Children or Ore? (1917)

From the December 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of Alsace-Lorraine has received considerable attention from the political and journalistic hirelings of the capitalist class. A vast amount of sloppy sentiment has been thrust upon us with the object of covering up the real facts at issue, a good example of which comes from Mr. Lloyd George.

“However long the war may be,” says that worthy, “however great the strain upon our resources, this country intends to stand by her gallant ally, France, until she redeems her oppressed children from the degradation of a foreign yoke.”

What noble words! How can this high character resist the temptation to take part in such a righteous cause! It may be that Mr. Churchill has given him advice on the subject. 

Knowing the history of the capitalist class, Socialists reject with scorn their professed sympathy for the workers of any nation. Material interest dominates their every action, as the following demonstrate?.

“If Germany could secure a peace based on her present military position” says a writer in the “Daily Chronicle,” 24.10.17, “the whole of this wealth of iron ore, estimated at some 5,000,000,000 tons, would pass under her control.” And further on we read : “Liberate those provinces from her clutch with their 21,000,000 tons of iron ore a year, their 3,800,000 tons of iron smeltings, their 2,300,000 tons of steel smeltings, and useful coalfields of the Somme Valley, and a long step has been taken towards peace.”

The thoughts of that iron ore will no doubt urge “our gallant ally” to “redeem her oppressed children.”

Terrible as is the idea of that 21,000,000 tons of ore, not to mention the iron and steel smeltings, passing into the hands of the German capitalists, there is something even worse in view.

“Suppose,” continues the article coolly, “Germany were to win and were to annex the greater half of the ferruginous basin that lies on French soil. Territorially it would be a very small acquisition. Economically its value would be inestimable. It would mean that after the war Germany would be able to raise some 46,000,000 tons of iron ore a year, while the French output would be reduced to a bare 4,600,000.

What a nightmare to the French capitalists! We can almost hear them moaning with Asquith that “no sacrifice can be too great when 46,000,000 tons of iron ore are at stake.”

Numerous other figures are given by the writer of the article. We are told, for instance, that with an Allied victory “France would be in a position to extract about 43,000,000 tons of ore a year and Germany would have to remain satisfied with a maximum yield of 8,000,000 tons.”

And to the importance of an Allied victory is established, as also is the fact that iron ore, and not oppressed people, is responsible for the particular interest centred in Alsace-Lorraine, "in the fate of which,” we are told, “is involved nothing less than the industrial supremacy of Europe."

A glance at the final paragraph, here quoted, will explain the British capitalists’ new-found love for the “children” of Alsace Lorraine.

  "It is clearly an almost vital interest, both for France and Great Britain, that the formation of a huge Franco-German cartel, based on the reciprocal exchange of coal for ore, should be prevented, that we should ourselves supply France with the coke that will enable her to do her own smelting, and that we should take from her in return the iron ore that we now import from Sweden and from Spain.”

The evidence given shows the capitalists in their true character as a cold-blooded, profit-seeking tribe, ready to slaughter millions of workers to gain an advantage over a commercial rival. Hypocrites that they are, the shedding of crocodile tears with one eye while using the other to calculate the tons of iron ore the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine would provide is to them a simple matter.

The value of their sympathy for oppressed people can be measured by the fact that the toilers of all countries are oppressed. Murdered with work and starvation that wealth may be piled up in ever-greater abundance for the benefit of those that exploit them, the life of the workers is one round of oppression no matter who their rulers may be.

Their conditions are general; they do not change in essentials as we cross frontiers or land at different ports. The workers are slaves and capitalists live by their robbery the world over. An attempt on the workers’ part to secure a larger portion of the wealth which they alone produce is met, when necessary, with the armed forces of the State, used by the capitalists to uphold their position as exploiters of labour and to defend their interests against the capitalists of other countries.

The State to which we belong does not trouble us; our object is to get control of the fighting forces for the purpose of overthrowing the present system of society and establishing Socialism, the system wherein wealth shall be produced to give comfort and happiness to the whole community.

Then and then only shall we be freed from capitalism and its horrors of peace and war. To us, therefore, Socialism is the only thing that matters.

E. L. Wake

Editorial: Yapp's Anchor. (1917)

Editorial from the December 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is an important aspect of the present trend of economic affairs, not only in this country but throughout the civilised world, to which we do not remember to have seen the attention of the workers drawn. We refer to the permanent effect of the depression of the standard of living of the toiling masses.

Those who know what a vital part the standard of living plays and has played in the resistance of the working class to the wages-depressing efforts of the employing class, do not need to have their attention drawn to the serious after-the-war effects of the present suppression of all the little “luxries” with which many workers were wont to vary the monotony of their dietary, and the partial deprivation of such prime necessaries as bread and meat. To however, to whom this is not familiar ground, it is necessary to point out that the standard of living — the customary level of comfort (we don’t like the term in this connection, but can find no better at the moment) — of the working people, is the very basis of the wages struggle. To this both wages and the development and intensification of production have tended to shape themselves through the whole course of capitalist exploitation. Through generations multitudinous circumstances hare added their quota to its making, each quota to be seized upon and clung to and fought for with bitter tenacity. Thus this “standard of comfort," to give it its common name, is a historic product.

But the condition of things produced by the war, the high prices of necessary things, the shortage of many of them at any price, the emasculation of trade union resistance, the virtual existence of industrial conscription, the voluntary surrender from “patriotic" motives, and other circumstances which may occur to other minds, have crumpled up this “standard of comfort" in a way that generations of capitalist brutality had failed to do. The historical asset, which had tended to persist in a remarkable manner through ages of competitive strife, is being smashed to atoms now that in all but appearance, competition is as dead as a doornail, and a lopsided conscription has taken its place.

This historic asset is much easier surrendered than recovered. There is a world of subtle meaning, a wealth of ironic humour, in the anchor badge we are all to be wearing “before Christmas." They whose anchors they are count upon them holding in the Greater War after the war.

Socialism's Traducers. (1917)

From the December 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

American Pseudo-Socialist Manifesto Criticised.

One great difference between the master class and the working class is the clear grip that the former have—despite their scientific and sociological ignorance— of the insecurity of their position as a ruling class. The workers in a large number of cases, have not even grasped the fact that a ruling class exists, and so are quite puzzled at the various social actions going on around them, the effects of which they feel without understanding the cause.

But a certain number—a minority at present — are beginning to understand that there is some connection between the evils they suffer from and the fact that they have to work for a master. This understanding is confused and even vague with many at the moment, but its existence is beyond dispute, and causes a good deal of uneasiness among the masters. 

To meet this spreading understanding, that contains at its core a number who clearly grasp the fact of their being slaves under this system of society, and which number grows as the vague understanding increases, the masters use various agents and agencies to mislead the workers, to hide the facts of the case or to strenuously deny them, and to endeavour to increase the confusion of thought existing among those who are beginning to have a faint glimpse of the truth. 

By far the greatest danger the masters are faced with is the steady spreading of the knowledge of the class struggle that must exist in a society divided into masters and slaves. The great work of Marx and Engels in laying the foundations of this social truth has always excited their hatred, and they have attempted in various ways to minimise the effect of this work. At first it was ignored in the hope that silence would kill it. When this failed it was derided and jeered at. At a later stage attempts were made to meet the Marxian case by pretended arguments and serious replies. The tricky journalist W. H. Mallock tried several explanations of the phenomena of surplus-value, each contradicting the other, ending with his claim, without the slightest evidence to support it, that the increase in wealth production was due to the marvellous mental ability of a few individuals who have only begun to appear on this planet during the 19th century. 

At the other end of the scale we have professors like Bohm-Bawerk, who, flatly contradicting the Mallock theory, claim that surplus-value is due to a future estimate of a present good. 

But Bohm-Bawerk's views are embodied in large and expensive volumes beyond the reach of most workers ; Mallock's laboured case is also out of the worker's way, being more often met with in high-priced journals than in the ordinary newspapers. Moreover, the facts of social and industrial development began to drive home to increasing numbers of workers the truths of the Socialist case. 

The cleverest of the master class began to look for new methods to meet this danger and started a scheme far more misleading to the workers than any of the misrepresentations of Mallock or the slimy shuffles of Bernard Shaw. 

They and their agents began to popularise the term "Socalism" by tacking it on to every little reform or collective action taken through the Government or Municipal bodies. 

The world-war has given them numerous new opportunities for this misuse of the word. It has brought to the front in clearer light than before, the fact that men passing as Socialists, such as Barnes, Stanton, Parker, Roberts, Henderson, Hyndman, Thorne, Tillett, and so on, were all the time merely agents of the master class who used their positions and influence to mislead the workers on the question of Socialism and the truths it embodies. 

Vigorous attempts hare been made to trick the workers into believing that Socialism meant taking part in the quarrels among the capitalists over markets, etc., even to the workers slaughtering each other by the million, while the capitalists look on and laugh at their amazing folly. 

How similar are the methods employed by the capitalist class the world over is shown by the Manifesto of the Nationalist "Socialists" of America, published in the November issue of this journal. For over two and a half years America refrained from official participation in the war. No sooner does she announce her intention of taking part in the mammoth slaughter than certain capitalist agents masquerading as Socialists issued the manifesto referred to in order to show how the war is justified in the interests of "Socialism." A criticism of that precious production will be found to apply generally to the similar effusions issued in the countries of all the belligerents on this war. 

We are told first that—

there is a difference even from the point of view of revolutionary Socialism between democratic and autocratic governments.

The value of this statement depends entirely upon the meaning given to the word "difference." This is given a little further on, when it is said—

We believe that liberal institutions have their value, as making it possible to agitate for Socialism, and to progress towards Socialism without destructive internal conflict.

Let us examine this statement in the light of the facts. The only possible deduction from this sentence is that the "Allies" are countries with "liberal institutions" "making it possible" "to progress towards Socialism without destructive internal conflict," while the "Central Powers" are nations in a condition quite the opposite of this. Thus we are to suppose that the shooting down of workers at Chalon, Roubaix, Lyons, Paris, etc. in France, at Featherstone, Belfast, Llanelly, Tonypandy, Dublin, and so on in the British Isles, and at Pittsburg, Colorado, Gold City, Homestead, San Francisco in America, are not instances of "destructive internal conflict," because only working-class lives were destroyed ! The "liberal institutions" with their "bloody Sundays" and "pogroms" existing in Russia when the war began, were no doubt wonderful factors in the "progress towards Socialism without destructive internal conflict," and were worth maintaining at the price of the slaughter of the working-class in the opinion of these "Socialists." 

It is quite true that similar instances can be quoted from the records of Germany and Austrio-Hungary; but this would only show that the actions of their "autocratic governments" are practically indistinguishable from those of the "All lies." 

By their own definition of the word these so-called Socialists have failed completely to show any difference between the belligerent countries worth the sacrifice of a worker's little finger, let alone his life. 

Secondly, it is stated that—

If we could have the full revolutionary Socialist program tomorrow, we might be called upon to defend it against nations which were organised for oppression under military and aristocratic rulers.

Lovely logic ! Leaving aside the absurdity of supposing one could have Socialism in a country where a large majority of the people are opposed to it, note the "if "and the "might" given as reasons for the workers taking part in the appalling slaughter of the present war. And on whose behalf? England, a short time after the war began, and America, immediately following her declaration of war, took military and autocratic measures unparalleled by any of the "aristocratic" rulers engaged on the other side. The introduction of conscription—that is the compelling of men to become murderers of their fellow men with whom they have no quarrel—without consulting the mass of the people in any way, shows a brutal ruthlessness in the two most "advanced" countries, which are supposed to possess the most "liberal institutions," that has not been surpassed in any of the other nations. 

Obviously, then, the workers are not being called upon to defend their own interests, but to fight on behalf of a ruling class whose actions are of the same kind and on the same level as those of the ruling class of the Central Powers. 

This hypocrisy on the part of these "Socialists" is further emphasised in section three, where we are told that—

the proper aim of Socialist world politics at the present time is an alliance of the politically advanced nations for the defence of the democratic principle throughout the world.

The "democratic principle" that forces men to slaughter without even consulting them on the matter ! 

To say that they are "willing to fight for democracy" is more hypocrisy, as neither the present war nor the aims of the Allies is for democracy, but for plutocracy. 

The stale old nonsense of a "citizen army" which we have heard here for so many years is trotted out in section six, where it is said : "We believe that there is no danger to democracy in a citizen army and navy controlled by the people." What clap-trap! Who are "the people" ? In America, as in every other capitalist country, "the people" consist of two classes, the capitalist class and the wage slave class, that is, of two classes whose interests are in violent antagonism. Which of these classes would control the "citizen" army and navy while capitalism exists ? As we have shown in every issue of the Socialist Standard, it would be the capitalist class. Then the "citizen" army would be used to shoot down the wage slaves in the interests of the masters in America and elsewhere, just as the "citizen" army in Switzerland has been used. 

Paragraph eight, that declares for the "democratization of the military service" under capitalism is another specimen of cant, as the merest tyro in Sociology knows that one cannot have democracy among masters and slaves. The statement about the "spirit of comradeship which is found in the trenches" is a deliberate lie, for no more in the trenches than in the training camp dare a private speak to an officer without permission, nor can he even take shelter in the same dug-out, except in special circumstances. The few accounts of the treatment of the men by their officers that have leaked through the rigid censorship give a significant picture of the "spirit of comradeship" to be found on the battle front. 

It is, however, in the ninth paragraph that we find the truth revealed in the utmost nakedness. Here we are told :

Our military training should be made the physical culture part of our public school training. It should be begun in childhood thru the work of the Boy and Girl Scouts.

Not only are these "Socialists" in favour of conscription for men, but they wish to extend it to children, boys and girls alike, and to instil into their plastic minds the sordid brutalities of militarism in the interests of the master class. This carries militarism beyond anything yet attempted by the Germans. 

The people who were boasting of their willingness to "fight for democracy" now demand the most reactionary and degrading system of training it is possible to establish, and would attempt to foul the name of Socialism by stating that their treacherous proposals are items in a Socialist programme. This is further added to when in paragraph ten they say: "A vital military system should be an organic part of the national life." This is exactly what the Allies claim exists in Germany to-day, and which they declare it is their aim to crush! "Even if Germany were willing to make peace," it is said, "we must go on till the Prussian military system is destroyed." While a militarism even more foul and brutal is to be established in the "advanced" countries with "liberal institutions." What a huge lesson in the hypocrisy of the claims about the war aims of the Allies is given by this document! 

So far is it from removing "Prussian militarism," that one great result of the war will be the establishment of the same militarism in the "advanced" nations who were previously lacking in this particular brand. This result was not only foreseen, but was deliberately worked for by certain of the capitalists in these countries because they realise how insecure is their position to-day and wish to guard against being overthrown. In America, as in Europe, they have found willing helpers in the slimy lickspittles, some of whose names are given above, and whose colleagues signed the document which was printed in the last issue of this journal. Their claims to speak as Socialists are as false as they are foul, but it is a tactic to be expected and it can only be met by constant exposure of these frauds and the persistent Propaganda of the class struggle existing, whose ultimate conclusion will be a world order of peace under Socialism.

Jack Fitzgerald

[Just as this is being sent to the printer the papers announce that Parliament has decided by a majority of 38 to disfranchise the conscientious objector to military service. The question may come up again before the Bill becomes law, but the passing of this amendment tears away one of the last pretences that the war is for "freedom"and "liberal institutions," when the "freedom of opinion" so long boasted of as an Englishman's birthright is now openly and officially trampled upon, as it has been in more or less unofficial ways all through the war. 

[J. F.]

New Departure. And a Warning. (1917)

From the December 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much excitement has been caused by the more frequent air attacks and the means adopted to frustrate them. As might be expected, very little truth is allowed to be known, and the good old game of bluff is made to do full service. Following the raids it is now the practice to have somebody of note make a speech of the grin and bitters order, in which care is taken to provide a sufficient amount of sympathy (with the tongue in the cheek), a deal of praise for the fortitude of the sufferers (workers, of course, every time), but, above all, to point out the necessity for steeling OURselves to yet greater efforts in order to vanquish, once for all, this dastardly method of warfare, adopted by an unscrupulous enemy, etc., etc.

Much use is made of the gag that the raids are deliberately organised for the purpose of striking terror and wreaking destruction in the ranks of Britain’s working class, and colour is lent to this assertion by the fact that it is they who chiefly suffer.

Contrast this with the statements of others who now and again come very near to letting the cat out of the bag as to the real object of our aerial visitors. Then, again, we have the silly remark made by a certain august personage that he “couldn’t make out what the Germans were trying to do.” All of which goes to show what a confused state of mind must exist in the workers regarding many things that are happening.

And now comes news that surely cannot fail to be understood—news of a new departure in the use of these devilish machines, and one that will be certain to commend itself to the capitalists of this country. The news comes from Rome, and was revealed in the Italian Parliament on its re-opening in October.

Reference was made to the serious riots which took place in Turin during the second fortnight of August, and the general food crisis throughout Italy which led to the resignation of the Food Controller.

  The Turin riots, partly due to delay in providing the town with sufficient bread, partly to political discontent, lasted a few days, and the authorities were obliged to use machine-guns to restore order, while some barricades were destroyed by bombs thrown from aeroplanes, this being the first occasion on which aircraft have been used for such a purpose. No official figures were published of the number of dead and wounded, calculations varying from 50 or 60 to 500, the latter number having been in he report of a non-Italian authority in Turin.

—”Manchester Guardian,” 24.10.17.

This, mind you, is an act committed by one of our devoted allies, and therefore will be considered quite in order. In fact, British capitalists will be grateful, not only for the suggestion, but for its initiation. It shows to what uses aircraft can be put after the war. Its efficacy is proved, and there are people in this country who will not fail to support the adoption of the same methods should a similar occasion arise.

At this point we may ask ourselves a question. If, as our rulers say, it is cold-blooded, dastardly and detestable for a country at war to attack towns in such a way that must involve the loss of civilians’ lives, irrespective of age or sex, how much more cold-blooded and dastardly must it be when such means are used deliberately by the Allies against unarmed men, women, and children of their own nation for simply demonstrating their dissatisfaction at a state of affairs which deprives them of the very necessities of life? Is it not sheer hypocrisy on the part of our rulers to condemn acts committed against them and their interests whilst at the same time acts far worse are committed for them and in their interests?

The Socialist is not surprised, of course, for it is no new thing for the workers of any country to lose their lives whilst defending their interests against those of their masters. We have had numerous instances in this country, such as Featherstone, Hull, Grimsby, Tonypandy, Llanelly, Dublin, and Belfast—all during the last twenty-five years.

It is to be hoped that this latest method of dealing with working-class opposition will not be forgotten by those whom it most concerns—the workers themselves. In fact it is hardly likely to be, because it is a new method of attack which the workers here must expect when the world war is over and the respective sections of the capitalist class can turn their attention more to the class war. To us the class war is the only war that should claim our interest. It is not a war wherein capitalist nations fight each other, but a war in which international capital—British, German, and so on—combines to wage war on its common enemy, the working class.

Why are we the enemy of capital, national and international? Because the capitalists own the means whereby we live. All that we own is the power to labour. In order to live we are compelled to sell this to those who own the necessaries of life. It is they who decide whether we shall live or not. It is here where the interests of capitalists and workers are opposed. It is from this the class war springs, with its strikes and lock-outs, its police and bayonet charges, its hellish punishment of the workers. Poverty, unemployment, almost all the evils we are subjected to, arise from this fact of ownership by a class of the means of life. It comes to this, that in order |that we may exist at all, it is necessary first of all to obtain their permission.

Such was the position of all workers, whether English, German, or of any other nationality, before the war “for liberty” commenced, such is their position while it is being waged, and such it will be when it is over. This must be, because the capitalists, after the workers have shed their blood in defence of the system, will still be in possession of the means of life, and will still control them through the political machinery also in their possession.

If the workers desire to be free and to abolish the class war with all its evils, they must organise themselves as a propertyless class against the property-owning class on the political and industrial fields, and seize from the capitalists their political power, thereby clearing the way for the freedom of the whole human race.

This is the work the Socialist Party has set out to accomplish, but it can only be done when the workers decide to do it. Therefore we appeal to ALL readers of the Socialist Standard to endeavour to understand our Declaration of Principles with a view to accepting it and joining us, so that the day will be appreciably nearer when we shall smash up this rotten and inhuman system, and institute a healthier, happier, peaceful, and truly prosperous state of Society.

Fiat Lux

Are Socialists Slackers? (1917)

From the December 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

There ie no object for which the capitalist class might enlist or conscript the Socialist that could, by any conceivable argument, be considered by him to coincide with his interests. The sole aim and object of the Socialist is the establishment of Socialism. It matters little to him, as regards the direction of his revolutionary energy, that he may not live to see its fulfilment: his interest is bound up with his class, and the necessity imposed on that class to prepare itself for the organised and conscious effort that will carry it through the convulsions of social revolution to a complete transformation of Society.

The emancipation of the working class can only mean extinction for the capitalist class. The latter must be deprived of ownership in the means of wealth production. This is the conscious aim of the Socialist, because only by that means can the power of the ruling class be broken. The Socialist objective is to strip the capitalist class of the power they wield to-day— to take from that class that which gives them the power to exploit, and makes of them a separate and ruling class.

Stripped of political power and ownership in the means of wealth production, capitalists and capitalism cease to be, and the working class, having rendered them powerless by capturing the machinery of government, are at once free to organise production and distribution on the basis of common ownership and democratic control.

Such an object is contrary to every capitalist interest. It denies to the capitalist the right of exploitation, the right to govern, the right to live in idleness and luxury: it even denies to capitalists the right of existence as a separate class inside the social organism.

The Socialist is committed to the task of ending capitalist industry. He is convinced by facts, figures, and experience that the capitalist class are parasitic, are useless, pernicious, corrupt, brutal and hypocritical; he is convinced that their affluence is the result of robbery, and that the poverty of his class is due to this robbery.

In the light of this knowledge the Socialist confronts the ruling class as the implacable enemies of his class. There can he no affinity of interests, no compromise, no object in common that can unite him with that class. He is pledged in complete antagonism. Convinced by irrefutable evidence of the truth of his position, he stands shoulder to shoulder with his comrades in the red army, determined to wage the class war to the utter extinction of capitalism.

His slavery is real, ever-present, all-engrossing. Beside it monarchies, markets, nationality and empires are as dust in the balance. He can only wipe out the degradation of it by waging incessant and relentless war on the class that enslave him. And that class, fully conscious of his antagonism, knowing his object, alive to its meaning and significance, must know that the Socialist would not voluntarily give one moment of his time nor one ounce of bis energy, to the fulfilment of any object espoused by them.

To call the Socialist a slacker is therefore absurd and peevish. In pre-war days the capitalist and bis agents failed to conceal their chagrin and annoyance at the steady advance of Socialism. To-day they endeavour to bridle their mortification at the opposition they meet with. For the moment the Socialist is the lesser enemy, and his antagonism is submerged by the hubbub of patriotism raised by labour leaders and self-styled Socialists, who have only adopted the name that they might serve capitalist interests more effectively.

Every capitalist newspaper contains columns of support from prominent Socialists, so-called. Fraternisation—by order of the capitalist—is to be the policy of the Socialist. The capitalist would have the class war suspended while his business war remains undecided. More, he would even conscript the conscious and stalwart enemies of his class and drag them from the noble and glorious fight they are waging, and sacrifice them like pawns on the military chessboard glad to be rid of them, even if their going helped him not at all towards a decisive victory and a firmer grip on the markets of the world.

But it is only the dupes of the false Socialists that are soared by the fraternisation cry. The Socialist, who understood Socialism and meant Socialism, even before the war—years before—declared emphatically that no conceivable circumstances could possibly justify the suspension of the class war. The irreparable injury inflicted upon tho working class by the master class placed all thought of armistice or compromise out of the question. While the robbery of the working class proceeds, while they are enslaved and impoverished, it is the duty—a duty he owes to himself, to his class, and to posterity—of every Socialist to expose every capitalist bait that may tempt the workers, to lay bare the hollowness of all their protestations, the futility of all their reforms, and the baseness and greed that stimulates all their actions. It is the duty of the Socialist to dissect and lay bare before a politically ignorant working class, the capitalist process of exploitation. The working class can only emancipate themselves when educated and organised. Can those who join in the performance of such a task be termed idlers or slackers? The colossal nature of the task answers the question. There is no slackness about the Socialist; others may be drifted and drafted, through sheer apathy, spinelessness, and ignorance, into capitalist enterprises, but he is occupied to the full. The class war is the only war that matters to him, and all the energy left to him after his periods of exploitation, is absorbed in its prosecution.

It is more ridiculous and absurd for the. British capitalist to call the Socialist a slacker than it would be for him to rail at the German capitalist for not assisting in his own defeat. Their present enmity will pass. Their pre-war understanding and international solidarity against the workers of the world will be re-established—some day; but the class war is a war that must be fought to a finish, a war that will increase in bitterness as economic conditions intensify and the ruling class, actuated by the desire to maintain their supremacy, descend to even more infamous and brutal methods of suppression than they employ to-day.

But whatever the tactics or policy of the ruling class, the Socialist will neither be deceived nor intimidated. When they appoint their bourgeois friends and agents — men like Kerensky, Thomas, and Lloyd George—to act as leaders and make pronouncements for the Socialists, they will be stripped of their disguise and exposed as frauds. When all such methods fail to deceive the workers and armed force alone keeps them in subjection, the Socialist will fearlessly reiterate his advice to capture the machinery of government and use the armed forces against the enemies of Socialism.

Those who believe in the righteousness of the allied cause but fail to take their share of the work and danger, slinking into the munition factory or skulking behind jobs of so-called national importance while shouting their loudest for a military triumph to be accomplished by others—those are the slackers. Those who plead before tribunals on any but Socialist grounds, although they plead in accordance with capitalist laws are not only slackers, but humbugs. Christian. Quaker, and humanitarian can all justify their objection to fighting by extracts from their book of superstitions. But the fighting parson can also justify his bloodthirsty attitude from the same source—such is the accommodating character of the Christian religion and the farcical nature of the conscientious objection.

Capitalist politicians, in the past, have said that the working class, unrestrained by capitalist authority, were powerless for anything but destruction and anarchy. But even while it was being said capitalism was drifting helplessly toward the present maelstrom of slaughter and devastation. With full power and authority over the wealth producers, the capitalist class cannot safeguard them against poverty and starvation, although the wealth actually produced by the workers would suffice for a population three times as large. Capitalism failed to protect the workers in peace-time from poverty and anarchy. It has even failed to keep the peace. Its failure is complete a failure for all men to see. Yet still the ruling class pretend to hope—for what ? A solution of the poverty "problem”? No, for that would end their supremacy. They hope that the working class, the bulk of society, will continue to leave them in possession of all the means of wealth production ; that idleness and luxury may still be theirs ; that the right to exploit shall still belong to them, even though their rule is responsible for a continuous glut of wealth side by side with universal poverty, periodically culminating in a welter of blood and an orgy of destruction.

To support such a system is a crime against the working class. To work steadfastly for its abolition is meritorious and sensible. The Socialist, therefore, takes no side in capitalist quarrels, but works consistently for the overthrow of capitalism. He does not believe in the righteousness of any of the belligerents, because the capitalist class of each nation lives by the robbery of his class. His object is to end the chaos and ruin that afflicts society. Let those who bolster up or tolerate such a system compare their actions with his and then ask themselves who are the criminals and slackers of modern society.

F. Foan