Editorial: Much Ado About Nothing. (1909)

Editorial from the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

We refer, of course, to Mr. Asquith’s speech of the eleventh of December, at a dinner given in commemoration of a Liberal defeat. “We are met,” said the Premier on that auspicious occasion, “to celebrate a failure.” The Lords had inconsiderately slaughtered a Liberal licensing bill, and sour-faced Nonconformity had in consequence been cheated of its sop. Weeks had been spent by the Commons in dreary talk in the passing of that measure, and tons of unreadable printed matter had been issued, but this had not prevented it going the way it had been expected it would, and perhaps intended it should, go—apparently to the relief of the majority outside. The bill, indeed, was utterly worthless to the workers, and quite hopeless in the promotion of temperance : its only function seems to have been to square the electoral account for nonconformist and teetotal support.

The collapse of the so-called Education Bill, added to the violent death of the licensing measure, had depressed the Liberal party and made many of its supporters discontented, and it became incumbent on Mr. Asquith to give a rallying cry to decaying Liberalism, and revive the drooping fortunes of his party. And to the accompaniment of loud and prolonged cheering the anxiously awaited pronouncement was made public. “I invite the Liberal Party from tonight,” said the hero of Featherstone, “to treat the veto of the House of Lords as the dominating issue in politics.” Hardly inspiring, this, as a rallying cry, even if it were not mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. Indeed, what did the Premier propose to do to make his dominating issue a reality ? Was the party to go to the country forthwith upon the issue and fight the Lords ? No, quoth Mr. Asquith, that would be to admit the right of the Lords “to dictate both the occassion and the date of a dissolution.” So the Liberals were going to be brave—and to submit. The hollowness of Liberalism hardly needed further demonstration. “Down with the Lords” is again to be its empty rallying cry ; and although the House of Lords, has not yet gone to Jericho, still its walls are expected to crumble at a shout, for certainly the Liberals are prepared to do nothing more.

It cannot be denied that there exist powerful constitutional weapons against the Lords which the Liberals could use were they sincere, but wherever capitalist interests are endangered Liberal and Tory have two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one. In view of working-class unrest, does not the second chamber offer a possible barrier to working-class advance should other obstacles not suffice ? And does not this account for the tenderness with which the Lords are treated by the Liberals, and partly, also, for the enormous number of peers which the latter create ? Not, however, that we are enamoured of a reform of the House of Lords, for the reform of a rotten institution simply serves to perpetuate that institution, and a House of Lords reformed would undoubtedly be a House of Lords strengthened as a weapon against the workers. Nevertheless the fatuity of Liberalism in this respect, as in regard to their projected Land Tax, cannot escape recognition. The fiscal reform of the Liberals, indeed, is at least as futile as the fiscal reform of the Tories, as far as working-class interests are concerned. So, also, with that other measure which collapsed of its own weakness—the “Education” Bill. There, also, we have an example of Liberal futility. Though called an Education Bill, this measure had nothing whatever to do with the improvement of education, but was solely a faction squabble between sections of the capitalist interest as to which particular brand of Christianity should be forced down the throats of the children. In other words, since the particular form of superstition to be taught is but the outward and visible sign of the interests of one section or other of the ruling class, so the squabble over religious education was really to decide which section of the ruling class the children were to be taught to look to for guidance. To capitalist parties this religious squabble may be vital. Mr. Hill, “Labour” M.P., may claim that “the Bible is still his best book,” and that he believes “in simple Bible teaching.” But from the working-class point of view the fact remains that the worker’s interest is foreign to all this Labour cum-Liberal twaddle.

Moreover, the Liberal-Labour bankruptcy on the question of unemployment could hardly be made clearer. Along with the boasted avalanche of Liberal measures—all conceived in the interest of the ruling class —the position of the worker has been steadily growing worse. Statistics convey a quite inadequate idea of the extent of dumb suffering and poverty that exists among the workers from this cause. Mr. William Redmond, M.P., is moved to remark in Reynold’s that “there is no part of the world where the contrasts between luxurious wealth and miserable poverty are so marked as in England, and particularly in London.” And he further adds,

“We have in Ireland suffering and unemployment enough. But the humblest labourer in his cottage in the country is to be envied in comparison with the workman in the great cities who finds himself without employment. Bit by bit the little articles of the home are sacrificed. The pawnshop stretches forth the only hand of assistance often to be found. The home goes, and there is nothing left but the streets. Far preferable is the lot of the poorest dweller is the countryside to this.

England has been glorified because of her great industrial progress, her mighty factories, and her great hives of industry. But when the depression of trade brings with it the discharge of workmen and the hopelessness which that entails, it is futile to talk of the glory of England’s progress. She then presents a spectacle which is unparalleled in the history of the world, of the most boundless wealth on the one hand, and the direst poverty on the other.”

But to these sufferings of the working class the Liberals, like the Tories, are cynically indifferent, and are, in fact, only likely to move when the workers start acting for themselves. So bad is the state of affairs, indeed, that the Labour Party, that docile tail of the Liberal bow-wow, is even moved by the callousness of the Government to murmur a faint protest. We quote from the daily paper of December 12th.

“Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., secretary of the Labour Party, speaking at Coventry last night, said deliberately (according to the Central News Agency) that unless the Government turned over a new leaf and observed more sympathy, initiative, and determination in dealing with the serious problems of unemployment it would find the Labour Party before long in violent conflict with it.”

Things must be bad indeed, when the Labour Party threatens to be in conflict with the Government ! In fact, we cannot believe that it will ever come to that. The faithfulness to the Government that has hitherto characterised the “Labour” members is not likely to be disturbed. As we have been reminded on more than one occasion, they find their seats too comfortable.

For the working class, however, groaning under their increasing burden of misery, only the policy of hostility can be of use. They must, as distinct from the Labour Party, find themselves all the time in violent opposition to the capitalist Government. They must democratically champion their own interests against all sections of the capitalist party, and realise to the full that the rallying cries and faction fights of Liberals versus Tories are in very truth rightly said to be “much ado about nothing.” Indeed, if the workers are not prepared to take a stand with their comrades in the Socialist Party and fight their own battles, then there is no power can save them from the deepening misery that threatens.

The General Election: Our Manifesto to the Workers. (1910)

From the December 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

FELLOW MEMBERS OF THE WORKING CLASS,

Once again the various political parties are seeking your support in a General Election. The Liberal Government, who are appealing to you to retain them in office, were boasting in January last of their “great victory” at the polls. They pointed to the anti-Lords majority of 120 as a proof of their clear mandate and sufficient backing to abolish the Lords’ veto. Yet within a few months of this “great victory”, they are again asking you to return them for the same purpose.

Hardly had the Liberals been elected when Mr. Asquith admitted that he had not got the “guarantees” without which he promised at Albert Hall  he would not hold office.

The history of the Liberal party shows that the House of Lords has nothing to fear from them. Besides acting as a trysting place for their financial supporters, it does duty as an excuse for their broken promises and procrastination. They have raised the bogey election-cry of “Down with the House of Lords!” ever since the rejection of their 1832 Reform Bill, but though in power a dozen times since then with large majorities, they have not once joined issue with the peers. Instead of “ending or mending”, they have been extending, the Second Chamber. A far greater number of peers were created in the 19th century by the Liberals than by the Tories, and they are well ahead, with a total of 40, in the 20th century. In fact, the necessity of rewarding with peerages the great contributors to the party’s funds is, doubtless, one of the reasons for the Dissolution.

After indulging in the most violent denunciation of the Lords the Liberals arranged to patch up their quarrel by holding a conference, which, after five months existence, has been abandoned “for the present” – to use Mr. Asquith’s phrase. During these months a truce was called and we told not to disturb the little game of coddem evidently being played by the wily “eight”. The Government, if returned again, obviously intend to continue the sham-fight ’til the Coronation, when we may expect another General Election – or another conference.

Although the Liberals admit that the reform in the composition of the House of Lords means strengthening it against the people, the preamble to the Government Veto Bill states that “it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists, a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of a hereditary basis”. This Bill gives the Lords power to reject every bill twice. Even one of their own members has admitted the hypocrisy of his party. Writing to the Daily Chronicle (June 20th) the Hon. J. Martin, Liberal M. P. for St. Pancras, said: “The Government have changed front several times on the House of Lords question, and on account of their wobbling since the Election, I have no hesitation in saying that I have no confidence whatever in them.” During the Dissolution debate (18.11.10) he said: “I do not believe the Government are in earnest in their fight against the Lords. With a majority of a hundred members like myself to stand by them, I do not believe there was any need for a dissolution.”

All this goes to show how fraudulent the Liberals are; but even were they sincere on this question of the Upper Chamber it would not concern you, fellow-workers. Mere political changes do not affect your economic condition. The Liberals say that there is not such a reactionary Second Chamber abroad as the British, yet you know that poverty and unemployment abound there as here.

The poverty and insecurity from which you suffer has its roots, not in political forms, but in the class ownership of the means of life. No reform, whether of Tariffs, Franchise, or Poor Law, can touch the cause; consequently the effects persist though social reforms are continually passed.

Even Lloyd George confessed, in his City Temple speech (17.10.10), that “before we succeed in remedying one evil, fresh ones crop up. We are hopelessly in error”. That is a very significant admission. But the very reforms that fail to touch the evils they are supposed to remedy are, the “wicked Lords” notwithstanding, being made the issues by the Liberals at the present election.

Very Old Age Pensions for those on the verge of the grave (adopted because they are cheaper than Poor Law relief); Labour Exchanges (organised to smash strikes and reduce wages); a specious promise to qualify the legal effects of the Osborne judgment (a sop to catch the votes of the trades unions): these are the futilities with which the Liberals mock the care-worn wage-slaves of capitalism.

The Labour Party, as we have continually pointed out, is merely a wing of the Liberal party. It is composed of job-hunters who, like Shackleton, are seeking office in Liberal administrations. Said their chairman in the House of Commons (18.11.10): “It was because the Labour Party believed the solution of the House of Lords question would be a step forward that  they supported the Government”.

Your masters are seeking your suffrages in this election because upon their control of the political machine their supremacy depends. Liberal and Tory alike are out for the maintenance of this system, which means for you a continuation of your slavery. While pretending to be in deadly enmity, they are united as one against you when you try to better your lot. They combine in Masters’ Federations and try to starve you into submission by locking you out when you seek to make your wages cover the increased cost of living – as in Lancashire. They bring the armed forces into your midst to bludgeon you and menace your very lives – as in South Wales. Through their political supremacy your masters control these forces of repression, and if you are to change the conditions under which you work and live, you must fight to get control of the machinery of Government.

In that fight you cannot take sides with any section of the capitalist class, because it is to their interest to maintain this system which means luxury and idleness for them. Neither can you support those parties which, like the Labour Party and the Social-Democratic Party, are parties of compromise and reform. (The latter of these organisations has, in its election manifesto, advised the workers to stultify themselves by voting for the Tories. Their only candidate is a champion of “a strong navy”!) Your interests, being opposed to those of the capitalists, must lead you to ally yourself with a working-class political party waging an uncompromising battle against all the forces ranged in opposition to your class.

Your emancipation can only be achieved by converting the instruments of production from the property of the few (who use them to exploit you) into the common property of society, so that they can be used to produce the requirements of life in abundance for all; in a word, Socialism must be established.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the only party in this country that consistently works for this end: and as the realisation of Socialism depends upon the conversion of the workers, your place is within its ranks, striving to bring your fellow-workers into line, helping to hasten the day when the fratricidal warfare of capitalism is supplanted by the fraternal co-operation that Socialism alone can ensure.

Pending the time when the workers rally in greater numbers to the Socialist Party, and so enable it to take its proper place in electoral contests as the only working-class political party in this country, it has no candidates in the field. Hence all candidates before you at this election, whether they be openly and avowedly capitalist, or slink at the heels of the Liberals under the title of I.L.P., S.D.P., Labour or Socialist, stand for the maintenance of capitalism, and from the position we have outlined your duty is plain.

ABSTAIN FROM VOTING

on this occasion, and, lest the enemy impersonate you, go to the ballot-box and inscribe “SOCIALISM!” upon your voting paper. Above all, the work that lies before you is to enlist the support of your fellows in the fight for Socialism, for that alone can deliver you from the misery which to-day you endure.

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Editorial: Out-Heroding Herod. (1908)

Editorial from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the little scene in the “House” on Nov. 12, it can hardly be argued that the workers have gained even a more sympathetic administration of capitalism by the advent of the workman Cabinet Minister. After Mr. Asquith, who has no reputation for kindliness toward the workers, had promised the removal of certain restrictions in the dispensation of relief, the L.G.B. order, instead of instructing such removal, made it a voluntary action by the authority. Taxed with this in the “House,” Mr. Burns replied that he had adopted the best way of carrying out the Prime Minister’s promise. Mr. Asquith, however, disagreed, and the order is to be replaced by one incorporating the removal of the disability of having received Poor Law Relief within a specified time. Mr. Burns had better be careful. Already dissatisfaction is being expressed in high Liberal circles owing to his not playing the game carefully enough, and if he assumes a callous, unsympathetic attitude toward an unemployed problem which compels even the Premier to affect commiseration, he will have to give place to one who will smile and frown with his master, and shed tears to order. A few more examples like that under notice will blow the gaff on Liberal hypocrisy completely. Burns’ special function in the Cabinet was to conciliate working-class demands for independent representation and to show that the Liberal Party was so concerned to have the voice of Labour in its counsels as to obviate the necessity for separate representation.

To realise that the “short, square built man in the straw hat” who talked himself hoarse on behalf of the dockers in 1889 and the man who is out-Heroding Herod in the cruel, callous administration of relief to the unfortunates of capitalism are the same John Burns is difficult, and shows how complete a control over their representatives must the workers exercise before their convictions can be made to prevail.

An I.L.P. “belief”. (1917)

From the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Independent Labour Party believes that the war was caused by the breakdown of class government in Europe. The peoples had no voice in policy before the war, and when they suddenly found themselves faced with “enemies” they had to fight.”

This statement contained in No. 1 Leaflet “The I.L.P. and the War” is not supported by facts or evidence of any kind ; it is merely a belief. Though whether the word “believes” applies to the first sentence only, or to the whole paragraph, it is impossible to say, nor does it matter much. The first sentence, expressing the belief that the war was caused by the breakdown of class government in Europe, if it is truly the belief of the I.L.P., is by far the most important statement, not only in this paragraph, but in the whole leaflet.

The writers fail to justify their belief. The master-class would ridicule it, and the Socialist would laugh at their self-inflicted credulity. What would be the attitude of the capitalist politicians ? First they would deny the existence of class government. Secondly they would claim that government was vested in the representatives of the people, was therefore democratic ; that government had not broken down, nor was it in the slightest danger of doing so. If the I.L.P. never anticipated this attitude it is politically sightless. If the capitalist position—so often expressed by its agents and spokesmen—was present in the collective mind of the I.L.P., they should not have been satisfied with the mere expression of a belief ; they should have shown in definite and unmistakable language that, in spite of capitalist boasting of the democratic nature of their system, class government exists. Moreover, they should have justified their statement that it had broken down.

They have done none of these things, it is, therefore, left to the Socialist to show the absurdity of their beliefs. In no country of Europe was there any government, at the outbreak of war, that showed signs of collapse. In every country of Europe—and the world—there was poverty and suffering, always on the increase, among the working class. There was discontent everywhere, but the suffering and discontent of the workers does not in itself mean the breakdown of capitalist government, on the contrary, it is proof of its power—and confidence in itself—to exploit and subjugate. At the outbreak of war, we are constantly being told, the Central Powers were organized and equipped for the struggle. That is to say, the working class of those countries were fully controlled and disciplined by the governing class. Obviously, class government had not broken down in those countries, but, on the contrary, had reached a high degree of perfection. In those allied countries where conscription was in vogue the military authorities, at the instigation of those who controlled the political machinery, gave orders for mobilisation and were obeyed almost to the last man. In this country the process was slower but just as sure. Everyone knows how the masters co-operated with their representatives in Parliament by “releasing” men fit for active service. But it is not everyone who knows how dexterously Mr. Asquith and his government, on behalf of the capitalist class of this country, engineered towards conscription. Had he been satisfied with having achieved his object and not boasted of his political dexterity, the workers would have been left to think that the Government had simply blundered from one pledge to another until conscription was accomplished, as much to their own surprise as other people’s. But the competition for ministerial portfolios often compels Ministers—however modest they may wish to be thought—to construe their actions in such a way as to gain them credit for acumen and foresight. Thus Mr. Asquith claimed that his government, by devious methods, had gained “compulsion by consent,” in the following utterance:

“Next, in the earlier stages of the war more men came in than we could effectively train and equip, and it was not until the beginning of last Autumn that the shortage of men, actual or prospective, became a serious problem. Compulsion, whatever may be said of its abstract merits or demerits, is alien to British traditions—(cheers)—and its introduction would have been viewed with the greatest suspicion in the absence of a proved case of absolute necessity by the vast bulk of Liberals, by a large body of Conservatives, and by practically the whole of organised labour. (Cheers.) I have consistently maintained ever since the recruiting problem became urgent that compulsion could only be practicable and made effective when at each stage of the road it was accompanied by general consent. That is exactly what has happened. Everyone who knows anything of our political life must be aware that such measures as have been passed by enormous majorities in Parliament this spring would even a year ago have encountered the most strenuous opposition, with most dubious prospects of survival.”

Whether this boast is true, or whether such a complexion had been given to a series of blunders, or whether the Government was dragged or forced along the road to conscription by the governing class, the result was the same and was never in doubt. The ruling class with their agents preserved their authority and achieved the same degree of power over the working class here, as the Allied and Central Governments exercised at the commencement. Clearly class government had not broken down in this country.

But possibly the I.L.P. intellect will object that these facts only apply to the period of the war, and that the outbreak of war placed the Government once more on their feet, or braced them for the struggle. But they cannot take this attitude in view of the concluding sentence in the paragraph quoted. “The peoples had no voice in policy before the war.” Quite so. The Government conducted the business of the ruling class in utter disregard and contempt for the working class, until they called upon them to defend “their” country—their country, who’s?-and the credulous—or should it be shuffling and treacherous ?—I.L.P. babble about the people who “suddenly found themselves faced with enemies they had to fight.” Had the people—that is the working class—understood their class position they never would have waited for the master class to choose enemies for them. But thanks to the I.L.P. and the rest of the parties and organisations that serve the master class, the workers have had but little chance of learning who are their real enemies. Had the workers of every country understood the nature of capitalist society and their own slave position, the governing class in each country would never have succeeded in persuading them that the workers of other lands could be their enemies. There is no possible ground of antagonism between the wage-slaves of one capitalist State and another. The antagonism that exists is entirely between the different groups of the governing class. When these groups fell out they knew that the workers under their control and domination could be relied upon to do the fighting in their interest. Had they entertained any doubts as to the docility of their wage slaves they would have hesitated before plunging into war. A working class really antagonistic to its rulers would use such an occasion to further its own object : they would face the enemy their experience pointed to ; not the enemies of their enemy.

Once again the real Socialist position must be emphasised. The I.L.P. complain that “the peoples had no voice in policy before the war.” Would there be any difference if they had? Without knowledge the workers can be led to support any policy that happens to be in the capitalist interest. We have seen the workers in the past—plastic as clay in the potter’s hands—led to conflict against those who are “their allies” to-day ; or fighting on the side of those who are designated as their enemies, and through all the sanguinary wars engendered by capitalist production and distribution they have remained a slave class under the domination of those, for whom they fought. Before wars can cease the workers must gain the knowledge that will enable them to prosecute the class war to a successful conclusion ; until that time arrives their lot must be to work the factory machine, or the machine gun, at the instigation and in the interest of the governing class.

F. Foan

The Fruits of Anarchy. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Curious effects of divergent interests.

When a period of trade activity has been unusually protracted, the inevitable crisis invariably startles the economists of the ruling class in the midst of ruminations on their good fortune, or genius, in having at last overcome trade epidemics. As with the trade crisis, so with war comes as a bolt from the blue, shattering theories, exposing contradictions, dissipating hopes, and falsifying prophecies.

Anarchy in Interests Produces—

Conflicting interests must always produce conflicting ideas. A survey of prevailing ideas will consequently give some notion of the underlying anarchy of capitalist interests and conditions.

One group of idealists we can afford to leave to their own shallow cogitations. Those who argue that without war to develop and ennoble—and kill off the fittest—the human race is certain to degenerate. They are backed up by the “war traders” for obvious reasons. Opposed to them are the humanitarians, the anti-militarists, and the peace-loving bourgeois traders, whose ships, heavily insured, are on every sea. These traders, always fearing for their markets, express vehemently their belief in arbitration and their suspicions of diplomatists generally. In the interest of trade Andrew Carnegie subscribes two millions to finance a peace tribunal. At the same time armament firms subsidise the Press and frighten the ignorant with scares, bribe high-placed officials through their agents in all parts of the world, cater for every nation or province that happens to lie inflicted with agitators, whose business it is to keep alive feuds and magnify every action of a neighbouring-State into a sinister threat against the cherished freedom of the people.

Anarchy in Ideas.

The following quotation from the “Daily News and Leader” (15.7.14) presents quite typically the attitude taken up (in peace times) by the peace-mongers :

“If there is not soon a world-wide movement against the tyranny of war and of all the infamies associated with it, it will not be for lack of lessons. Wherever we turn, to France or Russia, Germany or Japan, Italy or our own country, the evidence accumulates of the burden which the war-traders put upon the backs of the people. Their business has no relation to patriotism. It is cosmopolitan in its operations and soulless in its motive. It works upon the fears and hates of ignorant people, uses the Press as the instrument of its purposes and makes tools of the diplomatists and the statesmen, many of whom are financially interested in its success. In Russia, in France, and now in Japan we have seen how it can buy up the very services and make lackeys of the generals and admirals of army and navy. Its maleficient influence overshadows the democracy of every land and until we have found a way of uprooting the whole evil system there will be no real progress made towards peace or an enduring civilisation.”

“Our own country” is not excepted in this sweeping statement. The Prime Minister, when confronted with figures relating to the operations of armament firms abroad, said he dared say the figures were correct, but he knew of no sufficient reason for instituting an enquiry. Shortly after two of the largest British firms entered into a contract with the Turkish Government to carry out extensive works at Constantinople that meant the virtual re-modelling of the Turkish navy, while just before the outbreak of the war, according to a prominent war correspondent, “the British Admiralty was lending missions of naval officers to Greece and Turkey, to hasten in co-operation with the contracting syndicates the preparation of their war forces.” The same writer added : “There is not a feud, or the possibility of a feud, but these tradesmen are at hand to egg on the rival adventurers, and to ‘equip’ them with the latest instruments of the science and art of wholesale homicide.”

Circumstances, you know, Alter Cases.

The peace-mongers forget their former denunciations when their country is involved in war. The “business” of the war traders has a close “relation to patriotism” when the “latest instruments of the science and art of wholesale homicide” must be placed in the hands of the workers to defend capitalist interest. The cry is then “Pile up the munitions ; more elbow room to the war traders.” They forget what they have said—but they cannot unsay it.

Before the war it had become almost a platitude that great wars of conquest, religious wars, etc., were things of the past ; that to-day commerce and industry dictated the policies of the different nations. Since the war every capitalist hack has been busy denying the economic cause—even while crying : “Capture the enemy’s trade”—repeating again and again that the struggle is between “militarism and democracy.”

“Prussian militarism” has become an everyday phrase. Exactly what is meant by it has never yet been clearly explained. According to some supporters of the so-called voluntary system, it is synonymous with conscription ; others affect to see difference between the French and German forms. One fact beyond dispute is that the capitalist class of every country maintain armed forces up to the strength they deem necessary to cope with their enemies within and without ; and it is even more certain that the capitalists of no country hesitate to use them when their interests are at stake. The methods may be slightly different, but the object is always the same—to retain possession or ownership of the means of life.

Relatives are Best Apart.

For instance, the Kaiser, according to Benjamin Kidd (in the “Daily News and Leader,” 7.9.15), appeals directly to his conscripts, saying :

“In view of the present Socialist agitation, it may come to pass that I shall command you to shoot down your own relatives, your brothers, your sons, or parents, which God forbid, but even this you must obey without a murmur.”

while Mr. Asquith, in the House of Commons says, in answer to a question (I quote the “Daily Chronicle.” 24.3.14).

“I think it is a very good rule, where the military force is called in to render assistance to the civil power, in exceptional cases, both as regards officers and men, so far as you can do it, to avoid the employment of those who are locally connected by personal, domestic, or social ties.”

In peace time every increase in armaments raises the war discussion anew and furnishes fresh evidence in the shape of contradictions, confessions, and absurdities. Ten days before the declaration of war the United Methodist Conference passed a resolution “protesting against the ominous growth of armaments.” One rev. delegate declared that

“the war spirit was not in the heart of King George, the Kaiser, the House of Commons, the Reichstag, or in the hearts of the British or German people. It was in the brain of a few irresponsible journalists, who were obsessed with a dastardly kind of Imperialism. He hated strikes, but would be glad to see a strike of the great democratic forces of Europe as a protest against this wicked, inhuman, and sinful waste of money.”

Note how these despicable followers of the mythical Christ are concerned for their masters’ money—a fraction of which comes to them in the shape of livings. One would almost imagine it was of greater importance in their estimation than human life did one not remember that personal ambition overshadows everything else in the mind of the up-to-date Gospel hawker.

Notoriety being their goal, it does not always follow that popular ideas must be applauded ; sometimes the reverse will bring a freak Non-conformist within the circle of the lime-light. At present it is almost criminal to denounce war, even in theory yet the president of the Churchmen’s Union at Rugby goes even further and denounces scientists for their share in it—possibly on principle, because he recognises the antagonism between science and religion. He

“deplored the employment of the latest discoveries of science and the newest inventions of civilisation not in the service of mankind, but to kill, burn, and torture. Men of science and learning had been bribed by the rulers of nations to prostitute their powers to the invention of horrible instruments for the wholesale killing, poisoning, and torture of brave men.”

Parson’s Filthy Job.

Obviously this is a case of the pot reflecting on the sooty condition of the kettle. The priest is equally susceptible to capitalist bribery with the scientist, and just as ready to furbish old superstitions or manustitions or manufacture new ones, to the detriment of the working class, as the scientist is to invent or improve instruments for the perpetration of wholesale murder.

So much for the irresponsibles. There are writers and politicians, however, that are considered authoritative ; but we shall be disappointed if we expect to find their utterances free from similar contradictions and absurdities. Mr. Norman Angell in “The Great Illusion,” we are told by a contemporary,

“Lays down the principle, which he enforces by references to recent history, that in the case of a great war the victor suffers more in the long run than the vanquished. . . . Moreover, because also of this interdependence of our credit-built finance, the confiscation by an invader of private property . . . would so react upon the finance of the invader’s country as to make the damage to the invader resulting from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated. So that Germany’s success in conquest would be a demonstration of the complete economic futility of conquest. . . . For allied reasons, in our day, the exaction of tribute from a conquered people has become an economic impossibility.”

In November 1910 Mr. Asquith, speaking on the subject of international relations, furnished the occasion for a Press discussion in which prominent leader writers expressed similar views to those of Mr. Angell. The “Aberdeen Evening Gazette” (11.11.10) said :

“If Germany beat us, she could not destroy our trade : she could not seize any of our colonies or annex any of our territories. She could not exact a ‘thousand million’ indemnity, because credit is now an international business, and to impair British credit would be to shake her own. If Germany smashed us she would smash her own best customer, and her own people would pay the penalty.”

The ”Times” (11.11.10) said:

“They move, as he says, in a vicious circle. They arm because they distrust one another, and they dis-trust one another because they are armed. It is a chronic malady, the cure of which Mr. Asquith is optimist enough to hope for through the growth of a more genial spirit among the nations. A more potent agency will perhaps be the increasing complexity of international relations, which makes it difficult for one nation to damage another without almost equally damaging itself.”

The “Westminster Gazette” (11.11.10) said :

“Trade is a great pacificator, and the international credit on which trade rests is a thing to which war is abhorrent. The fear of breaking the peace and the difficulty of breaking it grows with the growth of armaments. And at the same time the subconscious conviction that the whole collective process is a kind of insanity must gradually project itself into the conscious proceedings of civilised nations.”

These quotations are by no means isolated. In recent years similar opinions have been repeated so often that they should be familiar to every newspaper reader. But note the change since the outbreak of war. Every possible evil, from economic, annihilation to wholesale slaughter, has been flung at the heads of the workers to frighten thorn into the recruiting office or the munition factory. When the international capitalist class saw no immediate cause for quarrelling, their scribes told us our trade could not be destroyed by Germany, nor could our colonies or territory be annexed. A war indemnity could not be exacted by Germany because it would shake her own credit. Yet Britain’s credit is to be shaken by this very action, according to every responsible newspaper, while the self-appointed “Adviser-in-Chief to the British Nation”—Mr. Horatio Bottomley—says that “we shall need an army of occupation to mind the German capital whilst the war indemnity is being paid.”

Many writers have uttered grave warnings on the horrors of war, and have suggested remedies that were almost laughable—if the subject were not so tragic. Mr. Egmont Hake, in the “Daily Telegraph” of September 6, 1892, prophesied that

“We shall have battles raging for days over extensive grounds, hurried and disorderly retreats, desperate pursuits, and consequently, miles of country strewn with carcases and corpses. Should we wonder if to this tragedy Nemesis were to add her epilogue —pest.”

and the remedy is, “a liberal support of our hospitals” !

Professor Gardiner says :

“It should not be impossible to build upon the basis of the international comity of savants a society of men pledged to use their powers and discoveries not for destruction, but for saving life, not for promoting, but for moderating friction between nations.”

Benjamin Kidd told us in “Social Evolution” that the Christian religion was responsible for an ever-growing altruism and humanitarianism in the “Western civilisations.” He is, perhaps, surprised at the calmness with which these peoples regard the slaughter going on to-day, though, he admits his theory is falsified and that altruism is useless as a force to avert war, when he suggests that the Allies should “declare the United States of. Europe”—and, one might add, arm in preparation for war with the United States of America, or some other combination of powers in competition with them for the world’s markets.

But about the most outrageous thing that has been said on the war question is the reply given to those workers who asked what is their stake in the country. “Their wages.” Those wages that for “millions of the workers do not suffice to replace the energy used up in their daily toil.” The wages system is the most complete and tyrannical form of slavery evolved during centuries of class domination. Wage slavery squeezes every ounce of energy out of the workers and scraps them, condemns men, women, and children to degrading poverty and continual anxiety and, as “John Bull” says, “the sordid atmosphere of the office and the workshop.”

This is the worker’s stake in every land—if he seeks diligently and has the luck to find a master. But if he has knowledge concerning the position he will detest the wages system, and if he has wisdom in addition to knowledge he will work for its abolition and the establishment of Socialism. The nationality of his master in the meantime will not count with him : all members of the master class alike are to him parasites that live by his labour and drive him into the factory with the whip of unemployment and hunger, to be exploited.

F. Foan

Notes and Comments. (1906)

From the July 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

WHY THE LABOUR PARTY IS A FAILURE.

THE PRINTING TRADES DISPUTE.

ASQUITH’S WHITEWASHERS.

Mr. Frank Smith has passed from the Salvation Army to the Labour Movement and from the Labour Movement to the Salvation Army until one hardly knows where he is at any given time. At present he appears to be in the Labour movement as the secretary of a side-tracking, self-appointed Committee, who advise the unemployed to deputise and to beg of their masters to recognise the “right” of their slaves to work, instead of pointing out that they, the slaves, should organise to end their slavery and establish their right to live. In this connection he has a bone to pick with the “Labour” Party in the House of Commons.

* * *

He complains that the “Labour” members are permitting, without protest, the Liberal Cabinet to fool with the unemployed question, and wonders what it is “that is sapping the fight out of the majority of the Labour members?” “What is it,” he asks, “that appears to be turning the lions into lambs ?” He suggests that they are forgetting that they are still agitators, with a wider platform and a greater opportunity to push the war into the camps of the enemy, and are attempting the role of “statesmen,” and adds that they will lose their way and get side-tracked, for the politicians can beat them at the game of bluff every time.

* * *

The Executive of Mr. Smith’s Committee includes G. N. Barnes, M.P., J. Keir Hardie, M.P., and J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P. Has Mr. Smith discussed the matter with his Executive or does the Committee merely consist of Mr. Smith, and the pretence of an Executive merely part of a “game of bluff” which Mr. Smith, as well as his “Labour” Party friends, play so well ?

* * *

Now why should the “Labour” M.P’s be expected to “put up a real fight in the House”? They were not elected to put up a fight. Men who will throw over their principles of independence in order to secure votes, as did so many of the few Labour members who ever professed any, are not going to make a fight against the very men with whom they made compacts at the General Election.

* * *

Take Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, for example. He made a compact with the Liberals of Leicester, because he was more anxious to get to the House of Commons than to fight the enemies of the working class. At the meeting at the Temperance Hall, Leicester, held on January 5th, where he was adopted, he expressed himself in hearty sympathy with the proposals of the government, as voiced by Sir H. Campbell Bannerman in his Albert Hall speech, and asked the working men of Leicester to use both votes in order that Mr. Broadhurst and himself might be returned. He explained that “both the L.R.C. and the Trades Council had declared against ‘plumping’ in order that every member might utilise both his votes to return two Progressives, and so promote the more urgently needed industrial reforms.” And the speech which he delivered after the poll was declared, quoted in our March issue, amply proves that he was returned to support the capitalist Liberal Government, not to put up a fight against it.

* * *

Then there is Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., who is also supposed to be one of the “independent” Labour M.P’s. There has hardly been a Liberal function of any importance since the General Election that Mr. Crooks has not attended. In April, for instance, he and his wife were present at a back-scratching banquet at the Trocadero, which included “some of the best known names in Liberal politics.” The Lord Chancellor presided, Dr. Macnamara and Mr. H. C. Lea, M.P., were the head cooks and bottle washers, John Burns and Lord Monkswell spoke, and Mr. James Stuart and Sir H. Campbell Bannerman sent their congratulations by letter. The speeches mainly concerned the “great Radical victory,” and many were the references to “the dark days from which Liberalism had just emerged.” Does any sane person expect that Mr. Crooks is going to “put up a real fight” against the exploiters whose hospitality he is so willing to accept ?

* * *

Of course, at this function Mr. Crooks did not preach about the evils of drinking, smoking and gambling. That he reserves for the class to which he once belonged. It is part of the decoy-duck game he is playing for the capitalists.

* * *

Then we have Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., now made a Justice of the Peace for the Borough of West Ham, in which capacity he will be called upon to punish those victims of the capitalist system who have offended against capitalist laws, passed to protect capitalist property and capitalist institutions. Mr. Thorne is a member of the S.D.F., who, no doubt, will claim that a “revolutionary Social Democrat” can serve the working class and at the same time serve in the capacity of a tool of the capitalist class. There is now no real difference between Burns and Thorne, excepting that Burns is well paid for his job and Thorne is one of the great unpaid.

* * *

I am here reminded of the words of Wilhelm Liebknecht: “A Socialist who goes into a bourgeois government, either goes over to the enemy or else puts himself in the power of the enemy. … He may claim to be a Socialist, but he is no longer such. He may be convinced of his own sincerity, but in that case he has not comprehended the nature of the class struggle—does not understand that the class struggle is the basis of Socialism.”

* * *

Before elected persons can put up a real fight they must be elected to do so, they must have a guiding principle and a definite policy. They must know what they want and how they must go to work to get it. And above all, they must have the knowledge that behind their actions lies the full strength of the electors who voted for them and the non-electors who also helped to return them. They must clear their minds of the fallacy that place necessarily means power for those claiming to represent the working class. That power can only come when the working class understand their position, and will return men as rebels. “No compromise” must be the watchword, and as the “Labour” M.P’s have not been returned as rebels, as they do not endeavour to enlighten the working class as to their position of wage slaves, as they merely hanker after reforms in a mild and quite respectable manner, they are useless to the working class, and therefore are, as they must be, a failure.

* * *

The dispute in the London Printing Trade has, apparently, only ended as far as the Compositors are concerned, and it is quite evident that in ending it the Compositors were guilty of two false moves—one in not recognising that the matter affected all the workers in the industry, and therefore that all should have been considered and consulted before any agreement was entered into, and another in falling so easily into the trap laid for them by the astute newspaper proprietors, who in future will form a separate employers’ organisation, apart from the Master Printers’ Association. If the Compositors were in a position to exact terms from the masters, they should have insisted that the cause of one employer should be considered the cause of all, that all the employers should join one and the same masters’ association, and thus action against one would have been action against all. The policy of the working class is to get all its enemies, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, into one body in front of it.

* * *

A great and enthusiastic throng gathered together at the National Liberal Club on Friday,June 16th to meet the members of the Government and to make merry over the Liberal victory. As might be expected, the Social Democratic Federation was represented—by Mr. A. E. Fletcher.

* * *

Mr. W. P. Byles has taken upon himself the whitewashing of Asquith, who, he claims, was in no way responsible for the murder of the Featherstone Miners. Against Mr. Byles’ opinion we have Asquith’s own avowal, previously quoted in these columns. It was made at Glasgow on the l7th October, 1893, and he said :—”In his character as Secretary of State for the Home Department, it had been his duty to take executive action in more than one of those cases for the maintenance of the law and for the prevention of disorder, and he accepted the full responsibility for everything that had been done.”

* * *

Of course, whatever Asquith’s whitewashers may say, Asquith is bound to take the responsibility. If he repudiated it, it would be tantamount to admitting that the Imperial troops could be ordered to murder in cold blood the Imperial workers, at the instance of a local capitalist, without the consent of the Executive Government. It is too much to expect a member of the Executive Government to plead that the Government does not control the Executive’s forces, and therefore Asquith takes the full responsibility. And glories in it, gloats over it, smiles in grim satisfaction at the thought that his class had so crushed the workers as to make it possible, without a protest, either from the workers outside or from the “Labour” Members who were then inside the House. They did not “put up a real fight” then, any more than the present “Labour” members will over questions which really concern the working class.

J. Kay

Notes by the Way: Maxton and Marx. (1932)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Maxton and Marx.

Mr. Maxton’s utterances never show more than a superficial acquaintance with Marx’s writings, just sufficient to impress the average uncritical I.L.P. audience. Nevertheless, he claims on occasion that he is a Marxist, and the I.L.P. as a body is now, according to its General Secretary, on a “definitely Marxist” basis. Mr. Maxton, writing about the late John MacLean (New Leader, September 2nd), says that it was MacLean who gave him his “earliest insight into the work of Marx.” Maxton goes out of his way to praise MacLean for integrity and courage in refusing to “minimise or explain away what he had said,” on the many occasions when his activities landed him in the dock.

This is more than can be said for Maxton in his advocacy of the Marxism which he is supposed to accept. He recently reviewed Trotsky’s “History of the Russian Revolution” in the News-Chronicle (June 27th, 1932). Here was a rare and valuable opportunity for Mr. Maxton to declare himself boldly. But the News-Chronicle is the organ of Nonconformist-radicals, and Non-conformist-radicals have votes, and they strongly dislike Marxism with its materialist philosophy. So the would-be British Lenin carefully balanced himself on the fence, managing at the same time to deliver a nice back-hander in the shape of the common jibe of the capitalist apologist that Marxists are “doctrinaires.” He gave a brief statement of the Marxist case, but prefaced it with the words “the doctrinaire Marxist . . . tends to describe in hard, formal language the economic conditions, and the nature of the class struggle which is in process.” Then, instead of saying “This is the Marxian case. I accept it,” Mr. Maxton would not commit himself to anything more definite than “The Marxist says, and probably says truly, …”

There is a good word for this sort of thing— “mealy-mouthed.”

Mr. Maxton used to be a teacher. We can imagine how he taught. “Now, boys and girls, the doctrinaire mathematicians say that two and two make four. They are probably right. . . .”

The school authorities must have been glad to get rid of him.

* * *

How Dare They!

The Daily Mail is shocked. Some workers in New South Wales have “seriously” asked to be allowed to have some of the comforts of life over and above a bare subsistence. This occurred at the N.S.W. Industrial Commission. The Mail reports as follows : —

“The trade unions . . . admitted that the cost of living had fallen but tried to introduce a higher wage standard, seriously demanding allowances for tobacco, 7 pints of beer weekly, two cinemas weekly, 12 suit pressings yearly, hair shingling and cigarettes for wives. They also claimed that the children of workers should not of necessity have to wear patched trousers. . . .” (Daily Mail, 27th August.)

Who ever heard of such a thing? Not necessary for workers’ children to wear patched clothes ! What would there be to keep their mothers out of mischief in their idle hours ? Off they would go for their weekly allowance of cigarettes and hair-shingling, and heaven knows what else.

This was not far short of treason and the Industrial Commission smartly nipped it in the bud, reducing the basic wage from 82s. 6d. to 70s. for men and from 44s. 6d. to 38s. for women.

* * *

The Leopard Has Not Changed its Spots

Labour Party supporters who believe that the Labour Party has become a different party since it lost Snowden and MacDonald should ask themselves why, at the Twickenham by-election in September, the Daily Herald (September 15th) thought fit to give prominence on its front page to a declaration by the Hon. Treasurer of the Twickenham Liberal Party urging voters to vote for Mr. Holman, the Labour candidate. In the absence of a Liberal candidate this Liberal Party official found the Labour candidate deserving of Liberal support. If the Labour candidate stood for Socialism, as his party pretends, he would have received just as much opposition from the Liberals as from the Tories. Instead of which the Liberal press told their readers to vote Labour.

* * *

It is Just the Same at Home

A special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian has made a tour of inspection of the great industrial works being built in Russia. He is favourably impressed by what has already been achieved in the way of improving the productive capacity of Russian industry and is optimistic regarding future progress. But this is what he has to say about the living conditions of the workers at Magnitogorsk, a new industrial town where an enormous steel plant is under construction : —

“Perhaps the most serious and certainly the most obvious defect at Magnitogorsk is the complete absence of decent housing. The barracks where most of the workers live are over-crowded and sometimes infested with vermin ; the canalisation and water supply are most unsatisfactory. The ungainly brick structure which represents an hotel for engineers was so over-crowded at the time of my visit that people were using the bathrooms as living quarters. The administration of the factory readily admits the unsatisfactory state of the housing, but explains it by the necessity for concentrating all available labour and material on industrial construction. That this explanation is not regarded as altogether satisfactory is evident from a recent tart governmental characterisation of the situation, which begins : ‘The condition of work on the building of the city of Magnitogorsk is in an extremely unsatisfactory state, which threatens to upset the productive activity of the Magnitogorsk works. The plan of housing construction for 1932 has been fulfilled only by 10 per cent.'”

When the correspondent discovered the bad housing and the irregular food supply, etc., alongside marvellously-equipped factories and up-to-date plant and machinery, he must have felt how closely Magnitogorsk resembles any other industrial area in any other capitalist country. But then what is the use of sending correspondents abroad unless they can discover or pretend to discover some new thing ?

* * *

Asquith and the Life of the Worker

What the Manchester Guardian correspondent forgot to say about the life of the workers in England was said by the late Lord Oxford (then Mr. Asquith) in a letter written in the early nineties, and published in The Times (September 14th, 1932): —

“We all think, at least I do, a vast deal too much about ourselves and our own feelings and hopes. When I was at Oldham to-day I was standing at half-past 12 outside Platt’s works. They are the largest machine makers in the world, and employ 10,000 “hands.” The whistle sounded for the dinner hour, and suddenly the great gates were opened and there burst out an ocean of men, in such numbers that for five minutes the streets in both directions were blocked by the moving crowd. I watched them closely as they passed me—a long procession of wan-faced, grimy, tired, silent figures. They get an average of 18s. a week, and work with intervals for meals from 6 to 6. Civilisation and religion have done something for them—given them paved streets, watertight houses, Board schools, chapels, and even (in Oldham) an art gallery. But life in its real sense they have never known, and to their dying day will never know.”

Twenty years afterwards Mr. Asquith did not think that there was anything incongruous or indecent in his asking these same men to sacrifice their lives defending against the Germans the interests of the class Asquith represented, the class responsible for these conditions.

* * *

Capitalism’s Crises

Writing in the New Leader (September 16th), Mr. Maxton ridicules the possibility that capitalism may recover from the depression. Against a recent forecast of trade revival he places a number of statements from capitalist sources and says, “I could go on citing from Tory newspapers evidences in support of my belief that the industrial crisis is deepening.”

Mr. Maxton may be right about the trend of the depression at the moment (but even on that point he can be right only because he was completely wrong a year ago in announcing that the final collapse of capitalism would have occurred before February, 1932), but in general his argument is hopelessly confused and misinformed. He says:—

“Every year since 1921 one or other or several of our leading public men has announced to the world that the depression of trade is over, that the boom is in sight.”

Mr. Maxton is unaware of the fact, but nevertheless, capitalism, both in Great Britain and in the world generally, was going through a period of expansion up to the start of the present: crisis in 1929. In Great Britain the number of unemployed in 1928 and 1929 was nearly a million fewer than in 1921. The volume of production increased between 1921 and 1929 more or less continuously. According to the review of world production (1925-31), just issued by the Economic Section of the League of Nations, the world output of primary products rose 11 per cent., of industrial products possibly 30 per cent., and general trade 20 per cent. (Manchester Guardian, September 16th).

At different times Mr. Maxton has held many beliefs., most of them wrong ones. Workers who swallow his present absurd belief about the impending collapse of capitalism will have cause to regret it just as they had cause to regret swallowing Mr. Maxton’s earlier beliefs—abandoned for the time being—that the workers’ only hope was to vote for the Labour candidates, that they should put their trust in Snowden and MacDonald, that bankers alone, and not the capitalists as a whole, are exploiters, and that capitalist reforms are the way to solve working class problems.

* * *

Socialist Propaganda in Russia

The refusal of the Russian Government to allow Trotsky’s supporters to propagate his views is a reminder of the obstacles Socialist propaganda will have to overcome in that country even when the Russian workers begin to wake up to the fact that Bolshevik-administered capitalism cannot solve their problems. One of Trotsky’s adherents in Moscow writes as follows to the New York Militant (July 30th, 1932): —

“Despite the unremitting organisational raids, the Left Opposition lives. Oppositionist units and groups are disseminated everywhere, and in many places considerable Oppositionist nests are uncovered. There was hardly ever in this world at any time or anywhere such difficulty for a genuine Marxist trend to carry on its work, in the technical sense, as there is for us at present in the Soviet Union. This is one of those vicious jokes of history, on which the most expert dialectician can break his teeth. The more respectable part of the capitulators motivates its capitulation precisely in this manner, ‘it is anyway impossible to carry on illegal activities ; at any rate, it is better to serve as an honest functionary of the workers’ state.’ But it appears that the Oppositionist idea finds its channels. As regards this sphere, I, of course, am compelled to be exceedingly careful. I shall enumerate therefore only such facts as have already received a certain publicity, or to put it more exactly, which have reached the ears of the rulers.”

Imitating their Moscow masters, the British Daily Worker (August 31st) states that it will not insert letters defending Trotsky’s point of view.

* * *

Where the Communists Get Their Money

Money is not so plentiful in the Communist Party as it used to be, but even so the officially-returned expenses of the Communist candidates at the last election totalled over £2,500, not counting their 20 forfeited deposits, which total another £3,000. (See “Election Expenses,” H.M. Stationery Office, 1932. 1s. 3d.)

Of course, anyone who knows the difficulties which face small organisations with a working-class membership knows that the Communist Party, with its daily paper and lavish expenditure on publications, must be subsidised. Officially the Communist Party has never denied this—why should it?—but the ordinary members, for reasons of tactics or because they know no better, frequently maintain the contrary. There is, however, no doubt whatever that money has been and no doubt still is being received from Russia.

In 1919 Zinoviev in his Presidential Report for the Executive Committee of the Communist International dealt with the question of monetary support for parties abroad and said that the

“Russian workers . . . deemed it their proletarian duty to render . . . support to the struggling proletariat of other countries. . . . The Italian Communists, for instance, proudly declared quite openly that some of their party organisations could not have been formed except for the brotherly help of the Communist International. Similar declarations have been made by the Communist workers in other countries.” (“Editions of the Communist International,” printed in Christiana, 1920. Report by Zinoviev, P. 17.)

He said that it had been decided that the Russian Communist Party should “take upon itself the chief burden of expense of the work of the Executive Committee.”

Mr. Walton Newbold admitted, in a letter to Forward (July 10th, 1920) that his expenses when running as a Communist candidate for Parliament “were defrayed in the main from the funds of the Communist International, and originated in Moscow.”

The Communist official organ, Workers’ Life, on May 11th, 1928, issued a “Frank Statement” on “The Communist Party’s Money.” The statement contains the passage: —

“The Communist Party has never sought to disguise the fact that it is a national section of an international party, paying its financial contribution to its international headquarters and receiving assistance in return from time to time for different phases of its national work.”

This “frank” statement is, of course, decidedly the reverse of frank in contriving to disguise the fact that the money received from Russia is far in excess of the contributions to Russia. The Home Office claimed that the British Communist Party spent £27,928 in the year ended April, 1928, of which £10,330 was derived from payments of £5 Bank of England notes made by a bank in Moscow. (See Daily Telegraph, June 27th, 1930.)

There has never been any real reason why any Communists should deny something which everybody knows and to which the only objection is that it ties the Communist Party to the unsound policy of their paymasters.

* * *

The Quality of Communist Party Membership

The Communist Review (August) publishes figures of Communist membership in Great Britain since 1922. The figure given for that year is 5,116 and for January, 1932, 9,000. Comment is made on the unsatisfactory quality of the membership and on the rapidity with which recruits pass in and pass out again. The writer says that some 1,500 of the 2,700 members who joined between November, 1931, and January, 1932, had left the Party within about six months. This would make the present estimated membership about 7,500. When it is remembered how the Communist organisers rope in hundreds of members at a time, this instability is not surprising. During the cotton dispute Mr. Saklatvala was in Lancashire on behalf of the Communist Party. He sent a message from Preston to Communist Headquarters claiming that he had enrolled more than 100 strikers in one day as members of the Party. (See Manchester Guardian, September 9th, 1932.)

The writer in the Communist Review says most of the recruits at the end of 1931 “came from the ranks of the unemployed, signed application forms at mass recruiting meetings in moments of enthusiasm; many of them having no real intention of becoming members.”

* * *

Capitalists and Capitalists

Mr. Bromley, President of the Trades Union Congress, is one of those Labour leaders who encourage the false view that the workers should line up with one section of the capitalist class (the industrialists) against another (the bankers). At the Trades Union Congress on September 5th he developed this line and described the National Government as being controlled by “banking and financial interests.” If we turn to the Labour Party’s analysis of the composition of the House of Commons (see Labour Bulletin, March, 1932) we find how little warrant there is for Mr. Bromley’s assertion. Out of 691 directorships of companies held by Members of Parliament, only 11 are bank directorships, and 53 are described as “finance and land.” Among the non-financial directorships there are 29 brewery, 26 chemical, 30 coal, iron and steel, 40 electric light and power, 36 engineering, 51 insurance, 36 mining, 24 paper, printing, etc., 25 railway, 26 textile and 20 telegraph directorships.

Are we to understand from Mr. Bromley that only the banking and financial M.P.s vote for capitalism and against the workers, and that the remainder have backed the workers against the Government and capitalism ? We have not noticed this, but we do notice that the railway directors are asking for another cut in the pay of the railwaymen, including those who are members of the Union of which Mr. Bromley is General Secretary.

* * *

The Country that is Safe for the Bondholders

The Moscow Daily News, published in English, and distributed by official Russian agencies, gave prominence in a recent issue (August 15th) to some flattering remarks about Russia made by Mr. Corliss Lamont, son of Thomas W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan & Co., the American financiers. The headline running right across the top of the front page says, “Soviet Bonds Safest says Lamont.”

The sub-headings are “Recommends them to U.S.A. investors. Big Return, Par Redemption, Defaults Unknown.” . Mr. Lamont, in an interview, said : —

“It is true that the Soviet Union offers great opportunities to American business men. … I am even more impressed, however, by the opportunities here for the average American investor. How many people in the United States know that they can invest in the Soviet Government bonds which regularly bring a return of 10 per cent. in good American dollars, and which can be redeemed at par on demand ? Backed up, as they are, by the resources of the whole Soviet Union, it would seem that there are no safer bonds in the world to-day, and few as safe.”

How happy the American investors will be to discover that they can get a safe return of 10 per cent. in good American dollars, and how lucky the Russian workers are to have this opportunity of consoling the bondholders after their recent unfortunate speculations with Mr. Kreuger, and the Insull companies.

* * *

Perhaps the visit of Mr. Lamont to Moscow and the recent suggestions of Russian approaches to New York financiers will explain the sudden cancellation of a Negro film which the Russians had planned. The Crisis (September), a Negro-American monthly, states that 22 young American negroes went to Russia at their own expense, but by invitation, to take part in a Communist propaganda film. Suddenly they were informed, late in August, that the contract was “off.” The Observer (London, September 11th) publishes a report from the Moscow correspondent to the effect that some of the negroes concerned have stated that the film was cancelled because representations were made by “an influential American who is interested in promoting closer relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.” The negroes are annoyed and denounce the Soviet Government for “making a compromise with white American imperialism at the expense of the oppressed negro proletariat.”

* * *

Censorship in Russia and Elsewhere

Dr. Edwyn Bevan writes to the Times (September 3rd) complaining because the Russian authorities held up a book of his dealing with the History of Christianity. It was returned with the note that its entry into Russia is forbidden.

Dr. Bevan is probably not aware that within the past two or three years, and possibly now also, the Socialist Standard, as well as the publications of the Communist Party, are forbidden entry into Australia. Now that we have drawn his attention to it, we wonder if he will write to the Times about it.

Edgar Hardcastle

J. Hunter Watts Explains His Vote for Masterman. (1905)

From the February 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The General Secretary of The Socialist Party of Great Britain has received the following communication :

94 Grove Park, Denmark Hill,

15th Jan 1905.

Dear Comrade,—”A lie that is half a truth is the worst lie of all” and it is a half truth to which the Socialist Standard gives currency this month when it says that I voted for a Liberal candidate for the constituency in which I reside and advised other members of the S.D.F. to do the same. A Jameson raider offered himself for election, and as I shall never either forget or forgive any instrument of the iniquity which robbed another of the little peoples of its national freedom I did my best to thwart the ambition of Rutherford Harris. As there is no way of voting against a man other than voting for his opponent I “supported” Masterman, though I know no more of the man than I know of the one who is said to reside in the moon. I shall repeat the offence at the next election even if the raider’s opponent is a circus clown.

Yours fraternally,

J. Hunter Watts.

* * *

Comrade C. Lehane,

Communist Club, 

107, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, W.C.”

The note to which Mr. J. Hunter Watts referred was as follows :

“In our last issue we dealt with the S.D.F., I.L.P., and L.R.C. members being induced to support the Liberal faction of the Capitalist Party at “Free Trade” meetings and we notice that H. Kirby deals with matter in “Justice.” He describes Mr. Masterman, the Liberal candidate for North West Ham, as “an adept at trailing Liberal red herrings before the workers’ noses.” But we would remind Mr. Kirby that when Masterman contested Dulwich, one of the best known members of the S.D.F., J. Hunter Watts, voted for him and urged other Social-Democrats to go and do likewise. Now, if Masterman was advanced enough for such a leading revolutionary Social-Democrat as Hunter Watts, surely smaller fry should follow such a good example ? Perhaps one of these days the S.D.F. will endeavour to pursue a consistent policy, but we are afraid it will then be too late for them to regain the public confidence,”

We now print a letter written by Mr. J. Hunter Watts to the then Secretary of the Peckham Branch S.D.F. during the election referred to.

“94 Grove Park,, Denmark Hill,

13th December, 1903.

Dear Comrade, Till after Christmas I have so many business claims on my attention (last Wednesday I was obliged to travel to Manchester and shall probably have to return this week) would you kindly intimate to the members of the Elocution Class that we will start work the first Wednesday in January. If convenient to them I would rather hold the class here because all my books etc. will be ready to hand but I leave it to their choice and I will come to the Branch Room if they prefer that rendezvous.

Though it goes very much against the grain to vote for a Liberal, it seems to me a duty to do one’s level best to prevent a Jameson Raider being sent to Parliament as our Parliamentary Representative so I intend to vote for Masterman on Tuesday, Would you kindly ask the members of our Branch to consider tomorrow night whether as individuals they can adopt the same policy though collectively it might be unwise to support Masterman. On Harris’s head rests some of the blood of the peasant farmers slain in defence of their national independence.

We cannot forget this !

Yours fraternally,

J. Hunter Watts.

The Secy. Peckham Branch S.D.F.”

We have no desire to misrepresent anyone, and we publish the whole of the correspondence in order that our readers may see that there is no foundation for Mr. Hunter Watts’ suggestion (or “half truth”) that we were not strictly accurate in our statement that he “voted for Masterman and urged other Social-Democrats to go and do likewise.” As a member of the S.D.F. Mr. Hunter Watts is supposed to believe that there is no difference between the various sections of the capitalist politicians, but by exhibiting a preference for one capitalist candidate he claims to know no more than about the man in the moon, but who, according to another S.D.F. member, is “an adept at trailing Liberal red herrings before the workers’ noses” against another whom he knows as an open enemy of the people, he shows that he recognises a difference, and that there are occasions when he thinks that the workers should vote for their class-enemies.

If Masterman was worthy of S.D.F. votes in Dulwich he is equally so in North West Ham. Here Ernest Gray, Conservative member and candidate, has supported Rutherford Harris and his friends fearlessly and openly, from the Jameson Raid to the Chinese Labour Ordinance. If individuals are to be singled out then “some of the blood of the peasant farmers” rests upon Ernest Gray’s head and he should be kept out of the House of Commons. The S.D.F. should vote against him by voting for Masterman. The blood of the murdered Featherstone miners is upon the head of Mr. Asquith, and the S.D.F. should try to keep him out of the House of Commons by voting for his Tory opponent. But Masterman as a member of the Liberal faction must support his leaders, of whom Mr. Asquith is one. And candidates who support the person responsible for that cruel and cold-blooded butchery should be kept out of the House of Commons, therefore, the S. D. F. should vote against Masterman.

Mr. Hunter Watts says that he will repeat the offence at the next election even if the raider’s opponent is a circus clown. Supposing Mr. Asquith is the opponent, Mr. Hunter Watts will vote for him and show that he considers the South African war more important than the class war here at home.

If particular incidents connected with the capitalist attitude towards the people are to be taken into consideration and capitalist candidates voted for or against because of them, where will it lead ?

Mr. Hunter Watts is apparently aware that there is neither wisdom nor logic in his attitude because he expresses the opinion that it would not be wise for the S.D.F. to do collectively that which he advises the members to do individually. But electoral action which the Body cannot take wisely and logically does not become wise or logical when taken by individual members.

The position is as illogical and contradictory as is that of the S.D.F. towards the L.R.C. Although the Body withdraw because it “might be committed to the support of candidates whom, by its rules, it was bound to oppose ; while it could not honestly accept aid for its own candidates unless it supported those favoured by the majority of the delegates” it yet allows its members all over the country to act as delegates to the L.R.C., and to do precisely that which the S.D.F. says it cannot do.

Mr. Hunter Watts, like many others, has allowed his emotions to get the better of his convictions. He may be unable to forget or forgive any instrument of the iniquity referred to, but neither the defeat of Harris nor the return of Masterman would restore freedom to the Boers any more than the defeat of Asquith would bring back to life the murdered miners. The instruments of both iniquities were the capitalist-class, acting in the interests of their class and against the interests of the common people, here and abroad. Capitalist politicians cannot be considered individually, but only as “all the rest, Tories, Unionists, Whigs, Liberals and Radicals who form a part of that hateful army of parasites which is permanently quartered on you and your children” (see S.D.F. Manifesto, General Election, 1895). Speaking at Canning Town last month Mr. D. Irving, also a member of the S.D.F. Executive, declared that “it does not matter a brass farthing whether Balfour or Campbell Bannerman reign at Westminster.” We agree. Let us be able to assert that neither shall do so by the votes of Socialists.

Editorial Committee.

"If Only — !" (1919)

From the November 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

That organ of capitalist interests, "The Star," in a recent editorial (14.10.19) sheds its rays on some of the bestial products of our vaunted civilisation. It shows some of the streams from the overflowing cesspool of capitalism, but, being what it is, it takes care not to reveal the source—the actual cesspool!

The most characteristic feature of capitalistic journalism, it seems, is its supremely cunning evasion of basic truths. All kinds of fine phrases, lies, half-truths, pathos, and camouflage are good material wherewith to erect buttresses to prop up a decrepit, damned, and doomed system of society.

The "Star" heads its editorial "If Only––."

It pronounces its benedictions on the League of Nations Union and refers to it as ''the greatest hope of mankind." It says: "The King's message pleases us. He says that 'millions of British men and women, poignantly conscious of all the ruin and suffering caused by the brutal havoc of war, stand ready to help if only they be shown the way.'" (Italics mine.)

The "Star" takes its cue from the King's Message. It deplores the bitter results of the war with as much fervour as it aided and abetted its prosecution when the "Honour and Liberty" of capitalist thieves was at stake.

Speaking of war it says : "We all hate it. We all passionately desire to make it impossible in our time or in our children's time. Why, then, is the universal will of mankind defied or evaded? " And it querously asks: "Why can't we get on with the building of the League of Nations."

It proceeds : 

  "Mr. Asquith in his lucid and laconic speech says that all is not going well with the League. Old and new wars are being waged. Men are being slaughtered. Wealth is being wasted. From Riga to Fiume there are baleful omens. A pallid impotence paralyses statesmen. A year has slipped away since the Armistice, and with every month the chance of wiping out war is ebbing. Mr. Asquith tells the doomed world that if the nations for another generation go on cherishing animosities, hatching rival ambitions, manoeuvring by some new system of groups and alliances for international positions, and in the meantime husbanding their resources for that purpose, there is an end—a tragic and decisive end—to all the the best hopes of humanity. War as we have endured it is horrible, but war in the future will be immeasurably more horrible."

Ay ! Millions of men and women were deluded by the capitalist battle-cry of "A War to End War." Millions of workers doubtless cherished hopes that the Great War would mark the beginning of a warless future when it was brought to a ''glorious conclusion." But it has not.

Their hopes have been torn from them, and trampled on in this "period ot reconstruction." The "beautiful new world" spoken of by that arch-deceiver of the working class, Mr. Lloyd George, is as sordid and hellish a world as ever the old one was.

Having successfully essayed the inequitous task of starving the German people into supine surrender and smashing them militarily, the Allies are now engaged in the biggest political crime against a whole race ever engineered. Russia, with its teeming millions of inhabitants, is being slowly but surely starved to death by a blockade of the most infamous character, in order to make it safe for—CAPITALISM I

All and every naval and military means in conjunction are being employed in a sanguinary struggle ostensibly to crush out Bolshevism—a purely working-class movement. Seemingly no sacrifice of workers' has been too great to seat Capitalism firmly in the Russian saddle and possibly to re-establish Czardom. The present writer remembers having seen the cover of a magazine on which appeared in glaring letters, "Russia—England's opportunity." Exploiters, thieves, and all the plutocratic scoundrels of the world have feasted their greedy eyes in imagination on the vast virgin wealth of the Russia they desire to exploit.

"The chance of wiping out war is ebbing," wails the "Star." And if that paper spoke the truth that it knows so well it would admit that there never has been a "chance of wiping out war." Under capitalism war is a "cert." Sooner or later, whenever capitalist interests in conflict cannot be adjusted in the political field, they are fought out on the battlefield by masses of the working class pitted against each other in groups by their callous masters, and compelled to commit wholesale fratricide for the sake of financial interests and sordid commerce.

The capitalist spokesman, Asquith, in his "lucid and laconic speech," practically admits the menace of a great eruption of the war volcano in the not distant future. None knows better than he that it is capitalism alone that caused the Great War, and that will again set the war machines in motion whenever and wherever is pursued a relentless search for markets and control of trade routes.

None knows better than he that a league of nations is no preventative of future wars. Under capitalism war is the final method of settling the claims of opposing interests: "Victory" its arbitrament—for which the workers pay in agony and death.

The social atmosphere is electrical with discontent, suspicion, and mistrust: the deluded people are beginning to see the inability of their rulers and exploiters to make of Earth anything other than Inferno. The failure of the present system is apparent. Its inevitable turmoil is snaking the whole structure of society; its bankruptcy is palpable. Even in "peace" time its civilisation is a piggery gaudily painted to camouflage its essential slime and filth.

To continue the quotations from the "Star":

 "Mr. Asquith says that the world is still bristling with the machinery of destruction. The mills of murder are still working full time. The war budgets of all the Powers are still on an appalling scale. We are worse than the worst. We set the pace for our allies. It is a hot and hellish pace. Why are we wasting hundreds of millions on armaments that cannot possibly be used if we mean what we say? Is it to fill the pockets of the armaments firms? Is it to support parasites in khaki ? Is it to supply an instrument for insensate ambition? Or is it sheer pure stupidity?"

Is not this an admission of the inability of our masters to create a "beautiful new world" ? And what of this ?—

  "The chemists are only lisping the "alphabet of destruction." In a few years they may invent horrors, that will torture and slay us in our beds, not by tens but by hundreds of thousands.
  We all know this. We all foresee the inevitable agony that is being prepared. And yet we are helpless. We cannot coerce the fools or chain the lunatics. We are the victims of a nameless evil. . . . We lack the courage to impose our will upon the pygmies who mismanage our affairs. The bitter truth is that the people in every land are giants who are caught in the toils of cunning and crafty miscreants who are coldly cruel in their selfishness, pitiless in their arrogance, merciless in their vanity."

The bemoaning fatalism evinced in the above reflects the fact that the capitalist class are unable to check the mighty forces they make use of. The proletariat the world over are learning by bitter experience that Capitalism alone is their enemy, and that if the world is to be free they themselves must set it free. The anarchy and chaos caused by the present system is such that we are rapidly approaching the time when it will become unworkable. Crisis will follow crisis, and the world's wage slaves will have the truth of their position forced upon them as their misery increases.

Workers, for your own sakes and for humanity's sake study Socialism ! Then, when yon understand it, you will organise to establish it and so emancipate yourselves from the shackles of wage-slavery on the one hand, and rid yourselves for ever from that awful and doubtless true menace of war which butcher Asquith, for sordid ends of his own, so vividly depicts but can find no reasonable remedy for.

Graham May