Socialism v. Secularism. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

It will be remembered that during the time the “Daily Standard” was carrying on its campaign against what it euphemistically called “The Red Peril,” the S.P.G.B. was misrepresented by a holy leech as being Atheistic first and Socialistic afterwards. Of course, the Socialist Party at once and rightly repudiated the allegation; but in view of the fact that this lie of the reverend gentleman is widely accepted as the truth, and that it is being persistently circulated both by the enemies of Socialism and the ignoramuses of Secularism, each for purposes of their own, it is thought advisable to set out in plain and unmistakeable language the attitude of the S.P.G.B. towards the movement known as

ATHEISTIC SECULARISM.

In the course of a debate (Cohen v. Gun) on the subject of “Theism v. Atheism,” a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society pointed out that “Theism is always, in the ultimate, merely an expression of some theory of the origin of the Universe.” No doubt he was quite right in making this assertion, for the moment Theism ceases to be so characterised it becomes meaningless and loses its raison d’etre. It is in this connection alone that it can be judged on its argumentative merits or demerits. For this very reason, however, Atheism, its antithesis, finds itself, as a philosophy, within the same groove, merely representing antagonistic views on this specific subject and this alone.

In the first part of Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles” we find Atheism and Theism, as he conceives them, dealt with in an impartial and masterly way. All the arguments that may be deduced in support of either contention are clearly set forth, dissected, and analysed ; and while showing the fallacies and the self-contradictory nature of the Theistic mode of reasoning, he proceeds to show that Atheism, as a reasonable hypothesis accounting for the origin of the Universe,

CANNOT BE ACCEPTED,

not on the ground of improbability, but of inconceivability.

Speaking of Theism as a theory of the Uni­verse Herbert Spencer writes :

“To conceive existence through infinite past time implies the conception of infinite past time, which is an impossibility. To this let us add that even were self existence conceivable it would not be an explanation of the Universe. No one will say that the existence of an object at the present moment is made easier to understand by the discovery that it existed an hour ago, or a clay ago, or a year ago; and if its existence now is not made more comprehensible by knowledge of its existence during some previous finite period, then no knowledge of it during many such finite periods, even if we could extend them to an infinite period, would make it more comprehensible. Thus the Athe­istic theory is not only absolutely unthinkable, but even were it thinkable, would not be a solution. The assertion that the Universe is self-existent does not really carry us a step beyond the cognition of its present existence, and so leaves us with a mere re-statement of the mystery.”

Evidently the representative of the National Secularist Society was fully aware of this, for he was careful to point out that : “It is the

SOLE BUSINESS

of Atheism to analyse theistic arguments and to reject them if they prove unsatisfactory on account of the contradictions which they imply.”

It will here be noticed that no alternative hypothesis is offered.

The above admission (from which there appears to be no escape) by the aforementioned speaker—probably the most capable man in the ranks of Atheism, explicitly excludes that philosophy from dealing with anything outside theistic controversies, and although it may be contended that Secularists do extend their activities in other directions, yet an impartial examination of the attitude they adopt and the propaganda they advocate, will show that as far as the real, vital, and fundamental issues are concerned, they are as indifferent or as reactionary as the Theists they oppose.

The economic and political aspects of society are either rigidly kept out of their discussions or are considered as of little or no importance in comparison with Secularism. Thus, in spite of his profession of determinism, the Secularist utterly fails to understand that religious ideas, like his own—like all ideas, in fact—are determined by

SOCIAL CONDITIONS,

and are therefore nothing but the results of such conditions.

What are those conditions, and how are they characterised ?

These are questions which have no weight in the propaganda of the Secularist. To the Socialist the solution of these problems are of extreme importance, because it carries him to the very foundation of society. It breaks through the veil of idealism and enables him to see what lies behind the scenes. Such a solution affords the only explanation of the rise of and the course followed by ideas, and therefore of intellectual development. The conception of history, from the materialist point of view, is based upon the fact that before we can think and have ideas, we must have food, clothing, and shelter. How they necessaries of life are produced and distributed determines in general what the people of an epoch shall think and shall strive for. In other words, ideas are subservient to economic forces. Further, these economic forces constitute the centre of gravitation of political activities ; whether the manner in which the necessaries of existence are produced and distributed shall be preserved or abolished constitutes the object of those who endeavour to capture political power.

Thus it is that legislative measures, enacted or in the process of being enacted, no matter what aspect they may present, always find their root-motive in

MATERIAL ADVANTAGE

and are subservient to the basic principle of modern society, viz., private property.

The Secularist or pseudo-materialist places the cart before the horse in true Christian fashion. He is much more interested in effects than in the causes that produce them. Although, as we have already seen, and on their own admission, Atheism can only stand as a negation of fallacious theistic ideas, the Secularists nevertheless regard it as a basic principle upon which they proceed to elaborate a certain plan of conduct and to derive from it their conceptions of ”right” and “wrong,” “justice” and “injustice,” “good” and “evil,” and various other forms of morality. They assert that man is the creature environment and circumstances, and yet they disregard the material factors which govern the society upon which they propose to operate! And with what results ?

In the political arena, which is but a reflex of the circumstances in which we live, they are

HOPELESSLY DIVIDED.

One finds all shades of opinions among them—similar opinions, in fact, to those held by the very people they are out to attack. Such are the “refreshing fruits” of their so-called “philosophy” ! Such are the people who parade their propaganda under the name of Materialism, while they attribute their unbeliefs to the triumph of Reason ! They do not realise that such an expression is just as illogical and just as silly as any that ever flowed from the lips of a Christian. By this they imply that Reason is something transcending all laws, something beyond the scope of cause and effect, whereas, it being only a function of the brain acting in accordance with acquired experience, it cannot be conceived as triumphing over anything. One might as well talk about the wetness and ponderousity of water triumphing over oxygen and hydrogen.

The fact is that the Secularist will not atone for his sins, so a scape-goat is to be found, and he finds it in the shape of Reason.

This simply tends to show that atheistic Secularists are people who have extricated themselves from one superstition to embrace another. As the Socialist Party points out in its pamphlet “Socialism and Religion”: “The bourgeois-freethinker is, like the Christian, attributing miraculous powers to the

“FIGMENTS OF MEN’S BRAINS.”

Now, in the face of this it is obvious that the attitude of Socialists toward Secularism must be identical with that they assume towards religion: it must be one of uncompromising antagonism. Neither of them explain the bed-rock basis of society ; neither of them are concerned with the cause of increasing wealth in one section of the community at the cost of the perpetual and ever increasing poverty of the other section.. These things are outside the sphere of activity of their respective philosophies.

While the Christian from his abysmal ignorance tells us that men must be born again before they may be able to change and improve society,, the Secularist believes that social evils find their immediate cause in the existence and influence of religion ! In his study of history he sees nothing but the evil deeds of priestcraft. Deeper than this he does not go and does not

WISH TO GO.

Thus his so called philosophy is not unlike the Hindu theory of the earth resting on the back of an elephant, itself standing on a tortoise, and then — nothing except his triumphant Reason !

While the Theists and the Atheists are wasting their time and energy on things that do not matter, while academic discussion affords sport for their intelligence, there is a situation the gravity of which increases in intensity as each day passes. That situation is that the producers of the world are poor because they are robbed ; they are robbed because the means of wealth production are private property owned by those who have political power. What matters it to -the worker whether his master imposes upon him atheistic ethics or Christian morality ? In either case is his misery more bearable ? Is his insecurity lessened ? Does his worry and care for the morrow leave more room for the peaceful enjoyment of life ? Obviously no !

In the sphere of politics there is nothing to distinguish the bourgeois freethinker from the Christian. Both are to be found in the same camp, lending their efforts to the work of repressing and oppressing the working class. The J. M. Robertsons, the Greenwoods, the Haldanes and the Morleys are engaged in an unholy alliance with the Asquiths, the Isaacs and the Lloyd Georges. In France the Briands and the Clemenceaux are against the working class. In Portugal the Positivist legislators are

FILLING THE PRISONS

with exploited and discontented wage-slaves.

Secularism, forsooth ! Does any Secularist really think that the affairs of this world are run and managed by religion ? Why, if by Secularism it is meant that the affairs of this world can be run without supernatural intervention. what else is there, what else can there be, but Secularism to govern now ?

One thing reigns supreme : the grim class struggle.

The question as to how parasites shall continue to live and workers be exploited alone sways the destinies of millions to day ; and the simple and only question regarding the destinies of millions to-morrow is as to how parasites shall be swept out of existence and workers be free. This abolition of the parasites, this freeing of the workers, is the object of Socialism. The Socialist cares little for a world of ideas whereby workers are enslaved. When the workers come into their own they will have a

WORLD OF IDEAS

of their own. In the meantime, let it be noted that the Socialist looks upon Theism and Atheism, Secularism and Christism, as so many red herrings drawn across his path, as so many Will-o’-the-wisps which disappear one by one as he travels towards his emancipation.

M. J. Le Cart

The C.O.S. and fish. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of the price of foodstuffs, we are informed, was dealt with by the Council of the Charity Organisation Society in a discussion raised by the reading of a paper by the Rev. J. C. Pringle. It turned upon the effect on prices of a large supply of fish and the necessity of keeping prices up by destroying part of the catch.

When a Socialist agitator makes it a count in the indictment of capitalism that a portion of the wealth produced must be destroyed to keep up the price of what is left, he is accused of exaggeration—or worse. Yet the reverend gentleman takes the acceptance of his statement for granted.

“At present, part of any great catch was thrown into the sea to prevent a fall in prices. It was too great a risk to sell it as manure. Yet it was admitted that each fall in price brought out an army of customers, who could not, or would not, pay a high price. Social workers ought surely not to rest until they had satisfied themselves that everything had been tried which might obviate the necessity of throwing fine food into the sea within sight of hungry people.”

And there is no plainer or more direct condemnation of this ridiculous system called capitalism than this plain fact. Fish is most frequently the commodity dealt with in this way, but it is by no means the only one. Fruit and agricultural produce is similarly treated—fruit being allowed to drop and rot upon the ground when the market price is not high enough to pay for picking, packing, and marketing. And while the products of the land are so treated, we have alleged democratic agitations to get back to the land, and prominent statesmen drawing lurid word-pictures of the town-dwellers scrambling after smallholdings, and bits of dirt generally.

But while fruit is very nice in season, and dropped fruit may be tolerated sometimes, it cannot be accepted as a staple article of diet all the year round. The effect produced on the market by the multiplication of fruit growers, what time fruit won’t pay for marketing, may be imagined but cannot be described.

To return to our muttons—or our fish—the effect of this on the fish market would be similar.

“Applied science was coming to the aid of the fisheries, and some plaice recently transferred to the Dogger Bank multiplied several times as fast as they did in the place they came from. When it came to marketing it was difficult to believe that human ingenuity could not devise a means of giving the public the benefit of great catches without injury to the business people to whom the public owes it that it had fish at all.”

The difficulty is not that there is a shortage of fish, but that there is too much fish. Why, then, take the plaice from one place and place it in another place to make it grow quicker? It is only for manure or to be thrown into the sea at the finish. Human ingenuity within the limits of capitalism cannot devise a means of selling fish or anything else at a profit at a price that eliminates profit. And we are grateful to learn that it is to the business people we owe our supply of fish. The business people are, presumably, the manipulators of the market, the owners of the fleets, and the shopkeepers—the people who decide how much to market, how much to use for manure, and how much to put back in the sea. We should have thought in our simplicity, not belonging to the C.O.S., that we were indebted to the men who caught it—the men who, at great risk of life and limb, issue from every nook and cranny along the coast-line to catch fish—fish being a food, and men having been fishermen ever since they shed the simian tail and came down out of tree-tops.

The report of the discussion at the Council of the O.O.S. in the “Daily Telegraph” does not tell the conclusion that body came to on what it calls “a vexed question.” The disputants took two sides, one claiming that articles were sold cheaper to poor people, the other claiming that there was no selling at lower prices except to get rid of surplus stocks. It would seem in the face of it the latter must be more correct or there would be no necessity to destroy the surplus. There is no doubt plenty of demand—hungry stomach demand—for fish, fruit, and other foods ; but there is no “effective” demand—no £ s. d. demand beyond a certain limit. That limit is fixed by wages.

There is an argument that wages are rather to be measured by the use that is made of them than by their actual quantity. This argument reaches its zenith with the teetotaler who would say that if you spent nothing on beer you would be able to eat all the fish and none would have to be thrown away, Of course, that overlooks those who merely eat fish—well salted—as a necessary preparation for preventing any beer being thrown into the sea ! But the argument of the teetotaler shifts the question without solving it.

The argument has another phase, one shown during the discussion of the recent budget. The extract belongs to Mr. Masterman, presumably, but it has been cut out without the introduction being preserved. As it was received with great gusto and Ministerial cheers, it will not be repudiated :

                                      “COMMUNITY’S EXTRAVAGANCE.”

“He agreed that the evidence of the Budget provided facts for seriousness as well as satisfaction. There was evidence of amazing extravagance in all classes of the community. There was little evidence of laying up or even of anticipation of bad times that might succeed good times.”

All we can say about it is that, if the argument is taken too seriously, we shall have the C.O.S. discussing “vexed questions” affecting a great number of industries, and the working class will be in the position of the unfortunate donkey who, by a process of elimination, was to be reduced to one oat a day, and who, having been successfully got down within sight of the desired end, disappointed everyone concerned by inadvertently deceasing.

Obviously, when fish is produced for the feeding of the community, the contradiction of having hungry stomachs clamouring for food on the one side, and the business people to whom we are alleged to owe the fish we get throwing it away on the other, will be impossible. If production for a capitalist market necessitates such a state of affairs, so much the worse for capitalism. It is, perhaps, too much to expect the C.O.S. and its “social workers” to view “throwing fine food into the sea within sight of hungry people” as a necessary and inevitable result of capitalist production, to be remedied only by changing the entire method and producing fish—as everything else—for the enjoyment and the use of the community organised into the Co­-operative Commonwealth.

D. K.

Leicester—and after. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month we dealt briefly with the position occasioned by the bye-election at Leicester, and pointed out to the workers generally, and to the workers of Leicester in particular, the necessity for understanding their class position in society. How necessary this is has been demonstrated by the fact that a very large number of workers voted for the Liberal candidate, believing that their interests would be best looked after by the Liberal Party, and that if they abstained from voting it might be taken as “a graceless disregard of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s position.”

The refusal of the National Executive of the Labour Party to endorse the candidature of the Leicester Labour Party’s candidate can only be taken as evidence of their adoption of the “one-and-one principle.”

The truth of our contention that the Labour Party is not independent and is mainly concerned in keeping the Liberal Party in office is amply confirmed in three recent issues of the “Labour Leader.” (It is worth while to remember in this connection that it was the Liberal Government who passed the Payment of Members Bill, and, of course, £400 a year is worthy of serious consideration.)

Since the declaration of the poll we have been treated in the capitalist daily Press, and especially in the “Weekly Journal of Socialism, Trade Unionism, and Politics,” to yards of explanation from the official Labour Party.

The “Labour Leader” (July 13) says: “We all want a clearer manifestation of our independence. We all want a more vigorous denunciation of the Government’s tyranny at home and abroad.” A letter from the secretary of the Bermondsey branch of the I.L.P. appears in the same issue, in which he states, among other things, that “the Leicester business has given us a staggering blow in Bermondsey. Our members are broken and crushed. They feel they can no longer face the enemy, as they know that the criticisms levied against the ‘independence’ of the Labour Party are justified after all, and that they can no longer honestly continue to repudiate the allegations. They are sick and tired of ‘explaining’ and ‘apologising’ for the Party, and the culminating business of Leicester can neither be explained nor apologised for. It can only be condemned.”

In another issue of the “Labour Leader” we find a special article by Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, in which he tells us : “Our Parliamentary policy is exactly that which the most revolutionary Socialist Party would adopt if it had 40 members in the House of Commons in the year of grace 1913.”

This is, indeed, nonsense. When the workers become class-conscious they will reject the Labour Party for the spurious body of rogues and fools that it is. Understanding what they want, and having sent 40 members of “the most revolutionary Socialist Party” to the House of Commons, it is certain these representatives would have to carry out the instructions of the workers who had sent them there. Knowing that they were sent with specific instructions they could not play a two-handed game, and we should not witness that, sorry spectacle which the Labour Party has treated us to—a “revolutionary” party voting against their own amendments in order to save the Government.

Last year there were several bye elections, and as a result of three cornered contests the Conservative candidates in some instances managed to secure the seats. This caused much discomfiture amongst the Liberal and Labour Parties.

Why the workers should be perturbed at the loss of Liberal seats the present writer cannot understand. Are not the Liberal Party ever ready to bring out the armed forces to maim and murder the workers with as little compunction as the Tory Party ? Belfast, Llanelly, Tonypandy prove that they are. Yet this is the brutal party that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is prepared to “bargain” with. The following from “Reynolds’s Newspaper” (6.10.12) is pretty significant :—

“Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, in a speech on Wednesday last, stated that there would be no more three-cornered contests if the Liberal Party would recognise the right of the Labour Party to 80 members.”

“This would seem to indicate the readiness for a ‘deal’ on the part of the latter in view of the next election” is an editorial comment.

Independence, forsooth !

In the “Labour Leader” of July 17 appears an article by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald under the heading : “What is Independence ?” He says that his critics are “nothing more than anti-Liberal,” and asks : “If Lord Selborne had been in South Africa instead of Lord Gladstone what would have been the difference ?”

What this has to do with the “independence” of the Labour Party it is difficult to understand. The reference to Gladstone and Selborne is, of course, an admission of the truth of our contention that the Liberal and Tory parties are really one party, who are only concerned with the robbery of the working class. But if the working class are to derive any comfort from the fact that things would have been no different on the Rand had Lord Selborne been there instead of the Liberal butcher, they should find balm in the reflection that the miners would have been just as ruthlessly murdered had Mr. MacDonald been there instead of either.

A recently joined member of the I.L.P. said publicly : “After what you have done about Leicester, it seems to me that I might just as well have stayed in the Liberal Party for all the good we are doing” (“Labour Leader,” July 17.) Quite so.

Fellow workers, the only organisation worthy of your serious consideration is the Socialist Party of Great Britain, because it is the only party standing for Socialism.

S. W. T.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For August. (1913)

Party News from the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Once again, I don't have enough room in the label section to include all the listed speakers, so some brief information on some of the speakers missing from the sidebar.

• C. Elliott was a member of the Tooting Branch, originally joining the SPGB in September 1909. There is no record of when they lapsed their membership.
• F. J. Rourke was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in June 1909. Their membership was lapsed in February 1914. ("Moved away".)
• H. Joy was a member of the Tooting Branch.
  William Lewington was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in March 1907. He resigned from the SPGB but no date is given for his resignation.
  C. Gatter is possibly Alfred G. Gatter, who was a member of Stoke Newington Branch. They originally joined the SPGB in February 1910, and their membership was lapsed in April 1919.
  A. L. Cox was a member of Islington Branch.
  B. Seach was probably G. Seach, who originally joined Hackney Branch of the SPGB in September 1912. His obituary appeared in the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard.