Hungry for Socialism (2008)

Book Review from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hunger. By Raymond Tallis. Acumen, 2008.

Raymond Tallis, a physician turned philosopher, has delivered a thoughtful if slightly anarchic book in The Art Of Living series. In 164 pages he discusses several different concepts and manifestations of hunger. Starting with the nature and evolution of biological hunger in animals and humans, he goes on to trace how the pleasure of meeting nutritional needs has spawned for humans a multitude of other pleasures.

The author looks at how the hunger for food develops into what he calls hunger for others. There comes, for at least some people, the hunger for meaning and significance. Tallis’s final chapter “asks how we might manage our individual and collective hungers better so that we shall be less possessed by them and more concerned with the suffering of those to whom even subsistence is denied”.

The author makes several references to Marx, mainly on the fetishism of commodities and humans producing their own means of subsistence, but he nowhere expresses a hunger for revolutionary change. He does, however, take issue with another philosopher, John Gray, for whom planet earth has been doomed by the arrogance of human beings (“Homo rapiens”). Tallis points out that when humans regard their species as no more than animals they are inclined to treat one another even worse than hitherto.

As the author notes, the world we live in demands that we consume many things beyond our bodily needs. It is “a world where many have little or nothing to eat while many more are eating far too much and are in hot pursuit of a multitude of secondary and elective hungers”. Tallis doesn’t talk about a socialist future but he does say a few words about utopia: “The central presupposition of utopian [is] that our hungers will somehow serve our fellow men and not set one against another, that there are fundamental desires that will drive us to work for the common good.”

We drink to that!

Stan Parker

War, Peace and Profits (1942)

From the September 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

The casualties of war mount with the scale of military operations, but outnumbering even the victims of the battlefield are the legions who succumb to the fearful heritage of war—hunger and pestilence. That was the experience after the last world-war, as we are reminded in a book just published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

“Medical Relief in Europe,” by Dr. Melville D. Mackenzie, is described in “The Londoner’s Diary” (“Evening Standard,” 24/7/42) as being the “grimmest, most fascinating book I have read recently.” Its grimness cannot be questioned, for it tells the author’s experiences in Eastern Europe after the last war, where he worked with Nansen in an endeavour to relieve the plight caused by starvation and disease. Despite their efforts, “more people were killed by famine and disease in the three years after the war than by guns during the war.” We do not know whether the author’s work took him to Central Europe, where the devastation wrought by these “Horsemen of the Apocalypse” was equally fearful. Amid such parlous conditions the democratic republic of Weimar was born — puny and rickety, like many of its children. No wonder it did not survive.

In Hungary, the revolt led by Bela Kun was crushed, according to the Communists, not so much by superior force, but by the American shipments of wheat placed into the hands of Hungary’s old ruling class, the reactionary landowning aristocracy. Whilst bombs are raining on cities and millions of men are blowing each other to pieces, the horrors and problems of the present crowd speculations as to the future into the background. Only our rulers permit themselves occasional, highly rhetorical, glimpses.

Mr. Anthony Eden, perhaps second in popularity only to Mr. Churchill, and a strong tip for future premiership, in a speech at Nottingham on July 23rd, delivered himself of the following : —

“Industry has reached a stage in which there is no necessity for anyone in the world to go short of food, or to lack the means to build themselves a better life. The problem is to organise a full production and an equitable distribution for all.” (“News-Chronicle,” July 24th, 1942.)

A problem indeed. For Mr. Eden and his class, none of whom conceive or admit the need for Socialism, it is insoluble. But there is no harm in trying, at any rate, on the public platform.

Bearing in mind the disappointment which awaited the workers in the years of slump and unemployment that followed the last war, Mr. Eden added a word of caution :

“We must have no illusion about the future even after the war is won. To win the peace will be as hard a task as to win the war. We shall need the same national unity at home. We shall need true friendship between the nations who have fought as Allies.” (Ibid.)

We shall need something far more drastic, the abolition of the capitalist social order. But Mr. Eden would not be able to help in that direction. He can only hold out hopes for a continuation of some form of “National Government” and agreement on international policy among the victors. We are not told what contribution an alliance of political parties, all of whom have had their chance of dealing with the problems of poverty, unemployment and other evils, but failed, can make to the future happiness of mankind. In the sphere of international relations there are already signs of rifts in the lute. Mr. Cordell Hull, United States Secretary for Foreign Affairs, declared in a speech of the same date as that of Mr. Eden, that the welfare of the post-war world demands “the removal of trade barriers.” Whilst Free Trade may suit the interests of American capitalists, it is not so clear that it would be welcome to ruling class interests in Britain and elsewhere. Wherever we turn, the interests of capitalist ownership of the means of life nationally and internationally effectively prevent any substantial amelioration of human suffering. It is idle for Mr. Eden to avow in the same speech that “Never again must we tolerate the chronic unemployment, the extremes of wealth and poverty, and slums, and lack of opportunity for so many, which have disfigured our national life in the past.”

And may we add, continue to disfigure it in the present. In a written statement by Captain Crookshank, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, it is seen that—

“The number of big incomes shows no reduction. A hundred people still receive over £100,000 a year, but whereas in 1939 they paid 12½ millions in tax, they now pay 17.3 millions.” (“Evening Standard,” July 24th, 1942.)

We are not told whether their combined incomes have risen since 1939, though that may well be the case.

At the other end of the social line-up, 5,700,000 taxpayers are in the £125—£250 per year class. With the cost of living at its present rate, it is not necessary to be a student of economics to appreciate the hardships suffered by those wage earners and their dependents.

Nowhere have the ruling class relaxed their grip on the economic and political life of the country. Rather have they strengthened it. Squeezing out the smaller capitalist fry will give greater power and security to the monopolies, just as it will lower the social status of a working class having to contend with powerful combines, whose representatives personally occupy the pivotal positions within the machinery of State. These are the realities of the present and they count for more than the chimera of platform speeches.

They also reveal the future trends of capitalist society. In other countries, too, this centralisation of control and ownership has been put into effect or else discussed; the motive is not a new one; it is the same that has actuated capitalist production from the beginning—profits and the greater security in obtaining them.

Bearing in mind what has been said at the beginning of this article, the following item of news is of special interest : —

Under the heading, “A European Plan for Farming,” the “News-Chronicle” which reported the speech of Mr. Eden also brings news of a conference in London between representatives of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria.

“These representatives,” the report goes on to say, “have prepared a peasant programme aimed at opening new post-war markets for their countries in Western Europe—the only way to free them from economic and political domination by Germany.”

“Their programme insists on peasant ownership, with peasant institutions, democratically organised; ample facilities for credit, including a Central Agricultural Bank; and regulated prices.”

Can the futility of capitalism be demonstrated more convincingly ? There are prospects of mass starvation for some time after the war in these very countries, and landowning interests there are looking to Western Europe for a “market” !

Unless the workers of the world awaken to the urgency of Socialism, the epitaph of all human civilisation may well be :

“They wanted work and they gave them munitions factories and war; they wanted bread and they gave them a Central Agricultural Bank and regulated prices.”

Sid Rubin

Land of soup kitchens (2000)

From the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sweet charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Janet Poppendieck (Penguin, 1999) is an interesting and well-documented analysis of the process by which hunger emerged as a problem in the United States. Local assistance payments to destitute individuals drifted downwards in the 1980s and were the frequent target of cut-backs in the 1990s. Over the same period, the minimalistic federal Supplemental Security Income programme for the aged and disabled barely kept up with rising housing costs. The value of family allowances (AFDC) has been declining since 1989 and it is no longer sufficient to cover real rents and leave enough for food. The food stamp programme is based on an outdated calculation of needs and a highly restrictive means test. In the early 1980s, however, the Reagan administration operated cut-backs in Medicaid, housing assistance, energy assistance, unemployment compensation, income support and food assistance.

Given that this all took place during a major recession, the effects of the cut-backs were immediately felt by charity workers operating in the field of food relief :

“It used to be just two or three people a day coming for food,” Brother Giles Needler of the San Damiano Friary told a New York Times reporter late in 1981. “Now it seems that the doorbell is always ringing. And before it was the knights of the road. Now it’s mothers with five kids, families.”

Before long the existing network of soup kitchens was swamped with the “New Poor”. A survey undertaken by the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities finding that in some 16 areas demand for emergency food had increased by 50 percent between 1982 and 1983. In a third of agencies demand had doubled.

But whilst this was not, in itself, sufficient to shift attention towards the soup kitchen ‘solution’, two events more or less guaranteed the emphasis placed on emergency food. The first of these was the substantial cut-backs in the food stamp and child nutrition programmes. The fact that hundreds of individuals were involved in the food assistance programmes that had been cut, meant that a highly articulate lobby could use what appeared as a food emergency to focus attention on what was, in fact, a larger problem of social deprivation, unemployment and homelessness :

“It takes a while to lose your home, but you get hungry right away, and when you do, it is hard to think about anything else.”

The second even was the discovery of massive stockpiles of surplus dairy products created by agricultural price support. These products cost a lot to store and could well have gone to waste. So, naturally, enough attention focused on this food, the government seeking to deflect criticism by distributing what was often mouldy cheese to individuals prepared to wait in line in the middle of winter to receive it. This food distribution was helped along by a small army of volunteer workers. What happened next was entirely predictable:

“With hunger a recurrent topic on the nightly news, and dairy surpluses calling attention to the abundance of food available, a sort of snowball process occurred in many communities. As more kitchens and pantries sprang up, more food drives and appeals for financial support were organised, more people became involved with hunger-related activities, and more hunger stories appeared in the press.”

The voluntary effort was encouraged by city heads and belatedly endorsed by the Reagan government. This transformed the individual emergencies into a social emergency. Pretty soon, the distribution of other food surpluses (rice, cornmeal, and honey) was pressed for and obtained whilst the federal government intervened to provide financial and logistical support. In the mid-1980s projects were irrupting right across America, helped in this by the government which was by this time providing grants to local administrations.

The fact that reformers concentrated most of their attention on hunger led to the demand for subsidies for emergency food programmes whilst encouraging concerned citizens to step into the breach which had been opened up by the government. This was clearly detrimental to the demands for the restoration of statutory entitlements. Yet the shortcomings of emergency food aid are well documented. It is more often than not insufficient, nutritionally inadequate, and inappropriate. The supply of food is subject to the vagaries of market surpluses; cheese one week, peanut butter the next. Distribution points are often inaccessible and geographical distribution tends to be patchy. The incredible inefficiency involved in improvising a food distribution system contrasts with the sophisticated commercial operation which panders to the needs of the financially solvent :

“This nation has a food distribution system that is famous all over the world for its ability to deliver variety and economy to even the most remote places in the country. Ironically, the period in which soup kitchens and food pantries have proliferated is also a period that has seen the reduction of supermarket availability in many inner-city neighbourhoods.”

Even by the narrow standards of the food stamp programmes, soup kitchens are a logistical non-starter. Food stamps at least have the advantage of allowing a modicum of participation in what’s left of the commercial set-up in poor neighbourhoods. So why build a food distribution system from scratch? The answer, of course, is that charity mobilises unpaid voluntary labour. It can therefore afford to be profligate with regard to the utilisation of human energy. The fact that recipients have few alternatives means that there is little need to closely tailor supply to needs. More importantly, because charity is uncertain it removes poverty from the public domain of statutory requirements and therefore releases pressure to raise welfare levels. Not to put a finer point on it, it’s cheap.

MM

Poverty and Food (1941)

Book Review from the November 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Englishman's food : a history of five centuries of English diet by J. C. Drummond and Anne Wilbraham (Jonathan Cape, 12s. 6d.)

Blessed be ye Poor (Luke vi. 20).

J. C. Drummond and Anne Wilbraham make a notable contribution to Social Science in their book “The Englishman’s Food” (Jonathan Cape, 12s. 6d.). The general reader will appreciate its vigorous and clear treatment and apt illustrations, the student its wealth of duly documented references, while the Socialist will find a rich mine to quarry. Its main theme is to be found on page 484: “Most of them (the poor) did not even get enough food to satisfy their hunger; in nine cases out of ten, sheer poverty was the cause.”

* * * *

Dives and Lazarus.

It is the same hideous tale throughout the ages, and on the whole the wage slave has suffered more than the chattel slave from under-nutrition; gluttony and guzzling have characterised sections of the governing class no less under modern Capitalism than under Roman Imperialism. The cartoon opposite page 259, “A Lord Mayor’s Banquet,” may remind readers of Herbert Morrison’s tears for a blitzed Guildhall, which our County Hall tribune associated with noble fights against tyranny ! The dietary given for workhouse inmates in the nineteenth century on page 264 is a fitting contrast, where “same” occurs with damning iteration, and the changes are rung on broth, dumplings, and treacle.

* * * *

Noblesse oblige !

Wholesale exploitation eked out by petty thievery is clearly indicated in Chapter 17; some of the facts recorded will be an eye-opener. “When his own stocks were short, the Lord of the Manor seldom hesitated to draw upon the poor man’s reserve. Usually this amounted to confiscation. Piers Plowman described the plight of one left with nothing but a worthless ‘tally’ in exchange for the goods removed.” They order these things better to-day, our Lords of the Manor, with their retinue of “economists.” The smaller thieves, it is true, occasionally had a slim time, as “The Fraudulent Baker,” reproduced from an early MSS., grimly portrays, but, be it noted, the Lord of the Manor was almost as nearly touched by the baker’s fraud as the serf or tenant farmer.

* * * *

Patriotism and Profit.

Petty thievery attained bigger and bigger stature, until, under fully fledged Capitalism, it assumed the rank of the Order of Minor Brigandage, and was officially recognised and blessed by the Liberal hero, John Bright, who recognised Adulteration as a form of Competition. Chapter 17 will repay careful reading.

“In 1852, the public was shocked to learn of the proportion of tins supplied to the Navy which, on being opened, were found to contain putrid meat . . . unprincipled manufacturers utilised all sorts of unsavoury materials in preparing their products” (page 555). Since the Crimean War, a huge number of attempted safeguards, extending to and amplified in the present war, have sought to protect the armed forces of the nation against patriots who grace boards of directors;—it is at least unfortunate that to-day the office of Government watch-dog and profit maker are not altogether dissevered.

* * * *

Benevolent Fagins.

The Boer War effected more than the compulsory union of Dutch and British exploitation of the unfortunate African native; it brought home to the governing class the necessity of conserving Labour Power to meet the exigencies both of industry and of war under modern conditions. As a result of Government enquiry, reluctantly undertaken, it was found that “the public which had rejoiced vicariously in the triumphs of the football field and cycle track were discouraged to learn that of those who wished to serve their country in the day of trial a startling number were found physically unfit to carry a rifle” (quoted on p. 484). The Commiittee “tended to give greater attention to such factors as overcrowding, bad sanitation, alcoholism, ignorance, etc., than to what was, in fact, by far the most important cause, SEMI-STARVATION DUE TO SHEER POVERTY.” Since that period, milk in schools, infant welfare, vitamins, carrot juice. The “expectant mother” was discovered— the working class father is still left in a blurr of uncomfortable and perplexed “expectancy.”

* * * *

Limping Reform.

Page 539 affords a striking example of how Capitalism, twist and turn how it may, is itself dogged and thwarted by inherent contradictions and nasty snags. Stockton-on-Tees removed a foul slum, and settled its inmates on a relatively decent estate. Surprisingly enough, the death-rate increased under the new conditions; enquiries made it clear that attempts to throw the products of poverty out of the windows will only result in them coming in at the doors in other guises. “The move to the new estate had involved the tenants in larger rents, which had been just sufficient to reduce their purchase of the most nutritious foods.” It is worth noting that one year on the estate recorded 3.2 per cent, as against an average slum percentage of 1.4 previously.

Exigencies of space forbid further references to the many good things in this highly interesting book, but the quaint picture reproduced on page 182 is too precious to pass by. A German artist of the 15th century presents a Madonna holding the hand of the Child whose limbs clearly betray Rickets. Hans Burgkmair took this then very prevalent infantile evidence of malnutrition for granted. Science to-day has made its complete abolition possible; children of the working-class alone to-day suffer from Rickets, a Poverty afflication. Lean Rickets and Swinish Gout mingle in the ghostly Dance of Death staged by Capitalism. The establishment of Socialism alone can ensure the utter and complete annihilation of Poverty, with its attendant horrors; Socialism alone can create the Carefree Madonna and the Happy Healthy Child.

Augustus Snellgrove

Passing Comments: Mutual Admiration Society (1951)

The Passing Comments Column from the September 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mutual Admiration Society

There was a warming scene in the House of Commons the other day when two capitalists, one on each side of the house, gave their views on one of the chief problems confronting both parties nowadays —how to get the arms drive going satisfactorily. Mr. Strauss, Minister of Supply, whose family fortunes are derived from metal-trading, said that "his department is working vigorously. It has recruited a number of industrialists, it has placed 51,000 contracts with industry, and he is confident that this year’s programme will be achieved.” (Daily Express, 24.7.1951.) And he graciously gave what William Barkley calls “an unusual tribute across the table for his services” to Col. Sir Ralph Glyn, the Tory member for Abingdon, who was the chairman of a select committee which has made a number of recommendations to the Government on the question of the switch of industries to rearmament. Sir Ralph holds down four jobs altogether—he is an M.P., he is a director of J. Samuel White & Co., Ltd., and of the British Match Corporation, and he is chairman of the Skefko Ball Bearing Co., Ltd. And he gallantly replied by praising “trade union leaders for their efforts at harmony in industry.” He also said that "this heavy rearmament programme must inevitably depress British standards of living for some years. This gave opportunities to mischief-makers who were what used to be called traitors.” So they are all comrades together, Tory capitalists, "labour” capitalists, trade union leaders; the only cads are the mischief- makers who object to having their standards of living depressed.

* * *

Enterprise and Vitality

Mr. Strauss had found time to sing the praises of some more of his fellow-capitalists four days before. Opening a new Austin plant, he said (Daily Herald, 20.7.1951): "This plant will make a great contribution to Britain's industrial resources. It is typical of the enterprise, imagination and vitality of the Austin company. Those responsible deserve our gratitude.” In return, Mr. Lord, Chairman of the Austin Company, drew attention to the difficulties the Government had to face, and said: “Some people seem to think that a change of government will put everything right, but it won't make bad workmen work any more, or get us more coal and steel, or deal with Communism as we know it in this country.” And it is certainly true that whether the Labour Party or the Conservative Party is administering Capitalism the problems they have to face will be much the same; one of the chief flies in the ointment will always be those workers who are too idle to bring a really sizeable profit in to their employers.

* * *

More and More

Mr. Lord is reported as having gone on to say: “We must all work together and realise that the days of more and more for less and less are over.” Come, come, Mr. Lord. Haven't you seen the latest figures for dividend increases? We admit that it would not be strictly true to say that now a shareholder is doing less and less to earn his dividends since one cannot do less than nothing, and the shareholder was already doing that. But the other part—”more and more”— certainly applies, since higher dividends have been reported all the year, culminating in an 18 per cent. increase in June. Now, of course, a schema of partial restriction—on dividends, not on profits—has been introduced to keep the trade unions quiet, and some of the extra dividends the shareholders hoped for will have to be salted away in companies' reserves for the three years during which the scheme will be in operation. But whereas the workers, persuaded of the benevolent intentions of the Government by this latest plan, will be expected to forego wage increases altogether, the dividend increases will not be foregone, merely postponed till the end of the scheme.

A confidence trick, in fact, of the highest order.

* * *

Vicious Circle

One of the main excuses brought forward by the heads of each state for rearming is that some other country has rearmed, and "we nave to do it as well to defend ourselves.” Thus Russia keeps large armies in being in order to defend herself against the threat presented by the fact that America has stocks of atomic bombs and numerous overseas bases. And America and Britain have to rearm to defend themselves against the large Russian armies (a Daly Herald headline on July 28th was “Why we must arm—Stalin has. five and a half million armed men”). The Daily Graphic, however, goes one better. Not only do we have to rearm because our future enemies are arming; we also have to rearm because our allies are arming. Commenting on President Truman's report to Congress that in twelve months twenty per cent. of America’s total industrial production will be devoted to “defence,” the Graphic says (24.7.1951): “America is bearing—and bearing willingly—the main burden. It is shameful for anyone in Britain to suggest that we should not do our share.”

Stripped of verbiage, the argument runs like this: The Russian workers have let themselves be deluded into accepting a lower standard of living so that the Russian state can have bigger armed forces; the American workers have let themselves be deluded into accepting a lower standard of living in order that the American state can have bigger armed forces; therefore we in Britain must also “do our share”!

* * *

Pax Vobiscum

At the opening of General Eisenhower's new headquarters near Versailles, the General is reported to have said that “it was the first time in history an allied headquarters had been set up in peacetime to preserve peace and not to encourage war” (Continental Daily Mail, 24.7.1951). “We strive to lift from the hearts of men the fear of the cell block of the slave-camp. We strive to establish Pax Atlantica under which all men may push forward to new heights to new levels of achievement”

If the General really wants to preserve peace, he chose an unfortunate comparison. For “Pax Romana,” although its literal translation is “the Roman peace,” had nothing to do with the preservation of peace. Pax Romana is the name given to a time when there were still wars. Why then was it called "pax”? Because whatever wars there were—against foreigners outside the Empire, against rebels within it—were won by the Roman rulers. It was the same with that other period of history to which the name “pax” is sometimes applied—the period 1815—1914, which some historians have called “Pax Britannica.” This didn’t mean that there were no wars in this period—it simply meant that whatever wars there were, within or without the British Empire, were won by the British rulers.

But perhaps that is the kind of thing the General had in mind.

* * *

Food and Famine

Here are some quotations from a missionary magazine (“The Kingdom Overseas,” July, 1951) taken from reports on the Mysore and Trichmopoly areas of India.

“We have seen little children crying for food, seen them snatch the food from each other’s hands, watched them eat with relish the husks of oil-cake from the oil mills, and search the fields for herbs and roots to eat.” 

“The shadows of death and the pale ghost of hunger have been present in countless homes. But many have had no homes—in which to live or die. These of our people were wandering from the west, eastward or to the hills; but in that search for work and food only some were successful.” 

“All of us in this Trichinopoly Diocese, and especially those on the western side, will remember 1950, above all, as a year when famine, the worst in living memory, stalked our countryside.”

1950? The News Chronicle (24.11.1950) had something to tell us about 1950. "A year’s supply of potatoes for twelve million people—26,700,000 bushels— has been destroyed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture this year, because it could not sell them abroad.” Let us not, however, put down our Western and democratic way of life as a complete failure. Some of us have enough food—enough of it for all purposes. If you are wealthy enough there is a shop in the Champs Elysees, in Paris, which will bathe your dog for you—in milk (Sunday Express, 15.7.1951). And from the same paper (1.7.1951) we learn that the beauty experts in New York have thought up a new facial to take the wrinkles out of rich women’s faces. Its ingredients? Eggs, milk and strawberries.

* * *

Sleight of Tongue

When we see an expert at work in any field it is difficult to withhold our admiration. Let us therefore give his due mead of praise to Mr. Churchill, who surely can have few peers in the work of improving on the facts for purposes of propaganda.

On July 14th, Mr. Horner, the national secretary of the Mineworkers’ Union, said in a speech at Morpeth that "if a Tory government is returned, it is certain that there will be a national strike of the miners, following the measures which such a Tory government propose to take to deal with the mining situation.” If the experience of the inter-war years counts for anything at all, this statement is so self-obvious as to border on being a truism. If a Tory government is returned, it is likely that ultimately the miners will be driven to resist mining measures by going on strike. Up to the present, indeed, one of the most valuable services performed by the Labour Government for the capitalist class has been to keep the strikes and disruption in this most important of industries down to a far lower level than after the first world war.

* * *

Masterstroke

Now Horner’s statement is a clear warning about the certainty of industrial disturbances in the coalmines under a Tory government Mr. Churchill, however, calls this warning "threats” and "shameful menaces.” More: he multiplies the scope of the warning by more than ten. He says (Sunday Express, 22.7.1951): “But now the Communist Horner has stepped outside the sphere of industrial disputes, and threatens the whole british democracy with a national strike to bring the country down if they dare express their opinion and wishes at the polls.” This is a masterstroke. By leaving three words out of the original phrase, “a national strike of the miners,” he extends the "threat” which he alleges has been uttered from one concerning fewer than 700,000 miners to one concerning more than ten times that number of organised workers.

A man of such abilities should be capable of retaining his place indefinitely at the head of the Conservative Party.

* * *

Free from Financial Worries

The Daily Express (20.7.1951) is calling for some wage increases. The subjects of its concern are the High Court judges, who only get £5,000 a year. When their salary was fixed, it says, it was “considered big enough to keep them free from financial worries which might impede their judgment.” Now, it seems, it no longer is.

No doubt it’s a good thing for judges to be free from financial worries. If this is the only criterion, however, what about, say, railway signalmen? An error in a judge’s judgment might mean a man being convicted wrongly; an error in a signalman’s judgment might mean dozens of people killed in a train smash. No doubt a judge can work better when free of financial worries; but isn't that true of all workers? The trouble is that there is only one way in which we can free all workers from financial worry; the establishment of Socialism. But that wouldn’t interest the Daily Express.

* * *

Help for the Democrats

From the Continental Daily Mail (24.7.1951): “Mr. Richard Casey, Australian External Affairs Minister, said to-day that 'solidarity among the democratic nations is necessary to cope with Communism’s onslaught.’” Mr. Casey was speaking in Indonesia, and he said that "Australia had offered any possible neighbourly assistance in technical, educational and other fields." Some more neighbourly assistance now reaching this particularly democratic nation from Hitler’s old finance minister, Dr. Schacht, who has been specially invited out by the Indonesian Government. It is not so long since our reformists were rejoicing over the replacement in Indonesia of a Dutch ruling class by a native one. But it seems that the Indonesian capitalists are also running up against problems, and they show no mote fastidiousness about the quarters from which they receive help than do their brother-capitalists elsewhere.

* * *

Simply and Informally

“Princess Elizabeth wants to travel ‘as simply and informally as possible’ when she sails for Canada with the Duke of Edinburgh on September 25th in the C.P.R. liner ‘Empress of France.’ Shipping officials have been told that this is her wish." (Sunday Express, 29.7.1951.) So there is going to be no fuss at all. Well, hardly any.

The royal apartments on board are to be four inter-communicating state-rooms “on the sun-trap port side of ‘A’ deck.” “Upper Pullman berths in the cabins are to be stripped out. New fitted carpets will be laid. Special bulkheads will be erected across a companion way to ensure greater privacy. One of the cabins will be converted into a private lounge-dining room.”

It looks as if the royal couple are going to have almost as ascetic a time on board as they do at home.

Alwyn Edgar

About Books (1954)

Book Review from the April 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1952 Victor Gollancz, Ltd., published that excellent book by Josué de Castro, “The Geography of Hunger.” In the early chapters Mr. de Castro points out that, although there have been innumerable books on the subject of war, that other great human tragedy, hunger, has seldom called forth a book. He lists for us the few books on the subject; the novels “Hunger” by Hamsun and “The Grapes of Wrath” by Steinbeck; Istrati describing his experiences in Rumania, George Fink in the suburbs of Berlin, and Felekov and Neverov describing hunger in Russia. That is Mr. de Castro’s complete catalogue.

There is now another, a most excellently written book, that can be added to the list. "The People of the Deer” by Farley Mowat, published by Michael Joseph in 1952 at 15s., with drawings by S. Bryant and maps.

Farley Mowat developed what he terms “the disease of the arctic,” which is a longing to spend his time in the wide open spaces of the Canadian North West Territory. He learned of a little-known group of Eskimos who occupied the inland somewhere west of Hudson Bay and he decided to find them. Others had set out on a similar expedition before him and had perished in “The Barrens,” that terrifying territory north of the Canadian timber line and west of the Hudson.

Mr. Mowat made his first trip alone, contacting an old trader who had hung on in the inland country and getting to know the few remaining Eskimos of the Ihalmiut people. After a brief interval of a few months back in Southern Canada, Mr. Mowat returned to the Ihalmiut Eskimos in 1948 with a student of zoology, a Mr. Andrew Lawrie, as his companion. He set to work to learn the language and to study the history and customs of these people.

The story of these northern people is a tragedy. It tells of a once comparatively numerous people reduced by 1951 to about forty individuals. Mr. Mowat tells how, winter after winter, during the past fifty or sixty years, the ranks of these lovable folk have been decimated by starvation and disease—starvation and disease that was unknown till white men in search of profits probed their way into the northern lands.

These people live entirely by the caribou: they eat it, clothe themselves from its skin and build their lives around it and its habits. For generations they have hunted it for its meat, its fat, its bone, its horn, its hide and its fur. Without it they die, but in the days when the vast herds of these deer roamed their land there was little fear of dying from that cause.

The Ihalmiut have few possessions but no man claims exclusive ownership of even the tools of his own creation. Their tools, weapons and boats are the work of skilled craftsmen and they were once wonderful hunters. They hunted the caribou, killing just enough to supply their requirements.

Then came the white man in search of furs. The Eskimos were contacted and offered rifles, ammunition, kettles, tobacco and a variety of knick-knacks in exchange for furs. They gave up hunting the caribou in favour of the white fox, they laid aside their spears in favour of rifles, they gave up their deer meat in favour of white flour and tinned food. Things went well for years. Then the 1914-1918 war killed the fur market. The traders withdrew from their northerly stations and when the Eskimos trekked south with their furs they found the traders’ huts empty. They couldn’t understand it. They waited thinking the white man must come back, he still must need the furs.

When the worst of the winter weather was on them the Eskimos had plenty of furs but no ammunition for their rifles. They had lost the art of their primitive form of hunting. They had reduced their resistance to the cold by eating food of the white men instead of deer meat and fat. They had contracted white men’s diseases and they died by the hundred.

This story was repeated between the wars. When the fur trade boomed the traders went north with the weapons and gew-jaws to exchange with the simple people who were prepared to obey their every wish. When trade slumped, without warning the traders left and the Eskimos died. This is a sorry story of the effect of capitalism when it comes in contact with primitive people. The rifle and the demand for furs urged the eskimos to kill in excess of their living needs and the hordes of caribou have become as decimated as the people themselves. The caribou is in danger of passing away like the buffalo of the American plains.

If there are any of these people left in 1954, and if they are ever rescued from their plight, the solution of capitalism will be to either provide charity or to use them to work to produce wealth for exploiters. If it is a matter of helping them to re-adapt themselves to their environment, and there is no profit to be made in the process—well, maybe some charitable organisation will lend a hand. Or, more likely, as Mr. Mowat indignantly tells us, excuses will be made for doing nothing about them.

In addition to presenting us with this interesting sociological work Mr. Mowat is a first class author and his writing makes his book enthralling. He has neglected no aspect of study of the Ihalmiut people and he kept our noses glued to the pages of his book till we reached page 316 and the final word.

W. Waters.

Hunger! (1923)

From the June 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Mr. Jones-Brown, the senior partner of Messrs. Miller & Company, I knew myself, for after I wrote ‘The Wake of the Sun,’ it was read by Glass and sold to them for fifty pounds. When this bargain was finally struck, Mr. Jones-Brown said to me : “Now, Mr. H., as the business is all done, would you mind telling me quite frankly to what extent this book of yours is true?” I replied : “It is as true in every detail as it can possibly be.” “Then you mean to say,” he asked, “that you actually did starve as you relate?” I said : “Certainly, I did, and I might have made it a deal blacker if I had chosen.” He fell into a momentary silent reverie, and shaking his head, murmured : “Ah, hunger is a dreadful thing; I once went without dinner myself !”

Morley Roberts

Free Meals (2020)

 From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why not free meals for all?

That free meals for children during school breaks was ever an issue is surely a brazen example of the iniquities of capitalism.

The story ran like some synopsis for an updated staging of the musical ‘Oliver’, only it isn’t fiction. Why is it that the sixth largest economy in the world, that has borrowed, and will continue to borrow, many billions of Covid pounds, jibs at a few relatively measly millions to feed children plunged into poverty through no agency of their own?

A more pertinent question is, why should a resource that’s as vital to life as air be rationed by the ability to pay? A society that is struggling with the present pandemic to keep people breathing would not tolerate a system denying oxygen to those without the requisite bank balance.

Yet that is the logic of capitalism. Children, many of key workers on pathetically low pay who daily put themselves at risk of infection, are at the mercy of a squabble between national and local governments as to who will provide a meal a day for them.

The logic of socialism is that food will be available to freely supply the needs of everyone, adult or child. As it will be for all necessities of life. People will take what they need because they won’t have to take or hoard more, just in case. After all no one deliberately tries to breath in more air than they need.

Such will be the outcome of socially organising production to satisfy self-determined needs, rather than the capitalist need to satisfy profit taking and the restrictions on access this necessarily entails. Surprise, surprise, this option is not being promulgated in any of the media coverage of children and their inconvenient urge to eat between term times.

Voice From The Back: Keep It In The Family (2005)

The Voice From The Back column from the September 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keep It In The Family

The Make Poverty History movement has been taken seriously by at least one member of the African capitalist class.

“Most of his country’s citizens survive on less than 60p a day, but that has not stopped the son of the President of Equatorial Guinea spending nearly £1 million on three luxury cars during a massive shopping spree in South Africa. Teodorin Nguema Obiang, the Minister of Forestry, Environment and Housing in his Father’s Government, bought a black Bentley Arnage and a cream Bentley Mulliner worth £600,000 last weekend. He then added a white six-litre Lamborghini worth £275,000 to his new fleet, according to The Star newspaper.” The Times (21 July). Mr

Obiang’s family have made poverty history – for their family at any rate. But what about the working class in that country – 60p a day? We might earn about £60 a day but the capitalist class in Britain enjoy the same class differences. How many of you spend a million pounds on a shopping spree?

An Honest Ambassador

President Bush took the unprecedented step of appointing the US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton during a recess of the US Senate. He deemed this necessary because of an opposition easy to understand when you consider Bolton’s contempt for the UN. “In 1994, during a convention in New York, Mr Bolton declared:

  ‘There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interests and who can get others to go along.’” He also said: “The only question for the United States is what’s in our interest. And if you don’t like that, I’m sorry, but that is a fact.” The Times (2 August) 

There is nothing remarkable about this. It correctly sums up the US position in world politics, but what the Senate object to is the honesty with which they are expressed. Politicians are never fond of honesty, it sets a dangerous precedent!

Wage Slaves

A common objection to socialism is that people are too lazy and wouldn’t work thus making socialism impossible. This “lazy man” objection to a new society doesn’t seem to square with the findings of a report prepared by the office supplier Esselte. “Nearly a third of British wage slaves work more than 50 hours a week; 4 per cent more than 70 hours; and more than a third take work home according to a survey of 2,611 people.” The Times (4 August)

Good News From Uganda

Amidst all the despair about world poverty we have managed to discover from the letter page of an African newspaper some good news. “About two thirds of the world’s population are hungry, while millions die from starvation every year. Why in a world of potential plenty, is so elementary a human need as food neglected? … The law that governs everywhere is “no profit, no production”. Uganda Observer (4 August) Yes, even in so-called backward Africa, workers are learning that capitalism causes poverty.

A Bleak Future

Despite the well-meaning activities of the Make Poverty History campaign and various promises from G8 the future looks grim for the poor in Africa. “The proportion of malnourished people in sub-Sahara Africa has remained at about 35% since 1970, the International Food Policy Research Institute said. But population growth means the number affected rose to 200 million by 2001. … It warns that the number of malnourished children could grow from 38.6 million now to 41.9 million by 2025.” BBC News (12 August) Well meaning charities are not the answer to this horrendous social problem. As the socialist letter writer to the Uganda Observer noted “the law that governs everywhere is no profit no production”.

What is your view?

We are socialists and obviously we detest a society where people are forced to lie and cheat in order to survive, but what about successful liars and cheaters who have done well inside capitalism? Here is the PR Guru Max Clifford who has made millions lying and cheating. “Do I say, No, my client isn’t gay when I know that he is? Of course. Does telling the truth matter? If it’s showbiz…rock’n’roll … then absolutely not.” The Times (16 August) It isn’t just show business though, here is Sir Harvey Jones a former chief executive of ICI commenting on modern capitalism – “Business is getting more corrupt. It is less a calling, less a profession. The stock market … has purely become a gambling den. The Times (15 August) These people have benefited from capitalism and yet can see how corrupt it is. You haven’t benefited at all, so why do you support it?

A Christmas Carol. (1922)

From the January 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again we have been treated to the customary sentimental piffle in the press regarding what is known as the festive season. The Daily News has made for us the round of the pulpits, so that our hearts may be made strong and our spirits raised to face the coming year. But, alas ! there is always a fly in the ointment; and though the D.N. has done it's best it could not avoid mentioning unemployment. But stoutly ignoring the other 364 days, it gleefully informs us that "for the first time there was no need for anyone to be hungry on Christmas Day." If we ask, Is there any need for anyone to be hungry on, say, the 2nd of April, we shall be told we are extremists and disturbers of the social peace !

Nevertheless, we do ask it; and since the D.N. will not answer us we will address our query to you. When you drew your savings from the slate club on Christmas Eve, did you bother to think that you have no guarantee that you will not be hungry on the 2nd of April? For our part, we should think that the hard-earned turkey on Christmas Day and no other day would be one of the most cogent reasons for discontent. We do not insist that life is most happily spent in eating turkey and Christmas pudding each day of the year, but with no desire to hurt the feelings and heartfulness (poet's license, and be careful of the "H," Mr. Printer) of the D.N., we cannot see that there is any cause for congratulation in the fact that everybody had one meal for keeps in 1921. Mind you, we are not making too scathing a criticism, we are resolutely dismissing from our memory the poor wretch we met this morning who had subsisted on Christmas Day on little more than a crust of bread. We will not let creep into our minds the image of the thousands whom we know have not the wherewithal to eat nor to sleep at Christmas time, nor, indeed, at any other time.

If, however, we must justify our existence by acting the "skeleton at the feast," we will respectfully inform the D.N. that not only is their statement a lie, but that it is an insult. And that, we think, all things considered, is just about as politely as we dare put it.

S.

Editorial: Capitalism's Dark Hour. (1920)

Editorial from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

We used to hear much more than we do now about the awful prospects that awaited the peoples of the world in the event of their deciding to substitute Socialism for capitalism. Not only were we to wade to our goal through a sea of blood, but we were to find, when we reached our Land of Promise, that instead of being a land flowing with milk and honey, it was a stoney and sterile desert. Famine and rape would stalk the land; anarchy and chaos would overwhelm humanity; rain and destruction would embrace all—all except the capitalists, departed per Cooks, with their capital (per Pickford) to “Wangaloo, in unpacific seas.”

Talk of that kind is not very fashionable just now—not that Socialism is any more attractive to those who used to indulge in such vapourings, but they are rather afraid to throw stones for very obvious reasons.

However, if our opponents dare not talk of such things that is no reason why we should be deterred, while on the other hand there are good reasons for reminding our fellow wage slaves of the hypocritical taunts that our capitalist enemies have not the impudence to use just at present.

We are moved to these remarks by the awful spectacle of human misery which capitalism in her very prime offers to our eyes. For some days there has appeared in orthodox Press a most agonising appeal for funds to relieve the starving multitudes of what are now called the famine areas of Europe. In this appeal the Statement is made that FIVE MILLION children are in danger of starvation, and we read this tragic announcement:

  “News is just to hand that only those children between three and five can be helped; the mites under three must be abandoned to starvation, for there will not be enough food to go round if these are included.” 

and it is commented, “It has been necessary deliberately to select which children shall be saved and which must be left to die.”

Those who have with such cool effrontery declared that Socialism could not feed her populations have here something to think about. The present system, with all its wonderfully fertile means of production, is helpless to prevent catastrophes of such dimensions of horror as no act of nature within human knowledge has ever equalled—nay, it is not merely that it is unable to prevent them: it produces them.

How utterly helpless the system is to cope with its own products is vividly shown by two other statements in the heart-rending appeal. “Our docks are choked with food," it says. “Food is ready, clothing is ready.” That is the first statement. “I am convinced that Central Europe is in danger of a famine that may involve all nations in a common ruin,” Dr. Arthur Guttery is reported to have stated. So, though there are ample means at hand to save these starving people, and though their misery is the concern of all other nations inasmuch as it is a standing menace of disaster, even to ruin, to all other nations, because those means are the property of the few instead of being the property of society, nothing can be done. Here the accumulated stocks of mutton cause the Government embarrassment, so that they are compelled to lower the price in order to induce people to eat more freely of it; there men, women and children are dying in thousands, and threatening to scourge the world with epidemic, for want of that very surplus mutton—yet this accursed system has no other solution to the problem than private charity, which really is no solution at all.

There is another side to the question which should disturb the complacency of those who regard themselves as so detached from this great tragedy as to be not greatly concerned. Only three short years ago it needed but a slight turning of the fortunes of war to have brought this awful calamity upon the mothers and fathers and children of this land. And more, it may yet be the experience of those now living in this country to find their food supply cut off by foreign powers. A comparatively weak naval force, operating in the wide ocean spaces, could do it, and capitalism shows itself capable, in the struggle for markets, of condemning rival nations to death.

Rear View: Help! (2019)

The Rear View Column from the January 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Help!

Last year Save the Children issued an emergency alert: ‘In war-torn Yemen, 85,000 children may have died from starvation since start of crisis. Families are forced to choose between food and other necessities, like water and medicine. 13 million people face starvation – many of them children. Please help.’ Nobody can fail to be moved by the pictures and accounts of the latest group of people starving unnecessarily. It really is an obscene crime against humanity that people should be dying of starvation in a world which is not only capable of producing enough to feed everybody but even has enough food stockpiled to stop it straightaway. Help comes with understanding: food, like every other commodity in the modern world, is produced primarily for profit, as this headline from Asia Times (31 October) attests: ‘In Yemen, plenty of food but few have the cash to buy it’. And: ‘While agriculture and food distribution suffer from the war, food remains available in markets across the country — but few can afford it. “All kinds of food and other items are available in the market. The problem is not a shortage of food in markets but that we do not have money to buy food that is now expensive,” Sofi said’ (Middle East Eye, 9 November).

Want

Such analysis by two mainstream media outlets puts that of the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International to shame. An article titled ‘At least 85,000 child deaths in Yemen highlight Saudi-US war crimes’ (wsws.org, 23 November) blames American imperialism and fails to mention that those with money in Yemen can, and do, have access to food as well as medicine. To be sure, Yemen being the battlefield for one of capitalism’s endemic wars complicates matters — and whenever war breaks out it is our class which suffers the most — but famines only affect those whose access to money or land has collapsed for some reason. Famines are a social not a natural phenomenon.

War

Wars are never fought in our interests. War often results when conflicts of interest between states over markets, sources of raw materials, energy supplies, trade routes, exploitable populations and areas of strategic importance cannot be resolved by other means. The article ‘Yemen Genocide About Oil Control’ (globalresearch.ca, 20 November) supports this view. ‘Yemen is a strategically key geopolitical stretch of land at the critical connecting point of the Red Sea which links to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean. It’s the site of one of the world’s most strategic shipping choke points, the Bab el Mandab, a narrow passage a mere 18 miles distance from Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, making it one of the US Department of Energy’s Oil Transit Chokepoints. According to the US Department of Energy an estimated 4.7 million barrels of oil passes through Bab el Mandab in both directions daily, including oil bound for China.’ The same article concludes: ‘[Prince Mohammed bin] Salman not surprisingly claimed it was a war of Iran-led “imperialists” against the forces of Saudi-led “freedom-loving” Sunnis. China now has its first overseas military base across from Yemen in Djibouti, next door to the US whose Camp Lemonnier is the largest American permanent military base in Africa. Former colonial occupier France is also there. There is far more at stake in Yemen than we are being told.’

Peace?

When some semblance of peace is restored and the strategic port of Hodeidah is once again open for business, any food aid which arrives will likely be calculated using capitalism’s calculus. Protecting the market for food in Yemen is in fact a key factor shaping the so-called ‘food aid’ policies of governments and the UN. They know that to make available for free distribution anything but minimal amounts of food per starving person would be to undermine local markets and local market-oriented production, leading to more people coming to lose their access rights to food. And of course they are right. Given the market system this is exactly what would happen. So, quite apart from financial cost considerations, they deliberately limit the amount of free food they supply. Market forces will likely prevent the immediate starvation in Yemen being solved in the way that it would be, almost literally overnight, in a sane society, one that would have to be based on the common ownership of resources: transporting the food from the warehouses of Europe to the towns and villages of the former country of Yemen.

Abundance and Poverty (1961)

From the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some time ago, under the above caption, the now defunct News Chronicle, in a leading article, asked “is it really beyond the wit of man to devise a means of sharing out more fairly the world's bounty?" This was by no means the first challenge to society to meet the paradox of want in the midst of plenty, and the report that to-day, in Toronto, thousands of children are starving, provides ample evidence that the challenge has not been met

The statement comes from Dr. Morris Zeidman, a Presbyterian minister who runs the Scott Mission, which has “opened its doors to feed the hungry children of the city’s unemployed.” Referring to a woman who could not drink the soup provided, a mission worker said, “Some of these people have been subsisting on so little that they now find it hard to stomach ordinary food ” (The Guardian 10/3/61).

Is this, we may ask, part of the heritage of freedom for which members of the working class fought and died in two of the bloodiest wars in history? Must people go without the basic essentials of life at a time when productivity has increased to heights never known before? When man was the slave of nature, shortage and want could be explained in something like intelligent terms, but to-day, when his productive capacities are virtually unlimited, he must find some other answer.

Thirteen years ago, Lord Boyd Orr, then Director-General of the World Food and Agriculture Organisation, could say “There was no difficulty about producing food for the present population of the world, or even twice that number, but the problem was, could politics and economics arrange that the food that was produced was dispersed in the countries that needed it?’’. Seven years later, the Oxford economist, Mr. Colin Clark, remarked that in two years no authority had disagreed with Professor Dudley Stamp, who pointed out that if Danish agricultural standards were to be practised on the available cultivable land, there would be enough food produced to give an excellent diet to probably seven times the world’s present population.

What Lord Boyd Orr and Mr. Colin Clark failed to recognise, or at least make no mention of, is the fact that however capable man may be of producing wealth, it is ultimately the question of ownership which decides whether or not he will partake of that wealth. Food, like every other commodity in our modern world, is produced primarily for profit, and the fact that it eventually may satisfy hungry children in Toronto or elsewhere is incidental and of secondary importance.

The answer to the News Chronicle’s question will not be found in the speeches of politicians and economists; if it could, the question would not be asked after a century of Parliamentary Statutes and fact-finding Commissions, designed to reform capitalist society in the interest of those who make it tick.

A. F.

"The Hell of Steyr". (1932)

From the February 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

(From an Austrian Correspondent.)
The name of Steyr is unfamiliar in England. Steyr is an Austrian town in which motor-cars are manufactured, Detroit on a smaller scale, and it is significant that the appearance of an article in the Detroit Free Press on the conditions of the workers in the American auto-industry should have almost coincided with the publication in a Vienna paper of a report under the above heading from their correspondent in the Austrian city of motor-cars. The workers of Steyr, like those of Detroit, are a law-abiding, industrious, hard-working lot, but under capitalism these virtues do not guarantee either sustenance or security to the workers. As one of our speakers, now dead, used to put it to his audiences when analysing the effects of the capitalist system: “It comes to this,” he used to say, “the better you are and the harder you work, the worse it is for you in the end.” Steyr as well as Detroit have proved the truth of this assertion. The workers there have attained an extraordinary degree of efficiency in motor-car making with the result that within a relatively short time all the markets were glutted and work had to be suspended. Under capitalism, increased efficiency has the consequence that while the companies have amassed huge fortunes for themselves, the workers’ lot has gone from bad to worse until it has, on the masters’ own showing, become a veritable hell!

The Vienna newspaper, “Sonn-und Montagszeitung, ” in its issue for January 4th has a long report from its representative who made a special visit to Steyr. The newspaper writes:—

  “One has been quite accustomed to the daily desperate calls for help coming now from this, now from the other working class quarter, but the signal of alarm, 'A City Dying of Starvation,’ makes one look up. It comes from the second largest city of Upper Austria. The Mayor of Steyr at the last meeting informed the city council that of the 22,000 inhabitants about 11,000 are without any income whatever, that 90 per cent. of all the children are underfed and that a large proportion of the population are simply compelled to go begging. The correspondent says that one must have been in Steyr to realise what is concealed behind these figures. 11,000 tragedies in one small city which has become a city of beggars. You are accosted at every street corner by swarms of children—tiny, pale creatures in thin rags and torn shoes who surround the passing stranger with outstretched hands, wailing and imploring. They enter the shops begging for money or something to eat. And there are also young people and old women. In the Municipal poor house there are 328 aged people who now have to go out into the streets too, once a week, to supplement their scant rations by begging. And so do the inmates of other municipal institutions. Friday is the principal day set down for general begging and thousands of people go begging on that day in Steyr. 

Beds Without Bedding.    

“The greater part of the unemployed, and those who are no longer in receipt of the dole, do not live in houses, but in wooden barracks. The conditions there are described as simply appalling. Twelve persons were found to live in one room with three beds without bedding, which had all been sold long ago. All sleep on straw, the wife and the husband and 10 children. They eke out their existence between the four wet walls, the inevitable clothes line drawn across the room with wet clothing. The big boys and girls sleep side by side and next to the parents, with two little children in one bed, without bedding. They sleep as long as possible in order to suppress the pangs of hunger, many also have no shoes. On New Year’s night a woman was confined in a room of the barracks in the presence of her four other children. In another barracks a woman with two children tried to take her 'life'; she had been dismissed from the works two days previously and was not entitled to the dole, so she took prussic acid. Other families live in what were formerly stables. A canal with stagnant water runs outside and the barracks are infested with rats and mice. 

Dogs For Dinner.    

"Here and there in the barracks the correspondent saw remnants of what used to be toys, but the children, he says, do not play. They are hungry and cold. Also they have lost their favourite playmates—the dogs. Formerly there were hundreds, but they have nearly all disappeared within a year, in Steyr. Nobody will openly say what has become of them, but everybody knows that in this city of starvation the dogs have been killed and eaten. 

Children Condemned To Death.    

"The Municipality, a bankrupt municipality, has the care of 1,100 children who have lost their father or whose parents are divorced. ‘The state of health of the population is simply alarming,' said Dr. Pitniskern. 'In a year I have treated 5,000 patients free of charge. Consumption plays havoc in the town. The children are nearly all ill; at least 90 per cent. are underfed; at school examinations I find only skeletons. No flesh, no blood, only skin and bones, and when asked, it is invariably the same answer: nothing to eat. I treat many children who have not seen any meat for months. A boy in the first class did not know what meat looks like, he had never eaten any.’ 

“It goes without saying that under such conditions a normal school service has become impossible. The dilapidated school rooms serve as mere places in which to keep warm. Half of the children cannot attend for lack of shoes, others have only torn ones and insufficient clothes. 

“The Works now employ only 1,700 people, whereas more than 15,000 are dependent on work there. Another 300 were about to be dismissed. ‘With the dole,’ the correspondent says, they will be ‘alright' for a time. They are envied by those who are no longer in receipt of any benefit and only get 42 groschen (4½d.) per day poor relief—42 groschen!

   "366 persons are daily given a meal in the canteen of the Steyr Works. A thousand present themselves every day, but there are only 366 soups, the daily portion, consisting of cabbage and a piece of bread; sometimes they get a piece of meat. The correspondent describes how he watched an old worker eating but half of the contents of his basin, food that would barely have sufficed a child. When asked, he replied that the other half was to be taken home. ‘How many are there at home?' asked the correspondent. ‘Wife and three children,’ was the answer, and he pressed the basin closer to himself and sought to get away; others barred him the way, begging of him, begging of the beggar! 

“This is what the tourist guide book says about the picturesquely situated city of Steyr: 'A lovely place on the meeting place of the River Steyr with the River Enns, with 22,000 inhabitants, tall chimneys and a Gothic church,  to which the correspondent added: 'with 11,000 beggars, with 15,000 starving, with 18,000 persons destitute, tall chimneys that have not smoked for years, chimneys of idle factories. The industrial city of Steyr has become the hell of Steyr, an Austrian 'devil’s island ’ of decent, honest men, ready and willing to work.”

The paper added, of course, the usual appeal to its readers for help, though it confessed at the same time that charity is no solution. The editor did not give a remedy, but there are, of course, numerous political parties and crowds of professional politicians, chiefly coming from the so-called "intellectuals,” always ready with "remedies ” and “ reforms,” with "demands” and programmes supposed to cope with economic ills, and generally pretending to represent the interests of the workers. Every one of these remedies has been found to be a fraud, a farce and a delusion, while some of them have turned out to be worse than the disease.

Socialism the Only Remedy

There is ONE remedy for all the evils of working class existence, and ONE only— it is the solution which the science of Marx and Engels made plain, but which it does not pay the “leaders of labour ” to propagate. For that task the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties in other countries have been established. We insist that these evils are all part and parcel of, and inseparable from, the present social order—capitalism—a system of society in which the means of wealth production are owned and controlled by a small section, on whom the mass of the people are dependent. These evils will persist and glow unless and until the working class, organised in the Socialist Parties, make an end to private ownership, so that no individual will be dependent on another private individual for his material subsistence. Under Socialism, such absurdities as poverty in the midst of plenty, which is the outstanding feature of capitalism, will be unthinkable, because society will produce all human comforts and conveniences for USE only and not for profit. The product of men’s hands will then cease to play tricks with them, and the further improvement of machinery, which spells wreck and ruin to the workers to-day, will then only increase the real well-being of all. We insist that no proposition can be sound and worthy of working-class support that respects the present social order and does not aim at the destruction of a system that deprives millions of people of a chance of earning a living, that humiliates and degrades, and drives thousands to despair and suicide. Any proposition that does not establish equal right for all to the means of life, deserves nothing but the contempt of the workers.

The workers of Steyr and of Vienna have had an object-lesson which should open their eyes. Putting their trust in leaders—who are the curse of working-class organisations —they elected a majority of Social-Democrats to the two city councils, with the result that after 12 years of such administration Steyr is now “a city dying of starvation,” while Vienna—a city of under 2 million inhabitants—has the dreary record figure of over 120,000 unemployed, over 3,000 suicides in the past year, and more beggars than ever before.

Workers of the world! It is high time to bestir yourselves! Rid yourselves of your illusions and of your leaders! Join our ranks and so leave your mark to posterity as men and women of whom they will be able to say that you assisted in the great task of ridding the Earth from the fangs of the monster incubus of capital!

Rudolf Frank

How To Save The Children. (1920)

From the June 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anomalous as it may sound, Sentiment and Cruelty are very closely akin, and although we may perhaps give our short-sighted humanitarians credit for a real desire to alleviate the sufferings of the babies of Central Europe we cannot but recognise that their charity in its present form tends only to prolong the sufferings of the wage-workers' children all the world over. The root cause of the problem of starving Europe is the ownership of the means of wealth production by one small section of society. There is no shortage of food actually. Nature has not failed us. But the promoters of the “Save the Children” movement do not understand this.: Their notions are capitalist notions. To them all is well with the world except that five million little Austrians are in danger of a terrible death. But bate they never walked, say for instance, through a Lancashire industrial centre? There they would see children distorted in limbs, stunted in growth, faces and eyes eaten by disease, and covered with grime and dirt Capitalism chains their mothers to toil throughout the long day with the result that the children go neglected. In some places it is the custom for one of the elder children to bring the latest unweaned baby to the factory gates at certain stipulated hours so that the mother may leave her work for a short while to suckle it. Under capitalism the children of the workers are but potential wage-slaves. Their happiness does not count. It is nothing new to us to learn that same children somewhere are being starved to death. In New York, London, Paris, Rome, in fact, everywhere where capitalism exists children are starved and will continue to starve.

Our leading article last month pointed out the failure of capitalism to solve the problem of starvation. There is, therefore, only one method left. That is the Socialist method—the abolition of capitalism. Send all the foodships you may and you but abrogate the misery of but an infinitesimal number of those who suffer. And what is more, the position must worsen as capitalism reaches its final stage of development. The sooner you realise that the sooner will you desire to end it. Does it need those heart-rending photographs we have been seeing lately, of children, emaciated and twisted beyond recognition with rickets, to bring home to you the rottenness and vile inhumanity of the system you tolerate? Do you plead ignorance of the misery and squalor that must confront you every day of your lives? We cannot believe that. All the world knows that Queen Alexandra has got something in her eye or that President Deschanel fell out of the train in his pyjamas. Why, then, does not all the world display an equal interest in the wrongs that little children, and their parents, are subjected to in every part of the globe?

Thus we tell you that we are the only ones that can save the starving children, and we cannot do that without your support. Your charitable ladies of a generation hence will be appealing for starving babies to be fed, just an they are to-day, just as they were a generation ago.

If, therefore, it hurts you to see babies die a terrible death; if it even hurts you to see them live terrible lives, your duty is plain. That is to wipe out the system which is responsible and to establish in its place a system that will mean security of life for the individual from the cradle to the grave.

And if you must contribute to a fund for starving children, that fund and the only really effective fund is the Socialist Party’s £1,000 Fund.

Stanley H. Steele