Are the Workers Getting Worse Off? (1937)

From the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent from U.S,.A. writes: “In discussion, many workers maintain that the condition of the working class is getting worse all the time. They say the ratio which the workers receive in values contrasted with what the capitalists receive in values becomes less and less as capitalism develops, i.e., the workers’ share of new value always grows less. This contention meets with a difficulty. Let us assume that 75 years ago the workers received half of what they produced, and that to-day they receive one-fifth. It is obvious that they are more intensely exploited. On the other hand, it is undeniable that to-day the workers receive more actual goods than they did 75 years ago, i.e., their real wages have gone up. In short, as capitalism develops, the workers are more intensely exploited at the same time that their real wages are increasing. In view of this fact, how can we say that the condition of the working class is getting worse all the time? By saying this, we imply that the workers are getting less and less material benefits, whereas in actuality the reverse is true."

The first point which emerges is that it is not good enough simply to say that the workers are “worse off" or “better off." It depends what you are comparing. As our comrade points out, the workers might be better off in the sense that they have a higher standard of living than formerly, but worse off in the sense that they get a smaller proportion of the wealth produced. We get a smaller fraction of the loaf, but a bigger piece of bread, because the loaf is much bigger.

There is no contradiction in this. The worker must have a rather larger slice of bread if he is to go on producing a much bigger loaf. Intensified exploitation not only takes more energy out of the worker but also requires more skill and knowledge. It is true that mechanisation, rationalisation, and so on, often tend to reduce the skilled craftsman to a machine minder or repetition worker. But machines which abolish skill require skill to produce; rationalisation requires brains to think the schemes out and operate them; large-scale production, keener competition, urbanisation, trustification and trade unionism, government and local government legislation—acting and reacting upon one another—progressively increase the complexity of the whole social organisation of which this large-scale production is the heart. Education Acts, Public Health Acts, Insurance Acts, are required to prevent deterioration and to produce a cleverer and fitter worker to run a mightier and more intricate system.

There is no doubt that at least the lower grades of the workers are fitter than they were 75 years ago. The incidence of the more outrageous diseases of gross malnutrition, such as infantile rickets, has been halved and halved again. Dairy products, fresh fruit and vegetables, the rare week-end “extravagances" of the harassed housewife, become more commonplace on the kitchen table. Maternal mortality has been greatly reduced. The death rate of young children in Great Britain during the summer months is one-eighth of the corresponding rate 40 years ago. The working class are taller, heavier, and live longer. The continued outcry from medical officers of health that much preventive sickness damages industry and robs children of the benefits of the education available, is well justified, but it does not follow that the worker's health is worse or no better. It means, rather, that the authorities' conception of physical well-being improves along with the needs of the capitalists for a fitter worker to do the work required of him. Similarly, the prevailing notion of what constitutes destitution, or the bare level of subsistence, has changed. As an example, comparison may be made between the diet scales in 1826 and to-day for inmates of Chelsea Institution: —

1826.

Breakfast: Gruel or broth, 1 pint.

Dinner: Meat (three days weekly), 8 ozs.; potatoes, 12 ozs.; bread, 3£ ozs.; beer,

1 pint.

Supper: Bread, 3½ ozs.; cheese, l½ ozs.; beer, 1 pint.

1937.

Breakfast: Tea, coffee or cocoa, 1 pint; Bread, 7 ozs., or porridge, ½ pint; jam or marmalade or syrup, 1½ ozs., or corned beef or sausage or brawn, 2 ozs.

Dinner: Bread, 2 ozs.; meat (various), 4 ozs., of fish, 8 ozs.; potatoes, 6 ozs.; other vegetables (including pickles), 3 ozs.; pudding (various), 8 ozs., or raw fruit; tea, ½ pint.

Tea: Tea, 1 pint; bread, 7 ozs.; margarine, ½ oz.; jam or cheese or cake.

Supper: Tea, coffee or cocoa, ½ pint; bread and margarine, 2 ozs.; cheese or buns or biscuits.

The destitute to-day “enjoy” a standard of dining higher than that of a considerable section of regularly employed workers 75 years ago. And the workers are better off, not only in regard to basic food, clothing and shelter, but also in respect of sanitation, recreation, social amenities, “humanisation" of State relief, public manners and private decency.

There is equally no doubt that the worker is better educated. Public education, popular Press, cinema and radio, though inevitably propagandist, at least provide the bricks and mortar of critical thinking. Churches get emptier. News theatres flash world news across the screen. Even the electoral appeals of our capitalist masters have now become more refined, more factual and more sophisticated. The cynic, the soppy, the shyster, the high-waisted “tough-guy,” are insignificant elements in a working class who are mentally equal to the task of operating efficiently a social system far more complex than Socialism need be.

This rise in the standard of living, physical and mental, is necessitated by the technical requirements of capitalism itself, and in turn it helps those mental changes which will make Socialists of the workers. Capitalism gives the workers a higher standard of living—and a higher standard of indignation. They get a sniff of the good things that might be, in the same breath that the gulf between riches and poverty gets wider, industrial depressions more long-drawn out, war more fantastically ferocious, speeding up more hysterical, insecurity more widespread. The very violence of these contrasts brings them to the attention of the workers: they begin to recognise them as problems. And the same ingenuity which the capitalist requires to solve his problems of profit-making can solve the worker's own problem in the midst of plenty, and economic insecurity in the face of colossal power over nature. Whether the workers are better or worse off is a matter of definition: it is a source of inspiration for the Socialist movement that the workers are better equipped to grasp the Socialist solution to their poverty—common ownership of the means of life.

Frank Evans

Poverty or misery: a correction (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article “Poverty or Misery” in the January issue (page 5, middle of column 2) reference was made to Mr. Strachey’s unjustifiable use of a translation which gave the word “poverty” in place of the German word meaning “misery” in a passage from Marx’s Capital. This point stands, but error was made with regard to the various editions of Capital. The editions in English of Volume I. of Capital are:—

(1) The Swan Sonnenschein edition (1886) translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, is based on the 3rd German. This was the only English edition edited by Engels.

(2) The Charles Kerr edition (1906) is the same translation as the Sonnenschein, except for incorporation of additions and revisions to text made by Engels to the 4th German edition. These amendments to text were translated by Ernest Untermann. 

(3) The Allen & Unwin edition (1938) is a facsimile reprint of the Sonnenschein. The amendments made by Engels to the 4th German edition, are printed as an appendix. It is only these amendments which Dona Torr translated. 

(4) The Allen & Unwin edition (1928) in one volume was newly translated by Eden and Cedar Paul from the 4th German edition. (It was reviewed in the Socialist Standard in March, 1929). 

Later on this edition was taken over by Dents and published as two volumes in the Everyman series.

Ed. Com.

Letter: Jargon and things (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jargon and things

I am concerned to know what is the general social activity of Socialists outside party activity. When I see Socialists they seem far removed within, from the world they live in, as though they were immune from it.

Your party states that under Socialism, world common ownership of land, industry and transport, etc., all the necessities of life are produced entirely for use instead of for sale (money) and profit-making. Yet there is no mention in your Object and Declaration of Principles that there will be no money (wages etc.) under common ownership.

Why does the SPGB use complex phraseology and long-winded terminology? In many of your articles in the Socialist Standard the composition of England is what I call a jargonized English.

Why does the SPGB fail to realize that people expend less energy but consume more than 50-100 years ago? Because you say that workers are relatively worse off, does that mean you would welcome a return of conditions of 100 years ago?

Why does the Socialist Party stubbornly persist in saying that the wage-earners support capitalism because they support various reform parties such as the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Parties when they show support for capitalism by its very economic nature? Surely the voting of various reform parties is only an endorsement of support of capitalism.

Do you think of capitalism as a threat or challenge?

R. Martin 

Finsbury Park

Reply:

Round the table of the committee which produces the Socialist Standard the “general social activity” of the members includes going to work, bringing up families, playing and watching sports, going to the pictures and the circus, shopping, house-decorating, talking to friends, etc. We can’t and don’t seek to be “immune” from the everyday world. What do you do in your spare time?

Several features of the Socialist case are not specifically mentioned in our Object and Declaration of Principles. Besides the fact that Socialism will be a moneyless society, the Principles do not say we are opposed to reformism, or state our attitude on war, leadership, nationality and other questions. The Object and Principles nevertheless spell out these things. The absence of money is not something we plan as well as common ownership of the means of production and distribution, but a clear implication of common ownership.

Jargon and long-windedness are avoided in the Socialist Standard, and we have been complimented on our liveliness among political journals. It is true that some subjects cannot be expounded painlessly, and the reader must himself make some effort. That is the case with most study; we try to minimize it, but those who want to learn find the effort worth while.

Comparisons with conditions a hundred years ago are beside the point. In 1876 a house with a water- closet outside the back door represented the height of modernity; today it is considered disgracefully substandard. The proper comparison at any time is between what the working class gets and what it produces and makes possible. Today as a hundred years ago workers’ consumption is restricted to the portion of the wealth they produce that is handed back to them as wages, and this position cannot alter under capitalism.

We assume you mean that the workers consciously support capitalism only at second hand by voting for pro-capitalist parties. Certainly the majority of workers do not understand capitalism and are voting only for more houses, promises of employment, etc.; the major part of the Socialist Party’s work is making clear the nature of the social system. But without understanding, direct and indirect consent come to the same thing. A supporter of a supporter is still a prop to the system.

It is much better to understand that capitalism is a social system based on the class ownership of the means of living than to use words like “threat” and “challenge”. These belong to the realm of foggy language you say you object to.

Editors.

The Fraud of Municipal Bakeries. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reply to R. B. Suthers.

“Bread and Bunkum” is the title of an article in which Mr. R. B. Suthers draws, in the Clarion, a harrowing, soul-rending picture of the last gasp of the petty shop-keeper, particularly the master baker (perhaps the most pious, unctuous, psalm-grinding, callous sweater civilisation has produced) who is now being crushed by the newest thing in trusts—the Bread Trust.

Mr. Suthers, out of the fulness of his heart, is moved to prescribe a remedy. What is this precious remedy ? None other than municipalisation, which he imagines is Socialism. He says :

“The only question for the small baker is, ‘Am I to be abolished by the Trust or by Socialism ?’ Allow me to put the problem from a Socialist point of view. Here is a community in which bread is a necessity to life. So much bread is required every day. The question is how to make bread in the cheapest and most expeditious manner. It is plain that in a large town it would be cheaper and more efficient to have one or more large bakeries from which bread could be delivered in motor cars direct to the customers, rather than have a number of small shops with a little hand cart or slow horsed cart each overlapping the district of half-a-dozen others. Local depots might be necessary, but they need not be so numerous nor so large as under the wasteful system of to-day.”

If I thought Socialism was anything so monstrous as this glorified capitalism I would fight it for all I was worth.

I have been a victim of this Manchester god of “cheapness” and “expedition” for over twenty years, and during that time have seen many journeymen bakers broken on the wheel of “cheapness,” “expedition,” and “efficiency.” I would ask Mr. Suthers to quit for a while his beloved rate-saving, middle-class view point, and look at the matter from the position as it affects the working class, the only class that matters, or is worth consideration in any way.

Assume that the rate-savers decide to municipalise the bread supply (it won’t be decided by master bakers, Mr. Suthers) what happens ? To ensure expedition and efficiency, cheapness, and other Manchesterisms, it will be necessary to have the newest and most down-to-date machinery operated in the most scientific manner and the latest manner is this: A large bakery is erected on scientific principles, that is, the interior of the structure is divided into two bakeries, exact duplicates, each with its gear of flour sifters, sack shakers, dough mixers, dividers, moulders, provers, ovens and storing racks, with one clock for the use of both. No partition divides them, so that the gangs of nearly naked, emaciated slaves work in full view of each other, each driven by an enslaved slave-driver

.

At the stroke of the clock the two gangs begin their mad race against time and efficient, untiring machinery. An industrial policeman, called the General Foreman, who is not necessarily a baker, clad in snow white cap and overalls, Stalks majestically from gang to gang, book in hand, recording by the common clock the time each gang takes to finish its “rounds,” not that the most “expeditious” may be decorated with a “Crown of Wild Olive,” but that the laggards may be called upon to render an account of their stewardship in that capitalist hell of “cheapness, expedition, and efficiency,” and the misfits weeded out and “scrapped.” This mode of procedure brings out the tigrish instincts of the ganger, who is especially selected for his ability to drive and bully, and who is always on his trial, and can only retain his job by keeping time with his “opposite” or by running past him, consequently the “hand ” who slows down or does not hear a shouted order is “woke up” with a torrent of foul abuse and indecent oaths. The hawk-eyed “Pinkerton” looks on and makes a note. Such is a modern bakery !

In one of these efficient infernos I wot of, the most happy human machine is a big and powerful deaf mute, who works by watching the others. He never complains, nor does he hear the ganger’s live and modern English, nor “the roaring loom of time,” as typified by bread-making machinery. Yet he is sometimes pitied as being afflicted !

In a factory of this description the output per man engaged averages about twenty-two sacks of flour per week: in handicraft bakery it averages about twelve sacks. It is obvious, therefore, that as the industry becomes either trustified or municipalised, a large number of bakers will be thrown on the streets, and the market is already overcrowded with this class of merchandise, as a visit to the factory gates at 11 p.m. will testify. After that hour the poor devils who have failed to secure a night’s job may be seen tramping, Christ knows where, while their brilliantly lighted municipal trams, only half filled, glide past them. Perhaps by tramping through the slush and rain in broken boots they can meditate the better on the advantages of municipalising the trams, which Mr. Suthers with ghastly irony, told us a time ago now belongs to all the people. Mr. Suthers does not say what municipalisation will do for these, or for the “outed” master bakers, the redundant carmen, the superfluous shop-girls, millers’ travellers, shop fitters, and a host of others who will go into the ranks of the unemployed, and in the fulness of time become unemployables, wastrels with drooping lips and slouching gait, fit material for the casual ward and the lunatic asylum, if no worse fate awaits them.

Mr. Suthers, in his tender solicitude for the small master (the ever-starving journeymen seem to be an entirely negligible quantity) asks : “Will the trust buy him out ?” and answers : “No ! the trust will freeze him out.” “Will the trust,” he goes on, “find the starving shopkeepers work ? Will it ?” No, Mr. Suthers, it will not, neither will the municipality buy him out, though, certainly, he may secure a job by the influence of his co-religionists on the council. If he be a Freemason he may even become a “Pinkerton.”

Mr. Suthers concludes by asking “Why then should we not organise this business of making bread, and put an end for ever to the degrading condition and struggle for existence between rival bakeries ?” And my answer is because it would be better to eliminate all the “business” out of industry absolutely, and make bread to be eaten, not to lower rates. Municipalities go into business to make profit only, like any other capitalist concern. It does not signify whether the owners absorb the profits in the shape of “reduced prices” or lower rates. If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread the operation of the “Iron Law of Wages” will secure all the advantage for the capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on the working class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist, joint-stock enterprise, municipality or government, and with each step in concentration the working class gets relatively less and the master class gets richer, more corrupt and more bestial, as recent events in Berlin and elsewhere show.

Why should all the bread be made in factories, anyhow ? In a Socialist community the housewife would have the facilities, if she so wished, to make bread and pastries for herself, her mate and her children, and to suit their individual palates. The essence of Socialism is freedom, and if a woman prefers to develope her individuality by making pure and wholesome food she will be at liberty to do so. All healthy humans must expend their energies in some manner, and why not in cooking—who shall say them nay ?

The damnable idea of being marshalled and drilled, or numbered and docketted, like any other merchandise, in a state of glorified capitalism is not the Socialist’s ideal, but its antithesis, no matter what the capitalists and their protagonists, the pseudo-Socialists, choose to name it. We don’t want to be driven to the gate of the municipal or other factory to hustle and elbow our fellows out of the way so that we may catch the official’s eye in the mad and sordid scramble for mere belly food, for a mere animal subsistence, to be thrown on the social scrap-heap the moment we cease to be “expeditious,” there to rot out a living death, the mental agony prolonged by being kept on the brink of Kingdom Come by a “George Barnes” pension, previously deducted from our competition wage. With the advent of Socialism the whole of the capitalist State and its superstructure will collapse, with its cant of living wages, its Brotherhoods of Man, and the rest of its nauseous humbug.

Socialism will enable us to co-operate with our fellows for the production and distribution of all the necessaries and comforts of life, and to further bring under control the forces of nature for the common weal. Then and then only will the humanities have a chance. Then we shall live, stand erect and be men and women. Away with all forms of capitalism ! Speed the Social Revolution !

W. Watts

Blogger's Note:

A number of R. B. Suthers' books are available over at Archive.org.

The Proletariat (The Working Class). By Karl Kautsky (1907)

From the November 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

Specially translated for The Socialist Party of Great Britain and approved by the Author.

5. The Industrial Reserve Army.

The introduction of the labour of women and children into industry is, as we have seen, one of the most powerful means for forcing down wages.

But at times other means have an equally powerful effect: the importation of workers from localities backward in economic development, where the population have but few wants, but possess labour-power that has not yet fallen under the ban of industrial enterprise. The development of large industrial enterprise, especially of machinery, not only makes it possible to use unskilled in place of skilled workers, but also affords the opportunity of obtaining them cheaply and quickly. Development of the methods of transit proceeds hand in hand with the development of production ; transit on a large scale develops side by side with production on a large scale, transit not only of commodities but of persons. Steamships and railways, these highly praised bearers of culture, not only carry rifles, whisky, and syphilis to the Barbarians, but they also bring the Barbarians to us and with them their barbarism. The migration of agricultural labourers into the towns is assisted by this development; and from ever greater distances swarm the persevering masses, who have but few needs and little power of resistance. Slavs, Swedes, and Italians go to Germany and drag down wages; Germans, Belgians, and Italians go to France; Slavs, Germans, Italians, Irishmen and Swedes to England and the United States; Chinamen to America and Australia, and perhaps in the not too distant future they will to Europe. On German ships Chinamen and Negroes are already taking the places of white workers.

These foreign workers are, partly, expropriated small peasants and petty bourgeois, who have been ruined and driven from hearth and home by the capitalist mode of production. Gazing at the numberless crowds of imigrants we may well ask the question whether it is Socialism that thus makes them homeless and is responsible for men and women leaving their native land.

By expropriating small peasants and petty bourgeois, by importing crowds of workers from distant countries, by the development of woman- and child-labour, by shortening the term of apprenticeship (which becomes merely a period of initiation) the capitalist mode of production effects an enormous increase in the number of workers at its disposal. Hand in hand with this increase proceeds the ever growing productivity of human labour in consequence of the uninterrupted progress in technical improvements and inventions. And not alone this, but capitalist exploitation increases also the power of utilising the labour-power of the individual to the utmost degree, partly through extending the hours of labour, but also by speeding up the workers, especially in those cases where the organisation of the workers or legislation prevents the former course being pursued.

And at the same time machinery has the effect of reducing the amount of manual labour required. Every machine displaces labour ; if that were not so there would be nothing gained in having the machine. In every industry the change from manual labour to production by machinery causes the greatest suffering among the manual workers affected, who, whether they be handicraftsmen or factory workers, become redundant, and are turned into the street. It was this effect of the machine which the workers felt first of all. The numerous instances of revolt in the first decades of the nineteenth century showed the great suffering and despair which were caused by the introduction of machinery. The introduction of machinery, and every subsequent improvement thereof, is always detrimental to the interests of certain sections of the workers : sometimes, of course, other sections may benefit—as, for instance, those employed in the engineering trade. But this knowledge will hardly be a consolation to the displaced workers faced with starvation.

The effect of the introduction of every new machine is that as much as before is produced with fewer workers, or more than before with the same number of workers. If, therefore, the number of workers employed in one country is not to diminish, in consequence of the growing development of machinery, then the market must be extended in the same proportion in which the productivity of labour increases. As, however, economic development causes at the same time the quantity of labour performed by the worker to grow and the available labour-power to increase rapidly—and much more rapidly than the population—it is necessary, if unemployment is to be avoided, that the market be extended much more rapidly than in a ratio that would merely keep pace with the growing productivity of the workers owing to the introduction of machinery.

Such a rapid expansion of the market has scarcely ever taken place under the domination of capitalist industry on a large scale, certainly never for any considerable period in a large field of capitalist industry. Hence, unemployment is a permanent feature of capitalist industry on a large scale, the one being inseparable from the other. Even at brisk periods, when the market experiences important extension and trade is flourishing, industry has not room for all the unemployed. In periods of slackness, when trade is dull, their number grows immensely. They, together with the workers of the superfluous petty undertakings, form a whole army—the Industrial Reserve Army, as Marx called it—an army of labourers always at the disposal of capital, from which the latter is always able to draw its reserves as soon as the industrial struggle shows signs of becoming animated.

The reserve army is invaluable to the capitalist. It serves him as an important weapon to keep in check the army of the employed and to make them more submissive. Since the overwork of some causes the unemployment of others, the unemployment of these latter becomes the means for sustaining and intensifying the overwork of the former. And yet in face of this fact it is asserted that we are living in the best of all possible worlds!

While the expansion of the industrial reserve army fluctuates with the fluctuations of commercial life, its general tendency is to move in an upward direction; for the technical revolution proceeds ever more rapidly, extending continually to wider spheres, but the expansion of the market on tbe contrary becomes ever more limited. We shall have occasion to refer to this point again in another connection. It suffices here to have drawn attention to it.

But what does unemployment mean ? It not only means want and misery for its victims, not only intensified slavery and exploitation for those in employment, but it means also insecurity of existence for the entire working class.

Whatever the fate of those exploited under former systems of exploitation may have been, they were certain of one thing—security of livelihood. The sustenance of the slave or the serf was assured at least so long as the existence of his master was secure. Only the ruin of his master could deprive him of his security of livelihood.

The misery or want that under any former mode of production was at times experienced by the population was not the consequence of production, but a disturbance of production through bad harvests, cattle plague, floods, invasion by hostile armies, etc.

The existence of the exploiter is not bound up with that of the exploited. The worker and his wife and children can at any moment be turned into the street, with starvation staring them in the face, without causing the slightest change in the position of the exploiter who has fattened on him.

And the misery of unemployment is to-day rarely the consequence of disturbances in production through external, overpowering influences, it is now in fact the natural consequence of production itself. Disturbances in production under present conditions often increase the opportunities for work instead of lessening them: one need only call to mind the consequences of the war in 1870 to the economic life of Germany and France during the immediately succeeding years.

Under the domination of petty enterprise the income of the worker producing on his own account grew larger the more industrious he proved to be. Laziness ruined him and caused his unemployment. To-day the longer the workers work the more unemployment increases. The worker causes his unemployment by his own work. Like many another maxim from the world of petty enterprise, the one that the worker’s good fortune depends upon his being industrious has been changed to its opposite by the large capitalist enterprise. And another maxim still mouthed to-day by many a Philistine, presumably for the benefit of the worker, has become an untruth, namely, that anyone willing to work can find work.

Just as little as a small property is a sure protection against want and misery, so is possession of labour-power. While the ghost of bankruptcy is continually hovering over the peasant owner and the handicraftsman, the ghost of unemployment haunts the wage-worker all his life. This continual insecurity is, of all the evils of the present mode of production, the most tormenting, and also the most atrocious, the evil that stirs up the feeling of the worker unspeakably and scatters completely to the winds all his conservative notions. This eternal insecurity of his own position undermines his belief in the security of the existing state of things and extinguishes his interest in its retention. And he who continually dreads the existing state of things finally loses all fear for new conditions.

The capitalist mode of production brings in its train overwork, unemployment, and dissolution of the family for the working-class, and it has at the same time the effect of forcing proletarian conditions upon further sections of Society, thus visibly making these conditions the general conditions of the great mass of the population.

Blogger's Note:

It was the German SPGBer, Hans Neumann, who translated Kautsky's writings from the German into English for the Socialist Standard.

The Bakers’ Agitation. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why the Manchester strike must fail.

There is probably no “skilled” section of the working class in a more hopeless plight than the Operative Bakers. All the forces of bestialization seem to be focussed upon that unhappy craft. Withdrawn from all social intercourse with his fellows, and from home life, by the continuous nightwork system, beginning his week’s work early on Sunday evening (I have heard men sworn at for not being in soon enough to allow the boss and his family to be in time for Chapel), sweating far into the next day, he comes home exhausted, takes a fitful and feverish sleep, and repeats the process daily until Friday, when he must start several hours earlier and work several hours later in order to make bread in one night for two days. The work is not only physically exhausting, but the nervous strain is great. He sees the dough in warm weather “moving” faster than he can cope with it to keep it sweet. If the temperature suddenly falls during the night, or (as is often the case in these days of faked ingredients) the yeast deteriorates, it is “on the green side,” and he goes in fear of a “slamming” if the vans have to wait, or if the loaf has to weigh two pounds to be big enough for sale.

In the factories the hours are usually shorter, but the nervous strain is even greater. The speed is much faster and the work oftimes more laborious. The operative’s job is much less secure, at he can be discharged without notice. The wages in both cases work out at less per hour than that of the general labourer, the trade union rate, which few receive, being only 28s. per week of 60 hours for table hands. He therefore does not receive the means of subsistence for himself, a wife and family. Under such inhuman conditions it is certain that the spirit of revolt would be engendered in all those not sunk in the torpor of despair, but alas ! the operative baker’s spirit of revolt does not take definite shape. He has no money to buy books, no opportunity to confer with his.fellows ; the mental atrophy resulting from many hours of night labour in the hot, fetid atmosphere of the bakery (I have worked in an atmosphere of over 100 degrees Fah.) make him the sport of those execrable creatures, the palate-tickling, self-seeking Labour leaders.

The baker’s spirit of revolt is manifesting itself at the present time in Manchester, and there are threats of a strike unless certain demands preferred by the operatives are conceded. Let us see what a strike in the baking industry means, and why it must entail, not only the suffering incidental to every strike, but also starvation for the women and children and bitter disappointment for the operatives.

In the first place I will briefly recall the London ’89 strike as it is called, the last great strike in our industry, and which our “leaders” claimed as the most successful strike since the amalgamation of the small unions. After a long agitation the London men finally decided to come out, a manifesto was sent to the masters and copies posted on the hoardings ; and on a given date all the men handed in a copy of the union’s terms for the signature of their respective employers. If these terms were not accepted the men gave a week’s notice. Many employers gave in, and the result was that these engaged a few extra men and supplied those masters who stood out with bread for their customers in cases where a sufficiency of blacklegs could not immediately be obtained. We thus had the edifying spectacle of union men blacklegging their striking brethren. London did not lose a single day’s bread supply. The displaced operatives received strike pay for some weeks, and paraded the streets carrying “peels” draped with crepe, headed by a brass baud which played the Dead March and other sloppy sentimental drivel outside the non-union shops until the funds were exhausted, mainly through the refusal of those in work to pay strike levies, and dropping out of the union.

Meanwhile the masters were active. They immediately substituted quick-working distillers’ yeast for the old fashioned bread-sweetening but, slow-working “thick” and “compo” yeasts; the “straight” dough system was adopted in lieu of the ferment and sponge system. More machinery was introduced, factories sprang up, or were enlarged, the unemployed grew larger, with the inevitable result of longer hours and less pay for those employed. And in less than a year conditions were even worse than before, excepting in a few instances, mostly factories.

I myself, rather than submit to the conditions my pious employer tried to enforce, threw up my job and walked about for weeks looking for work, spent the accumulations of my thrift in advertising, and was finally glad to accept a job at 22s. and bed per week of upwards of 90 hours. My bed was a fifth share of a room over the flour loft, in which we cooked and smoked. One corner of the room was the office of a city gent rejoicing in the name Pierpoint & Co., and there were other occupants of the room whom we did not individualize, but referred to by the generic name of “mahogany backs.” This was six months after our “successful” strike in that year of successful strikes, 1889.

Shortly after this there occurred an incident which revealed two facts to the alert capitalist. In North London a master baker and publican was a member of the local vestry, and in his capacity as guardian of the public health, led the opposition to a builders’ sundriesman constructing lavatories in the basements of some buildings he was erecting. The sundriesman tried various ways to bring our baker “to his senses,” without avail. He then played his trump card and threatened to ruin the baker, and this is how he proceeded. He took a shut-up shop in close proximity to the baker’s, went to a local factory owner and arranged to have an unlimited supply of bread, engaged a cashier and countermen, fitted up the shop and opened it for the sale of bread at a penny per quartern lower than the lowest cutter in that “bread-eating neighbourhood.” People came from all the surrounding districts with flour bags, baskets, etc., to fetch bread for themselves and friends, policemen were stationed at the shop door to regulate the crowd, who filed in, made their purchases, and went out through the back entrance. The bakers in the factory were working at breakneck speed, at piece wages, their wrists swollen and bandaged with excessive moulding. The baker vestryman was “brought to his senses,” and many others were driven out of theirs and compelled to call a meeting of their creditors, while the factory-owner and the builder made a profit. Less than a year ago the victor, who now lives in affluence, told me he did well over the “deal.” This incident revealed to the factory-owner the number of sacks of flour that could be turned into bread per man in a week. The speed was maintained, but wages reverted to the normal night wages. The more alert capitalist was quick to see the possibilities of machinery, and that a practically unlimited supply of bread could be turned out with its aid and that of a few skilled bakers, and by drawing on the ever increasing army of “unskilled” labourers. He saw the economic advantage he thus obtained, and that the possibility of a successful strike of London bakers was gone for ever. Indeed, the improvement and development of machinery in the baking industry has proceeded at such a pace that it is well known by live bakers that a very large proportion of the work now done in bakeries could be done by unskilled labour, which would be immediately introduced should the operatives force up their wages by any means.

And in the event of a strike the general foremen with one or two blacklegs to supervise the weighing of yeast and salt, the temperating tank, the pitching of flour, etc., and with the assistance of engineers, supplied by the engineering firms, to superintend and work the dough mixers, dividing and moulding machines, regulate the heat of the ovens and draw the plate, could turn out all the bread that was required. Unskilled labour could easily do the rest. The result would not perhaps be the highly finished commercial loaf of to-day, but bread equal in quality to that at present sold. In no trade has technical knowledge been rendered valueless so quickly as in that of bread making, and the factories are fast scooping the trade. Everything is working in their favour, and a rise in wages, shortening of the hours of labour, the abolition of night work, or any other possible reform would give the factory a further economic advantage over the handicraft bakery and the operative.

In 1889 the masters were not organised as they are now. Every district has its local association, while 90 per cent. of the bakers in urban districts are in the National Association. It will be an easy matter then to get the output of the 700 striking operatives in Manchester made in the various factories and conveyed to Manchester in a little over four hours, even from London. Sectional strikes are hopeless in all trades, but in the case of the bakers are madness. There is no hope for us under the capitalist system of production. We must trust to ourselves alone, cease to look up to leaders or appeal to politicians, organise ourselves politically and industrially, not in vain attempts to palliate or relieve our conditions, but to end them.

That trade union leaders do not understand the working-class position and are not to be trusted is evidenced by their public utterances, their miserable failure in the House of Commons, the insipid twaddle with which they decorate the title pages of rule books (“Defence, not Defiance,” “For the Good of All,” etc.), their dining and wining with, and cringing sycophancy in the presence of, the enemy’s lenders. That they do not understand the position is the most charitable construction that can be put upon their conduct. If they understand, acting as they do, they must be frauds. On the other hand the capitalist does understand the economic position, does recognise the incessant class war being waged, does fight scientifically, with all the logic of brutal warfare. He gives no quarter and allows no scruples, no appeals to his humanity to thwart him in his one object and ethic, the complete domination of the working class, the securing to himself an ever increasing share of the wealth produced by our labour. I therefore appeal to the Manchester men before engaging in a suicidal sectional strike, to reconsider their position and what a defeat must mean to them, what a long fight must mean to their wives and children. Even supposing a long fight were possible, is the objective worth the struggle ? While capitalism lasts the capitalist must come out on top. Our emancipation can only come by the complete overthrow of the system of production for profit, and the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth.

W. Watts

A Look Round. (1906)

From the October 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist propaganda in Bulgaria is not quite such easy work as here, if one may judge from a letter, written in Esperanto, received from a comrade there.

* * *

The Socialists held a Congress at Varna in August. Previous to the opening they organised a public meeting. One of the speakers condemned the persecution of the Greeks by the Bulgarians. Naturally, this displeased the “Nationalists.” They dubbed the Socialists “pro-Greeks” and threatened to kill the speaker (Harlakov). On August 10th, during the afternoon sitting of the Congress, a band of about 30 hired assassins entered the hall and commenced to shoot with revolvers. About 100 shots in all were exchanged. One Socialist was killed and several wounded, but three of their opponents bit the dust and about a score were wounded. From which it is apparent that the Socialists of Bulgaria are not only prepared to move resolutions, but know how to shoot straight. Harlokov was slightly wounded in the shoulder. The delegates then considered it advisable to change the venue of their Congress and accordingly continued their labours at Shumeri.

* * *

The balance sheet of the London District Board of the Amalgamated Union of Operative Bakers and Confectioners for June quarter contains some interesting figures. £154 18s. 7d. was paid into the Sick Fund and £227 1s. 6d. paid out. The Management Fund received £128 16s. l1d. and £133 1s. l1d. was expended. Out-of-work contributions amounted to £127 18s. 9d. and payments to members £145 14s. 6d.

* * *

It is poor consolation for the members to be informed that the out-of-work payments show a diminution as compared with the previous quarter, in view of the secretary’s statement that the decrease is chiefly due to unemployed members having reached the end of the benefit period.

* * *

During 1902 this Union made 1,211 new members and lost 1,583. 1,066 were enrolled in 1903 and 1,061 were lost. In 1904 730 joined and 870 were lost, and in 1905 899 joined and 960 fell out. The London District has now commenced to enrol “Trade” members at 2d. per week.

* * *

The fact of the matter is that the condition of the working class is becoming so precarious that increasing numbers of them are unable to pay the sums demanded by the Unions and the latter are compelled to pay sick and unemployed benefit at an ever increasing ratio.

* * *

The Bakers’ Union is concentrating its efforts upon a Forty-eight Hours Bill. “We have determined” says Mr. L. A. Hill in the August issue of the official organ “to re-introduce our Forty-eight Hour Bill into Parliament and to continue if necessary to re-introduce it until victory crowns our efforts and our banners wave upon the ramparts of freedom for the operative baker.”

* * *

“Freedom” via a Forty-eight Hours Bill is good, especially when the same writer in the same column says “The eight hours day is after all a temporary palliative, which, while it would undoubtedly have the effect for the time being of absorbing the bulk of our unemployed, would not be lasting in its effects.”

* * *

In the September issue of the Journeymen Bakers’ Magazine Mr. Hill returns to the subject and says “if by Trade Union or legislative action your hours are reduced, your employer, and other employers also, will need more men, and it is not too much to say that every unemployed baker in London will obtain work.”

* * *

Of course this is sheer nonsense. Already the eight hours day is in operation in several bakeries, and instead of more men being employed there are fewer. And not only so, men who have worked for the “smart yankee” who is running one of the largest bakeries in London and the suburbs aver that they would sooner work 12 hours in the ordinary shop that does not possess machinery than 8 hours in the machine bakeries.

* * *

Without machinery, a skilled baker turns about 10 sacks of flour into bread in a week of sixty hours. In an up-to-date bakery, such as exists in London and Glasgow, 22 sacks is the normal output per man per week. But under exceptional circumstances (say in the event of a strike or lockout) one skilled operative, with the aid of a fireman and unskilled labour, could turn from 400 to 500 sacks of flour into bread in a week. The public would get bread whilst the Trade Union bakers starved. An Eight-Hours Act would not affect the machine bakeries. It is already in vogue there and they can successfully compete against the small shop. The small man could not stand the increase in his wages bill which Mr. Hill claims would follow the passing of the Bill, as the competition of such firms as Price & Co., the V.V., and the Co-operative Societies would prevent him raising the price. He would therefore “go under” and the trade would pass into the hands of the machine bakeries.

* * *

The Bishop of Birmingham in dedicating a new chapel at the Aston Workhouse said the problem of the unemployed was complicated by the fact that so many parents were content that their boys earned a little money by selling newspapers, running errands, and such like casual employment. At the time when they wanted to be engaged in a self-respecting industry which would be really useful to the community they found themselves out of employment at the age of 18 or 20 without any trade behind them.

* * *

What a heap of money some people get for talking nonsense. Are there no unemployed with a “trade behind them,” none who have passed through the various stages and mastered the difficult processes of “a self-respecting industry” ? Why even the Trade Unions that made returns to the Board of Trade during August shewed that out of a membership of 596,010, 22,528 were unemployed. This is equal to 3.8 per cent.

* * *

These would be men “with a trade behind them” and as they represent only a fraction of the Trade Unionists, the extent of unemployment at a period when, according to Reynold’s Newspaper, we are experiencing the beneficial results of ousting a Tory Government and electing a Radical one can be imagined. If the country contains only five millions of workers with a “trade behind them,” there would be, on the basis of the returns made to the Board of Trade, 190,000 unemployed. There’s prosperity for you !

* * *

Sir J. Crichton Browne was nearer the mark at the Congress of the Sanitary Inspectors’ Association at Blackpool when he said “The struggle to acquire property, to win applause, to earn bread was fiercer than ever; the pressure of labour had been transferred from the muscles to the nervous system, for physical energy was supplied by steam and electricity, and it was nerve energy that was needed to control machinery, and the indications were that the nerve tissue that supplied the energy was more easily exhausted than it used to be.”

* * *

In commenting on the Report of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, which has just been issued, the Daily News says : “The income reviewed by the department is estimated at over nine hundred and twelve millions. That is the share of the national income which passes almost entirely to the upper and middle classes in the form of rent, salaries, and profit on businesses. It is a figure continuously leaping upwards. In the changes of ten years the value of English land and houses has advanced by 21 per cent.; the profits of business concerns have increased by 41 per cent.; the salaries of Government, Corporation, and other public company officials increased by the enormous proportion of 67 per cent.”

* * *

And it is during this ten years that the unemployed problem has reached an intensity never known before; that Trade Unions and Friendly Societies have been faced with an enormous strain upon their Funds owing to the increasing inability of even the “thrifty” members of the working class to find employment and to keep in good health ; that the average amount per depositor in the Post Office and Trustee Savings Bank has, since 1899, fallen every year. Truly, the master class is getting richer and the working class is getting poorer.

* * *

There were 121,979 persons in England and Wales certified as insane and under care on January 1st, 1906, being 2,150 in excess of the figures recorded on the corresponding day of 1905.

* * *

On January 1st, 1906, according to a Parliamentary paper issued by the Local Government Board, there were 926,741 paupers in England and Wales, equal to one in 37 of the population. The proportion in London was 1 in 32. The insane paupers have increased from 49,986 in 1872 to 108,629 in 1906.

* * *

It is claimed that the rate of able-bodied paupers per thousand of the population has decreased, their place having been taken by those described as “not able-bodied.” This probably means that the working class, in increasing numbers, are being physically and mentally incapacitated.

* * *

At a meeting of South Wales steel makers at Swansea on September 2nd it was decided to form an association to be known as the South Wales Siemens Steel Association, having for its object the protection of makers’ interests and regulation of trade. Arrangements were made whereby funds will be deposited to place the new association on a proper basis. The chairman is Mr. H. Eccles (Britton Ferry), the vice-chairman Mr. F. Gilbertson (Pontardawe), and the secretary Mr. R. W. Evans (Llanelly).

* * *

According to a return recently issued from the Department of Labour and Commerce, Washington, the United States Consul at Lille (Mr. C. J. King) describes a new invention for spinning flax and flax waste. Mr. King says the process, which is one recently patented by Mr. Arthur Guillemaud, tends to simplify the present method by applying the system of spinning cotton to flax. It consists in replacing the high cumbersome machinery now necessary in flax spinning by low self-acting reels, such as are employed in cotton spinning. The machinery differs little in appearance from the cotton frames, being simply adapted to the exigencies of the flax fibre. The bobbins are set at the back, the yarn running off through the watering tank (for wet spinning) placed between the bobbins and cylinders. As the yarn, passes through the cylinder the water is pressed out into a canal directly under the lower cylinders. The yarn then runs off perfectly dry to the reels, and, owing to the long self-revolutions, a better and smoother yarn is the result. The new method decreases the general expenses and saves labour, and the air of the rooms is less infected, and the floors are changed from stagnant pools into dry and sanitary places. Mr. King adds that the new method should prove of considerable value in the development of the linen industry.

J. Kay

Doubts and Difficulties: Do the Workers Live on the Verge of Starvation? (1906)

From the September 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much discussion has been evoked at one time or another as to the statement alleged to have been made by Sir H. Campbell Bannerman that twelve millions of the population of Britain were living on the verge of starvation. To many people the important question has been as to whether the afore-mentioned individual made or did not make the assertion substantially given above. In all the discussions I have heard on the subject the question has never arisen whether the statement, whether made or not, was true in substance or in fact.

o o o o

To the Socialist the matter is one of vital interest. Half a century ago Karl Marx, after a close and searching examination of the conditions of English industry, arrived at the theoretic position that so long as the present basis of industrialism—the capitalist, privately-owned property basis—existed, for so long would the wages of the worker be determined by the cost of his subsistence, that is, by the barest amount necessary for maintaining the worker and his family. This theory arrived at by deducing from the basic laws of capitalist production, he verified it by a careful review of the conditions of the workers as found in practice and as described in the reports of Royal Commissions appointed to enquire into such conditions.

o o o o

True as the theory of a bare subsistence wage was found to be some sixty years ago so to-day is it true that the wage of the worker is similarly governed. An exhaustive analysis of present day conditions is not necessary to satisfy us as to the truth of this but for the benefit of some who may not have sifted the evidence for themselves, a few pointers may be useful in showing where the evidence may be found.

o o o o

A good many years have now elapsed since Mr. Charles Booth set himself the task of exposing the “wild” statements of the Socialist as to the poverty of the workers. The result of his work is shown in his “Life and Labour of the People of London,” a remarkable indictment of our vaunted civilisation. The figures he gave of the poverty of the London workers showed that the statements of the Socialist were not an exaggeration but an understatement of the position. 1,300,000 of the population of London, or over 30 per cent. of the people of the richest mother-city in the world, were receiving a wage of less than a guinea a week !

o o o o

A guinea a week was the mark at which he had drawn his poverty line, and there were in London thirteen hundred thousand people below that poverty line. Assuming that this rate of poverty ruled throughout the whole of the United Kingdom we should, taking the population figures of 1901, have 30 per cent. of a population of 41,600,000 living under the poverty line adopted by Mr. Booth. Thirty per cent, of 41,600,000 ! 12,480,000 !! What a picture of misery, of degradation may be conjured up by a contemplation of these figures !!!

o o o o

It was, however, always open to critics to contend that owing to London’s premier position men and women were more likely to drift thither than to other towns, and that in any event, in the rural districts, such a rate of poverty must be impossible. Unfortunately for this contention, it was not in accordance with the facts, and subsequent investigation has proved that what obtains in London obtains likewise in rural villages like Egremont, and in small provincial towns like York.

o o o o

With Egremont I do not intend to deal, and I shall also pass over investigations into similar and subsidiary poverty problems in other towns. But with regard to York I may be permitted to write at somewhat greater length.

o o o o

In the Autumn of 1899, which was a period of comparative prosperity, Mr. Seebohm Rowntree conducted a house to house investigation into the conditions of working-class families in York. The results he arrived at were published for him by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. in a book called “Poverty. A Study of Town Life.” From this it appears that in York in 1899 “families comprising 20,302 persons, equal to 43.4 per cent. of the wage-earning class, and to 27.84 per cent. of the total population of the city, were living in poverty,” and Mr. Rowntree sums up by saying that the fact that nearly 30 per cent. of the population are found to be living in poverty is of the gravest significance.

o o o o

30 per cent. of the population in York. 30 per cent. of the population in London. Truly remarkable the way in which the results of capitalism are uniformly displayed. At page 133 he explains that the poverty of unskilled labour is due to low wages. I believe I have formerly quoted the following remarkable passage but it bears repetition:—

o o o o

“It is thus seen that the wages paid for unskilled labour in York are insufficient to provide food, shelter, and clothing adequate to maintain a family of moderate size in a state of bare physical efficiency. It will be remembered that the above estimates of necessary minimum expenditure are based upon the assumption that the diet is even less generous than that allowed to able-bodied paupers in the York Workhouse, and that no allowance is made for any expenditure other than that absolutely required for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency.

“And let us clearly understand what ‘merely physical efficiency’ means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half-penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join sick club or Trade Union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles, or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco, and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation, ‘Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description.’ Should a child fall ill it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.

“If any of these conditions are broken, the extra expenditure involved is met, and can only be met, by limiting the diet ; or, in other words, by sacrificing physical efficiency.

“That few York labourers receiving 20/- or 21/- per week submit to these iron conditions in order to maintain physical efficiency is obvious. And even were they to submit, physical efficiency would be unattainable for those who had three or more children dependent upon them. It cannot therefore be too clearly understood, nor too emphatically repeated, that whenever a worker having three children dependent on him, and receiving not more than 21s. 8d. per week, indulges in any expenditure beyond that required for the barest physical needs, he can do so only at the cost of his own physical efficiency, or of that of some members of his family.”

The italics in all cases are Mr. Rowntree’s.

o o o o

In face of these statements we can only conclude that there is more than sufficient evidence to show that at least twelve millions of our people are living below the poverty line, and that those living on the poverty line are on the verge of starvation. Nor is this all. Those who to-day are above the poverty line may to-morrow be below and vice versa. The conditions persist though the persons vary. Says J. A. Hobson “Only three out of every ten persons in the richest country in Europe belong to a class which is able to live in decent comfort . . the other seven are of necessity confined to a standard of life, little, if at all, above the line of bare necessity.”

o o o o

The persons differ. Again I quote from “Poverty.” “The life of a labourer is marked by five alternating periods of want and comparative plenty. During early childhood, unless his father is a skilled worker he probably will be in poverty; this will last until he, or some of his brothers or sisters, begin to earn money and thus augment their father’s wage sufficiently to raise the family above the poverty line. Then follows the period during which he is earning money and living under his parents’ roof; for some portion of this period he will be earning more money than is required for lodging, food, and clothes. This is his chance to save money. If he has saved enough to pay for furnishing a cottage, this period of comparative prosperity may continue after marriage until he has two or three children, when poverty will again overtake him. This period of poverty will last perhaps for ten years, i.e., until the first child is fourteen years old and begins to earn wages, but if there are more than three children it may last longer. While the children are earning, and before they leave the home to marry, the man enjoys another period of prosperity—possibly, however, only to sink back again into poverty when his children have married and left him, and he himself is too old to work, for his income has never permitted his saving enough for him and his wife to live upon for more than a very short time.

“A labourer is thus in poverty, and therefore underfed

(a) In childhood when his constitution is being built up.

(b) In early middle life—when he should be in his prime.

(c) In old age.”

o o o o

It thus appears that the number of the workers at some time or other below the poverty line is not confined to 43 per cent. It is true that this is the number at any one time. But the individuals at present below will to-morrow be above and their places will be occupied by others of their class. But the “aboves” and the “belows” cancel one another and we thus derive the result that the normal condition of the working class is to exist on the poverty line. The worker has absolutely no guarantee that he will escape from the position of having to receive less than is necessary to maintain him in a state of merely physical efficiency.

o o o o

The reason for this condition of things is that he must sell his labour-power in “free” competition with his fellows in an ever overstocked labour market. Hence no reform can do anything for him. The only remedy is to abolish the present method of private property-holding, the operation of which can be shown as the cause of the overstocked labour market with its necessary corollary of a subsistence wage. This abolition would be no mere destructive policy, but would be the preliminary to a system of common property holding, the end of which would be care of all and not the aggrandisement of a few.

o o o o

I think, therefore, that there can be little doubt that the statement that twelve millions of our population are on the verge of starvation is an understatement of the case, and that if this were clearly recognised to be the result of capitalism there would be a more speedy growth of a Socialist Party in this country than at present seems probable.

o o o o

Be that as it may the struggle has commenced, and to those who have studied the question there cannot be any doubt that victory lies with the working class and with Socialism.

Economicus.

Stumbling blocks. (1905)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some questions asked and answered. 

Mr. H. J. Priest (Islington) sends the following five questions, which we answer.

1. Should all reforms be opposed by the members of the S.P.G.B.?

Our members oppose no reform which benefits the working-class.

We, however, resolutely decline to barter our Socialism for some vague promise of reform that resembles the proverbial pie crust. We decline to support an enemy, who is utterly opposed to us on the most important points, because he promises some minor measure.

Further, practically the whole of the so-called “reforms” at present proposed would not, under present class rule and economic conditions, materially benefit the workers if obtained.

2. Are the reforms for which our forbears fought, useless—e.g., The Factory Acts, Free Speech, and the Education Acts ?

The reforms to which Mr. Priest refers are not useless and have never been characterised as such by the S.P.G.B. They are, however, all echoes of the last class struggle.

The passing of the Factory Acts (particularly that of 1847) was largely due to the Tory landed aristocracy in revenge for the Corn Laws, and in vain attempt to stem the rising tide of manufacture, to stop the desertion of the land for the factory, and to hinder the mill owners in competition with the agriculturists for the available supply of labour power. On the part also of the more far-seeing manufacturers and Tories alike, it was to prevent the loss to the ruling class that would follow the utter degeneration of the working-class goose that laid the golden eggs. How near this was may be judged from Engels “Condition of the Working Class in 1844.”

For long the Factory Acts were rendered practically inoperative by the manufacturers, until they slowly discovered that, in moderation, the Acts did not diminish, but rather increased efficiency, output, and profits. We counsel our friend to examine the present Acts and their working; he will not find much to be proud of.

Free Speech and Education Acts were essential to the development of Capitalism, and were the work of the modern capitalist class on its advent to political power. Free Speech as a necessary corollary to free competition and the development of trade ; Education Acts, in order that the wage slaves should be more efficient and therefore cheaper.

Just as capitalist development renders Socialism inevitable, so also do many of the measures which were indispensable to Capitalism, prepare the way for Socialism in spite of the interests which promoted them.

3. Are the people in Russia fighting for phantoms in fighting for reforms?

This question hangs closely to the previous one, and the subject has been dealt with in No. 6 of this journal. Historically the people of Russia are fighting the battle of middle class emancipation. They are fighting precisely the same battle that our forefathers fought: and this is the secret of capitalist sympathy for Russian revolutionists.

It must not be forgotten how backward Russia is in economic development. Only 12 per cent. of her population live in towns, whilst commerce and great industry are largely in foreign hands. Hence the Russian industrial capitalist has still his emancipation to achieve. Though the populace is (in the towns) largely leavened with Socialist teaching, economic development is not yet ripe for Socialism, whilst it is largely a cloak for middle class aspirations. The freeing of the growing Russian industry from the strangling grasp of autocracy is the next step in social advance, and necessarily compels the support of the Russian working-class. Let our friend notice also that the work is being done by a revolutionary movement, out for the abolition of Czardom, not for its reform. Showing thereby that a revolutionary movement is far more efficacious even in the obtaining of concessions than is a timid reform movement. But reform cannot satisfy modern Russian conditions, for so long as Feudal Czardom is left in control, so long will it use its power in its own interests against the other classes in the state. Nothing but the deprival of the Russian feudal class of the control of the machinery of government can meet the present needs of Russia.

This means revolution ; it means the advent to administrative control of a new class : a class thrust forward by economic development. It means Bourgeois supremacy, leavened, (let us hope), by working-class influence.

What Mr. Priest calls reform in Russia really spells revolution ; the rise of a new class to the helm of the State, and the breaking down of the barriers to the untrammelled development of industry in that country; the inevitable, but let us hope brief, precursor of the Socialist Commonwealth.

The bloodshed and disorder which too often accompany revolution are due to desperate efforts of the ruling class to cling to power, to retain their domination over society, in their own interests in spite of the changed conditions and the will of the people.

The victory of the third estate in Russia, accomplished necessarily with the aid of the workers, will doubtless find a strong Socialist party on its feet to keep pace with the ever more rapid economic development, profiting by the experience of the more advanced countries, until the time arrives for proletarian triumph, when class distinctions are abolished, and the people come by their own.

4. Are not well fed, well leisured, well educated proletarians more useful to Socialists than anaemic, underfed, ignorant workers without leisure to read or think ?

From social history one fact stands clearly out ; that great political movements do not depend for their success upon the actual prosperity or otherwise of their participants, but upon far deeper economic causes. Thorold Rogers points out the frequency of great social discontent in prosperous times, and gives the Peasants’ War in England as an example whilst we know numerous instances of great political changes which have been effected by the people in times of direst distress. It can hardly be said that the organised and determined movement of the Russian people is connected with a surfeit of food, education and leisure.

But is it at all probable that the modern proletarians (i.e., propertyless) will become well fed well educated and leisured, persons, otherwise than by their emancipation from wage-slavery ? Is it not true that there is an alarming and continued growth in lunacy, degeneracy and pauperism ? Is not toil daily becoming more intense and employment more insecure ? Are not wages on the decline, and is not the modern worker worn out at an earlier age than his forefathers ?

There is, unfortunately, but little hope that the conditions of the working-class can materially improve under capitalist rule. The ruling-class will secure that the amount of their rent, interest and profit shall not dimmish by being expended unprofitably to themselves upon the means by which their wealth is created; and the growing intensity of competition nips in the bud any attempt at genuine aid to the workers by even the most kindly disposed. The growth of the unemployed side by side with the intensification of toil and decline in wages, are features inherent in capitalist development; and the ruling class cannot deal with these without committing social suicide.

The more capitalism presses upon the proletariat, the more nearly is the remedy placed within reach. Taught discipline in the factory, the workers will be forced to discipline themselves into economic and political organisations: whilst the concentration of wealth into fewer hands, the trustification of industry, the growing gulf between, the two classes, increasing wealth in face of spreading poverty, declining wages in face of greater productivity, all make the issues clearer to the workers and show to them that the way out of their misery is to take and hold the vast means of producing wealth, and so transform these from instruments of public oppression and private profit, into social instruments for social well-being.

Through Socialism alone can education, leisure and a material existence worthy the name become a possibility for the workers, and their physical, mental and moral uplifting a reality.

In face of the growing contradictions, and ever more glaring anomalies of capitalist society who can doubt that the toilers will, like Jonathan in the day of battle, “taste of the wild honey in the wood and find their eyes enlightened” ?

5. Are Socialists, who, while admitting that it is not Socialism, yet support reforms purporting to improve the condition of the workers, to be considered decoy birds and traitors to Socialism ?

This question is answered in our reply to No. 1. We have only to add that those who realize the truth of our principles, yet who attempt to wheel the workers into line on some petty issue behind one section or other of the capitalist party, are traitors to the working-class and should be branded as such.

ff the workers are content to support capitalism and capitalist candidates for the sake of “reforms” that are useful to capitalism (and a capitalist government will grant no other unless by fear of extinction), then, we say, the removal of the cause of working-class misery is indefinitely postponed.

The degradation and impoverishment of the workers are due to capitalist exploitation, and this, no mere reform can end. Our supreme aim must therefore be the abolition of the system of robbery.

It is less difficult to convince the average worker of the necessity for Socialism, than it is to convince him of the necessity for some dozen ineffective reforms ; while it is infinitely more useful.

Letters: Is there a short cut? (1976)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is there a short cut?

I have become a consistent and grateful reader of your journal. However I do believe that the establishment of an all-sharing, all-caring society cannot be achieved in the foreseeable future by wholly democratic means.

The SPGB has been established over fifty years yet its voice is still insignificant. The unrest of the ’twenties and ’thirties were not to my knowledge effectively taken advantage of by you. Instead a so-called “socialist” government was born heralding a new land of nationalization, social welfare etc. Today in 1976 the same flimsy worthless promises are bellowed by Ministers who keep their so-called “socialist” Cabinet seats warm. There are 1.4 million officially unemployed and beggingly accepting the crumbs from the capitalist table. (You quite rightly state that the real figure is nearer 3 million.)

Does the SPGB now assume to let another fifty years slip by? How do I convince my friends that I am not a starry-eyed dreamer but someone equipped with sensible, concrete and democratic proposals for organizing and establishing a Socialist Britain? You wish to take the democratic road to Socialism — how successful have your candidates been in local by-elections? “Man makes his own history but not according to his will.”

Shaun McCarthy

London SW1

Reply:

Many people feel frustrated, as you do, at having to endure the continuation of capitalism while seeking mass understanding for Socialism. However, the alternative you seem to be implying, minority action, would not change things. Without a mandate from a conscious Socialist electorate, the minority could only be another government.

We suggest you look on the establishing of Socialism as we do, as an urgent matter, and convince your friends of the same. Best of all, join the SPGB (when you have got rid of that misunderstanding about “a Socialist Britain”) and throw your effort into bringing about Socialism. Every new member is a nail in the coffin of capitalism.

Spiritual Matters

It would appear that religion can bar membership to the Party for sympathizers. Perhaps you would be good enough to clarify my position, since I have considered applying for membership.

Under no circumstances could I be regarded as religious, in the accepted sense. I follow no creed, nor accept any religious dogma. I do, however, look around me and wonder at the miracle and mystery of life. Perhaps some day Man will have sufficient knowledge to explain “How” the miracle occurs, but I think the question “Why” will still remain. I can see a sunset and be moved by its grandeur; I can watch a horse move and be excited by its beauty; I can look at a cathedral and marvel at its form and craftsmanship. These things can be explained, but mere explanations do not account for Man’s spiritual reaction. If I choose to wonder at the life-force behind life itself and if I choose to call it God, is this incompatible with Socialism?

That people should understand that the root cause of most of our problems lies in the fact that we produce for sale and profit instead of for the needs of mankind — seems to me to be Socialism’s fundamental message. While I agree with most of your argument about religion I can’t see why so much fuss should be made about it in regard to membership of the SPGB.

George Pearson

London S.W.20

Reply:

The explanations of phenomena are not “mere” ones. At the beginning of his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe J. W. Draper wrote:

In the month of March the sun crosses the equator, dispensing his rays more abundantly over our northern hemisphere. Following in his train, a wave of verdure expands towards the pole. The luxuriance is in proportion to the local brilliancy. The animal world is also affected. Pressed forward or solicited onward by the warmth, the birds of passage commence their annual migration, keeping pace with the developing vegetation beneath. As autumn comes on, this orderly advance of light and life is followed by an orderly retreat, and in its turn the southern hemisphere presents the same glorious phenomenon. Once every year does the life of the earth pulsate; now there is an abounding vitality, now a desolation. But what is the cause of all this? It is only mechanical. The earth’s axis of rotation is inclined to the place of her orbit of revolution round the sun.

Let that wonderful phenomenon and its explanation be a lesson to us; let it profoundly impress us with the importance of physical agents and physical laws.

There is nothing wrong with experiencing emotional pleasure. What you apparently have not considered is that it is variable according to different social conditioning. A conception of beauty which deeply moves people in one time and place is distasteful in others.

Examples are to be found in all the fields you mention. The idea of beauty in nature arose chiefly from the Industrial Revolution. In architecture, as in all the arts, what is strongly appreciated in one culture is unacceptable in another. That some qualities appear to transcend time and place is due to the comprehensiveness of capitalism. However, other keenly-felt reactions are quite temporary. For instance, concepts of female beauty — alleged to have “launched a thousand ships” — differ widely and are ultimately functional.

There is, therefore, no ground for calling these phenomena "spiritual” and attributing them to a force “behind life itself”. People have a sense of mystery about emotional pleasures because they are denied access to them — many of the “beautiful” things and experiences are simply manifestations of wealth. As Dr. Johnson said: “Rid your mind of cant, sir.”

Rates and Things 

In your view, taxation is not a matter of any consequence to the working class. Could you explain how this applies to the rates levied on private and council housing, and to motor vehicle and television licences?

Do Socialists participate in the election of trade union officials? Presumably this presents some difficulty as most of the candidates hold an allegiance to other political parties.

If political parties can be classified as being in favour of private capitalism, state capitalism or Socialism, how would anarchist and syndicalist groups fit into this?

Do you have the information on the Socialist Labour league, etc., that I asked for?

You might be interested to know that in Lord Chalfont’s programme “It could never happen here” the is spokesman advocating a re-run of Russia 1917 was a certain Duncan Hallas.

R. Richardson

Reply:

Rates are a tax on property, and the greater part of them comes from industry and commerce. So far as housing is concerned, before the decline of private landlords, rates were paid like taxes out of income. Since they are levied on each item of property, it became landlords’ practice in some cases to separate rates from rent, making the tenant responsible for paying them (“exclusive” and “inclusive” rents). Obviously it is a book-keeping difference — the tenant pays the same gross amount. Local authorities adopted the “exclusive” system for council housing so that, instead of deducting tax to pay to themselves, separate rates and rent funds were contributed to.

The dispersal of former estates of let-out houses, largely into owner-occupation which now forms about half the housing stock in this country, has led to the landlords’ rates being levied as countless relatively small amounts on individuals whose house-purchase makes them technically “property-owners”. The system is widely considered to be anomalous as a tax rooted in pre-war conditions, and alternatives to it are being sought. Motor tax and television licences are not taxes but special funds raised from users of facilities. The former was known until recently as the “road fund licence”, and the income was intended for the provision and upkeep of roads by highway authorities.

Socialists in trade unions make their own choices as to voting for officials. They may take political affiliations into account, but the function of trade unions is the limited one of seeking better wages and conditions; a candidate for office will be judged for his likely effectiveness as a negotiator above anything else. Socialist Party members in unions do not pay the political levy for the support of the Labour Party.

Political groups and parties which advocate the abolition of capitalism have to be viewed for the validity of their claims. If their policies are not realistic ones they will not achieve the aim they talk about, and capitalism will continue. While not avowedly in favour of it, they do their bit for it. Anarchists and syndicalists generally support reforms, and have supported governments or political parties which appeared helpful to them; and this sort of compromise means taking the side of capitalist class interests.

On your last question, we don’t think it is our function to supply information about other political parties.

Worsening Conditions

In conversation with a friend on the economic cutback I said that Marx had prophesied that the more advanced and technological capitalism becomes the worse will become the lot of the common people. She replied that Marx said no such thing.

Is it not the situation today, with millions starving and out of work and other millions merely subsisting amidst a technology capable of producing abundance for all? If Marx did not say it, should he have done?

And would it be a truism, or is the lot of the people better but merely suffering a temporary setback until more advanced technology produces another glut that cannot be consumed by the producers?

Would you please explain Mr. Healey’s words that higher prices would cost the user more but be a lighter burden on the taxpayer, and we must not kill the will to work (when a couple of millions can’t get work?)

Ruth Bolster

London S.E.15

Reply:

The passage you are thinking of is probably the one in Capital Vol. I, Chapter 25, “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation” pages 660-1, Allen & Unwin edn.):

We saw in Part IV, when analysing the production of relative surplus-value: within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange him from the intellectual potentialities of the labour-process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour-process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital.

However, you (and your friend) should read the entire chapter. Marx did not argue that the working class must continuously slide into more abysmal conditions. On the contrary, he pointed out that under some circumstances:

A larger part of their own surplus-product, always increasing and continually transformed into additional capital, comes back to them in the shape of means of payment, so that they can extend the circle of their enjoyments; can make some additions to their consumption-fund of clothes, furniture, etc., and can lay by small reserve-funds of money. But just as little as better clothing, food and treatment, and a larger peculium, do away with the exploitation of the slave, so little do they set aside that of the wage-worker. A rise in the price of labour, as a consequence of accumulation of capital, only means, in fact, that the length and weight of the golden chain the wage-worker has already forged for himself, allow of a relaxation of the tension of it. (Page 631).

The governing factor is the needs of capitalism:

The rise of wages therefore is confined within limits that not only leave intact the foundations of the capitalist system, but also secure its reproduction on a progressive scale. (Page 634.)

What is the standard of judgement for “worse”? It can only be, as you point out, the potentialities of society. In the same chapter Marx reviews a Budget speech of 1863 in which it was claimed that “the poor have been growing less poor”. He says:

How lame an anti-climax! If the working-class has remained “poor”, only “less poor” in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class “an intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power”, then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased, because the extremes of wealth have. (Page 668.)

We do not know the speech by Healey that you refer to. Presumably he was referring to the effects of subsidies on prices. Two things to keep in mind are: (1) that the price of labour-power also is subsidized, i.e. kept in check by family allowances, rent and rate rebates, welfare benefits, etc.; (2) that the burden of taxation is not on the working class but on the capitalists, for whom it is better to contribute to subsidies on selected commodities than be faced with demands for wage increases all round.

As for “the will to work”, see the review of The Right to be Lazy in our last issue.

New Definitions?

It will be agreed by SPGB members that they have to spend as much time with enquirers telling them what Socialism is not as with telling them what it is. The greatest coup of the capitalist propagandists was when they succeeded in misrepresenting Socialism to the masses. Their allies are those organizations which claim to be Socialist or Communist, though they are nothing of the sort.

It seems to me that the Socialist parties have done little research into the nature of language. If not, why not? Such research could help to solve the problem of propaganda. According to Marxian analysis, ideas are a reflection of the mode of production. It follows that language is likewise engendered. Therefore it should be possible to evolve the language to correspond to the actual processes of production instead of being a reflection of a class ideology as at present. A vast number of words and usages exist which presuppose such things as scarcity, division of interests, competition, attack, exploitation, leadership, etc., and which do not truthfully reflect the process of production.

Science extended mathematics to bypass “ordinary”, inaccurate language in order to deal with physical realities. Marx used prose to say what modern economists tend to say with mathematical formulae. There is a great increase of people trying to be “scientific” by using jargon, endeavouring to escape emotional connotations and vagueness in expression, though they often fail in this.

I am not advocating a complete new mathematical language, such as Leibniz imagined. I do advocate an effort to educate the working class in an analytic response to words, in order to clarify ideas, and to emancipate them from the cheap propaganda which at present bamboozles them.

For example: I think it would be a good start if, instead of accepting definitions as expressions of opinion, we demand (and teach others to demand) that a definition be a description of the way the thing is produced, including a reference to its function. I don’t think Marx would frown on that practice.

F. Sliwinski

Newcastle-on-Tyne

Sorry, Earth

I was interested to read of the latest exploits of Friends of the Earth in the April SS, and I wondered if you could make any use of the following story. A while ago I received a letter from a comrade which was contained in a used envelope made good for re-use by a stick-on label issued by Friends of the Earth. Since I believe in doing all I can to counter the wastefulness of capitalist society I sent off a postal order for a bundle of these economy labels. Back it came, with a note from our Friends saying Sorry, we’ve stopped selling economy labels because they’re no longer economical. So I wrote again, asking by what criteria it could be no longer economical to use less paper than that contained in a new envelope. And the answer? "Those of our Accountant”. One of their directors gave a lengthy explanation and gave a breakdown of figures to show that the sale of economy labels did not make a profit for Friends of the Earth. And then I remembered: it’s Friends of the Earth Limited (Registered in London. Company No. 1012357). The letter even spoke of what was necessary "to stay in business”.

So there you are. You can’t serve two masters, and you can’t be committed to "the rational use of the Ecosphere” and to the continuation of a profit-motivated society. Otherwise, you end up wasting more paper by having to send out slips saying silly things like "Sorry, we no longer do economy labels because they’re no longer economical”. Further evidence, if any were needed, that the most effective way of countering the wastefulness of capitalism is to propagate the establishment of socialism.

Bill Valinas

Notice.

As we go to press with this issue, we have learned of the death of our comrade Gilbert McClatchie — "Gilmac", who was a contributor to the Socialist Standard for over sixty years. An appreciation will appear in the June issue.