American independence and its mythology (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776 is upon us, it seems like a good time for socialists to assess this momentous event. Marx, in contrast to his writing on the American Civil War, has little to say about the conflict other than that he saw it as progressive but unresolved until the North’s victory over the South in 1865.

Although we have little interest in the international and internecine struggles between members of the bourgeoisie, what of the claim that these events on the east coast of North America constituted a revolution? If so what kind of revolution and was Marx correct as seeing the transition of 13 colonies into a nation-state as a progressive event in respect of the long-term aim of socialism? A cynic might suggest it was the capitalists of both states and their hatred of paying tax that generated the conflict between them. That the early USA was almost entirely dependent on slave labour for its wealth does make the shouts for liberty and justice rather hollow and hypocritical but then the international bourgeoisie have always been masters of myth creation and, as ever, it falls to Marxist socialists to try and separate myth from reality by stripping away the ideological overgrowth.

By 1763 the British had succeeded in expelling their French colonial rivals from North America but in doing so they had all but bankrupted their treasury. To maintain a series of forts to protect the victory was expensive and Parliament resolved to raise the revenue to pay for this by a series of taxes that regulated overseas trade on the 13 colonies. The colonists, on the other hand, thought that they had done their fair share of fighting to help the British defeat the French and saw no reason to pay for the honour. The climax to this came with the implementation of the hated ‘stamp act’ which was the first direct tax imposed by the British.

In 1763 the British had also forbidden any further expansion west because, for one thing, they feared the cost of going to war with the native Americans. However, the colonists saw the west as ripe for land speculation and they proceeded to create a ‘general assembly’ in the same year to oppose these British measures under the slogan: ‘No taxation without representation’. In response London passed a series of ‘quartering acts’ that imposed British troop garrisons in many of the leading towns with the added insult that the locals should provide them with food and shelter. Boston erupted and British ships were confiscated, whilst embargoes were placed on imports and exports to the ‘old country’. This was an act of rebellion against the crown which resulted in an invasion of Boston in 1768. Boston became a hotbed of rebellion with constant tension and violent skirmishes which in 1770 climaxed with the infamous ‘Boston Massacre’ in which many colonists were killed. Riots followed including the famous ‘Boston Tea Party’ where British ships were looted and their cargoes destroyed. By now the Americans had begun to create armouries for what they regarded as an inevitable war. On discovering the location of one of these a British army marched on Concord to seize the armaments but were confronted along the way at Lexington by a colonial militia and the first battle of the war took place.

The war was to last until 1781 when the British surrendered at Yorktown to the Americans and their French and Spanish allies. The colonists had won their independence but what kind of state would they create and was it in any way ‘revolutionary’? The propaganda against Britain had portrayed it as a feudal autocracy when, in fact, the King and his aristocrats (both old and newly created) had been capitalists for a good 100 years before the rise of merchant capitalism in the new world, and parliament was the final arbiter of policy.

The American economy was mainly based on the labour of chattel slavery and people like George Washington lived like ancient Roman patricians on massive slave estates. So in its formative years the republic saw very little change from the perspective of the black slaves and the poor white farmers. Britain was well into its ‘industrial revolution’ and was a much more progressive state than its new competitor. Most of the signatories of the ‘Declaration of Independence’ were slave owners who, apparently, saw no hypocrisy between the claims of liberty and justice for the white elite and the reality of life within for hundreds of thousands of enslaved inhabitants.

Thomas Jefferson began his political career opposing slavery but ended it as a racist bigot of the worst kind. In North America the conjunction of slavery and skin colour became enshrined in the American psyche and even after the ‘emancipation’ at the conclusion of the civil war many of the formerly enslaved became ‘share-croppers’ – in effect, little better than medieval serfs. America had progressed from chattel slavery to feudal serfdom. This kind of racism was to fuel the genocide of the Native Americans and so preserve the racial and political violence embedded deep within the culture which survives to this day. Of course, socialists are not surprised at the depths of bourgeois hypocrisy but the American oligarchs seem to have taken it to another level claiming that they have no empire and that their state violence was always in ‘defence of democracy’. Perhaps the origin of their state is one of the reasons for the US’s continual political backwardness? If 1781 was revolutionary it was an extremely reactionary revolution more akin to the Third Reich and its genocidal and slave-economy policies than to the English and French revolutions.

Many historians regard the relationship between the founders’ support of slavery and their call for liberty and justice as some kind of paradox; they shy away from the truth of the origin of their country being founded on a lie. It can be said that the absence of any mitigating counterforce to the free market capitalism embraced by the oligarchs made it possible for the northern states to invest millions of dollars into industrial technology and so become one of the most powerful economic powerhouses by the end of the nineteenth century – in that Marx was correct; but what he didn’t foresee was that this extremely technologically advanced country would not also enjoy a commensurable rise in working-class political consciousness. Consumerism, religion and nationalism would prevent any important political evolution and has led to the kind of authoritarian ‘king’ figure that America now endures. The world longs for the end of the murderous American imperialism which seems, at last, to be within sight. Its birth in violence, racism and genocide and the malign shadow that has forever haunted America as a result might finally destroy it. No doubt it will be replaced, in the absence of socialist consciousness, by an equally rapacious capitalist global empire of some kind. ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ will have to wait until people realise just how to make what was and is now just a platitude into something meaningful and real.

Wez.

Wage-labour v. Capital (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was once a story in circulation of Siamese twin brothers who hated one another from birth. Inseparably joined together, their hatred became deeper and more bitter with each inconvenience they caused one another. Either could have willingly killed his brother, but they were joined in such a manner that the death of one would mean the death of both. One could not exist without the other.

Thus it is with wage-labour and capital. Born together, they are inseparable yet they are antagonistic. They are complementary yet they are perpetually in opposition to one another. They strive strenuously against one another but the abolition of one means the end of both. Neither can exist without the other.

Capital is wealth that is invested for the purpose of producing further wealth with a view to profit. The process requires the bringing together of raw material, machinery and human effort. The capitalist owns the raw material and the machinery but the human effort he must obtain from the workers. He needs to obtain and use it in a particular manner—a manner known as wage-labour.

There have been other forms of labour in the past. There was once free labour, then slave labour and serf labour. These different forms served certain conditions but are useless to capital.

In very distant times men lived under social conditions now known as Primitive Communism. Under those conditions they worked with their very primitive tools to produce things in order that the whole community might use them. There was no question of profit, no question of some working to produce for the benefit of an idle section of the community. All who were capable assisted in the tasks of obtaining and preparing the things that were necessary to feed, clothe, house and maintain them all. They thought not of things as “Mine” or “Yours” but as “Ours—the property of us all.” Those conditions of labour were free. They are obviously useless to the capitalist who seeks only profit and relies on others to produce it.

Slave labour followed. This was a system where one section of the community owned, body and soul; lock, stock and barrel, a number of others—owned them and worked them as slaves. They had to feed them, clothe them and shelter them, whether they were working or not. Such conditions required, for the slave owners, that as far as possible there should be regular and constant work to be done so that they did not have to maintain slaves who were idle and temporarily useless to them. Their main problem was whether it was better to get slaves and work them to death and then get others, or whether it was cheaper to treat their slaves with some little consideration so that they had a long working life.

To the capitalist this form of labour is equally useless. He requires to be able to employ his labourers and dismiss them just when he has need. The wealth that his workers produce for him must go to a market and the condition of that market is unpredictable. The capitalist may have orders to fulfil to-day that may be doubled or may cease altogether to-morrow. He needs to get his labourers to suit his orders, some to-day, maybe more to-morrow and perhaps sack the lot the next day. He wants his labour power in the same way that he wants his electricity, switch it on when required and off when not required. He does not want the expense of wasted electricity, neither does he want the expense of maintaining labourers for whom he cannot find work.

The capitalist does not want the initial expense of buying his labourers, as slaves were bought. It would enormously increase his capital outlay, and replacement would be a costly business. This point is adequately illustrated by the story of a man who paid £100 for a negro slave and sent him to work painting a roof. The slave turned to his master and said, “ Massa, if you send me on to that roof and I fall and break my neck you will be £100 out of pocket, but if you go to the city and get some of that white trash for sixpence an hour and he falls and kills himself, all you have to do is go and get another one without losing a penny.”

The capitalist does not want to be bothered with the carcasses of his employees, all he wants is the energy that they contain and he only wants that when there is profit to be made.

Serf labour is of a different order. The serf is not bound to his master but to the soil that his master owns. The serf has his piece of land, no matter how small or poor, and he produces things for use, a little for himself and family, and the rest for his overlord. He may also give his overlord some of his working time to till the lord's crops or to defend his domain. The serf owns some of the tools that are needed to produce his food, clothing and shelter, and he owns a little raw material—the land on which he works. But he is chained to the soil. A change of overlords leaves him on the same ground working on behalf of the new lord. To the overlord the land is useless without the serf and he assumes certain obligations to his serfs, as they assume certain others to him. The lord, of course, gets the fatter living whilst the serf struggles in poverty.

This, likewise, is useless to the capitalist. He does not want his workers chained to any particular place. They must come to the work, he cannot take the work to them. The factory, the mine, the workshop, the garage, the depot, the dock, the warehouse or whatever sort of place the capitalist owns is the spot to which the worker must be free to come.

Neither does the capitalist want his workers to have the slight amount of independence that a piece of land, such as the serf had, would give them. The capitalist cannot afford to have his machinery held up because some of his workers have taken time off to get in their hay or their potato crop or to thatch a roof. The worker must be entirely dependant on the capitalist for his livelihood so that he can be disciplined into punctuality, regular attendance at the place of work when required, and respect for his employer’s wishes. He must be conditioned by the job without outside interference. Absenteeism and insubordination that might flow from a little independence are a curse to the capitalist. So serfdom does not suit capital.

The capitalist needs wage-labour. He wants not the worker’s body but his energy, mental and physical. Mental and physical energies are inseparable. There is no physical work that does not call for thinking and no mental work that does not entail some physical effort even if it is only pushing pen over paper. The capitalist wants this energy on tap and he wants it to be completely at his disposal. Wage-labour offers him all that. The worker seeks employment, he offers for sale his bodily and mental energies for a price. That price is the wage. It may be called a salary, an income, a fee, a stipend or what you will, it is the same thing. The capitalist can employ the wage-labourer or not, employ him today and put him on part time or sack him tomorrow; tell him what time to come to work and what time to go; tell him how the work shall be done and take from him the wealth that he produces.

The capitalist also likes to have a reserve of labour power from which he can draw when his business requires it. If there is no such reserve and he needs extra wage-labourers he must compete with his fellow capitalists for workers by offering higher wages, a process that is distasteful to the capitalist class. Efforts are made to create a larger army of wage workers or build a reserve in some way.

When capitalism first appears in any part of the world wage-labour appears with it. One of the capitalists’ first worries is the creation of a reserve of wage-labour. In most countries this problem was originally solved by taking away from the serf, or the peasant, the land that he owned. This made him propertyless—-a proletarian, and drove him into the ranks of the wage-labourers to seek employment from those who did own property. The hundreds of enclosure acts on the statute book of this country are evidence of the ruthless process of dispossessing the English serfs and peasants. Their land was taken and enclosed by fences to be used largely as sheep grazing land, large hunting parks or for large scale agriculture. The poor landless families wandered to the towns where the factories were, there to operate machines that made woollen goods from the sheep that now wandered over the site of their late homesteads. The reserve army of wage labour, in those days, included small children, the aged and the infirm, as well as women.

The reserve army now-a-days is maintained by drawing more and more women into the wage-labour category. Labour saving machinery is introduced to enable one man to do the work that was previously done by two. The redundant men help to fill the ranks of the reserve of wage-labour, to be drawn on when occasion may demand.

If capitalists have to compete with one another for a limited supply of wage-labour and the price tends to rise, they howl “blue murder.” They will use their political power to freeze wages, bind the worker to his job or direct him to another. They have even conscripted women to the wage-labour ranks. The competition between capitalists for the limited markets wherein to sell the goods that the workers make, results in the accumulation of capital into fewer and fewer hands and the bankruptcy of the weaker capitalists, who then go to join the swelling ranks of the wage-labourers.

If capital needs wage-labour, so does wage-labour need capital. Whilst there are men and women who own nothing but the energy contained in their bodies, they must, in order to live, have access to the tools of production and the raw materials to work on. Whilst these things are in the hands of capitalists the workers must go to them for permission to use them. Unless the capitalist is prepared to invest these things in some profit making enterprise, the workers can starve.

Yet, despite needing one another so desperately, wage-labour and capital fight tooth and nail. The capitalist seeks always to increase his profit which means that, out of the total wealth that the workers produce, he seeks to increase his share. The larger the capitalists’ share, the smaller the workers portion.

To increase his profit the capitalist tries to cheapen the price of wage-labour, increase the price of goods to be sold or reduce the amount of wage-labour used. All three of these methods are detrimental to the wage worker. In the first instance he gets lower wages, in the second his wages will buy less because the price of commodities will be higher and in the third case, the introduction of labour saving machinery or the reorganisation of an industry will cause some workers to have their work intensified whilst others can be idle if they cannot find another employer. So the wage-labourers resist the capitalist’s attempts to increase his profit.

The wage-labourer also seeks to increase his part of the total wealth produced. He strives for higher wages. Things that were originally luxuries become comforts and finally necessities. To be able to read and write was once an accomplishment for the wealthy only, now it is a necessity for the humblest wage-worker. A Sunday suit of clothes, holidays, passenger transport were once luxuries and are now very essential needs. Radio has passed the luxury stage and can be considered a comfort, in time to be a necessity. These things become essential for the workers who seek to increase their wages to enable them to acquire these new needs. Variations in the price of things that have long been established as essential needs—food, houses and clothing, cause the worker to seek to adjust his wages whenever the variation is upward. The capitalist will put on the pressure to cheapen the price of labour-power when the variation is downwards.

So the two, wage-labour and capital, are continuously locked in a ding-dong struggle. The worker will find the capitalist’s discipline irksome and he will organise in a Trade Union in an endeavour to have a say in the conditions under which he is to work. The capitalist will have to resist again. The capitalist will jealously guard his trump card, the political weapon, and use it when the workers become a little too audacious.

The worker sells his labour power either by time or by amount. When he sells it by time he receives a wage rate calculated by the hour, day or week. He strives to reduce the amount of time over which he sells it by struggling for a shorter working day or shorter working week, whilst maintaining his total wage at the previous level. The capitalist, on the other hand, endeavours to increase the working time without a wage increase, thus gaining for himself a larger share in the total wealth. When labour power is scarce he will increase the total time by demanding overtime work and he will pay for such time at special rates, still ensuring himself a profit.

When the worker sells his labour power by the amount it is known as piece work. Here he is paid, not by the measure of time but by the quantity of wealth produced in a given time. This urges him to intensify his work by working as hard and as fast as he can in order to increase his total wage. Now-a-days piece work is referred to as "payment by results" or "incentive bonus.” The effect is to squeeze the maximum amount of energy out of the worker in the minimum amount of time. This is most useful to the capitalist when the market is good and orders are flowing in rapidly, when he is competing with other capitalists to get goods to the market in the shortest possible time. Piece work is often a prelude to a re-adjustment of time rates. Having enticed the worker to betray just how fast he can work he is then called upon to work at that pace for a time measured wage.

All these points are the issues which keep wage-labour and capital perpetually at war with one another.

There are some features of wage-labour which resemble slave-labour. So much so, in fact, that it is often referred to as wage-slavery. Although the capitalist only requires the workers energies he cannot have them separate from the body which generates them. The worker cannot rise in the morning, extract a quantity of labour power from himself, wrap it and send it to his employer with a stamped addressed envelope, then return his body back to bed with a pipe and a book. The worker must, himself, go to his place of employment and have his labour power extracted by the day, hour or contract. So, during his periods of work, the wage-labourer appears to be owned by the capitalist.

In this relationship of wage-labour and capital the advantages are all with the capitalist. He gets the wealth and the privileges whilst the worker's lot is one of continual work in order to live, coupled with which are his poverty and the insecurity of livelihood. Capital is his enemy. If he destroys capital he destroys wage-labour also, but he does not destroy himself or his ability to labour.

The problem has a simple solution. Having no property the worker must work for a wage in order to live. The capitalist has the property and can employ the worker. Take away the capitalist's property and place it in the possession of the whole of the people and there will be neither propertyless wage workers nor property owning people who can command the labour power of others. Labour remains; so do the raw materials and the machines, but the labour becomes free—free to produce wealth in order that everyone may enjoy it. No wage-labour, no capital, no profits, no markets, no wars to capture markets, no class domination, no classes. Instead, a classless society working to produce the needs, comforts and luxuries of life and having all things available when produced.—Socialism.

One thing is clear. Where there is wage-labour there is capital, and where there is capital there is capitalism. Some would have us believe that capitalism has been abolished in some parts of the world. To test the truth of this is easy. Do the people work for wages? If so, there is capital, and capitalism is the same all the world over. Society will be well rid of both wage-labour and capital.

W. Waters

Social contrasts. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anatole France in one of his novels says that “the life of a people is but a succession of miseries, crimes and follies.” This is largely correct. Certainly, from the manifold volumes of historical works in existence, treating of various periods and various peoples, we may gather some knowledge of the crimes and follies perpetrated by the ruling classes of these times, and the enslavement, and consequent misery, of the other, and greater, portion of the populace. It would, indeed, appear from an examination into different historical epochs, that the greater the wealth and culture of the ruling class, the more degraded and hopeless is the condition of those they rule.

If, for example, we turn back to the so-called “golden” age of Greek civilisation, we find that at the time of the greatest prosperity of the Attic state, the whole number of free Athenian, citizens, women and children included, amounted to about 90,000 ; the slaves of both sexes numbered 365,000 ; the balance of the people being made up of aliens—foreigners and freed slaves—these numbering about 45,000. History tells us little or nothing of the lives of these 365,000 human beings on whose toil practically the whole structure of the much-vaunted Greek culture rested. We have had handed down to us the philosophical systems of Plato and Aristotle, the lyrical dramas of Aeschylus and Euripides; the sculpture of Pheidias can yet be seen in the British Museum ; in the glowing pages of Pluttarch (to say nothing of William Smith) are to be found the records of all the heroic deeds performed by Pericles and Alcibiades ; but the life of a slave does not make such pretty reading as that of a philosopher or artist, and so the historians have been very careful not to disturb the sleek complacency of their readers by a recital of the doings of the mere wealth-producers. The blood and sweat of the slaves would soil the classical purity of Greek culture, so the blood and sweat must be buried beneath the traditional glory of the slaves’ taskmasters.

Coming down to later times a very similar contrast may be observed between the status of the rich and the poor, between the dominant class and the class dominated. In another “golden” age—that of the “virgin”‘ queen Elizabeth—wealth, we are told, increased to an enormous extent. Green, in his “Short History of the English People,” says,

“The lavishness of a new wealth united with a lavishness of life, a love of beauty, of colour, of display, to revolutionize English dress. The Queen’s three thousand robes were rivalled in their bravery by the slashed velvets, the ruffs, the jewelled purpoints of the courtiers around her. Men ‘wore a manor on their backs.’ The old sober notions of thrift melted before the strange revolutions of fortune wrought by the New World. Gallants gambled away a fortune at a sitting, and sailed off to make a fresh one in the Indies. Visions of galleons loaded to the brim with pearls and diamonds and ingots of silver, dreams of El Dorados where all was of gold, threw a haze of prodigality and confusion over the imagination of the meanest seaman.” English literature, following in the wake of the Italian Renascence, took on. a new lease of life through such men as Spenser, Shakespeare, [Bacon and the numerous other poets and writers who graced the Elizabethan age. A scientific knowledge of natural laws was spreading.”

“It was only in the later years of the sixteenth century that the discoveries of Copernicus were brought, home to the general intelligence of the world by Kepler and Galileo.”

Drake, Raleigh, Hawkins and Frobisher, between the intervals of “singeing the King of Spain’s beard,” were circumnavigating the globe, breaking into the charmed circle of the Indies, or discovering the North-West passage.

And yet there is very distinctly another side to the medal. During the reigns immediately preceding that of Elizabeth, a great and ever increasing number of the people had been forcibly expropriated from the soil and thrown out upon the highways to exist as best they might.

“They were turned en masse into beggars, robbers, vagabonds, partly from inclination, in most cases from stress of circumstances. Hence at the end of the 15th and during the whole of the 16th century, throughout Western Europe, a bloody legislation against vagabondage The fathers of the present working class were chastised for their enforced transformation into vagabonds and paupers. Legislation treated them as voluntary criminals, and assumed that it depended on their own goodwill to go on working under the old conditions that no longer existed.” (Marx in “Capital.”)

Marx further tells us that

“In Elizabeth’s time ‘rogues were trussed up apace, and there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallowes.’ (Strype’s ‘Annals of the Thee-formation and Establishment of Religion, and other Various Occurrences in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth’s Happy Reign,’ Second ed., 1725, Vol. ‘2.) According to this same Strype, in Somersetshire, in one year, 40 persons were executed, 35 robbers burnt in the hand, 37 whipped, and 183 discharged as ‘incorrigible vagabonds.’ Nevertheless, he is of the opinion that this large number of prisoners does not comprise even a fifth of the actual criminals, thanks to the negligence of the justices and the foolish compassion of the people ; and the other counties of England were not better off in this respect than Somersetshire, while some were even worse. . . . Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.”

In modern capitalist society these same sardonic contrasts prevail. In the Daily Chronicle of June 6th, 1903, it was pointed out that “the whole volume of British Trade has increased from 764 millions sterling in 1898 to 877 millions in 1902,” and in the same issue appeared a report of a speech delivered by the late Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, in which he declared that about 30% of the population were underfed, were on the verge of hunger. (Vide SOCIALIST STANDARD, August this year.)

During the first nine months of 1910, official trade returns show that :

Imports rose by £37,530,000,

Exports of British goods rose by £41,239,000, and Exports of imported goods rose by £11,063,000

as compared with January to September 1909. In the same issue of the paper (Morning Leader 8th October) in which these figures are given, is a short paragraph, headed “Pea-pickers Hardships,” giving an account of a meeting held at Romford, at which “the lamentable conditions under which the pea-pickers live in Essex” was discussed, Canon Ingles remarking at this meeting that the way the pickers lived while on the farms was a disgrace to a Christian country and Canon Lord William Cecil supporting the view that employers should be compelled to provide pure water for drinking and clean straw for beds.

In spite of the great increase in trade that has taken place since the beginning of 1910, at the present time there is perhaps more dissatisfaction among the industrial workers of this country than for some years past. The boiler-makers, the miners, the cotton operatives, the chain-makers and the railwaymen. to mention only a few, are seething with discontent. And yet exports of British goods rose by £41,239,000 !

Historical research shows that, no matter at what period—ancient, medieval or modern,—no matter what may be the wealth and culture, the spread of knowledge, the goodwill even (if such there be) among the dominant class, the condition of the class dominated is, in the main, one of base and degrading servitude, of physical and mental misery. Using the words of the before-mentioned French author, we may epitomise the history of the members of the slave-class by saying that “they were born, they suffered, they died.” Suffering has been their only heritage since slavery was first instituted ; whether it he chattel slavery or wage-slavery does not make very much difference, except that perhaps the chattel-slave was, in some respects, better off than the modern wage-worker.

The Socialist Party exists for the purpose of abolishing, once and for ever, both slave-class and master-class. We of course recognise that natural inequalities between individuals do and must exist. But we know further that social inequalities and contrasts between individuals or classes are an anomaly. To help do away with these social inequalities and contrasts, to raise society to a higher plane, where equality of opportunity shall be accorded to all, irrespective of race or sex, is the reason for our existence as a party. We ask for the intelligent co-operation of our fellow wage-slaves to assist us in this work, so that the day may be hastened when such terms as slave and master, owner and owned, working class and capitalist class, will be, without meaning. When society has evolved into this stage, when the Socialist Commonwealth has at last been established, then for the first time will a period of real culture and intellectual activity be possible to all, and not to, comparatively, a mere handful of men and women, such as have monopolised all the best things of life up to the present.

F. J. Webb

Patriotism and Class Interest. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whoever has more than a very slight acquaintance with Socialist literature will be aware that on nearly every conceivable subject connected with the mental and social aspects of man’s life, the Socialist has a view-point and opinion which is distinct from, and usually antagonistic to, that which is usually regarded as true. This is so because the Socialist holds as correct ideas which, carried to a practical conclusion, would overthrow and wipe out the present condition of society, whereas the ideas of the mass of the population to-day are essentially those which, are favourable to the continuation of the existing system. It is, therefore, only to be expected that the Socialist conception of patriotism, is one which is unacceptable to almost any other school of thought.

Patriotism is often taken to mean “love of one’s country,” but this is misleading, as what is really intended to be the object of this “tender affection” is not actually the country or territory itself, but the social group which occupies it. It is social solidarity which is the essential nature of patriotism. This is plainly to be seen when we consider the more primitive forms of society where, as is the case with cattle-rearing nomadic tribes, the territory occupied is only an incidental factor varying almost from day to day. Here it is actual kinship which is the social “bond of union.” But this is not the case in modern societies, the members of which may be, and usually are, different in point of language and race. But, providing that they are born within the territorial confines dominated by a particular social group, that group claims their allegiance. This is probably the cause of the existing confusion between the terms “country” and “nation.”

Thus far both bourgeois and Socialist theorists may agree ; but when we come to the conception of the modern function of patriotism we find an immediate divergence and antagonism of opinion. To the brain soaked with the orthodox ideas of capitalist society (and suck brains prevail to-day) the sentiment of patriotism appears as one of the very noblest that can animate the human mind. To work staunchly for the welfare of the “nation” is regarded as highly creditable, and as one of the greatest forces of human and social progress. No greater compliment exists than to be called “a patriot.” 

But we—the Socialists—repudiate this view of patriotism. We will have none of it. This sentiment of national solidarity is to us a snare and a delusion. It is in our view one of the most pernicious of the many superstitions which today benumb the minds of the workers—for it is the workers that we stand for : their interests are our interests.

An impulse of loyalty to the social whole is obviously only valid when there is unity of interest therein, and is incompatible with the existence of class antagonisms in the community, when these conflicting interests are well understood by the classes themselves.

The working class of to-day is, because it is property less, in a condition of economic subjection, and the idea that a subject class can look after its own interests and at the same time look after the interests of the society of which it forms a part is a delusion. The reason for this is clear. The existence of a subject class implies the existence of a dominant class. In its structure and its institutions the society is always such as to perpetuate the conditions of the respective classes—the ascendancy of the one and the subjection of the other. If, therefore, the servile class desires to be emancipated from thraldom (as it must do if and when it realises its condition and therefore its interests), it must be antagonistic to the social structure and to the class who would maintain it. Consequently any allegiance to the social whole on its part would be suicidal folly.

For many thousands of years now, the division into conflicting classes has been an outstanding feature of all the most advanced societies. Under the system of chattel-slavery, upon which basis the earliest forms of civilisation were reared, patriotism took an openly class character. Although the slaves were an integral, and indeed, a basic, part of these societies, yet the conditions of their life were such as to prohibit almost entirely any sentiment of loyalty to the social group in which they worked. In the first place the manner of their exploitation and oppression was so clear and open as to admit of no misunderstanding. Secondly, they had usually no tie of blood or language with their oppressors which could serve as “blinkers” as they so often do to-day. The immense hordes of slaves in Babylon, Greece, and Rome, were gathered from all parts of the known world ; they would in many cases remember the land and society of their birth, where they were free men. All circumstances, therefore, conspired to to wipe out any trace of social solidarity among them and to keep alive a hatred of their oppressors.

Of “mighty Babylon” Romaine Paterson, in his valuable work, “The Nemesis of Nations,” says,

“The fact that every new conqueror was hailed with acclamation by her populace is a proof of their immense weariness. Both Cyrus and Alexander were received with shouts of joy by a vast multitude assembled on the walls. A great mass of human beings sunk in slavery, and living in slums where life must have been at least as degraded as it is in Shoreditch, Hoxton, and other parts of modern London, can have possessed no national interests. The peril of the State was not theirs.” (Page 127.)

These slaves of Babylon had not learnt the lesson which the modern proletariat must learn—they looked to the new conquerors for their salvation instead of to themselves, only to find a change of masters and a slavery as intense as the old.

What patriotism existed in these antique societies was found solely among the freemen, who constituted what our “elite” bourgeoisie do—”society.” As the slaves vastly outnumbered the free population, armed slaves were exceedingly dangerous, and consequently we rarely find the slaves taking part in, or being trained for, war. Not until that great class conflict of the ruling classes known as the Peloponnesian War, did the slaves of the Greeks become fighting men, and only then on condition that they were freed from bondage. The ruling classes in the several Greek States were often at war with each other, but when a slave rising broke out they were united in their efforts to crush what they feared as they feared nothing else. We read that Athens on one occasion despatched to Sparta a large force of troops to aid in the suppression of a revolt of the helots.

* * *

Times have changed. Of Babylon we have but a memory and a few crumbling remains dug from the desert sands. Greece and Rome have long fallen. But the slavery remains—changed in form, yes, but the same in essence, and even more effective as a means of exploitation. Under the modern system of wage-slavery the robbery of labour still persists, but hidden under the hypocritical sham of liberty of contract. The antagonism of interests within the nation is with us to-day, just as it has existed in all societies based upon classes. Only upon a recognition of this conflict of the classes can the workers organise effectively with the aim of emancipation.

As capitalism develops it ever widens the breech between the toilers on the one hand, and the parasites of capital on the other. Ever-increasing wealth and riotous luxury among the bourgeoisie presents to the worker’s eyes a more and more glaring contrast to the pitiful condition of poverty in which he exists. This being the case it becomes ever more urgent from the capitalist point of view to devise new, and to perfect old, methods of effecting that mental stupefying process which has always been one of the chief bulwarks of class rule.

Religion, which has served the master class throughout history so well, and which was the main “opium of the people” in the old days of chattel-slavery and of serfdom, through the development of science which the present era-must needs in its own interest encourage, is becoming less and less effective as an instrument of class subjection.

Patriotism, of all creeds, has appealed most to the master class in its efforts to find a substitute for religion, and consequently it is being pushed with greater persistence year by year. It is easy to see why this has been so. A patriotic working class kills several birds with a single stone. First, it offers to the capitalists the delightful prospect of a working class innocent of all “narrow,” “selfish,” class interests, ready to sacrifice all for the “national good,” and content to exude from every pore their wealth-creating energy, under this “harmoni­ous” system, based upon a “just” division into “fair” wages and “reasonable” profits.

Secondly, by fostering a belief in national superiority it creates a mutual distrust and even hatred between the workers of the different nations. Thirdly, it makes possible a ready and willing fighting force, to wage the wars of the various national sections of the capitalist class, which are an inevitable effect of the workings of the present system.

Is not this prospect to our masters’ eyes truly a glorious one ? No wonder they spare no pains to achieve and maintain it ! Through their control of the channels of education, both in the schools and in the censorship, literary, and even (as they find it necessary) of the theatrical and the picture shows, even to the street-corner orator, they wield an enormous power of mental oppression. The perverted “histories,” nationalist “economics” and “sociology,” the glaring pomp and show of “our” national butchers the armed forces, the Empire Day pageants, boy scout and kindred movements, all bear witness to the truth of the above contention.

Those flunkeys of capital, commonly called labour leaders (because of their well-known social function of leading the lambs of labour to the clippers of capital to be shorn of their surplus wool [value] with as little display of irritation among the lambs as the circumstances will permit) are, as would be expected, useful helpers in this process of pumping patriotism into proletarians.

One of the leading lights of this fraternity of leaders, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., President of the Board of Education, recently delivered himself thus :

“He was satisfied that the spirit which has prompted millions of men in all classes to volunteer (?) for service was in a large measure due to that love of country which our schools had fostered. He quoted passages from the publications of the Board to show that the Department was fully alive to the importance of inculcating a sane and healthy patriotism in the minds of the young and promised that any practical proposals for furthering this object would receive his most careful consideration.”—”Manchester Evening News,” 28.3.16). (Query ours.)

* * *

Against all this array of the mental and moral influences of capital the Socialist, brings the logic of his position by which he stands or falls. Against nationalism he preaches the class struggle and the solidarity of interest of the workers the world over. He points to the worldwide spread of capitalism, to the gradual equalising of the condition of the workers in every land, and the sameness of the problems which they have to face. To the jingo “history” which, places in the forefront the blast of the bugle and the roar of the cannon, and conceives history as the rise and fall, birth and death, conflict and alliances of nations, the Socialists confront the facts of sociology, which show that the foundations of society and the driving forces of social progress lie in its mode of acquiring its material subsistence ; that the basic factors in a society are not its politicians and its militarists, but the producers of wealth, not the sword and the cannon, but the tools, the machinery, and the land.

Ours is a hard task, but it must be faced and accomplished. The education of the proletariat as to its interests and destiny is the great work which we Socialists have set ourselves. Once get the seeds of class-consciousness implanted, the favourable soil created by capitalist conditions will cause it to root, and to spread the mighty undergrowth of the international league of the working class. Then will the mental agents of class oppression, among them patriotism, wither and die like the weeds they are.

But that time is not yet. To-day more than ever in the past is the clarion call of ’48 a vital and a stirring necessity, to awaken the giant frame of labour to shake off the leeches which suck his blood and fetter his might :

“WORKERS OF ALL LANDS UNITE ! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT THE CHAINS WHICH BIND YOU, BUT YOU HAVE A WORLD TO WIN.”

R. W. Housley

Slavery and History. The Evolution of Subjugated Labour. (1909)

From the February 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

The essential characteristics of slavery are, we find, human subjection to and labour for the profit of masters. When man’s labour produces more than is indispensable for his maintenance, slavery is born. Prisoners of war, instead of being killed and eaten, or simply killed, are kept alive in order that they may work for their captors. Thus slavery is unknown to the more primitive folk of the savage, hunting stage. As defined, however, it is found wide-spread among peoples of a higher development, and passes historically through innumerable modifications. Nevertheless, three leading forms successively mark the course of later social evolution, namely, chattel-slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour; for the latter comes well within the definition.

We are well aware that the popular notions on slavery, and, indeed, those fostered by capitalist journalism, are mostly confined to an acquaintance with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Herbert Spencer’s view of the matter may, therefore, well be quoted as showing the far wider scope of the institutions. He says, (Vol. 3, p. 456, Prim. Soc.),

“The current assumption is that of necessity a slave is a down-trodden being, subject to unlimited labour and great hardship ; whereas in many cases he is well cared for, not overworked, and leniently treated. Assuming slaves everywhere to have ideas of liberty like our own, we suppose them to be intolerant of despotic control: whereas their subjection is sometimes so little onerous that they jeer at those of their race who have no masters. Assuming that their feelings are such as we should have under the same circumstances, we regard them as unhappy ; whereas they are often more light-hearted than their superiors. Again, when we contrast the slave with the free man, we think of the last as his own master ; whereas very generally, surrounding conditions exercise over him a mastery more severe and unpitying than that exercised over the slave by his owner : nature’s coercion is often worse than man’s coercion.”

Spencer had to make out that the subjection of the wage-workers to the capitalist class is simply “nature’s coercion,” but otherwise his view is quite acceptable.

In offering our fellow workers some information on the condition of their historical forebears, we shall, true to the materialist conception of scientific Socialism, see in the evolution of slavery, not the idealist’s progress of ideas out of ideas, independently of material conditions, from earlier cruelty to later gentleness, but simply a reflex of the movement and progress of productive methods. A remodelling of institutions not according to heaven-sent aspirations, high ideals and “moral” religions of Greek, Mahometan and Christian, but as the further expansion of economic forces required.

The earlier written histories describe the Mediterranean and North European peoples as being, many of them, advanced to the threshold of civilisation, and still organised by kinship in contradistinction to organisation according to the territory inhabited; some living largely by agriculture, and others, like the Semitic tribes of Western Asia and Northern Africa, a pastoral, nomadic life. Private property was accumulating amongst them, even to the land itself in some cases, while domestic animals, cattle, goats, and so forth, were such everywhere. It is above all upon this new factor that depends the subsequent history of civilised peoples, including the evolution of slavery. Military raids were frequent, and provided conquerors with plunder, more fertile lands, and, above all, with prisoners, who were made to tend the cattle, or to do the more laborious work of the fields. At a later stage the ranks of slavery were swelled by poor citizens or tribesmen selling their children, and even themselves, into bondage in payment of debt. The book of Leviticus hands down to us the rules for the treatment of both the “stranger” and Hebrew bondsmen.

Greece.

Some of the Grecian tribes when they conquered a neighbouring people simply bound these to the soil and compelled them to bring to their conquerors a certain fixed part of their produce, leaving their family institutions untouched, and even allowing them to accumulate property. Thus, amongst others, the Spartans held their helots ; and indeed, much of the military organisation of the former was required to keep the helots in subjection, for they long retained the memory of their free condition.

In Attica and Corinth, the distinctly commercial states, however, great numbers of chattel-slaves, largely barbarians, were held and exchanged. “At the time of the greatest prosperity the whole number of free Athenian citizens, women and children included, amounted to about 90,000 ; the slaves of both sexes numbered 305,000 and the aliens foreigners and freed slaves—45,000.” (“Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State,” by F. Engels.) Slaves furnished all kinds of useful labour. Many were in domestic service, others were cooks, bakers, tailors, miners, labourers on agricultural estates, seamen, oarsmen, etc., while the State had slaves for soldiers, and even policemen. “The free Athenian regarded this police duty as so degrading that he preferred being arrested by an armed slave rather than lending himself to such an ignominous service.” (Engels.) In Greece, although their condition underwent important changes, the slaves were mildly treated, and enjoyed considerable legal protection. Slaves came increasingly to acquire property rights and then, as Spencer has it, “the slave’s condition was much that of a freeman paying heavy taxes.” As to the outcome, Engels says that

“The great number of slaves is explained by the fact that many of them worked together in large factories under supervision. The development of commerce and industry brought about an accumulation and concentration of wealth in a few hands. The mass of the free citizens were impoverished and had to face the choice of either competing with their own labour against slave labour, which was considered ignoble and vile, besides promising little success, or to be ruined. Under the prevailing circumstances they necessarily chose the latter course, and being in the majority, they ruined the whole Attic State. Not democracy caused the downfall of Athens, as the European glorifiers of princes and lickspittle schoolmasters would have us believe, but slavery ostracizing the labour of the free citizen.”

Rome.

In the earlier period of Roman history the head of the family (paterfamilias) had full power of life and death over all the members of his household—wife, child, and chattel-slave—and all were treated in general with great rigour. Slaves when old or otherwise useless were often “exposed” to starve upon an island in the Tiber. Many servile revolts are recorded—some of them of formidable proportions. That under the gladiator Sparticus in 73 B.C. lasted over the course of three years, and was only suppressed by a mighty effort by the Roman State—and this in spite of the fatal lack of cohesion and discipline among the men, who in seeking their freedom could not escape the temptation to linger in Italy for the plunder of the cities.

Later, under the Emperors, multitudes of slaves were employed in the various mechanical arts, while the cruelty of the masters was restrained by law, and property might be acquired. Further, the continual warfare with its consequent strain of military service upon the citizens resulted in the impoverishment of the poorer of these, and their lands passing into the hands of a few great landholders. Agriculture became entirely a slave occupation, carried on upon great estates called latifundae ; a system that led to the depopulation of Italy and the extinction of any class capable of resisting the Imperial tyrants or the barbarian invaders who followed.

The attitude of Christianity towards slavery was, and is, well exhibited in the notion of St. John Chryostom, that the apostle did not insist on the suppression of slavery because it was desirable that men should see how truly the slave could enjoy liberty of soul—the slavery of sin being the only real slavery. Indeed, Christianity is quite innocent of the milder treatment of slaves during the later Roman period, or of the decline of chattel-slavery, for, as Spencer puts it, by the partial failure of the supply of slaves through conquest, “the Romans were obliged to have recourse to the milder but more tedious method of propagation ; and this improved the condition of the slave by rendering his existence and physical health an object of greater value to his master.” Negro slavery in America is fairly well known, and considerations of space prevent us from giving it special treatment here. However, it is well to mention that it arose in consequence of the great demand for agricultural labour there, of a kind suited to hot and damp climates. It received its great impetus from the invention of the cotton gin at the end of the eighteenth century, when cotton became definitely available for clothing in competition with wool and flax. The “peculiar” Southern institution was abolished only when it threatened to prevent the full expansion of normal capitalism based upon wage-labour ; and the clash of material interests there involved an expenditure of blood and treasure rarely matched in history.

Collapse of chattel-slavery.

Now while the Teutonic eruption all over the European portions of the Roman Empire brought with it its own, as yet but little developed, servile institutions, yet it is true that this famous period roughly marks the transition (amongst Western peoples) from personal to territorial slavery—from chattel-slavery to serfdom. The steady degradation of the free population and consequent contraction of markets, resulted in the decay of the large-scale slave-worked agricultural estates ; and since the great numbers of slaves now became a burden upon their owners, these were now largely freed, and small-scale agriculture by “colonists” replaced the older system. These small cultivators paid a fixed sum, or a proportion of the product to landowners, and in other respects were indeed the prototypes of the mediaeval serfs. With regard to the Germanic overrunning of Gaul, Seebohm is quoted by Spencer as inferring that the mediaeval serf was the “compound product of survivals from three separate ancient conditions, gradually, during Roman provincial rule, and under the influence of barbarian conquest, confused and blended into one, viz., those of the slave on the Roman Villa, of the colonus or other semi-servile and mostly barbarian tenants on the Roman Villa or public lands, and of the slave of the German tribesman, who to the eyes of Tacitus was so very much like a Roman colonus”

Feudal Europe.

The wide-spread prevalence of the type of subject labour known as serfdom characterises above all the Middle Ages with its baronial sway and feudal organisation of society. The barbarian conquest of the ancient world, in spite of an intellectual setback, did, after all, but continue social evolution—reinvigorated, however, by the new blood from the northern forests. During and after the migrations the conquerors settled amongst the older cultivators, taking the major portion of the land and working this themselves, aided by the bondsmen they held. The long period of war and conquest had, however, left its mark upon their social organisation. The chieftains’ families had acquired the privileges of hereditary and military aristocracy and remained at the head of a new social class (itself a result of the new division of labour : cultivators—warriors), the professional soldiers. Continual warfare between the various military chieftains (e.g., the Heptarchy in England) induced most of the agriculturists, organised as these were in village communities, to place themselves under the care of a lordly “protector,” in return for which protection they surrendered the titles to their lands. Monasteries and churches in this way became, during the ninth and tenth centuries, amongst the largest landowners, and their bishops and abbeys powerful nobles. The protecting lord, baron, seigneur and his retainers had to be fed, clothed and sheltered in their massive castles and were able to exact this by commanding the services of the protected vassals for definite periods— corvée. This servile condition existed, however, in different forms : the services to be rendered and the civil rights vary with time and place. The monarch sometimes, especially in later times, sustained by the burgher class seeking its particular interests, ruled in favour of the lighter forms of serfdom.

Decline of serfdom.

In England typical serfdom gradually disappeared toward the close of the Middle Ages, and in most other European countries considerably later. It was abolished in Russia by Imperial edict as late as 1861. Serfdom had its frictions, as witness some robust rebellions- e.g., the villeins’ revolt under Jack Cade and Wat Tyler, likewise the Jacquerie in France and the Peasants’ War in Germany.

But the determining influence in its decline, in the last analysis (as in the case of all other social phenomena with the exception of the earliest experiences of the race, when society was more under the influence of sexual relations) was essentially economic, although a superficial reading of history may provide an idealist and purely political explanation. The progressive division of labour and its application in newer and more efficient methods, together with the resulting growth of cities, has everything to do with the rendering of serfdom obsolete and incompatible with progress. In England the change from the old, large, open field, yet scattered, small-plot system of agriculture, to the enclosed field system, together with the displacing of husbandry in favour of pastures, for sheep raising, in response to the demand for wool, had much to do with decreasing the need for numerous workers fixed to the land. “Owing to the spread of new agricultural methods, their services ceased to be valuable,” says Spencer, quoting Cunningham.

The development of the bourgeoisie in the cities and their need of defenders resulted in many serfs finding refuge and livelihood with them. In Italy the serfs were largely feed in this way, while the wide-spread demand for money on the part of the nobles during the Crusades, and in emulation of the now prosperous city merchants, led the manorial lords to look rather to rent payments than to services ; and finally it was being discovered that “free-labour” was more efficient and profitable than “servile-labour.” Spencer has it that “German observers in Russia, as quoted by Prof. Jones, say that a Middlesex mower will mow as much in a day as three Russian serfs. The Prussian Councillor of State, Jacobi, is considered to have proved that in Russia where everything is cheap, the labour of a serf was double as expensive as that of a labourer in England. In Austria the work of a serf is stated to have been equal to one-third that of a hired man.”

It is of some interest to note that vestiges of serfdom survived in England until quite recent times. Thus colliers and salters were bound for life to the mines in which they worked, and their sons with them, until the end of the eighteenth century, while well into tho nineteenth century a “free” labourer could not choose, so were conditions arranged, to leave his employer without incurring risk of punishment. Finally, as regards the real relations of servile and free labour, and the determining causes thereof, the views of these two, certainly not Socialist, and eminently respectable, thinkers, may not be out of place. Thus, John Adams in the American Congress of 1776, “That as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of freemen or slaves. That in some countries the labouring poor men are called freemen ; in others they were called slaves ; but the difference was imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten labourers on his farm gives them annually as much as will buy the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand ?” (From “Lost Principles of Sectional Equilibrium,” by “Bararossa,” 1860.) Herbert Spencer concludes in this way. “When slave labour and free labour come into competition, slave labour, other things equal, decreases as being less economical. The relative lack of energy, the entire lack of interest, the unintelligent performance of work, and the greater cost of supervision, make the slave an unprofitable productive agent. Hence with an adequate multiplication of labourers it tends gradually to disappear.”

Reviewing, then, slavery in the only fruitful manner, that is, historically ; considering its origin, manifestations and developments, we find that so-called free-labour—wage-labour—falls into its proper place as a later development, of servile production. Free-labour is seen then, to have its roots in chattel-slavery and serfdom, and its future—but to that, shortly. For while labour has been gradually freed from the shackles of chattel and villein conditions, it yet undeniably partakes of the essential characteristics of slavery, viz., human subjection to and labour for the profit of masters. Its distinction from the older forms is sufficiently indicated in the well established Socialist term—WAGE-SLAVERY.

However, the existing order, capitalism, based upon wage-labour, contains and develops within itself its own negation, as did the earlier social systems. The ancient order, based upon chattel-slavery, could not survive the degradation consequent upon the fullest development of that basis, and gave way to the agricultural and military barbarism, which soon developed the feudal system, leaning mainly upon serf-labour. This in turn prepared within itself its own destroyers,—the merchant and artizan class of the towns, the bourgeoisie, who, overthrowing the nobles, and also the King where he could not be made to serve their turn, have become the dominant class, and have moulded society much in their own sanctimonious image. The historically indicated negation of capitalism is Socialism: and the revolutionary instrument of its achievement is the modern class of wage-workers who, stripped of property, are compelled to seek a livelihood by selling to the bourgeoisie their labour-power, but who, in so doing, at the same time acquire an understanding of the conditions of their own development, become class-conscious, and organise for their emancipation. Thereby “emancipating society at large from all its exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggles.”

History dictates the final overthrow of slave-founded society, and the establishment of fraternal society—SOCIALISM.

John H. Halls

Slave v. “Free” Labour. (1907)

From the May 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Caesar,” said a planter to one of his Negro slaves, “shin up thet thar tree an’ thin out ther branches some.” The Negro showed no dispo­sition to reply, and being urged with language customary of the time and place, answered, “Yaas, Massa, me go plenty quick, Massa, but dis chile ‘im tink, s’pose Cassar ‘im fa’ down—dat’s berry bad job fo’ Massa: Caesar ‘im cost lot o’ money. Spec’ Massa better send Irish Mike. If white man fa’ down dat aint no loss t’nobody, nohow.”

Letter: The Root of Roots (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Root of Roots

Your article under the above title, written by Harmo, caught my attention as I feel it misses the particular significance of the “roots phenomenon” in race relations in Britain today. The quotation your correspondent gave from Kautsky that “the study of the past, far from being mere dilettante antiquarianism, will become a powerful weapon in the struggles of the present . . ." is indeed apt, but he did not, it seems to me, draw an important conclusion from it. I don’t believe that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity” as is implied by your writer who correctly points to the miscegenation which has existed from time immemorial. The point is that the slave background, common to so many in the USA and the Caribbean, has left black people with a feeling of disorientation, not of belonging—in short, of “rootlessness”.

Historically therefore the story of slavery is important in leading present day peoples to struggle for real equality, but psychologically the study of one man’s own history may be equally important in helping oppressed groups not only to a better awareness of the injustices of the past and the need for social change, but also to a confident awareness of their own great cultural tradition which is only slowly but surely becoming evident particularly in studies in the African continent. Thus the study of history may not only be informative but also may have a profound psychological part to play in the struggle for equality.

D. C. Mayer

Romford

Reply:

Our article did not imply that most black people are unduly concerned to prove “racial purity”—the reference was made to Haley (the author of Roots) and militant “Afro-Americans” who do pursue this line, and who invariably do so for commercial or political reasons. You say black people have a “feeling of disorientation” and "rootlessness” and if we are, for the sake of brevity, to assume some positive meaning from such phrases, is not this “feeling” common to the Irish, Polish, Italian and other elements —including the native Indian—which go to make up the American population?

The mistake is made by some in assuming that "a feeling of disorientation” reflects a form of almost instinctive desire to get back to “roots”. As our article pointed out, this is likely to prove a most difficult exercise in itself. It also fails to take into account the effects of capitalist society which, with its lack of social plan, its requirement for the free movement of labour coupled with reversals in this policy, so-called national rivalries and shifting alliances, in itself creates insecurity among members of society as a whole.

We have always stressed the need for men and women to both study, and learn from, history. Any real study will reveal that the vast majority have a common solution to problems, including racial problems, which in capitalism are falsely made to appear as group problems to be dealt with in isolation. If you feel that there is a psychological barrier to be overcome before members of the working class can understand and work for the establishment of a society based on common ownership, it is not one erected by Socialists.

Editors.

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation [4] (1914)

From the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last issue)

Attention has already been drawn to a good deal of conclusive evidence exposing the humbug and hypocrisy of the assertion that the “civilised” white man’s effort in the Colonies is in any way disinterested, and prompted by a desire for the amelioration and uplifting of the status of the natives. The Socialist’s suspicion is, of course, immediately aroused by the simple facts that (1) the missionary is ever closely followed by keen business men and concession hunters, and that (2) the boasted “inherent superiority” of the “imperially thinking,” white saviours frankly and emphatically discount any relationship other than domineering distinction from the teeming millions of coloured, and especially black subject races. For our prejudiced opponents, however, it will be necessary to enquire more into the ways in which the interests and affairs of the natives are safeguarded and handled by the white intruders, to perceive the real objective of colonisation. Before entering into more details as to the methods employed, we will, however, take the opportunity to show that the aforementioned “fine qualities” of our masters and their apologetic agents are coupled with a colossal amount of impudence and effrontery. A few examples will suffice.

Among the pretexts which our “disinterested” pioneers of civilisation use in justification of their missions and interference in the natives’ affairs, we find the former “deploring,” and asserting that they are out to “eradicate,” such evils as the precariousness and insecurity of primitive man’s conditions of existence, their inter-tribal warfare, their ignorance, superstitions, etc.

Now, it would no doubt be a highly laudable action for anyone to endeavour to bring light and leading to such tribal societies as are actually afflicted with a similar state of things. But, how should we describe, if not as a piece of colossal impudence, such pretence of remedying and uplifting coming, as it does, from a quarter where men have long been at their wits’ end to know how to grapple with the “gigantic problems” of ever increasing poverty and misery, unemployment and disease, which perplex Europe to-day ? How should we name otherwise than as gross insults, such pretensions coming from quarters where even “ever grinding labour does not always guarantee sustenance or security ; where you still have oppression of the weak by the strong, and where you have a condition of things which, at any rate, was foreign to the barbarities even of darker ages” ? (Vide Lloyd George’s statement at Cardiff, 30.12.11.)

Tribal warfare ! There, no doubt, the savage and the barbarian have something to learn from their superior brethren, provided, of course, they have not yet had a sample of “white superiority” by having their villages burned to the ground by the most up-to-date methods of modern militarism, and finding themselves forced into increasing toil on the plantations of Christian exploiters.

Were a party of African or other aborigines to arrive in these days on the “highly civilised” continent of Europe, their own achievements on the battlefield would certainly and rightly appear to them mere childsplay as compared with the orgies of blood, fire, and rapine that “our” chiefs are capable of engineering, not only on land, but on the sea and in the air. As far back as 1838, William Howitt wrote in his “Popular History of the Treatment of the Natives by the Europeans in all their Colonies” :

“The barbarities and desperate outrages of the so-called Christian race, throughout every region of the world, and upon every people they have been able to subdue, are not to be paralleled by those of any other race, however fierce, however untaught, and however reckless of mercy and of shame, in any age of the earth.”

Apart from the unceasing class-war that is raging inside every civilised Christian nation between the confiscators of the means of life and the disinherited masses who can only exist by selling themselves, body and soul, to the former appropriators, the agents of our “piece-loving” masters and “great intellectuals” have to admit that, as a rule, peace (i.e., the peaceable division of the pieces) between the different nations can only be preserved on condition of being armed to the teeth, and applying every new technical discovery, as fast as it is made, to the instruments of destruction. Nay, so brilliant and beneficient are the results of “our education” and of the gospel of the Prince of Peace, that—as the experience in Ireland, for example, has shown—even the folk of one and the same community can be persuaded to drill and arm against one another !

And from such quarters comes the pretence of concern about the evils of tribal warfare existing in continents thousands of miles away, amongst peoples who are despised and held in utter contempt by the Christian nations ! The unblushing effrontery of it ! Just imagine those who do not care a rap about the welfare of their fellows at home ; imagine those who could stand by in perfect composure, during the recent Balkan atrocities, hearing week in and week out the poignant tales of the wholesale devastation of innocent peasants’ villages; imagine those who are to day responsible for :

“Battlefields Covered With Dead”

“Brilliant Bayonet Fighting”

“Great Slaughter of Germans” ;

imagine, if you can, those intellectually bankrupt and morally decrepit apologists for the powers that be, to be capable and anxious of decently educating or bettering the lot of anybody, let alone obscure savages !

Also the ignorance and superstitions of primitive peoples have long worried our masters. Hence, with their almost proverbial disinterestedness, missions were organised and are now tumbling over one another in an endeavour—well backed by guns and bayonets—to enlighten the ignorant on these points and to teach them reverence for, and awe and worship of the “unknown” and the “unseen” which, rightly interpreted, mean—the Christian Capitalist.

Probably the interpretation which we place on this claim of “enlightenment” will not be seriously disputed by its authors or our opponents, and therefore we say no more about it. Who, indeed, could take seriously or see anything but humbug in such a claim, coming from a quarter where the mass of the people are steeped in profound ignorance and obsequious superstitions ? What detrimental superstition is there amongst savages that does not find its corollary amongst the so-called civilised white peoples of to-day ? Think only of the present European war with its manifold tragic phases and consequences to the age-long dispossessed “labouring poor”—horrors which would be inconceivable in any sane system of society where actual science could be diffused among the people, instead of that abominable apology that goes to-day by the name of education.

Of course, the necessity for the deliberate inculcation of the conventional lies will be sufficiently clear when we realize that the wealth and power of the bourgeoisie are bound up with and dependent upon the ignorance and superstition of the mass of wealth-producing people.

But the bluff which veils the real intentions of the colonisers is not the worst of the evil. Just as this civilisation, based, as it is, on the capitalist mode of production, has the inexorable tendency to more and more impoverish and degrade the white peoples, in the same way many, and certainly not the mere imaginary evils afflicting the coloured races to-day in tropical and sub-tropical countries, are directly due to the contact with the civilised European who “means business.” Whether we refer to the abominations of the caravan and carrying system, which condemns thousands of blacks, including women and children, to carry heavy burdens of colonial produce over tracks of hundreds of miles ; or to the revolting labour-recruiting methods, by which the unsuspecting natives are practically forced to work on plantations or in mines, often in deadly climes thousands of miles from their homelands (under conditions of which they had not the slightest notion) ; or whether we refer to the flourishing slave-traffic, pure and simple, it is obvious that those horrors were unknown in the Colonies before the advent of the rubber speculators, cocoa and tea-planters, soap-boilers and influential Christian bootblack dealers.

With regard to the last mentioned evils, we have it on the authority of, amongst many others, the British Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, that the exercise of force to secure labour for the colonies is increasing. In an official letter to the “Daily Chronicle” (23.7.14) the said Society stated :

“An Official Definition of Slavery

“To The Editor Daily Chronicle.

“In view of the increase in the exercise of force to secure labour for tropical regions, serious developments in the South Seas, and proposals now being made in British East Africa, the committee of this society appealed to Mr, Harcourt to declare publicly that in the opinion of his Majesty’s Colonial advisers forced labour for private profit is a form of slavery and will not be tolerated within the British Dominions.

“Upon this important issue Mr. Harcourt has given us permission to say that, in his opinion, the proposition contained in the society’s letter ‘that forced labour for private profit amounts to slavery appears to him to be self-evident.‘

“This eminently satisfactory reply brings the Colonial Office into harmony upon this cardinal issue with the Foreign Office, for to Sir Edward Grey is due this definition of modern slavery.

“At the same time we beg to point out that not only in foreign territories, for which we have treaty obligations, but even in certain British territories forced labour for private profit appears to be increasing.

“Travers Buxton, Secretary.

“John H. Harris,

“Organising Secretary. 

“Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, July 21, 1914.”

It may be left to a future occasion to record some of the ugly and harrowing revelations that have recently been made concerning the slave-traffic in various dominions, amongst others Angola, British New Guinea, the New Hebrides, and East Africa. We will only say that advertisements “seeking to buy and sell labourers” appear as freely in the Colonial Press as for any other merchandise. Mr. Cadbury, according to a statement in the “Daily Chronicle,” actually received an offer of a cocoa plantation, the “assets” of which included “200 black labourers £3,555,” and at the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, Sir Geo. King-Hall said that “the state of affairs in the New Hebrides was scandalous and disgraceful. . . . Acts had occurred in the Islands which were a blot and a slur on a chivalrous nation.”

So far, then, is the white man’s mission from improving the conditions of the backward races, that the latter’s real misery and degradation only begins at the contamination with the civilised. Indeed, the springing up of “protection societies” points to the fact, alarming to the exploiters of the Colonies, that in many districts, especially in Australia, the havoc caused through such contamination is so great that “preservative” measures form to-day a good deal of controversy.

Direct slavery, properly so-called, is, of course, not the desired ultimate aim and end of our Colonisers ; imbued, as they are, with a keen sense of responsibility in carrying out their “cultural trust,” our masters have always had an “angelic” antipathy against the exercise of force in connection with the “labour question.” The “civilising mission” will not be terminated, and the “native problem” will not be considered to be satisfactorily solved, so long as the ideal wages-system, under which the Christian nations so harmoniously and gloriously thrive and prosper, is incomplete in the Colonies.

However, we will next confine ourselves to deal with some of the methods employed for the purpose of bringing about the desired result, or—as Dr. Dernburg, the late German Imperial Secretary for the Colonies, on 22nd June last, at a visit to the London Chamber of Commerce, said : “The great question of how to deal with all mankind of darker colour ; how the white man was to retain his hold and domination over them whilst at the same time fulfilling the cultural trust imposed upon the more advanced peoples to improve the condition of the backward races.” And to set at ease these who might shrug their shoulders at what has been and what will still be said about the methods of the foreigner (as if the same did not apply to the British Dominions) Dr. H. E. Dernburg’s assurance that “whenever he was in a difficulty as to how a certain Colonial problem ought to be handled, he had found a solution in the study of British methods” will suffice.

Rudolf Frank

(To be Continued)

The Christian Church & Feudalism. (1933)

From the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Lesson in Historical Materialism. 

Christian churches are monuments built out of the miseries of slaves—chattel-slaves, bond-slaves and wage-slaves. They are monuments of plunder and despair.

In certain respects the conditions that existed at the time Christianity was established as the state religion of the Roman Empire, sixteen hundred years ago, were typical of the conditions that have favoured its existence ever since.

The early Roman Republic was of a type common at the time. It was a city state based upon small scale agricultural production with minor trading activities connecting it with similar states outside. Its inhabitants consisted in the main of freemen farmers and slaves. The freemen possessed varying quantities of wealth but all took part equally in the voting and administration of affairs. The early wars of defence grew into tribute-imposing wars and a commercial class developed which brought about internal conflict.

The foreign wars of the republic ruined a large section of the peasants and concentrated landed property in the hands of a small section which formed the. aristocracy or patrician class; fostered the growth of a class living partly on commerce and partly on usury; developed a military force giving allegiance to leaders which eventually grew into a powerful military state; and further increased the impoverishment of the poor by the huge increase in chattel slave labour.

The civil wars that broke out during many centuries, and the direction taken by imperial policy in ruining the agricultural and commercial competitors were the expression in one form or another of the conflicting interests of these classes. It was these movements that threw up names— Gracchi, Cicero, Caesar, Augustus,—that have survived when the tendencies they represented have been almost forgotten.

By the first century B.C. the old city state had grown into an empire made up of a huge collection of municipalities subject to tributes imposed by the parent city, and the privileged section of its citizens acquired enormous wealth which they spent in the building of. beautiful villas with marble columns, costly gladiatorial combats and luxurious living and lavish displays of one kind or another. A multitude of Italian, Slavic and Germanic tribes had been incorporated into the Empire. The mode of production had changed from the small production of the peasant farmer to production by slave labour on large estates in different parts of the Empire. The Roman trader had accompanied the Roman army in its pioneering work and a considerable commercial development had been reached which spread a network covering North Africa, Spain, Britain and a portion of the East, but having as its centre Rome—all roads led to Rome.

The old senatorial city-state constitution of Rome was unsuited to this expanding empire with its conflicting' classes and complicated policies. The struggle that took place and was spread over a long period of time modified the power of the Roman Senate and placed considerable power in the hands of the military leaders. The intrigues in the Roman Senate by bribed tools of Caesar as a prelude to his crossing of the Rubicon read strangely modern. The general ruin and misery caused by the civil wars eventually produced a universal desire for peace. A correct appreciation and interpretation of this desire helped Augustus into the position of the first of the Roman Emperors, though both he and succeeding Emperors wielded power under the constitutional cloak of the First Consul of the Empire.

In the early municipalities tribute was exacted through the medium of the elected freemen of the localities, but the growth of Rome as a huge tax-gathering machine brought changes in the instruments of tax-gathering to secure a greater flow of wealth to the centre. Tax-gatherers and municipal officials were appointed from the centre and a huge bureaucratic machine developed, which tightened the hold of the centre upon the Empire, and also brought bribery, corruption and the legal arts to a high pitch of perfection. Usury became a considerable source of wealth and flourished like mushrooms on a dunghill.

Under the Empire chattel slave labour entered every sphere of production, and this form was exploited to its utmost limits, until it became a barrier that limited the further achievements of Roman civilisation. Slave labour is notoriously wasteful, both of soil and of implements, as the slave has no personal interest in the work he is doing nor in the animals and tools he is using. Its cheapness kills the incentive to improvement in means of production. Hence agricultural science made little progress and no means were used to replace the nourishment drained from the earth. The result was a progressive exhaustion of the soil.

The growth of the bureaucratic machine and the increasing rapacity of its personnel, together with, a progressive reduction in the returns from slave labour, tended to make the Empire top-heavy—it was carrying too many and too rapacious drones and unproductive labourers compared with its productive capacity. The increasing burden of taxation reduced the capacity of the municipalities to put armed men in the field to defend the frontiers, and drove the small farmers more and more to sell themselves into slavery, or put themselves in dependence upon powerful landowners, in order to live or to escape military service.

By the fourth century A.D. the whole tendency under the Empire was downwards. Even the rich had misgivings and a feeling of the impending end of their affluence, and were ruthless in their exploitation of the earth and everything on it in the attempt to accumulate and squander as much as possible, with the motto, “make the most of to-day for to-morrow we die.” Hopelessness in the future was the ultimate view that pervaded all sections under the Roman Empire at the time.

The above is a rough picture of the position when Constantine became Emperor of the Roman dominions.

In the meantime, Christianity, a hotch-potch of earlier philosophical ideas, was born and spread through the decaying Empire. The soil was fruitful and it flourished and acquired property which it struggled to retain and increase for hundreds of years after.

It had a message for rich and poor, for freeman and slave. It proclaimed to all who suffered that this life was but a brief span in a vale of tears, a necessary suffering to open the gates of Paradise in a mythical world after death. Those who saw nothing but misery in their life on earth gladly clutched at the hope that this life was only a temporary evil.

The rich it consoled with the following admonitions to the poor:—

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that he are ordained of God.

Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

For this cause pay ye tribute also; for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.

Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due: custom to whom custom: fear to whom fear: honour to whom honour.

(Epistle to the Romans, Chap. 13.)

Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ."

(Epistle to the Ephesians, Chap. 6.)

Ih the Sermon on the Mount passive obedience is preached and the followers of the Church are urged not to resist evil nor oppression but to turn the right cheek to the smiter. It is further impressed upon them by the assurance, "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth," and similar precepts.

The above teachings were an expression of the conditions of the time and were, on the one hand, the hopeless wail of the poor, and, on the other, an instrument to keep the poor submissive. With the spread of Christianity the wealth and property of the Church grew, and with it the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. The Church gathered under its wings for the administration of its affairs officials of various grades, from workers amongst the poor up to the wealthy bishops at its head.

While the Church was growing an economic revolution had been slowly spreading throughout the Empire and was eating at its chattel-slave basis. The dwindling returns from slave labour and the burdens borne by the freeman led more and more to a new form of dependence in industry and on the land. The migrations of industrial freemen were being limited by new industrial arrangements and industrial slaves were acquiring a new form of dependence. Agricultural freemen were being subjected to systems of leasing lands and customary tenancies. Agricultural slaves were granted their freedom on condition that they gave certain free service to their lords, as well as working the lands allotted to them.

Constantine was the largest private landowner in the Empire and by the time he was firmly seated as Emperor the various methods of production were intermingled on all estates, and he found them an almost inextricable tangle on his own. The method of customary tenancy, however, was rapidly growing in favour.

The change the Empire had undergone through the centuries had been fundamental. The old local city state with its ruling aristocracy had passed away and the later aristocracy of Rome were men who owned vast estates in Africa, Spain, and the large territory that at that time went under the name of Gaul. Local ideas had also given place to ideas that were the fruit of a huge agglomeration of people of different races and religions who were grouped under the same Empire. But while the development of a people may halt for a while it does not remain permanently at the same level. When the forces within have developed to their limit new forces are born which require a re-alignment of classes. A fresh surge of development commences in a new direction. Such was the position under the Roman Empire. Slave culture had reached its limit and threatened to involve all in a common ruin. But a new form had been silently superseding it. One that later became known as feudalism.

In these circumstances a church that knew no local boundaries, whose god existed everywhere, whose organisation was supported by a hierarchy of officials, and which proclaimed the divine origin of law and rulers found favour, and fitted with increasing exactitude into the needs of the Empire that was becoming feudalised.

With the growth in the feudal form of production the old governmental machinery became unsuitable and new machinery had to be devised. The passing away of municipal freedom had weakened the capacity of the central executive to appreciate the needs of the vast Empire. Rule by the Senate had not been sufficient to control adequately the huge Empire, and succeeding attempts to make the administration more efficient had degenerated into a struggle between the Senate and' the military chiefs. The effort to bring efficiency and unity into the administration was responsible for the development under one of the Emperors (Diocletian) of an advisory council, at first temporary, and finally growing under Constantine into departments covering the various divisions of treasury, war, judicial functions and so forth. The essence of the new form was its capacity to deal better with the administration of the Empire and yet remain under the personal control of a head.

A number of measures were introduced to bring uniformity into the economic relationships. The result ultimately tied the cultivator to the soil and to his lord, and made succession to these fixed tenures hereditary. But something else had still to be accomplished. A means had to be found for ascertaining the needs and wishes of the people and for sanctifying the decrees of the rulers. It was here the Church stepped in. Burrowing into every cranny of the Empire and the home, amongst the poorest as well as the richest, it possessed an administration with unequalled social knowledge, and an accumulation of property that placed it on the side off the new type of property owners. At his hand Constantine found a suitable and willing tool in burning the feudalised state, and at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. From that time onwards the Church has thrown its resources on the side of the oppressor. In the course of centuries it became itself the largest feudal proprietor in the world, at one time owning a third of the land of Europe. In England in the 16th century it is computed that the Church owned one-third of the land and half the wealth of the country. In fact, it is almost a truism to say that during the Middle Ages the Church and feudalism were the same thing.

Thus feudalism commenced a career that lasted, over 1,200 years, and with it, the Christian Church spread like a blight over the most distant parts of the known world.

Such, briefly, was the material origin of the idealised Christian Church.

Gilmac.