Pressure Valves. (1920)

From the November 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is meant by the term "pressure valves" needs no explanation : the majority of men know their use in these days of highly developed machinery. Therefore it is not the present writer's intention to pen an article on valves as applied to mechanical devices, but to point the accusing finger at the human valves who appear in the form of Labour and trade union officials screwed rather tight upon the working-class ignorance.

At present we see these valves working vigorously, proof of the high pressure in the working-class boiler, which in its turn results from the still higher pressure put upon the working class by modern capitalist methods of production.

We have had many opportunities—and the future holds a good many more—to witness how the labour-leading charlatans adapt themselves as valves to relieve labour pressure and work only for the maintenance of the master class, sure, if something unpleasant happens for the master class, that the labour wheedlers must not be blamed.

For instance, analyse the attitude of the coal miners' leaders. Their alarm whistle has torn the air for four weeks to inform the master class that something unpleasant would happen if the high labour pressure was not relieved. Whenever they sound the alarm they take great pains to show the master class how to artificially relieve pressure in order that the old engine— which takes everything worth having and returns nothing worth keeping to the working class—may be kept going.

This artificial relief, you will have guessed, takes in all cases the form of wage adjustment to accord with the increased cost of living, but as you will have already observed, even the most generous (!) adjustment never puts the workers much above the poverty line.

There are many who are familiar with all manner of mechanical devices, mostly ardent T.U. men, walking alongside closed factories with nothing to do and next to nothing to eat. They were told by their leaders and other capitalist agents to produce more in order to save "their" country from ruin. They produced more, with the result that, whatever they have done for "their" country, they have put themselves on the starvation list.

Why don't they study our warnings given month after month ? Why don't they seriously investigate? Why don't they use their brain power in the right manner? They soon would realise the uselessness of following leaders who work hand in hand with the very class they ought to fight to the bitter end if they honestly wished to serve, and not to help dominate, the working class.

Do these ever-increasing masses of unemployed study the law of cause and effect ? They certainly suffer the effects of the capitalist system.

The S.P.G.B. is open to them if they are desirous of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the cause of their suffering and of the means whereby we shall rid the world of a system which causes such suffering.

A.  DRUMMER