(Continued from last issue.)
“There are some 830 millions of the neo-Caucasian race of the world, who are either uncultured or backward or retrograd in their mode of life, who stand at present entirely aloof from our civilization, who in the eyes of most white men are helots, without rights to be maintained or feelings to be considered. At the present time these 830 millions of black, brown, and yellow men are unable to wage war on the white man on anything like equal terms. To his aggressive advance they can only oppose a passive resistance ; often they are quite without defence against his conscious or unconscious cruelty. Out of this total of 830 millions of backward peoples at least 365 millions dwell within the limits of the British Empire or its sphere of political influence. If we are going to—I will not say exterminate, for that is now impossible—make the lives of 365 millions of black, brown and yellow human beings miserable and serf-like, so that by degrees they dwindle and die out, are we so sure that we can plant in their places an European population which will prove as suitable to climate and surroundings ? . . . It is very doubtful whether the white man can exist there in large numbers . . . and whether he can suffice for the agriculture and the mass of the work of development. . . . We must, therefore, protect, educate, uplift and encourage the aboriginal population.”
Thus spake Sir Harry Johnston at the Annual Meeting of the Anti Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society on April 23rd, 1914.
Although Sir Harry accuses “most white men” of looking upon coloured mankind as “helots” whose rights and feelings need not be considered, it is pretty evident that for all practical purposes only “our pioneers of colonisation” can be meant— those who have been in the past and are now actually treating the coloured races in this manner ; those who have been and still are waging war upon them to which they cannot reply upon “any thing like equal terms” ; those who, “consciously or unconsciously,” perpetrate cruelties against them.
The phrase “most white men” can only refer to shareholders who do not despise dividends made by torturing innocent human beings in a manner the world had never known before—to a ruling class which has filched the lands of nearly half the coloured peoples, and under whose sway slavery is increasing and millions have already been forced into reserves and compounds. But for an Imperialist to accuse his fellows of disregarding the natives’ rights and feelings is not only an extremely grotesque case of ye pot calling ye kettle black, but also betrays him for the ignoramus and humbug that he is. For none other would suggest that a civilisation based on the right of might, and into the range of which the “backward peoples” must be brought, by fire and sword, is compatible with maintaining the rights and considering the feelings of the weaker.
How, indeed, would our Imperialists establish their civilisation in the colonies if the natives there were to retain their rights to their land ? What would become of capitalist enterprise, and where should the supply of labour come from, if the natives’ rights to the unrestricted use of all nature’s gifts as means of subsistence, were to remain unchallenged ? Is it possible that a policy of scrupulously respecting the feelings of the natives in the matter of industry, and mere theoretic teaching and encouragement, could solve the “labour problem” ? Would it not be a calamity striking at the very roots of civilisation, and making all commerce and progress impossible, if the natives were at liberty to cease work when they had produced enough to “provide their ordinary and very primitive requirements of subsistence” ? Where would their Worships’ profit and dividend come in ?
In fact, as the recent commission upon native labour in East Africa pointed out, the main contention of the planters there is that there is an ample supply of labour in the Protectorate, and that the only difficulty in the way of making them emerge in sufficient numbers to work for the white man, is the comparative affluence, which they still enjoy. It was, therefore, and is still, constantly being urged, that the natives should be forced out of their already small reserves (in the South African Province of the Transvaal, for example, 1,000,000 natives have assigned to them 500,000 morgen of laud which they can call their own, while 31,000,000 morgen are in the possession of 300,000 whites!) or that taxation should be so increased as to force them to spend a larger portion of the year in labouring for the white settlers ; it is suggested that they should do their share of work for the Government; that they should be compelled to wear clothing in order that they should be forced to buy such things, etc, etc.
No, the "labour problem” in the Colonies can only be solved by further encroachment upon the rights and liberties of the native (aboriginal) populations, and the solution must carry with it the character of encroachment even if effected indirectly by the gradual economic development.
However much some Negrophile capitalist souls may pretend to regret the violation of the coloured people’s rights and feelings and however much they may claim to be anxious to see the same glorious triumph which civilisation has resulted in at home, where all “rights” are perfectly safe and all feelings scrupulously considered, it is evident that the natives’ salvation is unavoidably bound up with hardship and suffering in the beginning.
All who recognise the great gulf that separates the primitive coloured man from the highly advanced whites must see that the former, in the very interests of his uplifting, cannot be trusted to the same extent, and left to enjoy the same privileges, as the “high standing” modern working class. Just as their right to their land cannot possibly he maintained, so their well-known and deeply deplored “right to be lazy” must be infringed!
If the civilised worker, as the result sod reward of centuries of “education and advancement,” has acquired the privilege in question, and can be relied upon not to abuse it, it is inconceivable that the granting of a similar right in these Colonies could in any way make civilisation a reality amongst the uncultured and retrograde peoples. Could anyone seriously entertain the idea that without infringing their “right to be lazy,” these simple minded people would develop anything approaching the prodigious industriousness of the modern working-class ? Does not the very existence of the “labour problem” in many Colonies show that “education” and “uplifting” have not hitherto so far advanced things as to bring about this highly desirable result ?
The members of the modern working class, so far from abusing their privileges, jealously dispute with each other, not only locally, but nationally, for what are vulgarly called “the jobs on hand,” and from their repeated applications for the “right to work,” it cannot be doubted that they are looking forward to a time of still greater activity. Is not the claim of the whole working class “more work” ?
Just at present the prodigious industry, coupled with the most rigorous abstinence, of the European working class, has once again literally overwhelmed their masters, and in their endeavours to find new outlets and “work for all,” a deadly conflict for the right to do the work of the world in future has arisen. It is, indeed, at such stagnant periods that the complete triumph of civilisation is moat glaringly demonstrated, because rather than relax their pace of toil, or partake more liberally of the fruits of their labour, they submit to a wholesale destruction, not only of an enormous mass of stored-up wealth, but even of productive human forces.
But while the modern working class, in all these things, as a result of their “culture” and age-long “education,” see eye to eye with their masters; while they again and again justify the masters’ implicit trust, and in spite of all temptations, do not deviate from the path of virtue, and from serving the Lord God Capital, it cannot reasonably be suggested that the ideas of “uncultured backward” people would coincide with the conceptions of a modern master. After all, a high civilisation such as “ours” presupposes an all embracing “system of education,” and last but not least, of religion, such as Christianity. Whereas the modern workers, in obedience to their lords’ and masters’ command, “set themselves at variance against one another” rather than relax their ever increasing productivity or consume more than one eighth to one third of the fruits of their labour, thus periodically leading their masters to the embarrassing problem of how to dispose of the surplus; whereas, in short, the majority of the working class fully come up to the expectations of their masters, it would be most unreasonable to trust savages with the same privileges as are enjoyed at home.
These “helots,” after having for centuries laboured under the wicked conception that the sole purpose of all natural resources was to serve as means of subsistence, and who were consequently accustomed to consume the whole of the fruits of their labour (think of the horror!) —these sinful people, who never dreamt that mother earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, can hardly be rid of their impossible notions, and converted into useful and “profitable” units, by the persuasive efforts of the Lord's chosen servants alone —indeed, corporal punishment has been found a far more efficient means of curing obstinate reluctance to acknowledge the supreme authority and laws of God—Capital.
If one thing emerges more strikingly than another from the history of the efforts by which the capitalistically backward countries have been and are being brought into the range of modern civilisation, it is the fact that the fundamental condition of such enterprises is the expropriation of the mass of the people from the land and and their conversion into wage workers. The much-vaunted “education of the savage races” is really only a high-sounding phrase used by some to hide this awkward fact of expropriation. We only need again refer to the obstinate resistance which the “aggressive advance” (the term is in itself significant) of “civilisation” meets everywhere on the part of the aboriginal populations, and to the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of workers, to illustrate this fact. Deprivation of free access to the means of subsistence is, in fact, the only way to convert free men into wage slaves; and the existence of each a “labour problem” merely proves, as has been pointed out, that the separation of the natives from their own conditions of labour and their root, the soil, is not yet successfully effected, in other words, that the impoverishment of the people is not yet complete. In the eyes of our Imperialists, such countries are, of course, in a very backward and uncivilised state, and “education and culture” must be improved therein. No one in his senses would ever associate a “high civilisation,” such as we find at home, with a similar “labour problem”; quite the contrary, complete (capitalist) civilisation is unthinkable without a permanent reserve army clamouring for “the right to work ”
The lesson is obvious and should not be lost upon the modern working class, who labour under the delusion that they still have “a stake in the country.” It is that “civilisation” presupposes the completed expropriation of the mass of the people from the land and the means of wealth production.
But it is by no means necessary to go to the Colonies to discover the basis of “our civilisation.” Does not the fact stare one constantly in the face that the people have been deprived of their heritage ? What other explanation is there for the “terrible social difficulties” and stupid anomalies surrounding us ? What other cause is there of this awful and degrading poverty in the midst of plenty ? What else could turn every technical progress into a calamity ? What other factor could turn every labour saving device into a means of increasing the unemployment and poverty of the many ? Is it, or is it not, the fact that the few (the capitalist class) have confiscated the land and the instruments of wealth production, and that they allow these things to be used only when it suits their interests — their pockets ?
Never was there, consequently, a more bare faced, hypocritical cry than the present appeal to the workers to take up arms in defence of “ their country.” Why, Lloyd George himself told an audience in Bedford last year that “most of the land of Britain is in the hands of very few persons.” He went on : “I should say it is in the hands of something like half of the population of Bedford.” He pointed out, speaking of the agricultural workmen (and his remarks obviously apply equally to all other workers) that “he no longer had a stake in the country, . . . and that he had been converted from a contented. well fed, independent peasant to a hopeless, underpaid landless drudge on the soil, whose wages are less to-day than they were, in proportion to their purchasing capacity, in the reign of Henry VII ! Where has the land gone?" the speaker asked. “Stolen! Landlord Parliaments have annexed Naboth's vineyard.”
Thus we see that the policy of colonisation that is being carried out before our eyes and has been described in these columns—the robbery of the land from the native and the destruction of his own means of living—is nothing more or less than the policy which has successfully reduced is —“the heirs of civilisation”— to a class of wage-slaves labouring our whole lives in poverty in order that others may enjoy lives of riotous luxury.
Even a Liberal minister, when it suits his party purpose, can tell us truths about our present position, but dare not admit the obvious universality of this practice wherein the whole of labouring mankind is being more and more completely reduced to a condition of abject economic slavery; but the workers cannot forever remain duped. They will realize the fact that the fate of their black brothers is their own fate, that the causes which have reduced them to slavery are reducing their black brothers to slavery.
The white labourer, like the black, is forced to toil for capitalist profit by force or fraud, and it is more than ever clearly true that the working class of all countries are the wage-slaves of a mass that makes its country synonymous solely with its profit. This all-important fact the workers must end by seeing clearly, and then they will stand surely together as one man on the freedom of humanity, by the overthrow of this world-wide capitalist class. This must be so, for economic development fights for us and, to use again the well-worn but fundamentally true words of Marx, the workers have nothing to lose but their chains, while they have a world to win.
Rudolf Frank
(Concluded.)
Blogger's Note:
By the time the last in the series of these articles had been published in the Socialist Standard in November 1914, Britain and her allies had already been at war with Germany for three months, and in 1915 Rudolf Frank, originally from Bohemia, was to be interned as an 'Enemy Alien' at Alexandra Palace.
I don't have exact dates for when he was imprisoned but Frank wrote in the December 1964 Socialist Standard article, 'Reminiscences of an old member', that:
When the 1914-1918 war broke out I was put in an internment camp. The long confinement at least offered opportunities for further enlightenment and discussion on politics. Lectures and meetings were held and prisoners were also free to debate subjects in all kinds of private circles, language classes, etc. Soon groups particularly interested in Socialism were regularly gathering around our platform. The discussion became particularly lively when Comrade Neumann, also an active member of the S.P.G.B. (translator of Kautzky's Erfurter programme) later joined the army of internees. Apart from lectures, a very successful May Day meeting was held with Neumann as the principal speaker. Among the many adherents to the Socialist case were Mundl, Guilke, Bankofsky, who all joined the S.P.G.B. after their release . . .
On his release from prison in 1919, Frank was deported from Britain and was never able to regain re-entry despite many attempts. "Comrade Neumann" was also expelled from Britain at the end of the war and, according to Robert Barltrop in his book 'The Monument', was rumoured to have died in the Spartacist Uprising. Frank eventually settled in Austria, still a socialist, still spreading the word, and played his own part in the eventual formation of the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten.
The following links give more background on Rudolf Frank:
