Do You Know? (1930)

From the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

That an Examiner in the Bankruptcy Department of the Civil Service, who was fired on the 18th February for accepting a bribe, was paid the munificent rate of £4 5s. 0d. per week? And yet you are urged to support Government ownership!

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That according to Fenner Brockway, London M.P., and member of the National Council of the I.L.P., "The present tendency is that, despite a Labour Government, Capitalism is being strengthened.” And yet the I.L.P. urge you to support the Labour Government!

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That Baron Rothschild and his friends, "in a six weeks' trip . . . bagged five lions, five buffaloes, two rhinoceros, and five antelopes.” They did it from an aeroplane because it was safer! And yet one and a half millions of workers cannot find a job, and the rest are urged to accept reductions because industry "cannot afford to pay” a decent wage to all!

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That British motor-car producers (in the interests of free competition!) threaten to "force British agents to sell only British cars . . . It is the intention in future contracts, it is understood, to change the wording to enable the supply of cars by any British maker to an offending agent to be stopped at once. All producing firms in the British motor industry have agreed to this.” And yet the hypocrites who rule us complain and threaten war when the Chinaman or the Hindu suggests "supporting their home industries” !

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That the Labour Party are only administering Capitalism, like the previous Governments, and therefore cannot make any appreciable difference in the number of unemployed, because they cannot force the self-acting doors on the tube railways to bring back the discharged porters, the automatic machines to bring back the booking clerks that are superfluous or all the other improvements in machines and organisation—in Government departments as well as outside—that "save labour” to suddenly bring back the workers that have been rendered superfluous. All sections of the International Capitalist class are engaged in a mad rush to obtain markets by cheapening production, i.e., by reducing the number of workers employed to produce given quantities of goods.

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That Ramsay MacDonald has found from his practical experience of "Government” that his earlier ideas were too "advanced”? That’s what comes of wearing a top-hat and going to dinner with "the people that prey.”

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That "the Angel of Mons were motion pictures thrown upon 'screens' of foggy white cloudbanks in Flanders by cinematograph projecting machines mounted on German aeroplanes which hovered above the British lines,” that the British Command was aware of the trick and turned the vision to their own benefit? No means are too despicable for employment in modern wars, because the latter are the product of one of the most despicable instincts—profit-seeking.

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That Lord Beaverbrook’s new party is only the latest stunt to keep the worker’s mind off the real cause of his troubles—the private ownership of the means of production. One can prophecy with a fair amount of confidence the line the next General Election will take: On the one side, Conservatives, and on the other Liberals and Labourites arguing about the incidence of this or that item of taxation, and the worker’s slave position will be obscured by the smoke screen of useless argument. Whether there are high taxes, low taxes or no taxes, the worker remains a slave to the owners of the means of production, who, at the same time, are the rulers of society today. And until the worker turns a deaf ear to all kinds of stunts he will remain a slave.

Gilmac.