Book Reviews from the March 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard
“An Unauthorised Programme" and “Poverty” by R. J. Derfel (Manchester), each 2d.
Two pamphlets designed to shew that Trade Unionists, Co-operators, Labour Representators and Socialists—particularly Socialists—are all more or less right in their conceptions of the causes of poverty and all more or less wrong (generally more) in the methods they adopt to effect a change. Socialism alone, the author holds, will guarantee the poor against the misery of their present condition, but they will never understand that until Socialists organize Labour to do something that will bring some immediate benefit to them (the workers).
It seems there’s far too much talking at present and not enough doing.
This should, says Mr. Derfel, be at once remedied. The first thing is to do—more talking ! We should have a world convention of all “religions and churches, reformers, philanthropists, Socialists and all professions and interests.” This is bound to do good. Thereafter we should form societies to provide coals, clothing, milk, food, houses, and, yes, and funerals—particularly we presume funerals. Under this soup and blanket treatment the workers will awake and abolish the philanthropists, etc., etc., etc., and poverty will be no more. As it is
“things are getting worse instead of better. Monopolists are not satisfied with joining house to house, they join town to town and country to country in their eager desire to grab all for themselves. . . The churches with scarcely an exception are on the side of private property and privilege. Government and law supported by all their servants from the bum to the judge and defended by the Police and the Army and Navy, are under the control and at the command of the upper classes. . . Our rulers have always, and still do, make the fullest use of force and compulsion in their own interests and that is why . . the many are so poor and miserable.” Nevertheless “it is not true that the upper classes as a class or that both or either of the political parties as a party are enemies to the workers.”
Which of course is very clear. Quite obviously “the upper classes as a class” when they use force and compulsion in their own interests are not doing it in their own interests at all. Not really. They are not the enemies of the workers who keep the workers poor, but the friends ! It therefore quite plainly follows that “the mission of Socialism must be for all. It must appeal to every class.”
By closely following these lines we shall be able “to abolish poverty without doing an injustice to anyone or leaving a feeling of wrong behind.”
”Clearly,” says our author, “there is need for patience.” There is. We are in need of more of it ourselves.
Certainly we are in danger of losing all we have at present to this pathetic product of Mr. Derfel’s muddled thought. When a man sets out as his practical programme (as distinguished from the impractical programmes of all the other folk) the calling together of representatives of all professions and interests to consider ways and means for the abolition of most of the professions and interests represented; when he talks of the necessity for the Socialists’ appeal being to all, at the same time what he emphasises the fact that the dominant class are using every force at their command to keep the working class in subjection ; when he hopes to abolish poverty without leaving a feeling of wrong behind in face of his argument as to proletarian misery being the outcome of the assertion of what the capitalist class undoubtedly regard as their rights ; and when he argues that a people too desperately poor to obtain even the means of sustenance should be encouraged to buy their own houses, he must not be surprised if the normal person fails to raise enthusiasm for Mr. Derfel’s patent prescription for the prevention of poverty.
Mr. Derfel seems to have a good heart and the best of intentions, but his thought requires ordering and his studies augmenting.
A. J. M. Gray
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