” poisoning of one kind and another, and consumption finds victims by tens of thousands.

We know that of recent years the Press has published the heart-rending news of explosions in mines with their great loss of life, and that the customary enquiry has produced evidence proving beyond honest dispute that had the mine-owners taken reasonable precautions the terrible loss of life would have been avoided. We know that Lloyd George, at the behest of the ship-owners, raised the load-line of ships so that the owners might get greater profits at the expense of seamen’s lives. It is hardly necessary to refresh the memories of our readers with reference to railway disasters and the appalling waste of railwaymen’s and passengers’ lives.

After every railway disaster the usual enquiry of the Board of Trade official takes place ; the scapegoat is invariably an employee. The railway directors escape all blame. In the “Nineteenth Century Magazine” for June appeared an article on railway administration in Great Britain, from which is quoted the following scathing criticism.

“What is the Board of Trade record in this connexion ? It is shameful. Our percentage of killed and wounded on railways is nearly twice what it is in France. After every accident, there is the same heartless mockery, The same condemnation of a perfectly innocent engine-driver or signalman, found guilty of being human, of having failed to do the duty the human machine is not capable of doing : a duty which it is biologically impossible for him to carry out with the requisite degree of certainty. It is the duty of the Board of Trade official, as specified by Act of Parliament, to enquire into the cause of railway accidents, and advise and enforce the proper remedy. The Board of Trade official knows that the cause of 90 per cent. of railway accidents is one locomotive running into another, and he knows that the remedy is to instal apparatus which would render the recurrence of such accidents a physical impossibility. He knows that the engine-driver or signalman as the case may be, who has been guilty of the inevitable biological lapse, is as innocent as the policeman who stands at his elbow in the dock. He knows that the really guilty persons are the railway managers and he himself: the railway managers because they have neglected to make the inevitable accident an impossibility, and he himself, because he has neglected to employ the authority vested in him by Parliament to force the adoption of the necessary preventive measures. The procedure in these so-called Board of Trade inquiries is nauseating in the extreme. The real points of importance are purposely avoided. Why does not the Board of Trade official enforce the remedy he knows so well ? The explanation is obvious enough. He knows that the installation of preventive measures will mean a legitimate expenditure of railway money on a large scale, and that this will deplete some railway dividends, and absorb others altogether. He knows that this would cause an immediate outcry from the railway shareholders en masse, that real enquiry would follow, and that the miserable sham in which he is a partner would be at an end. He therefore orders a fresh copy of the conventional report he has made so many times before, to be made. It only differs in the matter of the date, and the figures of the killed and wounded, and the place at which the disaster took place. He sheds the same number of crocodile tears as he did on the previous occasion, and takes his directorship of one or more railway companies on his retirement from Government service (Italics mine.)

Think it over, fellow workers ; read it over yet again, and I have no doubt as to the result of your serious deliberations. During the processes of production and distribution thousands of men and women are hurled into premature graves in the greed for profits, while thousands of the wealth producers every year are maimed or become physical and mental wrecks as the result of the awful conditions under which they are compelled to labour for a bare existence. The capitalist class are only concerned with the acquisition of dividends, and are indifferent to the prodigious waste of human life that is ever resulting from their avarice. The writer hardly feels disposed to give the reader a further dose of the horrors of the ghastly struggle on the Continent ; but no more convincing evidence could be adduced to show the cold-blooded, murderous nature of the ruling class.

Not content with the systematic butchery of the workers in the “piping times of peace,” the master class, whenever their material interests are seriously threatened by their rival capitalists of another nation, do not hesitate to force the whole of the manhood of the toiling masses who are capable of shouldering a rifle and marching, into the armed forces to safeguard their interests and property. Many thousands will never return. As they die fighting King Capital’s battles they will be hurled unceremoniously into any hole as so much refuse, forgotten by their historic enemy—the ruling class.

Perhaps the reader would like to peruse the following, culled from the “Daily Chronicle,” 12.6.16.

“’Vorwaerts’ publishes an article headed ‘More than 700 Graveyards.’ The article refers to the battlefields of Galicia and to the efforts that are being made by the Austrian authorities to bring some order into the chaotic military burying places which lie scattered over almost the entire province. The writer reckons that between the town of Gorlice and the heights of Tarnovo no less than 419 graveyards have been cleared of their unsightly surroundings, and says that where possible natural beauties in the landscape have been utilised to lend dignity to the enormous cemeteries.

All along the Dunajec one proceeds from graveyard to graveyard thickly strewn over the entire countryside. Russians, Austrians, Germans, Hungarians, to the number of 40,000 are buried in the cared-for graveyards, a number which does not include, of course, those buried in masses in one grave. In West Galicia alone about 600 graveyards exist, and in other parts over 100. From the Dunajec eastwards the multitudinous graves of the Russians are seen stretching away into the eastern plains, an awful record of the death-grapple of last year.”

The reader will, of course, recognise that the same conditions apply with equal force to France, Belgium, and other areas where hostilities are in operation. The writer can almost hear the terrible shrieks of the Anti-Socialist in pre-war days: “Socialism will break up the home.” That agonised voice is strangely quiet while the homes of whole peoples are being laid in desolate ruin.

Need more be written ? We Socialists urge the workers to study their position in society, to understand the great and bloody struggle which exists between the capitalist class and the working class, and when they realise and understand these things, to join with us in the work of spreading the knowledge of the principles of Socialism, and organising our fellow-workers, consciously and politically, for the overthrow of the hideous capitalist system and its blood-soddened parasite class.

Only when capitalism is overthrown will society be able to free itself from the shackles that bind it, and men and women be able to lead a free, full, and joyous life.

C. F. Carter

The capitalist creed. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Business is power, poetry, pleasure, life—all in one. Business feeds people, clothes them, houses them ; provides their necessities, their amusements, their luxuries. Business has called into being the steamship, the express train, the motor-car ; the telegraph, the telephone, the wireless. Business bridges rivers, tunnels through mountains, cuts canals through continent. 

Business is the Atlas of the World. 

There’s no higher profession than business on the big scale. All the other professions live on crumbs from the business man’s table. Law—that’s the safeguarding of business and property at home. The Army—that’s fighting for it abroad. Medicine—that’s making people fit for their job. Politics—that’s altering laws to meet the changing requirements of business.

—”The modern Chesterfield,” Max Rittenberg.

Analysis of Wealth. IV. Accumulation. (1916)

From the September 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

Capital is an accumulation of surplus-value. Whatever the original capital with which capitalist production started may have been it has long since disappeared, consumed by the capitalist class.

Likewise with the individual upstart. Even if we grant that by “his own exertions” he becomes possessed of a sum of money, this sum does not become capital until he uses it to exploit labour-power. As this process continues his capital comes to consist of accumulated surplus-value, while his original sum disappears in consumption.

Other things remaining the same the accumulation of capital implies an increase in the demand for labour-power ; for capital, in order to remain itself, must grow by the exploitation of ever more labour-power. This in itself gives rise to an increase in the rate of wages, since in the course of time the demand must tend to outstrip the supply as provided by normal increase in the labouring population.

Capital, however, is by no means satisfied with this state of affairs. It sees in the natural limits of population a limit to the rapidity of its own growth. Hence as we have shown in a former article, it exhibits a historical tendency to force on the productivity of social labour by specialisation of individual functions and by the introduction of machinery. Thus it wrings from a given quantity of labour-power a larger proportion of surplus-value. Therefore, along with the accumulation of capital goes an alteration in what Marx calls its technical composition. Its constant portion, i.e., that invested in the passive factors of the labour process, increases at the expense of the variable element which purchases labour-power.

This enables production to be carried on on an ever-increasing scale without the demand for labour-power increasing sufficiently to cause a rise in its price. On the contrary it reduces the demand for labour-power to such a point as to cause a permanent over-supply of workers ; in other words, it creates an industrial reserve army—the unemployed.

The larger the scale on which an individual capitalist does business the more he is enabled to economise and reduce the number of his employees in proportion to work done. The cheaper, therefore, can he sell his commodities (since they embody less labour) and the keener becomes his competition against his rivals. They in turn are forced to economise and to and “extend the scale of their operations as rapidly as possible. In the long run the large capitals become larger while small ones get absorbed or wiped out ; for the market soon refuses to bear the increased weight of goods supplied by this acceleration of production. This centralisation of capital causes further economy and increases the industrial reserve army.

Thus in the process of accumulation we observe on the one hand a tendency to increase the productivity of labour and on the other hand a contraction of the market for its products, seeing that the growth of the unemployed lessens the demand for commodities, both on their part and on the part of those actually employed whose places they are ever ready to take.

These two forces act and re-act on each other to an increasing extent. The competition of the unemployed forces the actual workers to submit to the lowest wages and the maximum amount of work. This increases the accumulation of capital, which in turn intensifies competition among the capitalists for the market, causing further economies and more unemployed.

At one end of the social scale, then, we have the concentration of capital in fewer hands and consequent luxury and idleness ; at the other end, absence of all wealth other than than necessary to secure the workers’ continued existence in a state of overwork, coupled with a deadweight of destitute wretches denied even that questionable privilege. This state of affairs arises inevitably from the very nature of capitalist production, and its special features are aggravated with every step in capitalist progress. Even the statistics compiled by capitalist authorities, governmental and otherwise, bear out this conclusion.

So far we have examined only the growth of capital. It remains for us to consider its origin and destiny. Assuming on the one hand a class with the means of production and on the other a class without these means it is easily seen that the former can exploit the latter to an ever-increasing degree.

The question arises, however, as to how this relationship was established. Orthodox economists and other apologists for things as they are assure us that it is solely due to the virtues of the possessors and the vices of the proletariat. If by virtue we mean work, however, we have already seen that the accumulation of capital by no means bears out this fairy tale. At present and for centuries the workers with all their toil have been unable to accumulate. If the capitalists saved money by work it was an extraordinarily long time ago. We are forced, then, to turn to history for a solution of the problem.

The system of society immediately proceeding the present social system in the course of evolution we know as Feudalism. It consisted of a complex hierarchy of lords and vassals bound to each other by the duties of military support and obedience and the right of protection. As a basis for this system was serfdom. The land was parcelled out among the lords and their subordinates, and while the latter cultivated the land of their lords they had land of their own for their personal use. In the towns chartered freemen carried on handicrafts and commerce. Thus reciprocal obligations existed and were established by feudal law and custom. No man lacked the means of subsistence, or an occupation. The lords exploited their subordinates, but the latter possessed something tho modern wage slave lacks—security!

The decay of feudalism forms the starting-point of capitalist development. In England it was spread over the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. By degrees the peasants and handicraftsmen freed themselves from servile duties and became independent producers, while in conjunction with the growth of trade and the production of commodities arose and flourished the merchant class, who sandwiched themselves parasitically between the producers on either side of the exchange and incidentally fleeced both whenever occasion offered.

The feudal nobility, exhausted, in numbers and resources, by friction among themselves, disbanded their retainers, who thenceforth become propertyless men seeking employment for a living. Large estates passed into the hands of wealthy farmers and burghers, who did not hesitate to evict the tenants in order to convert one-time arable land into sheep pastures. The new nobility also confiscated common land for similar purposes spurred on by the increase in the price of wool. The spoliation of the Church during the Reformation aggravated this condition, and by the end of the 16th century a considerable labour-market had come into being, consisting of expropriated agriculturists, disbanded retainers, and forlorn monks.

The process went on in stages till the 19th century, when the last vestige of the old yeomanry disappeared. At first legislation from Henry VII. onward attempted to stem the tide of usurpation, but in the 18th century the law itself had become the instrument whereby the robbery of the people was effected. Private force was supplemented by the force of the State, which has remained to this day the agent of the plutocrats. From the first it penalised the disinherited for their misfortune : flogging and branding them was its most merciful means of dealing with them.

This, as Marx says, established the “discipline necessary to the wage-system,” and encouraged the new-born proletariat to submit to the low wages and long hours at first legally enforced by the State.

As the workers became habituated and resigned to their fate the severity of the penal legislation relaxed, only to be applied with all its original vigour again when the workers found in combination a means of parrying the onslaught of the masters.

If to-day Trade Unions and strikes are legal it is only because the capitalists have been able to circumvent the determination of the workers by counter organisation, increased economy, and the corruption of the unions themselves.

The labour-market once established, the genesis of the capitalist class followed as a matter of course. In agriculture the farmer, one­-time agent for the landowner, was transformed into an independent exploiter. Whereas the independent peasant had previously produced many of his own requirements, such as clothes, in addition to purely agricultural products, now, as a wage-worker for the capitalist farmer, he had to purchase these elsewhere. Hence arose a domestic market for capitalist industry in the towns. Merchants and money lenders were not slow to take advantage of this. Employing numbers of disinherited peasants, etc., they entered into competition with the independent handicraftsmen of the guilds, and owing to the larger scale of their operations and the division of labour in the workshops which they introduced, they were ultimately able to outstrip the guildsmen in the race. In the face of this competition the guilds went to pieces and added more exploitable material to the labour market. 

At the same time there arose the struggle between the capitalist nations of Europe for world domination. Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England followed one another in rapid succession in exploration and conquest in Africa, America, and Asia, plundering the natives of their wealth and converting them into slaves for export to plantation colonies. The plunder thus obtained by the agents of the “merchant adventurers” helped to form new capital in England and on the Continent for the exploitation of white slaves.

These are the methods, drawn very mildly, by which the modern “respectable” class rose to power. The depths of their historic depravity are in direct proportion to the “loftiness” of their professed ideals. Champions of Justice, Freedom, and Charity, their career is indelibly stained with robbery, slavery, and murder. Need it be added that it shows no signs of improving from the standpoint of the workers ?

To sum up, modern wealth or capital is a product of social labour, past and present, which has been and continues to be monopolised by a small class of individuals, which grows relatively smaller as the mass of disinherited producers increases. In its origin it destroyed the unity which existed between the producers and their products, including the means of production, thus reducing them to social outcasts, having no access to the means of life as provided by nature and society. This relationship it perpetuates and uses as a means of self-expansion at their expense.

Technically, however, it indicates economic progress. In the place of the isolated workers of the middle ages able to produce but a meagre variety of articles of wealth, we have to-day an international combination of producers using a highly complex organisation of machinery, means of transport and distribution capable of providing comfort and leisure for all.

What prevents this desirable consummation of industrial development ? The reader who has followed this analysis will readily see that it is the capitalist character of this social wealth, i.e., its private ownership, which alone stands in the way. The private property of the many workers has disappeared before the private ownership of a few idlers. To return to the former state is neither possible nor desirable. It is not our business to destroy the fruits of centuries of toiling agony, but rather to enter into possession of them ; and as the means of production become ever more concentrated and incapable of control save in the mass, the only alternative to private ownership by the few is common ownership.

This will reunite the producers with their means of production and simultaneously preserve technical progress, for it is this progress which forces on the revolution. It unites them in the productive process and reduces them all to the level of wage slaves for the maintenance of capital. Hence it breeds a community of interest and a common consciousness. Let us speed on the day when they will unite in one organisation with a common purpose. Let us rally them round the Socialist standard, and establish Socialism, the cooperative commonwealth.

Eric Boden

[Concluded.]

Analysis of Wealth. III. Exploitation. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

Just as there are two aspects of a commodity, utility and its exchange-value, so there art two ways of viewing its production, or in other words, the labour process.

At one and the same time the labourer produces a use-value and an exchange-value ; the former by transforming raw material into useful articles, the latter by adding labour thereto.

We have already seen that capital in the process of expansion assumes two forms. Part of it becomes represented by raw material, tools or machinery, etc., the passive factors in wealth production, while the rest is invested in a special commodity, labour-power, the active, value-creating agent. Both these factors are obviously indispensable. Without raw material, etc., the labourer would have nothing in which to embody value ; without the labourer raw material would become useless and valueless. For the only use raw material possesses is to serve as the element of the complete commodity, and its exchange-value only counts in so far as it becomes part of the total value of such complete commodity. Raw material, machinery, etc., lying idle, untouched by labour, rot and rust, and lose their exchange-value along with it.

Hence by transforming them into new commodities the labourer does more than add new value ; he preserves old. In so far as raw material, etc., is so transformed, the labour previously expended upon it counts as part of the total labour necessary in the production of a commodity.

On the other hand, the passive factors in the labour process are incapable of transferring a greater value to the finished product than they already possess. The value of the raw material and machinery does not multiply itself ; it remains constant and is called by Marx constant capital.

In realising the utility of the constant capital the labourer preserves it : that is one aspect of his activities. Let us now turn to his function as the producer of new value.

We have seen in a previous article that the amount of value the labourer adds to the commodity is determined by the length of time he inevitably occupies. Thus in our first example he worked six hours and added a value of three shillings ; in the second instance, by working twelve hours a value of six shillings was produced.

We also saw that the object of the capitalist in purchasing labour-power was to take advantage of its capacity for producing more value than it possessed itself. That in the first case the capitalist realised no surplus-value because the labourer produced no more than the equivalent of his value, but that in the second case the surplus amounted to 3s, the product of the extra six hours labour.

In each of these cases the constant part of capital adds no more than itself to the total value. The amount of the constant capital in the second case is twice that of the first in order that the labourer might work twice as long, but this makes no difference to the result. The new value of 6s. is added by the labourer.

Just as any purchaser seeks to obtain the maximum use-value from his commodity, so the capitalist uses up labour-power to its limit ; seeks to obtain the maximum of value, and therefore of surplus-value, from its exercise. It is the object of the present article to show how this is achieved. One thing must be borne in mind, viz., that the rate of surplus-value is not calculated on the total capital, but only on the part which is expended in the purchase of labour-power. Thus in the above instance, whereas the wages of the labourer were 3s. and the total value produced by him was 6s., the rate of surplus-value was 100 per cent. ; that is to say the surplus was equal to the wages.

When the capitalist speaks of his “rate of profit” he would in this case reckon the 3s. surplus-value in proportion to the total capital advanced, viz., 27s., thus making the rate a little over 11 per cent.

Well as this method may serve him in his conventional dealings, it hides the true extent of the exploitation of labour-power.

We have seen that the capitalist obtains his surplus by prolonging tho labourer’s work beyond the time necessary to reproduce a value equivalent to his wages. It is, therefore, to the capitalist’s interest, to extend the working day as much as possible. The limit in this direction is simply the physical capacity of the labourer.

In order to exert his powers the labourer must have time to eat and sleep and recuperate, but beyond this the capitalist, having purchased these powers, has sole right over their exercise during the period for which he has purchased them. The only difference, in fact, between the wage-labourer and the chattel-slave is that the former sells himself piecemeal, i.e., in periods, while the latter is sold once for life.

It is, of course, possible that the capitalist may use up in one day a greater quantity of labour power than the worker can restore in three (“Capital,” p. 217). In other words, he may use more labour power in a day than he pays for. It is the labourer’s business to claim the price of his commodity, and hence a struggle ensues as to the extent of the working-day.

In sections 5 and 6 of Chap X. (“The Working Day”) Marx shows how the manufacturers succeeded in extending the working day by degrees from the normal day of the Middle Ages to twelve hours in the seventeenth century. Then how, with the introduction of machinery in the eighteenth century, a violent encroachment took place on the remaining leisure of the workers. “All bounds of morals and nature, age and sex, day and night, were broken down” (p. 264).

Men, women, and children were worked to the point of exhaustion, until even the capitalist legislature, threatened by working-class revolt on one hand and the extreme physical and mental deterioration of that class (the source of surplus-value) on the other, were compelled to place legal restraint on private greed by limiting the hours of labour. For years they dallied and toyed with the matter, passing laws and abstaining from granting money for their administration and adopting all manner of devices to render their concessions purely nominal. Only when the most distinguished medical authorities had pointed out the danger to the ruling class of persisting in the industrial murder of children, did this class definitely prescribe that no children under 13 years of age should be worked more than 12 hours in one day. Even then it left, all manner of loopholes for the evasion of the Act (1833), of which the manufacturers, in their blind profit-lust, were not slow to take advantage.

With eloquent thoroughness Marx shows how rival sections of the ruling class exploited the misery of the workers on the political field in order to gain their own ends ; how time and again they betrayed them, and finally only conceded the meagre right of sufficient time in which to eat and sleep after a bitter struggle over every inch of ground for half-a-century.

These passages are indeed enlightening as to the character and methods of our masters, which have changed, if at all, only in the direction of greater duplicity.

The very nature of machinery enables the master class to increase the speed at which their slaves work, thus exhausting them more rapidly and reducing a legally limited working day to nominal value. Hence the workers are under the necessity of continually struggling to obtain still further reductions in the hours of labour. For by so much as the speed at which they work is increased, by so much is their life-time shortened.

Hitherto we have considered only one means of increasing the surplus-value, i.e., the lengthening of the working day. Capital, however, by no means rests content with pushing that to its limit. It is for ever seeking to reduce the value of labour-power and consequently the necessary time spent by the workers in reproducing that value, thus leaving a greater portion of a given working day in which they must produce surplus-value. This result is effected chiefly in two ways.

From the time the capitalist class first assumed control of industry there has gone on an increasing splitting-up of the forces of production among the producers. By concentrating numbers of workers in one workshop the earlier manufacturers were enabled to divide a handicraft into separate parts, each part being taken up by a different worker. Instead of being a skilled craftsman the worker became a mere special cog in a machine, and in this way the time spent in learning his calling was considerably reduced. Another effect of this alteration in the process of production was an increase in the product of a given number of men. The specialisation of individuals economised the time necessary to produce each individual commodity. This resulted in reducing the cost of the articles produced and consequently the maintenance of the labourer. Thus in two ways the exchange-value of labour-power fell ; wages suffered a reduction and the increased product went to the capitalist.

The effects of this division of labour, which Marx defines as Manufacture proper, were insignificant compared with those resulting from the advent of machinery and modern industry. Here the worker loses the last vestige of skill and has his productive capacity enormously increased by being converted into an attendant of a monster which operates not one but many tools at once. The time spent in learning his task now falls to almost nil, while the cost of his necessaries is still further reduced and his wages along with it. Surplus-value increases by leaps and bounds, and since machinery is constantly being improved, more universally and economically adopted, there has as yet been discovered no limit to this increase.

We see, then, that capital grows by securing domination over living labour-power and consuming it to the limit of its capacity. In this process the labourer preserves the constant part of capital, reproduces the equivalent of his wages, and adds a surplus which may be converted into new capital.

Despite various theories concerning the “abstinence” of the capitalist, however, the whole of this surplus-value does not become capital. Quite a considerable portion goes to provide the person of the capitalist with the necessaries, comforts, and luxuries proper to his social status. Still, he does “save” !

What specially interests us here though is that his whole consumption fund, large though it may be, involves no reduction of the amount of his wealth. Even if he consumed the whole of the surplus produced by the labourers he would become no poorer. He would remain a capitalist.

There is, however, another aspect of this relationship. In the course of time the capitalist inevitably spends a sum equivalent to his original capital in his own personal consumption. The capital he has invested therefore becomes practically the creation of the labourer : a sum of accumulated surplus value. If, for instance, the capitalist makes a profit of 20 per cent. per annum and consumes the lot, then in five years he will in effect have consumed the whole of his capital. The sum intact which he still retains is the fruit of his exploitation of labour-power, and it is with this sum that he continues to purchase labour-power.

The reason the labourer offers himself for hire is precisely because he does not possess the means of production. By continually yielding to the capitalist all his product over and above his necessary price, wages, he reproduces his own propertyless condition. Saving by the capitalist, nay, the mere existence of the capitalist, involves the absence of opportunity to save for the worker. The process of exploitation perpetuates itself.

The accumulation of surplus-value, the fruits of the process, simply enables the process to be carried on more extensively. In other words, the workers produce the means for their employment on an ever-increasing scale. Their reward for doing this will be dealt with in a further article.

Eric Boden

Analysis of Wealth. II. Surplus Value. (1916)

From the July 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

In a former article under this heading the writer tried to show that the substance of value, the common property of all commodities as such, is social labour, measured by the time taken in its expenditure. He tried to show further that money serves as a measure of values, a standard of prices, and a medium of circulation, only because it is itself a commodity, that is to say, it embodies social labour in the same manner as do the articles for which it is exchanged. He tried to show still further that the production of commodities, i.e., articles for exchange, and the use of money are features of a certain stage of development in the means and methods of production and in the control thereof, and are destined to disappear with future progress.

We have now to consider money a little further in the form of capital in the process of accumulation, or in other words, the phenomenon of “money making money.” For money in itself is not necessarily capital. Only when it is used for the purpose of adding to itself does it become so. When the independent producer (peasant or handicraftsman) brought his goods to market he received for them a certain sum of money which sooner or later he expended on articles of a different sort, largely for his own personal use and partly, of course, to buy fresh raw material, etc. To him the money entering transiently into his possession was not capital. Nor were the goods he sold, for he received in exchange goods of equal value. No interest, no profit, accrued to him in the transaction.

Otherwise is it with the modern capitalist with a sum of money, which is constantly expanding in volume. He buys commodities not for consumption by himself, but in order that in some form or other he may re-sell these commodities and realise a profit on the transaction. Apart from this profit his activities as a capitalist would be meaningless.

The independent producer bought commodities mainly in order to realise their use-value in his own person. The capitalist buys them only to throw them back into circulation and receive in return an increase in exchange-value. The simplest definition of capital, then, is money thrown into circulation only to be received back again with an increase to itself, which increase becomes part of the capital which is again advanced to return with a fresh increase.

This increase or profit Marx calls surplus-value. The problem of its origin is the central one in economic science, and its solution holds the key to an understanding of all the workings of capitalism.

The quest for profit is the mainspring of the present social order. Let us take the mainspring out of the case and examine it.

In the first place, it is obvious that money must go into circulation in order to increase itself. If it simply lay in a safe it would remain the same in quantity. Thus is the modern capitalist cuter than the old-fashioned miser. Being a “true Christian” he refrains from the stupid, worthless process of hugging his money to himself, and lets it go believing implicitly in the words of his Lord : “Whosoever would save his life the same shall lose it, but whosoever loseth his life for my sake [“profits’] the same shall find it.” But bearing in mind that on the average prices are determined by values, and these latter by the socially necessary labour embodied in commodities, it is also clear that the circulation of money cannot in itself give rise to profit. On the average the capitalist buys commodities at their values and sells them again at their values. He exchanges equivalents, and unless some increase of value takes place between the two acts of buying and selling he can realise no profit. Various orthodox theories have tried to see the origin of surplus value in the process of exchange. The investigation of these theories, however, shows them to be based either upon the confusion of use-value with exchange-value or upon the illusion that prices (and implicitly values) are determined by the arbitrary will of the owner of commodities or by mere chance.

In dealing with capital the scientific economist is concerned not with an accumulation of use-values, but of exchange-value in the form of money ; which accumulation, moreover, is not made by one or a few capitalists at the expense of the rest, but by the capitalist class as a whole. The origin of surplus-value is, therefore, to be found in production, or in other words, in the productive consumption of the commodities originally purchased.

All commodities which are consumed in order to re-appear as new commodities may be said to be productively consumed. For instance, leather purchased by a boot manufacturer is consumed in the factory to reappear as boots. The boots, moreover, contain more value than the leather, since they embody additional labour. This additional value, however, is by no means necessarily surplus-value. Imagine, for instance, an independent boot-maker purchasing his own tools and raw materials and selling his own product. The value of the raw materials, etc., is transmitted to the finished product, which, in addition, contains the value added by the bootmaker’s labour. The boots are sold for more money than was paid for the leather and the tools, but no surplus-value has been realised ; money does not in this instance make money. The raw materials, etc., do not transmit more value than they themselves contain ; all the increase is due to the boot-maker’s labour. The difference between the original outlay and the price he gets for his commodity is simply equal to the value he has added. The effect is the same as if he had made no outlay but produced a new and distinct commodity and sold it. His money has not expanded itself ; he has simply added to it. In short, it is not capital. Men do not become capitalists and wealthy in the modern sense by themselves adding value to natural objects. Rather, the increase of their wealth is obviously independent of their efforts and totally out of proportion to any they might make.

Nevertheless, seeing that all value is but the embodiment of labour, surplus-value, being a particular form of value, can only be derived from labouring in some fashion. Therefore in order to obtain surplus-value the capitalist must find in the market not merely ordinary commodities (which are in capable of producing for him more value than they themselves possess) but some commodity which actually produces value, i.e., labours. This commodity he finds in the energies of the modern wage-labourer. It matters little to the capitalist what other commodities he deals in. Food or clothing, luxuries or necessities, all alike embody labour, therefore it is the labouring commodity which he essentially requires in order to obtain profit.

When the capitalist purchases other commodities he buys congealed labour : labour which is past, dead, inactive. From them alone he can expect no increase of value. In buying labour-power, however, he secures the potential source of all further value. So far as he is concerned the special function of labour-power is to produce value and, above all, surplus-value. With the usefulness of labour-power, in any other sense he is not concerned, any more than he is concerned with the utility of the goods he sells. Capital being but a sum of exchange-values, its sole passion is for its own growth by the production of more exchange-value, which means the continual consumption of labour-power. It remains to show how by this consumption surplus-value is actually produced.

Labour-power, like every other commodity, possess an exchange-value, which is realised in a price, termed wages. The amount of this exchange-value is determined by the labour-time spent in its production. The average wages of any section of the working class depends upon the cost of its customary necessities of life, including such special education as may be necessary in the branch of industry in which it is employed. It is obvious that wages cannot be long depressed below this standard without impairing the productive efficiency of the labourers’ energies. On the other hand, if they rise far above this standard the surplus-value is encroached upon. For surplus-value is nothing more than the difference between the wages of the labourers and the sum total value of their product. Were the labourers in the habit of producing no more wealth than would keep them, in working condition surplus-value would be impossible. The labour market, like the market for other commodities, is liable to fluctuations, but experience shows that these cancel one another, and that the general level of wages is such as will maintain the workers in their daily tasks.

But though the price of labour-power is limited in this way, the limit of surplus-value is simply the productivity of labour-power. Anyone purchasing a conmodity acquires the use of it, and the capitalist only buys labour-power in order that he may use it up, i.e., set it to produce the greatest possible amount of exchange-value in the form of commodities. Here we may take examples from Marx (“Capital,” Vol. I. p. 106).

Marx first supposes a capitalist advancing a sum of 15s. which is split up as follows : 10s, is the price of 10 lbs. of cotton ; 2s. represents the value of wear and tear of machinery, etc.; 3s. is paid for the hire of labour-power. We have thus a sum of 12s. as constant capital, i.e., value which passes unchanged into the form of the finished product, yarn. This is assumed to be the product of two days labour of twelve hours each, i.e., two hours labour is embodied in a sum of 1s., or a commodity of that value. Supposing now that in six hours the 10 lbs of cotton are converted into 10 lbs of yarn, The yarn contains thirty hours labour ; twenty-four being spent in producing raw material, etc., and six in converting it into finished product. Its value,, therefore, is 15s., i.e., 1s.for every two hours labour.

Here no surplus-value is created, for 15s. was the sum originally advanced. By only working six hours the labourer has done no more than produce an equivalent of his wages, 3s., and the capitalist makes no profit.

Marx now gives a second case. In this the capitalist advances 27s. Twenty lbs. of cotton are bought for 20s., and 4s. is allowed for wear and tear. The labourer is paid his wages of 3s., but instead of working only six hours is made to work twelve, having exactly twice the amount of raw material to convert into yarn. This time the yarn represents 60 hours labour, 48 being contained in raw material and twelve being added in the process of spinning. If 30 hours labour are represented by 15s., then 60 hours are embodied in 30s.

The capital advanced was 27s., so that the capitalist makes a profit of 3s. when selling the goods in the market at their value.

These simple examples illustrate the whole character of capitalist production. Carried on as it may be with all due regard to legal forms, it yet consists of a process of robbery disguised by the exchange of equal values.

The capitalist certainly gives the labourer his “due,” i.e., the value of his energies, or in other words, the cost of production of his commodity labour-power, but if the labourer simply replaced this value the capitalist would gain nothing. For him the transaction is meaningless unless the worker produces far more than that, unless, in fact, his whole life-time becomes but a process of producing value.

In further articles the writer hopes to outline how capital in its lust for self-expansion pushes the exhaustion of labour-power to its limits. For the present it is as well to remember the cause of the subjection of labour-power to capital.

The worker sells himself (in the form of his energies) as a commodity. Why ? His obvious motive is to obtain his price, wages. These as we see, however, only represent sufficient to keep him in existence. It follows, then, that he lacks the means of subsistence and must purchase them, which still further implies that he does not possess the wherewithal to produce them. This is another point to be dealt with later.

Eric Boden

[To be continued.]

Analysis of Wealth. I. Value. (1916)

From the June 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eric Boden

[To be continued.]

By the Way. (1915)

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

And it was further asked :

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

The official reply was that the question was being considered.

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

* * *

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Scout.

“A Whiff of Grape.” (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A. E. Jacomb