Rout of the Railway Men. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Metz” of the A.S.R.S.

Curious indeed are the parallels that history furnishes us between incidents and events, often apparently unlike, and separated by time and position from each other. History, of course, does not actually repeat itself, and the parallels must not be pushed too far, but in the salient points of likeness valuable lessons may be learnt and deductions drawn for out future guidance.

Bazaine and Bismarck.

It will be remembered how, in the Franco-German War of 1870-71, Marshal Bazaine had been surrounded by the German Army and driven into Metz fortress, with 180,000 men and large munitions of war. Instead of using this immense force to break through the lines and join the other French armies, as every canon of military and national expediency demanded, he tried, as he afterwards confessed, to negotiate with Bismarck for the surrender of France on the condition that he (Bazaine) should be allowed to retain his own army and establish himself as dictator after the peace. Bismarck played with him till the opportunity for a successful sortie had passed and then became adamant. On October 27th, 1870, Metz was surrendered unconditionally, and the immense army passed into the possession of the Germans and remained prisoners until it suited the interest of the German ruling class—personified in Bismarck—to set them free to crush the Communards in Paris.

At the opening of the war between France and Germany, it was claimed by the French generals that it would be a triumphal procession from Paris to Berlin. Sadowa was forgotten. But the results showed a reversal of the procession, and it was Paris, not Berlin, that was beseiged.

Attempts have been made to defend Bazaine on the ground that the huge war stores were largely “fake” ; that the contractors had swindled the commissariat by supplying barrels of sawdust for food, empty cases for cartridges, and brown paper for boots. We need not now inquire whether Bazaine was a party to the frauds and received his share of the plunder. The revelations made in this country a short time ago show how far up as well as how low down these “business operations” extend. But the very shortage of real supplies should have been an added incentive to rapid action on Bazaine’s part, and the excuse only emphasizes his guilt.

The Parallel of Metz

The parallel of Metz with the recent struggle between the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the Railway Companies is remarkable. Firstly, preceding the conference held on November 6th, the officials of the A.S.R.S. had declared that it must be “recognition” of themselves or war. The men had been asked to vote upon this point, and an overwhelming majority declared in favour of enforcing this “recognition” by a strike if the companies refused to accept their demand. To-day, despite this vote, “recognition” is swept out of existence for seven years. This by itself would be a small point were it not coupled with the fact that the rank and file of the Railway Servants—union and non-union alike—have been surrendered, bound hand and foot, to the companies for those seven years. Never was “victory” so disastrous.

It is unnecessary to go into the full details of the Conciliation and Arbitration Scheme agreed to by the officials of the railway servants and the companies, but the essentials may be stated. For the purpose of this scheme each company is a unit that sends its representatives to the Sectional and Central Conciliation Boards, as well as before the final arbitrator, when any matter is carried so far. The men, however, employed by each company, are divided first into sectional groups along trade lines, and then into geographical groups for the purpose of electing their representatives. The whole of the employees are concerned in this election, and their representatives must be chosen from among themselves, and their power is rigidly confined to dealing with the hours and wages only of the particular section they represent. When a Sectional Board fails to agree, the Central Board, composed of the representatives of the company and one or more chosen from the employees’ side of the Sectional Board, shall consider the matter. In the event of this Board disagreeing, the matter is referred to a single arbitrator, appointed by agreement between the two sides of the Board, or, failing this agreement, by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Master of the Rolls. The decision of this arbitrator shall be binding upon all parties.

Here, then, we have not only no “recognition” of the Union or its officials, but a deliberate flouting of the latter in that all representatives are to be elected from the employees themselves. Both Mr. Bell and the Daily News claim that the officials may represent the men before the final arbitrator, but while Lord Claud Hamilton says “recognition” has been completely abolished, the scheme is silent on this point, leaving the deduction to be drawn that it is the members of the Central Board who will argue before the final arbitrator.

Why Official Recognition?

In attempting to defend his claim for official recognition by the directors of the companies, Mr. Bell pointed out that if an employee were to go forward with any grievance his position of dependence upon the very people he was meeting almost paralyzed his efforts, but the trade union official, with a security of living outside the company, could argue every point. Moreover, it was stated, and numerous instances given in support, that an employee going forward to complain of the grievances of himself and his fellow workers, was thence a marked man and, if not discharged at once, some technical point would be found and used as an excuse for discharging him a little later. The whole of this contention has now been thrown overboard by the signing of this scheme.

It is exactly at the first move where this protection is most wanted, and even if Mr. Bell were correct in saying that officials could appear before the arbitrator, this would leave the men completely defenceless in bringing forward any complaint, as it must pass through the other stages first. Moreover, these Boards only deal with “hours and wages,” thereby leaving the other conditions of employment completely in the control of the companies, while in case of victimisation the men have absolutely no chance of redress, or even of discussion, under this scheme. A man who pushes forward the claims of his fellow workmen vigorously may he elected to the Board, and the company could then discharge him, while the men would be unable to lodge any protest through that Board.

Secondly, the excuse of the “faked” stores at Metz is paralleled by the position of the “stores” or fighting fund of the A.S.R.S. The officials boasted of having £362,733 in their funds. But, according to the Railway News, £192,422 belong to the provident fund, and, under the Friendly Societies Acts, could not be touched for strike purposes. This would leave £170,311 for a fighting fund for over 100,000 men, as not only would the actual members of the A.S.R.S. require support, hut the non-union men who might have come out would also need keeping. Even this does not reveal the whole truth, for the A.S.R.S. have over £120,000 invested in municipal loans, and £51,000 in railway companies’ stock !

Incompetency or Insanity ? 

Could incompetence or insanity go further ? Here is a sum, nearly one-third of their theoretical fighting fund, placed in the hands of the very people they have to fight. It is as though Bazaine had placed a portion of his ammunition in the German camp “to be kept dry.” With so small a fighting fund at their disposal the necessity for swift and decisive action on the part of the A.S.R.S. was imperative. Yet not only are the negotiations—or rather attempts at negotiations—kept dawdling about for over twelve months, but the chance to strike a blow in the busy season is, as the Daily News stated, deliberately thrown away by the officials.

More important, however, is the fact that the agitation was originally for an “All Grades” advance of wages and shortening of hours for all employees. This was pushed on one side at the first opportunity and the question of “recognition” put in its place, while the men were gulled into believing that “recognition” was all important. As though the example of the Boilermakers’ Society a short time ago was not at hand for them to see the value of “recognition” without the power to enforce their demands. When the Boilermakers refused to accept the conditions that their “recognised” officials had agreed to, they were served with a week’s lockout notices, and, frantically appealed to by those officials, finally accepted the employers’ terms.

The engineering employers on the Clyde “recognise” the A.S.E. to such good purpose that the “recognised” officials were used to keep the men at work after they had twice voted in favour of a strike to improve their conditions. The A.S.R.S. is itself recognised by the North Eastern Railway Co., with the results that were dealt with in our August issue. In spite of all these facts the men were fooled into believing that ”recognition” was of more importance than better wages or shorter hours; that dawdling about and sacrificing their chance of an effective blow during the busy season was more “diplomatic” and likely to obtain “public sympathy” (whatever that may mean) than insisting upon their original demands would have been. They voted in this belief, and back with terrific force is sent the answer : “seven years shalt thou serve in complete bondage.”

How Bismarck Recognised Bazaine.

As far as any work, other than that of a sick benefit society, on behalf of its members is concerned, the A.S.R.S. is practically dead for the next seven years. Mr. Bell’s pathetic appeal to all employees to join the A.S.R.S. can hardly evoke a hearty response seeing that the Boards, after the first election, will manage their own details. There is absolutely no place in the scheme for, and therefore no reason for the existence of, the A.S.R.S., while the scheme lasts. It may be objected that the officials were recognised seeing they were asked to sign the Scheme on behalf of the men. Yes ! exactly as Bismarck “recognised” Bazaine—until his operations were complete.

The union officials—for it must be remembered that the men have not been consulted at all on this Scheme—have been used as the tools of the companies in signing an agreement binding upon both union and non-union men, and then have been completely flouted in the Scheme itself and the unions ignored.

It needed but the last cynical point in the scheme to show how completely the companies have triumphed. The months of August and September are the favourite holiday months of sections of the capitalist class, including railway directors and managers, and with supreme irony it is laid down that the conciliation Boards shall not be called together during these months.

In the Franco-German War no single disaster—not even Sedan—was so completely crushing as Bazaine’s treacherous surrender of Metz.

In the history of trade unionism no parallel can be found to this crushing disaster called “The Settlement of the Railway Crisis.” Never before has so large a body of workers been delivered over to their masters, bound hand and foot by such a cast iron scheme of “conciliation,” without their being allowed any voice or vote in the settlement. It is the greatest victory for the employers on record, and will act as a great incentive to other large employers to adopt the beauties and powers afforded to them by such “conciliation” schemes.

Between the working class producing all the wealth that exists in Society, on one hand, and the capitalist owning, through the robbery of the workers, that wealth on the other hand, there must of necessity exist a bitter struggle for life itself. For the workers to own the means of life means the abolition of the capitalist class and system; for the capitalist class to exist means the continued subjection and slavery of the workers. There can be no “conciliation” or “arbitration” between the robber and his victim. The working class has nothing to arbitrate or conciliate but has itself to emancipate. Let the railway servants study these facts and realise the necessity for depending upon themselves instead of allowing “diplomatic” leaders to guide them to ambushes and disasters. Let them learn from their own past history how the employing class will use any and every means, from bribing so-called leaders with an office under Government to pouring troops and Maxims into the troubled areas as at Featherstone and Belfast, for the purpose of preserving their own position. Then, while organising upon the class basis for the overthrow of capitalism, they will organise upon the same basis for the purpose of fighting their battles upon the economic field, and, ignoring such phantoms as “public opinion,” use every available opportunity to strike sudden and far-reaching blows for the improvement of their conditions and wages. Along with the Labour misleaders will be swept away the superstitious nonsense of “conciliating” or “arbitrating” robbery ; and if only this lesson be learnt, then the parallel to Bazaine’s action at Metz in the signing of the Scheme at Whitehall will not have been in vain.

Jack Fitzgerald

Socialism and Social Reform. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many people who regard Socialism merely as a demand for Social Reform, as a desire on the part of certain sections of the community for better conditions of labour and living for the working class. This misconception is largely due to organisations claiming to be “Socialist” but devoting their energies to the propagation of reforms, whereby the real issue is obscured, the sympathies of the kind-hearted are aroused and, at election times, the support and votes of those who know nothing of Socialism, but believe in some particular “ameliorative” measure, are secured. It is this kind of “Socialism” that leads people to talk of the Socialist demand as “the true development of the Liberalism which won the working classes the franchise and other privileges they now enjoy,” although, as the Tories justly claim, many of these “privileges” were granted by them in the teeth of the opposition of the champions of Liberalism. It was, therefore, refreshing to read Mr. Balfour’s speech at Birmingham on November 14th. In truth, he said, there is no difficulty or ambiguity about the subject at all. Socialism has one meaning and one meaning alone. Socialism means and can mean nothing else than that the community … is to take all the means of production into its own hands, that private property and private enterprise are to come to an end and all that private enterprise and private property carry with them. That, continued Mr. Balfour, is Socialism, and nothing else is Socialism. In discussing the difference between Socialism and social reform, he said : Social reform is when the State, based upon private enterprise, based upon private properly, recognising that the best productive results can only be obtained by respecting private property and encouraging private enterprise, asks them to contribute towards great national and public objects.

In other words, social reform leaves the basis of Society untouched, and does not affect the relative condition of the propertied class and the working class in the least. On the other hand, Socialism means the abolition of private property and the establishment of common ownership and control of the means of wealth production. It is therefore easy to understand why those who are opposed to Socialism advocate social reform, but it is inexplicable why those who claim to be out for Socialism should, by their advocacy of social reform, help the master class to maintain their supremacy, and side-track the workers from the only cause that can emancipate them, the cause of Revolutionary Socialism.

Asked and Answered. (1907)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Question.

(1). Will capitalism have to go through the process of the nationalisation of the land, the mines, the railways, etc., before Socialism can be achieved ?

(2). Would not the fact of the working class being able to see the futility of these reforms—having acquired them—assist in the propaganda of Socialism ?

(3). If so, should not the Socialist Party do all in its power to secure these ”palliatives,” by adopting a programme on which these items figure, with a view to pushing capitalism forward at as great a rate as possible ?

(4). Would it be possible to establish Socialism, pre-supposing the existence of a clean-cut-class-conscious proletariat, with capitalism no further advanced than it is to-day ; in other words is it more a matter of hastening the development of capitalism than creating the hostile and revolutionary Socialist ?

M. Mullett

(Brixton, S.W.)

Answer.

(1.) Marx has truly said that

“No social order ever disappears until all the productive powers are developed for which it is adapted. New and higher social institutions are never established until the material conditions of life to support them have matured in the womb of the old society. Therefore mankind never sets itself any tasks, except those for which it has received proper training and which it is able to perform.”

An industry, however, which is developed to the trust stage is as completely organised as a nationalised industry and differs from it only in that it is controlled by a section instead of by the whole of the capitalist class. Since therefore the trust is a completely organised industry and presents but little if any greater difficulty of acquirement by the workers over a nationalised industry, there is no reason whatever to suppose that Society must of necessity pass through a stage of complete nationalisation.

The productive forces for which modern society is adapted are developed when the essential or chief industries are centralised under trusts or State, for the subordinate industries which have not reached that stage need in the main but the application to them of the form of organisation already developed in the trust or their absorbtion into the greater industrial organisations by the triumphant working class. So long as the method, structure and material of organised production be existent so that the unmistakable method and solution be presented, the workers, if class-conscious Socialists, can with little difficulty complete the organisation of the productive forces and turn them into social instruments of social welfare.

(2). It should be obvious that if the workers see the futility of reform tinkering, the propaganda of Socialism is enormously assisted. But the recognition of the futility of reform should and can, at least in part, be made plain to the proletarians without them having to exhaust all the possibilities of error, and having to suffer the disappointment and disastrous apathy and delay that such a stupid and wasteful way of showing the futility of reform methods implies.

(3). Clearly, also, the owning class are already causing the development of capitalism to proceed at as great a rate as is possible in their eagerness to secure greater profits, and we as members of the working class need all our available energy, not to increase the profit of our masters, but to help the growth of Socialism among the workers so that class-consciousness may keep pace with the headlong development of capitalism, and industrial democracy be the speedy outcome of the economic evolution.

The advocacy of reform items would not of necessity increase the rate of capitalist development, while it would leave the workers more at the mercy of the exploiters and unprepared to end exploitation even when development were ripe for the change. Indeed, many reforms are designed to head back economic development. Even municipalisation is often a barrier against centralisation and complete organisation.

The stupidity of identifying what is the only hope of the workers with something that must confessedly lead to disappointment, apathy, disgust and reaction and leave the workers unprepared for their deliverance need hardly be enlarged upon.

(4). The existence of such a revolutionary Socialist proletariat is the obvious and inevitable sign of the ripeness of conditions for Socialism. And were prevailing conditions such that so completely Socialist a working class was engendered it could clearly use the productive forces of the day, and, by completing industrial organisation, transform capitalism into Socialism with but little difficulty.

Social change is not a mechanical process but depends on the reaction of the economic evolution upon human beings. Hence the importance of the class struggle. Hence the importance of propaganda in spreading and giving definiteness and conscious aim to the effects of economic pressure to which some respond more readily and intelligently than others. Hence above all the importance of refraining from misleading or humbugging the workers in any way, and the necessity of doing all that one may to put the real issue ever clearly before them even though but a handful have seen the light, for upon the development of Socialist consciousness among our class depends whether they are to remain unhappy wage-slaves indefinitely, or whether they are responding readily and intelligently to the demands of their economic environment and so preparing for their speedy and happy deliverance from poverty and oppression.

W.

The Proletariat (The Working Class). By Karl Kautsky (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Continued from November issue

Specially translated for The Socialist Party of Great Britain and approved by the Author.

6. The Growing Extent of the Working Class. 

The Commercial and the "Educated" Proletariat. 

It is not only by the extension of industry on a large scale that the capitalist mode of production makes the proletarian conditions general. It is also caused by the position of the wage-workers in industries on a large scale becoming the standard for the position of the wage-workers in other spheres of activity. And their conditions of work and life are revolutionised by the large-scale industries.

The advantages which these workers may perhaps have possessed over those employed in capitalist industries are now, by the influence of the latter, changed into so many disadvantages. Where, for instance, to-day the worker of a handicraft still boards and lodges with his master, the aforesaid change results in this handicraft worker being worse fed and housed than the wage-worker who has a household of his own. The long apprenticeship was, in times gone by, a means for preventing a glut of workers in handicraft; to-day the system of apprenticeship is the most effective means of producing a glut of cheap workers in handicraft and of depriving the adult workers of their livelihood.

Here also, as in other directions, things that under the domination of petty enterprise were reasonable and a boon, have become nonsensical and a hindrance owing to the capitalist mode of production.

The endeavour of guild-masters to revive the old guild system may in the main be ascribed to the desire to create, by the revival of the old forms, new means for the purpose of exploiting their workmen. They seek to save themselves from the bog by throwing down and stepping on proletarian bodies.

And these gentlemen grow indignant when the working class fails to become enthusiastic over this method of delaying somewhat the inevitable extinction of petty enterpise.

Commercial trading undergoes a similar development to handicraft. The large enterprise squeezes out of existence the petty enterprise, even in the sphere of petty trading.

The small commercial undertakings need not, therefore, diminish ia number. Petty trading becomes the last refuge of those who have gone bankrupt among the small producers.

In the German empire there were employed per thousand workers in each particular group :—

ESTABLISHMENTS	INDUSTRIAL		COMMERCIAL. (including Licensed Victuallers.)
	1882	1895	1882	1895
With 1 – 8 employees	551	399	757	697
With 6 – 50 employees	186	238	202	243
Over 50 employees	263	363	41	60

From this table it will be gathered that in commercial and licensed establishments petty enterprise predominates far more than in industry and declines less rapidly—speaking relatively. Speaking absolutely, petty enterprise is on the increase in commerce and the licensed victuallers’ trade. The number of employees in these callings increased from 1,013,981 in 1882 to 1,509,453 in 1895.

To restrict petty trading—for instance by restricting hawking or peddling—would mean nothing else but to sweep those who are getting their livelihood in that way completely off their feet and to force them into the ranks of the loafing class ; that is to say, to compel them to become beggars, vagabonds, or jailbirds—which would indeed be typical social reform.

The influence of the development of industry on a large scale, as far as petty trading is concerned, does not find expression in a decrease in the number of small trading concerns, but in their actual dwindling away. The existence of petty traders on their own account becomes continually more insecure and more like that of proletarians. Besides, there is a steady increase in the number of those employed in large concerns, who become real proletarians, and have no prospect of ever going into business on their own account; child- and woman-labour continues to extend, the latter accompanied by increased prostitution. Overwork, unemployment, and the cutting down of wages also enter this sphere of employment. The position of the commercial employee is approaching that of the industrial proletarian. The former can be distinguished from the latter almost in only one way, namely, by his keeping up the appearance, at a great sacrifice, of a higher social position, while the industrial proletarian knows nothing of practising such deception.

And yet another category of proletarians begins to develop: the educated proletariat. To be educated has, in our present mode of production, become quite a separate business. The scope of knowledge has grown immensely and is widening from day to day. And capitalist society as well as the capitalist state, require more and more men of science and art for the conduct of their affairs, for the subjection of the forces of nature, be it for the purpose of production or destruction, or for the luxurious utilisation of their increasing affluence. But not only the peasant, the handicraftsman or proletarian, but even the merchant, the manufacturer, the banker, the stock-exchange gambler and the large land-owner have no time to devote to art or science. Their time is fully taken up by their business and amusements. In present society it is not, as under former systems of society, the exploiters themselves, or at least a section of them, who foster art and science. They leave that occupation to a separate class, whom they pay for their services. Education becomes a commodity.

But until several decades ago it was still a rare commodity. There were but few schools, and study involved considerable expense. The peasants were mostly not in a position to be able to raise the means for sending their sons to the higher schools. Handicraft and commerce on the other hand were still in a prosperous condition ; hence, whosoever was engaged in these callings remained in them; only the fact of being specially gifted or in exceptional circumstances induced the son of the handicraftsman or merchant to take up the study of art or science. While the demand for officials, technical experts, medical men, teachers, artists, etc., increased, the supply was almost entirely restricted to the progeny from such circles.

The commodity education commanded therefore a high price. Its possession brought at least a comfortable living to those who turned it to practical account, like lawyers, officials, medical men, professors, etc.,—often fame and honour also. The artist, the poet, the philosopher were the companions of kings. The intellectual aristocrat considered himself superior to the aristocrat by birth or money. His only concern was the development of his intellectual gifts. Consequently the educated could be idealists, and often were such. They stood above the other classes and their material aspirations and antagonisms. Education meant power, happiness, and amiableness; therefore the conclusion lay near, that, in order to make all men happy and amiable, to surmount all class antagonism and to abolish poverty and degradation, nothing more was required than the diffusion of education.

Since then the spreading of higher school education—and here it is only a question of higher education—has made gigantic strides. The number of educational establishments has immensely increased. The number of scholars has grown to a still greater extent. Petty enterprise in commerce and industry no longer offers chances of prosperity. The petty bourgeois is unable to save his children from drifting into the ranks of the proletariat unless he can manage to give them a university education, providing, of course, it is possible for him to rake together sufficient means for this end. And he must think of providing not only for his sons but also for his daughters; for the progress in the division of labour gradually transforms, as already mentioned, household work into separate occupations, thus reducing more and more the work in the home, so that a marriage in which the wife is only the housekeeper, and not at least partly bread-winner, becomes increasingly a luxury. At the same time, however, the petty bourgeoisie falls into greater poverty, as we have seen, so that it loses the ability of affording a luxury. The number of celibates increases, as does the number of families in which wife and daughter have to work to augment the income of the family. Thus female labour increases not only in the direction of the petty and large industry, and of petty trading, but also in the sphere of officialdom in Government and private employment, as, for instance, in the post and telegraph offices, railways, banks, art and science. However loud the protest on the grounds of prejudice or personal interest may be, female labour enters increasingly into the various spheres of intellectual activity. It is not conceit, neither insolence nor uppishness, but the compulsion due to economic development, which forces women to seek occupation in that particular sphere as elsewhere. While the men in some intellectual occupations, in which craft organisation still exists, have been successful in keeping out female competition, the women have been able to gain admission to callings unhampered by craft organisation, as, for instance, journalism, painting, and music.

A consequence of this entire development is, that the number of the educated persons has increased tremendously in comparison with the past; but the favourable consequences which the idealists expected to be derived from a greater diffusion of education, have not been realised. So long as education remains a commodity, the diffusion of education means an increased supply of the commodity, hence a lowering of its prices and consequently a worse position for the owner of the commodity The number of the educated has grown to an extent that more than satisfies the requirements of the capitalists and of the capitalist state. The labour market of the educated workers is to-day as overcrowded as that of the manual workers. And also the intellectual workers have already their Reserve Army—unemployment is as much known in their ranks as in those of the industrial workers. Those who wish to obtain an appointment under Government have to wait years, often more than a decade, until they are able to get one of the badly paid minor posts. With the others over-work is followed as much by unemployment and vice-versa as with the hand-workers, and the forcing down of wages is practised upon them as upon the latter.

The class position of the educated workers grows perceptibly worse ; if before one spoke of the aristocracy of intellect, one now speaks of the proletariat of intelligence; and very soon these latter proletarians will distinguish themselves from the other wage-workers by only one thing—their conceit. The majority of them will still think they are something better than the wage-workers ; they still consider themselves to belong to the bourgeoisie, but in a similar way as servants regard themselves as belonging to the family of their masters. They have ceased to be the intellectual leaders of the bourgeoisie and have become their hired prize fighters. The ambition to succeed develops among them; not the cultivation, but the turning to account, of their intellectual gifts now becomes their first consideration, and the prostitution of their being is the principal means of advancement. Like the petty traders, they, too, are deceived by a few big prizes in the lottery of their life; they overlook the numerous blanks which are facing them and bargain away body and soul for the mere prospect of drawing such a big prize. The selling of their own convictions and a marriage for money have become in the estimation of the majority of our “educated,” two self-understood as well as indispensable means for “making a fortune.” And that is what the capitalist production has made of its explorers, thinkers and dreamers.

(To be continued)

Blogger's Note:

It was the German SPGBer, Hans Neumann, who translated Kautsky's writings from the German into English for the Socialist Standard.

Socialism, Religion and Education. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, as a party, stands steadily aloof from “religious” discussions. Why? Because it is a Socialist party.

As Marx says,

“The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. For a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by reducing their individual private labour to the standard of homogeneous human labour, Christianity, with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, etc., is the most fitting form of religion.”

In brief, Christianity, like all religions, is but an expression of material conditions, a direct outcome of social relations, the unsubstantial image of a world reflected in the muddy pool of human intellect. Cannibal savagery, blood-smeared Mumbo-Jumbo ; patriarchal tyranny, “jealous” Jehovah—Jesus varies with the ages. “Redeemer” of Roman slave ; War-God of Crusader ; General Overseer of Manufacturing Capitalist; Harp and Crown Dispenser of Hot Gospeller in a Charity-Organisation-ridden phase of Society.

To the Socialist, Marx has said the last word that need be said on the subject of the relation of Socialism and religion.

“The religious reflex of the real world can only finally vanish, when the practical relations of everyday life offer to man none but perfectly intelligible and reasonable relations with regard to his fellow men.”

Material conditions rule. “The English Established Church will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on one-thirty-ninth of its income.” This is as true to-day as when written in 1867.

The position, therefore, of the Revolutionary Socialist, the attitude of The Socialist Party of Great Britain on the question of “Religion” is clear. “Take care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves” says the old tag, which being interpreted for the present occasion means “Seek essentials. You may safely ignore results.” The essential to-day for the worker is a grasp of the fact that, while he has nothing to sell but his labour-power, while he is reduced to the rank of a

MERE COMMODITY,

under no conditions whatever can his class be anything but an ignoble conglomeration of wage-slaves, swinked and sweated by capitalist, preyed on by “leaders,” one of the sorriest spectacles which the “all-beholding Sun” has witnessed through the ages.

In so far as, and when, Religion allies itself directly with capitalism, the S.P. of G.B., being hostile to every other political organisation, is obviously in opposition to Religion. The greater includes the less. Similarly, when “Rationalism” allies itself with the exploiting class, we are compelled to fight that “ism,” especially when such “Rationalism” fantastically tricks itself out in a ludicrous, garb which it fondly imagines is Socialism.

F.J. Gould, "honorary associate” of the R.P.A., asserts that he is a “Socialist.” His fervid faith in positivist moonshine would be of itself sufficient evidence to the contrary, but a perusal of his article, “The Educational Future,” in the “R.P.A. Annual” is sufficient to dispel any doubts upon the point. He peddles in trifles. He is much exercised upon such momentous issues as “co-option” in educational bodies; he “cherishes hopes”—sure mark of the pseudo-Socialist, who is invariably a

“HOPE CHERISHER”

—that the present system under which the worker groans will be made somewhat more bearable ; he “demands” (another infallible sign of the soi-disant Socialist, this “demanding”) that “the school shall be deliberately directed to the evolution of willing and happy citizens equipped for devotion to the common welfare,”—in short, while mouthing the word “evolution” he shows his utter lack of the appreciation of the practical lesson which evolution has to teach, namely, that under given conditions, only given results can follow. The spectacle of this “Socialist” “demanding” that the school shall diligently apply itself to the better manufacture of “willing” and “happy” wage-slaves, who, in the huge majority of cases must enter the ranks of the exploited, must increase the ever-increasing army of unemployed, is one which is calculated to strengthen us in the opinion that the

MOST SERIOUS ENEMY

to the emancipation of the working class to-day is that curious freak of nature, that vertebrate animal without a backbone, the “Socialist” whose knowledge of Socialism extends as far as the knowledge of the name, who would “reform” the chrysalis into a butterfly, place an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and generally understudy David, who confessed that he had “erred and played the fool exceedingly.”

We are called upon to admire the “half mystical fervour” of Miss Margaret McMillan, who has “urged the necessity of communal baths, medical inspection, etc. for the children of the proletariat.” Does it ever occur to this brand of “reformer” that, while they may claim the latter title, they are no more entitled to the term “Socialist” than is the cattle-owner who believes in the virtues of a horse-pond and regularly engages a veterinary surgeon. In short, Miss Margaret McMillan,—who has never concealed her contempt for the “elementary” teacher of the children of the proletariat,—is simply energetically doing work for the capitalist class.

But our chief quarrel with F. J. Gould is his pushing of his pet palliative “Moral Instruction.” In schools run for, and in the interests of, the capitalist class, there can be no really “moral instruction.” The omission of “Religious Education,” and the substitution of the precious syllabus of the ”Moral Instruction League” is simply substituting one form of dogmatism for another. It is monstrous to suppose that a fervent belief in miracles on the part of a teacher precludes supervision as to personal cleanliness. It is a disputable matter whether, from the point of view of a Socialist, less harm may not accrue to the child mind from the teaching of mythological Jewish History than from the handling of a lesson on “Patriotism,” “Thrift,” etc. from the ordinary teacher who has never learned to think beyond the ordinary formulas which a bourgeois society has drilled into him, and who in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, consciously or unconsciously, looks upon his pupils as so much material to be exploited in the unspeakably dirty struggle for “promotion.” (Has F. J. Gould

FORGOTTEN HIS TEACHING DAYS ?

Does distance lend enchantment to the view ?) We heartily endorse the following from his article, and beg him to apply the precepts therein contained to himself : “What we need is the cultivation of the scientific habit, the capacity for seizing significant things, for neglecting unnecessary things, for reducing chaotic things to order.”

Augustus Snellgrove

The International. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and Engels had no misapprehension whatsoever as to the fact that the first International could only be the means of carrying and spreading a knowledge of Socialism among the wage-workers throughout the world. Such a task, in face of the great apathy and ignorance of the toilers, was a tremendous one, as the history of the first International has demonstrated. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that the International from 1863 till 1872 was a far greater educational power among the proletariat than the present International, which was inaugurated in 1889. This comparison becomes more significant still when it is asserted by prominent writers and speakers of the present labour movement that the first International was only a roof without the house, while the second, the present International, is a house with a roof. Marx and Engels never claimed any more for the first International than that it was an awning under which the toilers of the world were to be gathered in order to acquire a sound knowledge of capitalist society and of their position therein. And during the nine years of its existence it was indeed a powerful factor in the class struggle throughout the civilised world. The present International, however, is a house without a roof for all the good it is to the proletariat. Look back at that old International and you must feel astounded at the terror it drove into the hearts of the possessing class and their satellites; and why? Simply because it breathed revolution through and through; and Marx and Engels did their utmost to maintain the flame of the revolution.

With the tremendous advantages the present International possesses and has since it was inaugurated, as compared with the great difficulties of the first International, it is evident that the present International has by no means made the most of its opportunities. When in 1863 the first International saw the light there were practically only Marx, Engels, and a few other stalwarts to take up the gigantic task. Marx and Engels were then in the midst of their analysis of the capitalist system, which later on became the basis of the scientific Socialist movement. At the beginning of the first International there was only the Communist Manifesto, a work excellent in its way, but lacking the detailed exposition that followed in Das Capital. The Franco-German War, the Paris Commune, the many great fights and skirmishes of the workers with the capitalist class in every country from that period until 1889, when the second International was inaugurated, were certainly historic events from which splendid lessons ought to have been drawn by the international proletariat; but that was not to be.

The first International shines in the history of the international working-class movement as an epoch of revolutionary propaganda among the proletariat that is not in the least degree approached by the newer movement.

The first International Congress in connection with the first International was held at Geneva in 1866, followed by similar Congresses in 1867 at Lausanne, in 1868 at Brussels, 1869 at Basle, and in 1872 at The Hague. No Congresses were held in 1870 and 1871. During these two years the young international was sorely tried and proved too weak to withstand the exceptionally heavy onslaught made upon it. The Franco-German War and the subsequent Paris Commune were the primary causes of the collapse of the International in 1872, while the hostile position taken up by the bulk of the English Trade Unions against the brave and noble Communards, together with the fact that anarchist tactics were introduced and insisted upon by Bakounin and others were certainly most effective contributory factors to the ultimate fall of the first International. It has been frequently asserted by bourgeois writers and speakers and occasionally repeated by so-called Socialists that Marx was mainly responsible for the Paris Commune. Nothing is more erroneous. Marx knew the extent, power and possibilities of the first International too well to have advocated a sectional trial of strength between the practically unorganised proletariat and the capitalist class.

Marx and Engels, who had throughout the first International aided and advised it in person and by correspondence, continued to be helpers and guides in the different countries even after the first International had collapsed in 1872. When in 1883 Marx died, Engels remained in personal touch with the working-class organisations until his death in 1895, paying them visits in the summer and corresponding with them during the winter.

But although the Socialist movement in the different countries had since the fall of the first International nominally accepted the Socialist teachings of Marx and Engels and the principles of the class-struggle underlying them, the development of the political action of the respective Socialist parties almost in every country tended more and more towards opportunism, so that when the second International was inaugurated in 1889 the opportunist Parliamentarism of the German, Austrian and French parties and the reform tendency of the English, American, Belgian, Dutch, Italian, Swiss and other national parties, that had not yet entered upon a Parliamentary career, naturally found their reflection in the first and following assemblies of the present International. At each of these re-unions the opportunists and reformers were to the fore and easily overpowered the few valiant revolutionaries to whom the policy and tactics of negotiating with the capitalist class for “dirty patches on the wage-slavery garden” were treachery and abomination. And just in the proportion in which in the different countries the Socialist parties attached ever more importance to catching votes for Parliamentary and Municipal candidates running on reform programmes, the revolutionary propaganda was more and more relegated to the rear, till to-day we have a so-called International Socialist movement embracing organisations and individuals that are beyond a doubt purely bourgeois-radical in composition and action. As long as such conditions prevail the working-class movement will make no headway.

The constitution of the International Congress is, as we know so well, a purely theoretic one. Any working-class organisations avowing recognition of the class-struggle at the time of claiming admission have no difficulty whatever in being accepted. They may immediately before and after each Congress repudiate or grossly violate the principles of the class struggle; they may, in fact, be Liberal or Radical organisations at home; but so long as they pretend to be in accord with the class-war attitude, they are heartily welcome at these triennial gatherings.

And what is the composition of these Congresses in consequence? Let us briefly analyse it for our readers’ benefit. The English delegation undoubtedly carries off the palm.

First and foremost comes the Labour Party with a constitution supposing independence on pronouncedly non-Socialist lines. In Parliament they are represented by 30 members, who were elected mainly by open or secret compromise with the Liberal Party and on Radical programmes. In Parliament and out of it they have over and over again assured the Liberal Party that they would be perfectly friendly with them so long as that friendliness was reciprocated.

Next comes the bourgeois Fabian Society with its four members, who were at the last General Election returned as official Liberal representatives, and with a host of official progressive Municipal councillors. The Fabians want a state of Society where “Fabian intellect” shall dominate the masses on the “economic” basis of the “rent of ability”.

A further composite of the English section is the I.L.P., who deny and violate the principles of the class war all the time they are at home. Their members of Parliament were returned by the help of the Labour and Liberal parties. They spend all their efforts in propagating hopeless palliatives and reforms and in the real class struggle continually compromise with the capitalist class.

The S.D.F. support capitalist cat’s paws of the anti-Socialist labour type, and pursue a propaganda of palliatives and reforms, which finds its highest expression in waiting upon capitalist Cabinet Ministers and bourgeois Members of Parliament, to beg of them to push forward “Healthy Legislation for the Suffering Proletariat, etc.”

Besides this array of “sound revolutionary” organisations there are a few “craft-unions” that keep up their membership by their “starvation pension schemes and coffin clubs” mingled with the hope of being able to do something “very soon” for the unemployed with the most valuable aid of the Right Honourable John Burns, whom they support during his election, and then denounce as traitor if the hoped-for reforms are not forthcoming.

But this confusion and opportunism is not, as pointed out previously, only rampant among the organisations that form the British Section of this unhappy International. Take Germany for instance. Here you have the much-boasted of three and a quarter million votes at the last general election, yet the membership of the Socialist Party comprises about 600,000 only, scarcely 18 per cent of the number of voters. It is true that the number of trade unionists has risen to nearly two millions; but a third of these are members of Liberal or religious trade unions, that are entirely under the sway of the capitalist class; and other trade unions are so-called “neutral” ones, that is to say, they are craft unions, independent of the Socialist Party. In the political arena the German Party is dominated by the Reformers and the Revisionists, and in their Parliamentary and Municipal actions they are steeped to the eyebrows in bourgeois reforms and palliatives, while the revolutionary propaganda is left to the very much despised “Rickers”.

In France there was until the International Congress in 1904 at Amsterdam, a body of real revolutionaries – the Guesdists. But in consequence of the “unity” craze these revolutionary fighters fused with the Reformers, the followers of Jaurès, about two years ago on the following terms:

“The United Party is a party of the class struggle, which, even if for the benefit of the workers it takes advantage of minor conflicts among the possessing class or joins in action with a political party for the purpose of defending the rights and interests of the proletariat, remains nevertheless an opposition party, which in principle irreconcilably faces the bourgeois class and their tool – the State.”

The Reformers have, at least temporarily, bamboozled the Guesdists; but judging from the proceedings at the last Congress of the Party, some few weeks ago, there are already many bad sores, which can only lead to a split in the near future. The trade union question, the anti-militarist agitation and the Revisionist tendencies of the followers of Jaurès must bring matters to a head very soon. The United Party during the last general election obtained nearly 900,000 votes, 52 of their candidates having been elected. Yet the members of the United Party number only about 52,000. There are about one and a half million trade unionists in France. Half of these are either Nationalists or Radicals, or do not believe in political action at all. The remaining half are composed of men, most of whom consider it detrimental to the cause of Labour for the trade unions to work in co-operation with the Socialist Party. This question is the great bone of contention between the Guesdists and the followers of Jaurès, who insist upon the trade unions remaining “neutral”, whatever that may mean. it is probable that mainly through the difference the Guesdists will leave the United Party very shortly.

A similar state of things is reflected in the delegations of almost every country, and the truth forces itself upon us that the International Socialist Congress is, as far as the majority is concerned, Socialist in name only, many indeed repudiating even the name.

For the triumph of Socialism, national and international, organisation is essential, but the organisation must be for Socialism and based on Socialist principles or such organisation can be nothing to the workers but a delusion and a snare,

Hans Neumann

Further reading:

In 1968 the late John Crump wrote a three-part article in the Socialist Standard on the subject of the Socialist Party and the Second International. Click on the links:

• May 1968
• June 1968
• July 1968

Answers to Correspondents. (1907)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A. Porcelli, Baron de St. Andrew (The Cottage, Camberley.)—Your statement that Society cannot be divided into two classes because “there are, for instance, children in arms,” is distinctly refreshing. We are, however, always glad to deal with intelligent opposition. We note also that you profess to belong neither “to the working class nor to the capitalist class, but to a much nobler class, viz, the Sons of God.” Nevertheless, if as we surmise the necessities and comforts of life which you enjoy in your baronial “Cottage” do not descend direct from heaven, but are the products of worldly labour, it would materially assist us in deciding (at least to our own satisfaction) to which economic category you belong if we were informed whether your present income is the result of your own mental and physical labour, or is derived through the ownership of property and is therefore a tax on others’ labour. This is not a personal question, for “we must all toil, or steal, (howsoever we name our stealing).”

The statements regarding your numerous charities to the distressed working class prove only that those who produce the wealth do not enjoy it and that the appropriators, who flourish through the workers’ misery, accompany their alms with misunderstanding and contempt. We would, indeed, in this connection (in return for the text on unclean beasts to which you referred us) commend to you respectfully Matthew VI., 1-4.

You assert that we are “perfectly ignorant of the Bible.” But to this we cannot plead guilty; for we regard and use the Bible as a valuable historical document of the upper status of barbarism in social evolution. As you, however, appear to value the Bible in quite another sense may we suggest that you take as texts for your next epistle Matthew XIX., 21-24 and Isaiah V., 8?

We cannot afford space to deal with all the curious points you raise. Your point of view, moreover, not being that of a wage-worker, and presenting otherwise no common ground of logic and experience as a basis for argument, renders further discussion difficult.

Socialism, as such, is not directly concerned with religion or the supernatural, and is not antagonistic thereto except in so far as religion is used against the working class. It would, however, be idle to deny that the fulcrum toward obtaining a rational conception of life provided by the scientific basis of Socialism can ultimately leave no room in the consistent mind for belief in the supernatural.

The concluding statement in your letter that “Woe betide the man who ignorantly seeks to make God responsible for the warped nature of fellow man, and the evils produced by Satanic devilry” is, as applied to us, entirely gratuitous; and you may be comforted by the assurance that we hold no metaphysical cloud-pusher responsible for the misery of the world.

G.H.L. (Kentish Town).—No. There is no “mental labour” that does not involve physical labour, and no physical or manual labour that does not involve mental labour also. When we speak of labour we do not discriminate between mental and manual, they are complementary.

The distinction you also desire to make between the “producer” of commodities, such as the brick-maker, and the “non-producer” such as the transport worker, will not hold. The transport worker is just as much a producer as the brickmaker, neither really produces in the sense you mean, both however are engaged in producing values. The brickmaker usefully alters the form of the raw material supplied by nature, and the transport worker usefully alters its position ; embodying in the process, quite as much as the brickmaker, a portion of the labour necessary to placing the bricks upon the market and creating values in so doing.

F.D. (Wimbledon).—There are essentially but two classes to-day, as we say. The capitalist class comprises all those whose income is derived from the ownership of property and is contrasted with the working class which comprises all those (with their dependents) who are possessors of only their power to labour which they are forced to sell to those who monopolise the means of wealth production.

All marketable wealth is the product of labour, and the able-bodied man who lives without contributing his quota of the necessary labour is robbing his fellows.

On the border line, between the two classes of exploiter and exploited, (which are, on the whole, vividly distinct), there are a number—with a foot in each camp—called the “middle class.” The members of this group are becoming an almost negligible factor owing to the growing centralisation of industry, but in so far as they express themselves politically they cling tenaciously to the capitalist side of their interests, and all the more desperately since the small property or position that they hold is alone that which distinguishes them from the working class properly so-called ; and this small property or means of exploitation is that by means of which they hope to climb into the select and secure section of the exploiters and so save themselves from the proletarian abyss which ever threatens to engulf them. Hence this section of lower capitalists is not only reactionary in that it fights against industrial advance, but also is most unscrupulous in defending its right to exploit, in sweating, and in conserving its monopoly of education or position against the interests of the workers. A small section, it is true, would “organise” the workers, on condition that it be given (under title of “the expert”) all the well-paid jobs and the right to govern the masses; but in face of a genuine proletarian advance all of these stand by the reaction and bitterly oppose genuine industrial democracy.

It is therefore seen that as economic categories reflecting politically their fundamentally opposing interests, there are, in reality, but two classes: those who live by labour and those who live upon those who labour; so that the workers in their task ot abolishing all privilege and exploitation, stand alone, and must rely only upon themselves.

J.T.T.—Thanks for information. We are always pleased to receive local papers with interesting articles or reports. Your query will be dealt with next month.

The Fraud of Municipal Bakeries. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reply to R. B. Suthers.

“Bread and Bunkum” is the title of an article in which Mr. R. B. Suthers draws, in the Clarion, a harrowing, soul-rending picture of the last gasp of the petty shop-keeper, particularly the master baker (perhaps the most pious, unctuous, psalm-grinding, callous sweater civilisation has produced) who is now being crushed by the newest thing in trusts—the Bread Trust.

Mr. Suthers, out of the fulness of his heart, is moved to prescribe a remedy. What is this precious remedy ? None other than municipalisation, which he imagines is Socialism. He says :

“The only question for the small baker is, ‘Am I to be abolished by the Trust or by Socialism ?’ Allow me to put the problem from a Socialist point of view. Here is a community in which bread is a necessity to life. So much bread is required every day. The question is how to make bread in the cheapest and most expeditious manner. It is plain that in a large town it would be cheaper and more efficient to have one or more large bakeries from which bread could be delivered in motor cars direct to the customers, rather than have a number of small shops with a little hand cart or slow horsed cart each overlapping the district of half-a-dozen others. Local depots might be necessary, but they need not be so numerous nor so large as under the wasteful system of to-day.”

If I thought Socialism was anything so monstrous as this glorified capitalism I would fight it for all I was worth.

I have been a victim of this Manchester god of “cheapness” and “expedition” for over twenty years, and during that time have seen many journeymen bakers broken on the wheel of “cheapness,” “expedition,” and “efficiency.” I would ask Mr. Suthers to quit for a while his beloved rate-saving, middle-class view point, and look at the matter from the position as it affects the working class, the only class that matters, or is worth consideration in any way.

Assume that the rate-savers decide to municipalise the bread supply (it won’t be decided by master bakers, Mr. Suthers) what happens ? To ensure expedition and efficiency, cheapness, and other Manchesterisms, it will be necessary to have the newest and most down-to-date machinery operated in the most scientific manner and the latest manner is this: A large bakery is erected on scientific principles, that is, the interior of the structure is divided into two bakeries, exact duplicates, each with its gear of flour sifters, sack shakers, dough mixers, dividers, moulders, provers, ovens and storing racks, with one clock for the use of both. No partition divides them, so that the gangs of nearly naked, emaciated slaves work in full view of each other, each driven by an enslaved slave-driver

.

At the stroke of the clock the two gangs begin their mad race against time and efficient, untiring machinery. An industrial policeman, called the General Foreman, who is not necessarily a baker, clad in snow white cap and overalls, Stalks majestically from gang to gang, book in hand, recording by the common clock the time each gang takes to finish its “rounds,” not that the most “expeditious” may be decorated with a “Crown of Wild Olive,” but that the laggards may be called upon to render an account of their stewardship in that capitalist hell of “cheapness, expedition, and efficiency,” and the misfits weeded out and “scrapped.” This mode of procedure brings out the tigrish instincts of the ganger, who is especially selected for his ability to drive and bully, and who is always on his trial, and can only retain his job by keeping time with his “opposite” or by running past him, consequently the “hand ” who slows down or does not hear a shouted order is “woke up” with a torrent of foul abuse and indecent oaths. The hawk-eyed “Pinkerton” looks on and makes a note. Such is a modern bakery !

In one of these efficient infernos I wot of, the most happy human machine is a big and powerful deaf mute, who works by watching the others. He never complains, nor does he hear the ganger’s live and modern English, nor “the roaring loom of time,” as typified by bread-making machinery. Yet he is sometimes pitied as being afflicted !

In a factory of this description the output per man engaged averages about twenty-two sacks of flour per week: in handicraft bakery it averages about twelve sacks. It is obvious, therefore, that as the industry becomes either trustified or municipalised, a large number of bakers will be thrown on the streets, and the market is already overcrowded with this class of merchandise, as a visit to the factory gates at 11 p.m. will testify. After that hour the poor devils who have failed to secure a night’s job may be seen tramping, Christ knows where, while their brilliantly lighted municipal trams, only half filled, glide past them. Perhaps by tramping through the slush and rain in broken boots they can meditate the better on the advantages of municipalising the trams, which Mr. Suthers with ghastly irony, told us a time ago now belongs to all the people. Mr. Suthers does not say what municipalisation will do for these, or for the “outed” master bakers, the redundant carmen, the superfluous shop-girls, millers’ travellers, shop fitters, and a host of others who will go into the ranks of the unemployed, and in the fulness of time become unemployables, wastrels with drooping lips and slouching gait, fit material for the casual ward and the lunatic asylum, if no worse fate awaits them.

Mr. Suthers, in his tender solicitude for the small master (the ever-starving journeymen seem to be an entirely negligible quantity) asks : “Will the trust buy him out ?” and answers : “No ! the trust will freeze him out.” “Will the trust,” he goes on, “find the starving shopkeepers work ? Will it ?” No, Mr. Suthers, it will not, neither will the municipality buy him out, though, certainly, he may secure a job by the influence of his co-religionists on the council. If he be a Freemason he may even become a “Pinkerton.”

Mr. Suthers concludes by asking “Why then should we not organise this business of making bread, and put an end for ever to the degrading condition and struggle for existence between rival bakeries ?” And my answer is because it would be better to eliminate all the “business” out of industry absolutely, and make bread to be eaten, not to lower rates. Municipalities go into business to make profit only, like any other capitalist concern. It does not signify whether the owners absorb the profits in the shape of “reduced prices” or lower rates. If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread the operation of the “Iron Law of Wages” will secure all the advantage for the capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on the working class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist, joint-stock enterprise, municipality or government, and with each step in concentration the working class gets relatively less and the master class gets richer, more corrupt and more bestial, as recent events in Berlin and elsewhere show.

Why should all the bread be made in factories, anyhow ? In a Socialist community the housewife would have the facilities, if she so wished, to make bread and pastries for herself, her mate and her children, and to suit their individual palates. The essence of Socialism is freedom, and if a woman prefers to develope her individuality by making pure and wholesome food she will be at liberty to do so. All healthy humans must expend their energies in some manner, and why not in cooking—who shall say them nay ?

The damnable idea of being marshalled and drilled, or numbered and docketted, like any other merchandise, in a state of glorified capitalism is not the Socialist’s ideal, but its antithesis, no matter what the capitalists and their protagonists, the pseudo-Socialists, choose to name it. We don’t want to be driven to the gate of the municipal or other factory to hustle and elbow our fellows out of the way so that we may catch the official’s eye in the mad and sordid scramble for mere belly food, for a mere animal subsistence, to be thrown on the social scrap-heap the moment we cease to be “expeditious,” there to rot out a living death, the mental agony prolonged by being kept on the brink of Kingdom Come by a “George Barnes” pension, previously deducted from our competition wage. With the advent of Socialism the whole of the capitalist State and its superstructure will collapse, with its cant of living wages, its Brotherhoods of Man, and the rest of its nauseous humbug.

Socialism will enable us to co-operate with our fellows for the production and distribution of all the necessaries and comforts of life, and to further bring under control the forces of nature for the common weal. Then and then only will the humanities have a chance. Then we shall live, stand erect and be men and women. Away with all forms of capitalism ! Speed the Social Revolution !

W. Watts

Blogger's Note:

A number of R. B. Suthers' books are available over at Archive.org.

Every Class War is a Political War. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The bourgeoisie destroyed the feudal conditions of property; the proletariat will put an end to the bourgeois conditions of property. Between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie a struggle, an implacable war, a war to the knife, is as inevitable as was in its way the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the privileged estates. But every class war is a political war. In order to do away with feudal society the bourgeoisie had to seize upon political power. In order to do away with capitalist society the proletariat must do the same. Its political task is therefore traced out for it beforehand by the force of events themselves, and not by any abstract consideration.

Plechanoff—”Anarchism and Socialism.”

The Odd Men! (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr Lloyd George, the “statesman of the day,” the man of “dogged determination,” “marvellous tact,” etc., etc., as all the Tory and Liberal papers and politicians have hailed him since he induced Mr. R. Bell and his friends to sign that historical document which is dealt with elsewhere in this issue, has been making remarks about the Labour members. Speaking at Madeley, Salop, on November 1st, he said : —

“There were only five or six Socialists in the House of Commons. Five out of 600 ! Well, what were five among so many ? The Labour people were not Socialists. In the House of Commons they assisted the Liberal Party to carry practical measures, and even the Socialists, though some of them might make very wild speeches outside, in the House of Commons were thoroughly tame. (Laughter). He had never heard them propose a resolution in favour of upsetting Society ; he had never heard a revolutionary statement emerging from them. There they were, amending the Trade Disputes Bill, or tinkering up some other Bills, and doing some odd jobs of that kind in the Liberal workshop —(laughter and cheers)—in fact earning their living in an honest way in the great party factory.”

Similar statements have been made from time to time in the columns of this paper, but Mr. Lloyd George has an advantage over the members of the working class who, during the brief respite from toil permitted to them by capitalism, write, without fee or hope of reward, the articles for the Socialist Standard. He can speak from an inside knowledge of the sayings and doings of the Labour members, whilst the writers in this paper must mainly rely upon what is reported concerning them. The similarity of views is interesting. Can it be that Mr. Lloyd George, like other prominent members of the Government, is a regular reader of our journal ?

Undoubtedly, some folks expected great things when twenty-nine Labour candidates were returned to the House of Commons, especially as that number included several who, being members of the S.D.F. and the I.L.P., were supposed to be Socialists. But we of The Socialist Party of Great Britain had no false ideas on the matter. Long before the election, in our Manifesto, we had dealt with that fraud, the L.R.C. When the election was over we showed conclusively that the result was neither a victory for Socialism nor for Labour but for Confusion. We explained why we expected nothing from the victors and we have not been disappointed but justified. They could only do odd jobs in the Liberal workshop because they were only elected to do them. Had they been elected as Socialists by Socialists, Mr. Lloyd George would be telling a different tale to-day, but knowing all the circumstances he can no longer restrict himself to laughing up his sleeve, but must laugh aloud at the suggestion that these “respectable, adaptable, and sensible” Labour members are dangerous to the exploiting class.

A Young Man in a Hurry. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. J. R. Clynes, M.P., is certainly a “young man in a hurry.” During the Kirkdale Election he declared that the Labour Party would have been well worth creating if in the next ten years they did nothing more than settle the question of old age pensions. So there you are, you “too old at forty” wage slaves, you “scrapped” merchandise, (“scrapped” because the Workmen’s Compensation Act, for the passing of which Mr. Clynes and his Labour Party friends claim such credit, has decided your employers only to run risks with young and active men), give them time (ten years) and this precious, enthusiastic, impatient, impulsive Labour Party will settle the question, of old age pensions. And how will they “settle” it? Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., as a member of the S.D.F. is pledged to “free and adequate State pensions or provision for aged and disabled workers,” but what constitutes an “aged” worker is not stated. As members of the I.L.P., Mr. Thorne’s fellow-officials of the Gasworkers’ Union, Messrs. Clynes and Pete Curran are pledged to “State pensions for every person over 50 years of age, and adequate provision for all widows, orphans, sick, and disabled persons.” But as members of the “Labour Party” all three are restricted to “five shillings” (a whole five shillings, accompanied by a tract warning the recipients not to waste it in riotous living) per week to all workers over 65 years of age. And as Messrs. Clynes & Co. speak, not as members of the I.L.P. or S.D.F., but of the Labour Party, it is on the five shillings a week basis that they will settle the old age problem and they want ten years to do it! These be stirring times !

The True Antidote. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The true antidote to revolutionary Socialism, said Lord Milner to the Surrey Unionists on October 30th, is practical social reform, and he counselled his hearers to be more and not less strenuous in removing the causes of the revolutionary propaganda, while resisting it to the utmost. Commenting upon his speech, the Daily Chronicle asserted that revolutionary Socialism must be opposed by Liberal and Conservative alike. Quite so, but “social reform,” such as old age pensions, better housing, town planning, sanitary conditions of labour, the extinction of sweating, the physical training of the people, continuation schools, and other items constituting “an excellent program,” should be pushed forward by all parties opposed to Socialism, in order to remove the causes of the revolutionary propaganda ! Most of the items quoted above are found in the programs of the S.D.F. and I.L.P., and thus the capitalists will assist these bodies to carry them into practice knowing that they are “the true antidote to revolutionary Socialism.” Surely such an avowal should open the eyes of the organisations referred to and lead them to discard a policy which is helping the master class and which is supported by the master class because they know it will head back revolutionary Socialism. The owners of the means of wealth production do not fear Social Reform because it will leave them in possession of the power to exploit, but they do fear Socialism because that will deprive them of the power to exploit. To the Socialist then, the course is clear: advocate Socialism and leave its opponents to push reform.

Sunday evenings at Battersea Branch. (1907)

Party News from the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Editorial: God and the Labour Party. (1907)

Editorial from the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“One above sees all” is only a variation of the saying, “onlookers see most of the game.” Whether or no the truth of either can be demonstrated, it is certain that those not immediately concerned can get plenty of amusement out of the antics of all sections of politicians who are now claiming God as their “guide, philosopher, and friend.” Mr. G. H. Roberts, Labour M.P. for Norwich, visited the Burton Town Hall on October 21st and “in language rich in proverbial philosophy advanced the aims and objects of the Labour Party.” He had long claimed, he said, that, given an equal opportunity, there was no reason why the workman should not take his place by the side of the wealthy representative in the House of Commons ! He did not explain how the workmen could possibly have an equal opportunity with the wealthy. It would have been difficult, of course. Neither did he suggest that the workers should supplant all the wealthy representatives with a view to depriving them of their power to exploit ? No ! his “rich proverbial philosophy” finds expression in a desire for a “fair representation of all classes” in the House of Commons. He contended that the Labour movement was not only a sound political movement but it was “the greatest religious factor they had at the present time.” The Labour Party believed in the love of God and the brotherhood of man. They wanted the word of God to live in their industrial and human activities. And much more to the same effect. The only inference to be drawn from all this is that during all these years of working-class exploitation, Almighty God has been asleep or has been “winking the other eye” while those who believe in him and his “Love” and his “Word” have been fighting and maiming, and killing and enslaving each other. In the year 50 A.D., it is said, James, the Brother of Jesus, called upon the rich men to weep and howl for the miseries that were to come upon them ! “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days . . . Behold, the hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth.” . . “And the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord.” Despite this denunciation, the exploiters have continued to carry on business at the old stand, improving their methods, securing more power, and appropriating more wealth. So that it would seem that the Lord has been on their side. And now that the workers are slowly beginning to see the justice of Socialism, the masters who have “made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field,” finding they cannot argue, that they cannot oppose Socialism by other means, are endeavouring to play upon the ignorant passions, prejudices and fears of the people. They know how true were the words that Louis XIV. wrote to the King of Tonquin on January 10th, 1681: “For this God is … above all, the most useful in giving to Kings unlimited power over peoples.” And the “Socialist” members of the House of Commons should know it also. But instead of boldly and honestly facing the position, instead of avowing on the platform the opinions they hold in private, instead of standing by the scientific position that neither capitalism nor Socialism, as such, has anything to do with speculative opinions as to the existence or non-existence of a god or of gods, good or devilish ; they are, for vote-catching purposes, mouthing such twaddle as that which fell from their lips during the Kirkdale election and is quoted above. Let the people, instead of wasting time claiming God for their side, in answer to the exploiters who claim him for theirs, “leave tears and praying,” gird up their loins, harden their hearts, and strengthen their hands preparatory to engaging in the final struggle for the overthrow of class supremacy, a struggle that can only succeed when undertaken by a determined and intelligent proletariat.

J.K.

Editorial: Socialism and the Unemployed. (1907)

Editorial from the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent Manifesto of the S.D.P. (or is it S.D.F. ?) should more properly be dealt with in our “Literary Curiosities” column ; for a more remarkable document probably never emanated from any political organisation. As a pronouncement of a “Socialist" Party on so important a question as that of the unemployed it is even more remarkable.

The banquet and the pageant in honour of the Kaiser’s visit is “a studied insult to the unemployed of this country," although why so more than the Lord Mayor’s Show or any other feast we are not informed. Yet only three lines lower down this “studied insult" is referred to as a “cool manifestation of indifference to the wants of the workers," while yet another change takes place a little further on where the "cool indifference" becomes “a piece of wanton insolence.”

But the final stroke is here: “when we read that this arrogant autocrat is to be presented with a Gold Casket we wonder how much more our patience will be called upon to endure." So the presentation to the Kaiser is the last straw. The unemployed can stand many things just as the employed working class stands many things, but the presentation to the Kaiser is really too much.

The whole pronouncement has but two positive propositions to make; one is to the unemployed to “once more’’ assemble on Tower Hill, and the second is “to let the world know that you are asking ‘How long, O Lord, how long?”’

According to Justice of November 16th, J. E. Williams, whose signature is appended to the Manifesto as the organiser of the unemployed, although his authorship is doubtful, has been “demanding work for the starving unemployed" for the last twenty years, so that, if we may presume to answer for the Lord, we may safely say that, since twenty years has seen a worsening of the problem despite their efforts, we shall be a very long time yet at the Bame rate of progress.

The sequel duly followed the demonstration. After the usual speeches and the resolution “calling upon the Government to introduce . . .  such legislation as will provide work for all who need it (which the Socialist knows perfectly well a capitalist government would not do if it could, and could not if it would), the usual procession was formed which marched to the accompaniment of the “Red Flag” punctuated with hoots and boos for the Kaiser, until it fell foul of the police, was broken up, and some of its participators arrested.

This farce, for to the Socialist it is undoubtedly as ridiculous a farce as was ever perpetrated in the name of Socialism, is to Justice so successful as to be a cause for congratulation to its organiser; although the postscript to the article in Justice seems to indicate that the congratulation was penned before the demonstration had taken place!

To us the antics of a professing Socialist body on so essential a manifestation of the insanity of tbs system they are supposed to be able to point the way out of, is ridiculous in the extreme. Unemployment is an inevitable feature of capitalism, and is impossible of removal without at the same time abolishing the capitalist system that produces it. That is a fact known to any Socialist with the most elementary knowledge of the economics of capitalism, and is certainly well known to the S.D.F. unemployed organisers. Yet instead of educating the workers, employed as well as unemployed, as to the facts of the case, emphasising that only by the conscious action of the workers upon the political field will their emancipation be accomplished, and concentrating, as Socialists presumably should, on Socialism, and not like the I.L.P. on Old Age Pensions this year and something else next, they consciously mislead the unemployed to imagine that the capitalist government will introduce legislation if only the unemployed call upon them loudly enough. If they don’t think that, there is no justification for their resolution.

Yet the fact remains that the prime cause of unemployment is the robbery of the workers by which the capitalist class appropriate the whole of the wealth produced by the workers, returning to them just as much, on the average, as will keep them physically fit to continue working. The difference between the quantities produced and consumed by the working class (a difference continually increasing with every increase in the productivity of labour) represents a surplus which all the waste and all the luxury of its owners cannot absorb, with the result that the markets are glutted with an excess of commodities. Thus the “over-production,” the crisis, and the slackening of production involving an increase of unemployment. Since capitalism can never pay such wages to the workers as to enable them to buy back the whole of the wealth they have produced, the existence of an unemployed section is inevitably bound up with the continuation of the system itself. And, paradoxical as it may appear, the only direction in which palliation of that unemployment lies, is along the line of the waste of that surplus, or the channel of charities, &c. that tends to decrease the disproportion between the wealth produced and the wealth enjoyed by the workers that lies at the bottom of the problem of the unemployed.

All this is known to the Socialist, and he, therefore, wastes no time in attempting to palliate that which, in the nature of the case, does not allow of palliation, but by continually pointing out the only direction in which working-class progress can be made, that is by the propaganda of Socialism and the building up of a movement for Socialism as the only solution of the extreme poverty of unemployment, as well as the poverty of employment, works not alone in the sound direction straight towards emancipation, but at the same time inspires the capitalist class with such fear of the wrath to come as to open their purse strings and hasten the administration of their sops for what good they may be worth. The very fact that after the S.D.F. concentration last year and the year before on the question of unemployment an Unemployed Bill, in which they claimed to have seen their influence, was produced and has proved a failure from all points of view, especially the unemployed one, should be sufficient to provoke any Socialists who may still belong to that organisation to consider the advisability of trying the more logical method, the action more in keeping with their professions, that as Socialism is the only solution of unemployment, they will cease to advocate anything else than Socialism.

Dick Kent