Society and Morals. Part IV. Chattel Slavery and Civilisation. (1917)

From the November 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part III.

It was the growth of family and personal property which was the direct cause of the first great revolution in human society. In the “Old World” this was the result of the acquisition of herds of cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and the like. This probably arose through animals caught in hunting being preserved alive after the hunger of the tribe had been appeased. If this is so we can easily understand why, in pastoral countries, the domestic animals are usually found in the charge of the adult males. The men were the hunters, and although the proceeds which were required for food would be divided in common, where a residue occurred the captor was allowed to retain his “pet” (as the first tamed animals probably were). The animals bred and multiplied, and in time, as their utility in providing milk, wool, hair, and draught-labour was realised, they became a very valuable form of wealth.

Patriarchal Society.

This property in stock led to the abandoning of the old method of inheritance in the female line in which a man’s property (in the preceding stage only consisting of weapons, ornaments, and so on) at death could never go to his own children, who belonged to the wife’s gens, but only to his blood relations on his mother’s side. That a man’s children should inherit their father’s property male kinship was instituted, i.e., the children belonged to the gens of the father and could inherit his wealth without violating the old law decreeing that property should not pass out of the gens. Hitherto the marriage tie had been loose and easily dissolvable, now, however, to make certain of the fatherhood, it was strengthened and made permanent. From this point dates the “subjection of women,” but only as a gradual process, for the traditional reverence for the “mothers of the tribe” could not be wiped out at a blow.

The herds frequently grew very great in numbers, and where this occurred much labour was required to tend them. The household work of preparing food and turning the wool and hair into cloth was mainly performed by women, and while in the case of a poor man his one wife and perhaps daughter would suffice, to a successful and wealthy cattle owner more help was very desirable. This was acquired through polygamy. Wives were either seized by capture or, having now an exchange-value, were purchased, the price going to the father of the girl, who at the same time lost the value of her services.

“Besides the domestic labour performed by women,” says Jenks in his “History of Politics,” (p. 26) the herd owner “requires the outdoor labour of men, to prevent the cattle from straying or being stolen, to drive them to pasture in the morning and bring them back at night.” This labour was in many cases performed by slaves, and slavery first received an impetus at this period which was destined to have far-reaching effects.

Along these lines was evolved the “patriarchal family” which has been found to be so wide-spread in Asia, Africa, and Europe. It was, however, quite unlike the modern family, consisting as it did, not only of the patriarch or arch father and his wives, and children, but often of his sons’ wives and their children as well, together with a number of slaves, both male and female. The whole group was under the leadership and authority of the patriarch, which authority in many cases developed into a complete despotism, determining the life and death of those subject to it.

As agriculture came to be practised and gradually rose to supreme importance in the economy of Society, stock-keeping became a mere supplementary occupation, and the tribes settled down in villages as cultivators of the soil. Although at first the land was tilled in common, the practice developed of dividing the cultivatable land every year among the different households. After a time, with the growing recognition by the households that one years’ possession was insufficient to reap the benefits of the manures and labour incorporated in the lands that had been allotted to them” (Lafargue) the land was re-divided at progressively longer periods until at length each family came to have permanent though limited rights over a certain plot of land. Pasture and meadow lands, however, for a long time continued to be collectively owned and used by the village. Absolute private property in land was a much later development.

Meanwhile handicraft gradually separated itself from agriculture, the artisans (blacksmiths, wheelrights, etc.) who worked for the community being provided for in common by the village.

The morality of patriarchal society was that of the preceeding “savage” stage modified by paternal descent and authority on the one hand and family and private property on the other. In addition to the lessened respect which it engendered for females, the former stimulated to an even greater degree than hitherto a reverent regard for ancestry which led to a still more deliberate and conscious adherence to tradition and custom, and to a more definitely organised system of that ancestor-worship which the previous part outlined, as well as a disciplined subordination to the living patriarchs—the living representatives of the gods. Both in the strict artificial rules by which the labour in the village was regulated and in the hereditary trade castes (like those in India), with their secrecy and exclusivenese, were these principles manifested.

The growth of property resulted in theft becoming a crime in some cases considered even worse than murder. Especially condemnable was the violation of another’s plot of land and interferance with its boundaries. “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark,” said the Jews (Deut. XIX., 14.) and this sentiment echoes throughout nearly all barbarian law codes. The house—looked upon as the temple of the family gods—was particularly sacred and involiable. On the other hand the desire for property led to a change in the character of war, which was now carried on purely for plunder. Robbery (outside the tribe) was an honourable trade, as it is, for example, among the Afghans. Bordering on the sea this took the form of piracy, as among the early Greeks and the Norse Vikings.

As a defence against the frequent raids fortifications and walls were set up around a central citadel (“burg” or “acropolis”) and thither the craftsmen gathered and took shelter—thus towns arose. Loose federations of tribes passed into completely unified nations with a central administration at a point of vantage—and we reach the threshold of civilisation.

The Dawn of Civilisation.

All known forms of civilised society had their roots in patriarchal barbarism such as we have roughly described above. But they developed along divergent lines in accordance with their different geographical and historical circumstances ; and here we shall not make any detailed analysis, but merely deal in brief with the features more or less common to those civilised communities in which chattel-slavery was the dominating characteristic, especially with the best known—the Greek and Roman communities—but with sidelights from the older societies.

It is in the history of Greece and Rome that we can trace most clearly the final break-up of the primitive basis of Society—the supremacy of blood kinship. Long after the Greeks and Romans entered the “pages of history” they retained remnants of the ancient clan or gentile system. But as owing to trade, conquests, and other circumstances, a large population had grown up outside of the gentes, the gens, once a bulwark of democracy, had now become an aristocratic organisation the members of which (the so-Called Patricians) administered the affairs of the much more numerous “Plebians,” and used their privileges to safeguard and advance their property interests. Part of their power was derived from the fact that they alone understood the law, which, it will be remembered, is in patriarchal society ancient custom, handed down from generation to generation and kept strictly secret.

In both Greece and Rome, however, the Plebs, under the leadership of that section which had become wealthy through trade and other means, after a prolonged struggle abolished the privileges of the descendants of the clansmen by having the laws published and by substituting for birth or kinship, as the basis of organisation, residence in a certain area and the possession of property, thus making the community definitely political. The class divisions from now on were—rich freemen, poor “freemen,” and slaves.

The Prime of Chattel Slavery.

War continued to be the supply source of slaves, but with the growing demand consequent upon the increase in wealth and luxury, slavery instead of being the effect of war, now became the cause. “Both Nineveh and Bablyon undertook wars for the express purpose of obtaining slaves,” says Paterson, * and “the military activity of men like Tiglathpileser and Nebuchadnezzar had only one result—the overcrowding of the slave market.” At Athens slave merchants “were allowed to follow the armies, and were afforded special facilities for purchasing prisoners and for importing and exporting them” (ibid), and the same in essence applies to Rome.

In the sale of slaves in the public market many detailed regulations existed, not, of course, for the benefit of the slaves, but to protect the purchasers. From the famous “Hummurabi code” of Babylonian law we know that a disease peculiar to slaves was so widespread that dealers had to guarantee their slaves free therefrom, and the price could be reclaimed by the purchaser if the slaves he bought had contracted it. In Rome “slaves were submitted naked for inspection, unwary buyers were often deceived by tricks of the trade, and sometimes they sought the advice of veterinary surgeons, who pronounced upon the physical fitness of the individuals selected—the law required a public declaration of the slave’s character, and often a record of his conduct written on a scroll was hung round his neck” (Paterson, p. 271). For their better identification slaves were usually marked in some way. At Babylon “the name of the owner was often stamped upon the hand, and there is reason to believe that the brander of cattle was also the brander of slaves, or, like dogs, slaves were compelled to wear, probably unwary buyers) were often deceived by tricks of the trade, and sometimes they sought the advice of veterinary surgeons, who pronounced upon the physical fitness of the individuals selected—the law required a public declaration of the slave’s character, and often a record of his conduct written on a scroll was hung round his neck” (Paterson, p. 271). For their better identification slaves were usually marked in some way. At Babylon “the name of the owner was often stamped upon the hand, and there is reason to believe that the brander of cattle was also the brander of slaves, or, like dogs, slaves were compelled to wear, probably around their necks, clay tablets with the name and address of the owner engraved upon them” (ibid, p. 108).

As the slaves grew more numerous so also did the occupations in which they engaged. In the country they were employed by the Romans in thousands, often working together (frequently in chains) on great farms under the management of head slaves. At night they were herded in great semi-underground barracks. In the towns slaves were increasingly used in manufacture. Great numbers were employed in the houses of the rich. Prof. S. Wilkins in his “Roman Antiquities” says that in Rome “it was the custom for the porter to be chained to the door like a dog. In the great houses there was a slave whose duty it was to keep strict silence among his fellow slaves, and the slightest sound, even a cough or a sneeze, was punished with blows” (p. 69). Slaves could be hired from proprietors who kept large numbers of all kinds for this purpose.

The teeming multitudes of slaves assisted in, and really made possible, those monumental structures which even in our day are considered so wonderful: titanic walls, gorgeous temples, the “hanging gardens” of Babylon, the tombs and pyramids of Egypt, and the splendid roads of the Roman Empire, were all fashioned by the tired hands and brains of countless broken bondmen. Seen in this light much of the “glory and grandeur” of the “ancient world” so lauded by the orthodox historians has grim foundations.

At Athens slaves were habitually tortured to obtain evidence in law suits. “In case of either side being suspected of concealing any facts,” says Prof. Mahaffy in his “Greek Antiquities” (p. 73), “it was usual for the suspected party to offer his slaves for torture, and to refuse this when challenged was a weak point in his case.” As Paterson points out, a slave’s “voluntary evidence was rejected. He was not supposed to be capable of speaking the truth.” (p. 20).

As may be imagined, the punishments meted in Rome were typical. They are thus summarised by Prof. Wilkins : “For slight offences out to slaves were very severe. Those in use slaves were beaten with a rod, . . . severer punishment was inflicted by a whip or thong like the American cow-hide ; and the worst of all was the scourge made of knotted cords, with pieces of bone or even hooks inserted to tear the flesh. We cannot wonder that slaves sometimes died under the blows of this horrible instrument. That they might not be able to wince or struggle they were often hung up with weights fastened to their feet. . . . Death was but rarely inflicted because of the value of the slave as a piece of property ; the usual method was by crucifixion, one of the most painful forms that can be imagined” (p. 20). The feet of fugitive slaves were frequently amputated.

Social and Moral Effects.

The above outline indicates the views held regarding slaves by the so-called freemen. They were not considered members of Society ; they had no “rights,” and no duties toward them were recognised. Both in theory and in practice they were property—human cattle, so to speak. Varro, indeed, an eminent Roman agrarian writer, thus classifies agricultural implements : 1. The speechless, such as the waggon and the plough ; 2. The semi-speaking, cattle, etc.; 3. Those with speech, i.e., slaves. The theory came to be elaborated that not only was slavery indispensable to all cultural progress, but that slaves were designed to be such by nature. The classic statement of this view is thus given by Aristotle, the greatest of Greek thinkers: “There are in the human race individuals as inferior to others as the body is to the soul, or as the beast is to man ; these are beings suitable for the labours of the body alone, and incapable of doing anything more perfect. These individuals are destined by nature for slavery because there is nothing better for them to do than to obey . . . Nature creates some for liberty, others for slavery.” (Politics, I. 5.)

As slave labour gradually extended so as to embrace all branches of industry, productive labour, other than in art, came to be regarded as a rightful occupation for slaves only, and to be in itself servile and degrading. Especially was this the case in some of the Grecian States, where, as Prof. Mahaffy says (Ibid, 63), “any free man who was compelled by poverty to perform this manual labour was held little better than a slave.” War, politics, and, in Athens particularly, intellectual and artistic pursuits were considered the only “proper” occupations for a freeman, and were glorified accordingly.

We can readily realise the moral importance given to military service, for it was not only the means of acquiring the slaves so increasingly necessary, but was, and this was even more important, the essential safeguard against an uprising of the servile population which rapidly became far more numerous than the free. (Athens at its prime, for instance, had eighteen slaves to every adult citizen.)

As Society evolved in Greece and Rome, therefore, the citizens to an ever-increasing extent were divorced from productive labour, especially in the towns, in harmony with the contempt in which they had come to hold industrial pursuits. This was, however, doubtless a case of making a virtue of necessity, seeing that free labour was less and less able to compete with slave labour, for, owing to their enormous increase, slaves became commoner and cheaper than domestic animals.

The able-bodied freemen were, of course, required for the army, but so much was soldiering in line with their economic interests that, Greek soldiers not being in such constant and full use as were the Roman, they frequently enrolled for their keep and the possibility of plunder, with private military leaders, alien and even enemy governments, as mercenary troops.

But all “freemen” could not be soldiers, and we find that to a certain extent in Greece, and very largely in Rome, arrangements had to be made by the State to both maintain and entertain, in the cities especially, a horde of property-less citizens. Thus in Rome this proletariat received, as it was classically put, “bread and circuses.” The delight which the Roman citizens had in these latter “bloody shows” (free to all citizens) is an interesting study in psychology. In the arena slaves fought to the death for the amusement of the onlookers. Wild beasts from every corner of the Empire were pitted against each other and against slaves. The number of slaves thus slaughtered must have been prodigious, and was only made possible by their exceeding abundance and cheapness. Pliny justified these shows on the ground that they cultivated in the Roman a “manly” warlike spirit, and this was the general belief.

This, then, was the inevitable nemesis of the greatest development of ancient slavery—that which occurred in Rome : its canker rotted the Roman Society to the core. The wealthy, enveloped with every luxury, sank into a paralysing debauchery, and the poor “free” citizens of the “capital city of the world” largely became a mere clamouring, unprincipled mob, the dupes of every demagogue.

Regarding the ideas of the slaves themselves our information is very scanty. Every effort was made to prevent their discussion and organisation. As Paterson says (p. 187), “many slaveowners acted on the cruel advice of writers like Plato and Aristotle, who pointed out that, to avoid conspiracy, slaves speaking the same language should not be allowed to work together.” On the other hand, continued subjection, the conviction of the futility of resistance and the consequent hopelessness of their position, would lead in many cases to a despondent submissiveness and a spiritless resignation to the inevitable. Especially would this apply to slaves who had never known freedom, who had been born into slavery. But despite all this, there is undoubted evidence that many of the slaves bitterly nurtured their grievances, and occasionally their class-feeling rose to culmination in those revolts of which the best known is that associated with Sparticus the Gladiator. But these revolts always failed to break the disciplined armies of their oppressors, and the bleached bones and grinning skulls along the highways were a vivid record of the cruel price the slaves paid for the sake of liberty.

* * *

Morality and the Class Division.

With the development of classes the original character of Society as an organisation to secure the mutual welfare of its members is destroyed. Instead of the interests of every individual coinciding with those of the group, we have certain sections whose welfare is enhanced through the oppression, robbery, and degradation of other sections. The interests of these classes being opposed, the one to maintain and to extend its supremacy, the other to lighten its burden and to achieve its freedom, that spontaneous pulling together and social cohesion natural to primitive societies can no longer exist. The moral law which was a means of preserving the necessary order and stability in the earlier stage cannot any longer preserve this function (except where members of a class are deluded as to their real interests—a circumstance we shall consider later). Physical coercion must be applied or threatened if an oppressed and exploited class is not to be a disturbing and disrupting element in the social organisation. The slaves must be compelled to work and to render up their surplus labour-power, any attempt at revolt being promptly suppressed. This is most obvious where chattel slavery, as outlined above, is the system in vogue, but it is an essential feature of every class society.

Morality is, of course, not abolished, for social relations still exist ; but it changes in form and function. Just as morality was a bond, in the pre-war stage, between those having general interests in common, so it continues to be after the coming of classes. But this group with a community of interests is no longer the whole community, but a class within it. The ruling class has a morality which fits in with its interest, and, generally speaking, it uses the force which it controls in accordance with the dictates of its ethics, the main principles of which are expressed in its State-made law.

Likewise with the subject class, where its members think over and realise their interests as a class. It accepts, and as far as is possible acts up to, a morality which promotes these interests—interests the full realisation of which means social revolution.

R. W. Housley

(*) “The Nemesis of Nations,” W. R. Paterson, M.A. A work to be read for its full account of ancient slavery.

(To be Continued.)

Society and Morals. Part II. Economics and Social Organisation. (1917)

From the September 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part I.

One of the most important differences between human societies and the organisations of the “lower” animals is the greater development within the former of the principle of division of labour or specialisation in function. Not that this is unknown in non-human societies. On the contrary it is often well developed. But in them it almost invariably rests upon the specialisation of physical structure. In the beehive for example, the queens, workers and drones ; among the ants the “soldiers” and the “slaves,” are in each case provided with a bodily structure specially constructed and adapted to the work they have to perform in the community. Moreover, each separate class has its own special instincts. It must perform its own function and it can perform no others.

But in human society, as everyone knows, all manner of functions, different kinds of work, can be undertaken by individuals who are in all essential respects identically equipped—physically and mentally. Of course the two sexes are by nature fitted for and usually perform different kinds of work, but this is of small significance as it leaves unexplained that great variety of functions usually performed by one sex alone—the male. For example, we have some people engaged in the raising of agricultural products for food and clothing, etc.; others building habitations, others transporting goods to wherever required ; some are making machinery and tools to be used, by others, and many delve into the bowels of the earth to procure the metals for the use of the machine makers ; and so on indefinitely.

Man is able to perform a special function without a special instinct for it because his higher reasoning powers enable him to mentally visualise the work to be done, and by utilising the memorised previous experiences (either his own or those of other men), think out the method of accomplishing it. He requires no special modification of structure by reason of the artificial implements (such as tools) and processes which he creates and uses like so many limbs, powers and senses supplementing his natural ones. These have not been acquired “all at once.” Commencing at zero—with nothing—a slow evolution occupying thousands of centuries has resulted in modern man’s colossal artificial equipment and control over mature.

With every change in these self-made auxiliaries to his physical powers a corresponding modification takes place in man’s method and condition of living. One of the earliest discoveries ; one which makes an impassable breach between man and all other animals is that of making fire. The first weapon is the wooden club—a shaped tree-branch. Stone, horn, bone and shell, when sharpened, serve as scrapers, knives and fish hooks, tip another primitive weapon, the spear, and turn the club into a tomahawk or hatchet. A tree trunk, hollowed with fire and axe forms a canoe—the-far-back ancestor of the liner and ironclad. The wolf is tamed into the dog and, with the invention of the bow and arrow, completes an equipment which gradually transformed man from a tree-dweller subsisting on raw roots and fruits, indects and grubs, into a fisherman and a hunter.

As a direct outcome of hunting comes the taming and breeding of sheep, goats, oxen and horses. Their milk and meat serve for food ; their hides, wool and hair for clothing and dwellings ; their strength for transport. Following his flocks and herds from pasture to pasture man exists as a nomad on the grassy plains. The cultivation of plants, which now arises and progresses, is greatly aided by the acquisition of metal implements—axes, ploughs, spades and sickles, first as a rule of copper and bronze, but later of iron. This makes necessary a more settled mode of life. Village settlements spring up and these, in many cases (as the spinning and weaving of textiles and the working of metals) become specialised industries and trade arises, forming the germs of that later pheno­menon—town life.

The Productivity of Labour.

The most important result of the development we have just outlined, that result which above everything else has had a profound influence upon the form of social organisation, is the increase which it brings in the productivness of human labour. The total supply of products yielded by a given expenditure of labouring energy becomes larger as the technical implements by which they are acquired evolve.

The life of the primitive hunting savage, such as the Australian natives or the African bushmen, is an almost continuous and severe struggle to obtain even the barest necessities of life. With the rude methods at his command his success in the chase is so uncertain that often many days pass before the pangs of hunger can be appeased. To this may be traced many practices of his, looked upon by us with horror, which to him were perfectly moral and “natural.” Cannibalism is, at this stage, a normal means of supplementing the irregular and scanty food supply. To keep down the number of useless consumers the slaying of newly born infants forms an effective and legitimate means ; as also does the killing of the aged and enfeebled who, indeed, often voluntarily sacrifice themselves for the welfare of the community. Such customs are usually abandoned or greatly minimised when, with the domestication of animals, a more plentiful and regular source of food ia available.

With a rapidity which varies greatly according to the particular circumstances obtaining, the fertility of labour continues to advance, securing to man, for a time at any rate, increasing comfort and leisure, with ever sounder protection against famine, drought and the vicissitudes of climate. The men living at each stage, not experiencing the hard, bitter struggles of their forerunners, regard their own comparatively favourable condition as normal and “natural.” Each stage is the building ground for a fresh ascent ; the luxuries of one age are the “necessities” and commonplaces of the next. So man evolves.

Side by side with, and flowing from, this process is to be observed a change in the social division of labour and organisation of society, which is somewhat different from the already-mentioned distribution and sub-division of industry. In the earliest savage stages when subsistence was rarely anything but the fruit of continuous and intensely active (though not necessarily laborious) expenditure of time and energy, every fit person would have to engage in the process. But, as productivity is developed, it becomes possible for certain individuals, ever greater in numbers, to be relieved from directly productive employment, their necessities being provided by the rest of the community.

At a very early period we find this to be the case with the tribal or clan chiefs and the “medicine men” or priests. The village commune, which has been and still is the typical social organism of primitive agricultural peoples the world over (in its prime the most perfect organisation man ever evolved from the point of view of the material prosperity and social unity of its entire membership), had numerous officials which performed unproductive functions for the common good. These early cases of exemption from production, however, in no way violate that equality and freedom pervading primitive society which is the outcome of a common economic status among the members and their primordial bond of blood kinship. Thus the original character of the social group, as an organism existing (although unconsciously developed) to secure the welfare of all those living within it is maintained.

The Basis of Slavery.

A stage is eventually reached, however, when increasing productivity has results which ultimately bring about a complete revolution in the organisation of society.

Let us look at the increasing yield of labour from a somewhat different point of view. Given, a certain average standard of subsistence, it means that this will be secured by a diminishing expenditure of labour-power and therefore also implies the existence of an increasing reserve of time and energy to be otherwise than productively employed. This surplus energy and leisure time is utilised in those fete-days and ritual practices which are so common among fairly advanced barbarians.

But soon, a far different use is found for this overflowing energy, this one-time “play” time of man. A man who has a considerable reserve of energy after providing for his own needs is obviously a valuable person to have control over. He can then be compelled to yield up his energy in the form of labour to provide for the needs of those having this control over him, thus increasing their comfort and lightening or eliminating their toil. That this power over others was developed and utilised for purposes of exploitation, there is the clearest historical evidence.

The appropriation of the surplus time, and therefore surplus labour and its products, of one group of men forming a working class by another group composing an exploiting and ruling clas may be accomplished in various ways. The character of the force used, its distribution and the precise method of its application are varying factors.

Forms of Slavery.

In savage days captives taken in war were sacrificed either to appease the desires of the stomachs of their captors or the lusts of their gods. These were the most profitable ways of disposing of them, though, when of nearly-related tribes, they were sometimes adopted into the community. But when pastoral habits are adopted and the reserve of labour-power after self maintenance grows, it becomes practicable and desirable to retain the captives alive to labour for their captors. Still more does this apply in the agricultural stage. The captives become “chattel slaves”—are owned by their masters in the same way as cattle and are treated as such. As exchange develops they become articles of merchandise and slave raids and the slave trade, established institutions.

Found feebly developed in barbarian societies, chattel slavery may, under favourable circumstances, develop into the extensive and complex systems exhibited in the Greek and Roman civilisations, where the slaves vastly outnumbered the free population.

There is another method of subjecting the producer, wherein he is not violently wrenched away from his own land, society, his accustomed habits and occupations, being brought to work as a stranger and a chattel slave for an alien people ; on the contrary, under this second system the producers retain, fairly intact, for a time, their traditional institutions and customs, remaining in their “home-land” and at their customary employment. Here, the workers gradually change from free into exploited and oppressed producers through a military caste utilising the force they possess to exhort a tribute either in labour-time, goods or money from the mass of the community and to gradually centralise the control of society into its own hands.

This military caste may be one developed from the community itself by a normal process of division of labour or may be a band of warriors who have installed themselves as conquerors over a social group ; or again, more rarely, as in ancient Mexico and Sparta, an entire warlike community have achieved domination through conquest.

This system was a basic institution of the ancient Oriental States—Hindustan, Persia, Egypt and China. In a somewhat specialised form (wherein the rulers declared themselves owners of the land and levied a forced “rent” in labour and kind but later in money) it was dominant and known as “feudalism” during the “Middle Ages” of Europe. Although it has often existed side by side with chattel-slavery in the same community one or the other has usually predominated according to which of them circumstances were most favourable.

As these forms of slavery evolved, often placing the products of vast supplies of labour-power in the hands of a few individuals, inequalities of wealth became increasingly manifest in the ranks of the free class itself. In addition to ”freemen” and “slaves” there soon developed categories of “rich” and “poor.” Through the exchange of commodities luxuries of every kind were made accessible to the wealthy, awakening desires, which were a further stimulant to commerce. Money—the means of exchange—became a new social power, possession of which gave control over every product of man. In some cases usury and the mortgage widened the breach between the rich and the poor, for the impoverished debtors were often deprived of their last remaining possessions which were seized by the money-lenders. This occurred in Greece and Rome where the debtors were even sold into slavery.

But, above all, it was the merchants, those who lived solely by trade—skinning both producer and purchaser, who possessed this new power—gold, that glittering talisman of commodities. As they became more and more indispensable to the successful carrying on of the expanding trade, they gained an ever more complete control over industry, which thus tended increasingly to become the production of goods for sale alone, as distinct from the older method of producing for direct consumption. But production for the market involves a production varying in intensity, in the quantity of its products, according to the changes in the market, to the fluctuations in the demand for commodities.

Chattel-slavery, however, is not well adapted to the production of commodities. An owner of slaves will usually see that his slaves receive their maintenance whether they work “full time” or no time at all, for they are his property, they are wealth. We therefore find that, after a brilliant period of commercial progress up to a point, those ancient societies which depended on chattel-slavery at length reached the limits of their mode of production and industrial stagnation and decay set in. In the Southern United States we had a modern example of the same phenomenon.

With mediaeval feudalism, however, it was different. The growth of commerce and the use of money tended to relieve the serf of all dues in direct labour by the substitution of a money rent. From the oppressed serfs of a feudal baron they became free peasants exploited by a land-lord. But for most of them this was only a temporary respite, for, under one pretence and another, the peasants were ejected from their holdings by the land owners and thus deprived of their means of livelihood.

This was exactly what the merchant manufacturers, just then springing up, required to gain the advantage over the old, guild-bound, handicraft system. They were able to employ these propertyless workers as wage workers when “business was brisk,” discharging them when the demands of the market slackened, and, in this way, the production of commodities for sale in the rapidly expanding world-wide markets was made profitable.

Along these lines developed modern industrial capitalism with the labour system of wage slavery which thus constitutes the third great, historical method of exploitation.

As under chattel slavery and serfdom, the wage workers of to-day are compelled to render the fruits of their surplus energy to an idle class. The pressure used is less direct, but is, for that very reason, as we shall see, all the more effective. The system presupposes the monopoly of the wealth needed for production (land, raw material, machinery, etc.) by a small section of society. Those who have no means upon which to live must either starve or produce wealth for the property owners by using their means of production. This they do by selling their labour-power to the capitalists ; and the price or wage they receive is determined by competition, rising and falling according to the supply of and demand for labour-power, but always hovering around the cost needed for self-maintenance and perpetuation. All they produce above this goes to the capitalist class who thus correspond to the slave-holders and oppressors of the older systems.

In this brief survey we have seen how society in its primordial form becomes broken into classes, exploited and oppressed, exploiters and oppressors. Our next section will attempt to show the effect of this upon the character of moral ideas.

R. W. Housley

(To be Continued.)

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