Atoms and food (1955)

From the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Atomic Energy Conference at Geneva, a lecture was delivered by Sir Ernest Rock Carling, Medical Research Council Advisor to the Home Office. In this lecture, he said, that “all atomic radiation had been found to be potentially injurious to living organisms, and that the vast majority of permanent genetic changes caused by such rays were harmful ” (Daily Telegraph, 15/8/55). He suggested, however, that “the diminished fertility and shortening of the life span may not be altogether to be deplored, because world population may outrun food supplies."

There was an immediate protest by the Swedish geneticist, Prof. A. Gustavsson, who pointed out that the radiation damage did not lead simply to a diminution of the birth-rate or simple sterility; children might still be conceived, but what kind of children would they be. “. . . they might die in miscarriage, or soon after birth, or develop serious abnormalities such as big-headed dwarfism, digestive derangements, diabetes type diseases, or mental deficiency.”

This is something to look forward to in the future. It is, to say the least, a most unappetising prospect.

The destructive power of one bomb, such as was exploded at Bikini, is such that it could make an area the size of Wales uninhabitable.

It was pointed out by Dr. Richard Doll at an earlier meeting in London in June, of the Medical Association for die Prevention of War, that of 11 pregnant mothers in Hiroshima, seven bore mentally defective children. At Nagasaki, of 98 pregnant mothers, 30 received major radiation effects. Of these 30, there were three abortions and four still-births, a loss of 23%. He is, be it noted, a research worker in the Statistical branch of the Medical Research Council in London. “Peace News,” 10/7/55).

There; is, of course, no evidence at all for the suggestion of Sir E. R. Carling, that the mutations or genetic changes would, in fact; produce men such as Aristotle, Leonardo, Newton, Pasteur or Einstein. The power of these radiation bombs is destructive and not constructive.

Here is a case of a man who knows his own subject but is ignorant of what is going on in other spheres of study. For example, an authority on land use. Dr. D. L. Dudley Stamp, in his book “Our Undeveloped World,” points out that large parts of Canada, the United States, Argentine and Australia, do not yield nearly as much per acre as they are capable of doing. He sees the best farming in North Western Europe, whose soil is being improved, not wasted by erosion. Leaving aside the “great problem lands of the tropics” and the vast irrigation projects, he concerns himself with food production in the temperate zones. If the best methods were applied here, he considers that, without any extension of the present cultivated area, the world could feed 3,000 million mouths. If one includes the farming lands at present unused or only partly used he estimates that the food could be produced for 10,000 million people, that is four times the present world population of 2,400 millions. (Review Daily Telegraph, 2/4/53).

Why is it, then, that half the population of the world is undernourished? The answer is pretty obvious. Most people live from hand to mouth and have not the means to buy what they need. We live in a Capitalist world, Where the cream of production goes to the class that owns, whilst the vast bulk of the population have to struggle as best they can; and above all. Capitalism is not concerned with producing as much as is required for human needs but only that smaller amount that can be sold profitably.

I. F.

Two quotations: 1856 and 1955 (1955)

From the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the paradoxes of this century is that while a range of pleasures and diversions, unimagined by the wealthiest aristocrat a few generations ago, is now available to the ordinary man,, it gets more and more difficult to use them in the way pleasures should be used—impulsively. More and more of us possess beautiful new motor cats whose every line expresses the modern poetry of godlike, singing motion, of the marvellous escape from here, of the joyful ability to pierce the horizon-barrier and know the great earth. On some dreamlike Sunday afternoon, suddenly the whispering garden leaves and the bright innocent clouds invite us to rush, with the effortlessness of angels, out into the vast green landscape. And soon we are stuck behind an enormous thing with 84 wheels carrying a section of the Forth Bridge; we are hedged about by motor-cycle combinations containing identical families of one black-leather-coated man, one woman and one pale child; our dream dies among diesel fumes and brick suburbs.”—(Paul Jennings, Observer, 28/8/55).

“In our day, everything seems pregnant with its contrary; machinery, gifted with the wonderful-power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it. The new-fangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want. The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life and stultifying life into a material force. The antagonism between the productive powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted.”— (“ Karl Marx, April 1856.)

Your help is urgently needed (1955)

From the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

We need your help at once. For some time the cost of carrying on the Party’s propaganda and other activities has been running ahead of income. One reason for this is the heavy loss we incur each month through selling the Socialist Standard below cost We are reluctant to increase the price and we hope in time that with your help we may increase the sales which will reduce the loss. In the meantime we want your donations to enable us to meet necessary expenditure on the Party’s general activities. Send what you can afford.

Answers to correspondents: Taxation and the Workers (1955)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The reason why Socialists hold that taxation is not a burden on the workers were explained in the Socialist Standard, November 1950, to which C. J. Byrne and others are referred.—Ed. Comm.

SPGB Meetings (1955)

Party News from the October 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Science and the “Social Problem”. The Logic of the Socialist Solution. (1910)

From the October 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Common Error.

Emile Zola, in his realistic novel, “Work,” pictures science as the peaceful means by which the “evils” of modern society will be removed. He tells us that the continued application of science to industry will solve “the social problem,” the political action of the working class being unnecessary. Zola’s attitude has been adopted by others, and the popularity of contemporary science has led many intelligent workers to hold aloof from social and political movements and to occupy themselves with natural science. It is opportune, therefore, to consider the relation of science to the interests of the workers.

The greatest living biologist. Prof. Haeckel, opens his work “The Riddle of the Universe,” with these words :

“The close of the 19th century offers one of the most remarkable spectacles to thoughtful observers. All educated people are agreed that it has in many respects outstripped its predecessors, and has achieved tasks that were deemed impracticable at its commencement. An entirely new character has been given to the whole of our modern civilisation, not only by our astounding theoretical progress in sound knowledge of nature, but also by the remarkable fertile application of that knowledge in technical science, industry, commerce and so forth.

“On the other hand we have made little or no progress in moral and social life in comparison with the earlier centuries; at times there has been serious reaction and from this obvious conflict there has arisen not only an uneasy sense of dismemberment and falseness, but even the grave danger of catastrophes in the political and social world.”

In his later essays, “The Wonders of Life,” the same writer describes the conditions of life around him thus :

“Misery and want are increasing among the poor as the division of labour and over-population increase ; thousands of strong and active men come to grief every year without any fault of theirs, often precisely because they were quiet and honest; thousands are hungry because with the best will in the world they cannot find work; thousands are sacrificed to the heartless demands of our iron age with its exacting technical and industrial requirements. On the other hand, we see thousands of contemptible characters prospering because they have been able to deceive their fellows by unscrupulous speculation or because they have flattered and served the higher authority.”

The Capitalist Squint.

After having shown the great contrast between the advance of science and the terrible state of the mass of the people one might have expected this leading thinker to inquire into the cause of this phenomenon. But the bourgeois professor looks at things from the capitalist standpoint, and all we get from him is, a tilt at the Catholic Church—as though poverty was absent from Protestant England, heathen Japan or France with Secularists at the helm !

Sometimes, also, over-population is hinted at as the cause of the trouble, but the facts provide a crushing refutation of this claim. Misery is widespread in France, where a falling birth-rate gives rise to the cry “race suicide,” and has prompted the suggestion that parents of more than three children be given a bonus by the Government. The population of Ireland, 8½ millions in 1850, is now only 4½ millions, yet distress abounds in the land. Many examples could be given, but these suffice; the fact remains that poverty exists to-day in the very midst of plenty “such as was never seen on earth before.”

Why then has social life lagged behind while signal progress has been made in other fields ? Simply because science has not been applied in dealing with the “social problem.” Science is systemised knowledge, and it teaches us that all effects have an adequate cause. This teaching is acted upon when treating most subjects, but the men of science do not adopt scientific methods when dealing wilh social questions—perhaps because they know that it would menace the interests of the ruling class.

Reform is Fatuous.

View the “social problem” scientifically and we see that it is useless to continually attempt to end the evils that exist by merely palliating the effects ceaselessly produced by the system of society itself. The revolutionary policy of the Socialist is, then, in strict accord with the message of science because, seeing that the awful condition of the working class is caused by the robbery of the workers by the class that owns the means of producing wealth, the Socialist seeks to overthrow that class and abolish this system, and so remove the cause from which the social evils spring.

Consider some of the methods pursued toward many phases of industrial and social life, despite the volume of scientific knowledge acquired in in this “wonderful century” (as Alfred Russell Wallace calls it). Consumption and kindred diseases find their victims chiefly among the working class, owing to the conditions under which they work and live. This is admitted by the National Association for the Prevention of Consumption, and was clearly indicated at their Edinburgh Conference in July. They state that “the prevention of consumption raises the whole question of poverty,” but (like all reformers) they shrink from considering the question further.

The awful sufferings of those stricken by “the white scourge” is beyond description here. Seventy thousand persons die annually from it in the United Kingdom, but myriads linger on, bravely struggling to win sustenance for their dependants. A few may be “fortunate” enough to be sent to a sanatorium, and after a few months treatment are returned to the factory hells and slums, flung once more into the relentless grip of their foul foe. Many of the best of the race devote years to tending the afflicted, but these votaries of medical science are blind to the necessity of acting in line with the logic of science ;that is, to abolish the miserable conditions of the worker‘s lives, which are such a fertile source of disease.

Prostitution of Science.

That science is prostituted to the service of the capitalist class was made plain at the recent Food and Drugs Exhibition at Caxton Hall. The display showed how the ingenuity of the chemist was used to adulterate the food of the workers in order to increase the profit of the manufacturers. Bread, coffee, milk, jam etc., are so faked as to be detrimental to health. In the large factories (Packingtown is a flagrant instance) chemists are employed to give a false appearance to rubbish in order to make it saleable, regardless of the injury it inflicts upon the, toilers. A recent case of poisoning demonstrated that the cheap boots which the workers are only able to afford, are dangerous owing to the chromic acid used in preparing the “leather.” All along the line the same thing occurs. Reflect upon the fact that medical science is called upon to treat those people who suffer from the use of science in industry by the capitalist class. Science used by the possessing class is uniform in its effects upon the working class. Inventions and discoveries are pressed into the service of the profit-hunters and are used to increase their profits by saving wages, with the consequence that able-bodied men are flung into the streets to starve. The undeveloped bodies of the children—the potential parents of the race—are brought into the factory and workshop to operate the machines. When, as an inevitable outcome, physical deterioration sets in, the “healing art” once again comes on the scene to patch up the effects of the ever-potent cause !

The application of science to industry to-day enables the masters to speed up the toilers with the result that last year, for instance, the casualties in the British factories numbered over 328,000. Here again surgical science is ever busy tending the maimed and wounded, who, upon recovery, are compelled to go back to the death-traps of capitalism.

The question now arises, if science is applied to the “social problem,” what system of society does it point to, as the solution ? Let us turn to social science for the answer.

Where Spencer Failed.

Herbert Spencer showed that this system of society, like every other manifestation of life, has evolved to its present stage. That great thinker refused, however, to follow the logic of his own teaching, and the sorry spectacle was witnessed of the talented author of “Synthetic Philosophy” stooping to write such poor stuff as “Man versus the State” and “Facts and Comments,” in which he defended private property in the means of producing wealth, and sought to show that this institution must remain in the future. Though Spencer proved that society has developed to its present position from lower forms, he did not inquire into the laws of social change. That was done by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Already in 1847 Marx and Engels, in studying and criticising the philosophy of Hegel, had come to the conclusion that the method of producing and distributing wealth, and the social organisation arising from it, formed the basis upon which the political, legal and religious institutions are built up. They prove that throughout history the development of economic forces had rendered inevitable changes in the forms of social life. Since civilisation began the property conditions have led to the division of society into classes, with opposing interests, and the class straggles that ensued resulted in political revolutions with the rise of a new class to power each time. An analysis of the capitalist system of society showed that the capitalist class obtained their wealth by employing workers to use the instruments of production which they (the capitalists) owned, returning to the workers just sufficient to keep them fit to go on producing, and appropriating the difference between the wages paid and the value created.

The economic forces in society have developed to such an extent that thousands of workers co­operate in a factory, where the use of the most modern appliances and methods result in a vast mass of wealth being produced by a tithe of the men previously required. The private ownership of these great productive powers causes each individual owner to try and sell to an ever larger number of buyers, with the outcome that at frequent periods a large number of toilers are thrown out of work, the goods they have made being unsold. The machinery of industry is brought to a standstill during these “economic crises” ; those capitalists unable to tide over the period of stagnation “go under,” and thus the field is left to the larger concerns. These periods of industrial anarchy are becoming longer and more frequent, and if the development of society is to proceed, the ownership of these productive forces must pass from the few individuals to the whole of society; the method of ownership must be brought into line with the co-operative character of industry—Socialism must be established.

Many leading anti-Socialists have borne testimony to the truth of Marx’s teaching. Mr. W. H. Mallock says (“Nineteenth Century Review,” March, 1909) : “His survey of economic history broadly corresponds so far as it goes with facts, and must be accepted as forming one of the most important contributions to economic thought in the course of the 19th century.” Professor Flint, of Edinburgh University, whose work “Socialism” the anti-Socialists describe as the “best book written against Socialism,” says : “Where alone he (Marx) did memorable service was in his analysis and interpretation of the capitalist era, and there he must be admitted to have rendered eminent service.”

Many opponents of Socialism pose as being scientific, and urge that Socialism is contrary to Darwinian teaching. They say that the struggle for existence between individuals and the survival of the fittest—through natural selection—is a permanent feature of human existence. These people falsely interprete Darwin’s famous theory in order to combat Socialism.

That the Socialist position is based upon the facts of life is, however, clear. When man lived almost in a “state of nature” and the power of obtaining food, etc., was consequently limited, the struggle for existence was fierce. Frequently man fought against man for sustenance. But experience taught men that by co-operation they could better protect themselves against hostile forces and increase their power of getting the means of life. That co-operation has played a large part in social progress is admitted by leading biologists. Haeckel in “The Wonders of Life” (page 139) states that “the association of individuals is a great advantage in the struggle for existence.” Huxley (Evolution and Ethics, p. 33) points out that “every forward step of social progress brings men into closer relation with their fellows and increases the importance of the pleasures and pains derived from sympathy.” Professor J. Arthur Thompson, a prominent scientist of to-day, says (“The Science of Life,” p. 196) : “But even when the phrase (struggle for existence) is literally appropriate, we must remember the altruistic colouring of many facts of life, attraction between mates, reproduction, sacrifice, parental and filial affection, the kindliness of kindred, gregarious sociality and mutual aid.”

The control of humanity over nature now enables us to produce wealth sufficient to assume comfort, and even luxury, for all. Therefore the real necessity of a struggle for existence between man and man has long since passed ; but the fruits of industry are to-day monopolised by a few, with the consequence that men, women and children of the working class are forced to fight like animals for the opportunity to earn the necessaries of life. The spectacle of a father competing with his children for a job. brother against sister, husband against wife, is not by Nature ordained, but is the result of the economic condition imposed upon the workers by those who see in cheap and numerous wage-slaves, a chance of ever-increasing profit for themselves.

It is important, too, to realise what the phrase “Survival of the fittest” implies, because many of our unscrupulous opponents twist its meaning. Mr. Mallock, for instance, in his “Aristocracy and Evolution,” endeavours to show that because the great capitalists survive and flourish, they are, therefore, the “flower” of the race. A definition from one of the leading biologists of the nineteenth century will be useful here. “In the living world one of the most characteristic features of this cosmic process is the struggle for existence in the competition of each with all, the result of which is the selection, that is to say the survival, of those forms which are best adapted to the conditions which at any period obtain and which are in that respect and only in that respect the fittest.” (Huxley, “Evolution and Ethics” p. 4.)

Under capitalism those who rule are not the best intellects, the “men of ability,” or those possessing qualities fraught with the greatest happiness for the many, but it is the favoured few who, by inheritance, spoliation and fraud, come into possession of the means essential for producing the necessaries of life. Herbert Spencer himself was often financially embarrassed when desiring to issue the products of his facile pen. Compare him with a linen draper, Mr. Ch. Morgan, who last year left a fortune of over 13 millions ! Grant Allen, whose remarkable works drew praise from Herbert Spencer, embodied over twenty years patient study and investigation in “Plant Life,” “Physiological Aesthetics,” “Evolution of the Idea of God,” “The Hand of God,” and other works, yet this cultured author had a bitter struggle to provide for himself and wife. The pitiful story of how he had to turn to and write novels such as “The Typewriter Girl,” in order to “keep the wolf from the door” in after years is an illuminating example of the “reward” of ability under capitalism. As Allen himself well said (in a review article upon “Socialism and Natural Inequality”), “Look at the lives of our truly great men—our thinkers, our organisers, our men of science, our discoverers, our poets, our men of letters, our artists. Is it not a commonplace that the majority of these have had to pass through a period of early struggle, that crippled some of them, soured not a few, drove mad or disheartened or permanently weakened many ? Is it not a well-known fact that numbers of them died poor or starving or gave up the struggle in disgust, or lived on, mere wrecks, or took to suicide ?

“The worker who invents some valuable surgical appliance, some new anaesthetic, some scientific instrument, some optical improvement, usually makes next to nothing, sometimes looses even his all in the attempt to perfect or bring out his discovery.”

Socialism, a system in which the means of producing the requirements of life would be possessed in common and worked in the interest of all, offers us the prospect of extending our control over natural forces and assuring the comforts and pleasures of life to all in return for a minimum of labour. It presents us with the great incentive of ourselves being able to enjoy the wealth that we create, instead of seeing idlers consume the fruits of our toil. Under Socialism the struggle for existence will have ceased because, as Huxley says in the work referred to (p. 35), “When the ethical process has advanced so far as to secure every member of the society in the possession of the means of existence, the struggle for existence between man and man in that society is at an end.”

Instead of “a mere squabble round the platter,” the spirit of rivalry in the intellectual arena, the possibilities of self development then afforded, will result in an intelligent and informed population able to appreciate the beauties of literature, science and the arts, thus giving to the best minds in society the knowledge that their work can be understood and valued at its worth. How different to the present, when the majority of the people are so sunk in ignorance, with intelligence blunted and minds cramped, the every-day question of getting bread and butter filling their whole horizon and engaging all their time. Taking an interest in the study of the sciences, they can then help to extend the boundaries of human knowledge and increase the harvest in fields where the labourers have been all too few. Science is to-day cultivated by but a minority, but Socialism provides the means of leisure for all to take part in the work of wresting from nature secrets of infinite significance for human welfare.

Many sciences to-day are in their infancy and provinces such as psychology and “the problem of heredity” are really virgin fields awaiting cultivation still. Even one of the leading opponents, Dr. Schäffle, says of Socialism : “The very fabulous quantity of leisure would favour the rise of the more industrious as well as the more highly endowed individuals both in science and art, even if they were all obliged to spend 3 hours daily in manual labour. . . . Taste, natural gifts and love of art would still remain unalterably various.” (“Impossibility of Social Democracy,” p. 161-2.)

It is hoped that the necessity has been made plain for organising to speedily end this system and to institute Socialism. That Socialism is possible was admitted by the arch-individualist Herbert Spencer, who, writing to his old French colleague, M. G. Davenay, in Oct. 1905 said: “Socialism will inevitably triumph in spite of all opposition.”

Yes, Socialism is inevitable—if the workers organise and fight for it—as they will.

Adolph Kohn

SPGB Burnley Branch. (1910)

Party News from the October 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Revolutionary Proposition. (1910)

From the October 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued.)

We have seen that the present social system does not nor can be made to, fulfil its function of facilitating the satisfaction of the material needs of the people ; we have seen that a new social system, shaping itself from a basis of common, instead of private, ownership in the means of wealth production, is necessary to correct the faults of society so pregnant with misery for the only useful class in the social organism.

The evidence points to the desirability of such a change, at least from a working-class point of view, and those who agree will next ask if it is possible to carry the Revolutionary Proposition into effect, and further, how it is to be done.

Those who advance the Revolutionary Proposition claim that, much more than being possible, it is inevitable. It would be possible were it dependent upon, and within the powers of, human agency ; but it is inevitable because it is the work and product of forces superior to human direction, forces which make men mere instruments in their ceaseless operations. To show that the proposition is possible might still leave some doubt or argument resting upon the vanity of human wishes and the frailty of human endeavour. But to show that it is inevitable at once disposes of the question of possibility. It does more : it supplies the cold, strictly scientific reason for its consideration. A whole train of arguments may be raised upon any appeal to justice or humanity or other sentiment, but prove that it is inevitable and the only question left is how to forward or delay it.

We learned that the basis of society is the condition of ownership of the means and instruments of producing the necessaries of life, and we have reduced the Revolutionary Proposition to a proposal to change the present property condition for a certain other.

This property basis depends upon the stage of development of the means of producing wealth.

For instance, in a society in which the chase was the chief resource, and the bow and arrow and the spear the means of procuring sustenance, we find the land held in common by the whole community. The means of producing wealth being so crude and ill-requiting, there is no possibility of a surplus, or advantage arising from its monopoly. So it must await the development of the means of production—through domestication of animals and agriculture let us say—to a point of great fertility before land assumes the desirability which leads to private ownership.

On the other hand the very simplicity of the crude weapons of the chase places them within the reach of all, and while no barrier to private possession, would, in the last analysis, prevent their monopoly by a class. The means of producing wealth must wait until they reach a high state of development, until they become so costly as to be beyond the means of many, and so complicated as to require more than one pair of hands to operate them, before they pass out of the possession of those who use. them, and become a means of enslavement.

In this whirligig age no one can be unaware of the constant change and development of the means and methods of production and distribution. Invention follows invention in such hotfoot pursuit that one dares not give instances, because they are out of date almost before the ink is dry. Is it to be expected, then, that all this change in the productive forces of society is to be without effect upon that which has so far evolved with it ? To say so is to say that there exists complete harmony between the property relation and the productive forces.

This harmony can never become an accomplished and stable fact so long as classes remain, for while the development of the productive forces is outside human control, the property relation and the social structure which arises therefrom is the direct, conscious work of men. The class in power cling to old forms and old institutions, and uphold them with every force at their command, while the industrial evolution sweeps on, to raise up another class with opposing interests against them. The social edifice becomes out of harmony with the method of production, its institutions become bonds to industrial and social progress.

For instance, the feudal system, with the bulk of the people chained in serfage to the land, its guild restrictions in the towns and its hampering laws and customs and class privileges (for the wrong class, of course), fitting as it may have been when it first arose, was antagonistic to the rising system of capitalist production, which demands the absolute freedom of the workman to sell his labour-power as the first condition of its existence, and a plentiful supply of labour-power in the labour market, together with the free play of competition, as essentials of its development.

The discord exists at the present day. That inherent human hunger for material wealth which is the motive power of the development of the productive forces of society, has led the present ruling class to develope (in the sense of adopting improvements mainly thought out by their hirelings) industry beyond the capacity of their social system. The motive of production is profit. Profit (together with rent and interest) is that portion of the workers’ product which their wages do not suffice to buy back. With the improvement of machinery this surplus product which is filched from the workers increases, and its disposal becomes the real problem of the capitalist class. It must be sold—but where ? The bulk of the people are workers, and their purchasing power, relative to the total mass of the goods poured into the market, is steadily decreasing (because their output increases while their wages do not).

An increasing foreign market is an absolutely indispensable condition of the continuance of the capitalist system, whose very life depends on the disposal of its surplus products. But the foreign market has almost touched the limit of expansion. Every civilised country is entering the world-market with goods to dispose of—the surplus sweated out of their wage workers.

The day when the world market is incapable of further development must (at the latest) be the day of the downfall of the capitalist system. The unsold surplus is incompatible with further production. It must accumulate in the warehouses, glut the markets, and finally bring production to a stop.

This difference between the wage and the product is increasing by leaps and bounds, and it is helped by another factor. As the relative output compared with wages increases the number of workers compared with capitalists also increases. Competition leads to monopoly, and on the way indulges in the playful pastime of pitching the smaller capitalists out of the frying-pan into the fire. Particularly in times of industrial crisis the number who lose their seat at the capitalist table is very great. They are beaten down into the ranks of the workers, and with their children are compelled to sell their labour power in order to live. In this way control of industry is falling into fewer and fewer hands, while the number of those whose interests are served by the present system are becoming less in relation to those who would benefit by change.

Again, it is part of the work of the evolutionary process always to make the class which is next to attain power, conscious of the effort required, of it. This consciousness (since there has been class division and class interests in society) has been an essential condition of social change, because, while the development of the industrial means is beyond human control, the property relation upon which the social structure is raised, is the work of men governed by their material interests.

That they are not free agents in the matter is, of course, perfectly true, for each class has had to await a certain development of the industrial means before it could rise to dominance ; but the seizure of the means of living, upon which the successive classes have based their power, must always have been the work of men who understood that it served their interests to do so—men, therefore, who were conscious of their interests—and the safeguarding of their position by legal and other restrictions is a conscious endeavour to entrench themselves in power.

As each social system is dictated and upheld by certain interests, it requires the rise of oppos­ing interests to overthrow it. These interests must be developed before they can be perceived. This development is the work of the evolution of the industrial process. For instance, the de­velopment of the means of production—the evolution of the tool into the machine—raised up by the side of the feudal nobility, a class of manufacturers, whose interests as such were in opposition to those of the landed aristocracy. As time went on the interests of the two parties became more divergent, more acutely antagonistic, and with this the rising class grew more conscious of their interests. In this way the industrial development made the class-conscious material which was to effect the social change.

Similarly to-day development of the means and instruments for producing wealth is making sharper the antagonism of interests between the two classes in society, and making clearer the workers’ perception of that antagonism. The old idea that “Capital and Labour are brothers” is incompatible with increasing wealth of the capitalists and the deepening poverty of those who labour. The growing barriers against members of the working class climbing into the class above ; the withdrawal of the capitalists from even the remotest contact with actual pro­duction and the substitution of managers and foremen in their stead : these things draw clearer the line between the classes and show the workers that they alone produce all the wealth of society, that they are the only useful members of society, and finally, that they are robbed.

Then the trend of industrial evolution reveals the underlying principles of social development—the whence and the whither is known—consciousness of the class position ripens into consciousness of the way to emancipation, and the worker becomes a Socialist, destined to be the instrument of a social revolution.

All this shows that a social change is inevitable, but how do we know that this change will take the lines of the Revolutionary Proposition ?

In the first place we know that the new social system must be based upon common ownership because the industrial development is not raising up a new class in society, but is bringing to consciousness the working class.

Previous to the last social revolution it was the capitalist class that came to consciousness and power, wresting control from the aristocracy. But now it is the working class—the last class—who are being prepared by the evolutionary process—and it could not be otherwise, since there is no other class left.

When the working class capture power, therefore, any form of exploitation becomes impossible for there is no class to exploit. The sole reason for private ownership has gone. Indeed, if it is granted that another class is to come into power, that class must be the only other existing class—the working class. And if the working class come into power, there is no other conceivable social basis they can adopt than that of the Revolutionary Proposition—common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

To sum up, the realisation of the proposition is inevitable for the reason that the present system cannot continue because it contains the ineradicable contradiction that its mainspring is the production of profit or surplus-value, which surplus-value, accumulating, must throttle production ; and because the projected scheme of things is the only possible alternative. And the evolutionary process—which makes the Socialist—is preparing the revolution.

A. E. Jacomb

[To be Continued.]

Editorial: The True Meaning of the "Labour Unrest." (1910)

Editorial from the October 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Across the deadly dull controversey dragging through the columns of the capitalist Press, as to whether “Free Trade” or “Tariff Reform” is best for the workers to starve under, have flashed two intense rays of light exposing the bed-rock position of the working class in modern society.

In two different places, under different external conditions, but in essentials remarkably alike, we have seen two sections of the working class facing the same alternatives of either accepting conditions imposed by the masters—their employers—or trying how long their slender resources and desperate fortitude can stand against the masters’ piled-up wealth.

At Cradley Heath the chainmakers described by a Liberal newspaper as forming “the classic sweated industry,” have been locked out because they declined to accept the conditions their employers put forward, i.e., to work for another three months at the old rate of wages. In other words the chainmakers are deliberately deprived of the means of living unless they accept the master’s terms.

It is sometimes urged that if the chainmakers were organised into a trade union they could effectively resist the employers’ attempt to starve them. But leaving out of consideration for the moment the fact that they are unable to pay any subscription, however small, to an ordinary trade union, the statement is fully refuted by the experience of the boilermakers.

Here is one of the strongest unions, containing a large proportion of the men working at the trade, yet faced with the same position as the chainmakers—starvation or submission to the masters’ terms.

When to these cases are added the signs of trouble in the Welsh coalfields and the Lancashire cotton towns, the fact continually insisted upon by the Socialist—that the means of life are owned by the master class—is brought into clear light.

Whether the workers are organised on the economic field or not ; whether belonging to the (so-called) skilled or unskilled division of labour ; whether the employer calls himself Liberal or Tory ; whether it is under Free Trade or Protection, in every case and in every circumstance the worker is the slave of the employer, and must remain so while capitalism exists. And it is just this slave position that it is all important for the worker to study, while it is, on the other hand, just the one the employers and their agents seek to hide.

The Daily Express shrieks about the sacredness of the employers’ “contracts” when the men go on strike against a lowering of wages, though this “sacredness” has a curious knack of disappearing when the masters tear the contracts to shreds, from one end of the country to the other, by locking the men out.

The Daily News wails for a “public” arbitrator, as though the “public” were something apart from employers and employed, and in nonchalant evasion of the fact that the chainmakers’ trouble flows out of a Board of Trade arbitration.

Explanations of the “unrest,” as it is termed, abound on all sides, each differing from the others, but all having the one common quality of revealing nothing beyond their writers’ ignorance of the facts, or their feverish anxiety to conceal them. The significant vote of the boilermakers points clearly to the proximate cause of the trouble in that trade. The Edinburgh agreement, that “triumph of arbitration,” has been found to act completely in the masters’ interests and against the men. The clause stating that under no conditions shall the men go on strike has been taken full advantage of by the masters, who have reduced actual wages, increased the “speeding up,” and generally worsened conditions all round. When the men have protested long-drawn-out conferences have enabled the masters, as the Daily News puts it, to “turn an awkward corner.”

A series of such arbitrations has at last convinced large numbers of the men that it is hopeless to expect any settlement of disputed points in their favour under such a scheme. Hence the taking of matters into their own hands, and the “sectional” strikes in the various works and yards.

More important still is the fact that, at present at any rate, the men are refusing to place the power of extending such an agreement in the hands of their officials and leaders, who are so ready to once again act on the employers’ behalf and against the men. The unity of the capitalist Press—Liberal and Tory alike—with the officials in condemning this action of the men is sufficient evidence of how well those officials consider the interests of the masters, and of the masters alone.

But, as if this were not sufficient, those leaders have gone out of their way, in another place, to give further proof of their duplicity in these matters. At the Trades Union Congress held in Sheffield a stranger to their little ways would have imagined that this fundamental question of the slavery of the working class would have formed the chief topic of discussion. So far, however, from this being the case, we find that the greatest attention was given to the question “How shall we save our salaries ?” Nay, more than this, one of the first questions discussed was whether the Congress should have its opening ceremony presided over by a large employer whose workpeople were at that very moment on strike against his conditions of employment. Certainly a protest was raised by a few delegates, but the fact that an employer was asked to preside at all shows how completely these “representatives” are the agents of the masters.

The surprising vote of the boilermakers however, warned them not to play the game too openly. So a little farce was arranged and Earl Fitzwilliam, the employer referred to, while not abating one jot from his position, agreed to the matter being placed before an arbitrator. After this “victory” the delegates sit down to listen meekly to the platitudes of this “representative” employer.

It fell to Mr. Shackleton to give the premier illustration of “how to do ’em down.” A delegate had asked the awkward question how it was that the Parliamentary Committee were opposed to the premium bonus system, while a member of the Committee took the chair at a meeting in favour of the system at which Mr. Balfour and Sir Christopher Furness spoke. The member referred to was Mr. Shackleton. The chairman, asked when this happened, but the delegate was unable to tell him, and then Mr. Shackleton brazenly denied having taken the chair in such circumstances.

Had the delegate who raised the point been able to carry his memory back to Dec. 1908 he might have refuted the lie with the following from the Daily Telegraph (2.12.1908).

“In the chair was Mr. Shackleton, M.P., one of the most conspicuous Labour members in the present House of Commons; the chief address was delivered by Mr. A. J. Balfour, in his capacity as president ; and the vote of thanks was presented by three gentlemen representative of widely apart walks of life, namely, Sir Christopher Furness, one of the great captains of industry . . Professor A. C. Pigou . . and Mr. Amos Mann.”

The occasion was a gathering of the so-called “Labour” Co-partnership Movement, whose fraudulent character was clearly shown in the Socialist Standard of Feb. 1909.

As if to add further evidence to our case against the “Labour” M.P.s, Mr. Shackleton also stated that “they had done as much as was possible to keep in the front the fact that the payment of members and of returning officers’ expenses would not meet the case.” (Reynolds’ Newspaper, 18.9.10.)

But the cloven hoof was fully exposed when discussing the question of “bringing pressure to bear on the Government.” Shackleton’s hysterical defence of the Liberal Government could not have been surpassed by Lloyd George. And it is just at this point that the Socialist statement applies.

The master class are able to dictate life and death to the workers because, through their control of political power, they have control of the armed forces that are used to preserve the property of the master class against the workers. Hence the supreme importance to the master class of keeping the latter ignorant upon this matter. This accounts for the treachery of those who, posing as “leaders” of the working class, use all their influence to keep that political power in the masters’ hands, and fight against the Socialist propaganda, that shows to the workers the reasons they must capture that power.

The vote of the boilermakers, even if only a temporary phase with them, is a good sign as showing the decline of the “leaders’ “power to mislead. Let every working man and woman study Socialism and the way to their emancipation will be clear.