Capitalism's Dark Hour (1920)

Editorial from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

We used to hear much more than we do now about the awful prospects that awaited the peoples of the world in the event of their deciding to substitute Socialism for capitalism. Not only were we to wade to our goal through a sea of blood, but we were to find, when we reached our Land of Promise, that instead of being a land flowing with milk and honey, it was a stoney and sterile desert. Famine and rape would stalk the land; anarchy and chaos would overwhelm humanity; rain and destruction would embrace all—all except the capitalists, departed per Cooks, with their capital (per Pickford) to “Wangaloo, in unpacific seas.”

Talk of that kind is not very fashionable just now—not that Socialism is any more attractive to those who used to indulge in such vapourings, but they are rather afraid to throw stones for very obvious reasons.

However, if our opponents dare not talk of such things that is no reason why we should be deterred, while on the other hand there are good reasons for reminding our fellow wage slaves of the hypocritical taunts that our capitalist enemies have not the impudence to use just at present.

We are moved to these remarks by the awful spectacle of human misery which capitalism in her very prime offers to our eyes. For some days there has appeared in orthodox Press a most agonising appeal for funds to relieve the starving multitudes of what are now called the famine areas of Europe. In this appeal the Statement is made that FIVE MILLION children are in danger of starvation, and we read this tragic announcement:

  “News is just to hand that only those children between three and five can be helped; the mites under three must be abandoned to starvation, for there will not be enough food to go round if these are included.” 

and it is commented, “It has been necessary deliberately to select which children shall be saved and which must be left to die.”

Those who have with such cool effrontery declared that Socialism could not feed her populations have here something to think about. The present system, with all its wonderfully fertile means of production, is helpless to prevent catastrophes of such dimensions of horror as no act of nature within human knowledge has ever equalled—nay, it is not merely that it is unable to prevent them: it produces them.

How utterly helpless the system is to cope with its own products is vividly shown by two other statements in the heart-rending appeal. “Our docks are choked with food," it says. “Food is ready, clothing is ready.” That is the first statement. “I am convinced that Central Europe is in danger of a famine that may involve all nations in a common ruin,” Dr. Arthur Guttery is reported to have stated. So, though there are ample means at hand to save these starving people, and though their misery is the concern of all other nations inasmuch as it is a standing menace of disaster, even to ruin, to all other nations, because those means are the property of the few instead of being the property of society, nothing can be done. Here the accumulated stocks of mutton cause the Government embarrassment, so that they are compelled to lower the price in order to induce people to eat more freely of it; there men, women and children are dying in thousands, and threatening to scourge the world with epidemic, for want of that very surplus mutton—yet this accursed system has no other solution to the problem than private charity, which really is no solution at all.

There is another side to the question which should disturb the complacency of those who regard themselves as so detached from this great tragedy as to be not greatly concerned. Only three short years ago it needed but a slight turning of the fortunes of war to have brought this awful calamity upon the mothers and fathers and children of this land. And more, it may yet be the experience of those now living in this country to find their food supply cut off by foreign powers. A comparatively weak naval force, operating in the wide ocean spaces, could do it, and capitalism shows itself capable, in the struggle for markets, of condemning rival nations to death.