Liberal media: the barking dog of institutional power (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a recent Reuters investigation revealing that one fifth of sitting US Congress members, living presidents, and Supreme Court justices are direct descendants of slaveholders. Liberal circles celebrated this as exemplary accountability journalism. But this celebration reveals the sophisticated mechanism by which modern media manufactures consent. Not through falsehood, but through strategic structural omission.

The investigation was conducted by journalist Blake Morrison. He meticulously mapped genealogical connections between today’s political elite and their slaveholding ancestors. He traced lineages through census records, slave schedules, estate documents, and family bibles. He identified at least 100 members of the 117th Congress with ancestral ties. The investigation even named the enslaved individuals where records permitted, giving human names to those previously reduced to property listings alongside sorrel horses and folding tables.

The dog is on the chain

Morrison’s reporting frame focuses on the personal impact of discovering these genealogical connections. It frames the story through individual family history and curiosity. It systematically avoids examining the legal and financial mechanisms through which slaveholder wealth was preserved, compounded, and transferred into the present day.

The Reuters investigation, like much accountability journalism, perpetuates the fiction that wealth passes simply from father to son. This is not how dynastic wealth operates. The actual mechanisms, trust law, estate law, corporate inheritance, land title chains, and complex financial instruments, remain entirely unexamined. By failing to map and explain the legal instruments that protected and grew slaveholder wealth across generations, the investigation performs a crucial ideological function. It transforms a systemic analysis of racial capitalism into a personalised narrative of ancestral discovery. The story becomes about individual bad apples and their personal reckonings with family history, rather than about the structural continuity of wealth extraction from enslaved labour into contemporary financial and property systems.

The everyday reproduction of consent

This is not accidental. It represents the operational logic of what Walter Lippmann termed ‘the manufacture of consent’ in his 1922 book Public Opinion. Lippmann argued that the professional class should manage democracy because they know about power and because raw political reality is too complex for most people. Columbia University’s journalism school is the training arm of the institution most closely associated with Lippmann’s legacy. And it’s where Blake Morrison teaches interviewing and investigation.

Now consider a story that Reuters is not currently investigating. In March 2026, the Poynter Institute reported that Thomson Reuters (Reuters’ owner) has multiple contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), one of which gives DHS access to number plate reader data. Reuters journalists themselves signed a letter demanding the company explain what human rights and civil liberties due diligence it has undertaken in relation to this contract.

This story is not historical. It’s happening now. And it is about US government surveillance. Thomson Reuters has a $22.8 million open contract with DHS that runs until 2026. Another company, LexisNexis has a separate $22.1 million contract. These contracts support ICE and Customs and Border Patrol operations, including immigration enforcement and deportations.

A YouTuber, Ali McForever, traces the connections between state power, media systems, and global economic structures. Her analysis reveals how the manufacture of consent operates not through crude propaganda but through the careful cultivation of partial visibility.

She argues that Reuters will trace a family tree across centuries but will not trace a contract across subsidiaries. They will name an enslaved ancestor but will not name the shell company receiving ICE funding. They will expose a genealogical connection but not a procurement chain.

She also argues that Morrison’s investigations are formulaic. Although the story is always factual, the conclusion is invariably some bad apples and a regulatory gap. That is deliberate, not incidental omission. Legal wealth transfer mechanisms or surveillance infrastructure never appear anywhere in the investigation. A story containing falsehoods can easily be debunked yet stories that are structurally true but conclude just before the system is made visible produce something more durable. The wagging tail of accountability without any bite.

She argues further that Morrison’s work occupies a space where a systemic critique would otherwise exist. It occupies this space deliberately while Thomson Reuters takes millions from the same agencies that Morrison claims to expose. The public receives confirmation that journalism performs its watchdog function while never barking against the actual levers of power.

Trust structures

Let’s consider what a genuinely systemic investigation would require. Mapping trust structures established in the 19th century that remain active today or tracing land titles through Jim Crow-era legal mechanisms designed to protect white property ownership. Examining how corporate charters and financial instruments allowed slaveholder capital to transform into industrial and banking capital without passing through the father to son inheritance model that Reuters implicitly assumes.

Tracing the Thomson Reuters contracts through their actual ownership layers. Revealing which data brokers operate the number plate reader databases for ICE. Exposing the procurement chains that connect historical slaveholder wealth to contemporary border militarisation. This is work that Ali McForever has done. This is the work that Reuters deliberately avoids because it would expose their own complicity.

Journalism that maintains intimate proximity to power while performing the ritual of critique is in thrall to King Capital. It names the brokers but not the banks. It traces the genealogy but not the wealth. It exposes the contract but not the procurement chain.

This is workers’ consent being manufactured in its most abstracted form. Not through raw propaganda, but the careful cultivation of partial visibility, we are shown enough to believe ourselves informed, while the actual mechanisms of power, legal, financial, structural, remain unexamined behind a veil of individual narrative and personal moral narrations.

For socialists, we know when the bourgeois press celebrates its own accountability, we must ask what remains unseen. What legal instruments go unexamined? What ownership layers remain obscured? What surveillance contracts go unexamined? The answer reveals not mere journalistic failure, but journalistic function. To manufacture the consent necessary for the continued operation of capital and its dog, the military industrial complex, one carefully framed investigation at a time.

A.T.

Fog on the Danube (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a Comrade in Vienna

Turning over the pages of the Arbeiter Zeitung, the interested intelligent reader must surely ask himself where this so-called Socialist journal differs from other daily papers that do not pretend to stand for Socialism. There are the usual features of all the other newspapers: pages of commercial advertisements, pages of sport, programmes of all the theatres, cinemas and other entertainments, Police and Court reports on crime and the daily tragedies of misery and want, murder and detective stories, appeals for funds to help victims of natural catastrophes, to help the blind, the cripples, the orphans and all the other unfortunates dependent on alms and charity culled welfare.

Here are a few examples of the way these “Socialist” journals deal with news items that would offer good chances of driving home the Socialist case and lessons for the workers:

A report in the Arbeiter Zeitung stated that the 89 year old Lord Bertrand Russell was continuing from his prison cell his anti-bomb propaganda. The paper quoted the aged philosopher as saying in an appeal: “You, your families, your friends and your States will be exterminated by the common decisions of a few but brutal men.” These, Lord Russell named as Kennedy, Kruschev, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Macmilllan and Gaitskell. What did the Arbeiter Zeitung have to say to enlighten its readers on the merits or demerits of Russell’s action and peace propaganda? Nothing.

But should not a journal and a party calling itself Socialist enlighten the workers on this, as on all other political questions? Should it not point out that it is not individuals alone who move the world, but the forces of capital? And that the Kennedys and Adenauers, the Kruschevs and Macmillans are only the temporary managers of these forces? Should it not be made plain that if these individuals were removed tomorrow, other executives and lackeys would take their place and continue the same policy, as has repeatedly happened in the past, and is daily happening before our eyes? Was not Asquith, the British manager of world-war I, removed and promptly replaced by another, Lloyd George? Was not the Kaiser (who had been denounced as having caused the war) exiled and replaced by other individuals who carried on the old system until it produced world-war II? Did the system of Capitalism end with the end of Hitler and Mussolini, who had been accused of having caused that second war? Were not Russian and Bulgarian Czars, Rumanian and Yugoslav kings dethroned, only to be replaced by reformers and more up-to-date administrators of Capitalism like Stalin, Kruschev, Tito, etc., to uphold and continue the private ownership basis and money economy of society, albeit State-Capitalism? Does Lord Russell really believe that if Kennedy and the other present top managers of Capitalism were removed, all would be well in the world, and the nightmare of an impending third world-war lifted from men’s minds? Does he not see that the other pretended “socialist” and pacifist politicians like Nehru, Ben Gurion, Spaak, Guy Mollet, Ollenhauer, etc., are equally staunch upholders of the universal conflict-breeding system that makes war inevitable?

Competition

As long as it is possible for men to exploit other men, war will be threatening humanity. The proceeds (profits) from Capitalist exploitation must be realized by selling the products of labour in the world’s markets. This is where the conflict arises. Commercial competition is war. Even when the rivalry is carried on at the business offices and in the State chancelleries, the clash of interests—the cold war—is there all the time and is eventually transferred to the battlefields of the various continents. What is at stake is big business, the question primarily of who can pocket the profits to be made from “assisting” the underdeveloped countries! Who can get in first? Who can “help” them—in truth, who will exploit them and make the big profits? And as the exploiters mistrust and are envious of each other, one tries to oust the other from the market. For this purpose all means are considered, including atom-bombs.

About Christmas time high functionaries of the Socialist Party of Austria, like the Vice-chancellor, and top Municipal councillors, painted dreary pictures of things happening in the Austrian Welfare State. Said Dr. Pittermann, leader of the SPA:

“In the days before Christmas we heard of the shocking tragedy at St. Polten, where four children burned to death in a barrack dwelling. In the country with the highest increase of the national income, a working class family with four children has to live in a barrack, not because there are too few houses in Austria but because inhuman greed does not place these flats at the disposal of those who are in dire need of a home: they are only for those who can pay higher rents than a worker’s family with many children. In the nearly 2000 years from the stable in Bethlehem to the death in the flames of the four children in the stable at St. Polten, usury with the housing and property has not been done away with. There are tens of thousands of flats empty or only partly occupied in Vienna alone, and innocent children become victims of borderless greed.”

During the budget debate of the Vienna City Council, councillor Mrs. M. Jacobi deplored the widespread unhappiness still existing in our welfare world. She said :

“The Vienna municipality has in its homes or with foster parents 3,900 children whose parents do not care for them. The background of nearly everyone of these children is a heart-rending life-story. Recently one of the boys wrote a letter to his mother, which read: Dear-Mother, I leave school this year. I should like to come to you, otherwise I shall have to stay at the home. If your new husband objects, please write to me.

A few days later the letter was returned. On the back it said, without salutation or signature: Sorry cannot take you; must stay at the home. My husband does not want you. Don’t write any more, it is no use. You are grown up, go to work! Do not think of coming to me. Please do not come, otherwise my husband throws me out . . .”

During the same debate, the Vice-Mayor Mandl also deplored the “cultural crisis” and said that:

“despite all the achievements of the welfare state there are alarming signs of decay, of a sick society. In Austria 1,630 persons committed suicide in 1960. 11,500 persons intending to take their lives were taken care of by one welfare centre alone. In another department 15,000 addicts to alcohol applied for treatment and the numbers of alcoholics, of alcoholic intoxicated and juvenile criminality and neglect are rising.

The place of the physical and material misery has been taken by the psychical and cultural misery. The invasion of the mass media of Press, film, radio and television into leisure is one of the main causes of the negative, often anti-social reactions ….”

Although the so-called Socialist journals report daily the threatening problems in all parts of the present turbulent world, they never advocate Socialism as a solution for society’s troubles and problems. Whether the scene of the turmoil is in Goa or Angola, in Algiers, Kuwait or in the Congo, in New Guinea or in other divided countries like India, Pakistan, Germany, or divided cities like Kashmir, Jerusalem or Berlin, the “experts” of the Arbeiter Zeitung will deal lengthily with these insoluble problems, claims, threats and demands: they will refute or support the “rights” or “wrongs” of this or that predatory clique, take sides for one or the other band of thieves, and so confuse the workers and entangle them in things that are no concern of theirs bill only of their masters.

However well they may know that drastic evils call for drastic remedies, however glaringly evident it is—often on their own showing—that the Capitalist system is responsible for the evils and sufferings of the workers, their leaders will not draw the attention of the people and will not have them concentrate their thoughts on the need for the removal of the cause of all the trouble. One does not expect the Conservative politicians to preach revolutionary change as the only wav to remove the social ills and incongruities, but parties and journals calling themselves Socialist or Communist and not advocating consistently the revolutionary doctrine and principles, stand identified with the enemies of the working class.

Rudolf Frank

What their papers say (1982)

From the August 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a popular belief that certain newspapers report things "the way they really are" — without bias. In fact, there are no such things as neutral news items, recognisable entities independent of journalists. Rather, there are those incidents and issues which are perceived by editors as "newsworthy".

Journalists are trained to spot particular aspects of social affairs as suitable material to report on with a bias or “angle". Although we find a slightly different point of view in the liberal, "quality" press from that expressed in the rest, all newspapers have a common standpoint on the profit system — they support it. It follows that what they tell us about the world cannot help but be politically slanted. Last year thirty million people died through lack of food while mountains of beef were produced; thousands were slaughtered in wars while the combatants wished for peace; and millions remained homeless while palatial accommodation stood empty. The press was unanimous in ignoring these contradictions and reserving its astonishment and critical analysis for royal weddings and trying to detect a "new" SDP policy.

Before it is represented in the press, reality is put through the great distorting process. The four main journalistic devices are to personalise, trivialise, historically fossilise and moralise.

They personalise

Society is presently organised on the basis of minority ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. Production is geared to profit for the few, not for social need. Problems like industrial disputes, unemployment and wars are consequences of our social system but the press encourages us to look at them in terms of individual responsibilities. Hence, Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as the demon who has somehow personally engineered the unemployment of over three million people, or else a triumphal heroine who will put "Britain" back on its feet. Strikes are blamed on the personal irresponsibility of reckless trade union leaders. Even self-proclaimed non-revolutionaries like the former Longbridgc shop steward Derek Robinson and the GLC leader Ken Livingstone come in for prolonged campaigns of abuse in which they are reduced to being known as "Red Robbo” and “Red Ken". A variation on this technique of masquerading social issues as personal is to actually personify territories and to speak of "Britain fearing the proposed EEC policy" or “France will be taking steps to ensure that . . .". The persons created by this linguistic trick embody the interests of various sections of the ruling class, so that "Britain’s overseas investments” are in reality the investments of a small minority of wealth owners associated with Britain.

They trivialise

The papers are always littered with inconsequential revelations. We are prompted to turn our heads away from the condition of the world, our poverty and insecurity and busy our minds with matters such as “Why the Duke of Kent is to visit Darlington”, the new rhinoceros at a famous zoo and a thousand other inanities. Socialists are sometimes accused of being killjoys for not wishing to participate in discussions on such matters. But stop to consider why. As they are sliding the neutron bombs into their launching positions are we really expected to open a copy of the Daily Express, read about the man who fell into a vat of custard and still be slapping our thighs as the radioactive dust descends upon us?

They historically fossilise 

Society is in a constant state of change. The institutions, social relationships and problems of today have not always been with us and are only transitory. Journalists give us a misleading vision of society because they have a “photographic” perception of affairs rather than an historical one. They try to present an accurate picture of “the way things are” but they tend to freeze what they look at without seeing each situation as part of a much wider set of social relations which are not only changing all the time, but which we are capable of shaping for our own requirements. Thus, nation states, armies, managers, police and the wages system are all regarded as part of the fabric of society which is beyond any critical comment.

They moralise

On many issues that they examine, journalists pass moral judgement. They try to persuade us that something is good or bad, but the point is that the morality which they peddle is one which favours our social superiors and flies in the face of our own interests. Their moral precepts contort to keep us in place. So strikers who seek a paltry addition to their wage to try and make ends meet are greedy, while business tycoons who acquire additional companies have praiseworthy initiative and enterprise. If a man murders people in North Yorkshire for no reason he is an anti-social wretched villain. If the same man, trained by the SAS, commits the same acts for H.M. Government with a uniform on he will be hailed as a hero. When wealth producers reclaim goods from the wealth owners without paying for them this is theft and is morally reprehensible, but when the capitalists steal from us the fruits of our labour this is making a profit and is seen as morally virtuous.

The press like any other industry is owned by a few privileged people. Three major companies (News International, Reed International and Associated Newspaper Group) own three-quarters of all British newspapers and each company has similar interests in book and magazine publishing concerns, television companies and independent radio stations. In 1948 Lord Beaverbrook said to the Press Commission: “I publish my paper (Daily Express) purely for the purpose of making propaganda and for no other motive”.

Earlier this year. Rupert Murdoch sacked The Times editor Harold Evans because he resisted pressure to take a more right-wing editorial line supporting Thatcher and Tory economic policies. According to Anthony Holden, the features editor, “Mr. Murdoch wants a poodle as an editor” (Guardian, 13 March 1982). The press barons still like to enjoy control over exactly which arguments, about how capitalism should be run, are put in their papers, but there is not a conspiracy of newspaper magnates and most of the time connivance in capitalist propaganda is less explicit.

Nevertheless, the propaganda is always there. Take June 28 this year when there was a brief strike by the National Union of Railwaymen. All the papers were against the workers and with varying degrees of openness took the side of the bosses. Reports were brimming with comments and views from David Howell, the Transport Secretary, Peter Parker, the BR chairman and cabinet ministers, but no report came anywhere near presenting an adequate account of why the workers were dissatisfied with what they had been offered. The Daily Mail displayed a headline “Britain WILL Get to Work” and listed the ways in which workers should attempt to get in to produce profits. On 7 May 1926 the same paper had a similar message for suffering workers: “If you must go about walk as far as you can . . . don't buy more coal than usual. Keep a stout heart and smile at your troubles”. The Sun headline on 28 June was “STRIKE RABBLE" while the Daily Mirror (the paper which claims to stick up for the workers!) spoke shyly about the urgent need to end the strike and for “increased productivity”. The tirelessly liberal Guardian was also urging the railwaymen to “give reality a chance” — in other words “get back to work and stop complaining”. The Times and the Daily Telegraph had identical lines, only couched in more stilted language, whereas the Star took a similar line but with a bare minimum of written language.

Apart from imparting news, the papers also vie with each other to cultivate and cater for a popular culture for their markets. They reinforce ideas about desirable lifestyles, from the adverts in the Financial Times for special credit cards “for people who travel and entertain around the world. People whose lifestyle and income requires and justifies an additional range of financial services" (28 June 1982), to the crude horoscopes and cheap, brash “lighthearted" pages in the gutter press. Pleasure is promoted here as a spectator sport, something you need to get with cash, something where you are “being entertained". The lowest common denominator of interest among an estimated readership is exploited to the hilt to maximise sales. This converts the paper into another type of mass entertainment to be mechanically produced for profit on one side and passively consumed for gratification on the other. As Richard Hoggart observes in his book The Uses of Literacy:

These productions belong to a vicarious spectators' world; they offer nothing which can really grip the brain or heart. They assist a gradual drying-up of the more positive, the fuller, the more cooperative kinds of enjoyment. in which one gains by giving much (p. 340).

The only paper which represents the interest of the working class, because it stands for socialism and nothing else, is the Socialist Standard. The press and the other means of communication can only be used for their proper function — the unrestricted dissemination of ideas and other information — when they, along with everything else, are commonly owned. Raymond Williams approaches this point when he observes:

The irony is that the only practical use of communication is the sharing of real experience. To set anything above this is quite unpractical. To set selling above it may seem normal, but it is really only a perversion to which some people have got used: a way of looking at the world which must be right and normal because you have cut yourself down to its size (Communications, p. 26).

Remember knowledge is power, and every new reader of the Socialist Standard makes the movement for socialism stronger.

Gary Jay

War and Religion. By “The Times”. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Times” (4.10.14), lifting itself above the mere economic advantages we are supposed to gain by the war, endeavoured to prove spiritual gains as well. “No feature of the war has been more striking than the religious feeling it has evoked,” they said. War, which increases the uncertainty of life, has so unsettled the minds of the workers that their doubts and fears of the future have intensified. Without a philosophy based on science man becomes an easy prey to priestly ties. Regarding his own physical anatomy as something amazingly wonderful, and far beyond his poor understanding, he is easily persuaded that he has a soul that transcends even his physical possessions ; and the eternal existence of that soul in peace or torment depends upon his conduct while crawling about the earth in subjection to those who have taken possession of it.

Life is the only state that human beings can know, because it is only in life we possess consciousness and can know anything at all. The scientific mind accepts nothing without evidence, and neither science, religion, or philosophy has yet produced one shred of evidence to prove even the likelihood or possibility of consciousness, spirit, or any other known or unknown force existing apart from the substance or matter to which it belongs.

Scientists—in the laboratory—are practically agreed that the Cosmos is Matter in Motion, and nebulae, constellations, systems, geological and biological periods, and even the existence of different substances, are but changing manifestations of Matter in Motion. “Every living creature,” said a recent president of the “International Science Association,” “is, after all, merely a chemical mechanism,” and anyone that has read an intelligible work on physiology, explaining the functions and interdependence of organs, can appreciate that statement. An acquaintance with evolution, showing how both organs and functions have developed simultaneously, is sufficient evidence of its truth for anyone whose income is not affected. Consciousness or thought is the function of the brain, just as digestion is the function of the stomach. Digestion is impossible without digestive organs and food—though the wage-slave is often forced to try the experiment without the latter. Neither can consciousness exist without nerve ganglia, or brain and so nothing external to be conscious of. Science thus establishes the oneness or Monism of the Cosmos—but only for the cultured ruling class of society: the ignorant superstitions of the dark ages, slightly modified, are good enough for the workers.

In the supreme anarchy of a capitalist war events seem more than ever to be the result of chance, and gods, mascots, and oracles are brought out, dusted, and worshipped; and “The Times,” with characteristic hypocrisy and satisfaction, remarks that the “War has evoked religious feeling.”

“Nothing in man is more real than the instinct that urges him to sacrifice himself for an ideal which to him is dearer than life itself,” says “The Times.” We pass over the obvious error that, there can be any sacrifice where something dearer than what is given is the objective, and the equally obvious admission that man does not always act according to intelligence—even in important matters—but proves himself allied to the rest of the animal world by virtue of the fact that he still acts from instinct—when intelligence fails him.

Bat is it not characteristic of capitalist hypocrisy that the actions of their dupes should bs attributed to instincts and ideals, when it is common knowledge that necessity has compelled the vast majority to enlist. True, they sing and laugh as they march, but that does not prove that they have acted with either freedom or intelligence. It proves only that they have caught the war fever and are incapable, for the time being, of understanding or realising the actual situation—so aptly described and forcibly denounced by Israel Zangwill: “That they are food for powder, so coarse in texture ; carcasses so gross and sub-human, that their best use is to be thrown to the guns—a providential fire screen for the finer classes.”

The business of the ink-slinger to-day is to manufacture high-sounding phrases that appear to be loaded with importance, yet when analysed mean little or nothing. “War is a supreme test of reality,” says “The Times.” All the nations bluff, but only the contact of forces determines which is really the strongest—just as the opponents of Socialism can always destroy it any where but in debate. If there is sense in the statement, then the following from the same source obviously contradicts it. “Faith in force is a poor substitute for faith in right. Force is a sorry god” ; and the sentences that immediately follow are a reversion to the original statement that it is force that rules: “For, when a stronger strength arises to shatter it, nought but despair and doubt remain.”

But twice is not sufficient for “The Times” to contradict itself, so it throws over the first and third position and once more takes up the second: “When as we are firmly persuaded, the Allied Armies shall have overthrown the German’s divinity, the German people itself may learn the futility of trust ‘in reeking tube and iron shard,’ and turn again to the higher trust which their greatest teachers have inculcated upon them and upon the world.”

Next “The Times” says: “Faith and the spirit of sacrifice are the essence of religion, just as scepticism and selfishness are its negation.” The above definition of religion we might dispute, were it not that the word “essence” is not so clearly defined in capitalist politics and philosophy as in chemistry. The essential belief, and therefore the essence of religion, is belief in the supernatural. A code of morals, even including the “spirit of sacrifice,” without such a belief cannot be called a religion, no matter who imposes it. But this “spirit of sacrifice,” is undoubtedly a tenet of the Christian dogma, and eminently suits it for the capitalist system.

First let us see what is its actual meaning. To labour for others ; to risk life, or even to die, for others. Under this heading comes the whole of the working class. They live in poverty while they produce fabulous wealth for an idle class. They risk their lives daily and die in thousands for them on the field of battle. What we see then, is that the “essence of religion” so-called is really the purpose or object. So long as religion induces millions of workers to continue their life long sacrifice, the capitalist will generously permit them to think of themselves as sheep bled on the altar of civilisation, i.e. , capitalist idleness and luxury.

But what of the other side: “Scepticism and selfishness are its negation.” Every shareholders’ meeting, of every concern, at home or abroad, is evidence of capitalist greed. One eighth of the population takes two-thirds of the national wealth, and leaves one-third for the other seven-eighths. Avarice has been the watch word of the commercial class since the break-up of the guilds. How to get more out of their wage-slaves while reducing their rations has been, and is still, their most engrossing problem. Vultures snarling over raw flesh are less repulsive than capitalist governments quarrelling over markets and using the working class—after exploiting them—as “a providential fire screen.”

So much for their selfishness. It is unnecessary to marshall evidence to prove their scepticism, they show their contempt for the promises of future happiness and threats of punishment every day of their lives. They have no use for a religion that instructs them to “sell all they have and give unto the poor” ; nor do they care a tinker’s anathema for a “place on high,” if it is to be obtained by sacrificing a “place in the sun” here below. The capitalist has no “faith” in another life, and the “spirit of sacrifice” is not “business.” He is the embodiment of the ” negation of religion,” “scepticism and selfishness.”

“War,” concludes “The Times,” “with all its horrors and suffering, has at least this bright side. It lifts mankind out of its daily self, and suffuses the drab life of the multitude with a spiritual glow. In such an atmosphere the still voice of the divine spirit of the universe may be clearly heard, despite the clamour and clash of arms.” The colour has changed from drab to crimson. Poverty has intensified, and the murders committed annually on the industrial field, for profits, are being augmented by thousands daily ; yet mankind has gained something, ” a spiritual glow”—searchlights. But what does the “still voice” say ?—we are not told. Possibly the black-coated hypocrites are waiting for their orders from the representatives of that class in whose interests they teach and write such lies and rubbish for the confusion of the workers.

F. Foan

Classic Reprint: Gus has a shock (1985)

A Classic Reprint from the Spring 1985 issue of the World Socialist

The lies, distortions and omissions which characterise the bosses' press are hallmarks of a system which can only survive by ensuring the political slumber of the majority class. Anyone who thinks that capitalism is a genuinely democratic social system has only to look at the minority ownership and control of the means of communication to understand just how unfree present-day society is. In a socialist society the technology of social communication will be at the disposal of all members of society, and there will be neither owners (private or state) nor advertisers to determine what may be published. Indeed, any opponents of socialism will have free access to the press and other media, for the socialist majority will have nothing to fear from the open expression of the ridiculous case for capitalism. (Indeed, party political broadcasts might be shown on television as comedy entertainment.) 

The following classic reprint was written by F. C. Watts, one of the finest writers of the early years of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and was published in the Socialist Standard in January 1907.

GUS: You socialists ought to be grateful for the glorious institution of the free press instead of criticising the great newspapers as you do.

WILL: Grateful to whom? The so-called freedom of the press is, in reality, painfully limited; but such as it is, it was granted because absolutely necessary to commercial development. Material interests dictated it; not any love of the people. The capitalist class give us nothing but what it is to their interest to give, either to increase their profits or stave off their defeat, and we know from bitter experience that we have most to fear when our enemies profess a regard for us. 

GUS: But can you deny that the great daily newspapers are glorious and beneficient institutions, fearlessly standing out for truth and purity in public life? 

WILL: I emphatically and entirely deny every word of it!

GUS: Do you mean to say that the modern press is not free, or that it suppresses or perverts the truth?

WILL: I mean to say that the modern newspaper, by its very nature as a commercial venture, cannot exist except by perverting the truth; and that it is absolutely the slave of capitalist interests.

GUS: You surprise me. Explain yourself.

WILL: With pleasure. Now, newspapers are run by limited liability companies to obtain a profit, are they not?

GUS: That is so.

WILL: To get a profit they must sell; to sell they must please, to please they must suit themselves to the prejudices, ignorance or interests of their supporters.

     (Gus opens his eyes)

WILL: They cannot, then, afford to continue any line of policy when it does not pay, or when it is unpopular with the public or with that section of which they have constituted themselves the mouthpiece. To get the largest circulation and the greatest percentage of profit they must say what their readers or supporters want them to say, or else go under.

     (Gus looks startled)

WILL: Nor is that all; they have an even more important person to cater for — the advertiser. He is partly satisfied if the journal panders successfully to a large number of the public; but as a manufacturer he has important capitalist interests, and therefore would not support, by his advertisement, any journal that, through a love of truth, attacked his interests in any way.

    (Gus looks frightened)

WILL: Further, the various sections of the capitalist party have enormous campaign funds, and the newspapers, being run for profit, must slavishly support their capitalist party interest or forgo their reward. And the journalists who run the papers are the wage-slaves of the proprietors, compelled to utter, not what they think, but what their employers consider will sell best, and will please most the capitalist interest.

   (Gus tries to hide himself, Will holds him back)

WILL: Don’t run away, I’ve not done yet. The modern newspaper is thus, in the main, the reflection of the commonest, most superficial and most servile opinions of the public, and at the same time the advocate of the interests of its capitalist owners and advertisers. It is, therefore, against the financial policy of the modern newspaper to enlighten the working class; particularly in any direction that runs counter to capitalist interests. To satisfy its principal clients, the great advertisers and the political leaders, it must expound the views of the ruling class (or of a section thereof) and so doctor these views that the people may easily swallow them. It must, whenever the workers show a tendency to think clearly, carefully draw the wool over their eyes in order to keep them at the tail of the capitalist party and ignorant of the things that should concern them. For the rest, in order to earn its profits, the newspaper must batten on the ignorance and folly of its public.

GUS (who feels that the scales have fallen from his eyes): Well, but how can we alter it?

WILL: Only by abolishing the profit system. But we can help this on by doing all in our power to spread enlightenment among the workers and so show them the utter worthlessness of capitalist journalism; we can help by organising the workers for the overthrow of capitalist domination, and by pointing out that it is their duty to support a press of their own, not run by an individual or company (or profit, but owned and controlled by a genuine working-class organisation for the propagation of definite working-class principles. Thus alone can the education and emancipation of the working class be accomplished, and the freedom of the press from the curse of profit and capitalist domination become a fact.

F. C. Watts

Editorial: Heroism or Imbecility? (1905)

Editorial from the August 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

“To no section of the industrious working-class are we under deeper obligation than to the miners …. The Kingdom and Empire of which it is the heart, owe much to Welsh coal. … No deed of valour on the battlefield can surpass the splendid but quiet and unostentatious bravery which these rough workers display . . .” 

Yes, according to the capitalist press the whole world stands agog at the heroism of the miner in times of catastrophe similar to the recent explosion which took such a fearful toll of working-class life in a Welsh mine. But let these same heroes take a stand in order to secure a few of the comforts of life to set off against the dreadful hazards that they daily face; let them organize to fight the capitalist class for some improvement in the unmitigated hardships of their condition ; let them so much as hint a threat against the liberty of their masters to take the whole product of mine labour less that diminishing quantity necessary to the maintenance of the physical effectiveness of the miner, and this same Press will send such a howl of indignation up to high heaven at the unutterable selfishness that would reduce profits, and the crass stupidity whose insistent demands can only be satisfied at the risk of driving trade out of the country, that the workers in alarm cease their agitation or reduce their request by one half or (which amounts to the same thing) hasten to agree to the appointment of a conciliation Board, under the impression that they have done a wicked thing, or, with the idea generally fostered by their leaders, that they must do nothing to alienate public sympathy.

“Heroes” they are when they suffer suffocation without protest; endure hardships without complaint. “Bulwarks of the Empire” they, when they return to work without hesitation even while their comrades’ mutilated bodies are being brought out of the bowels of the earth. But let them organize for some amelioration in what is ironically designated their “lot” and they are scum to be flouted or children to be wheedled or dogs to be shot as at Featherstone—shot ruthlessly, unhesitatingly, with the calculated approval of capitalist hacks misnamed Labour Leaders who, having mounted to position upon working-class backs, betray the trust and sell the interest confided to their keeping. The line between working-class heroism and working-class imbecility is, in the eyes of capitalism, thin indeed. And seeing that, however small the demand, capitalist good opinion (the preservation of which to the unenlightened working-class mind is so important) is alienated; however feeble the protest capitalist love is turned into hate, capitalist bullets take the place of capitalist benevolence, it does seem to the casual observer that workers in the mine and factory stand to lose nothing by increasing their demand from the present absurdly ineffectual ha’penny or penny an hour advance in wages or the establishment of the status quo ante Farwell, to the demand for the full result of their labour and the abolition of an altogether useless and unnecessary capitalist class.

The “Bootless” boom. (1913)

From the April 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Those who wish to understand the phenomenon of working-class discontent should give their attention to the table of food prices just furnished by the Board of Trade. It covers the exact period of the present Government’s official life, and is therefore a dramatic comment on the theory that the secret of Cheap Food lies in the maintenance of Free Trade. There is scarcely an article of diet in which these seven years have not recorded rising prices. Bread is higher by only 4 per cent. in the ordinary retail trade ; but, as contract supplies show an increase of 9 per cent., and flour is up 13 per cent., it is impossible not to suspect that the figure is steadied by a reduction of quality. Beef has risen by 14 per cent.—counterbalanced, if one likes to think so, by a cheapening of ‘second quality’ and ‘inferior’ mutton. Sugar is slightly above the level of seven years ago, despite the reduction of the duty, and the great tendency of the markets is shown by an advance of 19 per cent. on potatoes, 16 per cent. on eggs, 14 per cent. on butter, 17 per cent. on milk, 21 per cent. on oatmeal, 22 per cent. on bacon, and 25 per cent. on cheese.”

“The wholesale value of certain imported foodstuffs shows a still more startling discrepancy, the rise in tea being 21 per cent., rice 32 per cent., coffee 46 per cent., and tapioca 89 per cent. Taking the facts as a whole, they mean that the cost of living has exceeded any gain that the working classes have secured in the means of facing it. All that has been effected in the way of raising wages, whether by trade unions or by other methods, has been nullified by the trend of prices, and at the end of seven years marked by strenuous agitation and political effort the wage-earner finds himself worse off than before. The causes of this tragic conclusion may be complex, but one fact is plain—that the parties which have dominated legislation for these seven years as the self-appointed champions of the working man are completely off the track. Whatever nominal concessions they may have gained for him are fruitless, because they have persisted in ignoring the essentials of their position. Free Trade can neither check the clearness of living nor advance the remuneration of labour. In good times it only allows the worker to make ends meet, and in bad times it throws him on to the brink, or into the gulf, of destitution. While the wealth of the country is increasing and Mr. Burns talks of “striding the world like a Colossus,”the producers of wealth only see that life is made harder for them than ever. Under the operation, of Cobdenism the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, and under these conditions we have no title to be surprised if a spirit of social revolution should exhibit itself in extending areas and with ever-increasing menace.”

Italics ours.

The above has not been written for the Socialist Standard, but is culled from the columns of the “Pall Mail Gazette” (14.2.13). In it we are not only reminded of the paradox (if such it can be called under the operation of the anar­chical system of production for profit instead of for use) that “booming trade” and “wealth striding the world like a Colossus” do not necessarily mean “boots for all,” but, what is more, our ever-challenged contention of the worsening trend of working-class conditions under capitalism is once again substantiated and admitted by capitalist authority. It will be remembered that only a little over a year ago that other worthy agent of slave-holders, Mr. Lloyd George, reminded a more or less interested world that “to-day you have greater poverty in the land and a more severe economic bondage than you ever had before.”

Although the scribe of the “Pall Mall Ga­zette” criticises the “self-appointed champions of the working class” for “ignoring the essentials of the workers’ position,” and fails himself to state these essentials, yet anyone who knows for what section of the master class Mr. Garvin and his co-workers on the “Pall Mall Gazette” have to write, and what interests they have to serve, will be familiar with what constitutes for the said organ “essentials,” and the alternative policy to “arrest” the worsening tendency. And even “Labour leaders”—who are too blinded by their own selfish interests to perceive the utter futility of (and, in fact, mostly support) the petty quack measures advocated in the daily Press, which are merely destined to enable the present system of exploitation to continue working smoothly, in other words to consolidate the system—I say even those who thus use the ignorance of the workers for their own aggrandisement, will not fear, in the case of the “P.M.G,” any essential deviation from its old policy or suspect it of adopting the revolutionary attitude.

The daily Press will still admit that the appalling poverty and misery are confined to the ranks of the working class, but they are far from disappointing our influential “leaders of Labour” by speaking of such things as antagonisms of interests existing between capitalists and wage workers. One might as well expect the Keir Hardies aud Blatchfords themselves to insist on the necessity of understanding that the problem of poverty is essentially one of class, and can only be met by the organisation of the workers on the cardinal principle of the irreconcilable and uncompromising class war.

Thus, although the writer left the reader to draw his own conclusion, the “P.M.G.” has long made it sufficiently clear that its only alternative to the ravages of Cobdenism is—Tariff Reform ! Presumably the poor scribe thought it desirable, for the holy sake of “expediency” (or for his own sake) to refrain, at this juncture, from mentioning the sacred battle-cry.

The essentials of the working-class position, indeed ! Could it be expected that Mr. Garvin’s paymasters would allow a statement of the real essentials ? or the publication of the result of a scientific investigation ? No. The nature of the essentials of the working-class position is such as to make their propounding utterly incompatible with the respectability of the “P.M.G.” Their nostrums do not only not disturb the peace of the slaveholders, but actually lead a section of them to a better exploitation of, and a tighter grip over, their unfortunate victims. And Tariff Reform, the nostrum of the aforementioned organ, would, of course, not make an exception in this.

We need only look to the Tariff-enjoying countries both on the Continent and in America, to get the lie direct to the rhetorical assurances of those capitalist hacks who claim that tariff walls are a safeguard for the prosperity of the workers. From time to time hostile clamours are heard going up in those countries against the dearness, and the still further rising of the prices, of the necessaries of life, which unmistakably show that there is equally an inadequacy on the part of the workers of those lands “in their means of facing it.”

Such outcries often reach these shores and find prominence in the Press. Who does not remember the reports of the recent upheavals in France and Belgium, the revolt of the housewives in the market places, the chronic protests and popular demonstrations demanding the abolition of import duties on food-stuffs in Austria, Germany, Spain, etc., in the States as well as in South America ?

The following, which appeared in the “Daily News and Leader” for Feb. 28, is typical of these constantly recurring news items :—

“PROTECTIONIST DUTIES TO BE REDUCED OR ABOLISHED.”

“Rio De Janeiro, Feb. 26.”

“The Government has decided to proceed with the revision and reduction of protectionist duties, and has authorised the Minister of Finance to reduce or, if need be, to abolish import duties on necessaries of life. This step has been resolved upon by the Council of Ministers as the result of the popular outcries against the dearness of food.—REUTER.”

In it not also significant that the reduction of import duties formed one of the issues at the last Presidential election in the United States?

For all those workers who still are under the illusion that different fiscal systems can have any influence whatever on the economic position of the working class the present writer has a wish that their “walks of life” might lead them amongst the working population of foreign industrial centres, say, for instance, in Austria. He feels convinced that it would be an eye-opener to them, and that they would speedily find out that what the Welsh Apostle of Free Trade said a little while ago of Britain, namely, that “that condition of things was foreign to the barbarities even of the darker ages,” is perfectly true of Protectionist countries. Unemployment is just as acute. A Budapest daily, the “Neues Pester Journal,” for February 11th which came into the hands of the present writer, dealt editorially with the problem of unemployment in that city. Here is word for word what it said:—

“To day there are in our capital more than 30,000 unemployed, who, with their families, are faced with the most pressing destitution, and are unable to find work. Thereby it must be taken into consideration that these workers, in consequence of the misery in which they find themselves, are willing to take on any work and are only too pleased to earn 60 or 80 heller (6d. or 8d.) for ten and twelve hours labour. During the last few weeks the large timber merchants have had hundreds of applications from unemployed offering their services for 20 heller (2d.) a day.”

If we bear in mind that the total number of workers in Budapest is approximately 100,000, it will be clear what an appalling amount of human misery there must exist in this Protection enjoying country.

Instances showing the terrible plight of the workers all over the world, side by side with ever-improving means of wealth production and greater command over natural resources, could be multiplied, but space does not permit.

The truth is that the class interest of the owners of those means of wealth production stand in the way of their manipulation for the common benefit. It is the historic mission of the working class to organise in order to break down the barrier, but so long as they superstitiously believe in the “sacred rights of property” inculcated by their masters, so long will they continue to be the unconscious dupes of the political bunglers.

F.

Blogger's Note:

Early Socialist Standard writers had a habit of signing off their articles with only their initials or, in this case, a single letter. 'K' was Adolph Kohn,  'W' was F. C. Watts, 'A' was Alex Anderson and, of course, Edgar Hardcastle wrote for the Socialist Standard for many decades under the pen-name of 'H'. 

A hundred plus years later that obviously sometimes makes it difficult to identify lesser used initials in the pages of the Socialist Standard but sometimes the articles they pen reveal wee clues. My guess is that 'F.' was Rudolf Frank. 'F'. mentions in this article the condition of the working class in Austria, and also quotes from a paper published in Budapest. Frank would have been travelling in these countries at this time and would have had access to this information.

Contemporary Voices (1976)

From the May 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The form and nature of the General Strike is discussed elsewhere in this journal: What we deal with here is the fact that the capitalist class in 1926, and no less today, were aware that there are many ways to skin a cat. The strike hit the production of newspapers, but not to such an extent that the propaganda of the capitalist class was made impossible. The copy to hand — the 4 page Continental edition of the Daily Mail for Monday, 10th May 1926 — leaves no doubt that it was directed almost entirely to the British market. The paper itself describes how “no feer [sic] than 30,000 copies” of the previous day’s edition had reached England in the morning by air and were distributed nationally, while a further 150,000 arrived by boat in the early afternoon. We give here some excerpts, all from different articles, to illustrate the force of the propaganda war waged on the strikers.

The headlines above the lead article set the tone:

BUSINESS AS USUAL IN SPITE OF THE STRIKE.

GREAT FIRMS THAT ARE CARRYING ON.

LISTS FROM ALL PARTS OF BRITAIN.

MORE WORKERS GO BACK.

TRANSPORT SERVICES INCREASED.

The greater part of the article is then taken up with a list of approximately 100 of these “great” firms from Glasgow to the Isle of Wight. The strike was pronounced illegal, but not merely by the Daily Mail reporters, the experts were brought in:

Lord Mersey, the eminent jurist has expressed his entire agreement with the great lawyers who have already condemned the general strike as illegal. Speaking of the speech made by Sir John Simon in the House of Commons on Thursday night, in which it was pointed out that every workman who had broken his contract and every trade union official who had advised and prompted that course was liable to damages, Lord Mersey said to a Daily Mail reporter yesterday. I agree completely. It is good law.

Having received judgement in advance from the “good”, the “great” and the “eminent”, how the capitalist class must have greeted the prospect of wringing the immense wealth of the strikers from them in the law courts. However, the government was devising more hideous means of revenge. The paper reported that the strike was costing “Britain” £lm. a day:

An increase in direct taxation to meet the bill is contemplated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he has stated categorically that he will require to impose substantial increases in indirect taxation. In other words, the strikers, who have deliberately brought this disaster on the nation, will be made to pay for it in higher beer and other taxes.

All (and only) strikers drank beer of course. As for some of the others — item:

Employés [sic] of the Oxford and District Omnibus Company called together to consider strike action, refused to hear the speakers and sang “Land of Hope and Glory.”

But even the strikers had their moments of light relief — item:

Police v Strikers. At a football match at Plymouth between strikers and the local police on Saturday, the Chief Constable’s wife kicked-off.

No mention of the result however. The government had issued a "new pledge to all strikers” through the BBC which the paper publicized in a front page block in capitals:

Everyman who does his duty by the country and remains at work, or returns to work during the present crisis will be protected by the State from the loss of trade union benefits, superannuation allowances, or pensions. His Majesty’s government will take whatever steps are necessary in Parliament, or otherwise, for this purpose. [Signed] Stanley Baldwin.

The General Council of the TUC was nervously making its attitude known:

We also want to make it clear that we are not challenging, as is clearly inferred in one part of Mr. Baldwin’s spech, [sic] the rules, the laws or the customs of our Constitution. We are certain that so far as we are concerned the Premier will find us willing to listen to any statements he may make.

The advertisements add some colour. While it was with some regret that we noted under “London Amusements” column that “The Great Lover” at the Shaftesbury Theatre was “closed until further notice”; it was going to take more than a general strike to stop some:

Drages of Holborn offer Mr. and Mrs. Everyman living in London or 20 miles outside, the convenience of their private motor car service to convey those selecting furniture to and from the showrooms.

While elsewhere the Gleneagles Hotel was pointing out that every summer it attracted “the leading figures of the British social scene. Duke’s son and dramatist, statesman and sportsman, tee up on the famous golf courses and enjoy the finest holiday that Britain has to offer. Top-of-the-tree men [monkeys?] swarm at Gleneagles. They know the right thing. Wise in labour, wise in leisure. The best folk go to Gleneagles because it is the best place to go.” They point out that a night-sleeper would take you there. Driven no doubt by one of the volunteer engine-drivers whose photographs appear on the back page. The previous day (a Sunday) was described by the Mail in terms so partisan that only the capitalist hacks could fail to see any contradiction:

Sabbath Calm. The results of all this was that London passed a very peaceful Sunday. The town almost returned to that old fashioned calm which used to be the wonder of Continental visitors. Churches were better attended than usual and special prayers for the national welfare were offered . . . In the Bird’s Cage Walk a detachment of the Royal Tank Corps is sharing the Guards Barracks. There have [sic] a column of armoured cars with them and elsewhere in South London a number of heavy tanks are parked.

The Church, of course had something to say, and workers today should note carefully who had and (still have) “god on their side.”

Cardinal Bourne, the Archbishop of Westminster, during High Mass at Westminster Cathedral yesterday made the following declarations; there is no moral justification for a general strike of this character. It is a direct challenge to a lawfully constituted authority and inflicts without adequate reason immense discomfort and injury on millions of our fellow countrymen. It is therefore a sin against the obedience which we owe to God, Who is the source of that authority, and against the charity and brotherly love which are due to our brethren. All are bound to oppose it and assist the Government.

After three full pages of unadulterated opposition to the strike, the Mail writers ran out of steam, and had to rest. The back page is dominated by photographs under the heading “Pictorial phases of the General Strike”. What is notable here is that a reader would be unaware that there was any strike. We have volunteer railway-men, special constables on their way to work, members of the Chelsea Naval Depot eagerly reading the Daily Mail (what else?), and city working girls who have turned their offices into bedrooms to obviate transport problems to and from work. But a striker? Or a closed factory? Not one. When the newspaper could attack them no more, it simply ignored them. A deliberate policy aimed at confusing and dividing opinion against the strike. As far as public opinion was concerned, the paper published one letter only. It inevitably reflected a view with which the owners of the Daily Mail would agree. Although fifty years old now, it has a current ring to it:

The country is sick to death of these so-called trade union leaders. They are nothing else but revolutionaries notwithstanding their protests. Trade Unionism has got out of hand and requires to be clubbed on the head to put it back in its proper place.

As we watch Messrs. Murray, Jones and Scanlon of the present-day entering into “negotiations” with the government over how far the living standards of the working class can be permitted to fall, the correspondent would no doubt agree that they are now back in their “proper place.” The point is that the trade unions were not revolutionary in 1926 — in Britain or elsewhere. If this had been the case we should have no trade unions, with or without leaders, today. Nor should we be reading "yesterday’s news” in the knowledge that tomorrow morning we can read the same sentiments all over again.

Alan.

Economics and ideas. Their influence on political institutions (part 7) (1925)

From the October 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Concluded from last month).

School, Press and Platform.

The impregnation of the worker’s mind with individualist beliefs and his delusion of freedom are obviously a tremendous asset— practically a necessity—to the smooth running and perpetuation of the capitalist order. This was early recognised by intelligent agents of the employing class, and, from the dawn of the system the deliberate fostering and strengthening of such ideas by propaganda was attempted—but in an inefficient and unorganised way. But after the workers had won the franchise, definite organs for their “instruction” in the “way they should think” were necessary. “Now, if ever,” says Engels, “the people must be kept in order by moral means.” Engels, in his “Socialism—Utopian and Scientific” (Introduction), goes on to show the use the English bourgeoisie made of religion. Here we will consider three other agents—the school, the press, and the platform.

Upon the passing of the Reform Bill of 1867, one prominent politician sarcastically exclaimed, “Now we must educate our new masters.” Within three years the first State education scheme in England was adopted, and the Board Schools established. Six years later (1876), elementary education was made compulsory. No worker could now escape from acquiring not only the groundwork of bourgeois ideology in his most impressionable years, but also the special national applications of it through falsified history and the glorification of his “heritage”—the constitutional “charter” of his “liberties.” The training of the young worker was a master stroke of the ruling class.

Newspapers from their origin had hitherto been primarily organs of opinion and information amongst the propertied classes— and solid, serious, relatively trustworthy, and comparatively expensive. But when the workers had the capacity to read and the power of the vote, the press developed a new purpose and with it new methods and characteristics. The press especially for proletarian consumption—the sensational, hypocritical, lying, “yellow press”— appeared. In 1855 the Stamp Act had been repealed, and this, with new developments in paper-making, made a more popular press possible. New cheap papers sprang up all over the country, and old ones reduced their price. But it was after the extension of the franchise that the great developments occurred. The “Britannica” article, “Newspapers,” clearly states its basis:—

“Between 1870 and 1880 a complete revolution was effected as a result of social and educational changes” (564). “The modern impulse culminating in England in the last decade of the 19th century in what was then called the ‘New Journalism,’ was a direct product of American conditions and ways of life (political democracy), but in Great Britain it was also the result of the democratic movement produced by the Education Act of 1870 and the Reform Act of 1885, and it affected more or less all countries which came within the influence of free institutions.” (11th ed., vol. 19, p. 547.)

The modern newspaper sets before the worker distorted “news” and a view of affairs deliberately calculated to foster the hold over him of bourgeois ideology. It does not produce this ideology, but constantly provides fresh details acceptable to it—the “evidence” upon which it feeds and thrives.

That unique political fact, an enfranchised slave-class, furthermore, meant the unqualified triumph of the type of politician whose business it is to deliberately cajole and mislead the electorate. In his “Democracy and Liberty,” Lecky deplores the deterioration of English “political morality” that came after 1867—without, however, recording the true cause of it. The new political showmen were a necessity of the new political situation. They became the latest popular “heroes of society.” To regularly give a semblance of intense sincerity to the most hypocritical arguments is no light task, and men who excelled in it won the gratitude of the ruling class. Lloyd George is, of course, a splendid latter-day specimen, but perhaps the most skilful of all the modern political demagogues was Gladstone. Lecky, in the book mentioned, commenting on his special abilities says :—

“No one could compare with him in dexterity of word fencing and hair-splitting, and in the evasive subtleties of debate. . . . Nothing was more curious than to hear him make a speech on a subject on which he did not wish to give an opinion. The long roll of sonorous and misty sentences, each statement ingeniously qualified, each approach to precision so skilfully shaded by some calculated ambiguity of phrase, speedily baffled the attentive listener. . . . There was seldom a speaker from whose words it was so difficult to extricate a precise meaning; who so constantly used language susceptible of different interpretations; who so often seemed to say a thing, and by seeming to say it raised hopes and won influence and applause without definitely binding himself to it. Further, no other great politician so habitually steeped his politics in emotion, and this was one great cause of his wide, popular influence.”

Gladstone became the most popular and adored statesman of his time, and his portrait, along with that of Jesus Christ, still defaces the walls in thousands of working-class houses. Finally, it is significant that in the United States—the land of “liberty” in excelsis—where the workers have been enfranchised for a longer period than in any other capitalist State, the art of the “spell-binder”—of gushing, emotional, meaningless, wordy rhetoric—has achieved its most exquisite development.

The Modern State. 

The school, the press, and the platform are used assiduously to foster the “great illusion” of capitalism—that the worker is a free man, possessing freedom of opportunity with every other man, and liberty of contract. The preservation of this illusion is almost a necessity to, and is certainly one of the greatest safeguards of, the present system—and is recognised as such by the clear-sighted agents of the ruling class. The bourgeoisie are compelled to avoid anything that will tend to destroy this illusion. Even the “right to strike,” apparently menaced from time to time by “compulsory arbitration” schemes, is a necessity to the capitalists as well as to the workers—and the more far-seeing members of the employing class well know it. If ever the capitalists, in the height of fear and folly, endeavour to force the proletariat, as a class, to labour by law, and thus to thrust them into a legally recognised worker’s “status,” then indeed their days of power will be numbered.

For the same reason we may regard the enfranchisement of the workers, once established, as a necessity for the continued existence of the system. The ideology of the proletariat, flowing, as we have seen, from the relations of production, makes it inevitable. Engels says :

“The highest form of the State, the democratic republic, knows officially nothing of property distinctions. It is that form of the State which, under modern conditions of society, becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity. The last decisive struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie can only be fought out under this State form” (“Origin of the Family,” p. 210).

But we must not, of course, overlook the fact that the capitalist system and its State forms are still in process of development, and that there exists to-day in concrete reality a number of capitalist societies, each with a different history and each showing minor traits peculiar to itself. In Europe nearly every State contains vestigial institutions left over from Feudalism which affect its activities to a greater or less degree. More important, however, is the fact that capitalist production has by no means completely eliminated petty industry, and, in particular, wherever the peasantry are numerically very strong, as in Spain, France, and Italy, democratic forms can at least be temporarily suspended without immediate injury to the ruling class. Were the majority of the Italian population, for instance, proletarians, it is certain that the Fascisti reaction would have been much more hazardous, if not impossible.

The necessity of the Parliamentary State, with an enfranchised working class, where capitalism is highly developed and the industrial proletariat strong, was vividly demonstrated after the collapse of the German Empire in 1918, when, amid an unprecedented political crisis, when larger masses of workers were agitated and organised for revolt than probably at any other time in capitalist history, the bourgeoisie were compelled to set up the most democratic republican constitution in the world, with male and female suffrage over the age of twenty, proportional representation, and the referendum.

The State, however, of no matter what period or what form—monarchic, oligarchic, or parliamentary—remains in essence the same. It has one function, and one essential function alone—the preservation of the property of the exploiting class, and, accordinglv, the suppression of the exploited. Throughout the history of capitalism the State has served as the instrument of the bourgeoisie. The slaughter of the Communards of Paris, the bloody suppression of strikes all over the world, from Homestead to Featherstone, Colorado to Johannesburg, are evidence that it has served right well its historic function.

The capitalist class dominate society to-day because they control the public forces of coercion. But, unlike the ruling classes of other ages, this control does not arise from the fact that they themselves are the essential part of those forces. The bourgeoisie are not, and never have been, a military class. They, unlike their predecessors at the helm of State, are not only economically, but politically and militarily, entirely dependent upon the working masses. The workers make up almost in entirety the armed forces, and the workers, through the political machinery and through their bourgeois ideas, place these forces in the hands of their oppressors. The capitalists rule the immense majority of society because that immense majority sanctions their rule. The slave and the serf knew they were enslaved and exploited; the wage-worker does not. The economic relations of modern production serve to disguise the fact of exploitation, and, furthermore, tend to generate that widespread individualism and the illusion of freedom that facilitates the inculcation of ideas and opinions favourable to bourgeois rule.

As Engels says :

“The possessing class rule directly through universal suffrage. For so long as the oppressed class, in this case the proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one possible” (“Origin of the Family,” p. 210).

And when will the proletariat be “ripe for its emancipation”— except just when they realise that they require emancipating and understand the facts of their exploitation? Not when they begin to know that there is something rotten in the state of capitalism—for they know that now—but when they realise the cause of that rottenness. Then, when they grasp the truth that the evils of capitalism are inherent and inevitable, not accidental and curable, will they set about its destruction and the inauguration of a Socialist society in which the producers will control production and the distribution of its product. This transformation of attitude towards the system will involve, necessarily, the shattering of the illusion of “freedom,” and the replacement of economic individualism by a realisation of the possibilities of social ownership.

The essential process that must precede the proletarian revolution is the preparation and education of the workers for their revolutionary task. By “education” we mean, primarily, the education flowing from observation and reasoning—the instruction of experience. To-day Socialists as a body are largely students who have acquired their mental outlook on society to a great extent by books and lectures—secondhand, so to speak. So long as the simple elements of Socialist thought generally necessitate this kind of preparation, the Socialist movement is in its early, almost embryonic, stage. Not until the basic proposition of Socialist theory takes root in the minds of masses of men because they are the inescapable inferences from the facts of social life, provide the obvious solution for the pressing, immediate problems of the social situation, and are so self-evident that no counter-propaganda can efface them—not until then can we consider that the movement has reached maturity.

There is evidence that capitalism has yet a considerable future before it; a future of intensive exploitation of the yet untouched areas of the earth; a future of economic centralisation crushing out the last effective remnants of individualism; a future of imperialism and war, of industrial and political anarchy without parallel; a future in which the workers will be hammered and battered into a recognition of social realities.

But alongside the education of experience and practice will go also the education in theoretical principles and tactics born of the conception of history we owe so greatly to Marx. The first form will provide the necessary groundwork of class-consciousness; the second, the essential guidance to a policy avoiding the pitfalls and errors that beset a revolutionary class groping its way amid endless problems along the path towards emancipation.

When the “knell of capitalist private property sounds” and the workers are massed in their might to overwhelm the puny masqueraders—fossil guardians of order and civilisation—they will move with a resolute intention that nothing can frustrate, win the powers of society from the paralysed hands of the parasites of property, and, with confidence born of knowledge, forged in struggle, build up on the basis of man’s conquests over nature the Co-operative Commonwealth.

R.W Housley

The Moulders of Public Opinion. (1922)

Pamphlet Review from the December 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Observant readers, who are not aware of the forces behind the Press, must have often wondered why the same company will sometimes run Liberal and Tory papers or, more significant still, why the same paper will at one time support one party and at another time support the opponents of that party. An important array of facts and figures explaining these and many other apparently bewildering actions of popular daily and weekly papers, is given in the exceedingly useful pamphlet issued by The Labour Research Department, 162, Buckingham Palace Road, under the terse title of “The Press.” Why one set of papers will change with every alteration of the political weathercock—except when they change oftener—while another set remain steadfast to a given policy year in and year out, is explained here in the cold, calculating terms of finance and figures. Altogether this excellent publication, at the price of 6d., is well worth the study of every worker, whether man or woman.

Editorial: Shall We Mourn? (1922)

Editorial from the September 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

On August 15th the newspapers displayed large headlines announcing the death of Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper magnate. It is an interesting sidelight on the sham hostilities of the papers, that those who were lately his bitter enemies—on paper !—are now deploring his loss as that of “a great national figure and a prince of journalists.”

Working men who ponder over the actions of such “great men” are not moved to deplore his loss. It is to them but the loss of one who has climbed upon their shoulders ; a member of the privileged class ; a staunch supporter of the evil that Capitalism signifies—the havoc of wars and the miseries of peace.

The daily Press, without exception, exists in the main, not merely to give news “calculated to attract at the moment the legitimate interest of a reasonable man or woman,” as one paper would have us believe, but to provide a source of income to the proprietors. In doing this, it endeavours to gloss over the worst features of Capitalism and keep the workers satisfied with the present system of wealth production, which brings ease and comfort to the propertied few, and overwork and misery to the property-less many.

A large slice of the revenue of a newspaper comes from advertisements. A paper that cannot command a large circle of advertisers stands little chance of surviving.

Broadly speaking, those who advertise in the newspapers (we are referring to large advertisers, of course) favour the paper having the largest circulation among those interested in such advertisers’ wares; at the same time, being Capitalists, they will fight shy of a paper publishing information likely to harm their enterprises. Consequently the proprietors of a newspaper have two points of prime importance to bear in mind in the conduct of their journals—to obtain as large a circulation as possible, and, at the same time, to avoid, if possible, publishing anything that may offend their advertisers. The importance of the latter point many an Editor has learnt to his cost.

From the above we can see what attitude a flourishing newspaper must of necessity take towards the workers. It must side with the masters in keeping the workers in servitude. The news we are favoured with is selected with this end in view, though the papers dare not keep back some matters without risking a fall in the circulation upon which largely depends the quantity and value of the advertisements received.

Lord Northcliffe was a successful newspaper proprietor because his papers were conducted with a careful eye to these points ; in other words, he was an enemy of the working class.

How much the Press is concerned about the workers is illustrated by the statement of one paper (Daily News, 15/8/22), which, in an editorial, makes the following reference to Northcliffe’s death :—

“Next to the war, it is probably the most important fact in the history of this generation.”

What a callous lie ! The most important fact in the history of this generation is the fact that hundreds of thousands—ay, millions—of human beings are dying of overwork and underfeeding in presence of wealth, and means of producing wealth, accumulated in quantities undreamt of in the world before. Beside this the death of a newspaper magnate sinks into insignificance.

The Daily News (15/8/22) whilst commenting on Northcliffe’s death, made the following significant remarks :—

  “His judgment of men was sound, with the result that he surrounded himself with a band of able colleagues and assistants, who did much to aid him in establishing and carrying on the manifold undertakings of which he was the founder.”

The above remarks may excuse us for making a little digression.

Turn, to the life of any of the so-called “Great Men” produced by Capitalism, and it will be found that the tale is nearly always similar; they climbed to wealth and fame by appropriating the product of other men’s brains.

In this connection two men in particular may be mentioned—Andrew Carnegie and Pierpont Morgan. Both acquired huge fortunes, and both accomplished this end by using the genius of others.

Carnegie, the “great” ironmaster, knew nothing of metallurgy, but employed those who did, and rose to affluence on the results of their genius. He successfully took the fruits of others’ toil from the time he got control of Woodruff’s invention of the embryonic Pullman car until his mills turned out steel made by the Bessemer process, the process discovered by a genius whose name is unknown.

Pierpont Morgan acquired much of his “fame” in connection with the organisation of combinations in the American railway industry. He is spoken of as having had a marvellous head for taking in the position of the affairs of a company almost at a glance. How did this “great” man do the trick? The following quotation from “The Life Story of J. Pierpont Morgan,” by Carl Hovey (Heinemann), gives the key :—

  “All credit for this series of railroad rehabilitations is by no means his alone ; to one of his partners—the late Charles H. Coster—was assigned the task of solving the intricate and interwoven relations of railroad obligations, bonds, underlying bonds, collateral trust mortgages, and every other artificial form of securing a loan—and determining the amount fairly represented by each. Coster was a kind of rare genius, a sort of financial chemist, and possessed a gift of analysis in this new and difficult field; it often happened, when everyone else was baffled, that he alone was able to lay before his chief solutions clear and sound, which made it possible for Mr. Morgan to go ahead with his plans for a new structure” (p. 233).

That is how the trick was done ! And that is the way the “prince of journalists” did the trick.

When the workers of the world own the product of their labours, there will be no need for one to steal the work of another. Each will take his part in the production of needful things, and each will share in the enjoyment of such things.