The "Futurist." (1919)

From the October 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The notorious Welsh prophet is again at work. Those he represents are crying out for increased production. as their palms are itching for increased profit. Now that the smashing of heads and disembowelment of bodies has slackened down, each section of the master class is eager to obtain the cream of the markets.

On behalf of the British section of the international capitalist class, Lloyd George, the example par excellence of the political dodgery brigade, steps forward to try and persuade the workers that their interests are identical with the interests of the masters—that we must "all pull together" to oust foreign competitors (including ''our'' late much-esteemed allies, America, France, and Japan !) and to usher in a wonderful new world.

In his touching anxiety to get his valuable (!) views before us Lloyd George has established a new paper called "The Future" which is being distributed free (he evidently fears we should not be sufficiently interested to buy it). The third page contains "The Prime Minister's Message to the People" in bold type as follows :

"Millions of gallant young men have fought for the new world. Hundreds of thousands died to establish it. If we fail to honour the promises given to them we dishonour ourselves."

If the returned soldiers were asked what the new world was going to be like they would doubtless reply "a world of unemployment," judging from the fact that thousands of them can't get jobs.Their position has become so acute that the Government, to save its face, has to publish an appeal on behalf of the King to employers to give discharged and demobilised soldiers the preference over others. This, of course, would not materially alter the case, as it would merely result in the "others" being unemployed, and of such would their new world consist.

How well Lloyd George's Government is treating the dependents of those who "died to establish" the new world may be judged from the following:

"The pathetic circumstances of a soldier's widow, with nine children, who had to apply for out relief in consequence of a refusal by the Ministry of Pensions to allow her more than 6s. 10d. a week was strongly commented on at the East Preston (Sussex) Guardians yesterday. :

It was stated that the husband was discharged from the Army in May, 1918, owing to shrapnel wounds. After being operated on nine times he returned to his home at Durrington last October, and died four days later from influenza and pneumonia." 

"Daily News," 3.9.19.

This is only one of numberless similar cases.

Such is Lloyd George's idea of rewarding the heroes and honouring the "promises given."

When he was speaking at Birmingham on Oct. 22nd, 1906, he said in effect that if the conditions that gave rise to the complaint of "slums, pauperism and great want in a land of plenty" were not removed within three years the party he belonged to would deserve to go, and a new movement would grow up to displace the "Liberal bunglers and rogues." Writing now of the period immediately proceeding the war (nearly eight years after he made the above-mentioned statement) while he was still the leading light of the Liberal party, he goes on to say in his "message" ;

"What does a new world mean ? What was the old world like ? It was a world where toil for myriads of' honest workers, men and women, purchased nothing better than squalor, penury, anxiety, and wretchedness—a world scarred by slums and disgraced by sweating, where unemployment thro' the vicissitudes of industry brought despair to multitudes of humble homes ; a world where, side by side with want, there was waste of the inexhaustible riches of the earth, partly through ignorance and want of forethought, partly through entrenched selfishness."

Out of his own mouth the humbug stands condemned. His delightful future world is always a world the workers will never reach, if he can prevent it.

But let me quote the remainder of his "message" :

"If we renew the lease of that world we shall betray the heroic dead. We shall be guilty of the basest perfidy that ever blackened a people's fame. Nay, we shall s:ore up retribution for ourselves and for our children. The old world must and will come to an end. No effort can shore it up much longer. If there be any who feel inclined to maintain it, let them beware lest it fall upon them and overwhelm them and their households in ruins.
It should be the sublime duty of all, without thought of partisanship, to help in building up the new world, where labour shall have its just reward and indolence alone shall suffer want."

What a string of delightful empty phrases. How like the man who sold his own party for place and pelf, who with a stroke of the pen undid the life-work of Samuel Plimsoll and sent hundreds of sailormen to the bottom of the sea. This mouther of fine phrases was the man who introduced an old age pensions Bill that was to cut "a path through fields of waving corn" down which the aged poor were to totter to the grave. But the Bill turned out to be a measure to save our masters the expense of keeping our old people in the workhouse. The "benefits" of the Bill may be gathered from the following:

"When an aged collier applied at Market Bosworth, Leicester, for an old age pension yesterday he was informed that the law would not allow the Committee to grant him a pension as he had an income of £34 per year. The old man replied that he wished those who made the laws had themselves to live on £34 a year. He had worked in a coal mine for 55 years."

"Daily News," 4.9.19.

Lloyd George is one of those who have lately engineered the stranglehold on Persia through the new Persian agreement. Curiously enough, this agreement has followed very closely on the acquisition and control of four large Scottish companies by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, and their amalgamation under the title of Scottish Oils, Ltd., with a capital of four million pounds. (See "Daily News,", 13.9.19.) The wholesale exploitation of Persian working men is evidently going to find a place in the new world scheme.

This same political twister, who so lately was concerned about small nationalities, was a party to the following transaction :

"It was stated by Reuter's correspondent at Brussels that a portion of German E. Africa with a population of 3,000,000 natives has been banded over by this country to Belgium. The transaction is described as a free gift on the part of Great Britain."

"Daily News." 29.8.16.

Three million natives handed over "free," with the connivance of Lloyd George, to the tender mercies of the crew whose dastardly treatment of the natives in Belgian Congo was so notorious ! Where does the "small nationality" rights of the natives come in ? Did Lloyd George and Co. consult them as to their wishes ?

But to return to "The Future." The last page gives in more detail the new world ideas in an article entiled ''The Gospel of Work and Wages," signed "G.W.G.," from which we will take a few extracts :

  "You want to improve your position. You say that the day of the worker is at hand. It will dawn at once, improvement will come in a flood, when every worker in the land learns and obeys the true gospel of work and wages. Here it is :
GET EVERY PENNY YOU EARN: EARN EVERY PENNY YOU GET.
 . . . . . . . . . . .
There are some unwise people who think that when they pocket wages which they know very well they have not earned they are doing a very clever thing. Nothing of the sort. They are pickling a rod for their own backs.
Look at as a question of morals, that is as a matter of fair-play between man and man. In the bargain with your employer you have exacted from him the last penny in wages. On the other hand, he must exact from you, and you must be willing that he should exact, every stroke of the work for which he is paying."

So this is what Lloyd George means by the phrase "Labour shall have its just reward." For the bare cost of subsistence (our just reward) we must work ourselves stiff the livelong day. Those he refers to as "those who are indolent" are evidently those who do not give the utmost for their wages. The suggestion in the above paragraph that the masters pay us for the work we do is obviously nonsense. They pay us for the time we work (even in the case of pieceworkers), an entirely different thing. The work we turn out in a day far exceeds our wages in value ; that is why an idle and parasitic class can live in luxury while we live in poverty.

Let me make another extract:

 "Never forget that the "boss" takes one very hard job off your shoulders. When work is done, the products which result from it have to be sold to customers, and he finds the customers. If a miner had to sell the coal when he had dug it out of the seam he would be wasting most of his time."

Oh, you wicked, immoral slaves, who would deny your masters their full pound of flesh ! Your harassed employers travel around the world in luxurious cars and yachts, basking in Southern suns, romping in Alpine snows, hunting in Indian jungles and African forests. They cloy their sensuous appetites at sumptuous banquets, revive their drooping spirits at grand balls, rejuvenate their interest in life at the races—at least, so it had always appeared to me. But now we know they they only do all this to "take one very heavy job off your shoulders," to find the customers for the products of your toil—while hundreds of thousands of your fellows are dying at your doors for want of those very products.

How innocent Lloyd George must think we are when he tries to force such rubbish and humbug into our heads. What finding of customers do the shareholders do who live hundreds of miles from the place where all the work (including the selling) is done ?

The working class contains the only people who produce commodities and distribute them to the consumers, and they are the people who, relatively speaking, consume the least. The working class includes all employees, whether they be managers or office boys, scientists or mechanics, travellers or salesmen.

The latest news from America furnishes some suggestive ideas as to the new world of actual fact, as witness the following extracts relating to the strikes against the Steel Trust:

"Preliminaiy disorders disturbed the peace of Sunday in two centres near Pittsburg, where troopers of the State Constabulary broke up meetings that had been prohibited by the local authorities. . . .
Witnesses asserted that a meeting at Clairtown was proceeding in an orderly manner when the police charged the crowd.
Armed guards are protecting the steel mills."

"Daily News," 23 9.19.

The following from the same paper is an interesting side light on the concentration of capital:

"The properties owned by the corporation are valued at £380,000,000 and its total assets at the beginning of the present year were nearly £514,000,000."

And Lloyd George tells us we must work hard or our bosses will go broke !

But enough of this canting hypocrite, whose political life has been the record of delightful promises and shameless betrayals. He is but another of the tools the master class pay to blind the workers as to their true position as wage slaves.

Study Socialism and his frothy phrases will fall on deaf ears.

Gilmac.

By The Way. (1919)

The By The Way column from the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is just possible that, by the time this issue of our journal is ready for sale, the opposing sections of the capitalist class who, for close on five years, have been urging their dupes to slaughter, will have temporarily patched up THEIR quarrel.

The fact that there are, as Mr. Bonar Law has told us, twenty-three minor wars on hand, does not matter to those who are making the world safe for democracy. At long last the cry ''Give peace in our time, O Lord," has been heard, and "our greatest enemy" is crushed. We are now bidden to hang out our flags and rejoice. For what should we rejoice? Is it the knowledge that millions of the world's working class have been done to death and thousands upon thousands more rendered mental and physical wrecks, not forgetting the widows and orphans, in order to satiate capitalist greed, that we are now exhorted to rejoice and be glad ?

How mechanical it all is ! In the beginning the capitalist class inform us, the working class, through their Press, that we have an enemy "over there." We are told to hate him; tall stories are written in order to infuriate us and work us up into a warlike attitude ; and when our liberty-loving masters cry "halt!" we obey. And last of all they arrange peace concert parties for us. How stupid ! Think it over, fellow wage slaves.

--0--

In perusing some of the peace prattle I came across the following morsel which beautifully illustrates our masters' way of doing things, and proves incidentally beyond all disputation, that the noble ideal which has actuated the Allies from the very beginning down to the present time, namely, the crushing, root and branch, of militarism, has been worthily maintained. Here it is :

The German plenipotentiaries will arrive through the park, and military honours will not be accorded them on their entry, but they will leave at the same time as the Allied plenipotentiaries, and, being no longer enemy delegates, will receive military honours.

—Reuter Special.

Blimey ! I can almost imagine Lloyd George and Wilson leading the singing at some peace concert. Such songs as "For Old Times' Sake" and "We'll All Go the Same Way Home" would be most appropriate.

--0--

Just recently the big-wigs of the Empire's capital—the representatives of the holy trinity of Rent, Interest, and Profit—assembled for the purpose of bestowing the freedom of the City of London on "those two heroes of the war," Admiral Beatty and Field Marshal Haig.

Arising out of this little jollification there are just two points to which I desire to draw attention. First, it does seem somewhat incongruous that the claims of the men who have been fighting for the Allied section of the capitalist class should require to be incessantly placed before whose whose interests they; have been so well serving. Why is it that our capitalist masters so soon forget their faithful warriors when the last shot has been fired ? In the din of battle "we are one" ; there is the "new spirit of comradeship" which was generated in the trenches or on the man-of-war ; but with the cessation of hostilities the curtain is rung down on all the flowery talk, and once again the players return to the old game of scrambling for jobs—that phenomenon peculiar to capitalist society.

Here we see the antagonism of interests between the working and the employing classes. We may have been "over there," facing the "enemy," but coming back to the ordinary work-a-day world we suffer no delusion. Even the agents of capitalism are themselves occasionally forced to step in and, as it were, "pour oil on troubled waters," or remind the employing class that they have certain "obligations" to the men who have kept the flag flying, which should be honoured. This brings me to the burden of Admiral Beatty's speech, from which I quote the following :

  "I should like to express here the hope that in the revival of commerce, employers will consider the claim of ex-naval officers. Their inevitable lack of experience is, I understand, proving an obstacle to their finding employment. They have, however, invaluable qualities of resource, loyalty, discipline, and experience in handling men, which make them peculiarly fitted for many of the positions that have to be filled." —"Daily News," June 13th, 1919.

In the event of the Admiral's hope not coming to maturity, well, of course, the men can form part of the new "voluntary" armed force. The posters recently exhibited state : "If you are out of work call at the recruiting office." An empty stomach is a good recruiting sergeant.

--0--

The second point arises from the contribution of Sir Douglas Haig. Notwithstanding the innumerable occasions on which we have been told that this war was to end war, and that we were fighting militarism, we have this warrior bold asserting at the very time "we" are insisting that the Germans must limit their military forces to 100,000 men, that what we want is more militarism. According to a report of his speech I find he delivered himself as followeth:

  "My message to you, and through you to the Empire, is to urge you, now that the war has given you at once the reason and the opportunity to do so, to set up forthwith the organisation of a strong citizen army on Territorial lines—an organisation which shall ensure that every able-bodied citizen shall come forward when the next crisis comes, not as a willing, patriotic, but militarily ignorant volunteer, but as a trained man."

Yea, verily, I ask what it shall profit you if, having dethroned militarism in Germany it is enthroned in England ? Thousands of men have laid down their lives believing that in doing so they were helping to eradicate the evil of militarism. Surely they have died in vain if ear is given to these people of whom Sir Douglas Haig is the chief mouthpiece.

Our speaker revels in his subject. To make sure that none shall slip through the meshes he says later on—

 "There must, in addition, be our highly trained professional army to maintain the standard of our  military knowledge, and meet the daily needs of a police force for our vast Empire, and there must be proper and sufficient training schools and staff colleges that the higher arts of war may be kept abreast of the times. Above all, however, to ensure that the military strength of our race may be readily realisable to meet whatever danger may threaten us we need to organise at once our democratic citizen army."

This is what capitalism holds in store for the workers who blindly support this hellish system. Arise, then; remove the blinkers from your eyes, and help to fight for

THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS.

--0--

Though we were told that the Germans initiated the war in the air, and it was a violation of international law, the Allies seem quite content to extend its usage. For colossal hypocrisy the Allies take some beating. Now for a quotation on a recent air excursion—

BOMBS ON AMIR'S PALACE. 

A telegram received from Simla reporting the air attacks on Jalalabad, according to a Reuter message, says that these bombing raids have been highly successful. In a night raid Captain Carbery dropped four small bombs on the Amir's Palace. In a day raid four bombs were dropped amongst 2,000 infantry on parade, inflicting about 50 casualties. The infantry scattered into the barracks, which were bombed in the next raid. Six direct hits were obtained, and all the bombs were dropped in the town, which was much damaged. Fifteen machines took part in the raid and nearly two tons of bombs were dropped.—"Daily News," 28.5.1919.

--0--

We live in a strange world. The Government's appeal for money by the 4 per cent. Funding Loan and the 4 per cent. Victory Bonds does not in any way excite us. But we have some difficulty in understanding why the "Daily Herald" accepts these advertisements and prints them in its columns—whether paid or not does not matter—rails continuously at the Government, and claims to be voicing the views of the revolutionary working class. Is this the class-conscious action that paper frequently speaks of day by day ? Surely by issuing such an appeal our contemporary is assisting the master class to carry on, to further entrench themselves, to keep their hold upon the workers, and above all, assisting in spreading confusion amongst the workers by such anti working-class action ?

--0--

Though we frequently hear the Psalm-singing fraternity giving lip to the hymn "We are not divided, all one body we," the truth of their contention is gravely open to doubt, as witness the following :

The Church of England is so divided that many excellent churchmen have turned away in despair from any further effort to recover external unity.—Bishop of Hereford at Westminster.

The Scout

Armaments and Unemployment (1961)

From the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The disarmament conference organised by the Labour Party in January 1911 passed a resolution in favour of a campaign to secure the mutual gradual reduction of armaments; with a view to the ultimate disbandment of all armies and navies. It rejected a proposal for a general strike to prevent war and would not even discuss an amendment to the main proposal, which declared that disarmament could only be brought about by the abolition of capitalism and establishment of Social Democracy. Many interesting things were said at the Conference, including a declaration that the British Government was absolutely responsible for the world armament race, made by Will Thorne, M.P., who three years later was heartily supporting the war “against the German militarists". But what concerns us here is an amendment, debated at the Conference, which would have postponed any effort to reduce armaments until such time as a law had been passed providing full maintenance for workers who lost their jobs in the armaments industries. The amendment was defeated but the attitude persisted and is with us still: there are still many workers who believe that it is only armaments that keep capitalism busy, and that if governments reduce armaments, employment and trade and wages will collapse. How much truth is there in this belief?

It can be answered categorically from past experience as well as from general considerations that capitalism is not kept going simply by armament expenditure and therefore the effect that reductions of armament expenditure will have depends on all sorts of other factors as well. To start with, except in war-time, expenditure on armaments and armed forces represents only a small proportion of total national income and production—in Britain it is now about 7½ per cent, in U.S.A. about 11 per cent, and in other European countries very much less than 7½ per cent.

It is of course obvious that if the British Government suddenly destroyed all arms, gave up arms production and disbanded the armed forces, thus saving an annual expenditure of £1,400 million, it would create immediate problems for hundreds of thousands of redundant soldiers and armament workers, as well as for manufacturers with cancelled contracts. If trade conditions were already depressed at that time the effects might he severe and prolonged, but they would not be different in magnitude from the effects produced by any other sudden cessation of demand for labour and goods totalling £1,400 million a year. One factor to he remembered here is that what is called “defence expenditure" is not wholly or mainly on weapons of war; about half is on the food, uniform, buildings and pay military and civilian staffs.

In 1945 war expenditure was equal to nearly half the total national income. Then in two years it was cut from £5,000 million to under £850 million, and the size of the armed forces was slashed from 5 million to 800,000. The effect of this on unemployment was negligible though it involved millions of men changing their work and millions of others finding jobs after demobilisation. All that happened was that as the armed forces dwindled the numbers of workers m civilian employment grew, for capitalism was in a vigorous phase of expansion. Experience after the first world war was not the same. There was much more industrial disorganisation when the troops were demobilized and within three years came the acute though short lived slump of 1921.

British capitalism was still expanding in 1951 when the Labour Government launched the re-armament programme which more than doubled defence expenditure from £740 million to over £1,400 million. To make it possible other activities, including building and the capital expenditure on the Post Office and nationalised industries, had to be cut down because there were insufficient reserves of labour and raw materials to carry on the existing volume of civilian production plus the expansion of armaments, Within a year the Government reported that the planned expansion of armaments was itself falling behind because of these limitations.

America immediately after the end of World War It had much the same experience as Britain when it demobilized most of its war-time armed forces, but unemployment did not fall to so low a level.

Germany and Italy had a quite different experience. They were not going through a phase of expansion in the early port-war years and their demobbed soldiers and redundant munition workers largely went to swell the very heavy unemployment that lasted for ten years or more.

But later, though Germany's armament expenditure still represented only about 2 per cent or 3 per cent of national income and production, German industry has had several years of boom conditions with more vacancies than workers to fill them and hundreds of thousands of workers being brought in from neighbouring countries.

We can therefore say that though arms and armies play a considerable part in the whole field of production arid employment and can ax times exercise a considerable influence on the total magnitude, expenditure on them is no more decisive than any other expenditure of similar size, i.e. on average about 5 per cent to 10 per cent of total national production and expenditure, It all depends on whether capitalism is in an expanding or a contracting phase.

To put it in perspective, it may be added that while capitalism continues no government is in fact going to abolish its armies and armaments though, as in the past, there may be occasions when expenditure is reduced.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: Bobby's Discretion. (1919)

Editorial from the June 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, the bobbies have funked it. We are not, for the present, at all events, to be treated to the comic spectacle of strike processions of bluebottles being shepherded through the streets by their own blacklegs, the "specials." The world has lost an entertainment.

Of course, we are not blind to the difficulties of the policemen's situation. Their bosses had got the strangle-hold on them. By the simple expedient of stopping sixpence in the pound of their wages, confiscating their fees for the service of summons, and in other dubious ways, the capitalists provide a pensions fund at poor Booby's expense. The loss of this pension, together with the "sack," is the first threat the bosses hold over the bobbies' heads. Bobby is a man with no other trade in his hands in the vast majority of cases. So the threat of losing a regular job has special terrors for him. In addition, the loss of his pension—a pension designed, as most pensions are, to get a disciplinary grip upon the subject which probably no other expedient possible in a "free country" could afford, is a prospect requiring a quite uncommon type of mind to withstand.

The bosses, of course, played the game for all it was worth. They said they were flooded with applications from soldiers and ex-soldiers to take the policemen's jobs. They also talked loudly but vaguely about the arrangements that were being made to meet Buttons' grievances. It was the old, old game of bribe some and threaten others—the game played from the beginning to the end of the recruiting for the war—the game played to kill the demobilisation trouble after the Armistice. As, in the earlier case, the single and the young were promised jobs and preferment if they enlisted, and the married and the older ones were threatened that they would have to go if they did shove the others in; as, later, the older men were promised early demobilisation if they kept quiet, and detention till the last if they did not, while the younger men were soothed with extra money, so the older policemen were threatened more particularly with the loss of all that was so nearly won, while the younger men were soothed with promised improvements in the longer road before them.

Meanwhile the policemen played their cards just about as badly as they could. They have climbed down under threats—than which hardly anything could more completely have exposed their weakness and fear. Added to this they have climbed down before their bosses had committed themselves to the vaguely talked-of concessions, and in face of this confession of funk and weakness those concessions are going to shrivel up considerably. The bosses have found out all they wanted to know—that the reward they are offering their bulldogs is sufficient to secure their allegiance to their odious duties. If they dare not decline those duties for themselves they can never dare to decline to perform them for others. So, when labour troubles come Bobby will not, the masters are assured, be a trade unionist, and they have secured this, thanks to their cunning, at about the lowest possible price.

The Daily Chronicle in its issue of June 2 tries to point out to the policemen why the Government can never recognise the Police Union, and, as usual, it reveals only half the truth. "The police exist," our contemporary says, "to support the State. That is what they are for. . . They cannot strike and agitate, or even become public politicians, without ceasing to be policemen." Which is true enough as far as it goes, but does not dispose of the not unimportant fact that the policeman is so essentially a member of the exploited class that he cannot get his admitted grievances redressed until he threatens to cease to be a policeman.

The more important matter, however, is the statement that a policeman is only such to support the State. The complement of this half truth is, of course, that the State is only an instrument for keeping the workers in subjection. Directly this position is realised it becomes obvious how far the police are from getting recognition for any police union that could possibly link them with the unions of the industrial world. The position of police force affiliated with the industrial trade unions would indeed be a tragic one in a time of strife. This the bosses have sense enough to perceive, if the underlings have not. And it is for this reason rather than that they are afraid of being dictated to by the men that the Government will never recognise the Police Union.

It was probably a lie that the police authorities are inundated with blackleg applications from soldiers, but the capitalists have a deep pocket, and, as long as their control of the instrument of the State lasts will have no serious difficulty in obtaining men who will carry out their behests. It is simply a question of the price.

The only thing that can deliver the policeman—as the rest of us— from the tyranny of his tormentors is for the working class to assume control of the State, and to use its forces, including the police, to abolish capitalism and establish the Socialist Commonwealth.