(Edit Comm. Note: Although The Western Socialist was founded in 1933 — In Winnipeg. Canada — it has had precursors extending back to The Western Clarion of 1905. Another predecessor of our journal was The Winnipeg Socialist, published by the Winnipeg local of the Socialist Party of Canada, beginning with the issue of January, 1923. The lead article of that first edition was entitled UNEMPLOYMENT, with subtitle: The Poverty Problem Explained. Inasmuch as unemployment and poverty — some 48 years later — remain problems of great priority, the article is as timely today as when it was written. We take pleasure In reprinting this important analysis of one of capitalism’s perennial questions, working class poverty and the interrelationship between employment and unemployment The article was written by Adolf Kohn. a pioneer of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who was organizing for the socialist movement in Canada and the United States, at the time.)
Every day the number of unemployed workers increases. The chance of getting a job becomes less and less. The army of the workless tramp the streets begging for a job. Unemployment is not their real trouble. It is the want of the necessities of life. They are hungry and face starvation together with those dependent upon them. The idle rich are unemployed, but they do not suffer poverty. Unemployment is a curse only to the working class, because they are a class without wealth. Poverty, not unemployment, is the real “problem.”
Why are the workers out of work? Why are there no jobs for them? It is because the workers have produced too much. The factories and stores are overflowing with goods for which there are no buyers. The class that owns the land, factories and mines will only allow the workers to produce when they can make a profit out of their labor.
Capitalists need unemployed army
The capitalists introduce the latest machinery and scientific devices to increase the output of the workers, and thereby to reduce the number of workers they need hire. They employ women and children because they are cheaper. Every discovery and invention, every new method of speeding up the worker is Introduced to increase profits. The very development of modern Industry, therefore, continually throws the worker out of work. All these up-to-date methods of production increase the output of each worker and continually piles up the wealth in the factories. The workers in the factories have been so busy, so industrious and so productive that they are continually faced with unemployment. Each manufacturer produces as much as possible and as cheap as possible in order to capture the market against his competitors, because he is in business for profit. Each country does the same, and the result is a world war for markets, to dispose of their products.
It is in the interest of the capitalist to have an army of unemployed. Not only to absorb some of them when business is brisker than usual, but to keep down the wages of those in work. The employer knows that with an army of unemployed outside he can speed up the employed and keep them docile. While the worker is forced to sell his energy to the owners of the factories. his wage will get lower as the competition for jobs gets keener. If he does not find a master quickly, he will starve, so he is compelled to work on the bosses’ terms.
Where unions are powerless
The power of unions to resist is very small when unemployment grows, and so the workers’ standard of living declines. The present system of production for profit is impossible without the unemployed, and the employers’ power to introduce machinery and speeding up systems will always guarantee an unemployed army for the capitalists.
A cry for a shorter work-day as a remedy for unemployment is. therefore. a cry of men who do not understand the present system. Shorter hours are an incentive to the employers to speed up and devise ways and means for getting a greater output in fewer hours. Better machinery and the saving of waste are also adopted. Employers like Ford and Leverhulme boast of greater profits since they shortened hours. No union can remove unemployment. Unions cannot stop machinery being introduced to save wages. Unions cannot stop the growth of the Trust and Combine, which always eradicates waste, and, consequently, needs less workers to do the work. Unions cannot stop the constant overproduction which closes down industry. These things are inherent in the capitalist system. They are due to capitalist ownership, and the resulting anarchy. The contradiction of co-operative production inside the factory and the private ownership of the product, causes the depressions and crises we now suffer.
Not war problem
The worker, able, ready and willing to work, is denied a chance to apply his energy and produce wealth. He has produced too much and he is. therefore, left in misery, while around him is greater wealth than ever existed before. Labor leaders talk of greater output, while the warehouses are stifling with goods. Our politicians talk of increasing "our" foreign trade while unemployment has increased along with increasing exports. England and America's great export trade has not saved them from an unemployed crisis. After the great Allied victory the workers who carried on the war are offered a day or two’s work, removing snow, to get it done cheaper than ordinary rates. The industrious workers are insulted with a charitable dole insufficient to pay the rent, provided they are medically unfit to perform the miserable relief work at a starvation pittance.
The capitalists dare not attempt to absorb the unemployed. They could not do without them. They will not offer any grants likely to make charity more desirable than the lowest paid work. It is not a war problem, for the unemployed are a constant feature of the present system. Even when work is resumed and trade flourishes again, the same large workless army will appear as a result of a superabundance of wealth produced once more.
The capitalist system has no solution for unemployment. If work could be found tomorrow for some of the workless, they would merely add to the products clogging the market. The workers cannot buy their products because their wages are but a fraction of the wealth they produce.
The only remedy
Mr. Lloyd George tells English workers to emigrate to Canada, and preachers tell them to "trust in the Lord." We tell the workers there is no hope until they establish a system of common ownership of the natural and industrial resources, in order to produce wealth for use by the producers instead of for the profit of idle owners of these resources. You must establish Socialism, but, in order to do this you must acquire the necessary knowledge of the subject. Education and organization of the working class must be carried on, so that the workers can obtain the necessary political power to change the system. There lies the road to your emancipation.
Adolph Kohn
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