Editorial: The Eight Hour Day. (1908)

Editorial from the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Eight Hour Day.

The speeding up of the workman, the ever-growing intensity of the labour exacted from him, renders imperative a longer repose so that he may recuperate his working strength and maintain his maximum productivity. Hence flows the modern tendency toward shorter hours so that the profitableness of the worker to the capitalist may increase. It is the necessary and inevitable outcome of modern industrial conditions even from the capitalist point of view, and is by no means a sign of victory over the ruling class.

If the champions of the eight hour day were to confine themselves to stating the truth about their pet reform there would be little need to quarrel with them, but when they claim as one of the virtues of the eight hour day that it will abolish or greatly reduce unemployment, we join issue. It is rankest charlatanism to foist a piece of some necessary capitalistic patchwork upon the slow-minded as the remedy for the workers’ greatest ill, yet, unfortunately, it is the characteristic procedure of the labour leader.

In the present instance, if the reduction of working hours is to bring about more employment, it could only be by decreasing the output per man, and providing more work by causing the employment of more men to produce the same amount as before. But would it have any such effect ? So far as positive evidence goes it is directly against any presumption of a lessening of the output per man. Even past masters in the art of red-herring trailing give themselves away at times. Thus Sidney Webb and Harold Cox in their book, “The Eight Hour Day,” state in considering the result of a general reduction of the hours of labour in all trades that—

“The successive reductions of the hours of labour which this century has witnessed have been attended, after a very short interval, by a positive general increase in individual productivity. In many cases it has been found that the workers did more in ten hours than their predecessors in twelve. The effort to get more than a certain amount of work out of a man defeats itself.”

__________

The question that matters.

Instance after instance is given of the increase in efficiency and output that follows the reduction of the working day, showing how chimerical is the idea that a slight reduction in hours will put the unemployed in work.

Even as recently as the opening of the Mining Exhibition at Olympia on July 11th evidence was given of the normal result of a shortening of hours. Thus Lord Airedale of Gledhow: —

“In regard to the question of an Eight Hour Day, and of the consequent restriction of the hours of labour in mines, and the question of the increased cost that they were threatened with by mine owners, owing to the difficulties arising from the limitation of hours, he ventured to think that from what they saw that day of coal machinery, the mining engineers of that country would rise to the situation, and by the application of technical knowledge, he believed the threatened crisis would really not arise. It was cheering to note by such exhibitions that mechanical invention knew no end, and if it paid to use machinery when increased cost of labour came in, they might be assured that the difficulty would be successfully dealt with.”

It should be clear, then, that however necessary to capitalist development the reduction of the hours of labour may be, and however useful it may be in other respects, yet it most certainly is not the panacea for the great and growing evil of unemployment that its champions would have us believe. Besides, the question which overshadows all others in the eyes of the worker conscious of his position is not the paltry juggle with hours of labour, but rather the vital question of to whom shall the product of these working hours go ?

The workers, indeed, instead of wasting precious time and energy discussing and petitioning as to the particular sauce with which they are to be eaten, should at last awaken to the fact that it is not necessary that they should be eaten at all, and should take their stand with us accordingly.

50 Years Ago: Shorter Working Hours and Unemployed (1958)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The speeding up of the workman, the ever-growing intensity of the labour exacted from him, renders imperative a longer repose so that he may recuperate his working strength and maintain his maximum productivity. Hence flows the modern tendency toward shorter hours so that the profitableness of the worker to the capitalist may increase. It is the necessary and inevitable outcome of modern industrial conditions, even from the capitalist point of view, and is by no means a sign of victory over the ruling class. If the champions of the eight-hour day were to confine themselves to stating the truth about their pet reform there would be little need to quarrel with them, but when they claim as one of the virtues of the eight-hour day that it will abolish or greatly reduce unemployment, we join issue . . . 

In the present instance, if the reduction of working class hours is to bring about more employment, it could only be by decreasing the output per man, and providing work by causing the employment of more men to produce the same amount as before. But would it have very much effect? So far as positive evidence goes, it is directly against any presumption of a lessening of the present output per man. Even past masters of the art of red herring trailing give themselves away at times. Thus Sidney Webb and Harold Cox in the book, The Eight Hours Day, state in considering the result of a general reduction of the hours of labour in all trades that

“The successive reductions of the hours of labour which this century has witnessed have been attended, after a very short interval, by a positive general increase in individual productivity. In many cases it has been found that the workers did more in ten hours than their predecessors in twelve. The effort to get more than a certain amount of work out of a man defeats itself."

[From the Socialist Standard, September, 1908.]

Some Effects of Combination and Machinery. (1928)

From the July 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

This world of ours does change ! Or, rather, the evolution of Capitalism compels its apologists to perform astonishing somersaults in reasoning.

Not so many years ago one of the principal arguments against the Socialist was that he proposed to do away with competition and thus take away from industry its greatest means of progress. Since those days the war and post-war scramble for markets has so speeded up the introduction and improvement of machinery and commercial organisation, that amalgamations on a gigantic scale have been the general order of the day. Matters have reached a point now that it has become futile for Capitalists to attempt any longer to throw dust in the eyes of the majority of people with any hope of real success. However, these people do not eat their words; they do better, they forget what they have said in the past and now try to prove what advantages are coming from trustification in comparison with the old methods of cutthroat competition.

To the Worker who cares to think calmly over the situation, and looks at it entirely from his own point of view as a Worker, the position is simple. The needs of the whole inhabitants of the world are limited ; as machinery and organisation is improved it becomes more and more easy to meet these needs. Thus, relatively fewer and fewer people are required in production. The improvement in machinery and organisation, in contrast with the needs of the population, is practically unlimited, so that there must ultimately come a time when a comparatively small number of Workers will produce all that can be consumed. This is the dead wall up against which Capitalism dashes its head.

In ancient Rome, where a parallel situation arose, though, of course, only on a minute scale, the situation was met by the distribution of free food, etc., amongst the somewhat unruly unemployed. In modern times the rulers are more niggardly than Roman Patricians were, and they try to meet the situation by the distribution of carefully supervised doles that a dog could hardly live on, let alone a man with a family. But then, the Capitalist is up against a difficulty that did not exist in those old days. He must have a supply of labour, and if the dole is made enough to live on—well, who would want to work his energies out at the pace demanded by modern industry? Surely not anyone of intelligence ! Yet a “dole” that is insufficient breeds rebellious workers, and as the majority of workers are at one time in employment and at another time dole-takers, and as the future is going to bring a greater and greater tightness in employment, the Capitalist is finding his difficulties reaching a point when it will require a considerable amount of strategy to keep matters running smoothly—particularly as the Capitalists are by no means the most intelligent portion of the population.

I have been moved to make these remarks by two articles I read recently. One was by the New York correspondent of the Daily News (June 4th, 1928), who said, writing of conditions in America (where the breadline has recently appeared, to the astonishment of the Capitalist world) :

“American enterprise in the use of machinery is shown by the statement made at a recent meeting of manufacturers that in the motor trade one man can now do work which in 1914 required three.”

He goes on to point out that the average of the countries’ industries shows that only 71 men are now needed to do the work of 100 in 1914, which means a proportional reduction in employment of 29 per cent. He points out that American writers complain that still “better” results would have been obtained if out-of-date machinery was more rapidly scrapped, as is happening in the motor industry. He adds that

“American employers insist that machinery is creating a finer type of workman. It takes more brains to watch a machine than to handle a pick and shovel, they say.”

Speaking as one who has both handled a pick and shovel and has seen others “watching” a machine, I must seriously question the view. I discovered, to my cost, that it required, not only a good deal of intelligence, but a considerable amount of experience, to handle a pick and shovel properly. And as to pushing a loaded wheelbarrow along a narrow plank—well! ! !

But farther on comes the joke—unconscious humour is one of the principal characteristics of those who endeavour to bolster up the present system.

“The new problem is how to keep the worker awake and alert at his job. One method now being tried is to design machinery which signals the need for attention by sound and not by sight. . . .

Another suggestion seriously made is that a regular stimulus should be given to the worker, perhaps in the form of a regular vibration of the platform on which he stands.”

Now either machine minding is such an exhausting occupation that the worn-out worker falls to sleep from exhaustion, in which case that worker can be little more than a work-beast, like the little children of the early factory times in England in the last century, or is so dull and monotonous, and demands such little mental energy, that the workers are driven to sleep by it. They can have it which way they like, but surely, fellow worker, you would rather not have it either way ?

The other article to which I referred was written by Harold Cox in the Sunday Times (June 3rd, 1928). There are some interesting extracts from it :

“That there is an increasing tendency among leaders of industry to organise trade combinations is a matter of common knowledge. The movement takes two forms : in some cases firms which still maintain their separate identities are linked together in a federation or cartel, for purposes of common defence and common advantages; in other cases separate firms are completely amalgamated in a single unit or “combine.” Both forms of this modern industrial movement are far advanced in the United States and Germany. . . . Nor is this modern industrial movement confined to national areas. Already several international combinations have been established, and there are prospects of the creation of more in the near future. . . .

With the aid of modern machinery we can now produce goods at a pace that was hardly dreamt of a hundred years ago, and the result is that in many cases the power of production has overtaken the world’s capacity for consumption. In the earlier years of the nineteenth century, and, indeed, during the greater part of that century, there seemed, so far at any rate, as British trade was concerned, to be an almost insatiable demand for the goods that machinery was able to produce. . . . To-day, except in the case of new industries created to meet a new world demand, such as the motor industry and the artificial silk industry, the need for additional factories in Great Britain has practically ceased. Our trouble now is to find work for many of the factories already in being.”

There is the position in a nutshell. Production has outstripped consumption, and yet the children line up outside the baker shops in the morning for bread; more is produced than can be consumed, and yet thousands are unable to obtain sufficient for their bare needs. Industry promises you more unemployment, and harder work when you get employment, and yet wealth is produced with an ease and abundance undreamt of a century ago ! Are you satisfied that the present organisation of society is satisfactory? Can you think of anything worth while that you are likely to lose (except poverty and insecurity!) by abolishing private property in the means of production and substitution for it the common ownership of these means of production?

You hear a great deal of “tariff walls” and the like; set your mind at rest, the international combines are reducing tariffs to a joke. Treat tariffs and their expounders with the humour they deserve, and concentrate your mind upon the removal of the shackles of wage slavery. It is Capitalism that is your enemy—abolish it.

Gilmac.

Who are the capitalists? (1927)

From the November 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Every Man a Capitalist” is the title of an article written by Sir Sydney Low, and published in the “Sunday Pictorial” (2.10.27). The sub-title is “‘How Wealth is Spreading Amongst the Workers.”

Sir Sydney accuses Socialists of being “dealers in popular unrest,” and states that for years past we have been saying that “the rich are growing richer and the poor becoming poorer.” Also, we have said this so often and so persistently that many earnest persons who are not Socialists are inclined to believe there must be some truth in the indictment. In fact, there is none. So says Sir Sydney.

Of course, we are very pleased to hear that we are making an impression upon “many earnest persons who are not Socialists.”

To show that the rich are getting poorer, Low tells us “they are not spending extravagantly, their lives are simpler and less luxurious than they used to be.” These unfortunate people are parting with “their large, expensive houses, and offering their estates for sale. Many of them protest that they are living upon their capital in order to pay their way.”

This is all very sad, but it is not proof that the rich are getting poorer. They may not be spending extravagantly because they desire to invest more; they may be living less luxurious and more simple lives in the interests of their health. But the really important point, which Sir Sydney overlooks, is that large estates cannot be sold unless there exist purchasers. Unless, therefore, he believes that the large estates are being bought up by unemployed miners and others who have been compelled to relinquish their former occupation, there must still be rich people willing to be extravagant and able to afford it.

Another factor ignored by Sir Sydney Low is that many of these estates have been broken up merely because of the tempting opportunity of netting big gains, owing to the demand for building sites.

Then to show how every worker tends to become a capitalist, Sir Sydney refers to the increase in the number of privately-owned motor cars. He says : “By the end of this year there will be 700,000 self-propelled private vehicles in England. And who owns them ? For the most part people of moderate and even small means.”

Our opponent, evidently thinking this fad not sufficient to convince the sceptical, put forth further evidence to show that some day every worker will be a capitalist. This time it is houses. He tells us that “since 1923 600,000 new houses have been bought by middle class and working class tenants.” These houses have been built with State, or municipal, aid. And then “hundreds of thousands of others already in existence or erected by private builders have been sold to occupiers of the same kind.”

“House owning,” he goes on, “is not the only method whereby the man of limited income is turning himself into a capitalist. He tends more and more to become an investor.” As evidence, Sir Sydney informs us, “National Savings Certificates are now issued to the value of over £642,000,000. It may safely be asserted that almost the whole of that £642,000,000 represents capital belonging to the small investor.” But does it in fact?

In 1922, that is, before the workers’ savings had been drained by five years of trade depression, unemployment, short time and lowered wages, the Montague Committee were only able to express the opinion that “at least half” of the total sold up to the 31st March, 1922, represented the subscriptions of small investors (see Colwyn Committee Report, page 21).

Mr. W. T. Layton, the Liberal economist and statistician, estimates that small investors hold £455 million out of a total £6,592 million, which makes up the Internal National Debt, the magnificent proportion of 7 per cent. (“Economic Journal,” June, 1927, p. 204.)

However, enough! Is it the private ownership of a motor car, whether a Ford or a Rolls-Royce, that makes a person a capitalist? No. Is a man a capitalist because he owns the house in which he lives? No. Is it the possession of a few Savings Certificates that makes a man a capitalist? No.

What, then, is a capitalist? A capitalist is one who owns enough property in the means of living such as land, factories, railways, steamships, raw materials, etc., to be able to live without needing to work. The income derived from this private ownership frees the capitalist from the necessity of working for his livelihood.

It may be asked, what, then, is a worker?

A worker is one who, not owning any or sufficient property, is forced to sell his labour-power to the capitalist class, in order that he may live.

Sir Sydney speaks of the “lower middle class and the “higher working class.” This is “confusion worse confounded” as there are only two classes in modern capitalism, those who live by working and those who live by owning. And, as shown above, it is the manner in which a person obtains his or her livelihood that places him or her in one of these two classes.

As to wealth spreading out amongst the workers, heaps of evidence could be put forth to show the contrary to be true. First of all the workers are painfully aware of the constant dwindling in their wages, and ever-present unemployment.

In the report of the Ministry of Health, 1926-27, it is stated : “Poor Law Relief has risen nearly 350 per cent. since 1914, but outdoor relief has risen by over 1,000 per cent. The number of persons receiving out-relief were, in 1914, 387,796; 1927, 1,722,084 ” (“Daily News,” 16.9.27).

Then Mr. Harold Cox, who is a defender of capitalism, writing in the “Sunday Times,” 31.7.27., says: “In round figures pauperism in 1914 represented 21 per 1,000 of the population, and in 1927, as stated above, just under 40 per 1.000. It is, therefore, not far from the truth to state that the proportion of paupers to self-dependant citizens has doubled since 1914.”

The above facts show the falsity of Sir Sydney Low’s argument. As capitalism develops, the major portion of the wealth produced ccncentrates still further into fewer and fewer hands. It is, therefore^ obvious that the poverty of the mass must increase relatively to the wealth of the propertied class.

And as bad as the lot of the workers may be at the moment, it will tend to become worse with the further development of capitalism.

The only solution to the poverty problem of the working class is not for individual workers to buy a motor car, a house, or a few Savings Certificates, but to organise in the Socialist Party in order to do away with capitalism, the cause of their poverty, and to bring into existence Socialism, the social system which will free them from poverty.

C.

Labour and Value. Harold Cox on Karl Marx. (1924)

From the November 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent (Francis H. Napier) takes exception to Mr. Harold Cox’s criticisms of the Labour Theory of Value expounded by Marx. He quotes from a series of “Daily Mail” articles by Mr. Cox as follows :—

  “… many socialists . . . even when admitting that the greater part of modern wealth is created by the machine and not by the men will try to wriggle out of the consequences of that fact by arguing that the machine itself is the product of labour, and therefore anything that it produces ought to belong to labour. This very common Socialist contention ignores the fact that the workpeople who produced the machine were all paid for the work they did. Some of them may have been underpaid; some may have been overpaid; but they all received payment. They are not entitled subsequently to claim that the machine is theirs.”

Mr. Napier correctly points out that in admitting that the machine was produced by labour, Harold Cox is also admitting the accuracy of the statement that wealth is produced by labour; but both Mr. Napier and Harold Cox misrepresent Marx in suggesting that he made this the basis of a moral claim for the labourer of the full value produced. Mr. Cox, of course, is very well aware that Marx made no such claim. We cannot deal with that point here, but with regard to the question of payment for work done it must be quite apparent that if the workers did receive the full value of the machines produced by them, then the machines, or their equivalent, would belong to the workers after the work was finished, and there would be no surplus to go as profits to the employer. That profit represents the difference between the value of the product and the value of the workers’ labour-power. The workers do receive the value of their labour-power, their wages, but they do not receive the full value of their product.

Mr. Napier goes on to ask if it is correct, as Harold Cox says, that Socialists argue that “value . . . merely depends upon the amount of labour.” He states that he was not aware that Socialists held this view, “but rather that the value of the commodity was determined by its cost of production.”

Mr. Napier has fallen into an error here through a confusion as to the meaning of terms. When Marx speaks of “cost of production” he means its cost in labour, not the cost to the manufacturer of materials, wages, etc.

Marx deals plainly and simply with this subject in “Value, Price, and Profit” (chapter 6). He writes as follows: “The relative values of commodities are, therefore, determined by the respective quantities or amounts of labour, worked up, realised, fixed in them” ; and again, “The greatness of its value . . . depends . . . on the relative mass of labour necessary for its production.”

Mr. Napier quotes further from Harold Cox a question as to whether labour spent in pulling down a house is creating value, and answers it himself by showing that if a certain plot of land is required for the building of a new house or factory, then the work of demolition is a necessary part of the new building scheme, and the labour is therefore, in the words of Marx, “socially necessary” and value creating.

He quotes also illustrations of what Harold Cox calls “wasted or non-productive labour.” Two fishing boats set out to sea, and only one of them succeeds in getting a catch. Two watchmakers make a watch, but only one of them will go. Have the unlucky boatman and the bad watchmaker created value? asks Mr. Cox.

The answer is that a certain proportion of unlucky voyages is inevitable, and this wasted labour is therefore a necessary feature of the security of the amount of fish required by society. The socially necessary labour cost of obtaining fish includes this proportion of wasted labour. Marx, as Harold Cox knows, never claimed that value “merely depends upon the amount of labour,” but on the amount which at a given time it is necessary for society to expend. If labour is wasted unnecessarily, then it is not value creating. This is the position of the watchmaker who knows so little of his trade as to make a watch which will not go.

While we are on the subject of Harold Cox, it is interesting to learn that he has only just found out that MacDonald is an anti-Marxist. After quoting from MacDonald’s writings to show that the latter has long ago repudiated Marxism, he continues :—

  “To repudiate Marx is to repudiate Socialism as well as Communism. Ramsay MacDonald may claim to have a peculiar brand of Socialism of his own manufacture, but he is not entitled to act as interpreter for other socialists when he repudiates the prophet who founded their creed.” (Saturday Review, 25th Oct.)

It is noticeable, however, that the Harold Cox of the “Saturday Review” does not agree with the Harold Cox of the “Daily Mail,” to whom MacDonald is not merely the proprietor of a “peculiar brand of Socialism of his own manufacture,” but a representative Socialist.

Edgar Hardcastle

By The Way. (1924)

The By The Way Column from the May 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The anti-Socialist tell us that under Socialism we should become a stereotyped humanity; but their use of the word “State,” signifies that it is really State Capitalism to which they refer, Socialism implying the abolition of the State, to-day a Capitalist institution. Commenting on a recent play in which the central idea is the invention of mechanical men, a writer says :—

  “These robots had all, and more than all, the material efficiency of human beings, but no soul, no heart, none of those attributes which make life individual and interesting. That is what your Socialist would have you and me be like in his perfect Socialist state.”—Democrat, April 12th, 1924.

Think of your individuality when the hooter goes and you clock on at the dog biscuit factory or the soap works, think how interesting the routine of the office, the beautiful scenery viewed by a carman, or watching the beer in the brewery, calculating how much you and your pals could account for if only you had it outside. Ah ! you see you’ve a soul (!), and having one, perhaps a further item, same paper, same date will interest you :—

  “Where are these small, but important details that used to make our houses feel like homes? We do not find these things to-day. All the happiness has gone out of our houses. They are all alike, all plain and dull. For all the distinction or variation there are in them, they might be so many bathing machines or hen-coops.”

And in like manner you will find most of the “ bogeys ” of Socialism right here today.

* * *

  “There is one reasoned alternative to Socialism, the very simple yet perfectly true doctrine that small families and willing work would quickly banish poverty from our country.”—New Voice, April.

This doctrine, we are told, will win the support of the wavering masses, who in desperation are inclined “to give the Socialists a trial”; and although it contains reason, truth, work, and gutta-percha economics, we remain cold and unmoved. Smaller families mean cheaper living, and in the age of competition and sliding scales, cheaper living frequently means lowered wages. The more willing you work to-day, the fewer of you will be required for the job in hand, that means more unemployment, and therefore more poverty. The “reasoned alternative” to Socialism’ may appear “very simple,” but only to simple people.

  “The nation to-day is not producing enough to satisfy the natural human demands of the workers.. . . The demands for a decent standard of life have been increasing, but the means of satisfying them have not increased ; and to demand what is not there is crying for the moon.—Daily Chronicle, 31.3.24.

What an indictment of the present system ! In the world’s richest country the “natural human demands” for its workers cannot be met, so the Chronicle leader writer informs us, and by the naive assumption that “the Nation” would be one harmonious entity but for these demands, he attempts to conceal the cause of the contrast of wealth and poverty, and the inevitable conflict between the propertyless producers of wealth and its non-working Capitalist owners. Even for the workers to demand a “decent standard of life” is with true Liberal cant considered “crying for the Moon.” But the idle shareholders; they evidently may smile complacently upon the earth. Take only one instance, typical of the average concern, and what a difference we find in the reward of abstinence— from the dignity of labour :—

  “The twenty-second annual report of the Imperial Tobacco Company (of Great Britain and Ireland), Limited, issued last night, shows a nett trading profit for twelve months ended October 31st, 1923, amounting to £7,467,925 12s. 10d”—Daily Mail, 9.2.24.

What are the facts? Man’s power over Nature reached the stage of being able to maintain an idle ruling class in the dim and remote past; this he could only do when he could produce more than was necessary for his own individual subsistence, later in the middle ages, roughly fifteen weeks’ labour of the year enabled a labourer to sustain a family of five for that period (Thorold Rogers), while to-day, modern manufacture with its giant machines, electricity, railways and applied science, makes production possible on a scale that could far outstrip societies’ needs. Yet the workers are poor! and the best reason the Capitalist Press can advance is a dirty lie. The invention and industry of countless generations of workers HAS increased the means to satisfy the most extravagant demands ever likely to be made upon them, BUT those means are the property of the few, and operated solely in their interests. Need we stress the point?

* * *

  “But we have yet to meet the Socialist who’s willing to learn anything from anybody without doubting the motive of his teachers.” (Democrat, 9/2/24.)

Within the Capitalist system there are thousands of “anybodies” laying claim to be the teachers of the working class.

All profess to be in deepest sympathy with the sufferings of that class, and every library is filled with their voluminous vapourings. The Socialist, however, did not obtain his understanding by blindly accepting every nostrum that was placed before him. His mental evolution has been through the stages of doubt, investigation to understanding. He does not consider his the final word in knowledge, but is ever prepared to enlarge that knowledge. Unlike the Capitalist supporting worker, the Socialist reasons from a class basis, his class interests, for it is only from that basis that he can judge the usefulness or otherwise of any teaching to his class. Through the method of discussion and critical enquiry men and women develop the power to reason for themselves. Our advice to the worker in this age of political chicanery is to trust none, but to acquire that learning that dispenses with the need for trust or doubt and enables them to test, the teachings offered, written or oral, on the touchstone of Socialist knowledge.

* * *

  “Socialism meant complete destruction of private property and individual liberty. God save England from Socialism.” (Harold Cox, The New Voice Feb.)

The worker may read the above and yet retain his composure. The property referred to is not his watch and chain or the odds and ends that often find their way to “Uncle,” but Capitalist property, the bulk of the wealth of modern society. It is usual for Capitalist apologists to speak or write of Marx as “exploded” or out of date, but how his words meet the whines of that class and their agents to-day.

  “You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population ; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.” (Reeves, Ed., p. 18, Communist Manifesto.)

The above was written nearly eighty years ago, but Capitalist development has but served to emphasise these facts. The Capitalist pretends to see in his form of private property (the ownership of societies’ means of wealth production) a form that permits of no further development without social stagnation and the destruction of what he terms individual liberty.

  “The abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! … By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.” (Ibid.)

The freedom to exploit and plunder a working class free only to sell their labour power—if they can. Property in its present form is but a transient form, it will undergo change when there is no further room for development within the present system. The main force generated within that system and the human factor that must bring that change, is the growing conscious discontent of the working class, who in order to achieve their emancipation must realise that the barrier of freedom and comfort for all stands in the present socially operated, but privately-owned means of life. The only possible alternative is social ownership, by which the evils of to-day will be removed and the communal form of society in which the human family was cradled for so many thousands of years restored on an infinitely higher plane.

W. E. MacHaffie

Death of an Old Revolutionary Hero by George Bernard Shaw (1905)

Blogger's Note: Yes, I know it could be said that Shaw's short story is a dig against the Impossibilists of his day, but I don't mind; the pages of the Socialist Standard of Shaw's day were always filled with well-aimed kicks against Shaw and his fellow Fabians, and if you can't take it, don't dish it out. 

Though the short story dates from 1905, I found it in a GBS short story collection  which dates from 1934. 

From The Clarion of the 24th March 1905.

So old Joe Budgett of Balwick—Stalwart Joe—is dead at last. The Socialist movement has seldom mourned a more typical thoroughgoer than dear old Joe. We all knew him; for he quarrelled with every one of us at one time or another; and yet is there one who is not sorry to lose him? Those who witnessed that simple funeral at Balwick last Thursday morning, when the remains of a poor workman in a cheap pine coffin were borne through the pelting sleet to their last resting-place on the shoulders of Robert Blatchford and H. M. Hyndman, Sidney Webb and Harold Cox, Jaurès (who had come from Paris expressly to pay this last sad duty to the veteran of the International) and myself, Mr Gerald Balfour and Lord Lansdowne, must have asked themselves what manner of man this was to receive a tribute from persons of such diverse views, and so far removed from him in social position.

Joseph Budgett was a heavily built man; and even at 90—his age when he died—he was no light weight. My heart was heavy as I helped to shoulder the coffin; but I confess that poor Joe seemed heavier still by the time we reached the grave; for we were not trained to the work; and there was a good deal of sugaring among the bearers: Harold, for instance, did nothing but shelter from the sleet under the pall after the first ten yards; Jaurès and Hyndman argued in French instead of attending to their work; Blatchford, after the manner of highly sympathetic literary geniuses with a strong susceptibility to incongruous humor, was so convulsed with suppressed laughter that his quiverings rattled Joe’s bones over the stones without contributing anything to their support; and if it had not been for Webb and myself (Fabians doing the practical work as usual), Joe Budgett would never have got to his grave; for Gerald Balfour and Lord Lansdowne were too far forward to get their shoulders properly under the coffin.

Lord Lansdowne was evidently taken aback to find that there was to be no religious service (Joe having been an uncompromising atheist); but he spoke very feelingly at the graveside. “It was part of the tragedy of this man’s career,” he said, “that in all the seventy years of active political life during which he agitated ceaselessly on behalf of his own class, he never found either in the Liberal party or in the irregular groups which pretended to represent Labor and Socialism, that incorruptible spirit, that stainless purity of principle, that absolute integrity, aloof from all compromising alliances, which his honest character demanded as the sole and sufficient claim to his support. He regarded the Conservative party as an open enemy; but he rightly preferred an open enemy to a false or half-hearted friend; and so, if we never gained his theoretic approval, we at least always had what we valued far more: his practical support.”

It was at this point that the accident of which so much has been made befell Blatchford. The account of it in the evening papers was much exaggerated. It is true that the editor of The Clarion broke down and covered his face with his handkerchief. It is also true that in an attempt to hurry away from the graveside with his eyes full of tears he tripped over the sexton’s spade; but he did not fell into the grave, nor was an impression of the name-plate found on his person afterwards. The capitalist press naturally strives to belittle and make ridiculous the obsequies of a political opponent; but I cannot help thinking that it might have shewn better taste than to choose a funeral for a display of its cockney facetiousness.

The rest of the speaking has been so fully reported in all the Labor papers that I need not give any account of it here, except that Webb’s advice to the Progressive Municipalities to make Free Funerals a plank in the program of Municipal Socialism was quite practical and sincere, and was not, as The Deptford Times asserted, a thinly veiled threat of wholesale political assassination.

A good deal of misunderstanding has been caused by the report that the reason I did not speak was that Mrs Budgett said it would be a mockery for a man who had done his best to kill her husband to make a speech over his grave, and that Joe would turn in his coffin at the sound of my voice. Now it is quite true that Mrs Budgett actually did say this, and that I took no part in the speaking in deference to her wishes. But the three Labor papers who have rebuked Mrs Budgett for making her husband’s funeral the occasion of an attack on the Fabian Society are quite wrong in their interpretation of her remarks. She was not thinking of the Fabian Society at all. The truth is, I once did actually try to kill Joe; and as it happened a good many years ago, and he forgave me handsomely—though Mrs Budgett could never forget it—I may as well do penance now by describing the affair exactly as it happened.

I was quite a young Socialist then; and when I heard one day in spring that old Budgett was passing away whilst the earth was germinating all around, a lump came into my throat: the only one I have ever had. I got used to the news later on, because Joe began dying when he was 75, and never got out of his bed from that time forth except to address a meeting or attend a Socialist Congress. But, as I have just said, I was a young hand then; and an intense desire to see the old revolutionary hero before he returned to dust took hold of me. The end of it was that I found myself a couple of days later at his cottage at Balwick, asking Mrs Budgett whether he was strong enough to see me. She said he was not, as his heart was in such a state that the least excitement or any sudden noise might be fetal. But when she saw how disappointed I was, she added that he was so mortal dull that a little company would perhaps do him good; and so, if I would promise not to talk to him, and be careful not to make any noise, she would let me up for a while. I promised eagerly; and we went up together, she warning me not to trip over the high sills or dash my head against the low lintels of the sturdy old oakframed cottage, and I doing the one at every door in my anxiety to avoid doing the other.

This is perhaps the best place for me to say that Mrs Budgett struck me even then as being extraordinarily devoted to Joe. In fact, I dont think she ventured to regard him as anything so familiar as a husband. She had known both toil and sorrow; for she had had to keep Joe and bring up a family of five by her own exertions. As a boy, Joe had been apprenticed to a bigginwainer, and had served his time and learnt the trade; but when a little thumbed and blackened volume containing Shelley’s Queen Mab and Men of England, and Tom Paine’s Age of Reason, came in his way, and he heard a speech from Orator Hunt, the famous Man in the White Hat, he threw up his bigginwaining and devoted his life to the cause of the people, entrusting all his business affairs to his faithful wife, who never let him know want. In course of time he almost forgot his trade; for I remember on one occasion, when William Morris, in his abrupt way, said to him “And what the devil is a bigginwainer?” Joe was quite at a loss, and could describe it only as a branch of the coopering. The consequence was that Mrs Budgett had to work pretty hard as a laundress; but she did not mind hard work: what weighed on her was the curious fatality that the five children all turned against Joe. They became strong chapelgoers and moneymakers, and made their quarrel with Joe an excuse for doing very little for her, because, they said, they did not want their earnings wasted in encouraging him. So there had been sorrow and strife enough even in that little household.

Joe was sitting up in bed when we entered; and I was struck at once by the lion-like mane of white hair, the firmly closed mouth with its muscles developed by half a century of public speaking, the serene brow, clear ruddy complexion, and keen bold eyes of the veteran. He gave my hand a strong hearty grip, and said, in tones that were still resonant (for he had not then acquired the senile whistling utterance that pierced the ears and hearts of the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam), “Do I at last see before me that old and tried friend of the working classes, George Bernard Shaw? How are you, George?”

Although I was not then old, and had no other feeling for the working classes than an intense desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible people, Joe’s cordial manner encouraged and set me at ease. He invited me to sit down; and before my trousers had pressed the chair he was deep in a flood of reminiscences.

“I served my apprenticeship to the revolution,” he said, “in the struggle against the Reform Bill of 1832.”

“Against it!” I cried.

“Aye, against it,” he said. '“Old as I am, my blood still boils when I think of the way in which a capitalist tailor named Place— one of the half-hearted Radical vermin—worked that infamous conspiracy to enfranchise the middle classes and deny the vote to the working men. I spoke against it on every platform in England. The Duke of Wellington himself said to me that he disapproved of revolutionists in general, but that he wished there were a few more in the country of my kidney. Then came Chartism with its five points to fool the people and keep them from going to the real root of the matter by abolishing kings, priests, and private property. I shewed up its leaders, and had the satisfaction of seeing them all go to prison and come out without a single follower left to them. Then there was Bright and Cobden trailing the red herring of Free Trade across the trail of the emancipation of the working classes. I exposed them and their silly lies about cheap bread; and if I’d been listened to, no Englishman need ever have wanted bread again. Next came those black blots on our statute book, the Factory Acts, which recognized and regulated and legalized the accursed exploitation of the wives and children of the poor in the factory hells. Why, when I took the field against them, the very employers themselves said I was right and bid me God-speed in that campaign. Then came a worse swindle than the Reform Bill of 1832—the ’67 Bill, that gave just a handful of votes to a few workmen to bolster up the lie that Parliament represents the people instead of the vampires that live by plundering them. Didnt I get this scar over my eye from a stone that hit me while I was speaking against that Bill? But it became law for all that; and it emboldened the capitalists so much that they brought in the Education Act to drive all our children into their prisons of schools, and drill them into submission, and teach them to be more efficient slaves to make profits for their bloodsuckers. I spoke against it until I lost my voice for a whole month; and the people were with me too, heart and soul. It ended, as all double-facedness ends, in the Compromise. But thank God—not that I believe in God, but I use the word in a manner of speaking—I never compromised; and I never will. I left the International because it would not support me against the school Bastilles. And it was high time I did; for the International was a rotten compromise itself—half mere Trade- Unionism, and the other half a little private game of a rare old dodger named Marx—not Harry Marks, you know, but Karl— a compromise between a German and a Jew, he was: neither one thing nor the other. Then came the Commune of Paris, that did nothing but get the people of Paris slaughtered like mad dogs, because, as I pointed out at the time, it was too local, and stood for a city instead of for all the world. That put an end to everything for ten years; and then Socialism came up again with all the old mistakes and compromises: the half-hearted Chartist palliatives, the stooping to use the votes that the capitalists had bribed the people with, the pushing middle class men and autocratic swells at the head of it. I soon saw through Hyndman, and went with Morris into the Socialist League. But Morris was just as bad: all he wanted was our pennies to publish his poems—John Bull’s Earthly Paradise and such tosh as that—in The Commonweal. I turned the League against him at last and took The Commonweal from him; and then he shewed his true nature by leaving us without means to pay the rent or publish the paper. Nothing came of it but another Reform Bill in 1885. I said, ‘Does it abolish the registration laws and establish Universal Suffrage?’ ‘No,’ they said. ‘Then have nothing to do with it,' I said; and I spoke against it and agitated against it as I never agitated before. But the spirit of the workers was broken: they submitted to it like sheep. I took to my bed then, and never came out of it until the Dock Strike of 1889.”

“That roused you, did it?” I said, ambiguously; for I was now alive to the danger of jumping to any conclusions as to which side Joe might have taken.

“Could I lie here and see the people led away by a renegade like John Burns?” he exclaimed. “Oh what a degradation that was! what a spectacle of crawling slavery! to see freeborn men begging for sixpence an hour instead of insisting in a voice of thunder on the full product of their labor! That was what Burns’s pretended Socialism came to when he was put to the test. Sixpence an hour! But I expected no more. I saw through him from the first, just as I saw through Francis Place, and Fergus O’Connor, and Bronterre O’Brien, and the hypocritical Christian Socialists, and George Odger and Charles Bradlaugh and Hyndman and Morris and Champion and the German wirepullers, Bebel and Liebknecht. Self-seeking humbugs, talkers and compromisers all of them. None of them thorough, none of them genuine right through. The Dock Strike was nothing but a conspiracy between Cardinal Manning and John Burns to get Manning made Pope and to get Bums into the County Council. From that day I resolved that Burns should be driven from the cause of the people if my tongue and pen could do it. I’m organizing the Socialist opposition to him at Battersea—the genuine real Socialist opposition—and we’ll have him out at the next election, when the Albert Palace is replaced by flats full of Conservative voters.”

“You are working for the Conservatives, then?”

“Young man: I have opposed the Tories all my life; but theres one thing I hate more than a Tory; and thats a traitor.”

“Are all the Labor and Socialist leaders traitors?”

“Traitors! What puts such a thought into your mind? There are hundreds of true men who ought to be leaders, and will be when the people come to their senses. But the men that put themselves forward as leaders—that organize strikes and tout for votes and win elections are all traitors and self-seekers, every man of them. It’s the so-called unsuccessful men—the martyrs of the movement—the men that stand up for the people against everybody—mark that, against everybody: those are the real men, the salt of the people’s cause, the glory of the revolution."

He paused to take a sip of Liebig from a cup his wife had brought him when we came in. He did it just as a speaker who is getting hoarse takes a sip of water on the platform. As his historical reminiscences had by this time come pretty well up to date, I thought he was done; but he suddenly switched off from history to moral exhortation.

“Look at me!” he said, “going on for eighty, and as sound as a bell, except for this complaint in my heart, brought on by its bleeding for the people and by overwork on the platform. Thats because I am a teetotaler, young man. And why am I a teetotaler? Because the cause of the people has been drink to me and stimulant to me and courage and warmth to me. Have I ever taken money for my principles? Never. The exploiting classes have offered over and over again to finance me. But I have never accepted a penny.”

“Except from your wife,” I remarked, thoughtlessly.

For a moment he was completely taken aback. Then he said, with indescribable majesty, “Never. It is a foul lie; and whoever told it to you lies in his black throat. Prove to me that my wife has ever accepted a farthing from any oppressor of the people— that she has ever possessed a coin that was not earned by her own honest toil—and I will never look on her face again.”

“Thats not precisely what I mean,” I said, rather lamely; for I perceived that he had missed my point; and I rather doubted whether an explanation would mend matters. But he went on impetuously, being constitutionally a bad listener.

“My wife is a crown of rubies to me,” he said, with feeling. “But I have always kept her out of the rough and tumble of political strife. It has broken me up; but at least I have shielded her from it.” Here he wiped away a tear. “And when I think,” he went on, “that there are men who are at this present moment plotting to give the vote to middle class women and deny it to my wife, I feel that I could rise from my bed like a young man and fight with my last breath against it as I did against the abomination of 1832.”

“All or nothing is your principle," I said.

“Thats it,” he responded in a ringing voice, aglow with enthusiasm. “All or nothing.”

“Well,” I said, “as it is quite certain that you wont get All, you are practically the propagandist of Nothing: a Nihilist, in fact.”

“I am not ashamed of the word Nihilist,” he said. “The Nihilists are my brothers.”

“To change the subject,” I said: “is it really true that your heart is so bad that a sudden noise would kill you?”

“It is,” he said proudly. “You could snuff me out like a candle by knocking that cup of Liebig’s Extract over on to the floor.” 

I looked round. A grandfather’s clock ticked peacefully in the silence; for Joe, having reminded himself of the Liebig, was now drinking it; and even he could not talk and drink at the same time.

“Mr Budgett,” I said, rising, “I am not a Nihilist; and it is perfectly clear to me that nothing will ever be done as long as you are about. So here goes!” And I pulled the grandfather’s clock right over.

It fell with an appalling crash, striking as it fell until its weights thundered on the boards. Terrified at my own deed, I looked fearfully at the dying man. But Joe did not die. Instead, he sprang out of bed and said, “What the — — are you doing?”

I thought it best, on the whole, to drop from the window and make for the railway station. Next day I sent him £2—all I could spare—to pay for repairing the clock. But he sent it back to me with a letter of some thirty pages to say that he could do without a clock, but not without his self-respect.

That was why Mrs Budgett objected to my speaking at the funeral.

I confess, now that advancing years have mellowed my character, that I was wrong in trying to kill Joe. One must live and let live. He bore no malice whatever for the incident, and used to refer to it with the utmost good humor, always ending up with the assurance that he did not take me seriously, and knew that my real object was simply to give him a hearty laugh.

His end was undoubtedly hastened by his efforts to turn the Labor movement against the new Bill for the Enfranchisement of Women; and he was proud to number a Countess among his converts. He almost lost his temper with me because I said that I should support any Bill that would make a start by giving a parliamentary vote or seat to even one woman, though the property qualification were a million sterling. “All or nothing!" he said, with a fervor worthy of Ibsen's Brand.

The governing classes keep the mass of people enslaved by taking advantage of their sloth, their stupidity, their ignorance, their poverty, their narrowness, their superstition, and their vices. They could not enslave Joe by such means. He was energetic and clever; he was as well read as most cabinet ministers; he was sufficiently fed, clothed and housed (by his wife); he was a universalist in his breadth of view; he was an atheist; and he had practically no vices. And yet the governing classes tied Joe up with the principles of absolute morality tighter than they could tie a hooligan with a set of handcuffs.

After all, the principles of absolute morality were made for this very purpose; so Joe was hardly to be blamed.

George Bernard Shaw