Today and Tomorrow (1941)

From the April 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is interesting to note the economic changes that are transpiring in capitalist society and to speculate upon the results. Unemployment was considered a permanent feature of the profit system, but the experiments of Russia, Germany and Italy, together with the war, have for a time enabled our masters to put us all to work. The methods adopted by the dictators have been copied by the rulers of the Democracies. When the industry of a country is brought under a central authority everybody capable of working can be employed at some task or another; the rulers receive jointly the products of labour and use their control of finance and industry to enable them, to some extent, to regulate prices. Internal competition being done away with, together with the gold standard, the more wealth there is produced the better; the rulers can exploit after they have pooled their interests more advantageously than before : the almost complete elimination of unemployment by introducing State capitalism under war conditions does not eliminate exploitation but intensifies it. The problem is not solved. The lot of the wage slave is not improved relatively, but he obtains his heart’s desire—work. Work is the ruling passion of the wage slave, who is blind to the facts of his class position.

The question arises in regard to the effect these recent economic changes will have upon the rivalries existing amongst the group of exploiters : will they be able to pool their interests internationally ?

This would appear to be impossible. Conflicts are bound to occur over raw materials because of the necessity for each country to go outside its own area to obtain what is essential to modern production in this connection. The new developments will not eliminate war, but cause more nations to be involved: the present struggle is likely to extend to every country in the world ; there is no basis to establish permanent peace. It is essential that the working-class should understand that there can be no foundation for harmony amongst the peoples until Socialism is established.

Social evolution is, nevertheless, moving in the right direction, inasmuch as it is accelerating the development of capitalism: it is now bringing the system to a head. It has been said that once it comes to a head it topples over, but it is never likely to reach that stage. Human society is an organisation and, like every other organism, it struggles for existence; capitalism now threatens to destroy it : human society is compelled, when threatened with extinction, to attempt to save itself: it can only do so by abolishing the profit system.

The spectacular events now taking place in many countries, including this country, are due to the changes in the economic roots of the social organism. The war affects, directly or indirectly, every human being on the planet. This is because the development of social production has linked together all the peoples of the earth : for weal or woe, the human family is united; the emancipation of the individual can only be achieved as a result of the emancipation of mankind. The horrors of war are now bearing heavily upon the working-class, and some are showing signs of the strain their weary burden is inflicting on them. Rations are cut very fine, real wages have fallen, and the end is nowhere in sight. In some countries starvation exists and shows every sign of spreading; famine and fever follow in the wake of armies.

It is interesting to observe amid all this that the mind of the wage slave is not fully occupied with the reports of air battles or the feats of the Army and Navy. He devotes a certain portion of his time to trying to discover what is going to become of him after the war is over. There is steadily growing in him a determination not to go back to the bread lines of the Labour Exchange; he is desirous of preventing this, and discusses with his fellows how to do so.

The ground is being ploughed ready for the seed of Socialism. Let those whose hands are scored with toil go forth boldly and scatter the seed. Amid scenes of chaos and disaster let us keep alight the torch handed to us by the comrades who in the past nobly played their part.

We have now our opportunity. Let us make the most of it. It is not anti-social for the working-class to aspire to bring about the common ownership of the means of life. It is right. The movement to which we have the honour to belong is approaching a stage in which incessant political activity will be the order of the day.

Much will be expected from the exponents of the cause. They will, however, be encouraged and stimulated by the response they receive.

Conditions existing in the capitalist world leave no option to the working-class : they are called upon by history to emancipate mankind or perish. Whether the time be long or short before a conscious democratic effort is made to transform the system by those to whom the change means so much, it must eventually come.

In times like the present, men’s minds ripen quickly; reality provides an unanswerable argument. “The capitalist class are their own grave diggers” : they are compelled to set in motion those forces that bring about their elimination as a class: they are compelled by the laws inherent in their own system to place in the hands of the proletariat the means of freeing him and all society from economic bondage.

Charles Lestor