Society and Morals. Part IX — Socialism, its Economic and Theoretical Basis. (1918)

From the July 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VIII.

The Socialist movement is revolutionary ; its object is the establishment of society upon a new basis—that of common ownership by the members of society, of the land and the machinery necessary for production and distribution. The movement seeks, by this means, to solve what it considers the otherwise unsolvable problems raised by the prevailing capitalist society, such problems as, to take that most obvious to everyone, the existence of widespread poverty and drudgery side by side with the most prodigiously efficient means ever known of creating every kind of wealth. The abolition of war, also, is a problem to-day more keenly felt than ever before, which Socialists declare can and will be solved only by the abolition of capitalism and the organisation of that Socialist Commonwealth which is their supreme objective.

The Sociology of Revolutions.

In this series of essays we have had occasion to notice some of the social revolutions of the past. The revolutionary movements of previous ages also undertook to solve the social problems of their time. Such problems and the necessity for social re-organisation arises when the established institutions cease to conform with the actual economic relations of men, forced on them by the industrial conditions obtaining ; when the existing organisation of society hinders rather than facilitates the development of the sources of production.

Mechanical inventions and technical improvements step by step effect changes in the methods of industry, but social institutions tend to linger on and to outlive their usefulness because of men’s reverence for traditions and attachment to custom and convention. Only when the insufficiency of these institutions to meet the newly arisen needs becomes glaring and obvious is social re-adjustment more or less rapidly brought about. But in class-divided communities a potent artificial factor intervenes to retard this necessary social progress, and that is—the self interest of the class which the established order elevates to prominence and maintains in wealth and power.

Under the conservative and reactionary influence of ruling-class activity social contradictions have frequently become chronic and disastrous. When such a condition is reached this class which dominates society and receives the richest share of the wealth produced becomes parasitic by losing every vestige of social function. Conversely, the remainder of the community are afflicted with unnecessary burdens, restrictions, and privations, while society itself is threatened with collapse.

But if class-interest be often a powerful conservative agent it has also been the most virulent incentive in the cause of revolution and progress. Whenever a class existed who for any reason felt the ill effects of the obsolete system, with extreme severity, a class who, for instance, were conscious that their interests were or could be especially administered to by those very industrial forces which were denied expansion, this class became the chief advocate of revolution and played the part of leader and guide to the revolutionary movement.

Thus it was with that series of revolutions which removed the legal restrictions upon the liberty of industry and trade, imposed by the out-worn semi-feudal absolutism, and released for seemingly unbounded expansion the economic forces behind capitalism. These were the work primarily of the capitalist classes themselves, inflamed with revolutionary zeal by the oppressive conditions which so injuriously affected their interests. On the other hand, however, the landed-nobility-well-favoured parasites of the old regime were bitter opponents of, and strove to frustrate the aims of, the bourgeoisie. In this they were typical of all ruling classes, for as indicated above, history shows that every such class has clung to its power and privilege until compelled to abdicate, and never voluntarily assisted any move in social progress which menaced its sovereignty. Moreover, the dominant class of every epoch has never lacked arguments in justification of the position and of their system of exploitation which maintained them in it. Consequently they were ever incapable of being “moralised” into an unresisting acceptance of revolution. It is important to bear this in mind, for it shows how dangerously misleading is the work of those would-be “reformers” who declare their belief in an universally acceptable morality—a point we shall dwell upon later.

Ruling classes, however, have never relied solely on moral justification to safeguard their interests. On the contrary they were always prepared to use the most violent means or take the most extreme, ferocious action against a revolt of the “lower” oppressed classes, whether this was consciously revolutionary or not. Because exploitation and class oppression have underlain all the various forms of social civilisation, class friction and conflict pervades every page of its history. The ruthlessness of these struggles is revealed whether examples be taken from the slave risings of Antiquity, the serf and peasant revolts of the Middle Ages, or from the records of existing bourgeois society. The Paris Commune of 1871 will ever remain a tragic and significant instance of the modern phase of that ages-old war of class against class, oppressors against oppressed.

Utopia or Science.

Many men, often of great genius and learning, have in different ages elaborated schemes of social regeneration, plans to re-organise society upon a “better” basis. Among them may be ranked Plato in ancient Greece, More in mediaeval England, and later St. Simon, Fourier, Godwin, Owen, Compte and Proudhon. Their ideals were, however, never realised, for they all failed to see that every society is an evolutionary product determined by preceeding conditions, and in turn determining what is to follow. They did not recognise economic conditions to be the main foundation of society nor yet in many cases the irreconcilable antagonism between the interests of the existing classes or the effect this had upon their moral opinions.

True, in some cases, the ideas of men of this type, Rousseau, for instance, did assist in bringing about a social transformation, but only when it happened that the conditions for such had been prepared by economic developments and when a class already existed whose needs urged them on to revolutionary ambitions. But even where a social change was thus actually realised the new form of society never corresponded with that depicted by the imagination of such idealistic thinkers ; it was always moulded in accordance with those social needs, impressed upon the revolutionary class in the form of economic interests, and which were determined in the last analysis by the stage reached in industrial development.

In its every phase the modern Socialist movement differs from the Utopianism of the great social idealists, and of their puny, latter-day disciples, the sentimental reformists.

It was, indeed, the founders and pioneer exponents of the Socialist theory, Marx and Engels, who first showed, over seventy years ago, that economic evolution is the mainspring of social and ideological history. Since their time many non-Socialist historians and sociologists have been compelled to recognise the mode of production as the chief determining factor in social growth, and to Lewis H. Morgan, the famous pathologist, belongs the distinction of reaching independently this epoch-making conception. Every advance in historical and sociological research has repeatedly demonstrated the profound truth of the Marxian conception of society, and therefore, because the Socialist movement stands alone in its consistent adherence to this, its guiding principle, it may fairly claim to be in truth a scientific movement, the first to consciously apply social science to social revolution.

The Contradictions of Capitalism.

Aided by their materialist conception of history, Marx and Engels examined in detail the economic structure of capitalist society, how it had evolved and to what it was tending. Resulting from their politico-economic study was the demonstration that capitalistic production which had hastened the break-up, and emerged triumphantly above the wreckage of the feudal system, was now itself generating with its development economic and social complications which it was evident would ensure its eventual downfall.

We have already sketched out the salient features of capitalism as revealed by the Marxian analysis, and have also shown some of the colossal problems which the system as it matures rises for solution. The most striking and important are those which we saw lay at the root of modern imperialism.

How to dispose of an ever-growing volume of commodities in a manner profitable to their class is as we have seen, a problem which the capitalists of the world are compelled to face. To-day the attempt at solution results in war on a gigantic scale, bringing devastation and suffering and death to countless millions. In the future this difficulty bids fair to become, with intensified productivity and closing markets, insuperable. Capitalist production and commerce demand war, but production itself is now an international process, and wars, by obstructing commercial intercourse and free access to the world’s markets, threaten capitalist society with collapse, and by blocking the supplies of raw materials, cut at the very foundation of production itself. They thus constitute a terrible menace to social life itself, now that the whole world is one vast workshop. Imperialism is the path which the bourgeoisie are enforced to follow in recognition of the economic fact that modern history has outgrown the bounds of the national State, yet in their attempt to solve the problem they have to ferment a degree of national hate and antagonism never known before.

Allied to the above is the anomaly of over-production, for when, as frequently happens, the available markets are unable to absorb the whole of the vast surplus of commodities, a commercial glut occurs, warehouses remain stocked, factories slacken off or close down and the workers thrown out of employment are faced with starvation because, incredible as it may seem, they have produced too abundantly. Again, the use of more efficient machinery (in order to cheapen production), which, appropriately used, could both lighten the labour of the producers and greatly add to their comfort and wealth, under capitalism promotes unemployment, intensifies the competition for work, and augments both the toil and the poverty of the workers.

Under capitalism, let it be repeated, while the powers of production are greater and the wealth actually created vaster and more so every year, than under any previous system, being easily capable of supplying the whole population with every need and comfort, the great army of workers who use these powers to produce this wealth live in a condition of perpetual poverty and drudgery, and are thus isolated from most of tho real fruits which the science, art, and technical achievments of civilisation have to offer. And when in addition to this it is realised that competent social investigators declare existing economic conditions to be at the root of such evils as child-mortality, prostitution, crime, and a host of pernicious maladies like consumption, the striking force of the indictment which Socialists bring against capitalism will be forced home.

R. W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part VIII. The Outlook of the Proletariat (Continued). (1918)

From the June 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VIII.

Re-Birth of Unrest

The revival of trade union militancy which has taken place in recent years has its causes in those developments of capitalism we have previously outlined. The intense competition in the world markets which has supplanted the old-time “monopoly of Britain” made the employing class of all countries increasingly reluctant to concede even the least advances in wages. On the contrary, it stimulated the more general adoption of speeding-up methods and the wider use of the most perfect machinery. By depreciating the need for skill and increasing unemployment these factors led to a sharper competition for employment and tended to depress wages. The growth of trusts and of employers’ federations has enabled the capitalists to offer a more effective resistance to the unions, while on the other hand a progressive increase in the coat of living has proved a spur to working class unrest and organised activity, in spite of which real wages have continuously fallen.

In the last thirty years or so the strike policy has come again into favour, first among the newer and so-called unskilled unious, but later generally. Especially has this been so in the years immediately proceeding the outbreak of the war, during which period a continually growing unrest manifested itself among the workers in every part of the world. And it is probable also, that after the war militarism and capitalist “efficiency” will prove a further stimulant to working-class revolt, although, of course, the master class will make strenuous efforts to avoid industrial strife and suppress revolutionary propaganda.

To a certain extent a somewhat new outlook has been realised. The obvious dislike of the old-type officials and leaders to a militant policy and their love for the practice of “conferring” with the employers ; their compromising attitude and frequently proven treachery, have also led to much unfavourable criticism and to a decided weakening of their prestige. As a result many strikes have taken place in opposition to the desires of a compromising executive.

Moreover, the strong co-operation manifested among the masters in their determined efforts to resist and to break strikes, and particularly also the growing frequency with which they used their class weapon—the armed forces—to brutally coerce strikers into submission, brought about a decided tendency toward closer solidarity among the workers themselves. This is evidenced in the consolidation of various unions in the same field of production, in the spread of “sympathetic” strikes, and in the voluntary raising of funds by organised workers in support of disputes in which they themselves were not directly concerned.

Furthermore, the gradual decline of the industrial value of personal skill on the part of the employees, together with the need for “fighting” efficiency, has compelled the older “aristocratic” craft unions to recognise that their old-time method of conserving the strength of the unions by insisting upon special qualifications, including the prior serving of long apprenticeships, is both obsolete and futile. They have been forced more and more to adopt the method of the later “unskilled” unions who aim at including all those of a particular trade or industry within the organisation Consequently, “non-unionism” has become almost as great a crime in the eyes of the unionist as “blacklegging”—the worst delinquency in his moral code.

The same causes which fermented this revival in industrial strife also stimulated among the workers a livelier interest in politics which led to the formation of the Labour Party. The trade unions supported the project, and their leaders saw the possibility of political influence and office. The capitalist parties were cute enough to meet this new interest in political affairs by formulating delusive schemes of social reform to pacify and mislead the workers.

Moreover, having found the Labour Party leaders willing to play the same game, the bourgeoisie, especially the petty capitalist element, have given it no little amount of support. The Labour Party, dominated as it is by the reactionary leaders of trades unionism and men of the same stamp, to all of whom the notion of a class struggle is obnoxious, has consistently upheld capitalist principles, and is in reality only a bourgeois party with a “labour” label. Having achieved nothing of value for the workers it has become the butt of adverse criticism from the same elements as have shown independence and militancy on the industrial field.

                                                                       * * *

Thus far none of the movements mentioned above show any indication of being promoted by a full consciousness of proletarian interests. They register but the first stages of such a conception. The general mass of those who built up the strength both of the Chartist and of the trade union movement, saw and felt only their immediate sufferings and disabilities. The deep social causes from which these arose were mostly quite unrecognised. Consequently, no definite principles in opposition to capitalism were adopted by these movements, and no general code of proletarian ethics grew out of or with them.

Much the same applies to-day. The majority of the workers still accept the main dogmas of bourgeois orthodoxy. No doubt the trade unionist regards black-legging and non-unionism as bad and criminal whereas to the capitalist they are good and justifiable. Likewise extreme exploitation or “sweating” is abhorrent to the workers. Yet with regard to the existence of the wages system and of a profit-reaping class, the need for “national solidarity” in defence of “national interests,” and the like, the working-class mind is a faithful reflection of that bourgeois outlook which we considered in a previous section. Even where the workers do show a divergence of opinion upon Free Trade or Protection, Pacifism or Imperialism, these are manifestly but the effect of similar differences among the employing class and its retainers. That these contentions are correct is abundantly proven by the attitude the workers of every belligerent nation adopted upon the outbreak of the European War.

Nevertheless there does exist a school of thought and action which accurately reflects proletarian needs and interests, and therefore presents a true working-class system of morality, and this is the Socialist movement. Originating in, but toward the climax and close of the first period of working-class revolt, Socialism persisted and grew up, as it had to, independently of the several reformist and palliating movements, receiving a fresh impetus with the coming of the second period of activity now growing surely year by year among the workers of the world.

Our next and final consideration, therefore, will be Socialism in its relation to morality.

R. W. Housley

                                                                  (To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part VII. The Morals of Capitalism. (Continued). (1918)

From the May 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VII.

The Age of Cant.

Summing up the “morality of capitalism,” what is the distinctive feature by which it is distinguished from that of other class-divided societies ? It is undeniably that hypocritical taint which pervades it through and through, and which is seen in the glaring contrast which is presented between the moral theory professed and the actual moral reality practised. This moral hypocrisy is the inevitable outcome of the social relations immanent in capitalism. It results from the antagonisms which exist in the system; partly from that engendered in the competitive struggle between individuals and groups of individuals, but primarily from that antagonism which exists between the interests of the bourgeoisie on the one hand, and of the proletariat on the other.

Every activity of the bourgeoisie in its own interest must be undertaken professedly in the interests of the workers, or, more correctly, of “society as a whole.” For the “unity of society” and of its interests is a cardinal dogma, in which the very existence of classes is often denied. “Democracy, Liberty, and Humanity” have been the watchwords of bourgeois society, but words only, for in their name more horrible and sickening atrocities have been perpetrated than in any previous period in history. Thus, human life is held in this “most humanitarian age” to be sacred, yet witness the widespread equanimity with, which the slow starvation of thousands and the mental and physical deformation of millions are endured, and even the fervid glee with which the international capitalist class and their dupes beheld the bloody murder of 20,000 workers after the Commune of Paris, and which to-day greets the slaughter of millions on the battle-fields of Europe.

The worship of “democratic” and “humanitarian” phrases has led to the ludicrous situation that everyone professes to admire the rule “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you,” and for the most part to be guided by it, and yet the social system which these same people uphold makes the practice of this rule absolutely impossible. Did, indeed, anyone actually attempt to abide by this principle he would certainly come into such violent conflict with existing conceptions and institutions as to be branded an Utopian and a madman, and most likely he would be punished with imprisonment.

There is hypocrisy and deceit everywhere, from the lying and trickery of trades and the cant about the “honour of our public men” to the veneer of religious orthodoxy and the “love” that in conventional belief cements the economic contract we call “marriage.” Verily, our time has rightly been called “the Age of Cant.”

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Part VIII. The outlook of the proletariat. 

Owing to the fact that capitalist society rests upon the exploitation of the wage-earners by the owners of capital, it is rendered possible to generate a system of morality radically different from the bourgeois ethics we have been considering, namely, a system which conforms to the interest of the exploited class—the proletariat.

At the same time we have seen also, that an essential part of the superstructure of capitalism consists of institutions which effectively prevent the majority of the workers from recognising their real social status, make them contented with the system they are born into, and secure their acceptance of the bourgeois moral code. The formulation of a proletarian moral code and its acceptance by the working class is, therefore, a slow and difficult process, obstructed at every point by practically all the institutions of the social environment.

Only by gradual and uneven stages can the proletariat in the mass really assimilate a class ethic of their own. Thus to-day, for example, but a small minority have already reached this position, although many are fairly class-conscious and considerably ahead of the main body of the workers, who as yet only possess a faint glimmering of their class interests, whilst on the other side a backward section, growing, however, continually smaller, have not even achieved this state, but embrace in its entirety the capitalistic outlook.

The mental evolution of the proletariat is a subject so vast that here our survey must be practically confined to working-class development in England.

The Early Working-Class Movement.

The earliest independent organisations formed by the modern working class aimed at regulating the conditions of working, such as raising or maintaining the standard of wages or shortening the working day. In several of the more advanced industries such “trade clubs” had already been formed quite early in the eighteenth century. They were, at first, small and local. Working men of a common craft, living in a common locality, gathered together for the protection of their common interests. Though they were concerned with minor and immediate grievances, seeking only to palliate the, to them, evil effects of evolving capitalism, yet their very existence is evidence of the fact that, even in the pre-machine period of capitalism many workers were beginning to realise that their interests and those of their employers were by no means identical. While they acquiesced in the general nature of the system of production prevailing and considered it, on the whole, to be right and just, yet many things which their capitalist employers regarded as perfectly justifiable and reasonable they held to be wrong and unfair.

Their classification of “good” and “bad” employers still lingers in the minds of their latter-day trade-union descendants. In many respects their economic principles and morality were conservative and even reactionary, for they strove energetically to retain their old-established skill or craftsmanship against the tendency which the employers favoured of sub-dividing the labour process—a means of increasing profits and the domination of the capitalist over the labourer, but also a means of increasing the fertility of human energy, and therefore directly in the line of human progress.

Then came the “industrial revolution” with its ensuing horrors—the dawn of the “machine age” was at hand. In the many revolts against the terrible oppression of the factory system reactionary ideas were still, at first, the prevailing feature. Blindly, the outraged workers struck at the lifeless mechanisms which were the immediate cause of their degradation.

Violent machine-breaking riots occurred, the workers regarding the machines themselves, and not so much their capitalist owners, as the enemy to be combated. Strikes now became frequent, and trade combinations among the workers multiplied to such an extent as to seriously alarm the ruling classes and awaken them to retaliation through the State machine.

Combinations of workmen had never been legal bodies, but they had been more or less tolerated prior to the coming of the machine. But now their rapid progress in numbers and militancy brought forth the severe Anti-Combination Acts of 1799-1800. Savage persecution of workmen followed and unions were relentlessly suppressed. But, nevertheless, these organisations, made inevitable by capitalist exploitation, continued to exist in secret, and in the underground warfare against the em­ploying class, some recognition of the class antagonism inherent in capitalist society must have been forced upon many of the workers.

At length, however, after over twenty years of terrible persecution, the dominant classes seemed to have realised the futility and even worse of forcible suppression, and the unions were granted some measure of legal sanction. Immediately trade unions sprang up everywhere in greater abundance than ever before, for, in the intervening period, capitalist production had advanced exceedingly and machinery had now invaded almost every branch of industry. Consequently more oppression occurred, but to no real purpose.

Now, however, the far-sighted among the bourgeoisie were coming to see that these organisations were unavoidable, and although an evil were a necessary one. If they could not be killed they could, perhaps, be conciliated. How this view was justified we shall see later.

Many various experiments in industrial organisation were made by the workers in the succeeding decade or two, principally through the efforts of enthusiastic Utopians like Robert Owen. The social ideals of such men were high indeed, but the vast majority of the workers remained uninfluenced by them. They were in the unions because they thereby hoped, just as their predecessors had done, to ameliorate their immediate grievances, to obtain higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions of employ­ment.

Eventually, after many experimental failures, trade unionism settled down into that general form which prevailed throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. One advance was made, however. The unions for the most part ceased to be mere local associations and tended more and more to become national in their scope—a development made possible and necessary by the great progress in communication achieved through the introduction of railways. It is, perhaps, needless to add that as capitalist production gradually took root all over the world there spread along with it its necessary accompaniment, trade unionism.

Meanwhile the final struggle of the industrial capitalists for political power had had the effect of turning the workers’ attention also to the field of politics as a means whereby they might obtain relief from their intense impoverishment and distress.

Though the “industrial revolution” had considerably enhanced the wealth, numbers, and influence of the manufacturing bourgeoisie, this class remained, for a long period afterwards, excluded from direct political representation. Whilst insignificant country districts often had separate representatives, large and now vastly important and thickly populated industrial towns like Birmingham and Manchester were without independent representation under the existing constitution. Parliament, accordingly, continued to be dominated by the aristocratic landlords, vestigial remains of the now dead feudal system.

The manufacturers and their “intellectual” allies demanded political reform and strove, by incessant agitation, to draw the working class to the support of the reform movement. Among the discontented workers such propaganda fell upon fertile soil. Huge demonstrations were held all over the country and eventually, after many years of obstinate resistance and brutal repression, the government, fearful of civil war, reluctantly conceded the Reform Bill of 1832.

This Act, while it partly remedied the anomalies in the representation of the industrial centres and extended the vote to the wealthier strata of the capitalists, left the proletariat still without the franchise. Great disappointment and resentment was aroused in the workers by this betrayal, and within three years an association of working men drew up their own political programme—the “People’s Charter.” This was soon adopted by the majority of the politically active workers who became known as Chartists.

The enactment of the Charter was to establish political democracy by a thorough revision of the electoral system, and the Charter was thus the logical outcome of the political ideals of the bourgeoisie. But there can be no doubt that, to the masses of working men who gave their support to Chartism, political reform was but a means to an end—the alleviation of their miserable poverty, slavery, and degradation. This is shown by the vigorous activity of the Chartists on behalf of the Ten Hours Bill and other factory legislation, and by their loyal support of the industrial movement of the workers which was apparent in every strike. In such activities they were met by the bitter opposition of those self-styled “friends of the people,” the free-trade factory capitalists.

During their existence of about twelve years the Chartists accomplished a great amount of agitation and educational work, several widely-read newspapers being published in support of the movement. Adherents to the party multiplied rapidly, especially in the great northern centres of industry. The growth of the agitation made it hated and feared by the ruling classes both aristocratic and bourgeois, and many of its members were victimised by the employers and imprisoned by the authorities.

The Chartists, however, proved too weak to carry their point. Dissensions had grown in their ranks, and among the mass of their supporters, who were but loosely organised, many were side-tracked by the bourgeois agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Parliament scornfully rejected the petition for the Charter, and in the suppression of the minor insurrections and disturbances which followed, the Chartists found themselves “confronted with a highly developed military administration, with barracks ranged through the industrial districts, and with a newly organised and well drilled police force.” (Green’s “Short History,” p. 859.) Open revolt seemed futile.

Furthermore, the factory acts had removed many of the more pressing grievances of the workers, and a revival of trade relieved the unemployment situation. The bulk of the workers became politically apathetic ; the vigour of Chartism declined and, after a time, the movement collapsed and disappeared.

On the continent of Europe events, similar to those in England were taking place. There the bourgeoisie, striving to win political supremacy, also allied themselves with the proletariat, and in 1848 broke out in revolt. When, however, the workers at the first success put forward demands on their own account, the bourgeoisie immediately became anxious about “law and order.” In Germany they joined hands with their political enemies, the nobility, in suppressing the rising of the workers, and in France, after constituting themselves the ruling power, the industrial bourgeoisie crushed the proletarian rebels with great violence and bloodshed.

The Reconciliation : Its Causes and Consequences.

These early manifestations of a widespread spirit of revolt on the part of the proletariat took place, it must be remembered, before the days of “State education.” The marvellously complex organisations by which the workers were in later times to be impregnated with a bourgeois ideology had not yet been fully evolved. Masses of the workers were still unable to read or write, especially in the earlier period. What little reading and learning was possessed among them, here and there, was gleaned mainly through the agency of trade clubs or similar organisations, in connection with which small libraries were sometimes maintained and study classes held.

That capitalist tradition, including the dogmas regarding abstinence and directive ability, so respected by and ingrained in the bulk of the workers in after years, and which so largely holds them in its grip to-day, was, at that time, only in its formative period. The vast array of intellectual retainers of every type to-day in the pay of the bourgeoisie, was then much less numerous and not nearly so well organised, for the wealth and influence of the industrial capitalists was, at that time, comparatively small. Neither had they that undisputed control of the political machine which they were later to hold. Moreover, they themselves, in their revolutionary struggle with the nobility, had, in their criticisms of hereditary privilege, done much to discredit and undermine respect for established institutions and authority. When they had risen to complete supremacy the bourgeoisie were sorely in need of a working-class narcotic to occupy the place left by that which they had helped to undermine.

At length it was realised by the bolder and wiser elements of the bourgeoisie that an officially controlled educational system would not only give to the workers that technical instruction made more and more necessary by scientific commerce and production, but would also make possible the systematic and more efficient inculcation into the absorbant minds of the proletarian children the servile code of ethics which it had once been the exclusive business of the Church to foster. We have seen in our previous section the outcome of this idea. Still it seems hardly likely that the bourgeoisie could have seen what a valuable instrument in the service of class rule they were forging when the first timid “educational” schemes were put forward.

At all events, the fact cannot be gainsaid that with the gradual elaboration and extension of compulsory capitalistic education and, side by side with this the marvellous growth in cheapness, size, and circulation of the bourgeois Press (the greatest agent of mental perversion the world has ever seen), the earliest rumblings of revolt among the workers died down considerably. Engels has admirably shown that a religious revival fostered by the bourgeoisie also played its part in this process. Capitalism now seemed to have reached a comparatively stable and smooth-running condition as far as the workers were concerned, fulfilling all the desires of its profit-worshipping devotees.

Particularly was this conservatism of the workers manifested in England, where there operated more directly economic causes to this end. After the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 the capitalists of England entered upon their period of economic world supremacy. Out of the enormous and steadily increasing stream of profits the employers could well afford to conciliate the workers with sops in the shape of somewhat higher wages and with social reforms which eliminated many of the minor grievances of the workers. It paid to do this rather than risk a disturbance and a break in the continuity of their wonderful prosperity by unnecessary industrial strife twixt employer and employed.

After the workers had become docile the bourgeoisie could with safety satisfy that popular desire for the franchise which revived again and again, and this they did in succeeding stages. As Engels says, “parliamentary government is a capital school for teaching respect for tradition,” and besides, the vote completed the argument of the bourgeoisie that the workers were “free.” Did they not elect their chosen representatives to rule them ? Was not “democracy” now a reality ? Thus, apparently, were the capitalists made more secure than ever.

In this long period of working-class quiescence, which started about 1850 and began to end towards the close of the century, trade unionism persisted but took on a form so distinctly bourgeois as to become in itself and its results a powerful “bulwark of capitalism.” Politically the workers for the most part supported the bourgeois Liberal and Tory parties.

Whatever revolutionary sentiment had existed in the earlier movement now almost entirely disappeared. The view that the respective interests of the capitalists and the workers were necessarily antagonistic, which had been taught by many of the advanced Chartists, was now discredited. The workers generally held that the capitalists as a class were useful, necessary, even benevolent, earning the well-deserved profits of abstinence and ability, whatever grievances the workers had were thought to be due either to the greed of exceptionally bad and unjust employers or to unfor­tunate misunderstandings on the part of the capitalists or their workpeople ; this was the justification for trade unions.

The unions had for their motto “Defence, not Defiance,” and “A Fair Day’s Wage for a Fair Day’s Work.” Strikes were discouraged ; the new policy in dealing with disputes was one of arbitration based on compromise and mutual good-will. These tactics, of course, transferred the field of action from the mass of the organised workers to their officials and representatives, who met the employers or their agents in conference.

The growth in size of the unions, together with their anti-strike policy, enabled the accumulation of very considerable reserve funds, which were spent mainly in friendly benefits. These factors also tended to enhance the prestige and power of the prominent officials, who now became a full-time salaried staff, virtually, though not avowedly, dominating the policy and activities of their organisations.

R.W Housley

(To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part VII. The Morals of Capitalism (continued). (1918)

From the April 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VII.

We have seen that, under the wages system, the prime force used to subject the worker to exploitation is the economic pressure which bears upon him by reason of his propertyless condition. This condition, it is evident seeing the economic inferiority of the capitalists, depends for its perpetuation upon the recognition by the workers of the “rights” of capitalist property. The bourgeoisie are not a military class like the feudal nobility or the Roman freemen, but depend upon the working class even for the military force they command.

We can see, therefore, how extremely important it is to the capitalists that the proletariat should be contented with their social status, or, at least, see in capitalism a system of production at once necessary, inevitable, and just. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that these same conditions demand the continual readjustment of the institutions of the system in proportion as the workers as a class change their views regarding things social.

The very subtlety of the relation between himself and the capitalist is favourable to the fostering of the illusion in the workers’ mind that he is a “free agent.” The appearance of a contract “freely” entered into with an employer who, to a certain extent, he is free to choose, veils the real nature of the relation. The worker, as a rule, fails to see that economic necessity is a compelling force even more powerful and imperative than the whip and torture of the chattel-slave era. He does not see that they who monopolise those things by which alone he can live dictate, as a class, if, when, and where he shall live and under what conditions. On the contrary, he believes the doctrines assiduously taught him by the master class through their dupes and hirelings, the teachers, politicians, parsons, pressmen and “men of literature.” These, assisted by a whole series of institutions suited to the purpose, beset the worker from the cradle to the grave with influences which tend to mould his mind to the form most suitable to the needs the bourgeoisie.

Lest he should be indiligent and lazy in the production of profits he is taught that “toil ” is in itself a virtue (his teachers forget to mention that for him, like other virtues, it must be its own reward) and that the interests of both employer and employee being identical, a benefit to the former is, in the long run, beneficial to the latter also.

Lest the standard of comfort he aspires to be unduly raised (leading to a demand for increased wages) the worker is enjoined to be thrifty, frugal, and sober. Even poverty itself is glossed into a kind of goodness. He is told of the “peace of mind” which comes with practising the “virtue” of contentment. Discontent is branded as a vice and its preachers as “disturbers of the peace.” The very term “agitator” acquires a vicious and sinister significance.

History is perverted ; elaborately faked “histories” being written for use in the schools and out of them, which emphasise the “evils” of previous or contemporary non-capitalist forms of society, whilst showing in the most favourable light possible modern institutions and especially the capitalist class. The “historians” prove (!) that all revolutions have meant only anarchy, chaos, and bloodshed, with no beneficial results. “Reform,” is, however, allowed to be useful and good when judiciously applied by “wise statesmen.” Thus is the maxim driven home—never rebel, but trust the “great men” at the helm of State and industry.

“Patriotism,” so useful as an obscurant of class differences, a means of dividing the working class into national sections and of rallying them to fight their masters’ battles under the disguise of “national interests,” is cultivated and characterised as a cardinal virtue in these “histories.” National traditions, character, and achievements are, with this end in view, glorified and shown off in exaggerated contrast with those of foreign nationalities. Thus the working-class child in England is told of the glorious empire which is his “heritage,” but of which, in all probability, he will never possess more than the clay which clings to his boots.

The Press, owned by and used in the interests of the bourgeoisie, ably carries on the work begun in the schools by selecting, misrepresenting, and suppressing information regarding the events of the day. The religious organisations, by fostering ignorance and superstition, also do their share in the same mind-moulding process, though with decreasing efficiency as religion becomes more and more undermined by the growth of scientific knowledge.

Thus we see that the code of morality believed in by the bulk of the working class, is, to a very large extent, based not upon their own class interests, but upon the interests of their exploiters the capitalist class. It is a bourgeois, not a proletarian morality. It helps to preserve bourgeois society ; it serves as a support to exploitation and oppression.

We saw that this function of morality is also a phenomenon of feudal society, but that it was very largely bound up with religious belief. Under capitalism, however, not only does this form of morality play a very much larger part than under feudalism, but it is to an ever-increasing extent dissociated from religion and connected more and more to secular theories of social relations communicated to the working class through the so-called educational agencies under the control of the ruling class.

The Decay of Competition.

Capitalist morality, since its first triumph, has not remained stationary, but has, on the contrary, been continually modified and adapted to the changing needs and interests of the bourgeoisie, which naturally flow from the evolution of the industrial system.

No previous form of society has witnessed such rapid economic changes during its existence as capitalism, and as a result, at no period in history have ideas been so completely and rapidly revolutionised as during the epoch of the bourgeoisie.

The most striking of these changes we will proceed to briefly outline.

In the first place commercial competition, so characteristic of capitalism in its prime, produces results which tend to bring about its own negation. Competing capitalists needs must, if they are to win success, be continually striving to sell cheaper than their competitors. This cheapening is obtained by the use of more and more efficient labour-saving machinery and ever more perfect means of sub-dividing the labour process, co-ordinating productive activity and eliminating waste of energy and material.

But as the machinery in use grows decade by decade more and more elaborate and intricate, it increases in costliness. Moreover, large-scale production embracing much invested capital is less wasteful than numerous concerns on a small scale. Consequently in the evolution of capitalism larger and larger aggregations of capital are requisite for “success in business.” The “big” capitalists survive the competitive struggle while their many small competitors eke out an ever more precarious existence until they are “crushed out” out and join the proletariat.

Then the few remaining “big men,” seeing that further strife means less profits, draw together either openly or in secret ; combines, trusts, and cartels become the order of the day. This stage is best illustrated in the United States, where in many lines of industry competition is practically extinct ; but in England and Germany this process is almost as advanced.

All this, of course, brings about a change in the outlook of the capitalist class. By their most advanced theorists “competition” is now discredited and looked upon as wasteful, inefficient, and obsolete. The wealthy magnates, now reduced to a comparatively small sect absolutely divorced from productive activity, look upon labour as a degrading thing. They ape the manners of the “old aristocracy” whom their forefathers hated, and covet nothing so-much as a title (which, of course, they are prepared to pay for). Still they must make a pretence of being socially useful, and so they give it out, and perhaps actually believe, that they are the “brain ot industry,” upon which the welfare of civilisation rests. The working class are declared to be mere “brainless automata useless without the guiding genius of the ‘captains of industry.'”

The small capitalists, too, have their outlook modified in the face of their approaching disaster. They become “super-democrats,” and appeal to the workers for support, urging them to join in an agitation against the trusts “who are robbing the people.” They strike out in the political field for “clean government”—the abolition of bribery and corruption—when they see the long purses of the plutocrats working wonders in the executive, the legislature, and the law courts. They still retain the old “individualism,” invigorated by their hatred of of the new monopolies which are strangling them, but, in some cases, in favour of State ownership as the only practical alternative to the oligarchy of the trusts.

Capital’s “World Politics”.

We are now to deal with the most important series of changes, social and intellectual, which have flowed with the evolution of capitalist production.

For several reasons, chiefly perhaps, freedom from the ravages of war, English industry in the 18th century had outstripped that of all other countries. Capitalist production first successfully flourished in England and it was here that machine industry was first adopted. The productivity of the English labourer leaped forward amazingly. The enormous mass of commodities turned out with the new machinery was far beyond the meagre consuming powers of the poverty-steeped proletariat of England and had to be sold abroad. A flood of cheap factory products was poured upon the world-markets. England became the “Workshop of the World.” It was the “golden age” of English capitalists, who revelled in unequalled prosperity.

The foreign policy of the statesman during this period was a peaceful one. International complications which would hamper the steady running of the industrial forces and thus disturb the continuous stream of profits pouring into the coffers of the British, bourgeoisie, were studiously avoided. Militarism and war were discredited : they were expensive. They brought, moreover, no compensations at all to be compared with the objectionable features they presented, for as nothing could withstand the competition of the British factory product, the military conquest of markets was, generally speaking, quite unnecessary : they were automatically monopolised.

But despite all the Utopian dreams of British capitalism, this state of things could not last for ever. The effect of English trade was to stimulate and quicken capitalist development in the next most industrially advanced countries, whose bourgeoisie hastened to organise their resources and to introduce machinery. At first slowly, but none the less surely, America, Germany, and France, with others close to heel began to threaten Britain’s trade supremacy, first in their own “home market” under the shelter of protective tariffs, and even to compete with growing success with British goods in the open markets of the world. The world monopoly of England was gone. Even her “first place” among commercial nations was being seriously challenged. Now that their long era of uncontested triumph was drawing to a close a change began to make itself manifest in the outlook of the English capitalists. An influential section of the British bourgeoisie, who, so long as they had no competitors were staunch believers in “free trade,” began now to cry out for “protection” against “foreign goods.” The “tariff reform” campaign was started.

Now began that furious struggle between the capitalist classes of the great bourgeois nations for commercial supremacy. Each rival group is striving to dispose of a huge surplus of commodities, a surplus which grows ever larger as more and more efficient machinery is used to cheapen production. It must be got rid of, for to fail would mean disaster—bankruptcy for the exporters, the bulk of the bourgeoisie, and industrial stagnation. Consequently while the old foreign markets are as far as possible more thoroughly exploited, new, unexplored ones are constantly sought.

But the inevitable result of the export of goods produced in industrially developed areas to countries where capitalism is non-existent or but feebly developed is to break down all communal and feudal conditions and to force these countries upon the path of capitalist evolution. As Marx and Engels said in the “Communist Manifesto,” capitalism creates a world after its own image. The “Dark Continent,” the “Celestial Empire,” and “Holy Russia,” are all transformed with astonishing rapidity at the magic touch of capitalist commerce. Everywhere new capitalist nations are sprouting into life and entering into the maelstrom of international competition. But this means that one-time markets are now becoming competitors in need of a market themselves to dispose of their own ever-growing surplus. While the markets are thus tending to diminish or will soon do so, the competitors for them are on the increase. Thus the tension grows : production within the bounds of capitalism is approaching the end of its tether ; when will the breaking point be reached ?

As the sphere of economic interests of the bourgeoisie of each nation expands with the pressing need for new markets, so also do their political interests. Their political ideal is no longer merely national ; it is imperialistic. They each strive lo secure and monopolise as many markets and potential markets as possible. They obtain trade “concessions” from the governments of “backward countries,” often by pressure. Over areas where they export and establish means of production and transport—machinery, railways, etc. (practically synonymous with their foreign investments of capital)—they form or attempt to form “spheres of interest” and protectorates, or pursue a policy of annexation. Wherever possible they strive to monopolise for their own use areas rich in raw materials—mineral deposits, etc. Thus in recent years the bourgeoisie in Germany have elaborated their Mid Europe-Mesopotamia scheme ; in Britain the policy of “economic unity of the Empire” and of expansion in Persia and Mesopotamia, and the capitalists of the U.S.A. stand as “protectors” of Central and and Southern America ; France, Italy, and Japan all have their schemes of imperial expansion.

Competition is no longer between individuals or even corporations, but between groups of capitalists having the whole force of the respective armed States behind their ambitions and demands. Imperialism, especially in competition with rival imperialisms, means militarism and war.

Of course the old “Liberal-pacifist-free-trade” theory still finds a number of supporters among the less intelligent capitalists and theorists, or among those whose interests are not, as yet, menaced by foreign competitiors, but who, nevertheless, are compelled to stand part of the colossal expense incurred by a vigorous military system. The struggle between the old idea and policy and the new has at length reached its climax in the titanic war, and most of the erstwhile free-traders have abandoned the old position for the new. Liberalism has now become a thing of the past, for the economic conditions which engendered it have passed away for ever.

Imperialism, especially under the impulse of its exacting offspring, the war, has revolutionised the capitalist mind. The old “individualism” is dead as a working philosophy. Whilst, in the “Liberal” period, the capitalist class largely achieved its prosperity through each capitalist seeking independently his own welfare without much regard for, or need of, the support of his class, now that competition between its national sections has become intense, class solidarity’s within the nation has become imperative. The great expense of militarism and the need for efficiency demand concessions and sacrifices from the individual members of the bourgeoisie. The capitalist who disregards the interests of his class is despised.

Organisation for war having become an economic necessity, military service is now considered an imperative obligation. The military spirit is glorified ; military traditions are revived. The State is no longer regarded, as in the individualist period, a necessary nuisance, useful to keep the workers down (maintaining “order,” it is called) but otherwise the less in evidence the better. Now, on the contrary, it has become the “saviour of society” (i.e., of the bourgeoisie). Only by its powerful aid can the needs of the capitalist class be satisfied. The State, in addition to securing military efficiency, now organises and presides over the industries of the nation, striving to co-ordinate national production, eliminate waste, and otherwise promote that efficiency required for the intense competition in the world market. To do this the State takes complete control over many of the most vital branches of production and communication—the railways, shipping, munitions of war factories, agriculture, etc.

Of course, the working class must be attracted to the imperialist philosophy to make its aspirations successful. The “sons of toil” harken to the imperialist politicians and intellectuals who, with flowery phrases, describe and glorify the race for supremacy in the world market which takes to the unsophisticated “savage” of other lands the “triumphs” of modern capitalism, laces the deserts with railways and telegraph wires, and conjures up like mushroom growths everywhere, the crowded city and the whirring, smoke-belching factory. This process, the workers are told, is part of a mission—a mission to carry civilisation and culture to the barbarian. But the national sections of the bourgeoisie are each striving to be, if possible, the sole bearers of this culture, that is, in plain language, to obtain a monopoly of the new markets. Therefore they conduct their business, their overseas profit-seeking, to the cry of “national culture,” be it other variety—a culture which in each case is supposed to possess a “superior essence,” a superfine quality surpassing every other brand of culture. Following from this is formulated the “superior race” or nation doctrine. Thus whilst Joseph Chamberlain, a spokesman of British Imperialism, declared that “the Anglo-Saxon race is infallibly destined to be the predominant force in the history and civilisation of the world,” and Lord Rosebery proclaimed the British Empire to be the “greatest secular agency for good the world has ever seen,” Von Bernhardi and Triechski rave over the “world mission of Germanic civilisation.”

Patriotism assumes under the impulse of imperialism a new and virile significance. From the school, the pulpit, and the Press its dogmas and falsifications are preached with redoubled energy to a deluded proletariat. Efficiency in production and communication being not only a factor in military power, but, more important still, the prerequisite for success in the international market, ths economic relations of the worker, once considered a private matter, are now magnified into affairs of “national interest,” and the concept of patriotism is broadened to include them.

The worker who fails to concentrate all his energy in his work, on securing the maximum of output, who, for instance, “goes on strike,” is dubbed unpatriotic. The hard-won regulations of the labour unions, hitherto receiving a tardy recognition from the bourgeoisie as necessary evils, are now discredited and partly repudiated, being attacked as hindrances to output liable to lead to “national eclipse and disaster”—as unpatriotic.

R.W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part VII. The Morals of Capitalism. (1918)

From the March 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VI.

The industrial system which prevails to-day, and which has moulded social institutions along lines rapidly becoming world-wide, is known as “capitalism” because, under this system, the wealth used in production takes the character of “capital.” By “capital” is to be understood wealth which is neither used directly for consumption, nor yet, primarily, for the production of articles for their own sake, but wealth which is specifically employed for the purpose of yielding a profit or interest upon which the owner of the capital can live without necessarily consuming or diminishing the sum of capital itself.

Apart from the undeveloped forms—usurer’s or merchant’s capital which preceded the dominating “industrial capital” of to-day, this process of profit yielding is made possible because, in contrast to the possessors of capital (the capitalists) there exists a far larger class who possess no wealth upon which they can live. These propertyless persons must, therefore, undertake to work with the means of production owned by the capitalists on condition that in return they receive the means to enable them to feed, clothe, and shelter—in a word, maintain themselves.

This transaction between capitalist and worker takes the form of a purchase and sale of the worker’s labouring energy, for upon yielding this power to the capitalist for a stipulated time the worker receives a sum of money or a wage—the price of this energy. This price, whilst varying like that of any other commodity according to the relations of supply and demand, is determined by the cost of producing the commodity—in this case the maintenance of the labourer’s energy, of his life and that of his family at the customary standard of comfort and fitness.

Under capitalism practically everything that is produced is for sale in the markets. The capitalist does not desire to use the goods his employees produce for him ; it matters not to him even what they are, whether they be battleships or bootlaces, so long as he can obtain their equivalent in money by selling them. It is in their sale that he realises the profit he is all along out for. He obtains it from the value given to the goods by the labour of his employees, during their production, in excess of that which merely balances the wages he pays out. Obviously then, under these conditions practically all the benefits of increasing powers of production are reaped by the capitalists, who as a consequence become more wealthy, while the great mass of producers remain in a permanent condition of poverty.

The wage-worker under capitalism, therefore, is in a similar position to chattel-slave and to the serf, whom we have previously dealt with. He is a compulsory worker and he is exploited of the wealth produced by what we have hitherto referred to as surplus energy—that energy resident in man after labouring sufficiently to secure self maintenance.

Such, then, omitting details, are the primary features of the capitalist mode of production, a system which has profoundly modified all human institutions, ideas, and moral relations. To trace these changes it is essential to briefly outline its historical development.

The Coming of Capitalism.

In feudal Society there was no class of labourers who worked permanently for wages. Individuals may have done so, but there was no such class in the sociological sense. As we have seen, the serf, providing he abided by the customs of the age, was, by these customs, guaranteed normally, a secure livelihood. He was not a landowner in the modern sense, but he did possess certain rights in the land. The craftsman too, easily acquired the tools and materials used in his work. Neither, therefore, was under any economic necessity to sell his labour power to an employer for wages. Before such could become a social phenomenon the link which united the producer with the means of production had to be severed. This severance, the historic premise of capitalism, was accomplished in several stages, the details of which can be read in Gibbins’ “Industrial History of England,” or Marx’s “Capital.” Here we need only say in brief that as the old village community was gradually undermined by economic changes, such as the substitution of money rents for feudal services or payment in goods, the landed nobility were enabled by their control of the State to enclose the land of their estates, thus depriving large numbers of the peasantry of their only means of existence by ejecting them from their allotments. Many became petty craftsmen independent of the guilds, others flocked to the towns to form the germs of the urban proletariat.

Capitalist production began when wealthy merchants, instead of buying commodities from independent craftsmen, found it more profitable in order to meet the growing demands of the expanding international markets to gather numbers of these dispossessed workers into factories of their own, providing them with materials and supervising their work. In England many such factories existed in the 16th Century in “industrial villages” outside the Guild towns.

Soon division of labour introduced into the workshops made the workers more and more dependent upon their capitalist employer, a dependence which was made complete towards the end of the 18th Century by the revolution brought about by the advent of steam-driven machinery.

This dependence of the workers upon those who own the gigantic and above all, expensive machine plants, which while increasing their productiveness lessen the skill required of the producer, soon became general because, in the last century and a half, the machine process has been taken up in every branch of production.

In their evolution the capitalist class or bourgeoisie (so called because its first elements were , townsmen, inhabitants of the “bourg”) found it necessary to attack with a view to their abolition, all the institutions reminiscent of feudalism, which were a hindrance to the full satisfaction of their interests.

The merchants, who were the fore-runners of the industrial capitalists, had been materially aided by the favour extended to them by the Crown, to which they were a rich source of revenue and a powerful counterpoise against the baronage, who, with their petty armies and traditional prestige, were always a menace to the supremacy of the king. But after the military power of the nobility had been broken and their descendants had become mere land-owners and courtiers of the king, the growing bourgeoisie were oppressed by all manner of tolls and duties hindering the freedom of trade—Crown monopolies, a heavy taxation, and a political system which excluded them from any share in the government.

Against such conditions the capitalists rebelled. They became revolutionary, that is, they desired the abolition of the social institutions which had been adapted to feudal conditions of production, but which, now that feudalism was a thing of the past, were obsolete and a fetter to industrial progress ; and in their place they determined to establish new institutions suitable to capitalist production and thus to their own interests.

Their intellectual leaders developed new social theories, in which the conditions of the past were condemned as unjust, tyrannical and unreasonable. By contrast, the aspirations of the new class appeared as the very embodiment of Justice, Liberty, and Reason. Their great watchword was “Freedom” : freedom of commercial competition ; a working class “free” to sell its labour-power to any purchaser and to move from place to place with the shifting centres of employment. Previous forms of exploitation, now obsolete and a bar to the free operation of capitalist methods, were condemned. Chattel-slavery became a “crime against humanity.” Serfdom was declared a violation of the “Rights of Man.”

New religious conceptions arose in antagonism to the reactionary Roman Catholicism—the ghost of feudalism, the mental despot. “Freedom of conscience” and of faith were demanded. The “divine right” of kingship was stoutly denied. Puritanism, an extreme reaction against all things “Roman,” became dominant in England. It supplanted the authority of the Church with that of the Bible ; condemned the extravagant, sensual, and gay lives of the aristocracy ; raised to an ideal the miserly, money-seeking habits of the bourgeoisie, and substituted for the many boisterous feasts and holy-days of the past, possible with the agrarian economy of feudalism, the more regular, but meaner and dull, Sabbath.

In France the intellectual movement took the form of a crude but highly critical materialism under Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists. Natural science, discouraged in the feudal period as likely to lead to heretical opinion, was looked on with favour by the bourgeoisie. It aided them both in navigation and in industry.

Many new conceptions of law and morality were formulated. For instance, ancient law says practically nothing in relation to “contract,” which, as everyone knows, plays a great part in modern jurisprudence. In communistic and early feudal times the organisations of production—in agriculture the village commune, in industry the guild—persisted from generation to generation, and the relations of the members of them were fixed by customs often of immemorable antiquity. But with the rise of capitalist production, industry becomes a matter of the private enterprise of individuals. The capitalist set up his factory, purchased hia materials and labour-power, and thus founded a productive organisation which was the result of a perfectly well known agreement between men. Contracts thus became of importance in the basic relations of men, and they were made binding by the “law of contract.” The early bourgeois sociologists, such as Rousseau, regarded “contract” as of such fundamental importance that they accounted for the origin of human society by their theory of the primaeval “social contract.”

Enlisting the support of the discontented peasantry and proletariat by their “democratic” slogans, the bourgeosie at length broke the power of the Crown and the nobility ; capitalist production triumphed ; capitalist ideas and morality became supreme and their tenets were embodied in the law of the State.

In particular was the right of private property elevated to an inviolable position. Whilst, under tribal society, personal ownership of wealth, had been almost negligible and even under feudalism extremely restricted, with the first flush of the bourgeois triumph it became almost absolute. The doctrine was formulated that private property was a “natural attribute” of man and his “eternal right.” Accordingly, infringements of the laws of property, now dominant in the legal code, were severely punished. In England a century ago the death penalty was enforced in cases even of petty theft.

All legal restrictions on trade and production were now abolished—the reign of free competition and free exploitation opened.

Competition and Psychology.

The industrial competition which made capitalistic production and exchange so distinctly different from all previous forms has had a profound influence upon the mental life of Society. It became so intense that Engels likened it to the “struggle for existence” in the biological world. This unremittant war of “each for himself and the devil take the hindmost” fostered to the utmost the natural egoism or selfishness in men, and necessarily hampered the expression of their artistic feelings and social impulses.

The business man who loved “his neighbour as himself,” who cared at all for the welfare of his competitors, would be ruined financially and cast into the proletariat. Even the wage-worker, whose existence depends upon his getting a “job” cannot but fight his competing fellow-worker in the labour market, especially when, as is usually the case, the job-hunters out-number the jobs.

Competitive capitalism weakened social bonds and made men’s actions as anti-social as they well could be and retain their social organisation at all. But so much is the horizon of man’s thought limited by the conditions under which he lives, that competition appeared to the bourgeoisie as the basis of all progress, as the only “natural” condition of production. Any interference with its constant sway was regarded as a calamity. “Individualism,” having the “rights and liberty of the individual” as its dogma and Herbert Spencer as its greatest exponent, became the “philosophy bourgeois” par excellence. That the proletariat never completely assimilated this teaching is due to the fact that, very early, the workers learned the great law that combination, where possible, is more effective than strife—a lesson which the capitalists were not to learn until much later, as we shall see.

The prominence which the capitalist era has given to individual egoism is, no doubt, largely responsible for the general acceptance of the view that selfishness is the natural inclination of man, altruism being super-human, i.e., of supernatural origin—a view which has led to the ethical argument for the existence of God. As we have seen, however, concern for the welfare of others, equally with selfishness, is a product of the animal evolution of man.

The bourgeoisie’s steadfast belief in the gospel of competition was based upon the theory that out of the seeming strife and anarchy of the struggle came order and harmony through the inexorable workings of the economic laws of supply and demand. These laws were supposed to regulate production and distribution with the utmost possible exactness and to apportion the wealth produced with the greatest justice attainable. Consequently the bourgeoisie were bewildered by the periodic crises in history which were due to the over-production largely a result of the industrial anarchy prevailing. Their leaders sought the cause of crises everywhere but in the right place, even in the spots on the sun.

That the owners of capital should receive the largest share of the wealth produced was only “right and natural,” for, reasoned the economists, did they not “risk their capital” ; and was not this, in the first place, the outcome of their thrift and diligent industry ; and further, was not their organising and business ability at the root of the efficiency and success of their productive concerns ?

True, the mere landlords were wealthy also, and these surely enough were social parasites, the useless remnants of a bye-gone age. If the workers were poor, declared their theorists, what was to blame but their own thriftlessness and lack of intelligent effort ; the very laws of the “survival of the fittest” and of the ratio of population to food supply were against any other result.

Such was the tenor of the social theories prevailing during the classical period of capitalism. Translated into the political practice of the “Manchester School,” they meant the non-interference of the State in private industry. The individual capitalist could exercise his boundless avarice unfettered even by the wider interests of his own class. Men, women, and children toiled wearily day and night in the feverish hum of unhealthy factories, workshops, and mines. In Green’s “Short History” we read : “Women toiled in coal-mines, chained like beasts of burden to carts which they dragged on all fours through the long galleries, traversing from seventeen to thirty miles a day. Children from five years old were sent into the darkness of the mines. In the model mill of David Dale children from five to eight worked from. 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., after which they went to school, . . . . Children might be seen lying on the factory floors at night to be ready for work in the morning.” (Page 840.) Such conditions were justified by the morality of capitalism. Verily, in those days, as Marx has put it, “capital celebrated its orgies.”

When laws were passed to ameliorate such frightful conditions of exploitation it was due principally to the political opponents of the manufacturers—the land-owners—who were, of course, uninjured by the restrictions. To these “Factory Acts” the industrial capitalists were doggedly opposed. John Bright, their spokesman, denounced the Ten Hours Bill as “one of the worst measures ever passed in the shape of an Act of Legislature.” (Gibbins’ “Industrial History.”)

Nor were these the only “benefits” which flowed from the reign of free profit competition. As goods were produced, not that they should be used by their producers, but only to be sold at a profit, the quality of the articles was of little concern to the manufacturer so long as the purchaser could be deceived. The sale of adulterated food-stuffs, for instance, spread to proportions which would have seemed incredible in the “simple age” when people prepared food to eat. Bright declared adulteration a “legitimate form of competition.” Rubbish, in our civilised age, is sold as food, poison as drink, and the all-producing proletariat are clad in shoddy clothing and in paper boots. Fortunes are built up by the sale of quack “patent medicines” and “cures” for every imaginable ailment. The advertising of goods has become an art in itself, an art of lying and deceit. Every article is pronounced from a hundred glaring posters to be better than all its competitors. Under capitalism it has become impossible to separate lying from the most every-day economic relations. The worker lies to his boss about his qualifications ; the manufacturer and salesman lies to his customers from the hoarding and the Press, by his agent, or over the counter. The “business lie” has become “not a real lie at all,” a mere convention which everybody expects and everybody sees through.

Such are some of the glorious results of free competition and the “rights of the individual.”

R.W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part VI. Feudalism in Europe. (1918)

From the January 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part V.

After having treated in a general way of the social process which consisted of the breaking down of communistic and patriarchal organisation, and resulting in the subjection and exploitation of the one-time free and equal tribesmen, it behoves us now to investigate more closely that concrete example of this process which was passed through by all European peoples with a resultant organisation which persisted up to a more or less recent period, for it was out of the elements of this “feudalism” that modern or “capitalist” society evolved.

These “feudal States” were for the most part formed among the peoples who over-ran, and finally assisted in the break-up of, the great empire of Rome ; but even in countries where the grip of Rome had not been felt the form of society evolved by the “relatives” of these peoples was inevitably the same.

The drying up of the great plains of Central Asia impelled the barbarian nomads, to whom, hitherto, they had afforded sustenance, to migrate towards the more moist and favourable lands of the West, and they swept in recurring waves over the face of Europe for many centuries. Their military institutions were given a decided impetus, first, by the conflicts necessitated by their own invasions of already inhabited regions, and secondly, by the inroads upon them of fresh barbarians, after they had settled in Europe.

Gradually military States were formed all over Europe. Once independent tribes were consolidated by conquest into larger and larger aggregations, the first rude outlines of the modern nations were formed, whilst simultane­ously the Christian faith became “accepted” by the subdued peoples throughout Europe largely through wholesale conversions made practically compulsory by zealous plunderers like Charlemagne.

Thus, for example, the several small kingdoms in Saxon England were, after hard fighting, at last united in a somewhat precarious unity under Egbert. To quote Green in his “Short History of the English People,” the union “had removed the king, as his dominions extended, further and further from his people, and clothed him with a mysterious dignity,” he was “the ‘Lord’s anointed,’ treason against him being “punished with death.” His leading warriors or thegns “advanced with the advance of the king . . . whilst the common ground of the mark (the Teutonic village) now became folk-land in the hands of the king and was carved out into estates for his dependents. With the advance of the thegn fell the freedom of the peasant. The principle of personal allegiance embodied in the new nobility widened into a theory of general dependence. By Alfred’s day it was assumed that no man could exist without a lord. . . . Gradually the ‘lordless man’ became a sort of outlaw in the realm.” The Norman conquest only intensified this development.

All over Europe a similar process was going on. The one-time free villages were modified so that the inhabitants stood in various degrees of subjection to a lord who himself was subject to a king. Most of the people of the village, or manor as it came to be called in England, were serfs who were compelled to render service to the lord of the manor by cultivating for him the land he was allotted by the king, and also by yielding to him a portion of the products they raised upon their own allotments. In addition, every excuse was made by the baron for the extraction from the serfs of further tolls upon their produce ; normally the serf was prohibited from leaving the village of his birth, but he could obtain permission to live away by paying an annual fine or tax ; again, before his daughter was allowed to marry he had to obtain the lord’s sanction and pay to him a fine.

Among the serfs themselves existed many traces of the old communal spirit and institutions. Their land, for instance, was still divided very much according to the old principies, the portions being approximately equal both in area and quality. Furthermore, the serfs still retained their right to the common pasture lands, and to the forests for fuel. The times of and methods adopted in the labours of the field were largely regulated by the ancient customs, and even the village council or folk-moot maintained a certain amount of influence. “There were no strangers in the manor. It was an offence punishable with fine to harbour one,” says Thorold Rogers, thus showing the persistence of the old exclusive spirit.

But the whole history of feudalism shows the growing hatred of the nobility for the commu­nal rights of the peasants, and records successive attempts on their part to abolish them, and to seize upon the common lands. The Jacqueries in France (14th century), the Peasants’ War in Germany (16th century) were risings of the peasants against these encroachments of the baronage.

The Feudal Church.

As feudalism passed through its early formative period, the political utility of Christianity manifested itself with increasing clearness. “Throughout all Christendom,” says Jenks in his “History of Politics,” “bishops and priests were the most intimate counsellors and most enthusiastic supporters of the Crown, and the rich gifts of the kings were amply repaid by the halo of sanctity which the grateful Church thus threw around the person and office of the king.” (P. 84.) Every social relation of feudalism became sanctified by religion. The serf in his hut, the lord in his castle, were ordained for such stations by God—a view of class distinctions which is by no means extinct to-day. Thus the proper conduct for a serf, taught the priests, was that of humility before his superiors and contentment with his lot. He was enjoined to dutifully render to those placed over him, the services and respect they were entitled to. And, although the nobility were requested to respect the feudal rights of the peasantry, considerable latitude was allowed in their case. It was, however, the profound and religious duty of the nobility to uphold the Church of God and to preserve the integrity and prestige of their own class.

The Catholic Church became itself a great feudal power—the Pope corresponded to a monarch, his bishops and abbots to earls and barons. The Church itself owned one third of the land of Christendom and possessed serfs whom it exploited just as did its secular counterpart ; and its local dignitaries claimed a portion or “tithe” of the agricultural produce of the manors. As its wealth grew its greed demanded more and ever more, its devices to this end being numerous and ingenious. The clergy traded on the credulity and gross superstition of the “true-believers” by the sale of spurious “sacred relics”—the bones of saints, chips off the “original cross,” even the sale of “bottles of the virgin’s milk from the holy land” can be read of. The sale of “indulgences,” which were practically permits to commit crime, was practiced widely, and the clergy solemnly promised eternal bliss in paradise to those who left their wealth to the Church, later threatening hell-fire to those who did not, and making such legacies practically compulsory.

With the growing riches of the Church the clergy, especially the higher officials, had in it a vital interest to defend. Organised internationally, and with its millions of superstitious and mentally servile adherents, the Church wielded an enormous social power. Its leaders, recognising that its strength lay in the ignorant beliefs of the masses, set the entire power of the organisation against any swerving from its accepted articles of faith. Whilst it damned all actions contrary to the social virtues of feudalism, it declared heresy the greatest sin of all. Whosoever was suspected of the slightest trace of unorthodoxy in religious opinion was the legitimate prey of this “vulture of the ages.” Every cunning means, every agent, the spy, the informer, were used for its bloody ends. Imprisonment, fiendish torture, and the slow fire at the stake, were its means of enforcing Christian belief and “charity.” Jews and Moors, because of their wholesale heresies and, of course incidentally (!) their not inconsiderable “wealth (which was always confiscated) were among the most acceptable victims.

Every avenue of culture of the age was open to the clergy, and, in the early mediaeval period, to them alone. Therefore, however crude their intellectual achievements judged by modern standards, there existed a real chasm between the mental condition of the more important ecclesiastics and that of the great masses whose minds they dominated. But this very domination, and consequently their prosperity, rested, as we have seen, upon the maintenance of the ignorant superstitions of the multitude, and the upholding of crude and barbarously irrational dogmas. Intellectual hypocrisy was, as a consequence,a widespread feature among the clergy, and along with this sapping of their theoretical basis naturally went a disregard in practice, of the ethical “virtues” they professed and so “(hypocritically preached. In theory lovers of poverty and self-denial, the higher ecclesiastics revelled in luxury and pompous display. Nominally celibates, renouncers of the lusts of the flesh, many of them were rotten with voluptuous debauchery. Towards the end of the Middle Ages “it was openly asserted that there were one hundred thousand women in England made dissolute by the clergy. It was well known that brothels were kept in London for their use.” (Professor Draper, “Intellectual Development of Europe,” vol. 2, p. 234.) The history of the popes is a long record of trickery, robbery, and murder.

The Barons, their Estates and Morality.

We have seen that the feudal barons, while from the king’s point of view merely local agents distributed throughout his kingdom and responsible to him for their position and power, were in the beginning enabled to occupy these positions with the minimum of friction owing to the fact that they were regarded by the people over whom they held sway as the successors of the patriarchal chieftains they had supplanted and whose attributes they skilfully succeeded in taking over. But patriarchalism, with its reverence for blood connections and ancestral lineage, had succeeded in making every occupation every station—even the chiefship—a hereditary one. This idea was appropriated by the early kings and lords, who thus easily made their posts hereditary, and usually in the male line, as patriarchal custom and military exigences also, demanded. It was, of course, this fact which made kingship and lordship social institutions instead of merely the temporary result of conquest.

Furthermore, though the lord from the first acquired rights over the inhabitants of his district, i.e., power over men, yet the right he was most concerned about—the tribute—was so obviously extracted from the soil (agriculture being almost the only method of production) that, after a few generations, the lords came, quite naturally, to look upon the land of their district as the security for their exactions and as the real subject of their rights. The land persisted unchanged for generations, the inhabitants were a fluctuating and unreliable quantity.

Thus it came about that under feudalism “lordship of the land” was the recognised basis of social power. When an estate was transferred from one lord to another, everything living and erected thereon went with it. ; and when a lord lost his estate he lost his title and his privileges. The land did not belong to the lord, he merely had definite rights over it during his lifetime. He could not sell his estate, for upon his death these rights passed to his heir. Lordship of the land was the inalienable attribute of his family line, the foundation of its prestige and power.

To these several circumstances was due two of the best known features of feudal society—knightly “chivalry” and the “law of primogeniture”—and also to a certain extent a third—the condemnation of usury.

The first, when divested of the romantic trappings with which it has been endowed, is seen to have been an attitude adopted by the nobility with the fundamental object of ensuring the chastity of the women of the aristocracy, so that they should give birth only to legitimate heirs. These, by inheriting the feudal estates and privileges, carried on and preserved the continuity of the baronage, of the ruling class, of the feudal system. With this end in view the marriage union was made strictly monogamous and practically indissolable. It became with the males of the nobility a point of honour not to violate but to protect the chastity of the women who were the means of perpetuating the power of their class.

As for the women, it was their supreme function and virtuous duty to bear a legitimate son and heir to their lord. Moreover, that the estates should not be periodically dissipated and split up by being divided among a numerous progeny, thus weakening the family power, it was provided that only one, the eldest male child, should inherit. Pride of family, and in the blood “purity” of its line of descent, were thus typical features in the mentality of the feudal baronage, together with the physical courage, might, and prowess necessary to a military class forming the ideal of character among the nobility of the period.

But the lord, ever courteous and respectful toward the “ladies” of his own class, had no such feelings, as a rule, toward the women of the workers, whom he frequently made the miserable and powerless victims of his sensual lust. In many instances he was allowed the right to lie for the “first night” with any girl bride of the peasantry upon his estate.

Besides “land rights” the feudal nobles recognised only two other legitimate sources of social power—”divine” ordinance and the sword. But with the development of industry there arose another source of social power, which the lords did not and could not possess in any quantity so long as feudal relations persisted in their purity. This new power was money. Money is, of course, primarily a convenience for the rapid and fluid exchange of commodities. Those who possess it in quantity have access to every form of wealth, and it is therefore eagerly sought. But its possessors lend it only at interest and with sufficient security.

History records abundantly that usury and the mortgage are virulent agents in the destruction of personal relations and in the ruin of debtor land-owners large and small—of everything, in fact, which feudalism on its economic side stood for. Therefore the barons hated and envied the monied merchants and craftsmen of the rising towns and declared money-lending an abomination—though, of course, they were keen enough over obtaining money by seizure or otherwise whenever opportunity offered. The Church, as the faithful reflection of secular feudalism, took up the same position, and branded usury as an invention of the devils, nevertheless, with characteristic hypocrisy practising usury itself, either in secret or disguised, as it, with the lapse of time, accumulated in its own coffers money in abundance.

The City and The Guild.

The towns of mediaeval Europe were, for the most part, a development from such villages as offered special facilities for trade and outside intercouse, such as a site at the junction of highways or navigable rivers, or, perhaps, adjacent to a good harbour. To such a favourable spot there tended to gravitate the artisans who were not, or who had ceased to be, attached to a particular village as its official craftsmen, and who now produced goods for sale in the market about which the new town was rising. The market was, from the first, a neutral place where buyers and sellers could freely meet and which later came under the special protection of the king or the Church.

But as feudalism developed, the lords began to eye with rapacious greed the growing wealth of the townsmen under their lordship, and, fearful of the lords’ continual encroachments, the inhabitants made their towns fortified centres of resistance against the baronial power. The fortified towns now became a refuge for fugitive serfs, for they offered them protection from their erstwhile lords ; and usually after residence in the town for a certain period they were regarded as freemen. Thus the town population grew. Then the desire of the barons or of the king for ready money enabled them to purchase various trade-rights and privileges, and eventually to shake off all feudal dues and obtain a charter of independence from the lord or the king direct.

The “free city” was governed by a municipal council, the descendant of the “folk-moot” of the village. It consisted of the descendants of the original holders of the village lands, who, as the immigrant population had increased, had become a sort of exclusive aristocracy, and either became merchants themselves or manipulated the trade facilities of the town in their own interests. To them, therefore, fell most of the material benefits derived from the city’s acquired privileges. Obviously this monopoly of political power by the merchant or semi-merchant oligarchy ran counter to the interests of the actual producers—the artisans and craftsmen. To protect their own interests the artificers had to organise.

Already the followers of each craft possessed as a rule associations for social and religious intercourse, which probably dated from the patriarchal period. But we find these, with the growing antagonism toward the city aristocracy, gradually becoming adapted for, and taking part in, political activities on the one hand, and, on the other, taking on the character of economic organisations for the regulation of industry. After struggles more or less prolonged, these craft “guilds,” as they were called, became strong enough to seize control of the city councils, while on the economic side each craft in time obtained control over the supply and purchase of raw material and the sale of its products, both of which had been largely interfered with and manipulated by the city oligarchs.

To accomplish this economic victory the craftsman had to sink his purely individual interests for the interests of his craft as a whole and its guild organisation, but this offered no difficulties to men in whom patriarchal and communal ideas were even yet far from extinct. The artisan produced, as it were, for his guild. The association frequently purchased the raw materials in the bulk, distributing them equally amongst its members ; and it undertook the sale of the collective products. In individual sales by the craftsmen it regulated the prices at which goods were to be sold, prohibited competition among its members, forestalling in the market, and other means of obtaining exceptional prices. The guild also held itself responsible for the quality of the goods produced by its members, any case of inferiority being considered as reflecting disgrace upon the entire craft. Therefore the shop of the artificer had always to be open to inspection by the guild officials. In production each craft had its own strictly limited domain such as boot making or wood-carving, outside of which its members were not permitted to go, for to do so would be trespassing within the sphere of another craft. When a craftsman had so thrived as to require assistant workers in his extending business, the guild determined the number he might employ. Being the son of a full guildsman was the best title to the right of entry into the guild (a patriarchal characteristic), but usually a long term of apprenticeship had to precede such an entry, for each guildsman had to be “master of his craft.” The guild held itself responsible for the debts of any of its members, and, finally, it possessed its own courts of justice and, what was of considerable political significance, had its own armed militia.

These organisations of the mediaeval workers, to protect their common interests were, in their vigorous prime (and we cannot go here into their decadency, during which they developed aristocratic tendencies, excluding the poorer artisans, who could no longer become master craftsmen and were therefore employed permanently by the guild masters as wage-workers), impressed their principles strongly upon the moral views of their membership. Any infringement of the guild regulations was considered highly criminal and traitorous, rendering the offender liable to expulsion and therefore preventing him from working at his craft, making him, in fact, an industrial outlaw.

* * *

Summing up the morality of feudal society we again see that the class interests of the ruling lords—lay and clerical—and also of the semi-independent craftsmen of the townships, determined their conception of “right and wrong,” just and unjust, exactly as we saw to be the case with the Greek and Roman slaveholders. But, under a system of chattel-slavery, sheer physical force was almost the sole means of holding the slaves in subjection. It was not necessary for a community of interests between master and slave to be hypocritically assumed and inculcated. What the slaves thought was of little or no consequence to their owners : morality was considered no concern of slaves ; it was held to be an attribute of and an obligation upon “free-men” alone.

On the contrary with serfdom, the greater cohesion manifested by the workers made it very necessary to use mental as well as physical means to secure their complete subjection. A pseudo moral code was required for the workers in order to guide their activities along lines consistent with the welfare of their exploiters. But a serf who was compelled to part with both labour and produce to a non-productive lord could never be taught to believe that he was not exploited, that he was a free man, as it has been possible to teach the wage-worker of today. This awkward problem was ingeniously solved by the Catholic clergy, the intellectual and moral guardians of feudalism. They zealously inculcated into the peasantry the idea that the categories king, lord, and serf were of divine ordinance and unalterable, and further, that the present life, with its poverty and riches, is only a preparation for the coming “kingdom of God,” where those who had been meek and humble while toiling and suffering “here below,” would dwell in happiness “amongst the blest.” Such beliefs could, of course, only have been of real social significance and force in an age of “simplicity” such as the medieval period undoubtedly was. Culturally it was, in fact, nothing but a developed barbarism modified by the achievements of Greek and Roman civilisation.

The above outline reveals, then, a function of morality which we have not hitherto touched upon—that of deluding a subject class, of serving as a bulwark of exploitation and oppression. The full development of this, however, yet remains to be considered.

R.W. Housley

(To be Continued.)