Syndicalism: its origins and weaknesses (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month the main French trade union confederation of the time adopted at its Congress in Amiens a Charter which, spreading far beyond France, became the doctrinal basis of a theory of unionism and revolution known as “syndicalism” (this is in fact merely the ordinary French word for trade unionism, so in France this doctrine is known as “revolutionary syndicalism “). As this doctrine has played an important historical role in working class thinking and organisation, we mark this event by publishing below an English version of the chapter on trade unionism that appeared in the pamphlet Pour le Socialisme Mondial (“For World Socialism”) put out in French by the world socialist movement in 1981 and which reproduced the Charter in full as well as giving a socialist assessment of it.

Associations of workers of the same trade have existed since the Middle Ages but only became organisations of wage earners to negotiate wage rates and conditions of work with employers in the middle of the 19th century. Up till then these associations had been mainly mutual aid societies, but even these had been banned by the Le Chapelier Law of 1791 which was later incorporated into the Napoleonic Code. Workers’ associations nevertheless continued to exist. It was not until 1864 that they were permitted to come out into the open and not until 1884 that they were fully legalised.

In the 1860s the main workers’ organisation in France was the “Association Internationale des Travailleurs” (International Working Men’s Association) which had been founded in 1864 by French and British workers. Although Karl Marx played a prominent role in its activities the IWMA was not a socialist organisation but was mainly concerned with organising trade unions and supporting strikes. It did, however, introduce some socialist ideas to French workers. Thus in 1869 we find a federation of workers’ organisations in Paris proclaiming as its final aim “the total emancipation of the workers in a new social order where the wages system will be abolished” and in 1870 Leo Frankel declaring (not quite accurately) during a trial of some French members of the IWMA that “the international association does not have as its aim an increase in the wage of workers, but indeed the abolition of the wages system”. This demand for “the abolition of the wages system” had first been raised by the British Chartists in the 1830s and 1840s and had been taken up by Marx in an address he gave to the General Council of the IWMA in 1865 (published after his death as a pamphlet entitled Value, Price and Profit which we strongly recommend for an understanding of trade unionism, its uses and limitations). It was to become a prominent slogan of French trade unionism in the period up till the First World War, after the working class movement had recovered from the setback represented by the bloody suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871.

In 1895 various trade unions and other workers’ organisations joined together to form a “Confédération générale du travail” (General Confederation of Labour) which in 1902 declared its objective to be “the disappearance of the wages system and employers”. In 1906 the CGT adopted at its congress in Amiens a new programme. In view of its historical importance we reproduce (in a contemporary translation) this “Charte d’Amiens” in full:

“The General Confederation of Labour unites, independent of all political groupings, all workers who recognise the struggle to be carried on for the abolition of the wages system [. . .]

Congress considers this declaration to be a recognition of the class struggle which, on the economic field, places the workers in revolt against all forms of exploitation and oppression, material and moral, carried out by the capitalist class against the working class.

      Congress makes this theoretical affirmation more precise by the following points:

Regarding day-to-day needs. Trade Unionism pursues the co-ordination of the efforts of the workers, the increase of the workers’ welfare through the realisation of immediate amelioration, such as the shortening of working hours, wage increases, etc.

But this is only one aspect of its task. Trade Unionism is preparing complete emancipation which can only be realised by the expropriation of the capitalist class. It favours as a means to this end the general strike and considers that the trade union, now a unit of resistance, will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation.

Congress declares that this two-fold task, for day-to-day life and for the future, arises from the actual position of wage-earners, which forces the working class and imposes on all workers, whatever their opinion and political and philosophical views, the duty to belong to the basic organisation, the trade union. Therefore, so far as individual members are concerned, Congress declares complete freedom for every Trade Unionist to participate, outside of the trade organisation, in any forms of struggle in accordance with his political or philosophical views, confining itself only to asking him, in return, not to introduce into the trade union the opinions which he professes outside it.

In so far as organisations are concerned, Congress decides that in order that Trade Unionism may obtain utmost effectiveness, economic action should be exercised directly against the employing class and that the Confederal organisations should not, as trade unions, pay any attention to parties or sects which, outside or alongside, may pursue completely independently the transformation of society.”

The doctrine here expounded became a current in the working class movement that has become known as “syndicalism”. Only some of the leaders of the CGT accepted this doctrine and regarded the trade unions and the general strike as the means to overthrow capitalist rule and establish a new society. The bulk of the members were interested only in “day to day needs”, though they were sometimes prepared to support revolutionary phrases as a means of frightening employers into conceding higher wages or better conditions.

The Charter was not as anti-political as it has sometimes been claimed to be. It does not proclaim the incompatibility of trade union and political action, but only that political divisions should not be introduced into the trade unions. This was sensible, since to be effective in their role of bringing pressure to bear on employers over wages and working conditions trade unions need to organise as many workers as possible, irrespective of their political or philosophical views. They are, and must be, composed of workers of all views. To introduce political views (including the anti-politicaI views of the anarchists) is to risk division, so weakening the union in the face of the employers. In recognising this the Charter of Amiens adopted a sound position (one which is unfortunately not always remembered today).

Trade unions arise out of the wage-relation that is at the basis of capitalism. Capitalist society is divided into two classes: the capitalist class who own and control the means of production and the working class who, excluded from such ownership and control, are forced to sell their mental and physical energies in order to live. The wage which workers receive is the price of their labour-power and the price of this commodity fluctuates, like that of all commodities, around its value as determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour incorporated in it. If competition between workers for jobs was unrestricted then wages would tend to fall below the value of labour-power, as often happened in the 19th century before effective trade unions existed. Combining together in trade unions to exert collective pressure on employers is a way workers can prevent their wages falling below the value of their labour-power. Put another way, it is a way of ensuring that they are paid the full value of what they have to sell. This is the usefulness of trade unions to the working class but they can do no more than this. They cannot substantially increase the living standards of their members under capitalism but they can ensure that wages are not reduced below the subsistence level.

Trade unions, then, are defensive organisations of the working class which, in order to be effective, must recruit all workers, on the basis merely that they work for wages in a particular industry or trade and not on the basis of their political or philosophical views. This means that they are not, and cannot be, revolutionary organisations since they will be composed of non-socialists as well as of socialists. In fact at the present time, when the working class does not yet want and understand socialism, the overwhelming majority of trade unionists will inevitably be non-socialist and hence non-revolutionary. This was so before the First World War too. This was why it was absurd to expect, as did the syndicalists, the trade unions to act in a revolutionary way for this was to expect non-revolutionaries to behave as revolutionaries.

To end capitalism the great majority of workers must have first come to want and understand this change since the new socialist society which will be established in place of capitalism can only function with the conscious and active participation of its members—something the syndicalists did not accept. They imagined that they, as a conscious minority, could lead the discontented mass of workers in a general strike against capitalism. This would inevitably have been defeated with many workers being killed, especially as the anti-political stand of the syndicalists meant that the state, which controls the means of coercion, was to be left in the hands of a government representing the capitalist class.

Although the sincerity of the syndicalists’ desire to end capitalism cannot be questioned, their understanding of the future society to replace it can be. In suggesting that society should be organised on the basis of trade unions—“the trade union [. . .] will in the future be the unit of production and distribution, the basis of social organisation”—the syndicalists were merely projecting into socialism the industrial and professional divisions of workers which exist under capitalism. Since socialism is based on the social ownership (= ownership by society) of the means of production, the trade union ownership proposed by the syndicalists was not socialism at all but a modified form of sectional ownership.

The First World War revealed that not only were the bulk of CGT members not revolutionary but that they were patriotic. From this time on began a process of collaboration with and integration into the state by the trade unions which continues to this day, with the unions represented on many governmental institutions at national and local level and receiving subsidies from the state for certain of their activities. Trade unionism, in other words, has dropped its pretence at being revolutionary, though the present CGT did not eliminate its paper commitment to “the disappearance of the wages system and of employers” till 1969. This has led some to argue that as the trade unions are no longer revolutionary they should not be supported by those who want social revolution, but should on the contrary be opposed. This is not a fair criticism nor a valid conclusion.

The trade unions are essentially defensive organisations with the limited role of protecting wages and working conditions and it is by this criterion that their effectiveness or otherwise ought to be judged. By this standard, although they make many serious mistakes (disunity and rivalry, collaboration with the state and with political parties), by and large the existing trade unions do succeed in protecting wage rates and working conditions against what Marx called “the never-ceasing encroachments of capital”. Our members do join the existing trade unions and work within them to defend wages and conditions. We do not criticise the unions for not being revolutionary, but we do severely criticise them when they depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between workers and employers; when they collaborate with employers, the state or political parties; when they put the corporate interests of a particular section of workers above that of the general interest of the working class as a whole.

But even if the unions made no mistakes of this sort, what they can achieve for the working class under capitalism is very limited. They can—and do—enable workers to get the full value of their labour-power, but they cannot stop the exploitation of the working class. This exploitation is inherent in the wages system and can only be abolished along with it through the conversion of the means of production into common ownership under the democratic control of the whole community. But this requires political action based on socialist understanding by a socialist political party for which the trade unions, with their limited defensive role, can never be a substitute.

Adam Buick

Between the Lines: A very silly season (1986)

The Between the Lines Column from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

A very silly season

The MPs' summer holiday — a modest break of ten weeks or so — is known by the media hacks as "the silly season". Without leaders to observe and interview the TV reporters are traditionally short of "news" to feed the working class. So, when a giraffe gets its neck stuck in the railings in Chessington Zoo or a tramp is found dead with a 1911 copy of The Tatler stuffed down his pants (the best place for it) it is several hundred times more likely to be "news" when the MPs are on holiday than when momentous things are happening in parliament — like when a Welsh Nationalist broke the arm off the Speaker's Chair.

Silliest of the silly TV "news' stories of the summer of '86, far outclassing even the policeman from Shropshire who handcuffed his wife and couldn't find the key to unlock her, or the expert in memory improvement who forgot to turn up for the Wogan show, was the case of the elderly parasite and the fish bone. It was on a Saturday in late August when the news broke: a silly ITN newsreader with a very serious facial expression announced to the nation that "Her Majesty, the Queen Mother has been taken by helicopter from her castle in Ayrshire to a hospital in Aberdeen after complaining of discomfort in the throat caused by what could be a fish bone eaten last night". The bulletins (and they went on throughout the evening and all the next day) went from bad to worse. On were brought throat specialists and fish specialists and bone specialists. Then we were shown a film of that awful, awful occasion only four years ago when the same woman had another fish bone stuck down her gob and had to stay in hospital overnight. It was excruciatingly silly TV, even for the silly season.

Not long after — or was it before? one loses touch the ITN Silly Squad was despatched to film Mrs Thatcher going in and coming out of a hospital, there to have an operation to stop her fingers from pointing in the wrong direction. Oh, where would we be without live TV coverage to keep us so closely informed about such events? While viewers were given minute by minute coverage of the case of the recalcitrant fish bone, no TV coverage was given to a speech delivered by economist, Professor Alan Williams (Guardian, 2 September) in which he stated that kidney patients in need of expensive dialysis treatment should be denied it because hip replacement operations are cheaper to perform and worthier of the money spent by the NHS. "We should not shrink from following where the logic of that approach leads us that hospital dialysis should be restrained and total hip replacement expanded." What sort of social system is it that can allow workers in urgent need of dialysis treatment to suffer and perhaps die while it can glory in the news that when its arch-parasites have a bone in the throat or a pain in the little finger no treatment is too good, no helicopter fast enough, to satisfy their needs. If it was a fiction it would be silly, but as social reality it is sick.

The triumph of scientific analysis

For four weeks Channel Four ran a series (Wednesdays. 8.30pm) entitled The Triumph of Capitalism. Each week a chosen expert (who does the choosing? who does the excluding?) was given thirty full minutes to sit in front of the camera and examine the success or otherwise of the capitalist system. Three out of the four chosen experts were firmly pro-capitalism. This is what is known as balance. Had the three supporters of capitalism presented serious defences of the system as it is. we could have devoted space to examining their talks. In fact, the three defenders of capitalism neither understood the economic laws of the profit system nor attempted to explain how it could ever function without the anarchy and social devastation which it so evidently causes. Perhaps we should have expected nothing more.

The fourth programme in the series (Wednesday. 3 September) was presented by Professor Gerry Cohen, an Oxford Professor of Philosophy whose book, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A defence would be of interest to readers. Rarely, if ever, has the case against the capitalist system been presented in so eloquent and logical a manner on British TV. Cohen, through a process of rigorous historical and logical criticism, exposed the system as one of unearned minority privilege and legalised robbery. He pointed out that capitalism, far from setting out to satisfy needs, seeks above all to satisfy profit accumulation and this occurs at the expense of needs. Gerry Cohen did not go on to propose a socialist alternative (fortunately, considering a previous effort by him to do this on a TV discussion programme), but he did deny the alleged inevitability of capitalism and the oft-asserted impossibility of revolutionary social change. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that as far as his analysis went, and with the exception of minor theoretical points (for some reason he began by referring to workers selling their labour and only later used the Marxist term, labour power). Cohen's presentation could have been given by a member of The Socialist Party. Workers could do with more TV education like this — it compensates for the fish bones.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note:

A number of Professor Gerry Cohen's books were reviewed in the pages of the Socialist Standard. To read the reviews, click on the dates below.:

• Aug 1979: Karl Marx’s Theory of History by G. A. Cohen
• Feb 2002: If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? By G. A. Cohen
• Dec 2009: Why not socialism? By G. A. Cohen
• Jun 2011: On The Currency Of Egalitarian Justice. By G.A. Cohen

South African domination (1986)

Book Review from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apartheid's Second Front: South Africa's War Against Its Neighbours by Joseph Hanlon. (Penguin 1986).

As South Africa once again dominates the news, Hanlon's study provides a valuable addition to the analysis of the situation that exists there. South Africa's aim of domination within this area involves a mixture of military, political and economic action against its neighbours to create a buffer for the system of apartheid. South Africa's destabilisation policy has involved it in a war which has not hit the headlines but which has since 1980 "cost more than 100.000 lives and £10,000 million, and has made at least one million people homeless". This is part of the nightmare of South Africa. The aim of the war is to force dependency on South Africa by undermining the effectiveness of the economic organisation of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC). Victims of that destabilisation have included Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and Angola. South Africa also sees itself as a crusader against what it believes to be the rising tide of "Marxism" and for this reason it is prepared to back Unita forces opposed to Angola's so-called Marxist government. Lesotho and Swaziland are totally surrounded by South Africa and use the rand as their currency Along with Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland are also part of the customs union with South Africa. This is a system administered by South Africa in which there is free flow of goods within the four states with high tariffs on imports. Effectively this ensures South African domination because most businesses are located in South Africa and the high tariff rates necessitate purchase of goods from South Africa. SADCC attempts to relieve this reliance on South Africa by an integrated development including coordination and transport but all the neighbouring states are still integrally linked to South Africa. One aspect of this dependence can be seen in energy. South Africa is energy deficient but it still dominates. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland purchase all petroleum products from South Africa which also supplies significant amounts to Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia even though that oil is as much as 50 per cent dearer than world market prices. Similarly about 50 per cent of SADCC imports and exports go through South Africa although this is partly guaranteed by the fact that South Africa has bombed Angolan and Mozambiquan railways so that they could not carry traffic to and from ports in those countries.

The benefits to the South African ruling class of its destabilisation policy are fourfold. They ensure "security" insofar as they involve punitive attacks against ANC bases and escalate the notion of an outside threat. The creation of chaos and instability in neighbouring states allows South Africa to claim that alternatives to the apartheid system are less successful economically. The fact of economic dependence does not permit of a more aggressive policy against South Africa. Chaos elsewhere also makes South Africa appear as a bastion of stability in an economically backward area. Hence they can cry out against sanctions because, as Hanlon argues. “P. W. Botha talks of South Africa bringing 'salvation' to the neighbouring states, and of the west preventing this by actions against apartheid". The irony is that South Africa claims that it is being destabilised by the actions of its neighbours, by supporting the ANC and calling for boycotts and sanctions. It also justifies South Africa's destabilisation programme as retaliation. This includes arming rebels in Mozambique, Angola, Lesotho and Zimbabwe and cutting food supplies, as in Mozambique, Zambia and Lesotho in order that the indigenous populations would direct their frustrations at the individual governments. There have also been varied economic destabilisation tactics that have included limiting access to South Africa's railways, restricting migrant labour, closing borders, curbing imports, regulating exports and cutting electricity. This ensures South Africa's regional dominance, making the neighbouring states "a buffer against sanctions — just as Pretoria hopes to make them a barrier against liberation movements" This is why South Africa is opposed to SADCC which would free the neighbouring states from such reliance.

South Africa sees itself as the regional power of Southern Africa in the same way that USA operates in Latin America and USSR in Eastern Europe. Its incursions into neighbouring territories have been many and as Hanlon points out "commandos have raided seven of the neighbouring capitals and tried to assassinate two prime ministers". Only Malawi and Tanzania have escaped military insurgence. South Africa funds Unita, Mozambique National Resistance, the Lesotho Liberation Army and dissidents in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe. This adds to the claim that majority rule does not work.

There has been verbal support for SADCC from USA. Britain and West Germany but these countries have been less favourable to the notion of breaking with South Africa. Actual support for SADCC has come from countries without substantial investment in South Africa and have included Scandinavia, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium, while the USA, Britain and West Germany are more concerned about "their existing investments. markets and sources of minerals" in South Africa. Destabilisation may be a short term answer to South Africa's paranoia but it requires markets for its products and chaotic economies are not such markets. Developing capitalism in South Africa will bring divisions based on class rather than racial differences and a population capable of acting as a market. Hanlon's argument is that, although limited in their effect, sanctions, boycotts and disinvestment should be pursued against South Africa. Sometimes this is a facade pursued by countries, as is the case with Japan who bans investment but allows licences and technology transfer "so Japan is now South Africa's second largest trading partner and Japanese firms have 40 per cent of the South African market". For Britain and USA there has been a reluctance to impose sanctions, not that this is a point of principle (USA has wide ranging sanctions against Poland and Britain has done the same to Argentina). Hanlon argues that Britain must be prepared to suffer as a result of imposing sanctions and that this is a moral question. For Hanlon it is also a belief that this might constitute a long term investment for future majority rule might not look favourably on a Britain that was unwilling to take up such a moral stance There has been a high price to pay and SADCC in its report to OAU in mid 1985 said that between 1980 and 1984 destabilisation cost SADCC member states a total of £7,000 million as a result of war damage, higher transport costs, sanctions imposed by South Africa, production and export losses and caring for the many refugees. SADCC calls for sanctions even at the risk of its own suffering. The case that sanctions against South Africa will cause harm to the "frontline" states is the latest that South Africa has created to ensure its continued existence. It forces dependency as an act of calculated cynicism. Hanlon's answer is to replace one form of exploitation by another in the hope that capitalism without South Africa and apartheid will be an improvement. The dilemma for capitalism is the extent to which South Africa can survive with limited markets. For western capitalism the question of sanctions is one in which vested interests must be weighed against the possibility of future interests. In these economic arguments morality has a very minor role to play As for the majority black community they are merely the pawns calling for a voice in a world of rival capitalist interests.

Philip Bentley

Letter: Sexual preferences and socialism (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sexual preferences and socialism

Dear Editors.

I would like to congratulate Haringey District Council for deciding to promote a "homosexual and lesbian awareness" programme in the schools they are in charge of.

I am 19, gay, and when at school, it was a dirty word, known as being gay. This is because I lived in a 1920s Tory area of St. Anne's near Blackpool, where you are outcast if you are anything but middle class, own a house, two cars, have two children at private school and vote Conservative.

People like that don't realise times have changed, and that people today should be able to have confidence in their sexual orientation, and be able to be open in their sexual preferences.

All I can hope for is that Labour win the next election, so that these shackles can be broken, and gay people can be fairly treated in confidence.

"UNHAPPY SOCIALIST”

Reply:

The continuation of the profit-system depends on the uncritical social conformity of the majority. Great pains are taken, from an early stage in our lives, to discipline us into being "normal" and to treat abnormality with suspicion and often with contempt. As "Unhappy Socialist" observes, the sort of normal aspirations which we are conditioned to accept involve getting a house and a family and settling down, frequently to a routine of grin-and-bear it. This is largely a very modest and unimaginative way to have to endure your life but even this modest goal presents serious financial and domestic problems for most people who bite the boring bait.

The main type of normality which workers are encouraged to adopt is that which makes them good wage-slaves. Unquestioning obedience to authority, dull resignation to a class-divided society, a view of human nature as inherently selfish and the requirement to see present society as the final stage of historical development, are all part of the mental make-up of a "normal" person. Normality. though, is a permeating precept. As a result, all sorts of unorthodox people are herded together by conventional wisdom (conditioned ignorance) and branded as abnormal. Even if their ideas or conduct do not directly attack the class system, they are labelled with disapproval with varying degrees of contempt from "eccentric" to "subversive". Some groups may not threaten the existing structure of normality in a way that could be seen as dangerous to capitalism's basic needs but they are despised because they refuse to be bound by convention. Some of the vehement tirades against the itinerant hippies recently chased by the authorities from one county to another were examples of this. Some infringements of normality may not endanger the class system, but from the viewpoint of the ruling class (whose ideas are in n the main put by the mass media) assaults on conventional conduct are to be strongly discouraged.

Human beings are capable of enjoying a wide range of sexual behaviour. But the variety of sexual expression which is subtly promoted by the way we are socially conditioned is that which results in Mr Normal marrying Mrs Normal and. after working hard for someone else, settling down to produce two little normallettes who will be encouraged to grow up and repeat the same pattern of behaviour. The only social environment in which human sexual experience will be likely to develop freely, unconstrained by prejudice and poverty, is a genuinely classless society: socialism. Because of the prevalent and routine frustrations of everyday life for workers under capitalism and the limited creative pleasures open to most people, sex has become a rather frenetic and obsessional preoccupation with many people. The sexual part of our behaviour might well be less frenzied or important in a more imaginatively creative world. It will more certainly be beyond the realms of taboo and insecurity which it often occupies today. In any event, for as long as the majority permit the continuation of a social system which causes most people to live in poverty and insecurity, there will be the risk that one or other minority groups will become a victimised scapegoat for social problems.

The Labour Party stands only to continue to run the profit system. If it attained power as the government. it would do as it has done in its eight previous administrations and preside over chaos, poverty and discontent. As with any type of government. it would need to foster a certain sort of normality and however "progressive" its legislation. the problems of class-society would continue to arise. History demonstrates that "enlightened governments" which profess to make life comfortable for workers often, when their policies have failed to deliver the goods (as is necessarily the case), leave a trail of bitterly reactionary attitudes in their wake. Perhaps Neil Kinnock was perversely trying to avoid such a future problem by actually aiming to get power over workers on the very basis of having such views when he recently said:

I'm a father, and no matter how much I try to convince myself towards the course of enlightenment. 1 know damn well that, put to the test. I'm what people would call a reactionary (Everywoman, August 1986)

We shall not enjoy a properly liberated society while we are trapped in the social system which consigns the majority to lives of impoverishment, "normality" and alienation Instead of hoping for yet another Labour government to run capitalism, we urge our correspondent to become a socialist and act for a democratic society.

Editors.

Letter: Sri Lanka (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sri Lanka

Dear Editors,

I would like to draw your attention to a mistake in the article on Sri Lanka in the August issue of the Socialist Standard. The article states that the Tamils were brought to the island, then known as Ceylon, from India during British rule to work as cheap labour on the tea plantations. In fact, this group of "Indian" Tamils account for only about 1.2 million of the total Tamil population on the island. They lived until recently mainly on the plantations in central Sri Lanka.

The remaining 1.4 million Tamils live largely in the North and East of the island. They trace their history in Sri Lanka all the way back to the fifth or sixth century BC. when it is believed the Sinhalese began to settle on the island. By the time the Portuguese colonialists arrived in the 16th century AD. two separate kingdoms — Tamil in the North and Sinhalese in the South were well established. During the British colonial period these two kingdoms were brought under a single administration for the first time. At the time of Independence the idea of a separate Tamil state was regarded as rather extreme by most Tamils. Nevertheless the Tamils were concerned about their future status in an independent Sri Lanka, as they were considerably outnumbered by the Sinhalese.

The case of the Indian Tamils is quite different. They have had no share in the ancient history of either the Ceylon Tamils or the Sinhalese on the island. When they arrived in Sri Lanka they were scarcely better off than slaves. They were resented by the Sinhalese as they were settled on estates in the heart of the Sinhalese area. As the plantation economy boomed they found themselves marginally better off than the Sinhalese peasants in the area. The estates often provided them with some medical care, education and housing. They were disliked also by the Ceylon Tamils as they were mostly low caste Hindus living in abject poverty and dependent on the estates.

However, by the time of Independence they just outnumbered the Ceylon Tamils. They held considerable electoral sway in the central area of Sri Lanka, as they outnumbered the Sinhalese in these areas. Their vote ensured that eight Indian Tamil MPs went to parliament in 1947. In 1948 the Indian Tamils were disenfranchised and deprived of Sri Lankan citizenship. The Indian Tamil MPs were replaced by Sinhalese MPs This action gained the approval of the Ceylon Tamil leaders as well as the Sinhalese.

Since then there have been several agreements with India to repatriate several hundred thousand Indian Tamils and readmit the rest to Sri Lankan citizenship. These measures have been slow, largely unsuccessful, and have only added to the sufferings of the Indian Tamils. Conditions on the estates have deteriorated and the Indian Tamils live under conditions of considerable hardship.

However, it was not until 1977 that the two separate Tamil groups started to join forces. In that year violent anti-Tamil activity was directed at the Indian Tamil estate workers for the first time. This drove many of them out of the central area of Sri Lanka to the North, where they sought refuge with the Ceylon Tamils whose leaders by now were agitating for a separate state. Here they continue to be harassed by the state forces seeking out terrorist suspects.

KM

London

50 Years Ago: The Catholic Church and the Spanish Workers (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Forefront among those who glory in the rebellion, justify the rebel atrocities, or seek to blacken the Government with misrepresentations are the Catholic Church in Spain, the Pope, and the bulk of the prominent Catholics in England along with their Press. The Universe has vied with the Daily Mail in gutter journalism. The Catholic Bishops, like Bishop Amigo of Southwark, have assisted in a widespread campaign to whitewash the rebels. Bishop Amigo was able to discover that they and their Moorish mercenaries “are fighting for God and their country” to prevent its "total destruction" (Manchester Guardian, September 4th). The Catholic Tablet, wholeheartedly on the side of the rebels but above the disreputable behaviour of such papers as the Universe, was nearer the truth when it admitted (August 1st) that the rebellion was begun by the rebels for "economic and class reasons" and could be broadly described "as a class war." The Tablet, however, was more far-seeing than Bishop Amigo, and has backed the rebels with a certain amount of misgiving: fortunately, a well-founded misgiving, for the civil war is going to do the Catholic Church in Spain more harm than 30 years of propaganda. Whether the rebels win or lose there are millions of Spanish workers and peasants who will never forget that when they tried to climb out of hideous poverty the Catholic Church helped the landowners and military leaders to grind them down again, by force of arms and with the aid of Moorish troops and every device of modern warfare.

[From an article, "The Catholic Church and the Spanish Workers", published in the Socialist Standard, October 1936.]

SPGB Meetings (1986)

Party News from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There were so many meetings advertised in the October 1986 Standard that I had to split the party news post into two. And I still didn't even get to include everyone listed in the label section. Apologies to Janie Percy-Smith, Cliff Begley, Steve Coleman, Pieter Lawrence, E. Hardy, Carl Pinel, Ralph Critchfield, Enfield & Haringey Branch, Islington Branch, Doncaster  . . . did I leave anyone out?

SPGB Meetings (1986)

Party News from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

There were so many meetings advertised in the October 1986 Standard that I had to split the party news post into two. And I still didn't even get to include everyone listed in the label section. Apologies to Pieter Lawrence, Steve Coleman, Paul Bennett, West London Branch, Salford, Leeds, Manchester Branch . . . did I leave anyone out?

Socialist Sonnet No. 206: Wading Through the Motions (2025)

 From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Wading Through the Motions

The great, the good, the faithful, gathering

In conference halls, to bask in oration,

Of how they’re going to save the nation

Via three or four days of blathering,

As well as much waving of flags of course:

They will have the answers, once they find them.

Now all their past mistakes are behind them,

Not that they have any cause for remorse.

Immigration? Free Trade or Protection?

All the threadbare old arguments elide

As markets, not politicians, decide,

No matter who might win an election.

Leaders speak! Delegates go home again,

While ills of capitalism remain.

 

D. A.

A Bishop on Credulity. A Parson’s Poisonous Piffle Pulverised. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cross and the Crook.

“Christ died on the Cross,” We are told, and a wag who knew something added, “and his followers have lived on the cross ever since.” Consequently, when we read that the Bishop of London, holding aloft a “shepherd’s crook,” has commenced a series of open-air sermons, we must agree that the symbol fits the occasions. For if the crook is not emblematical of crooked ways it signifies a shepherd and sheep, and the sheep need a shepherd because the wool is drawn over their eyes. A beneficent capitalist executive, having for long realised the need of the sheep, have provided shepherds at a huge expense to their class. The Bishop of London is one of the provided (and well provided for—so well provided for, indeed, that he says, “Why, I wouldn’t take another blessed farthing if it was offered me.”)

“At 58 years of age, and unmarried,” says the Bishop, “I am one of the healthiest men in London.” Even sheep with wool combed over their eyes should be able to see that it is possible for their shepherd, with such an income, to keep healthy for quite a long time to come. He need not live in a reeking slum, or work in the poisonous fumes of a factory, or feed on adulterated and semi-decayed food. With £15,000 a year he can have the very best of medical attention, and should live to a hundred. Even then he will not wear out—his duties are too light—and he certainly will not rust, out, because, like most of the clergy, he is naturally oily.

Of course, the Bishop insists that his good health is the reward of a moral life, with especial emphasis on celibacy.

A word of explanation here. Personalities are not in our line ; as critics we deal with suggested reforms, with social evils occasionally, and always with the capitalist system itself. But the Bishop of London comes out with a mission of regeneration, denouncing drink and prostitution and furnishing an example of moral rectitude in his own person; talks endlessly about himself. Consequently I take up his challenge and merely remark that no doubt every member of his audiences could acquire all his boasted virtues on his salary.

The Science of the Crook.

Of course the Bishop would question their ability to perform the duties of his position. What are these onerous and brain-racking duties? First, to understand the standard of intelligence of his flocks, to be able to discern what they will appreciate according to that standard, and then to tickle their intelligence by bolstering up all the vile superstitions that poison their lives and render them easy victims for his capitalist masters. He jeers at science—that pleases his flocks, to whom study and thought are painful—but if he were charged with ignorance of modern science he would doubtless repudiate the charge with indignation. Yet in his discourse he adopts the attitude of one entirely ignorant of the facts and evidence of scientific evolution.

He selects two opposite points in the evolutionary circle and, ignoring the intervening ages with their endless panorama of development, seeks to ridicule science by comparing the phenomena of each, and by thus bringing them into juxtaposition, giving them the appearance of an absurd metamorphosis. His hearers, however, would swallow even this if it were only in “the book” alongside other miracles such as driving out devils and turning water into wine. But I leave it to the reader’s judgment.

The Argument of the Crook.

The following is from a “Daily Chronicle” report, 12.9. 16.

“The first thing that helped him to believe in God, added the Bishop, was Nature. “Why are we not blown off this earth as we rush through space at 10 miles a second ?” he asked. “The answer is because Someone has wrapped 70 miles of atmosphere round the earth. The most credulous person who is here is the man who can believe that that happens by accident.”

One might as well say that by flinging broadcast a bundle of letters one could produce a play of Shakespeare as that the universe was not the result of a designed plan.”

Of course, scientists have never suggested that the scattering of type broadcast would produce a Shakespearian play, or even so poor a thing as a bishop’s sermon, though both, they tell us, and everything else good and bad, have come in their turn as a result of the long process of development from the clashing of dead suns, the diffusion of fire-dust, the fusion of nebulas, and all the subsequent physical changes that resulted in the existence of this planet with an atmosphere and temperature capable of nursing into maturity capitalist society.

When we say nursing, however, we fail to perceive the necessity of a nurse. Unlike the bourgeois bishop who must have “someone” to wrap seventy miles of atmosphere round the earth, we perceive that the forces immanent in matter being the eternal property of matter, must manifest themselves wherever matter exists.

But the bishop has the effrontery to tell us that unless we can conceive of “someone wrapping seventy miles of atmosphere round the earth” have no alternative but to regard it as an accident. He would doubtless be surprised to learn that in nature—apart from man—there is no such thing as an accident. Accidents can only exist as ideas in the brains of animals, like man, who are ignorant of natural laws. When we know all the substances in which matter can express itself, and all the forces that belong to those substances, such words as accident and chance will be meaningless.

The Credulity of the Crook.

Those who uphold a social system where the mass of the people are enslaved by a small class, which exploits and governs them, cannot conceive of law without law-makers. The physical world must be analogous with their social world—and the spiritual world of their imagination an echo. If it, the physical world, reveals the fact that it evolves according to laws that can be understood and defined, that is evidence to them of a personality behind it—a supreme law-maker of the physical world, who was also its creator. Surely credulity cannot exceed this! Because an atmosphere envelops the earth “Someone” wrapped it round. Because suns are scattered like dust over the sky “Someone” arranged them. But the followers of this system of argument (!) never have the faculty of logic sufficiently developed to ask the old but still unanswered question, who created that “someone,” and again, who created that creator, and so without end.

When scientific knowledge becomes general it will be seen that the idea of a supreme law-maker, together with a spiritual world and the ideas of chance and accident, grew in men’s minds because of their ignorance, and its adoption and preservation by the ruling class is the outcome of their desire to maintain supremacy over the working class. To keep alive the fictions and superstitions of the past is to cloud the intellects of the workers and shut them off from real knowledge.

Thus are the workers, under capitalism, provided with a philosophy—a way of looking at things—ready made, that fits the system and keeps them mentally wedded to it. If sickness comes their way they must visit the panel doctor and have faith ; when husbands and brothers are murdered in capitalist mines or factories, or butcher each other on the capitalist-made battlefield, it is “God’s will” ; when the worker is unemployed it is his “luck” that’s out or he is “not worth his salt” ; when we point to the class division of society—the ruling class owning wealth but not producing, and the working class producing all wealth but owning none—it is “God’s will” once again, “otherwise it could not be.”

The Exit of the Crook.

It is small wonder that those who hear the message of Socialism for the first time fail to see in the working class the instrument of its fulfilment. It is only when they realise the full strength and meaning of Socialism that their doubts leave them. However ignorant and apathetic the workers may be to-day, the Socialist philosophy, pregnant with truth and appeal alike to self interest and the interest of their class, must eventually triumph over the traditions and superstitions of the past. As the torrent of human knowledge swells, the efforts to dam it up, to confine it to the ruling class and their sneaking tools, becomes ever more futile. The very sanction that a capitalist government must have from an ever-widening circle in society—which compels them to extend the franchise—opens the way to discussion of all the facts of capitalist society, and teaches the worker to use his reason and judgment. As these faculties develop, Socialist principles will be understood and accepted by the workers generally, because they embody the truth of their social position, show them the cause of their poverty, and point the way to their emancipation.

Down the steeps of capitalist anarchy the workers are driven to worse horrors and suffering. One by one the battle-cries and watchwords of their leaders and shepherds are proved worthless and discarded. Socialism—an object of contempt for the “respectable”—is first examined, next tolerated, and finally recognised as the only hope of the workers.

Poverty and misery cannot achieve Socialism, but those who suffer must needs seek the remedy, which they undoubtedly will find in spite of all the hopes and efforts of capitalists and their ecclesiastical agents to the contrary. The strength of Socialism, to-day is in its principles, based upon scientific analysis. The last century has seen the triumph of science in the field of wealth production and distribution. Tomorrow will tear down the theological and economic veil that masks the slavery of the wealth producers, and, revealing to them the real nature of capitalist society, will forge them a weapon to break through the social forms that bind them, to a system dictated by science and common sense.

Meanwhile we are faced with a wily foe. Every discovery in the realm of science is discredited until it is established beyond doubt, when it is claimed as a manifestation of the power of “Almighty God” and a justification of capitalist society. Thus Gallileo, when he, alone, proclaimed the earth’s movement round the sun, was imprisoned and threatened with torture by the priests of his day ; now celestial motions are claimed as evidence of supreme power. Darwin’s theory of evolution was hotly contested by the clergy, and is even now ridiculed by the more ignorant among them ; the more cunning, however, accept evolution and pretend to believe that “God” breathed into the elementary protoplasm and thus imparted the character of struggle and development.

Because the capitalist and his bishop are smug and self-satisfied they overlook the obvious—the poisoned nature of the breath. For their claim is an admission of “God’s” responsibility for parasitism, the cruelty of religious persecution, the horrors of militarism, and the squalor and misery of the working class.

There is still one discovery they have not yet annexed to the glory of their universal dictator—”the Materialist Conception of History,” given to the workers by Marx and Engels 68 years ago. Over that discovery the last great conflict must be fought. Only the working class can bring it to an issue. The game of the master class is to ignore it because it is the key to social evolution, and leaves them stranded in the realm of sociology, without a divine law-maker or a divine purpose in their rule.

And Dr. Ingram, how will he regard it ? For him it will be an accident, because it threatens with extinction his class and his vocation. To him it will matter nothing that the working class will rise to take over its inheritance—to free themselves from capitalist slavery. His sympathies are with his class, the class that he serves by fraudulently misrepresenting science, preaching decaying superstitions, and assisting to keep the workers in ignorance to facilitate their exploitation.

F. Foan

Analysis of Society. I. Interests. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The analysis of society is the logical continuation of the analysis of wealth. The problems which the nature of modern wealth presents ramify into all social relations and are reflected in all phases of social thought. Economic science is valuable in that it illuminates the conditions on which society rests, and thus provides the key to an understanding of its history, but it is by no means complete in itself. Thought must be translated into action, and it is when we come to the practical as distinct from the theoretical solution of the problems in question that we become impressed with the conservatism of existing institutions and find it necessary to discover some instrument for their overthrow. Prior to this, however, we must examine the exact nature of these institutions and their relation to their economic basis.

To commence with the last first, in considering the nature of the units of wealth, i.e., commodities, we arrived at the conclusion that the relations between them resulted from their mutual relations to an outside element, the human race. Only in so far as they were, all alike, products of human labour, was any meaning discovered in their exchangeability and the process of their existence generally. So in examining the relations between the units of society, let us pursue a similar method. We see already that they mutually enter into relations with outside elements, the various forms of matter which they convert (or have converted) into articles of use.

This is no mere whim on their part, but a matter of necessity. Human life is a material process demanding the continual absorption of matter and the use of the objects of the material world on an ever-expanding and more varied scale. From the simple process of digestion to the complex operations of the brain all human functions are material and presuppose objects either for the supply of energy or as a means for its exercise. The most idealistic of philosophers have never yet shown us how to live without eating, and living includes thinking, as a matter of course.

Human beings, then, have this in common—they are part of the process of organic evolution and, as such, have definite interests in the world around them. In pursuing these interests they enter into relations with one another, and according to the nature of these interests and the circumstances of their satisfaction so the social relations between them take their form.

Simple association in pre-historic times was a heritage from pre-human ancestors, and appears to be a feature common to the existence of all the higher mammals. Its basis was the quest for food and the necessity for mutual protection and assistance, and so long as the hunting and fishing (or, as an alternative, arboreal) mode of living continued this primitive tribal harmony was preserved. By degrees, however, it was destroyed by the domestication of animals and the discovery and development of agriculture, which claimed more intense application of effort and paved the way to slavery and conquest. Class rule was established, and as the mode of production has developed so has one class given way to another whose methods of exploitation were more up-to-date.

To-day antagonism is the most obvious characteristic of material interests. One and all must purchase their wants, “be they of the stomach or of the fancy,” and must therefore be first possessed of money. This implies, again, that they have made a sale of some commodity or other. Thus all persons come to be owners of commodities and appear now at one pole, now at the other, of the commercial magnet. They are continually opposed to one another as buyers and sellers.

Our economic investigation showed these opponents to be divided into two classes—the sellers of labour-power and the venders of all other commodities. These latter are also the buyers of labour-power since the commodities in which they deal are only produced by the action of labour-power on raw materials. We also saw that their object in purchasing labour-power is to obtain the surplus over and above its own maintenance which it is capable of producing, and further that this process is only possible because the owners of labour-power are destitute of any other commodity or means of production and subsistence.

Now if, as we have seen, wealth in its various forms constitutes the basis of social relations, then the ownership of wealth determines the nature of these relations. Capital is the ownership of the social means of production and subsistence by a small class. It forms the pivot on which modern society turns, and consequently all social relations to-day take the form of an antagonism between two classes, of opposite interests, i.e , capitalists and wage-earners, In place of the primitive free association for the satisfaction of common interests we have the compulsory subjection of one set of human beings and their interests to another set.

This division of interests in society is reflected in the constitution of the individual. Thus the average wage-slave, in order to secure the satisfaction of his stomach, enters a factory, office, or other stronghold of robbery, to perform tasks against which, more often than not, his brain and senses revolt, albeit somewhat blindly.

The greater portion of his energy is spent in producing value for which he receives no return. So far as he is concerned it is wasted and his life curtailed by just so much. With his wages he purchases the necessities of his commodity-existence, which are on the average no more than will enable him to perform his task to the satisfaction of his purchaser. If the nature of his employment demands that he shall wear “respectable” clothes, then his screw is adapted to this condition ; if not, well, he considers himself lucky to get any clothes at all. If extreme muscular energy is required of him, then he can afford to indulge in quantities of food which would make the dyspeptic clerk green with other things than envy ; but his expenditure must be limited in other directions. Everywhere we see that the standard of “living” of the various sections of the working class is restricted to the level which will enable them to subsist “economically,” that is, as producers of value for the expansion and development of capital. They are not credited with possessing “higher interests,” with the exception of those termed “spiritual.” For reasons which will be explained later it pays the capitalist class to encourage these. Even his meagre economic wants are at the best inadequately satisfied. His food is adulterated, his clothes consist of shoddy, and his house is jerry-built.

For a scientific appreciation of nature the wage-worker has neither the energy, time, nor means to spare. For artistic enthusiasm in his labour and its products he has no inclination. The essential conditions of genuine science and art are freedom and the power to express oneself, which implies possession of the means for doing it. In the capitalist process of production the individual worker is a passive factor. It is not he who uses the instruments of labour but rather these instruments which use him on behalf of their owners. Incidentally he keeps his body moving after the style of an automaton, but only at the expense of his emotional and intellectual nature.

It is not, however, only the workers whose natures are rent asunder and who suffer loss of individuality. The capitalist himself, for all the luxury of his existence, is at the mercy of the system which creates him. His emancipation from the necessity to labour reduces him to an economically meaningless position. The means of production which he controls are social in character and do not provide him, their owner, with any outlet for his energies. His only function is to accumulate. To spend his wealth is beyond him, and if he ever tries, a la Carnegie, soon gives it up as a bad job. The best he can do is to indulge in insensate extravagance. His most exact science is a knowledge of his accounts. His highest art is the multifarious one of cheating and gambling in the commercial and financial sphere. Any other “science and art” he buys, as he buys labour-power, to augment or display his wealth. Showy advertisements of his goods, mechanical contrivances for reducing wages and increasing profits, pompous mansions with a retinue of flunkeys, public libraries crammed with unintelligent technicalities and the dull prejudices of the bourgeois mind—these are the fruits of his patronage. He calls himself a self-made man, but his words and actions proclaim him the creature of his money.

This is well shown by his never-ceasing fear of revolution. So much is the capitalist the embodiment of capital that he cannot conceive himself existing under any other social order than the present one. Change for him can only mean extinction, so he clings in morbid frenzy to every institution or idea which supports things as they are.

If the wage-earner has yet to learn to live and be a man the capitalist, on the other hand, has got beyond that stage. His day is passing. Rotten product of a rotten system, he has lost the possibility of manhood, and dissolution alone awaits him and his class.

To the Socialist worker revolution is the breath of hope which inspires him to learn and endure until his class is ready for the task ; and his spare time and energy are readily given to assist his fellows to learn likewise. In order to satisfy their mutual interests they must dispossess the capitalist class of the ownership of the social means of subsistence and must convert these into the common property of society.

Present-day society is not the first to be characterised by division into classes with opposing interests any more than capital is the first form of private property. Other social systems based on other property relations have preceded it.

Primitive society was, as already hinted, communistic on a narrow scale. The unit of tribal organisation was the gens or clan, a group of kinsfolk which controlled economic affairs in the mutual interests of its members. Slavery and conquest, which were the outcome of agricultural development, put an end to this relation of equality. Slaves were prisoners of war or tribesmen who had fallen under economic obligations to their fellows. As private property increased in magnitude and importance, so the originally equal tribesmen became divided into rich and poor. There were, therefore, in the first civilised society at least three distinct classes, viz., slave-owners, slaves, and freemen who did not possess slaves.

The process of conquest, with its motive of territorial acquisition, broke up the independence of the local tribal communities and laid the foundations of Feudalism. The essential feature of this system was the military tenure of land. Freemen became divided into lords and vassals ; slaves were converted into agricultural serfs or chartered freemen privileged to carry on handicrafts. Here we have a regular hierarchy of classes whose rival interests made the history of the Middle Ages.

The collapse of Feudalism and its supersession by the existing order have been briefly described in a previous article. Sufficient has been said to enable us to contrast Capitalism with previous social orders. In the societies just described class divisions were numerous and complex, whereas to-day we are faced with one simple line of demarcation, i.e., the possession of capital. To-day there are but two really distinct classes.

When the feudal aristocrats supplanted the local patricians, when again, later on, the capitalists overthrew them in turn, they simply substituted one form of class rule for another. Beneath the revolutionary class in each instance there existed the workers whose exploitation has formed the basis of all civilised societies.

When the workers overthrow their present masters they will end the last of the ruling, exploiting classes. By abolishing private property in the means of life they will eliminate the cause of hostile interests and class rule. In emancipating themselves they will free and unite humanity.

Their task, however, demands knowledge. At present their minds still hold the numbing superstitions with which their masters feed them. To criticise the mentality of capitalism is, therefore, our next concern.

Eric Boden

Independence for All. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the report of an interview with a Mr. R. M. Kindersley, which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” of July 13th under the title of “The New Habit,” is about as much piffle as it is possible to get into two columns of that paper. The writer, Mr. Arnold Bennett, praises the subject of the interview for the part he is playing in getting other people to economise and save during the war, by the use of the bait of, not 9d. for 4d. this time, but £1 for 15s. 6d.— we are dealing with “high finance,” don’tcher-know.

Now, you 223,000 railway workers who, according to your “leaders” (“Daily Telegraph,” 21.8.16.) are getting less than 25s. a week, and you other workers who are getting less than a pound, have you read the scheme ? It shows you how to get rich without work ! Buy War Loan certificates. You will see you are on a good thing if I quote from the article. Mr. Kindersley is speaking.

“The proposition is the £1 for 15s. 6d. War Savings certificate. It means an unsurpassed security, the security of the British nation, and principle paid back at the end of a short term, together with compound interest at the rate of £5 4s, 7d. per cent. And no income tax ! And you can cash it at any time on three days notice. This form of saving presents every advantage.

There is simply nothing else to touch it anywhere on earth. Most people, old and young, have a foundation of common sense, and they only need to understand the advantages of the 15s. 6d. certificate in order to buy it.”

Stick a pin there—nothing to pay for the tip. This statement, of course, is wrong. You need more than to understand in order to buy a certificate : you need money. But still they have made it easy to quote again.

“Members need not wait until they have the 15s. 6d. in hand. They can begin to save at once with as small a sum as 6d. . . There is no limit except that no single human being can buy more than 500 certificates.”

This scheme is easy ; indeed there is nothing like it ; it gives everybody a chance. Mr. Kindersley has said so and he ought to know, as this article will show later. Let us see where the chance comes in for a person getting 25s. a week with a wife and four children to keep. He will probably have to pay out for

After providing for these items he has 11s. per week for food for six persons.

In order that at least one of the six can produce a profit for a boss he must be more or less fit and unfortunately (for the boss) he must eat a little. Consequently we will allow him, with things at present prices, 1s. a day, to be allotted as follows :

Now, Mr. Kindersley, after allotting the man a diet the cost of which would starve you, there are still five persons to feed on the princely sum of 4s. a week. How is it done? Do you feed one of your children at that cost ? Not much ! It is quite clear that there is nothing to spare for beer and tobacco, or holidays, or motor-car tours, or for governesses, toys, or pets for the kids. There is nothing for luxuries of any kind, or even to meet the expenses of illness.

Now, Mr. Kindersley, show us where it is easier to effect a saving—but I forgot, you are not doing that ; this side is left to the wives and maiden ladies of your class.

To turn to the interview again, Mr. Arnold Bennett asked, “And what are you persuading the women to do?” To this Mr. Kindersley replied: “We are persuading them to undertake house-to-house propaganda among women and to serve as honorary secretaries of associations, and to arrange for war economy exhibitions, competitions, cookery demonstrations, and all that sort of thing.” “But,” said Arnold Bennett, “this means heavy work for them.” “It does,” agreed Mr. Kindersley. “But the women will do it. They are doing it. They know, as a sex, the value of economy.”

Is it possible for impudence to go further ? For women who have as much in one week to keep a house on as the worker’s wife has in a whole year, to go and preach economy to these same workers’ wives is extreme irony. I should like to hear how they are received when they suggest cutting down the bill of fare in order to buy War Loan certificates.

“Don’t you want to hear about our advertising department ?” asked Mr. Kindersley. “Don’t you want to hear about, our travelling speakers ? And about our film ‘For the Empire’ ?” One of these talking machines or so-called speakers, has been found out by a section of the workers. He was billed to speak twice at an aircraft factory during dinner hours, bat his reception was such, and the heckling and questions were so much to the point, that only one meeting was held, and that of but 15 minutes duration.

Let me quote Mr. Kindersley again :

“But the most important reason is that we are showing members of the Association how to help the country, and this is what they want above all to do. They like to feel they have a stake in the country, and are helping it as well as saving. This combination is a new and delicious sensation to many of them.”

Until they wake up, when they discover it was only sensation.

The workers of this country, like the workers of other countries, have no stake in the country they happen to be born in. Out of the hundreds of thousands of members of the working class that have been killed in the present bloody war, how many have left wealth sufficient to have to pay death duty on, although the amount is only £100 ? Read the list of wills and you will see how seldom the working-class soldier has anything to bequeath. The butchered wage-slave has given all he had—life. And even that was not his. All there is in and on this country belongs to the capitalist class. Not only have the workers no stake in the country, they have no right in the country except at the bidding of the master class. This class has set up its tribunals to decide whether you shall work, where you shall work, and what work you shall do—or whether their interests would be better served by making a fighting unit of you, to go and murder other workers who are cajoled and coerced by masters in the same way that you are.

What rights have you ? For all the boasted “freedom” of the British race you have the right of slaves—the right to obey your masters. Anything you do in your own interests which is against the interests of your masters, as it must be since the interests of masters and slaves are opposite, is met with imprisonment, banishment, the ignominy of being strapped to a gun wheel, of even death by shooting or hanging.

Don’t blame the master class for what they are doing. Every class acts in its own interests as it understands them. Therefore as this country is owned by the capitalists who live in it it is to their interest to see that it is not endangered by the capitalists of another land, hence their present actions.

Just another quotation from the report in question ; it is a warning of what is likely to happen to all who don’t save. Says Mr. Kindersley :

“My belief is that these Associations are doing more than help the war—they are changing the nation. I foresee the day when the man, woman, or child who does not possess savings in the shape of a national security will be a marked man, women, or child.”

There’s a timely warning. Take heed, otherwise you will be marked “Cain” because you weren’t “Abel,” and the crime will not be on Mr. Kindersley’s shoulders.

Has it ever dawned on you why these people want you to save ? Some of the least astute of the capitalist class have partly told us, though we knew previously. Lord Clarendon, presiding over a War Savings committee meeting at Watford a few weeks ago said : “This saving scheme will not only help us now, but it will help to tide over the industrial depression which must follow the war.” There you are, fellow-workers, though these be lean years there are leaner ones to follow, and if you can be kidded to take up your belt another hole now and live on a bit less you will either be used to it or dead by the time the leaner years come. In either case you will not want poor relief. Should you fail to save in these times of “plenty” and dare to seek relief in the lean period, look out, for Mr. Kindersley has said you will be “a marked man, woman, or child.”

Perhaps the workers who exist in the small village in Herts where Mr. Kindersley’s large residence is situated will wonder what is going to happen to them seeing that their wages are well below 25s. per week. This apostle of working-class economy had the damned cheek to lecture these opulent villagers on the interesting subject of economy a few weeks before he took his family for a month’s holiday to Bangor. A staff of servants, averaging more than two to each member of the family, was sent on by rail, whilst the family followed by road in a Rolls Royce motor car and a cheap £750 knockabout Wolsely car (purchased to run one of the kids to and from school at Eton).

That is economy as practiced by a director of the Bank of England and a governor of the Hudson Bay Company. It is typical of the capitalist class as a whole. In peace time they rob you, the workers, of two-thirds of the wealth that you produce, and now when it is harder to live than any living person can remember, they tell you to save while they themselves spend more on their private billiard room than the average worker gets in wages all his life.

How do they manage it ? They are few compared with the working class, yet they control the lives of the latter. It happens this way.

The capitalists own the country and all on it. The business of the country is carried on through a political machine called Parliament. Control of this machine gives control over the Army, Navy, Police, magistrates, and all the judicial machinery of the country. All laws that matter are passed by and in the interest of those in control of Parliament, and are forced upon the people by the Army, Navy, Police, etc., who act according to instructions from Parliament. Any worker or body of workers who attempt to do anything against the interests of the capitalist class, who at present control Parliament, can at any time be punished or brought back to capitalist law and order by the coercive forces. How do the capitalists get control of Parliament and keep it ? It is quite simple. Every few years an election takes place, whereat there usually come before the people two persons, one calling himself a Liberal and the other a Conservative. Sometimes a Judas from the working class is allowed to take the place of the Liberal, but in the main it is Liberal v. Conservative. Now you know how they call each other names in order to get you to vote for them. Both are representatives of the class who own the country, and in the fight for the seat whichever gets elected makes no difference to the workers.

Millions of pounds of the masters’ money are spent on elections, and it pays because it gives them political control. They dangle before your eyes on posters big loaves and little loaves. “The foreigner has got your job !” they tell you on other posters. “Vote for Have’em and work for all,” they implore; “Vote for Kidem and cheap food,” they wail.

All this goes on because the working class have the power in their hands to give or withhold control of Parliament. That is, they possess the majority of votes. Consequently they have the power to take the control of Parliament from the capitalist class and use it in their own interests. But while they continue to vote for the representatives of the capitalist class, thereby giving them power, they must expect that power to be used in the interest of the class who, for the time being, possess it.

The way out of the trouble is to organise for the capture of the political machine. Organise on the basis of your class interests ; that is, organise as a class who produce all the wealth and own none of it, but who has for its object the social control and ownership of all the means and instruments for producing wealth, and the wealth when produced.

In this way and in no other will you prevent an idle class robbing you of 13s. in the £, and be able yourselves to live a free and full life.

SNOOKEY

The Ruin of Christ. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

A note on a newspaper's wish for a United Church.

For nearly two thousand years people have been told that Jesus Christ came to the earth for the well-being of humanity, left a stock of immortal truths and after great sorrows returned to his Heavenly Father. From the Scriptures we read that The Man of Sorrows worked miracles, put beautiful parables into his public speeches, and was superior to the powers of Death and the Sea. In history we learn that his parentage was so obscure, the evidence of either his existence or his work so debatable, that opinion drift between two extremes, Renan believing him to be a humble, considerate man and Shelley an ambitious man who aspired to the throne of Judea.

Interest was centred on Christ until quite recently because of the nature of the claims on his behalf ; the divine power with which his name was invested, the singularity of his birth, the lowliness of his habits, his nobility and his patience. If, when we consider Jesus in the most favourable light, we find his parables not entirely uninstructive, we also see that under the care of the Church they have become either wretched or villainous. Jesus, like King Lear, gave his property into cruel hands. By popes and archbishops his ethics have been falsified ; by philosophers he has been stript of his divinity ; his Godliness has become the faith of the fool and the target of Historians. In the future, interest will centre on Christ chiefly in consequence of some articles and letters which lately appeared in the “Daily Chronicle.”

The editor of that newspaper is urging the adherents of the two-and-seventy jarring sects to unite into a common brotherhood. He thinks that with a little trimming of faiths, a modification of the gospel to meet the advancements of science, and sundry other things, that Christianity might still be a power in the land. Alas ! why do not your friends tell you, poor ”Chronicle” Editor, that a writer on such a theme may nowadays wear out a mine of nibs and use a sea of ink before a sceptic will even smile. Am I alone to tell you that you should close the lid of your pot and pack up your pens ? Your God has made another error in judgment ; you are born too late in the day. Somewhere in the sixteenth century your kith and kin in Spain did not use pens. I learn on good authority that the founder of the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada, was never the editor of a newspaper.

But as I do not wish to be thought inconsiderate, or in any unworthy way to gloat over the downfall of Christ and his Church, I would like to openly consider some of the reasons for your proposals. Although I am an Atheist I see something infinitely pathetic in the fact that a people once so prosperous and proud, with abilities, as they once had, to construct their old giant crusades, with energy to war, with cunning enough to arrest the growth of science and art, should at last lose the power of their science-riddled Jesus and become dependent upon London newspapers.

In your columns you hint, as we have been told so often before, that religion is a necessity of national life : that God’s hand is in the work of the scholar and his influence felt in the life of the savage. With the latter half of your contention I am in complete agreement. Knowing something of the history of Christianity, and a little of the life of savages, it is difficult to see how they would lose anything by exchanging a crucifix of Christ for the images of wood and hobgoblins of stone to which they are devoted. But whatever loss they sustained, or whatever hostility the substitution aroused among the base Indians or the cannibals of Tierra del Fuego, the proposal should be insisted on English manufacturers would thus be able to export a large number of ivory Christs which are lying stagnant in the workshops. The other of your contentions I cannot so easily endorse. Voltaire, Tom Paine, Marx, Spencer, Darwin, were all great men ; so if it is true that the scholar cannot work without God’s help, then God alone is responsible for some of the deadliest arguments against his own existence and some of the wittiest satires on his own son.

We learn also that the Christian has worked and does work in the service of God. As a little pamphlet which we issue, entitled “Socialism and Religion,” deals with the birth, life, and death of the Idea of God, it will not be necessary for me to speak of it here ; I will alone consider the world’s work of his servants.

What has the Christian done in the world which the Atheist has not ? Point to an achievement of a saint who has the advantage of intimacy with the Almighty and I will counterbalance it with an important work of a Freethinker who is on no friendly footing with a divinity. Against the literary value of the Bible I place Shakespeare ; against “Genesis” and the “Book of Job” I place “King Lear” and “The Tempest.” We are told that St. Francis of Assisi held conversation with the sparrows and by the sea-side lectured the fishes. In contrast to these second-hand records of this laughable saint I place the beautiful lament of Burns over the field-mouse, written in subtle sweetness, not for the instruction of the simple creature which lost its nest under the ploughshare, but for the enjoyment of humanity. In the Psalms God gets praised in choice language, but no more tremendous melody of praise and sorrow has been penned than Shelley’s elegy on the Death of Keats—”Adonais.” Blake was intimate with the Almighty and kept in touch with the events of Paradise. Blake saw Eden and Hell. Blake had God as a model in his studio. Blake, so Blake claimed and many believed, passed through all the celestial and infernal valleys. He claimed that he had a special invitation, but I am inclined to think that it was just the result of an unsettled disposition. In any case his work has little artistic value or topographical importance. They are neither pictures nor maps of hell, so we must conclude that Blake was utterly foolish and could not learn, or that his divine instructor was out of touch with the modern French artists. I incline to the latter view after having read a biography of Blake by G. K. Chesterton. You may now agree with me, nearly-forgotten editor, that in works of beauty the saints are not supreme. But still the question remains—what have the religionists done which the sceptics have not ? For an answer we must look slightly at the noble work of the world.

Look to the early days of astronomy and you will find religion there as a worm in the bud. The slightest slip from the ritual of the Church, the publication of the feeblest heresy or the mightiest truth, was followed by hellish punishment. From the time when the priests first got power until the time when they lost it they struck right and left in a mad, blind fury. Up till the time when Voltaire lived eight million people had perished in Holy Crusades. There is no doubt the biblical God made priests in his own image.

Bruno suffered after Copernicus ; homes were ruined, arts and sciences enslaved ; authors, reformers, philosophers were blinded, branded, tortured, poisoned, or burned. Blind with the love of Christ, the Inquisitors did not know their own kith and kin. The friend of superstition died with its enemy. The poet was exiled and the astronomer murdered. Not a soul must breathe a syllable of any fresh thought. Those among our friends who know the joy of listening to or uttering fresh truths will understand the deep gloom of this enslavement. It is not alone to those rare and lonely martyrs of the cause of progress that we must always feel grateful, but also to those nameless thousands who have gone to their graves with the fire of truth in their hearts, with wonderful thoughts unpublished. Well we may remember the intellect and honesty of those olden mortals who braved the smiles, bribes, and fury of Christ’s ministers and dealt the first mortal blow to superstition, but we shall never know the details of the unhappy lives of those who were forced to let their poetry wither away—not so much as whispered—hide their yearnings, stifle their young dreams, as a mother the child she loves and yet fears to keep. We shall never be able to count the lost lives of the people, nor measure the infamies of the Church during those miserable years. The Church may do good by stealth, the rest of its work is on record,

Yet I am not of a spiteful nature, so I will offer Christians a few words of advice on how they may, if they will, become united. Do not write books, do not distribute crusts of bread, do not wage wars, for the love of God ; but sow and gather corn, weave clothes, build houses, on communal principles, for the love of humanity. Study the poets, historians, scientists, and architects, then in the music of their sentiments you will forget old hells, conjurors, and tricky heavens. In the knowledge of architecture and the love of nature which follow you will burn all the churches that have corrugated iron roofs ; in the strength of character which follows you will possess the foundations of future happiness.

No doubt you will often be told that an Atheist’s life is black and vacant. The men who repeat this stale nonsense are all men of less brain than Bacon, who says in his “Moral Essays” that “Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to virtue ; but superstition destroys all these and erects itself into a tyranny over the understanding of men.” Irreligion certainly accompanies an understanding of Socialism, but we Socialists can enjoy the picturesque parts of all religions, from the beautiful mythology of old Greece to that of the “Daily Chronicle.” We may enjoy the beauties of the country, the wonders of the cities, the solitude of the sea, or its commerce. The riddle of the universe is still with us to test our wits and keep them keen. Books, music, and art are now strongly established as the elements. It is not much that we lose when we lose a Christ, a priest, and an iron chapel. We are progressing. The Bible can no longer be used as a weapon against us. It is rapidly becoming an entertaining book in our hands. With our complete freedom from superstition, political and industrial as well as religious, we shall have reached the time when the Chapters of Genesis may be raised to the superb dignity of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The religion of Christ was no more fit for the guidance of the world’s workers than the fishing boat of Peter was fit for the circumnavigation of the world or the sandals of Joseph fit for a journey from Bethlehem to the North Pole.

But the old Church, the old slave-ship of Christ, last century was sinking fast and the wish to sail in solitary triumph was gone. Truth has been treated by their flinty clerics as a wolf with a small belly and a moderate appetite whose pursuit may be delayed with morsels of flesh. But Truth, instead, is like the sea on which no unprincipled ship can sail for long in security. The billows have been hammering at the old hulk of the Church for some ages now. Starting a voyage from Galilee, Christianity sailed smoothly for a thousand years or so, gathering up the slaves, stealing the treasures of free thought ; its blight was terrible, absolute, and swift. Thus astronomy rose like a whirlwind ; geology was as lightning. The surrounding sea beat harder and faster. The crumbling ship’s sails were ruined, its masts were snapped at the roots. The passengers and slaves rebelled and after much turmoil managed to get some kind of a Reformation. No one cared what was tossed to the sea so long as the crippled ship was saved. Year after year the storm grew worse and Christ’s compass led it astray. When their provisions were gone they turned cannibals : sect devoured sect. Last century the “Origin of Species” and the Socialist Philosophy were published and fell like thunderbolts in the old, rotten, rat-riddled, shattered ship. Amid the howling billows and gusts of wind the vessel sunk. In the wilderness of the waves it was lost with all its pretensions, tyrants, conundrums of Heaven, spectres of Hell, and the rest of its ghastly cargo.

I am afraid you cut a miserable figure, London Editor, as you stand on the shores of Fleet Street crying pitifully to the tempest: “Peace, be still !” Yet it will be interesting to see for how long an editor may sit by a grave trying to restore a corpse to health and strength, and remain free from pity and contempt.

H. M. M.