A Glance Backward — and Forward (1941)

From the September 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of our readers who, as young men, full of vigour and enthusiasm for life, fought in the last Great War, will remember the adulations lavished upon them by the many admirers of their heroic exploits. There were organisations to welcome their home-coming and to cheer their departure, and no effort was spared in arranging for their entertainment while at home on leave for convalescence. Well-to-do young ladies were among those who “sacrificed” their leisure to “do their bit for the boys” by feting and hero-worshipping them.

Nothing was too good for them; no praise was too high; and John Smith, the factory hand, and Bill Brown, the clerk, became heroes, endowed with all the virtues of which human beings are capable. It was good to be young and in uniform !

Special sympathy was extended to the “boys in blue,” such sympathy being equalled only by the gifts of cigarettes, comforts and delicacies heaped upon them by people no doubt motivated by generous impulses and genuine sympathy for the sufferings of these men. They were heroes, every one of them. Men of tremendous courage and reckless daring, who had responded to their country’s call in her hour of need, and, as such, they were feted, lauded and praised by a grateful community in a manner befitting a nation’s heroes.

In 1918 the war came to an end. Thousands of men who had been through four years of mud and slime, blood and slaughter, filth and brutality, four years of hell, were demobilised.

All over the country there were scenes of wild enthusiasm and joy. The war was over ! All praise to the heroes who had given their lives and limbs in the defence of the Motherland. Cheering crowds met the mud-stained, war-weary men who returned to resume their interrupted lives in a country bursting with gratitude. Tears were shed and monuments erected for the dead; promises were given to the living, to the men whose noble sacrifice had saved the country. Some of those who returned remained “boys in blue” for many years after the cessation of hostilities, forgotten by those who had been most ardent in their hero-worship. Inevitably so, for an emotion which had amounted almost to hysteria cannot be maintained for many years, it must wane with the passage of time and eventually die.

When the last victory parade was over, the last triumphant flags waved and the cheering died away, men began to settle down to a life which somehow seemed strange to them. They needed jobs, but it seemed there were not enough jobs to go round. They found that women had been absorbed into many industries and many of them continued to do jobs formerly carried out by men who had left them to join the Colours.

With the impetus given to trade by the needs of the war, methods of production had changed, rendering the skill of many workers obsolete. Men who had interrupted their training to “join up” found themselves unfitted for any particular trade.

This was indeed a strange and tragic homecoming. No more were they honoured, feted and admired; no longer were they heroes; they were units in the industrial machine, some to be absorbed in the process of reconstruction, some to be rejected, thrown on to the .reserve supply of labour, to be used when “better times” came along.

Unemployment, anxiety and insecurity were their lot, and even their medals, tangible evidence of the sacrifices they had made, failed to gain for them the jobs they so desperately needed.

They remembered the promises of a “better world,” “homes for heroes,” “equality of sacrifice,” and they looked around and saw that the rich were still rich and the poor, still poor, and they wondered what it meant.

Bitterness and disillusionment was the reaction of some, while others asked the whys and wherefors, and pondered in an effort to seek a solution for their problems.

Some of them came into contact with the S.P.G.B. and discovered, as a result, of their study of Socialism, that war, unemployment and poverty are social evils which arise out of the system of society under which we live.

That in order to abolish these social evils it is necessary to abolish the system which produces them, namely, capitalism, which is, briefly, a system which has as its basis the ownership and control of the means and instruments of production by a tiny minority, i.e., the propertied class, who, by virtue of their ownership have accumulated enormous wealth, privilege and power at the expense of the majority, i.e., the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced. The exploitation of the working class is a necessary condition of capitalism.

The alternative to this system, which gives rise to the anomaly of poverty in the midst of plenty, wars and periodically recurring crises, is Socialism; that is to say, the common ownership of the means of production, by and in the interests of the whole of society.

Production of goods solely for use will replace the wasteful, contradictory and brutal method of production for profit, involving the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few.

To bring about such a system involves the emancipation of the working class, and this task must be the work of the working class itself. The task of the S.P.G.B. is clear and uncompromising; that is, to continue at all times to propagate the cause for which we are organised (the establishment of Socialism), whatever the difficulties and however powerful the forces of reaction may be.

Let us, then, go forward to the accomplishment of our task, sure in the knowledge of our ultimate triumph, spurred by the memory of fighters of former days; cheered by the response to the Socialist message in all parts of the capitalist world, and steeled by the difficulties and formidableness of the task confronting us. This, comrades, is a battle worth fighting !

Arthur Price