Society and Morals. Part VII. The Morals of Capitalism. (Continued). (1918)

From the May 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VII.

The Age of Cant.

Summing up the “morality of capitalism,” what is the distinctive feature by which it is distinguished from that of other class-divided societies ? It is undeniably that hypocritical taint which pervades it through and through, and which is seen in the glaring contrast which is presented between the moral theory professed and the actual moral reality practised. This moral hypocrisy is the inevitable outcome of the social relations immanent in capitalism. It results from the antagonisms which exist in the system; partly from that engendered in the competitive struggle between individuals and groups of individuals, but primarily from that antagonism which exists between the interests of the bourgeoisie on the one hand, and of the proletariat on the other.

Every activity of the bourgeoisie in its own interest must be undertaken professedly in the interests of the workers, or, more correctly, of “society as a whole.” For the “unity of society” and of its interests is a cardinal dogma, in which the very existence of classes is often denied. “Democracy, Liberty, and Humanity” have been the watchwords of bourgeois society, but words only, for in their name more horrible and sickening atrocities have been perpetrated than in any previous period in history. Thus, human life is held in this “most humanitarian age” to be sacred, yet witness the widespread equanimity with, which the slow starvation of thousands and the mental and physical deformation of millions are endured, and even the fervid glee with which the international capitalist class and their dupes beheld the bloody murder of 20,000 workers after the Commune of Paris, and which to-day greets the slaughter of millions on the battle-fields of Europe.

The worship of “democratic” and “humanitarian” phrases has led to the ludicrous situation that everyone professes to admire the rule “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you,” and for the most part to be guided by it, and yet the social system which these same people uphold makes the practice of this rule absolutely impossible. Did, indeed, anyone actually attempt to abide by this principle he would certainly come into such violent conflict with existing conceptions and institutions as to be branded an Utopian and a madman, and most likely he would be punished with imprisonment.

There is hypocrisy and deceit everywhere, from the lying and trickery of trades and the cant about the “honour of our public men” to the veneer of religious orthodoxy and the “love” that in conventional belief cements the economic contract we call “marriage.” Verily, our time has rightly been called “the Age of Cant.”

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Part VIII. The outlook of the proletariat. 

Owing to the fact that capitalist society rests upon the exploitation of the wage-earners by the owners of capital, it is rendered possible to generate a system of morality radically different from the bourgeois ethics we have been considering, namely, a system which conforms to the interest of the exploited class—the proletariat.

At the same time we have seen also, that an essential part of the superstructure of capitalism consists of institutions which effectively prevent the majority of the workers from recognising their real social status, make them contented with the system they are born into, and secure their acceptance of the bourgeois moral code. The formulation of a proletarian moral code and its acceptance by the working class is, therefore, a slow and difficult process, obstructed at every point by practically all the institutions of the social environment.

Only by gradual and uneven stages can the proletariat in the mass really assimilate a class ethic of their own. Thus to-day, for example, but a small minority have already reached this position, although many are fairly class-conscious and considerably ahead of the main body of the workers, who as yet only possess a faint glimmering of their class interests, whilst on the other side a backward section, growing, however, continually smaller, have not even achieved this state, but embrace in its entirety the capitalistic outlook.

The mental evolution of the proletariat is a subject so vast that here our survey must be practically confined to working-class development in England.

The Early Working-Class Movement.

The earliest independent organisations formed by the modern working class aimed at regulating the conditions of working, such as raising or maintaining the standard of wages or shortening the working day. In several of the more advanced industries such “trade clubs” had already been formed quite early in the eighteenth century. They were, at first, small and local. Working men of a common craft, living in a common locality, gathered together for the protection of their common interests. Though they were concerned with minor and immediate grievances, seeking only to palliate the, to them, evil effects of evolving capitalism, yet their very existence is evidence of the fact that, even in the pre-machine period of capitalism many workers were beginning to realise that their interests and those of their employers were by no means identical. While they acquiesced in the general nature of the system of production prevailing and considered it, on the whole, to be right and just, yet many things which their capitalist employers regarded as perfectly justifiable and reasonable they held to be wrong and unfair.

Their classification of “good” and “bad” employers still lingers in the minds of their latter-day trade-union descendants. In many respects their economic principles and morality were conservative and even reactionary, for they strove energetically to retain their old-established skill or craftsmanship against the tendency which the employers favoured of sub-dividing the labour process—a means of increasing profits and the domination of the capitalist over the labourer, but also a means of increasing the fertility of human energy, and therefore directly in the line of human progress.

Then came the “industrial revolution” with its ensuing horrors—the dawn of the “machine age” was at hand. In the many revolts against the terrible oppression of the factory system reactionary ideas were still, at first, the prevailing feature. Blindly, the outraged workers struck at the lifeless mechanisms which were the immediate cause of their degradation.

Violent machine-breaking riots occurred, the workers regarding the machines themselves, and not so much their capitalist owners, as the enemy to be combated. Strikes now became frequent, and trade combinations among the workers multiplied to such an extent as to seriously alarm the ruling classes and awaken them to retaliation through the State machine.

Combinations of workmen had never been legal bodies, but they had been more or less tolerated prior to the coming of the machine. But now their rapid progress in numbers and militancy brought forth the severe Anti-Combination Acts of 1799-1800. Savage persecution of workmen followed and unions were relentlessly suppressed. But, nevertheless, these organisations, made inevitable by capitalist exploitation, continued to exist in secret, and in the underground warfare against the em­ploying class, some recognition of the class antagonism inherent in capitalist society must have been forced upon many of the workers.

At length, however, after over twenty years of terrible persecution, the dominant classes seemed to have realised the futility and even worse of forcible suppression, and the unions were granted some measure of legal sanction. Immediately trade unions sprang up everywhere in greater abundance than ever before, for, in the intervening period, capitalist production had advanced exceedingly and machinery had now invaded almost every branch of industry. Consequently more oppression occurred, but to no real purpose.

Now, however, the far-sighted among the bourgeoisie were coming to see that these organisations were unavoidable, and although an evil were a necessary one. If they could not be killed they could, perhaps, be conciliated. How this view was justified we shall see later.

Many various experiments in industrial organisation were made by the workers in the succeeding decade or two, principally through the efforts of enthusiastic Utopians like Robert Owen. The social ideals of such men were high indeed, but the vast majority of the workers remained uninfluenced by them. They were in the unions because they thereby hoped, just as their predecessors had done, to ameliorate their immediate grievances, to obtain higher wages, shorter hours, and better conditions of employ­ment.

Eventually, after many experimental failures, trade unionism settled down into that general form which prevailed throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. One advance was made, however. The unions for the most part ceased to be mere local associations and tended more and more to become national in their scope—a development made possible and necessary by the great progress in communication achieved through the introduction of railways. It is, perhaps, needless to add that as capitalist production gradually took root all over the world there spread along with it its necessary accompaniment, trade unionism.

Meanwhile the final struggle of the industrial capitalists for political power had had the effect of turning the workers’ attention also to the field of politics as a means whereby they might obtain relief from their intense impoverishment and distress.

Though the “industrial revolution” had considerably enhanced the wealth, numbers, and influence of the manufacturing bourgeoisie, this class remained, for a long period afterwards, excluded from direct political representation. Whilst insignificant country districts often had separate representatives, large and now vastly important and thickly populated industrial towns like Birmingham and Manchester were without independent representation under the existing constitution. Parliament, accordingly, continued to be dominated by the aristocratic landlords, vestigial remains of the now dead feudal system.

The manufacturers and their “intellectual” allies demanded political reform and strove, by incessant agitation, to draw the working class to the support of the reform movement. Among the discontented workers such propaganda fell upon fertile soil. Huge demonstrations were held all over the country and eventually, after many years of obstinate resistance and brutal repression, the government, fearful of civil war, reluctantly conceded the Reform Bill of 1832.

This Act, while it partly remedied the anomalies in the representation of the industrial centres and extended the vote to the wealthier strata of the capitalists, left the proletariat still without the franchise. Great disappointment and resentment was aroused in the workers by this betrayal, and within three years an association of working men drew up their own political programme—the “People’s Charter.” This was soon adopted by the majority of the politically active workers who became known as Chartists.

The enactment of the Charter was to establish political democracy by a thorough revision of the electoral system, and the Charter was thus the logical outcome of the political ideals of the bourgeoisie. But there can be no doubt that, to the masses of working men who gave their support to Chartism, political reform was but a means to an end—the alleviation of their miserable poverty, slavery, and degradation. This is shown by the vigorous activity of the Chartists on behalf of the Ten Hours Bill and other factory legislation, and by their loyal support of the industrial movement of the workers which was apparent in every strike. In such activities they were met by the bitter opposition of those self-styled “friends of the people,” the free-trade factory capitalists.

During their existence of about twelve years the Chartists accomplished a great amount of agitation and educational work, several widely-read newspapers being published in support of the movement. Adherents to the party multiplied rapidly, especially in the great northern centres of industry. The growth of the agitation made it hated and feared by the ruling classes both aristocratic and bourgeois, and many of its members were victimised by the employers and imprisoned by the authorities.

The Chartists, however, proved too weak to carry their point. Dissensions had grown in their ranks, and among the mass of their supporters, who were but loosely organised, many were side-tracked by the bourgeois agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Parliament scornfully rejected the petition for the Charter, and in the suppression of the minor insurrections and disturbances which followed, the Chartists found themselves “confronted with a highly developed military administration, with barracks ranged through the industrial districts, and with a newly organised and well drilled police force.” (Green’s “Short History,” p. 859.) Open revolt seemed futile.

Furthermore, the factory acts had removed many of the more pressing grievances of the workers, and a revival of trade relieved the unemployment situation. The bulk of the workers became politically apathetic ; the vigour of Chartism declined and, after a time, the movement collapsed and disappeared.

On the continent of Europe events, similar to those in England were taking place. There the bourgeoisie, striving to win political supremacy, also allied themselves with the proletariat, and in 1848 broke out in revolt. When, however, the workers at the first success put forward demands on their own account, the bourgeoisie immediately became anxious about “law and order.” In Germany they joined hands with their political enemies, the nobility, in suppressing the rising of the workers, and in France, after constituting themselves the ruling power, the industrial bourgeoisie crushed the proletarian rebels with great violence and bloodshed.

The Reconciliation : Its Causes and Consequences.

These early manifestations of a widespread spirit of revolt on the part of the proletariat took place, it must be remembered, before the days of “State education.” The marvellously complex organisations by which the workers were in later times to be impregnated with a bourgeois ideology had not yet been fully evolved. Masses of the workers were still unable to read or write, especially in the earlier period. What little reading and learning was possessed among them, here and there, was gleaned mainly through the agency of trade clubs or similar organisations, in connection with which small libraries were sometimes maintained and study classes held.

That capitalist tradition, including the dogmas regarding abstinence and directive ability, so respected by and ingrained in the bulk of the workers in after years, and which so largely holds them in its grip to-day, was, at that time, only in its formative period. The vast array of intellectual retainers of every type to-day in the pay of the bourgeoisie, was then much less numerous and not nearly so well organised, for the wealth and influence of the industrial capitalists was, at that time, comparatively small. Neither had they that undisputed control of the political machine which they were later to hold. Moreover, they themselves, in their revolutionary struggle with the nobility, had, in their criticisms of hereditary privilege, done much to discredit and undermine respect for established institutions and authority. When they had risen to complete supremacy the bourgeoisie were sorely in need of a working-class narcotic to occupy the place left by that which they had helped to undermine.

At length it was realised by the bolder and wiser elements of the bourgeoisie that an officially controlled educational system would not only give to the workers that technical instruction made more and more necessary by scientific commerce and production, but would also make possible the systematic and more efficient inculcation into the absorbant minds of the proletarian children the servile code of ethics which it had once been the exclusive business of the Church to foster. We have seen in our previous section the outcome of this idea. Still it seems hardly likely that the bourgeoisie could have seen what a valuable instrument in the service of class rule they were forging when the first timid “educational” schemes were put forward.

At all events, the fact cannot be gainsaid that with the gradual elaboration and extension of compulsory capitalistic education and, side by side with this the marvellous growth in cheapness, size, and circulation of the bourgeois Press (the greatest agent of mental perversion the world has ever seen), the earliest rumblings of revolt among the workers died down considerably. Engels has admirably shown that a religious revival fostered by the bourgeoisie also played its part in this process. Capitalism now seemed to have reached a comparatively stable and smooth-running condition as far as the workers were concerned, fulfilling all the desires of its profit-worshipping devotees.

Particularly was this conservatism of the workers manifested in England, where there operated more directly economic causes to this end. After the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 the capitalists of England entered upon their period of economic world supremacy. Out of the enormous and steadily increasing stream of profits the employers could well afford to conciliate the workers with sops in the shape of somewhat higher wages and with social reforms which eliminated many of the minor grievances of the workers. It paid to do this rather than risk a disturbance and a break in the continuity of their wonderful prosperity by unnecessary industrial strife twixt employer and employed.

After the workers had become docile the bourgeoisie could with safety satisfy that popular desire for the franchise which revived again and again, and this they did in succeeding stages. As Engels says, “parliamentary government is a capital school for teaching respect for tradition,” and besides, the vote completed the argument of the bourgeoisie that the workers were “free.” Did they not elect their chosen representatives to rule them ? Was not “democracy” now a reality ? Thus, apparently, were the capitalists made more secure than ever.

In this long period of working-class quiescence, which started about 1850 and began to end towards the close of the century, trade unionism persisted but took on a form so distinctly bourgeois as to become in itself and its results a powerful “bulwark of capitalism.” Politically the workers for the most part supported the bourgeois Liberal and Tory parties.

Whatever revolutionary sentiment had existed in the earlier movement now almost entirely disappeared. The view that the respective interests of the capitalists and the workers were necessarily antagonistic, which had been taught by many of the advanced Chartists, was now discredited. The workers generally held that the capitalists as a class were useful, necessary, even benevolent, earning the well-deserved profits of abstinence and ability, whatever grievances the workers had were thought to be due either to the greed of exceptionally bad and unjust employers or to unfor­tunate misunderstandings on the part of the capitalists or their workpeople ; this was the justification for trade unions.

The unions had for their motto “Defence, not Defiance,” and “A Fair Day’s Wage for a Fair Day’s Work.” Strikes were discouraged ; the new policy in dealing with disputes was one of arbitration based on compromise and mutual good-will. These tactics, of course, transferred the field of action from the mass of the organised workers to their officials and representatives, who met the employers or their agents in conference.

The growth in size of the unions, together with their anti-strike policy, enabled the accumulation of very considerable reserve funds, which were spent mainly in friendly benefits. These factors also tended to enhance the prestige and power of the prominent officials, who now became a full-time salaried staff, virtually, though not avowedly, dominating the policy and activities of their organisations.

R.W Housley

(To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part VII. The Morals of Capitalism (continued). (1918)

From the April 1918 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part VII.

We have seen that, under the wages system, the prime force used to subject the worker to exploitation is the economic pressure which bears upon him by reason of his propertyless condition. This condition, it is evident seeing the economic inferiority of the capitalists, depends for its perpetuation upon the recognition by the workers of the “rights” of capitalist property. The bourgeoisie are not a military class like the feudal nobility or the Roman freemen, but depend upon the working class even for the military force they command.

We can see, therefore, how extremely important it is to the capitalists that the proletariat should be contented with their social status, or, at least, see in capitalism a system of production at once necessary, inevitable, and just. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that these same conditions demand the continual readjustment of the institutions of the system in proportion as the workers as a class change their views regarding things social.

The very subtlety of the relation between himself and the capitalist is favourable to the fostering of the illusion in the workers’ mind that he is a “free agent.” The appearance of a contract “freely” entered into with an employer who, to a certain extent, he is free to choose, veils the real nature of the relation. The worker, as a rule, fails to see that economic necessity is a compelling force even more powerful and imperative than the whip and torture of the chattel-slave era. He does not see that they who monopolise those things by which alone he can live dictate, as a class, if, when, and where he shall live and under what conditions. On the contrary, he believes the doctrines assiduously taught him by the master class through their dupes and hirelings, the teachers, politicians, parsons, pressmen and “men of literature.” These, assisted by a whole series of institutions suited to the purpose, beset the worker from the cradle to the grave with influences which tend to mould his mind to the form most suitable to the needs the bourgeoisie.

Lest he should be indiligent and lazy in the production of profits he is taught that “toil ” is in itself a virtue (his teachers forget to mention that for him, like other virtues, it must be its own reward) and that the interests of both employer and employee being identical, a benefit to the former is, in the long run, beneficial to the latter also.

Lest the standard of comfort he aspires to be unduly raised (leading to a demand for increased wages) the worker is enjoined to be thrifty, frugal, and sober. Even poverty itself is glossed into a kind of goodness. He is told of the “peace of mind” which comes with practising the “virtue” of contentment. Discontent is branded as a vice and its preachers as “disturbers of the peace.” The very term “agitator” acquires a vicious and sinister significance.

History is perverted ; elaborately faked “histories” being written for use in the schools and out of them, which emphasise the “evils” of previous or contemporary non-capitalist forms of society, whilst showing in the most favourable light possible modern institutions and especially the capitalist class. The “historians” prove (!) that all revolutions have meant only anarchy, chaos, and bloodshed, with no beneficial results. “Reform,” is, however, allowed to be useful and good when judiciously applied by “wise statesmen.” Thus is the maxim driven home—never rebel, but trust the “great men” at the helm of State and industry.

“Patriotism,” so useful as an obscurant of class differences, a means of dividing the working class into national sections and of rallying them to fight their masters’ battles under the disguise of “national interests,” is cultivated and characterised as a cardinal virtue in these “histories.” National traditions, character, and achievements are, with this end in view, glorified and shown off in exaggerated contrast with those of foreign nationalities. Thus the working-class child in England is told of the glorious empire which is his “heritage,” but of which, in all probability, he will never possess more than the clay which clings to his boots.

The Press, owned by and used in the interests of the bourgeoisie, ably carries on the work begun in the schools by selecting, misrepresenting, and suppressing information regarding the events of the day. The religious organisations, by fostering ignorance and superstition, also do their share in the same mind-moulding process, though with decreasing efficiency as religion becomes more and more undermined by the growth of scientific knowledge.

Thus we see that the code of morality believed in by the bulk of the working class, is, to a very large extent, based not upon their own class interests, but upon the interests of their exploiters the capitalist class. It is a bourgeois, not a proletarian morality. It helps to preserve bourgeois society ; it serves as a support to exploitation and oppression.

We saw that this function of morality is also a phenomenon of feudal society, but that it was very largely bound up with religious belief. Under capitalism, however, not only does this form of morality play a very much larger part than under feudalism, but it is to an ever-increasing extent dissociated from religion and connected more and more to secular theories of social relations communicated to the working class through the so-called educational agencies under the control of the ruling class.

The Decay of Competition.

Capitalist morality, since its first triumph, has not remained stationary, but has, on the contrary, been continually modified and adapted to the changing needs and interests of the bourgeoisie, which naturally flow from the evolution of the industrial system.

No previous form of society has witnessed such rapid economic changes during its existence as capitalism, and as a result, at no period in history have ideas been so completely and rapidly revolutionised as during the epoch of the bourgeoisie.

The most striking of these changes we will proceed to briefly outline.

In the first place commercial competition, so characteristic of capitalism in its prime, produces results which tend to bring about its own negation. Competing capitalists needs must, if they are to win success, be continually striving to sell cheaper than their competitors. This cheapening is obtained by the use of more and more efficient labour-saving machinery and ever more perfect means of sub-dividing the labour process, co-ordinating productive activity and eliminating waste of energy and material.

But as the machinery in use grows decade by decade more and more elaborate and intricate, it increases in costliness. Moreover, large-scale production embracing much invested capital is less wasteful than numerous concerns on a small scale. Consequently in the evolution of capitalism larger and larger aggregations of capital are requisite for “success in business.” The “big” capitalists survive the competitive struggle while their many small competitors eke out an ever more precarious existence until they are “crushed out” out and join the proletariat.

Then the few remaining “big men,” seeing that further strife means less profits, draw together either openly or in secret ; combines, trusts, and cartels become the order of the day. This stage is best illustrated in the United States, where in many lines of industry competition is practically extinct ; but in England and Germany this process is almost as advanced.

All this, of course, brings about a change in the outlook of the capitalist class. By their most advanced theorists “competition” is now discredited and looked upon as wasteful, inefficient, and obsolete. The wealthy magnates, now reduced to a comparatively small sect absolutely divorced from productive activity, look upon labour as a degrading thing. They ape the manners of the “old aristocracy” whom their forefathers hated, and covet nothing so-much as a title (which, of course, they are prepared to pay for). Still they must make a pretence of being socially useful, and so they give it out, and perhaps actually believe, that they are the “brain ot industry,” upon which the welfare of civilisation rests. The working class are declared to be mere “brainless automata useless without the guiding genius of the ‘captains of industry.'”

The small capitalists, too, have their outlook modified in the face of their approaching disaster. They become “super-democrats,” and appeal to the workers for support, urging them to join in an agitation against the trusts “who are robbing the people.” They strike out in the political field for “clean government”—the abolition of bribery and corruption—when they see the long purses of the plutocrats working wonders in the executive, the legislature, and the law courts. They still retain the old “individualism,” invigorated by their hatred of of the new monopolies which are strangling them, but, in some cases, in favour of State ownership as the only practical alternative to the oligarchy of the trusts.

Capital’s “World Politics”.

We are now to deal with the most important series of changes, social and intellectual, which have flowed with the evolution of capitalist production.

For several reasons, chiefly perhaps, freedom from the ravages of war, English industry in the 18th century had outstripped that of all other countries. Capitalist production first successfully flourished in England and it was here that machine industry was first adopted. The productivity of the English labourer leaped forward amazingly. The enormous mass of commodities turned out with the new machinery was far beyond the meagre consuming powers of the poverty-steeped proletariat of England and had to be sold abroad. A flood of cheap factory products was poured upon the world-markets. England became the “Workshop of the World.” It was the “golden age” of English capitalists, who revelled in unequalled prosperity.

The foreign policy of the statesman during this period was a peaceful one. International complications which would hamper the steady running of the industrial forces and thus disturb the continuous stream of profits pouring into the coffers of the British, bourgeoisie, were studiously avoided. Militarism and war were discredited : they were expensive. They brought, moreover, no compensations at all to be compared with the objectionable features they presented, for as nothing could withstand the competition of the British factory product, the military conquest of markets was, generally speaking, quite unnecessary : they were automatically monopolised.

But despite all the Utopian dreams of British capitalism, this state of things could not last for ever. The effect of English trade was to stimulate and quicken capitalist development in the next most industrially advanced countries, whose bourgeoisie hastened to organise their resources and to introduce machinery. At first slowly, but none the less surely, America, Germany, and France, with others close to heel began to threaten Britain’s trade supremacy, first in their own “home market” under the shelter of protective tariffs, and even to compete with growing success with British goods in the open markets of the world. The world monopoly of England was gone. Even her “first place” among commercial nations was being seriously challenged. Now that their long era of uncontested triumph was drawing to a close a change began to make itself manifest in the outlook of the English capitalists. An influential section of the British bourgeoisie, who, so long as they had no competitors were staunch believers in “free trade,” began now to cry out for “protection” against “foreign goods.” The “tariff reform” campaign was started.

Now began that furious struggle between the capitalist classes of the great bourgeois nations for commercial supremacy. Each rival group is striving to dispose of a huge surplus of commodities, a surplus which grows ever larger as more and more efficient machinery is used to cheapen production. It must be got rid of, for to fail would mean disaster—bankruptcy for the exporters, the bulk of the bourgeoisie, and industrial stagnation. Consequently while the old foreign markets are as far as possible more thoroughly exploited, new, unexplored ones are constantly sought.

But the inevitable result of the export of goods produced in industrially developed areas to countries where capitalism is non-existent or but feebly developed is to break down all communal and feudal conditions and to force these countries upon the path of capitalist evolution. As Marx and Engels said in the “Communist Manifesto,” capitalism creates a world after its own image. The “Dark Continent,” the “Celestial Empire,” and “Holy Russia,” are all transformed with astonishing rapidity at the magic touch of capitalist commerce. Everywhere new capitalist nations are sprouting into life and entering into the maelstrom of international competition. But this means that one-time markets are now becoming competitors in need of a market themselves to dispose of their own ever-growing surplus. While the markets are thus tending to diminish or will soon do so, the competitors for them are on the increase. Thus the tension grows : production within the bounds of capitalism is approaching the end of its tether ; when will the breaking point be reached ?

As the sphere of economic interests of the bourgeoisie of each nation expands with the pressing need for new markets, so also do their political interests. Their political ideal is no longer merely national ; it is imperialistic. They each strive lo secure and monopolise as many markets and potential markets as possible. They obtain trade “concessions” from the governments of “backward countries,” often by pressure. Over areas where they export and establish means of production and transport—machinery, railways, etc. (practically synonymous with their foreign investments of capital)—they form or attempt to form “spheres of interest” and protectorates, or pursue a policy of annexation. Wherever possible they strive to monopolise for their own use areas rich in raw materials—mineral deposits, etc. Thus in recent years the bourgeoisie in Germany have elaborated their Mid Europe-Mesopotamia scheme ; in Britain the policy of “economic unity of the Empire” and of expansion in Persia and Mesopotamia, and the capitalists of the U.S.A. stand as “protectors” of Central and and Southern America ; France, Italy, and Japan all have their schemes of imperial expansion.

Competition is no longer between individuals or even corporations, but between groups of capitalists having the whole force of the respective armed States behind their ambitions and demands. Imperialism, especially in competition with rival imperialisms, means militarism and war.

Of course the old “Liberal-pacifist-free-trade” theory still finds a number of supporters among the less intelligent capitalists and theorists, or among those whose interests are not, as yet, menaced by foreign competitiors, but who, nevertheless, are compelled to stand part of the colossal expense incurred by a vigorous military system. The struggle between the old idea and policy and the new has at length reached its climax in the titanic war, and most of the erstwhile free-traders have abandoned the old position for the new. Liberalism has now become a thing of the past, for the economic conditions which engendered it have passed away for ever.

Imperialism, especially under the impulse of its exacting offspring, the war, has revolutionised the capitalist mind. The old “individualism” is dead as a working philosophy. Whilst, in the “Liberal” period, the capitalist class largely achieved its prosperity through each capitalist seeking independently his own welfare without much regard for, or need of, the support of his class, now that competition between its national sections has become intense, class solidarity’s within the nation has become imperative. The great expense of militarism and the need for efficiency demand concessions and sacrifices from the individual members of the bourgeoisie. The capitalist who disregards the interests of his class is despised.

Organisation for war having become an economic necessity, military service is now considered an imperative obligation. The military spirit is glorified ; military traditions are revived. The State is no longer regarded, as in the individualist period, a necessary nuisance, useful to keep the workers down (maintaining “order,” it is called) but otherwise the less in evidence the better. Now, on the contrary, it has become the “saviour of society” (i.e., of the bourgeoisie). Only by its powerful aid can the needs of the capitalist class be satisfied. The State, in addition to securing military efficiency, now organises and presides over the industries of the nation, striving to co-ordinate national production, eliminate waste, and otherwise promote that efficiency required for the intense competition in the world market. To do this the State takes complete control over many of the most vital branches of production and communication—the railways, shipping, munitions of war factories, agriculture, etc.

Of course, the working class must be attracted to the imperialist philosophy to make its aspirations successful. The “sons of toil” harken to the imperialist politicians and intellectuals who, with flowery phrases, describe and glorify the race for supremacy in the world market which takes to the unsophisticated “savage” of other lands the “triumphs” of modern capitalism, laces the deserts with railways and telegraph wires, and conjures up like mushroom growths everywhere, the crowded city and the whirring, smoke-belching factory. This process, the workers are told, is part of a mission—a mission to carry civilisation and culture to the barbarian. But the national sections of the bourgeoisie are each striving to be, if possible, the sole bearers of this culture, that is, in plain language, to obtain a monopoly of the new markets. Therefore they conduct their business, their overseas profit-seeking, to the cry of “national culture,” be it other variety—a culture which in each case is supposed to possess a “superior essence,” a superfine quality surpassing every other brand of culture. Following from this is formulated the “superior race” or nation doctrine. Thus whilst Joseph Chamberlain, a spokesman of British Imperialism, declared that “the Anglo-Saxon race is infallibly destined to be the predominant force in the history and civilisation of the world,” and Lord Rosebery proclaimed the British Empire to be the “greatest secular agency for good the world has ever seen,” Von Bernhardi and Triechski rave over the “world mission of Germanic civilisation.”

Patriotism assumes under the impulse of imperialism a new and virile significance. From the school, the pulpit, and the Press its dogmas and falsifications are preached with redoubled energy to a deluded proletariat. Efficiency in production and communication being not only a factor in military power, but, more important still, the prerequisite for success in the international market, ths economic relations of the worker, once considered a private matter, are now magnified into affairs of “national interest,” and the concept of patriotism is broadened to include them.

The worker who fails to concentrate all his energy in his work, on securing the maximum of output, who, for instance, “goes on strike,” is dubbed unpatriotic. The hard-won regulations of the labour unions, hitherto receiving a tardy recognition from the bourgeoisie as necessary evils, are now discredited and partly repudiated, being attacked as hindrances to output liable to lead to “national eclipse and disaster”—as unpatriotic.

R.W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

America . . . Land of the Free (1979)

From the Fall 1979 issue of The Western Socialist

America is the land of the free. Or is it? They certainly taught you at school that you were a free citizen living in a free country. The media screams out the glorious message to you every day: “You are free — now go to work.” Read the American Declaration of Independence; you can’t be freer than that . . . can you?

The definition of freedom adopted by a society determines the degree to which it imagine itself to be free. The Greeks called their society a free one, but it was based upon slavery. Since the Sixteenth Century in Europe individualism has reigned supreme. Liberty, in accordance with this definition, means the liberty of the individual: if you’re a worker you demand the liberty to work; if you’re a landlord you demand the liberty to take rent; if you’re a manufacturer you demand the liberty to make profits. Such is the freedom of individualism.

But what if your freedom is my slavery, if your profit is my unpaid labour, if your luxury is my poverty? Is that freedom Yes, it is the freedom of the individual.

The individualist conception of freedom is a class based one. It works well as long as there are workers willing to pay the price for the liberty of the minority. The working class need a new conception of freedom, a social expression of freedom. This will be in the interest of not just the lucky few, but the entire population of society. The social expression of freedom is socialism. Socialists argue that freedom is not just an abstract notion providing a defence for oppression, but a political necessity arising out of class antagonisms which are caused by property society. The socialist view of freedom is not moral — for morality tends to be simply the defence of established social relations — but practical. We do not say that freedom is desirable, but that it will be inevitable if workers are to bring to an end the oppression which is the product of class society.

Capitalist ideology faces a profound dilemma. Its liberal philosophical origins incline it towards conceptions of liberty and democracy, but its structure causes the system to act against the freedom of the vast majority, the working class. The liberal capitalist’s utopia is the liberal State described by Mill and proposed by the Declaration of Independence, but in practice the State serves as the oppressor of the working class. This must be so for property to be defended and profits to be made. In America and Western Europe the workers have won the right to participate in their own oppression by their possession of the vote. This is a valuable weapon which could be used to win control of the State machine and abolish capitalism. But workers Should be under no liberal illusions: this limited freedom is ever-precarious while the owning class have the upper hand. Legal expressions of freedom are useful, as those who lack them know, but they are no substitute for social freedom itself.

Socialists do not stand for individual freedom. The “right” of the capitalist to exploit the workers is not in our interest and so we oppose it. We will not support campaigns for the “right” of parasites to send their children to better schools than the rest or the “right” of the indolent class to kill animals for entertainment. We want social freedom where there will be no classes, no government, no laws, no social discrimination on grounds of age, race or sex, and free access to all wealth.

Such social freedom implies democratic decision-making. That will not mean simply the act of mindlessly voting for a leader once every few years. It will mean the informed, intelligent, uncoerced organisation of social affairs in which the minority viewpoint will be given the same freedom of expression as that of the majority.

Under capitalism they tell people that they are free and it is because the majority are unfree that they believe it. Let there be no confusion in the minds of the working class about the extent of their freedom.

Ask yourself this simple question: if you refused to sell your mental or physical energies on the labour market for one month how much food would your free society give you to eat? The answer is that under capitalism you can starve to death for all your mythical freedom.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: Origin of the idea of justice (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Locke, who, like the philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, used the deductive method employed in geometry, came to think that private property engendered the idea of justice. In his “Human Understanding” he expressly says that “Where there is no property there is no injustice, is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: for the idea of property being a right to anything, and the idea to which the name injustice is given being the invasion or violation of that right . . .”

If the idea of Justice, as Locke thought, can only appear after and as a consequence of private property, the idea of theft, or rather the tendency to take unthinkingly what one needs or desires, is on the contrary, well developed, before the institution of private property. The communistic savage and barbarian behave in regard to material goods as our savants and writers do in regard to intellectual goods: whenever they find them they take them, to use Molière’s expression. But this natural custom becomes theft, crime, from the time when common property is replaced by private property.

Into the head and heart of savages and barbarians common property put ideas and sentiments which bourgeois Christians, those sad results of private property, will find very strange.

Heckwelder, a Moravian missionary who in the 18th century lived fifteen years among North American savages, not yet corrupted by Christianity and bourgeois civilisation, said:

“The Indians believe that the Great Spirit created the world and all that it contains for the common good of men; when he stocked the earth and filled the woods with game, it was not for the advantage of some, but of all. Everything is given in common to the children of men. Everything that breathes on the earth, everything that grows in the fields, everything that lives in the rivers and waters, belongs jointly to all, and everyone has a right to his share."

[From a lecture by Paul Lafargue on Idealism and Materialism, Socialist Standard, May 1915.]

Might is Right (2007)

From the January 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Everybody is talking about “human rights” these days but what are they and will they always need protecting?

Socialists have a problem with “human rights”. Not of course that we don’t think individuals shouldn’t have free speech or shouldn’t be free from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. It is the concept of “rights” in general that is the problem.

We are materialists and so don’t like to deal in vague abstract ideas such as Justice, Freedom – or Rights. For us, these are reflections of material circumstances. We take the view that “might is right”, not in the sense that this is how things should be but in the sense of how things are. Without the power to enforce it (“might”) a “right” is just an ineffective, abstract concept.

Take the “right to strike”, for instance. What this means is that it is not illegal to go on strike. But the state only made strikes legal after the workers had demonstrated that the law wasn’t going to stop them striking. In other words, the state’s recognition of the “right” to strike was the state accepting that the workers had already acquired the “might” to strike.

This is not the case with individual “human rights” in countries which don’t recognise them. When Amnesty criticises the lack of human rights in China or Burma or Iran or wherever, they are merely appealing to an abstract idea since there is no might to back them up. No wonder the governments concerned don’t take much notice of these appeals (unless they want to make some gesture in order to obtain some diplomatic advantage).

The most that we as materialists can accept regarding the concept of rights is as a description of what is in the legal code of some state, i.e. as a description of what the law actually says rather than as an abstract idea existing independently of the law. So, we can say that the “right to free speech” or “the right to a fair trial”, etc exist in some country when this is provided for in the legislation of that country. On the other hand, if the law or the practise in China or Burma does not allow for free speech then this means that, as a matter of objective fact, no “right” to free speech exists there.

Any other definition of “rights” than what is set out in the law creates all sorts of problems, not least as to what exactly they are. Most people would associate human rights with free speech and freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment but why are they restricted just to things like these? Why, for instance, isn’t it a human right to have enough food or to be housed decently? On what basis, in fact, is something considered to be a human right? In the end, it can only come down to a question of political preference – it’s what the people making the claim consider desirable, not something objective that can be discovered. It’s an expression of what they think is right. Nothing more.

Origins

All the same, “human rights” – or “The Rights of Man” as Tom Paine entitled his famous 1791 polemic in defence of the French Revolution – do have a history. What, then, were human rights originally, when the concept was first introduced?

For this we need to go back to the end of the 18th century when two key documents were adopted within two years of each other: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens by the National Assembly of France in 1789 and the first 10 amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, known as the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791.

The “rights” in the two documents are basically the same (which was no accident of course since there was a cross-fertilisation of ideas between both sides of the Atlantic): the individual has the right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom for arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, and a fair trial before an impartial jury.

Talk of the government emanating from the “nation” and governing with the consent of the governed might lead to the conclusion that the right to vote, i.e. to say who makes up the government, would also be regarded as a “human right”. But in both documents such a “right” is conspicuous by its absence – and this is very revealing.

What it reveals is that both the American and the French Revolutions were revolutions carried out largely by, but in any event, in the interest of property-owners, large and small, who wanted to remove the obstacles to their accumulating more property. But there were conflicts between the larger and the smaller property-owners, between what in France were called the “bourgeoisie” and the “petty bourgeoisie”. One of the disputes between them was precisely over the right to vote.

The richer property owners were afraid that, as they were not themselves in the majority, the less well-off would vote to take away their property. In both America and France, they got their way and arrangements (restricted franchise and/or indirect election) were made to keep power out of the hands of the majority. Which is one of the reasons why we call these revolutions “bourgeois” revolutions. The “rights of man”, now known as “human rights” were first proclaimed by these bourgeois revolutions.

Economics

Marxists who have analysed these bourgeois revolutions have explained the “rights of man” as an ideology accompanying the development of the market economy which these revolutions both reflected and encouraged (see, for instance, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism by C.B. Macpherson). On the market, especially the ideal free competitive market, all commodity-producers are equal in the sense of the market not according special privileges to any of them (hence the call for the abolition of all titles of nobility); they are also free agents in the sense of making their own decisions independently of each other about what and how much to produce and sell; the market, the outcome of these decisions of the free and equal commodity-producers, operates independently of the government (hence it is the duty of the government to accept that all men are free and equal).

It is not only Marxists who associate “human rights” with the market economy. So do advocates of the so-called “free” market. Here’s what the Cato Institute, a free-market think-tank in America, had to say in a document put out in 1996 (opposing trade sanctions against China for its bad “human rights” record):

Free trade is itself a human right and rests on an individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property – rights the U.S. Founding Fathers regarded as inalienable and self-evident ( . . .). The proper function of government is to cultivate a framework for freedom by protecting liberty and property, including freedom of contract (which includes free international trade) – not to use the power of government to undermine one freedom in an attempt to secure others. The right to trade is an inherent part of our property rights and a civil right that should be protected as a fundamental human right. The supposed dichotomy between the right to trade and human rights is a false one. Market exchange rests on private property, which is a natural right. As moral agents, individuals necessarily claim the right to liberty and property in order to live fully and to pursue their interests in a responsible manner. The freedom to act without interference, provided one respect the equal rights of others, is the core principle of a market economy and the essence of human rights.” (http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj16n1-5.html)

This association of human rights and political democracy generally with the market economy and private property is the official policy of the US government. When it criticises the human rights record of Syria or Iran or North Korea (or, less stridently these days, China), what it is criticising is not so much the imprisonment of dissidents as the fact that these countries have state-run economies which don’t allow US corporations free access to invest and buy and sell.

That the US government uses “human rights” to try to impose its form of capitalism on other countries must be an embarrassment to organisations such as Amnesty who are interested in these rights for their own sake. It allows the governments they criticise to dismiss them as tools of US and Western foreign policy. Which objectively – even if quite unintentionally of course – they are.

Lowered sights

This wouldn’t be the criticism we would make of them. We would criticise them for having set their sights too low. In confining themselves to only taking up individual cases, they are missing the big picture. There’s nothing wrong with writing to prisoners (any prisoners, not just political ones) and taking up their case with the authorities. This will ease a little the lot of the prisoners chosen, but can’t really be called political action.

We would of course like Amnesty and the others involved in this sort of humanitarian work to work for socialism. Or even, to work for the coming of political democracy to those countries without it, as the best political condition under capitalism for the development of the socialist movement. But the various human rights organisations have deliberately chosen not to do this. This is not just because it would close all channels of communication with the political authorities they have to deal with to have any chance of achieving something in the individual cases they take up. It is also because they, either implicitly or explicitly, regard working for something bigger such as political democracy (let alone socialism) as to set too unrealistic a goal in the sense of something not likely to be achieved in the near future.

Human rights organisations are not the only ones to take up this position. In the last thirty or so years it has become the general position of people concerned about some problem or other thrown up by capitalism. In the past such people would have joined the Labour Party or the Communist Party to try to solve the problem by national political action. Now they have given up on this and dispersed into hundreds of single issue organisations (Amnesty, Shelter, Greenpeace, Child Poverty Action, etc, etc.). It is as if they have accepted that capitalism is here to stay and have adopted the tactic of merely trying to make things a little less bad in the field of their particular concern. It’s a reflection of the pessimism that has resulted from the failure of reformism, in which so many people had previously placed such high hopes.

No doubt such people gain some satisfaction when they make progress in a particular individual case, but can they really be satisfied with the prospect of endlessly having to fight such cases again and again? Can they really be happy seeing the future as capitalism continuing for ever with them trying to stop it stamping so hard on people?

Hopefully not. Hopefully they will eventually come round to realising that it makes more sense to work for a world in which there will be no violation of human rights since there will be no governments representing the interest of minority ruling classes with an interest in violating them to protect their privileges and rule. In other words, a classless, stateless world based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life by and in the interest of all the people, in which there would be no market as there’d be production directly for use.

In such a world the whole concept of “human rights” would be part of the in-built democratic nature of a classless society (whether as procedural rules or as spontaneous behaviour patterns). There would be no minority ruling class or armed political centre against which people would need protection – no institutionalised might against which a counter-might would need to be exercised.

Adam Buick

Human rights and human wrongs (2023)

From the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the government considers whether to press on with yet another scheme that rides roughshod over human rights law, we must remind ourselves that rights are not really all they’re cracked up to be.

With the UK Supreme Court’s recent ruling that the government’s plan to deport refugees to Rwanda is unlawful, the attention of the political bubble in Westminster has turned once again to the Tory Party’s favourite bugbear, the Human Rights Act. Once again, the talking heads of British ideological conservatism have been trotted out to denounce the perceived pernicious influence of foreign judges, and call for the repeal of this allegedly unfair and un-British piece of legislation. The debate over the future of the much-maligned Act, which incorporates the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights into British law, has been brought to a boil in recent times by numerous pieces of government legislation which call into question its hallowed principles.

High-profile and divisive environmental protests by groups such as Just Stop Oil, and Britain’s largest wave of strikes since the late 1980s, have both resulted in repressive legislation, in the form of a Public Order Act and a Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, both given Royal Assent in July this year. Before this, questions of human rights were raised by the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021 and the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021, both designed to grant immunity to certain agents of the state for infringements of the ordinary law.

Over in the liberal quadrant of the political spectrum, left-wing voices have reacted to such legislation with horror and dismay. For instance, in a recent interview on its website with Oliver Eagleton, Momentum, the ex-fan club of the ex-Labour leader, referred to this slew of new legislation as the ‘British State’s Authoritarian Turn’. Similarly, in response to the Supreme Court’s Rwanda judgment, Akiko Hart, the Interim Director of civil liberties pressure group, Liberty, accused the government of ‘dismantling the protections that keep us safe and allow us to challenge injustice’ so that ‘only they can win.’ On its website, Liberty hails the Human Rights Act as meaning that ‘you can defend your rights in UK courts’ and compel public bodies to ‘treat everyone equally, with fairness, dignity and respect.’ So the debate goes on.

In the mainstream perception of modern politics, socialists are expected by rote to join the chorus of voices crying out to protect our rights. There is certainly high pedigree in this expectation. After all, high-profile Labour Party figures have been supporting civil liberties as long as the party has existed; Clement Attlee and Harold Laski were founding members of Liberty in 1932, in response to police violence against hunger marchers. But this common conception of socialists as civil liberties crusaders is, ironically, further proof of these so-called socialists’ lack of any real red credentials.

This is not to say that socialists are opposed to the notion that people should be able to protest without being beaten up or arrested, or that individuals should not be dealt with unfairly. Rather, the socialist accepts that to expect such things from the capitalist state is a fairy tale. Human rights law is a noble thing, but under a capitalist economy, nobility is a bourgeois virtue. In reality, human rights rest upon a fundamental – wilful, gleeful – ignorance about the basis of capitalist society.

Bourgeois law, the law of the capitalist state, rests on a fundamental incompatibility between words and deeds, as recognised by all socialists; that the law treats us as free and equal individuals, but the economy treats us as slaves. This contradiction was at the heart of Marx’s thesis in On the Jewish Question. As Marx argued there, the political state is ‘the species life of man in opposition to his material life.’ The political realm is based upon citizenship, egalitarianism, and rights; civil society is based upon egoism, cut-throat dealings, and cold-hearted, calculated egoism. Thus we live in a world where voters starve, and citizens sleep in bus stations. We all have the right (at least on paper) to vote and protest our government, but none of us has the right to eat.

The self-proclaimed socialists of today’s capitalist left, in the Labour Party and outside it, would do well to remember the words of Evgeni Pashukanis, the Soviet judge and jurist whose seminal General Theory of Law and Marxism turns 100 next year:

‘The constitutional state (Rechtstaat) is a mirage, but one which suits the bourgeoisie very well, for it replaces withered religious ideology and conceals the fact of the bourgeoisie’s hegemony from the eyes of the masses’.

Pashukanis points to the ‘ties of mutual dependence’ between, for instance, peasants and landowners, or wage workers and capitalists. To Pashukanis (as to all Marxian socialists), it is these relationships of dependency which form the real basis of the state and its law. These ties are material ties, concerning our relationship to the sources of life, and affecting our ability to provide for ourselves as individuals. The law – law of property, law of contract, criminal law etc – are the state’s ideological reflection of these material ties. These material dependencies are the core from which the bourgeois state grows, and from which its law emanates. But to the legal theory of the state ‘it is as if they did not exist.’ To put the point in a more literary fashion, one need only note the wise words of Anatole France:

‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread’.

Sam Moyn, an American liberal professor, notes in his 2018 critique of human rights law, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World, that until the late twentieth century ‘people were overwhelmingly more likely to utter the word socialism than the phrase human rights in every language’. The growth of mainstream human rights politics has coincided with the death of a politics which, though flawed, sought if nothing else to articulate a vision of human freedom which reached beyond the confines of the bourgeois state and its limited rights; one based not upon legalistic idealism and the daydreams of bourgeois academics, but upon a recognition of the realities of a class-divided society.

In reality, we are not free, and no amount of human rights can change that. The Human Rights Act may sometimes allow you to enforce your rights in a British court, to a limited extent. But it does not guarantee fair treatment or dignity. The bills of rights and international treaties of the world cannot ever hope to accomplish such a colossal task when control of the resources and productive machinery of the world, on which we all depend for our day-to-day existence, is centralised in the hands of a tiny minority of individuals and regulated by the anarchy of a global market whose arbitrary spasms can bring down elected governments and throw millions into destitution overnight.

In reality, human freedom cannot be contained in the narrow and self-defeating limitations of human rights. Human rights – severely limited in scope, and enforced by capitalist states through gritted teeth or not at all – are merely a slapstick imitation of the idea that humans should live with dignity, respect, and community.

Socialists believe not in the ‘human right’ of the egoistic individual, but in the human freedom of the entire species. We gain our freedom by abolishing our rights; by abolishing the degrading class-divided economic structure and its authoritarian states which generate rights like a fire generates smoke. So if you wake up every morning to face the daily grind of wage labour, poverty, or the jackboot and the billy club; if you are struggling to be free in a world which has turned its back on you, stand up not for human rights, but for socialism. Forget the insipid and mealy-mouthed lawyer’s justice, and stand for a world where the means of life – the productive machinery of society and the goods it produces – belong not to one class, but to everybody as a community.

‘You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody’ (Jean-Jacques Rousseau).

Uther Naysmith

Is Socialism freedom? (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of whether or not Socialism would mean the destruction of individual freedom of action and choice is usually asked by opponents who believe that Socialism is something to do with nationalisation or that it exists in countries such as Russia, China and Cuba. We deny that Socialism exists, or ever has existed, in any part of the world and we state that nationalisation and state control of industry are nothing more than a way of running capitalism—the social system which dominates the entire world. Further, we declare that far from being the negation of freedom, Socialism will in fact be a new age of the fullest possible freedom in which the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.

By Socialism, we mean world-wide common ownership of the earth and all that is in it and on it (including farms, factories, and transport). The implication of this is that Socialism must be completely democratic—how else will the people control what they own? The fact that Russia, China, Cuba and so on are not democratic (and even in its most restricted form democracy means, at least, free elections, press, speech and association) underlines the fact that those countries are not Socialist.

In Socialism, assembly halls, theatres, cinemas, printing presses and all other media will be commonly owned and thus everyone will be free to use them as they require and, unlike today, use of them will not be restricted by proprietors (private or state) who demand profitability and often orthodoxy, before allowing anyone access to these means of communication which are vital to effective democracy. Instead of the narrow expression of views that normally occurs under capitalism, resulting from its minority ownership and production for profit basis, in Socialism, there will be the fullest expression of views without any censorship, copyright or restricted access to information whatsoever. The freedoms of association, assembly, and expression together with all the other aspects of individual liberty will exist in Socialism not because there will be any paper constitution which guarantees them, but rather because the organisation of Socialism will make their prevention impossible.

How will the organisation of Socialism ensure freedom of action and choice? The answer to this can best be illustrated by comparing Socialism with the society it will replace—capitalism. Capitalism is based upon wage-slavery—that is, because the vast majority of the population do not own the means of production and distribution they must sell their only commodity, their ability to work (labour-power) to an employer in return for a wage or salary. The working class are paid wages which are of less value than the product of their labour, the remaining (surplus) value being realised as rent, interest, and profit, the property incomes of the ruling class; thus the working class are exploited. Because they do not receive the full value of the product of their labour the working class have unsatisfied needs—they are restricted in their freedom of choice to what they can afford on their inadequate wages. In Socialism, there will be no wage-slavery, no employment and therefore no unemployment. Each will give voluntarily according to their abilities and each will take what they need — food, clothing, housing, travel, health-care — freely. Under wage-slavery, you are not free to do as you wish with your time nor free to go where you want, because you are contracted to an employer for a large chunk of the week and frequently your job becomes monotonous and meaningless. In Socialism, you will not be tied down to a particular job but rather, you will be free to do a wide variety of work which you will choose and control yourself.

Further, under capitalism, the choice and variety of goods and services is limited to what can be sold profitably on the market. Millions die for want of food, not because agriculture hasn’t the capacity to produce the food, but because the starving haven’t the money to make such production profitable. In the

moneyless society of Socialism, because we shall all own and control social production, all the necessaries of life will be produced in abundance (which is technologically possible now). We shall produce the greatest variety of clothes, housing, entertainment. We shall all democratically control, and decide policies for, housing, education and transport services—which at present are controlled by ‘experts’ and politicians.

Because Socialism will mean world-wide common ownership, there will be no state. The state—police, military, prisons, and judiciary—exists to protect the rights of private property owners. Where private property doesn’t exist neither will the state. Thus all those whom the law discriminates against—in the main, the working class—will be liberated by the abolition of private property and thus of its state. Those who argue that all that needs to be done to ensure freedom is to liberalise the authoritarian nature of the state by having a ‘Bill of Rights’ or a written constitution, ignore the fact that the state, far from being impartial and above the struggles in society, is in fact in the thick of them. The USA which has had a Bill of Rights for 200 years, has in recent decades witnessed vast Civil Rights Movements by people (Blacks, Women, Gays) claiming to be discriminated against by the state. As long as the state is in the hands of a minority, the majority remaining non-socialists, then the state can only be used to repress the working class, the vast majority.

The only way to ensure the fullest possible freedom for all humanity without distinction of race, sex or sexuality is to set up a social system based upon common ownership and, therefore, democracy. It is only common ownership which guarantees free access to the means of communication, to information and to all wealth. It is only socialism which, being free of any state machine, can ensure true democracy and freedom. Socialism is the only effective liberation.

Brian Philips

Economics and Ideas. Their influence on Political Institutions. (Part 3) (1925)

From the June 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued front last month).

Divine Right or Social Contract.

The struggle of the bourgeoisie for political emancipation culminated in England in the Great Rebellion of 1642-48. The chief immediate cause of the outbreak was the dispute over the right of the crown to levy charges upon property owners either by taxes or forced loans without the consent of their representatives. Its general social causes however must be sought in the developing antagonism between the domination of hereditary privilege and kingly prerogative and the political needs of an increasingly commercial society.

As the crisis approached Parliament definitely demanded the right to appoint and dismiss Ministers, and the control of the army. In the six years’ Civil War which followed, the established regime—the “King’s cause” was defended by the nobility and the more old-fashioned of the landed gentry, whilst to the Parliamentary forces adhered the traders of the cities allied with the freehold farmers.

At this stage no purely political doctrine had an appeal wide enough to rally all revolting sections, and we find the morale of the Cromwellian Army—the backbone of the Parliamentary forces, provided by “puritanism,” which in belief was the antithesis to the Catholicism of the crown and in its attitude to life the mirror of the needs of the yeomen farmers and the small traders.

It was not until the first phase of the struggle had ended in a bourgeois victory, and the question of “divine right” answered emphatically in the negative by the execution of Charles, that its theoretical expression was forthcoming. As Stopford Brooke says,

  “the opposition to the theory of the Divine Right of Kings did not enter into literature till after it had been worked out practically in the Civil War. During the Commonwealth and after the Restoration it took the form of a discussion on the abstract question of the Science of Government, and was mingled with an enquiry into the origin of society and the ground of social life.” (“English Literature” p. 132.)

The result of this enquiry showed clearly the wide influence commercial relations of life now had in the sphere of political thought. The productive organisations and customs of feudalism had their origin in the remote and misty past. Through unnumbered generations they persisted with little change and they were looked upon with veneration and believed to have a supernatural origin.

But commerce and money had brought a new form of organisation. The firms and companies of the traders and manufacturers had a perfectly well-known origin. They were deliberately established as a result of definite agreements between men. The law of “contract,” not of “status” or custom, was their basis and safeguard. What more natural then than that the theorists of the new order should suggest that human society and the State were originally formed by a common agreement for the social good and that therefore the governing authority could be repudiated if it violated the terms of the “original contract.”

Such a theory was put forward by Hobbes in his “Leviathan” (1651) and later taken up by Locke and Rousseau. Though Hobbes’ materialistic views met with much opposition on religious grounds the effect of the idea of the “social contract”

“at the time of its first appearance was immense. Its almost universal acceptance put an end to the religious and patriarchal theories of society, on which Kingship had till now founded its claim of a Divine right to authority which no subject might question.” (Green’s “Short History,” p. 615).

In the next phase of the struggle ending in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, the argument of the “social contract” was used with effect in the Parliamentary debates on the abdication of James II. and, in the final indictment against the King, his violation of the “contract” was specifically mentioned.

The Revolution with its “Bill of Rights” vested supreme authority in the House of Commons—the representative assembly of the propertied classes. Following it came another advance in bourgeois political theory by Locke, who cast into more acceptable form Hobbes’ ideas and definitely declared the supremacy of legislative assemblies. Again fact preceded theory. Locke’s “Essay on Civil Government” was the outcome

“not of a pure development of scientific ideas, but of the necessity for having a theory to justify accomplished facts.”

It was

“in truth an elaborate apology for the Revolution of 1688; not ostensibly for its righteousness or policy in the particular circumstances, but for the possibility of such a proceeding being rightful in any circumstances.” (Pollock, “Science of Politics,” p. 65.)

In the new regime the landowners were still predominant but the commercial and banking interests were a great and a growing social power. In the Commons the two rival groups faced each other as the Tory and Whig parties. But many of the wealthier landowners were by now interested also in commerce and finance and the antagonism between the two orders of property tended to become less. The power of the capitalists was manifested in the founding in 1694 of the Bank of England—originally a whig finance company; in the commercial laws based on the “mercantile” principle of accumulating bullion by restricting imports of manufactured goods whilst encouraging their export; and in the trade wars against France which the landed class generally discouraged.

The British Constitution now remained without serious modification for a century and a half, the most important development being the “cabinet system” which placed the executive under the control of the Commons. As an instrument giving political liberty to the exploiters of labour whilst securing the suppression of the producing masses the Constitution was one of the most perfect pieces of machinery in political history. The ruling’ classes rightly revered it as a perpetual guarantee of their wealth and privileges. They lavished adulation upon it. To Blackstone, the jurist, it was—”this noble pile,” whilst Burke went into ecstatic when he contemplated its “delicate equilibrium.” Based upon the right to representation of only a wealthy handful of the population—with an electorate of merely some 12,000 this allegedly democratic constitution was in reality an oligarchic despotism of the few over the many.

Through it was carried out by all due forms of law one of the most callous examples that history records of the spoliation and starvation of a helpless class through the enclosure and appropriation by the large landowners of millions of acres of the “common lands” used by the peasants of England for centuries. As a result of the growing numbers of landless and propertyless and the intense poverty of the new labouring class laws of unprecedented stringency were enforced for the protection of property. Thousands of working-class “criminals” were hanged for stealing no more than five shillings or a sheep, or for firing a rick of hay.

The “Rights of Man.”

The success of the mercantile interests in England in establishing their rule through Parliament gave a stimulus to the bourgeoisie in France—oppressed by economic fetters imposed by a despotism raised upon the remnants of feudalism, bearing the chief burden of a heavy taxation and excluded entirely from political power. Along with the smouldering discontent of the bourgeoisie developed a vigorous attack by the French intellectuals upon all the institutions and traditions of the established regime. Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and the authors of the great “Encyclopedia ” directed their shafts of criticism and satire upon the “unreason” of social relations, the despotism of the State over men’s bodies and of the Church over men’s minds.

The English Constitution was eagerly discussed and applauded. In it the French bourgeoisie and their theorists saw the ideal framework of society. Buckle in his “History of Civilisation” gives a detailed account of the extraordinary influence that English literature and institutions had at this time in France. Even Rousseau’s famous work the “Contrat Social,” which became the text book of the revolution, was little more than a development of the ideas of Hobbes and Locke. In it Rousseau declared the irrationality and tyranny of all existing social structure and idealised the “free, independent individual” — the “natural” man. The book had an immense vogue with all the disaffected and its popularity was so feared by the authorities that it was accorded the honour of being burnt by the public hangman.

The philosophers of the “age of reason” were sincere enough in their fierce denunciations of tyranny and glorification of “liberty”—but they could not transcend the times in which they lived. When Rousseau wrote his famous words, “Man is born free and is everywhere in chains,” he was not thinking of the same “chains” as those of the equally famous declaration —”The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Rousseau and those who thought with him denounced the chains of obsolete conventions and beliefs and of legal and political restrictions upon the individual and his goods. They did not conceive of property as a means of enslavement—to them it seemed the guarantee of freedom, of personal independence. Their utopia was a society of independent farmers, craftsmen and traders, and it was from this ideal basis that they formulated the inalienable Rights of Man— “to liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression.” It required machinery and the “great industry” to demonstrate the titanic power of slavery latent in the “free rights of property” and the “liberty of the individual,” and thus to lay the basis for the slogan of Marx.

But while the philosophers were indulging themselves with universal principles the merchants, lawyers and politicians were concerning themselves with practical realities. They were not troubled with abstract intellectual problems but with urgent economic, legal and political ones. But the main problems that confronted the revolutionary bourgeoisie in France, though the same in essence as those their English comperes had faced differed in historical setting.

The “grand seigneurs” had not been “corrupted” by commerce to the extent of the English aristocracy. They were still an exclusive, arrogant caste, despising trade, holding ancient feudal rights over the peasantry such as were long extinct in England, and—a most important point, they were entirely exempt from taxation. While the English nobility had faced merely a check to their political domination, only affecting: them indirectly in an economic sense, the French nobility were confronted with a threat to their economic security, to their feudal dues and fiscal privileges—with virtual expropriation. Hence the com¬promise that was achieved with little difficulty in England was in France next to impossible.

When the crisis was upon them the bourgeoisie were reluctantly compelled to ally themselves with the stirring propertyless populace of the cities. It was the “common mob” who took the Bastille. But the traders, the lawyers and the politicians had a wholesome dread of the hungry masses—inflamed with revolutionary phrases and extravagant promises and freed for the moment from their customary habits of subjection. Mirabeau warned the assembly against its “seditious allies.”

Whilst they had need the bourgeoisie readily used the multitude as a threatening weapon against the crown and the aristocrats, but when the strength of the old regime was broken, when

  “the King could no longer collect an army, the force of the crowd was no longer necessary to the Assembly. A kind of Riot Act was accordingly passed under which certain officials might at any time proclaim Martial Law ; to restrain the forces of agitation a censorship was established over newspapers and public meetings and even over the sale of literature.” (Packwood Adams—”The French Revolution,” p. 100.)

Thus the bourgeoisie endeavoured to maintain its newly-acquired and precarious power, to stay the surging forces of revolt that it itself had done so much to unleash and to secure “order”—the bourgeois order of peaceful exploitation.

The great rallying cry that stirred all the sections opposed to the old regime was “liberty ! equality ! fraternity !” But these vague words meant different things to different men. In the mouth of a bourgeois they had a definite, limited meaning. “Freedom” meant—liberation from the tyrannical control which the autocratic rule of the Bourbons had exercised over the lives and property of its unprivileged subjects. “Equality” implied the abolition of hereditary privilege and the guarantee of legal and political equality for all “responsible citizens”—all who possessed property and paid taxes.

When, in June, 1789, the deputies of the “third estate” constituted themselves the National Assembly of France their general aim was nothing more than the abolition of feudal restrictions and the erection of a representative Constitution with a limited Monarchy on the lines of that in England. And when, three years later, the Constitution of 1791 was framed, though prefaced by the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” it divided the people into “active” and “passive” citizens; the former consisted of men who owned property and contributed taxes, and who alone were to exercise the franchise and bear arms in the National Guard; the “passive” citizens were the propertyless multitude who were allowed neither representation nor legal means of resistance. But the “have-nots” proved not quite so “passive” as the “haves” were desirous they should be.

With the further developments—the war, the republic, the inability of the bourgeoisie to consolidate its power, the temporary domination of the propertyless of Paris followed by the dictatorship and “order” of Bonaparte—we need not here concern ourselves.

[Thirteen] years before the Revolution in France, a bourgeois republic—untrammelled by any effete feudal structure, had been set up in America. In spite of its “Declaration” that “all men are born equal” its political system gave the franchise only to property owners, and to show how cynically inconsistent its founders could be, it established the legality of the slave-trade.

R.W. Housley

(To be continued)