Proper Gander: The luxury gap (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s a hint of pornography about Channel 4’s documentary series Inside The World’s Most Luxurious… in that it presents an idealised version of something in order to titillate. The first three episodes each show off the highest of high-end vehicles: cruise ships, motor-homes and yachts. These are the most extravagant and technologically advanced ways of getting from A to B available, albeit only to those who can fork out £8,000 a night for a voyage on a liner. On the Seven Seas Grandeur, this would get you one of their ‘most exclusive’ suites, which comes with its own butler. The ship boasts seven restaurants (with Versace-designed crockery), a 470-seat theatre and an art gallery containing 1,600 exhibits, including a doted-on Fabergé egg. More compact are the motor-homes featured in the second episode. These are ‘jaw-dropping palaces on wheels’, one of which even includes a garage in which you can park your Ferrari. A hi-tech cockpit leads on to a sleek seating area, kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, even a roof terrace. The Element model of motor-home sells for over £2 million, although this sounds like a bargain compared to the £12 million cost for a flat of the same size (732 square feet) in Knightsbridge, London. The third episode showcases ‘the super elite’s ultimate status symbol’: yachts. We’re told that ‘these floating palaces redefine the meaning of opulence’, with one example being the £80 million Titania, which runs to 73 metres long and has six decks (containing a massage room, jacuzzi, gym and grand piano) joined by a glass lift. This ‘pinnacle of bespoke luxury’ is only rarely used by its owner, the billionaire founder of Phones4U John Caudwell, and otherwise can be hired out for £600,000 per week.

The series describes rather than attempts to analyse the extravagances, not that this means it gives an objective or neutral account, as illustrated by the gushing adjectives used in the narration. While the monetary value of the vehicles is often mentioned, more emphasis is placed on the attention to detail and the skills involved in manufacturing them. The motor-homes and yachts are made to order, with the specifications chosen by the beaming couples who commission them and built by hand by specialist firms. The talents of the designers, welders, plumbers, electricians, and hundreds of others are evident, and the yachts and motor-homes are certainly inspiring as technical achievements. The positive impression the programme engenders also extends to the owners, who seem personable enough, and the creators and crews who want to do a good job in making and running the craft. We are only shown the staff while they’re on duty and on camera, though, so we don’t hear if their opinions are always so committed. Despite the occasional wry inflection in the voice over, the programme’s affirming tone doesn’t encourage us to question the context in which these lavish objects exist. Still, it’s obvious that the lifestyles depicted in the programme don’t bear much relation to those of its audience. The extraordinary feats of design and engineering are tainted by the elitism which the vehicles represent.

In a socialist world, maybe more people will want to live in yachts or motor-homes or their future equivalents? Without the financial and bureaucratic constraints which in capitalism usually tie us to a particular location whether we want to be there or not, the freedom to travel around would be one of the principles of a socialist society. Some people, groups or communities may prefer to spend time travelling with or without a fixed home, and why not do this in the most comfortable way possible? This leads to the familiar argument against socialism that it is unrealistic and unsustainable because ‘what if everyone wanted their own luxury yacht or motor-home?’. An assumption behind this is that given the opportunity, people will tend to choose the most full-on option. Personal greed is an attitude encouraged by the relative scarcities of capitalism, whereas socialism wouldn’t create the conditions for an outlook as narrow. Wanting better isn’t necessarily the same as wanting more, and even in capitalist society, our aspirations are varied. If an individual or group in a socialist world wanted to produce a top-notch yacht or motor-home, they wouldn’t be able to make this happen through financial clout, but only by engaging the cooperation of many others. With resources and manufacturing capabilities owned and run in common, people will have to decide how to allocate them using whatever decision-making processes are most democratic, representative and practical. Without the wasteful production which comes with propping up capitalist infrastructure, a socialist society would be able to focus on satisfying people’s needs and wants. Whether or not this would involve behemoths like those featured in the documentary would depend on what provision and motivation are available at the time. A socialist society’s early period would have to prioritise ensuring the global population’s basic needs are met in a sustainable way. Maybe motor-homes and yachts or their future equivalents could be available on a pool-type basis, with people booking them to use for a while and then being available for someone else. This kind of arrangement would no doubt be alongside networks of more communal travel by land, sea or air. The technology and skills to create efficient, pleasurable means of transport are already here, as demonstrated by Inside The World’s Most Luxurious…, even if our current society limits this to the super-rich, as the programme also reminds us.

Mike Foster

Why we can’t support Your Party (2026)

From the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the weekend of 29-30 November some 2000 attendees at a conference in Liverpool founded a new political party called simply ‘Your Party’.

After Labour lost the 2019 General Election long-time left-winger Jeremy Corbyn resigned as leader and was succeeded by the man who is now the Prime Minister. During the four years during which he was leader Corbyn had tried to steer the Labour Party towards the left. Starmer decided not just to reverse this but to turn the Labour Party into a mainstream capitalist party, even to the extent of describing itself as a better ‘party of business’ than the Tories.

Corbyn himself was suspended as a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party (though not of the Labour Party itself). Starmer could have let him stay a member (as Corbyn would have wanted) but he and those around him were adamant. They wanted to completely change the Labour Party by in effect lopping off its leftwing. Corbyn’s supporters were expelled. Corbyn himself was not allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the 2024 general election. They put up a candidate against him; which meant that as he stood against a Labour candidate he was automatically expelled from the Labour Party. He won, easily, as an Independent.

From that point on, there were calls for Corbyn to support the formation of a new left-of-Labour party which would in effect be the Labour Party’s former leftwing as a separate political party. Whatever the reason Corbyn dithered and another suspended Labour MP, Zarah Sultana, precipitated things by announcing in July that she was resigning from the Labour Party to co-lead a new leftwing party with Corbyn. This was an announcement that a lot of people had been waiting for and up to 800,000 were said to have expressed an interest in the new party, though by the time of the conference only some 53,000 had actually joined.

Sortition

A new party cannot be created just like that. It has to have a statement of what it stands for and a constitution. Corbyn and his advisers drew up a plan which, in theory, seemed reasonable enough (as long as the provisional committee played fair).

A provisional committee is set up to draft a statement of aims and a constitution both to be put to a founding conference. These would be subject to amendments suggested by meetings of members. Those attending the conference are to be chosen by lot (now called sortition) from the membership. Conference will debate the finalised documents and selected amendments. These will be voted for or against online, not just by those chosen to attend the conference but also by the rest of the membership on the basis of one member one vote.

This — including sortition — seems a democratic way of going about founding any new party whatever its aims. Choosing those attending a founding conference by lot should ensure that they will be a representative cross-section of the membership and reflect the views of the average member and not just of an activist minority. More generally, it is an alternative to election but still a democratic way of choosing people to carry out particular tasks (as it already is today for choosing trial juries) and could have a wider use in a classless socialist society.

This, however, did not go down well amongst the activist minority made up of the various Trotskyist groups that had decided to ‘enter’ the new party (as in the past they had ‘entered’ the Labour Party). They argued that this would exclude experienced activists like, er, themselves.

In the event, it didn’t exclude them. It just ensured that they were represented in accordance with their proportion of the new party’s members. The Trotskyist groups were pleasantly surprised that quite a few of their militants were chosen to attend, even some from the more obscure grouplets

Do as I don’t

The Trotskyists also objected to a provision in the proposed constitution barring dual membership with another political party. This was in fact already in the application form to become a member and take part in the founding process. This, however, wasn’t enforced and members of the SWP, the old Militant Tendency (now calling themselves SPEW) and most lesser Trotskyist groups joined and participated freely in the pre-conference Your Party meetings.

One objection to Trotskyists being in the new party was set out by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, Robert Griffiths, in an article in the August issue of their paper Unity, where he criticised ‘the readiness of the ultra-leftist sects to infiltrate broad-based mass movements in order to divide them, pose as a “left opposition” to the leadership and recruit from those they influence and mislead’.

Which is indeed what Trotskyists plan, though it’s a bit of a cheek coming from the CPB as it’s what its antecedents used to be good at. (Incidentally, the CPB position is not to join the new party but to vote and campaign for its candidates under certain circumstances).

The Trotskyists lost no time in forming a ‘left opposition’ and campaigning to make the constitution of the new party as democratic as possible. This was not because they believe in democratic organisation but because it would give them a wider opportunity to work and recruit within the new party. They joined a ‘Socialist Unity Group’. One of its constituents calls itself the ‘Bolshevik Tendency’; which would have been a better name for their faction.

They are hypocrites because their own organisations are not organised democratically. Take the SWP, for example. It is run by a Central Committee which is chosen in this way:

‘The outgoing Central Committee selects and circulates a provisional slate for the new CC at the beginning of the period for pre-Conference discussion. This is then discussed at the district aggregates where comrades can propose alternative slates. At the Conference the outgoing CC proposes a final slate (which may have changed as a result of the pre-Conference discussion). This slate, along with any other that is supported by a minimum of five delegates, is discussed and voted on by Conference’.

What this means is that the SWP is run by a self-perpetuating group that in effect renews itself by co-option. The slate ‘selected’ by the outgoing committee is virtually assured of winning. It was how the Politburo of the CPSU was chosen in the old USSR. Their constitution also states that ‘permanent or secret factions are not allowed’.

When the SWP led a move to ‘seize control’  of the conference agenda by means of an emergency resolution, the conference organisers took this literally as a call to storm the platform and invoked the paper ban on dual membership to expel the leaders of the SWP (and hire a security firm to guard the platform).

In the end, the conference voted not to endorse a complete ban on dual membership but to make acceptance of being in another party more difficult. So the Trotskyists are still there.

What does the new party stand for?

Before adopting a constitution the conference also adopted a Political Statement setting out its general aims. This began:

‘Your Party is a democratic, member-led socialist party that stands for social justice, peace and international solidarity. Our goal is the transfer of wealth and power, now concentrated in the hands of the few, to the overwhelming majority in a democratic, socialist society’.

This is rather vague and says nothing about how quickly — or how slowly — this ‘transfer of wealth and power’ is to take place nor what the end result will be like. It is what the Labour Party promised in its election manifesto for the February 1974 general election. In fact, it is even rather less radical in terms of rhetoric as that manifesto talked about ‘a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families’.

The Statement doesn’t go into what they envisage this ‘transfer of wealth and power’ as involving but it will be much the same as Attlee set out in 1932 (Will and the Way to Socialism, p. 42):

‘A Labour [read: Your Party] government, therefore, not only by the transference of industry from profit-making for the few to the service of the many, but also by taxation, will work to reduce the purchasing power of the wealthier classes, while by wage increases and by the provision of social services it will expand the purchasing power of the masses’.

So, different private profit-making sectors of the economy are to be gradually brought into some form of ‘public ownership’; taxes on the rich increased; services provided by central and local government expanded and improved, and money wages increased. All this to take place initially within the framework of the existing mixed private/state capitalist economy. The end result — several decades down the line — would be a society where people’s incomes and what they owned would be more equally distributed than now and in which they would be working for some ‘public enterprise’ paying them a good wage and be provided with well-funded public services and amenities.

This is the old Fabian dream of the gradual transformation of capitalism into a more equal society by means of nationalisations and social reforms. It’s not as if it has not been tried, and failed. It always was impossible because it involves trying to make capitalism work in a way that it cannot.

What drives the economy under capitalism is the pursuit of profits to be accumulated as more capital invested for more profit. If a government interferes with this, the result will be a slowdown in the economy depriving the government of the tax revenues to proceed further towards a more equal society. Based as it is on profit-making, the capitalist economy cannot tolerate a growing increase in the purchasing power of workers and their families at the expense of what is the source of the purchasing power of the rich, profits.

The last time it was tried

All reformist governments with such a programme have failed everywhere, the most recent, spectacular one being the Syriza government in Greece in 2015. This failure is particularly significant as Your Party has a lot in common with Syriza, whose name is an acronym in Greek for ‘Radical Coalition of the Left-Progressive Alliance’ and which included Trotskyist groups as constituent parts.

Leftists explain the failure of Syriza either by a lack of determination or by a sell-out. In fact, it failed because the leftwing government came up against how capitalism works and realised that if it continued to try to apply its policy it would make things worse (they reasoned that if things were going to get worse it would be better that this should be managed by them, who had some sympathy for the working class, rather than by their political opponents who didn’t). A Your Party government would face a similar dilemma.

It is all very well Zarah Sultana saying, as she did in her closing speech to the Conference:

‘We are not here for tweaks of a broken system. We are not here just to lower some bills and sprinkle a wealth tax. We are here for a fundamental transformation of society’.

It got her a standing ovation and it will on May Day and at the end of the next Conference and similar ceremonial occasions but, in practice, in between, Your Party will be campaigning just for ‘tweaks’ and ‘sprinkles’ and seeking votes and popular support on this basis. It will be yet another reformist party. Support built on that basis will be of no use in furthering the cause of socialism. Which is why we cannot support the reformists who have formed what we can only call ‘Their Party’.

Adam Buick

Classic Reprint: Income tax and the wage struggle (2026)

A Classic Reprint from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Given the recent budget from Rachel Reeves and the debate about income tax rates and thresholds, we reprint this article as it will have some resonance.

It is popularly supposed to be a virtue in a government not to impose income tax on low-wage workers. So each government tries to claim credit for having made alterations in the income tax which have the effect of freeing some workers from tax liability entirely, or at least of reducing the amount of it. This claim was made by the Labour Party following its six years in office after 1945 and was repeated by the Conservatives at the 1959 election.

Both the claims are so framed as to be distinctly disingenuous.

It was quite true, as the Conservatives claimed, that the raising of the tax allowance exempted millions of people from tax, but it was equally easy to see that, as wages rise, the exempted millions came into tax range again. And when the Labour Party Handbook 1951 claimed that a youth earning £3 a week in 1951 was paying less income tax than would have been levied on a wage of £3 in 1938 it would have been appropriate to point out that £3 in 1951 would buy only about half what it would have bought before the war.

And both governments refrained from stressing the fact that since the war income tax (Pay As You Earn) has been brought down to lower pay levels to take in millions more wage and salary earners than before the war. The number of people paying tax was under four million in 1938, 12 million in 1945, over sixteen million at the end of Labour’s term of office, and up to nearly twenty million in 1961-2. The Tory budget of 1963 removed nearly four million from liability but with every wage increase some will be coming into the range again.

So if it is a merit not to make workers pay income tax neither the Labour Party nor the Tories can match up to the performance of the National Government in 1938; and none of them can compare with the governments in the nineteenth century which exempted practically the whole of the industrial workers and clerks from liability. An article in the summer number of Public Administration, by Mrs. Olive Anderson, shows that in the middle of the century the minimum level of pay liable to tax was about £3 a week, while the wages of even the most highly skilled craftsmen were under 30s. a week, and clerks’ wages were under 40s. a week.

Interest attaches to the comparison because during the Crimean War tax reformers campaigned to get the taxable level brought down so that the mass of workers would be brought in, one suggestion being to make the tax payable on all wages of 6s. a week and over. One of the arguments was that as it was the town workers who were so keen on the war, why shouldn’t they help to pay for it through income tax?

The proposed changes were not adopted, chiefly because of the difficulty and cost of collecting small amounts of tax from millions of individuals, many of whom often changed their jobs and moved to different towns. Below a certain level the tax costs more to collect than the yield to the government.

Later on tax collection became more efficient and more and more people were brought into tax liability by the twofold movement of the lowering of the exemption limit (from £160 in 1899 to £130 in 1915) and the upward movement of prices and wages.)

But what is there in the common belief that the working class as a whole gain from a lowering of income tax and would gain still more if they were entirely exempt? The answer is, nothing at all! The condition of the working class, apart from possible short term effects when changes are introduced, is not the result of taxation whether in the form of income tax or the so-called indirect taxes, Purchase Tax, etc.

To start with, were the working class better off in 1938 when most of them were exempt from income tax and the rate was only five shillings (1s. 8d. on the first £135), than they have been since the war when nearly all of them are within the tax range and tax is at a higher rate? The evidence points to the fact that as a class they were rather worse off in 1938. And to go further back, were they better off in 1900 or 1850 when they paid no tax at all? Again, the answer is No!

In the latest year for which figures are available there were about 23 million wage and salary earners (including company directors) whose total income was about £14,000 million and who paid a tax of £1,200 million. If we take the industrial workers and shop assistants only, with a total wage bill of about £9,000 million a year, the amount of tax might perhaps be in the region of £300 million to £400 million a year.

Of course those who now have tax deducted would find their take home pay correspondingly increased when the deduction was reduced or ceased, and would for a while be better off; but in the general struggle between workers and employers over wages, this reduction of tax would be a factor in stiffening the attitude of the employers. In the situation of recent years, with fairly continuous low unemployment and increasing prices, such a reduction of tax would operate like any slackening in the rise of prices, it would make it that much more difficult for wage claims to make headway against the employers’ resistance.

Conversely, changes which have brought more and more workers into the tax range, or have increased their rate of tax. had consequences similar to rises in the cost of living: they have stiffened the pressure of the workers for higher wages especially when unemployment has been low. In other words now that millions of workers have tax deducted they have come to think in terms of ”take home pay” and to struggle for the maintenance or increase of that, rather than to look at the wage before deduction.

Mrs. Anderson, whose article has already been referred to, has found that a similar situation may have existed during the Crimean War. One of the reasons why income tax was not then extended to take in wage earners was that with the shortage of labour caused by the war it was feared that to whatever extent tax was levied on the workers the employers would be forced to raise wages to keep take home pay at its former level.

In short, struggling to raise wages is in line with working class interests, campaigning over taxation is not.

H. (November, 1963)

Obituary: Ric Best (2026)

Obituary from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kenneth Alaric Best, who has died after a short illness, joined the Party in 1972 and soon after became a self-described hooligan in Bolton branch, after which he was a founder member of Lancaster branch. His merciless wit as a speaker, honed at a time when adversarial debate was considered a martial art, often left opponents feeling like they’d been machine-gunned. A smart and iconoclastic thinker, he ranged restlessly into all areas of socialist theory. People who spent time with him needed to stay on their toes, because he had little patience for those who couldn’t keep up.

But he also knew how to put the ‘social’ into socialist, with ganja-fuelled parties at his house after every public meeting, which is undoubtedly the reason why Lancaster meetings were so well-attended in the 1980s and 90s. He was an entertaining raconteur with a natural comic timing, and could make even young children laugh. He had a never-ending store of very funny and often salacious stories, sometimes at the expense of other Party members.

Bolton-bred, he spent his formative years in the fire brigade, then later became a computer engineer who embodied the Silicon Valley philosophy of ‘move fast and break things’, running several successful computer businesses. These commitments sadly caused him to drift away from Party involvement in his later years.

Our sympathies go to his wife Kay and children Jo, Jamie and Bill.

PJS

DAP adds:

Ric Best was the first Party member I ever met – it was early 1987 and a meeting in The Liverpool Pub in the business district of the city where what was to become Merseyside Branch gathered. Ric was studying for his Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University as a mature student, and I was a young politics undergraduate. We were different but got on, as we both liked debating. Ric told me he had joined the SPGB as the Party case was the best means he’d ever come across for winning arguments. I can testify that this is something he pursued with great vigour as many other students at the University at the time still vividly remember (as would our political opponents).

Ric was also a great advocate of democratic participation and all it implied. He claimed many times that the best weapon the Party had in its armoury was that it was scrupulously democratic and could – and should – attract people on that basis, being the most democratic political organisation in existence.

There is little doubt Ric was one of the Party’s great ‘characters’ – an overused word perhaps, but rarely more appropriate, and those who knew him will miss him and the energy he somehow imparted wherever he went.

Exhibition Review: Manchester and the world (2026)

Exhibition Review from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The John Rylands Library in Manchester was founded on the basis of profits made from the cotton industry. It is currently staging an exhibition, ‘Cottonopolis: the Origins of Global Manchester’, on until May. A number of books, letters and samples of cloth are displayed (one of the books being Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England).

The population of Manchester grew massively in the 19th century, to over ninety thousand, this increase being mainly in workers in the cotton industry. There were massive increases in production of calico and fustian, especially in the twenty years from 1790, and cotton cloth became Britain’s most valuable export. Inventions by Arkwright, Compton and others increased productivity enormously, and there was sizeable growth in companies that made machines, as well as in companies that output the cotton cloth. Steam power resulted in mechanical mills, and new ways of printing cloth were also developed. Mass production meant that the British weaving industry was able to out-compete manufacturers in India.

But, of course, weaving was only part of the story, as the raw cotton came from plantations worked on by slave labour, in the Caribbean and the American South. Some of the cloths manufactured were poor quality ‘Africa goods’, produced for sale to slave traders to clothe the slaves. One suggestion made in the displays is that the creation of a captive workforce in the colonies changed ideas about how workers in Britain could be exploited under the same industrial machine.

Nor was it just Manchester that profited from the enormous expansion of the cotton trade. Liverpool became an important port for imports and exports, and new canals were built, partly to transport food, coal and so on to the growing industrial hub in the city and its surroundings.

Not a large exhibition, but an informative and interesting set of displays.

Paul Bennett

Socialist Sonnet No. 218: These Old Men (2026)

    From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

 

These Old Men

 

Such are the old men. It is their thinking,

Not accumulated years, make them so,

These holders of office, presidents who

Have become too addicted to drinking

The elixir of power, or theocrats,

Even now, claiming divine appointment

For what is really their corrupt intent,

Reacting violently to perceived plots

In any opposition. Whether god

Or Mammon is promoted or cited

Is of no relevance to those slaughtered,

Supposedly for the national good.

There’s no proper accounting because

Theirs’s is the profit, the people the loss.

D. A.  

Editorial: Much Ado About Nothing. (1909)

Editorial from the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

We refer, of course, to Mr. Asquith’s speech of the eleventh of December, at a dinner given in commemoration of a Liberal defeat. “We are met,” said the Premier on that auspicious occasion, “to celebrate a failure.” The Lords had inconsiderately slaughtered a Liberal licensing bill, and sour-faced Nonconformity had in consequence been cheated of its sop. Weeks had been spent by the Commons in dreary talk in the passing of that measure, and tons of unreadable printed matter had been issued, but this had not prevented it going the way it had been expected it would, and perhaps intended it should, go—apparently to the relief of the majority outside. The bill, indeed, was utterly worthless to the workers, and quite hopeless in the promotion of temperance : its only function seems to have been to square the electoral account for nonconformist and teetotal support.

The collapse of the so-called Education Bill, added to the violent death of the licensing measure, had depressed the Liberal party and made many of its supporters discontented, and it became incumbent on Mr. Asquith to give a rallying cry to decaying Liberalism, and revive the drooping fortunes of his party. And to the accompaniment of loud and prolonged cheering the anxiously awaited pronouncement was made public. “I invite the Liberal Party from tonight,” said the hero of Featherstone, “to treat the veto of the House of Lords as the dominating issue in politics.” Hardly inspiring, this, as a rallying cry, even if it were not mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. Indeed, what did the Premier propose to do to make his dominating issue a reality ? Was the party to go to the country forthwith upon the issue and fight the Lords ? No, quoth Mr. Asquith, that would be to admit the right of the Lords “to dictate both the occassion and the date of a dissolution.” So the Liberals were going to be brave—and to submit. The hollowness of Liberalism hardly needed further demonstration. “Down with the Lords” is again to be its empty rallying cry ; and although the House of Lords, has not yet gone to Jericho, still its walls are expected to crumble at a shout, for certainly the Liberals are prepared to do nothing more.

It cannot be denied that there exist powerful constitutional weapons against the Lords which the Liberals could use were they sincere, but wherever capitalist interests are endangered Liberal and Tory have two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one. In view of working-class unrest, does not the second chamber offer a possible barrier to working-class advance should other obstacles not suffice ? And does not this account for the tenderness with which the Lords are treated by the Liberals, and partly, also, for the enormous number of peers which the latter create ? Not, however, that we are enamoured of a reform of the House of Lords, for the reform of a rotten institution simply serves to perpetuate that institution, and a House of Lords reformed would undoubtedly be a House of Lords strengthened as a weapon against the workers. Nevertheless the fatuity of Liberalism in this respect, as in regard to their projected Land Tax, cannot escape recognition. The fiscal reform of the Liberals, indeed, is at least as futile as the fiscal reform of the Tories, as far as working-class interests are concerned. So, also, with that other measure which collapsed of its own weakness—the “Education” Bill. There, also, we have an example of Liberal futility. Though called an Education Bill, this measure had nothing whatever to do with the improvement of education, but was solely a faction squabble between sections of the capitalist interest as to which particular brand of Christianity should be forced down the throats of the children. In other words, since the particular form of superstition to be taught is but the outward and visible sign of the interests of one section or other of the ruling class, so the squabble over religious education was really to decide which section of the ruling class the children were to be taught to look to for guidance. To capitalist parties this religious squabble may be vital. Mr. Hill, “Labour” M.P., may claim that “the Bible is still his best book,” and that he believes “in simple Bible teaching.” But from the working-class point of view the fact remains that the worker’s interest is foreign to all this Labour cum-Liberal twaddle.

Moreover, the Liberal-Labour bankruptcy on the question of unemployment could hardly be made clearer. Along with the boasted avalanche of Liberal measures—all conceived in the interest of the ruling class —the position of the worker has been steadily growing worse. Statistics convey a quite inadequate idea of the extent of dumb suffering and poverty that exists among the workers from this cause. Mr. William Redmond, M.P., is moved to remark in Reynold’s that “there is no part of the world where the contrasts between luxurious wealth and miserable poverty are so marked as in England, and particularly in London.” And he further adds,

“We have in Ireland suffering and unemployment enough. But the humblest labourer in his cottage in the country is to be envied in comparison with the workman in the great cities who finds himself without employment. Bit by bit the little articles of the home are sacrificed. The pawnshop stretches forth the only hand of assistance often to be found. The home goes, and there is nothing left but the streets. Far preferable is the lot of the poorest dweller is the countryside to this.

England has been glorified because of her great industrial progress, her mighty factories, and her great hives of industry. But when the depression of trade brings with it the discharge of workmen and the hopelessness which that entails, it is futile to talk of the glory of England’s progress. She then presents a spectacle which is unparalleled in the history of the world, of the most boundless wealth on the one hand, and the direst poverty on the other.”

But to these sufferings of the working class the Liberals, like the Tories, are cynically indifferent, and are, in fact, only likely to move when the workers start acting for themselves. So bad is the state of affairs, indeed, that the Labour Party, that docile tail of the Liberal bow-wow, is even moved by the callousness of the Government to murmur a faint protest. We quote from the daily paper of December 12th.

“Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., secretary of the Labour Party, speaking at Coventry last night, said deliberately (according to the Central News Agency) that unless the Government turned over a new leaf and observed more sympathy, initiative, and determination in dealing with the serious problems of unemployment it would find the Labour Party before long in violent conflict with it.”

Things must be bad indeed, when the Labour Party threatens to be in conflict with the Government ! In fact, we cannot believe that it will ever come to that. The faithfulness to the Government that has hitherto characterised the “Labour” members is not likely to be disturbed. As we have been reminded on more than one occasion, they find their seats too comfortable.

For the working class, however, groaning under their increasing burden of misery, only the policy of hostility can be of use. They must, as distinct from the Labour Party, find themselves all the time in violent opposition to the capitalist Government. They must democratically champion their own interests against all sections of the capitalist party, and realise to the full that the rallying cries and faction fights of Liberals versus Tories are in very truth rightly said to be “much ado about nothing.” Indeed, if the workers are not prepared to take a stand with their comrades in the Socialist Party and fight their own battles, then there is no power can save them from the deepening misery that threatens.

Editorial: The Powder Trust and Peace. (1909)

Editorial from the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

We cull the following curious note from the daily paper of December 14th.

“The Powder Trust as an agency for the prevention of war was the curious anomaly disclosed in the Federal investigation into the Gunpowder Trade Association just concluded at Cleveland, Ohio.

The members of the Trust declared they possessed the power to obviate war by refusing the supply of gunpowder to the nations. As late as 1905 the firms constituting the Trust bound themselves under a heavy penalty to make no sales to Governments without the consent of all the firms. They also fixed the price at which the Governments might acquire powder, thus establishing the fact that ‘the nations of the world are the playthings of a Trust.”

As in most bourgeois reasoning, however, there is an important flaw in the above association of the Powder Trust with peace. Peace means bad trade to a powder Trust. War means good trade and high profits. The Powder Trust is formed, not for philanthropy, but for high profits. It wants to increase the use of gunpowder, hence the very economic basis of the Powder Trust clearly determines that it shall, like the army, the navy, the makers of artillery, etc., throw the whole of such influence as it possesses against peace and in favour of war. Whatever good intentions the members of the Powder Trust might have, they all vanish before material interests, and even on the subject of good intentions one is forcibly reminded of the concentrated cant and humbug of the “peace” conferences at the Hague.

The Apostles of Lower Wages. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again we turn the searchlight upon the nefarious traffic of those who, styling themselves labour leaders, support the character by leading Labour, like a lamb, to the slaughter. The latest instance of the treachery of these odorous hirelings of the capitalist class, while of no importance as an historical event, since it indicates no new phase in the record of this unspeakable band of fratricides, is of moment as showing once again, to those who have eyes to see, the face of the old enemy beneath the mask of the new friend. Mr. D. J. Shackleton, M.P., member of the Parliamentary Labour Group, president of the Trade Unions Congress, is reported to have delivered himself of the following sentiments at the Mechanics’ Institute, Nottingham, on November 30th :—

“Supporters of the Bill recently rejected were hoping that it would have enabled them to deal with the drink traffic in such a manner as to put the country on a more equal footing with its industrial competitors in other countries. So long as they spent, as at present, far and away more than Germany and America per head of the population on intoxicating liquors, so long would they be liable to be beaten in industrial competition.”—Daily Chronicle, 1.12.08.

There is, indeed, food for reflection in this message from the chief of the purveyors of soporifics to the working class of this country. In the first place it may be noticed with what a deft turn of capitalist sophistry this hireling shepherd removes the fight from the “class” field to that of race. It is not, be it observed, the filching from the worker of the greater part of the product of his toil that claims the attention of Mr. D. J. Shackleton and his cannibal pack of vampires. No ! the enemy of labour is not capital; the despoiler of the worker is not that class which stand between him and the fulness of the earth the fruit of his painful drudgery ; the evil is not, mark you, rooted in the system of class domination, class possession of all that is necessary and good under the sun. No ! all this is mythology, the vain vapouring of well-meaning visionaries, or the calculated seduction of far-seeing panderers to the popular aspiration to better conditions. Labour has but one foe, we are told, and that is—himself.

Oh ! coals of fire upon those of us who dared to dream of the “brotherhood of man,” and those others of us who asserted nothing higher than the oneness of the material interests of the wage-workers the whole world—over the enemy of Labour in one country is himself in all other countries. The workers of Germany and of America have taken us by the throat in the strife of industrial competition, and we must clutch at their vitals in self defence.

Alas ! for our dream of emancipation without distinction of race or sex.

Oh ! sackcloth and ashes for those of us who aspired to the capture of political power for the overthrow of the capitalist system, the bill is to be filled by the abolition of the House of Lords to the end that a measure shall be passed to make the British worker become more abstemious and so put “the country on a more equal footing with its industrial competitors in other countries.”

Overwhelming shame on those of us who, in our visionary frenzy, declared for “the whole product to the producer,”—the trouble is that the workers already get too much ! They must be legislated into temperance—not for temperance sake, but to “put the country on a more equal footing with its industrial competitors in other countries.”

Repentance at leisure for those fools who sent Mr. D. J. Shackleton and his gang of shameless harpies to the House of Commons to forward the interests of Labour—the only interest of Labour they have made any attempt to forward is this abortive effort to reduce the workers’ “drink bill” so that a corresponding deduction may be made from their wages bill “to put the country on a more equal footing with its industrial competitors of other countries.”

These men stand now in the broad light of day, self confessed—by the lips of their leader—apostles of lower wages for the class who are fools enough to allow them access to their pockets in the vain hope that they will do something for them.

For how else can they pretend that the realisation of their desire to “deal with the drink traffic” can save their working-class dupes from being “beaten in industrial competition,” except on the ground that lower wages would rule, and enable the manufacturer to throw commodities into the foreign market at a lower price ? Mr. Shackleton may be quite correct in his economics so far. It is admitted that, notwithstanding the broad law ruling the world of commodities, making them exchange one with another according to the labour time necessary to their production, the manufacturer who secures the cheapest labour-power is certainly in a position to sell below value “to secure the business.” But to argue therefrom that the workers of this country, as a result of having learnt to live cheaper, and therefore to work, as these labour leeches wish them to, for smaller wages, are going to reap the benefit in the form of less unemployment, is to present a view as chimerical as it is pleasing and plausible.

If there is any truth in Mr. Shackleton’s argument that the lower wages due to the lessened consumption of intoxicating liquors will enable British commodities to find a larger sale in foreign markets, it equally true that the rise in British wages which would follow upon the more general demand for labour-power in the home labour market will have a counterbalancing effect. For the rest, as has been recently shown in these columns, any rise of the price of labour-power at once handicaps it against its incessant competitor, machinery, the extended adoption of which throws men out of employment until the relative proportion of out-o’-works to in-works stands at that particular level that best suits the production of profit.

So, the object of these instruments of working-class betrayal resolves itself merely into a reduction of the working-class standard of living, lessening of the portion of wealth produced which falls to the lot of the producer, ostensibly “to put the country on a more equal footing with its industrial competitors in other countries,” but in reality in order that a larger share of the wealth produced may be left for those who do not produce it.

A high aim, friends and fellow workers of the S.D.P. and I.L.P., who bruised your shoulders against the wheel to trundle these men into the “House.” A lofty and noble aspiration, brother workers of the trade unions, of whose Congress this particular individual is the presis, to direct your anxious efforts toward. Lower wages is the only message he has for you, for all the hundreds of golden pieces you pour into his capacious maw, year in and year out. A lower standard of living, a cheaper existence, is the only hope he can see for you, who produce all the wealth of the community and enjoy so little of it. A labour leader, and the only enemy he can find to lead you against is your fellow workers of Germany and America. The paid declarant of your poverty and suffering, he insults and mocks you with the suggestion that you have yourselves to blame for wasting your substance in riotous living—as your abstemious masters have told you for so many years without charging you anything for the information.

Fellow members of the working class, how long will you continue to put your faith in these damnable, sneering rascals who, imbuing you with the fallacious idea that they are nearer to you than your masters are, become the valued instruments of those masters by leading you around the industrial Desert of Gobi ? The present remedy for your deplorable condition is to reduce your standard of living to that of your German co-workers ; but how when international capital opens up the great Chinese labour market, and you are face to face with the products of 500,000,000 people who can each, we are told, live on a handful of rice ? It is logical to presume that your salvation will then lie in reducing your standard of living to meet the new conditions.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain do not offer you economic salvation at so low a cost as temperance or even total abstinence, do not promise you safety in citizen armies, or surcease of sorrow in pensions for the old and meals for the young, do not urge you to take arms against the militarism of the German Emperor or to tighten the belt and forego pipe and pewter in the endeavour to outstarve the “industrial competitors in other countries.” All we can offer you are the irresistible weapons of the class struggle and a place in the forefront of the battle; continued and increasing poverty and suffering until the day of victory,—but victory at last. They lie who promise you more; they betray who would have you burn your brains out in the search for palliatives. There is no balm in capitalist Gilead, therefore—the World for the Workers. Only possession of whole means of production can give you any amelioration of your lot. Unemployment and starvation, ay, and even drunkenness too, and other degradation, are, the necessary concomitants, or, it is better said, necessary results of your status as wage-slaves. That status must be altered ; and it is because these men who claim to represent Labour in Parliament, with their fostering of race hatred, their advocacy of cheaper existence, their thousand and one acts and “words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal,” are one of the chief bulwarks of capitalist domination that we denounce them for what they are—tools of the master class, betrayers of their own.

A. E. Jacomb

Where Labor is Robbed. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labor is robbed where labor is employed, and, directly, nowhere else. Labor is robbed in the pay envelope, and the hand that reaches the pay envelope to him and no other, directly, is in his pocket.

Labor cannot be robbed in the prices it is compelled to pay for the commodities which it consumes. For the good and sufficient reason that the cost of living determines wages. Wages always hover about the cost of subsistence. If provisions and clothing are dear, wages must go up to meet the increased cost of living, since the laborer must live before he can work. If the employer gets his profits, he must see to it somehow that his wage-slave is in working condition, just as the farmer must see to it that his horses must have hay and stabling if he is to have the benefit of their labor. The cost of hay is of no particular concern to the horses.

In an accommodated sense, labor can be “robbed” in the quality of the goods consumed, by means of fraud and adulteration but not in price.

A Battle Creek contributor to last week’s “Wage Slave,” for example, says that ”the hand of the rich man is externally in the poor man’s pocket for taxes or for the price of meat.” This is not correct. The hand of the rich man, i.e., the employer, is in the employee’s pocket in one manner only, and that is in withholding from him, in the pay envelope, four-fifths of the value he has created. They can’t make the wage-earner pay one penny of the taxes, Municipal, State, or National; and if meat sold at a dollar a pound, that wouldn’t affect him in the slightest degree, either, so long as other commodities advanced correspondingly. If the price of meat advances out of proportion to the cost of other food-stuffs containing the same dynamic energy, the result will be simply to change the form of his diet, but it can’t possibly affect his income or make it easier or harder for him to save anything.

The only workingmen in whose pockets the Beef Trust has its hands are its own employees, whom it robs, as other employers do, in their pay envelopes, and the farmer who is robbed in his pay envelope too, in an arbitrary depression of prices.

That the wage-earners do not pay the taxes is directly evident with the great majority of them who have nothing to tax. But it is none the less certainly true of those, also, who possess a small property and are rated as taxpayers. In their case, such taxes as are levied upon them enter into the cost of living, and, again, the necessary cost of living determines the wages.

Tax reform, “trust-bustin’,” cheapened transit—or if they made it free, it would be all the same—municipal lighting, lowering of rents—all these and similar measures are seen to be purely Middle-Class measures, designed either to make the big robbers divide up a little more evenly with the little robbers, or to enable the employing class to house and feed their wage-slaves more cheaply and, consequently, get them for less wages.

The one thing needful for the working-class, without which all efforts to better their condition are vanity and vexation of spirit, is the capture for collective ownership of the land and the machinery of production. When we have this, we have it all. Without we are nothing. All efforts or attempts to benefit the working-man by lowering the cost of his living will only play into the hands of the employing class.

From The Wage-Slave.

Jottings. (1909)

The Jottings Column from the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Liverpool Education Committee have completed arrangements for establishing technical evening classes for the female employes of the Ogden Branch of the Imperial Tobacco Company. The classes have been arranged at the request of the Company, who are providing rooms, lighting, heating, and cleaning free of charge to the Education Committee.” Manchester Guardian, 24.11.08.

The public spirit of the Imperial Tobacco Company is, of course, quite disinterested.

* * *

A conference was recently held at Bradford with regard to the system of employing children half-time in mills. Mr. Jonathan Peate reported on the conference to the Council of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce. In the course of his report are the following items. “Some firms employed a large number of half-timers, and if the abolition of this class of labour took place, or if the age limit was increased, it would be a great hardship to those firms.” Again: “In many cases, also, half-timers were earning an income which, if the system was abolished, would make a serious difference to, and cause great hardship to, the families to which they belonged.” And further : “These children were receiving training in the practical work of a mill which must be of the utmost value to them in later years, when they had to earn their own livelihood.”

* * *

Funny, isn’t it ? Thus are the interests of capital and labour identical. The half-timers are charitably employed because of the hardship to their families if deprived of their small wages ; the employer will also suffer hardship if he cannot employ them, and has to employ some adult (perhaps the half-timer’s father) to do the same work at higher wages.

* * *

And when the little beggars cease to eat in idleness the bread of charity, and are compelled to take life seriously and begin “to earn their own livelihood,” such training really might be of “the utmost value to them,” if they are not unemployed owing to a new generation of half-timers having supplanted them. In this case it would seem that their only hope lies in the direction of begetting baby breadwinners (did anyone say “Socialism” ?) as soon as possible.

* * *

The cry of the parents driven by economic pressure to send their children to work in order that subsistence level may be reached by the aid of their wages, is on a par with the cry of the “We cannot see them starve” sufferer from sentimental diarrhoea, who wants to do something for the unemployed under capitalism. He does something for them by blinding them to the only solution, in urging them to look for help to the class whose existence depends on a continuance of a reserve of unemployed labour.

* * *

A delegate to a deputation of teachers who visited Mr. McKenna on November 5th, 1907, showed how reforms may be made of no avail towards combatting the evils they are, ostensibly, directed against. Mr. Sykes (N.U.T.), speaking of half-timers, said that in 24 years experience he ”had never known a child rejected as physically unfit, although some of them were not robust enough to be allowed in the playground.”

* * *

The Manchester Guardian (6.11.07), dealing with this matter, said in effect, the half-timer keeps down the wages of adults by the competition of his cheaper labour, and is in turn forced, by entering unskilled employment, to a lifetime of low wages, and is flung into the industrial system whilst he should be playing.

* * *

“There has never been a Socialist speech delivered in the House; no Conference (of the Labour Party) has ever accepted Socialism except as a pious opinion. In some form the House of Commons would accept a Socialist resolution, provided there were no committal, but even that step has never been ventured.”

Ben Tillett in Justice, 5.12.08.

* * *

This is hard on our S.D.P. M.P., Will Thorne; but so far as one can see, if Ben Tillett is elected for the Eccles Division he will be on the same basis as Thorne. He will be elected as the “labour” candidate for Eccles, and not as an avowed Social-Democrat, vide S.D.P. rule 41, and rule 42 cannot be enforced by the E.C. of the S.D.P. any more than in the case of Mr. Thorne. We are not likely to hear a Socialist speech from Mr. Tillett, however, because on July 20th, 1907, he “was adopted by the Eccles Division Labour Party as Labour candidate, with the distinct understanding from the Dockers’ Union that his title should be ‘Labour Candidate.'” So wrote the General Secretary of the Eccles Division Labour Party, on October 8th, 1908, to the Manchester Evening News, correcting a statement that Mr. Tillett was “the adopted Social-Democratic candidate for Eccles.” I have seen no repudiation of this statement so far. Mr. J. R. MacDonald, also, in a published letter to Mr. Tillett, tells him he is “one of our candidates.”

* * *

“Referring to the unemployed, Mr. Grayson said that Mr. Blatchford was at present organising a scheme for feeding the hungry. If they ran short of funds they would appeal to Rothschild, the Duke of Portland, and the like, to put down a bit of their surplus cash, and if that appeal failed, all they could then say to the unemployed was ‘use your own savage discretion.’ If they could not get work and could not get food, then, without inciting, they would gently indicate that it was their indefeasible right to have bread.”—Manchester Guardian, 9.11.08. Report of speech at Greenfield, 7.11.08.

* * *

Poverty is rife under capitalist society to-day, so we will beg of the capitalist class to relieve our needs, not by disbursing all their surplus wealth, but just a bit of it. If we were to ask too much “that appeal” might fail. And when it comes to standing the hungry up “all in a row” before the rifles of the military, you won’t catch us inciting. Oh, no ! That’s risky. They might not accept our humble apologies so readily as they did Bill Thorne’s. And the “stone jug !”—they say you have to be quiet there !

* * *

If the workers cannot afford enough to keep the unemployed fed, we will ask the Rothschilds and others to be charitable. We will leave it to their generosity—we want no semblance of compelling them to disgorge by the strength of our class-conscious organisation. Not at all ! We’ll ask them “to put down a bit of their surplus cash,” and only when that appeal fails will we tell the workers that theirs is the indefeasible right to have, not only bread, but all else they require.

* * *

Even as a vote-catching dodge, this is pitiable, for the other axe-grinders can out-bribe them every time. If the Blatchford brigade give soup, the Liberal party will offer soup and pudding, and the Tory party will come along with soup, pudding, blanket, a suit of clothes and an overcoat to wrap them up in, and will scoop the lot. The race is to the rich, votes to the highest bidder, until the workers are taught what Socialism is; then they will no longer be bought and sold for a mess of pottage or a drink at the bar, will no longer be exploited in “charity,” either for the benefit of Liberal or Tory politician, noisy mumper on the “labour” movement, or the circulation of the “smart” journal of a “smart” set—much too smart for anything deeper than flirtation with Socialism.

Blogger's Note:

This was an unsigned Jottings column, but during this period of the Standard the regular writer of the column was Jim Brough of Manchester Branch, and as the unsigned author quotes from the Manchester Evening News in relation to Ben Tillett being selected as the Labour Party candidate in Eccles, I can't help but think that Brough penned this month's Jottings column.

P.S. Tillett did contest Eccles as the Labour Representative Committee candidate at the 1906 General Election but, by the time that the January 1910 election came around, he'd been replaced by G. H. Stuart-Bunning as the Labour Party candidate.

Prosperity under “Protection”. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unemployment in New York State

	Idle Continuously for 3 months, Jan., Feb. & March.		Idle last day of March.
	Number	Per cent.	Number	Per cent.
1906	24,746	6.5	37,239	9.9
1907	65,642	13.8	77,270	19.1

1908  101,466                      26.3                    138,131                     35.7

Fortnightly Review, Dec., ’08.

“Unity” as a Habit in England. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

St. Vincent, Minn., Oct. 11, 1908.

Editor “Trades Unionist” :

Keir Hardie, following the fashion set by sundry British labor politicians, globe-trotting at the expense of capitalist newspapers, has again delivered himself of an athanema against the Canadian Socialist movement.

It is in the control, he says, of “the impossibilist element which

HAS TO BE ‘DOWNED’ EVERYWHERE.”

If there is any place on earth where the impossibilism so deprecated by Hardie is “downed” it is in the “‘Appy land of Hengland,” in the labor movement of which nation Hardie is one of the foremost leaders, and inasmuch as “a tree is known by its fruits,” we would reasonably expect to see a forward, harmonious movement as a result of this “downing” ; that is, if we were fools enough to be misled by the labor, even trade union, Christian, even free trade, even any old thing but impossibilist type of Socialist like Hardie and his ilk.

I am weekly in receipt of two old country Socialist papers, “Forward,” and the London “Clarion,” and there is never an issue but what is half full of “scraps” between these harmonious “compromisers” who are, unlike the Canadian Socialists, completely free from “this dogmatic and blighting creed of withering materialism.” In the last issue of the London “Clarion,” keeping faith with capitalist Liberals there is the Labor party executive in refusing to endorse Edward Hartley in Newcastle, who, mark you, is as immune from the suspicion of being an “impossibilist” as Hardie himself. The reason for which action, as alleged by the “Clarion” writer, is that in double constituencies the Liberals and Socialist, even Labor, etc., candidates have

ARRANGED TO SAW OFF

Hartley, by running at the request of the local I.L.P., S.D.F., Clarion Scouts and the numerous other organisations that go to make up the highly harmonious labor movement that Hardie thinks Canada needs so bad, has seriously imperilled this holy alliance of alleged Socialist leaders and Liberal capitalists ; hence Hartley must be “downed” too. And this is the working out of “modern Socialism,” which, Hardie says, Canadians know nothing of ! Here’s hoping they may long remain in ignorance of this Newcastle brand at any rate.

What is this term “impossibilism,” anyway, that falls so glibly from the lips of Hardie and his type ?

Will any of those “active Socialists ” Hardie refers to, who are repelled by this dreadful thing, kindly explain ? As one who has had this epithet fired at him times without number, and without—as is customary—any illuminating definition, I am naturally curious to know. Reasoning it out by comparing a known “irnpossibilist” with a gentleman known not to be such, I have reached this conclusion. An “impossibilist” is a Socialist who, knowing that in Socialism alone lies

THE ONLY HOPE

of the workers, refuses to preach anything else, and refuses to stultify himself by saying so in one speech and saying something very different in another, and as a consequence is disliked by “practical” labor men.

A non-impossibilist can do both of these things and becomes very popular, a great labor leader, etc., etc.

An impossibilist, knowing that reforms where they do tempt one section of the workers, invariably do so at the expense of the others, says so; and as a consequence gets further castigation from the “practical” politician, whose stock-in-trade is reform.

The impossibilist is, however, reminded that there are reforms which, if enforced, would make matters more tolerable for the workers, but knowing the nature of the class in control, he

WON’T WORK FOR THESE REFORMS

nor recommend them, because if they were put upon the statute book there would be nothing to them ; but the non-impossibilist, being of a practical turn of mind, spends a quarter of a century and untold energy in getting an old-age pension at an age when most working people are dead, and an Unemployed Bill on the statute book that might as well be off for all the unemployed would know about it.

The “impossibilist,” being a very unpractical fellow, foolishly reasons thus: As the workers get their eyes open to the working of the present system and the source of the strength of the capitalist—the political power they proceed to arouse their fellows to wrest the control of public power out of their masters’ hands. The more revolutionary the attitude of the workers the more sops are thrown to them, just, for instance, as a man in a desert, pursued by wolves, often delays pursuit by throwing his clothes to save his skin. If the wolves are wise they don’t waste time chewing indigestible rubbers—they

PRESS ON FOR THE GOOD MEAT.

The non-possibilist dallies by the wayside.

But the non-impossibilist says, “these arguments are all right, but you fellows don’t get elected, and by the goddess of place-hunting you spoil oar chances too !” Aye, there’s the rub ! Get elected ! Make Socialists if you can, but get elected ! Never mind if you prolong the period ; the fool workers must stew and sweat and suffer, chasing up the blind alleys of reform into which you lead them. Never mind if thereby you play into the hands of the astute capitalists. You will reach the dizzy eminence of a great labor leader ; the masses will demonstrate about you and enthuse over you even if they go straight from your meeting after listening to your speech on reforms to vote the master class the right to rule and rob for another season. Also if you can write interesting “copy” wherein you denounce the “impossibilist” Socialist who is foolish enough to be a Socialist and nothing else, the “Daily Lyre” may also finance a trip around the world for you, so you can help to make as big a mess of the labor movement abroad as you have succeeded in doing at home, to the great delight of its middle-class readers. Of course, this sizing up of the “impossibilist” and the wiseacre who is not so is, no doubt, one of the “cruditites that

MARX AND ENGELS SO SOUNDLY TROUNCED.”

‘Tis passing strange that Hardie should refer to Marx and Engels as authorities at all, seeing he he has repudiated on more than one occasion their main propositions in which are embodied the doctrine of the class struggle and the materialist interpretation of history ; but in a sense the reason is not far to seek. This class struggle, when it reaches a certain stage, plays the very devil with the political ambitions of reformers, because it unites those wage workers whose position in human society is such that no reform in capitalism can benefit them and who have intelligence enough to see that the object for which these workers unite is not to dicker about the price for which they will sell themselves for given periods when their masters need them to work. They know that this price is fixed by conditions outside of themselves and circumstances over which they have no control. If the C.P.R. machinists had listened more to the Socialist “impossibilist” and less to the “get something now trade union reformer,” they would not have made such asses of themselves during the last nine weeks. They would have spent some of the money they lost in wages to dispute with the masters this fall, their title of ownership to that railway property that the working class created and alone give value to. Methinks if they had done that and spent the same energy they squanderd in bucking an overstocked labour market, in matching an empty stomach against a bank vault, they would have caused such a flutter amongst the dove-cotes of capitalism that the capitalists themselves would have set about

REFORMING THEIR SYSTEM

to the very limit, and that whether they elected their man or not. Incidentally they would have inspired other workers to follow suit, and, by the way, it is not yet too late. Never mine your compromising, place-hunting trade union leaders. If you knew as much as an owl you would refuse to vote for a man who was only a Socialist when not seeking office, and was afraid to label himself so when he was up for election. Wherever you see a Socialist candidate this fall who is “impossibilist” enough to make his campaign on this issue alone, viz., the

DISPOSSESSION OF THE CAPITALIST

owners of our national industries and the vesting of the title of ownership in the community, with the elected representatives of the workers who operate those industries in control, vote and work for his election. Leave the compromisers at home. If he will compromise to get elected, he will sell you out to stay elected.

In conclusion, I would ask those who read Hardie’s anathema to re-read it and note where his sympathies really lie. Note the severity and contempt with which he handles his brother Socialists, who, at the worst, are merely using unwise methods of propaganda. And in contrast note his references to the “delightful experience” he had interviewing “the wealthy man who had worked his way up from poverty to affluence,” and who was so “sincere,” although the “unconscious humor” of his “poetic” declarations made Hardie smile, etc., etc. Go to, Hardie. Get back to ancient St. Stephens and have a cup of tea with King Ed and the rest of the “me, too” Socialists. Canadian Socialism is much too modern for you or any other British labor leader to catch up with.

—John T. Mortimer, in The British Columbian Trade Unionist, Vancouver, Nov. ’08.

Blogger's Note:

The editorial from the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard covers Hartley and the 1908 Newcastle-upon-Tyne by-election.

The Capitalist Class. By Karl Kautsky (continued) (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Continued from the October issue]

Specially translated for the Socialist Party of Great Britain and approved by the Author.

8.— Increasing number of large concerns, combines.

If the extension of a concern forces its owner, the capitalist, to engage officials in order to lighten his task, the increase in the surplus-value due to the extension recompenses him for that expenditure. The larger the surplus-value, the more of his functions is the capitalist able to transfer to officials, until he has at last rid himself entirely of his managersLap, so that he has left only the “anxiety” of advantageously investing that part of his profit which he does not consume.

The number of concerns that have arrived at such a condition increases from year to year. That is proved most clearly by the growing number of Joint Stock Companies, where, as even the most superficial observer must recognise, the person of the capitalist has already ceased to be of any importance, only his capital being significant. In England 57 Joint Stock Companies were formed in 1845, 344 in 1861, 2,550 in 1888, and 4,735 in 1896. There were 11,000 companies, with a share capital of over £600,000,000 actively engaged in 1888, and 21,223 companies with a share capital of £1,150,000,000 in 1896.

It was considered that by the introduction of the system of share capital, a means had been found to make the advantages of larger concerns accessible to the small capitalists. But, like the system of credit, the system of share capital, which is only a particular form of credit, is, on the contrary, a means of placing the capital of the “smaller fry” at the disposal of the large capitalists.

Since the person of the capitalist can be dispensed with as far as his undertaking is concerned, anybody possessing the necessary capital can embark in industry, whether he understands anything about the particular trade or not. Hence it is possible for a capitalist to own and control concerns of the most varied kind, having perhaps no connection one with the other. It is very easy for the large capitalist to obtain control over Joint Stock Companies. He only needs to own a large proportion of their shares—which can easily he purchased—in order to make the undertakings dependent upon him and subservient to his interests.

Finally, it must be stated that generally, large capital increases more rapidly than small capital, because the larger the capital the greater (under otherwise equal conditions) the total amount of profit, and hence also tli,o income (revenue) which it yields ; again, the smaller the proportion of the profit consumed by the capitalist for his own use, the larger is the portion he is able to add as new capital to that already accumulated. A capitalist whose undertaking yields him £500 a year, will, according to capitalist ideas, be able to live only modestly on such income;. He will be fortunate if he succeeds in putting by £100—one-fifth of his profit—a year. The capitalist whose capital is large enough to yield him an income of £5,000 is in a position, even if he consumes for himself and his family five times as much as the first mentioned capitalist, to turn at least three-fifths of his profit into capital. And if the capital of a capitalist happens to be so considerable that it yields him £50,000 a year, it will be difficult for him, if he is a normal being, to use for his living one-tenth of his income, so that, though indulging in luxuries, he will easily be able to save nine-tenths of his profits. While the small capitalists have to struggle ever harder for their existence, the larger fortunes increase by leaps and bounds, and in a short time reach enormous proportions.

Let us summarise all this : the increase in the size of the undertakings : the rapid growth of the larger fortunes ; the diminution in the number of undertakings ; the concentration of a number of undertakings into one hand, and it then becomes clear that it is the tendency of the capitalist mode of production to concentrate the means of production, which have become the monopoly of the capitalist class, into ever fewer hands. This development is ultimately tending towards a state of things where all the means of production of a nation, nay, even of the civilised world, are becoming the private property of a single company, which is able to dispose of it at its discretion; a state of things where the entire economic structure is welded into one gigantic concern, in which all have to serve one single master and everything belongs to one single owner. Private property in the means of production in capitalist society leads to a condition where all are propertyless with the exception of one single person. It leads, indeed, to its own abolition, to the dispossession of all, to the enslavement of all. But the development of capitalist commodity-production leads also to the abolition of its own basis. Capitalist exploitation becomes contradictory, if the exploiter can find no other purchasers of his commodities than those exploited by him. If the wage-workers are the only consumers, then the products embodying the sxirplus-value become unsaleable—valueless. Such a condition would be as terrible as it would be impossible. It can never come to that, because the mere approach to such a condition must so intensify the sufferings, antagonisms and contradictions in society that they become unbearable, that society collapses if the development has not previously been steered into a different channel. Bui if this condition will never be reached, we are rapidly drifting that way, indeed, more rapidly than most imagine. For while on the one hand the concentration of the separate capitalist concerns into fewer hands is proceeding, on the other hand with the development in the division of labour the mutual dependence of the seemingly independent undertakings is growing, as we have already seen. This mutual dependence, however, becomes more a one-sided dependence of the small capitalists upon the larger ones. Just as most of the seemingly independent workers carrying on home industries in reaity are only wage-workera of the capitalist, so there are already many capitalists having the appearance of independence, yet subservient to others, and many capitalist concerns that appear to be independent are in reality merely branches of one huge capitalist undertaking. And this dependence of the smaller capitalists upon the larger increases perhaps more rapidly than the concentration of the various concerns in the hands of the few. The economic fabrics of capitalist nations are already to-day, in the last resort, dominated and exploited by a few giant capitalists, and the concentration in the hands of a lew firms is little else than a mere change of form.

While the economic dependence of the great mass of the population upon the capitalist class is growing, within the capitalist class itself the dependence of the majority upon a minority (decreasing in number but ever increasing in power and wealth) becomes always greater. But this greater dependence brings no more security to the capitalists than to the proletarians, handicraftsmen, petty traders, and peasants. On the contrary, with them as with all the others, the insecurity of their position keeps pace with their growing dependence. Of course, the smaller capitalists suffer most in that respect, but the largest capital, nowadays, does not enjoy complete security.

We have already referred to a few causes of the growing insecurity of capitalist undertakings, for instance, that the sensitiveness of the entire fabric as far as it is affected by external disturbances, increases ; but as the capitalist method of production intensifies the antagonisms between the different classes and nations, and causes the masses facing each other to swell and their means of combat to become ever more formidable, it creates more opportunities for disturbance, which give rise to greater devastations. The growing productivity of labour not only increases the surplus-value usurped by the capitalist, but it also increases the amount of commodities which are placed on the market, and which the capitalist is compelled to dispose of. With the growing exploitation competition becomes more intensified, as does also the bitter struggle of investor against investor. And hand in hand with this development there proceeds a continual technical evolution ; new inventions and discoveries are unceasingly going forward, and in so doing destroy the value of existing things, thus making not only individual workers and single machines, but entire plants of machinery and even whole industries superfluous.

No capitalist can rely upon the future ; none knows with certainty whether he will be in a position to retain what he has acquired and leave it to his children.

The capitalist class increasingly splits up into two sections: one section, growing in number, has become quite superfluous economically, and has nothing to do but squander and waste the increasing mass of usurped surplus-value that is not used as fresh capital. If one calls to mind what we have mentioned in the previous chapter regarding the position of the educated in present society, one will not be astonished to find that by far the greater number of the rich idlers are throwing their money away on mere coarse pleasures. The other section of the capitalists, those who have not yet become superfluous in their own undertakings, is decreasing in number, but their anxieties and responsibilities increase. While one section of the capitalists is decaying more and more owing to idle profligacy, the other section is perishing by never-ceasing competition. But the insecurity of existence of both sections grows. Thus the present method of production does not permit even the exploiters, even those who monopolise and usurp all the tremendous advantages, a complete enjoyment of them.

The great modern crises, which now rule the world market, arise from over-production, and are the consequence of the anarchy necessarily connected with the production of commodities.

Over-production in the sense that more is produced than is required can take place under any system of production. But, of course, it can do no harm if the producers produce for their own use. If, for instance, a primitive peasant-family harvest more corn than they require, they store up the surplus for times of bad harvest, or in the case of their barns being full, they feed their cattle with it, or at the worst leave it on the field.

It is different in the case of the production of commodities. This production (in its developed form) presupposes that nobody produces for himself.

[To be continued]

Fraud or Fool? An Open Letter to the Bishop of London. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Lord Bishop,—The Press reports you as saying recently, at a meeting convened by the State Children’s Association, that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury, if he had the brains and power.”

The most charitable construction that can be put upon this startling announcement is that you lack information, and since you are in a position which could readily enable you to obtain such information, you are a fool. As you should have learnt from one of your own textbooks, “A fool despises instruction.”

The inability to definitely posit you as fraud or fool by no means demonstrates that you are neither. In the hazy atmosphere compounded of episcopal mendacity and aristocratic thickheadedness which represents your mental equipment, your public utterances loom up tinged with varying proportions of the murky ingredients which gave them being.

The moral kink treads hard upon the intellectual twist. Folly and Falsehood were ever twin monsters of one brood.

I will not press you to give your definition of the word “power.” The habit you have fallen into of using sounding phrases which may haply disguise insincerity of heart, and clearness of mind, precludes you from giving precision to terms which cry aloud for such treatment at your mouth—”blind mouth,” Milton would have said. Your formal adherence to creeds and doctrines which you dare not examine, your futile juggling with the metaphysical niceties of an outworn creed, your £10,000 a year, are a bar, an ever increasing barrier, between yourself and intellectual candour.

What of your Ordination Oath, when one of your own clergy brazenly proclaims the prostitution of his office and of his intellect ”in his own pulpit at St. Margaret’s Church,” by declaring he mouths “formularies to which, as an individual, he cannot ex animo subscribe” ?

“Power”! Your statement with regard to the word in question simply means that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury if he could manage to do the trick.” “Any boy can punch his neighbour in the eye if he can.” “What will happen will happen.” 0=0. Startling conclusion ! Cerebation extraordinary—which brings me to the question of

BRAINS.

I understand from your utterance that you hold intellect to be one of the main necessities for success in life. That is a fair inference from your statement. You give adhesion to the taradiddle which declares to the French youth that every private carries in his knapsack the baton of a marshall ; you hold that the humblest clerk in the Admiralty, by strict attention to duty, may one day “become a ruler of the King’s navee”—inferentially that your exalted position is owing partly to an extra dose of grey matter.

A bitter fool !

I wonder what the assembled company in Park Lane thought. Did none wince at that nonsensical nullity of yours concerning “power”? I know naught of Lady Buxton, eke of Lady Courtney, but Mrs. Barnett ? The good lady who so severely takes the servant girl to task for her lack of coherent thinking, who has deplored the lack of “light” among the class which she vainly endeavours to sugar ! And the “secondary and elementary school teachers” present ! Peradventure, the secondaries and elementaries were at Park Lane on strict business bent. “Les affaires sont les affaires, n’est’ce pas.” If the question is not personal, did the presence of those same purveyors of specially doctored capitalist lore afflict you with a sort of sympathetic itching ? On the grounds of a common humanity, sharply and inevitably opposed as you and I must be, my Lord Bishop, on the political field, I sympathise with you for any discomfort you may have felt in the direction indicated. The creepiness of the “secondary” and “elementary” is of so loathsome a nature that a bishop should be spared that infliction.

Perhaps a quotation from Ruskin may help you to grasp my view-point on the question of Success and Brains. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not swear by Ruskin. It occasionally, perforce, swears at him. But, at any rate, he did see certain isolated facts clearly, if he failed to correlate them, and made a kaleidoscopic colour smudge of what was intended to be an ordered harmony. “In a community regulated only by laws of supply and demand” successful persons are “industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, unimaginative, and ignorant.” Not much room for brains here. Per contra, “the persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the entirely merciful, just and godly person.” Eh ! Ruskin wasn’t orthodox ? You repudiate him as witness ? My Lord of London, Right Reverend Father in God, bland participator in the profits distilled from the life’s blood of the workingman, reeking with the shame of the unsexed working woman, bloody with the agony-drops of children,—will ye accept the ruling of the phantom figure which you and yours have exploited in your own interest for so long, and whom you have solemnly declared to represent the highest attainable wisdom ? You are never tired of telling us the “His Life” was the highest teaching, irrespective of precept. So. And yet your Incarnation of Highest Truth, your Very-God-of-Very-God-Man made a sorry hash of his life, reproaching the Unbegotten-Very-God-of-Very-God in his dying agony. I beg pardon. You say, ha ! He attained the highest success. M’yes, but that was not the kind of success you contemplated when beaming on the Park Lane assembly. The archbishop’s throne, the bishop’s chair, have not, of recent years, been associated with martyrdom. What you indicated was, that the poor little worker’s kiddy stood an excellent chance of collaring the £15,000 a year attached to the “throne” of Augustine’s successor.

A word in conclusion. Your cant and rant have no longer much weight with the class that has worked religion for all it is worth, in the only way that it could be worked, viz., for the befooling and undoing of the worker. But you need not therefore despair. If your class has its philosophic doubters, its ethical philanders, its Cheynes and its Hensons, there are still the

PIOUS LABOUR LEADERS;

there are still the “Socialist” bleaters who find such solace in a quiet hour on their knees that they become permanently afflicted with housemaid’s knee on the brain, meek firebrands, valiant worms, revolutionary P.S.A’ers, to whom you may still address your pagan patter and mushy moralising. A tip, my Lord. Next time you address a gathering on a similar subject, why not invite a few of the meek-eyed crowd herein indicated ? That you may bore each other to mutual damnation is the final wish of

Yours,

SNOGGY