Mr. George Lansbury contributed among others, to the unemployment debates (Hansard, March 9 1925). His proposal was to give every young man between 18 and 25 the choice between starvation and working on the land. If they refused to work for a ‘fair wage’ he would not let them have a farthing.
Mr. Lansbury is apparently satisfied that a man ought to be allowed to starve who refuses exhausting work for long hours on the land, work, too, for which most of the unemployed are quite unfitted both by training and by semi-starvation if they have been long out of work. Yet with Communists and other so-called ‘left-wingers’ Lansbury poses as a Socialist.
As it happens the capitalist class have so far been of the opinion, and probably correctly, that the system of doles and relief is the cheapest possible one for them.
The unemployed have to be kept from sheer starvation, and the capitalist class have to foot the bill. They may pay a man 18/- to do nothing, or set him to work on the land, but if they do the latter it costs them much more than 18/-. A man working hard eats more, wears out more clothes, and must have better clothes and boots, as well as tools, machinery, etc. Rent would need to be paid and, in short, it is fairly certain that the dole is cheaper and that the capitalists do know more about this aspect of capitalism than do the Labour amateurs who are so anxious to administer the system for them. This is but one of the many brilliant futilities offered by the Labour Party to solve what is within capitalism insoluble.
(From an unsigned editorial “The Labour Party Betrays the Unemployed” Socialist Standard, April 1925.)
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