"The Master(s') Key." (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The high priest of Nonconformity—Dr. John Clifford—reached his 83rd birthday recently and was duly interviewed by a "Star" correspondent. Some very amusing opinions on the "Labour Outlook" were expressed by Dr. Clifford. To quote the " Star" (16.10.19):

LABOUR OUTLOOK.

  Dealing with the situation in the Labour world, Dr. Clifford said he thought the outlook was healthy and reassuring.
  "What is necessary is the internationalisation of labour conditions. There are four classes of people that have to be considered, and it is only when they meet and try to arrange matters on just and sound principles that there can be harmony.
  These four classes are the men with means, called capitalists ; the men who have land and rents ; the men who live on dividends and make their demand for their share on the profits of labour ; and the men who are really doing the work. They all have just claims, and these claims  can be met.

SPIRIT OF TRUST.

  The great thing is to foster the spirit of trust. Nothing wrecks labour so much as distrust, and our business is to fight everything that is creative of distrust and to nourish and strengthen all that creates confidence.
  Hence, the dissemination of the spirit of brotherhood is the key to and the secret of the full productiveness of industry and of the happiness of the world."

One would have thought that 83 years of experience in a world torn with social strife and the results of capitalist exploitation, and an ever-increasing class war caused by a damnable system based upon the enslavement and robbery of a propertyless working class, would have given him an insight into the fundamental fabric of society.

Unfortunately, the "internationalisation of labour conditions" necessary, in Dr. Clifford's opinion, is already accomplished, for everywhere the workers are wage slaves—exploited and robbed of the greater part of the wealth they alone produce. The "internationalisation of labour conditions" exists in the fact that the

WHOLE WORLD

is at present under the blighting, ruthless, influence of capitalism.

King Capital rules. The Earth is the capitalist's, aud the fulness thereof. Unemployment, chronic poverty, overwork and exploitation, like the poor, are always with us. War after war is waged for the sacred rights of the profit-mongers.

Yet the outlook is "healthy and reassuring," says Dr. Clifford. What optimism! What frankness'.

He mentally visualises, and tries to create, harmony out of the inevitable social discord ; out of a chaos of conflicting interests, order.

But he brings no philosophy built out of facts, wherewith to formulate scientific proposals. There are many notes on the piano keyboard : the science of musical composition alone can arrange them to avoid discord and create music.

Amid essentially warring claims he cries

PEACE !

when there can be only strife.

Let us consider the validity of the "just claims" of the "four classes of men."

(1) The capitalists own all the means and instruments of wealth-production and distribution, essential to life. They produce as a class—nothing! They appropriate, nevertheless, all the wealth produced by their human, wealth-producing machines—the working class.

(2) The men who own lands and exact rents tax the community for living on and using that land, which rightfully should belong to the whole people.

(3) The men who live on dividends are simply unproductive, anti-social parasites. They live by appropriating a portion of the surplus-value created by the workers.

(4) "The men who are really doing the work" are the working class. Divorced from the land, and possessing no means and instruments of production, they have to sell, in order to gain their livelihood, the only thing they possess—their labour-power of hand or brain.
That they sell as a commodity to their capitalist masters. They must either sell it or starve, and 

MANY DO STARVE 

because they are unable to sell their labour-power. They only sell it— in other words they only get work—when it suits the masters' purpose to employ them. They are compelled by economic conditions to accept the terms which the masters dictate, and for the time which they desire them to labour. They are employed, as the machine is, for the owners' use and benefit. As wage slaves their sole function is to create surplus-value. 

Receiving on an average only sufficient to keep themselves and an average family in a state that just suffices to provide the continuity of efficient workers required by the exploiting class, the workers are used to produce far more wealth for their capitalist masters than they themselves receive in the form of wages. All the surplus-value—all the value, that is, which the worker adds to the material in excess of the amount of his wages—is appropriated by their exploiters.

The latter divide the spoils amongst other sections of non-producers.

A portion of the surplus-value, in the form of economic rent, goes to the idle landowners, etc. Interest goes to moneylenders, financiers, and the like, who also do not create wealth. Profit, the remaining portion of the surplus-value or unpaid labour, is appropriated by the employing capitalists.

Thus the result of the present system is that a whole band of plutocratic brigands exists on the proceeds of working class robbery, and the workers themselves are daily strengthening

THE BONDS THAT BIND THEM.

Result: the capitalists as a class grow ever richer, both absolutely and in relation to their wage slaves, and the poverty of the workers is deepened with their increasing exploitation.

Thus, in dealing with adamantine facts, the Socialist smashes the fabled "identity of interest of Capital and Labour."

The "harmony" of those who are robbed and those who rob cannot be "arranged" on "just and sound principles"—even by Dr. Clifford and his fellow magicians. So long as the capitalist system continues there will be robbers and robbed, and so long as there are robbers and robbed there will be discord and strife.

Exploitation and the plunder of a property-less class through the wages system is the very essence of the present system, and will accompany it to the end.

The pro-capitalist John Cliffords will also continue to be a characteristic of the capitalist regime as long as it endures. They help to support the rotten fabric of an effete social order. Their part is to obscure the issues, to be "all things to all men" and keep the workers docile and diligent while the shameless plundering proceeds.

"The great thing is to foster the spirit of trust," says Dr. Clifford. There is an old saying:

POOR TRUST IS DEAD,

Bad Pay killed him." The workers do all the work of the world, and get damnably paid for doing it! They have lost trust in their leaders and their kind masters : they are beginning to take their blinkers off and to see around them some of the facts of things as they are. Let them bat study economics find Socialism, and then trust—THEMSELVES ! The working class alone can and will effect its own emancipation.

"Our business is to fight everything that is creative of distrust," declares the hoary old dope merchant. We have been urged to "trust Asquith" ; to "wait and see." We have had a notorious Welsh wizard conjuring up visions of "The Future"—a fantastic dream that resolves itself into a future menace of dire reality to the workers. With ever-increasing poverty and distress, and an accentuated class struggle, with the price of necessaries ever soaring and unemployment stalking the land, who amongst us can think the labour outlook "healthy and reassuring" ?

Dr. Clifford can, and does. He holds "the Key to the secret of full productiveness of industry and of the happiness of the world." It is evidently the master-key that unlocks the door barring the way to Lloyd George's

"BEAUTIFUL NEW WORLD."

Or is it—the Masters' Key?

Yea, verily it must be so, for by his doctrine the capitalists, the men who have land and rents and the men who live on dividends, "have all just claims," as well as "the men who are really doing the work."

That word "really" is most appropriate. It is amusingly used, too, to qualify things by implying that there are others who are not doing anything.

Dr. Clifford has hit the mark. There are men really doing the work. They are doing all of it because idlers do nothing to produce the wealth they appropriate.

The class that does all the work—the working class—receives the least benefit, which is a very fine example of "inverse proportion." But that state of affairs is not conducive to fostering a "spirit of trust."

It is because the workers keep a class of parasitic idlers in affluence that they themselves have to work so hard, so long, and for such a pitiful reward for their toil.

The "spirit of brotherhood between Capital and Labour" is an impossible thing to realise. The "full productiveness of industry" only means an increased production, and a consequent glut of the goods for which our exploiters must seek a market.

WAR AFTER WAR

has resulted through competition for markets. "Full productiveness" is inevitably bound to produce the usual over-production, the consequent stagnation and unemployment, the same old struggle for markets, and the next war.

No! Dr. Clifford's key is no key to better conditions for the workers. It is our masters' key that is used to help  increase the wealth and power of the capitalist class.

The "spirit of brotherhood" can only come with Socialism, when the means of wealth-production (even to-day socially produced) are socially owned and controlled for the use and benefit of all.

The master-key that opens the door to mankind's splendid future is POLITICAL POWER. When the workers understand their present wage-slavery and the plundering of their class by the capitalist system, they will see also, if they study Socialism, that in freeing themselves from the bondage of capitalism they will set the whole world free. They will then

TRUST THEMSELVES

to do so. Organising on the economic field, in factory, workshop, and. every sphere of toil, they will fit themselves for controlling wealth-production for society's needs and benefit. Organising, above all, on the political field for the capture and control of political power, they will, in obtaining it, hold the key to freedom in their hand, and will use it for the paramount purpose of establishing the Socialist Commonwealth. The World for the Workers !

Graham May

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Contrary to what many people suppose, Socialism is based upon a very solid foundation of scientific formulae. These scientific explanations of social phenomena, or in brief, theories, though not numerous, are of immense value to the cause of working class emancipation, for they give a proper direction to those longings and aspirations which must inevitably arise within a slave class not utterly beyond redemption, instead of leaving those worthy and very desirable emotions to the mercy and misdirection of uneducated sentiment. The writer proposes to briefly survey these theories in this series of articles, and to show their significance.

The first of the formulae to come under our notice is that which goes by the name of the Materialist Conception of History, the formulization of which we owe to Marx and Engels, although the principle was independently discovered and expounded by Lewis Morgan, the great American sociologist.

The Materialist Concept is a key to the interpretation of history. As its name implies, it attributes to material things the cause of that ceaseless change which is the subject matter of history, and is directly opposed to other interpretations of history, which ascribe historical change to human and superhuman intelligence.

The Materialist Concept declares that the roots of social change are to be found in the means and methods by which society gets its livelihood. Society gets its living by production. Men "only produce when they work together in a certain way," says Marx ("Wage-Labour and Capital"). "In order to produce they mutually enter upon certain relations and conditions, and it is only by means of these relations that their relation to nature is defined, and and production becomes possible."

This being so, it is plain that the nature of those relations must be determined by the stage of development reached by the means and methods by which they get their livelihood. Let us find an example in the old threshing flail and the modern threshing machine.

The flail, being a nonexpensive tool operated by one man, could be and was. at all events in the period which it typifies—the Middle Ages —owned by the man who operated it. It is clear, however, that the modern threshing machine cannot be owned by the operator, since it takes not one, but about a dozen men to operate it. It might be jointly owned by them all, in which case the relations set up between them would be those of partners ; it might be owned by one of them, or by somebody who took no part in the working of it, in which case the relations between the operators and the owner would be those between employees and employer, or it might be owned by the community as a part of the socially-owned means of production, in which case an entirely new set of social relations would arise. The same relations, however, which arose out of men getting their living together with the flail (as one of the instruments of production) can never shape themselves out of the co-operative operation of the threshing machine.

It must not be taken that our example shows that what has converted the peasant, operating his own flail for his own benefit, and standing in a certain group of relations to those about him, into a wage worker operating a threshing machine for a master, is the development of the threshing tool into the threshing machine merely. As a matter of fact, of course, this development was a slow and tortuous process, and various means have been resorted to to knock grain out of the ear—treading out by oxen and threshing by horse-driven machines, for instance. The relation of wage worker and employer, also, developed generations before the modern threshing machine was invented. Indeed, it is quite plain that before the latter could becornr a practical proposition this one thing essential to its operation as a general means of production had to exist—a class of men who were willing to work for wages.

Nevertheless our example shows that the flail (the terms are used as symbols of the prevailing
instruments of labour), as a means of enabling men to work for themselves, and the threshing
machine, as a means of employing men for wages, are the foundation of two separate and utterly distinct sets of relations between men, social relations, in short.

A. E. Jacomb

(To be Continued.)

Link to Part 2.

"So spake Mr. Churchill . . . " (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

  ''We are continually being told that we should not trade with Germany, but how are we to get our indemnities if we do not trade with her? France and America are already taking all steps to trade with Germany, and we should not be called upon to stand aside." So spake Mr. Churchill at Sunderland on Jan. 3rd.

And once again events have verified us. We said, at the time that magnificant piece of bluff the Paris Economic Conference, was staged, that it was sheer bamboozle, and now—.

The Programme of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune. by Frederick Engels. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

 [The general line running through this criticism of the Programme of the Blanquist refugees is still so applicable that despite the praise given to the German Workers' Party, it is well worth reprinting. The misunderstanding of social development by the Blanquists has been parallelled during the war period by groups both here and in Germany and Russia. Engels' criticism tells with even greater force against these groups than it did against the Blanquists, because the social conditions are more highly developed now than then, and there is, therefore, even less excuse for the misunderstanding.]

After the failure of every revolution or counter revolution, a feverish activity develops among the fugitives, who have escaped to foreign countries. The parties of different shades form groups, accuse each other of having driven the cart into the mud, charge one another with treason and every conceivable sin.

At the same time they remain in close touch with the home country, organise, conspire, print leaflets and newspapers, swear that the trouble will start afresh within twenty-four hours, that victory is certain, and distribute the various government offices beforehand on the strength of this anticipation.

Of course, disappointment follows disappointment, and since this is not attributed to the inevitable historical conditions, which they refuse to understand, but rather to accidental mistakes of individuals, the mutual accusations multiply, and the whole business winds up with a grand row. This is the history of all groups of fugitives from the royalist emigrants of 1792 until the present day. Those fugitives, who have any sense and understanding, retire from the fruitless squabble as soon as they can do so with propriety and devote themselves to better things.

The French emigrants after the Commune did not escape this disagreeable fate.

Owing to the European campaign of slander, which attacked everybody without distinction, and being compelled particularly in London, where they had a common center in the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, for the time being, to suppress their internal troubles before the world, they had not been able, during the last two years, to conceal the signs of advancing disintegration. The open fight broke out everywhere. In Switzerland a part of them joined the Bakounists, mainly under the influence of Malon, who was himself one of the founders of the secret alliance. Then the so-called Blanquists in London withdrew from the International and formed a group of their own under the title of "The Revolutionary Commune". Outside of them numerous other groups arose later, which continue in a state of ceaseless transformation and modulation and have not put out anything essential in the way of manifestos. But the Blanquists are just making their program known to the world by a proclamation to the "Communeux".

These Blanquists are not called by this name, because they are a group founded by Blanqui. Only a few of the thirty-three signers of this program have ever spoken personally to Blanqui. They rather wish to express the fact that they intend to be active in his spirit and according to his traditions.

Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionist. He is a socialist only through sentiment, through his sympathy with the sufferings of the people, but he has neither a socialist theory nor any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political activity he was mainly a "man of action", believing that a small and well organized minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution. Of course, he could organize such a group under Louis Phillippe's reign only as a secret society. Then the thing, which generally happens in the case of conspiracies, naturally took place. His men, tired of beings held off all the time by the empty promises that the outbreak should soon begin, finally lost all patience, became rebellious, and only the alternative remained of either letting the conspiracy fall to pieces or of breaking loose without any apparent provocation. They made a revolution on May 12th, 1839, and were promptly squelched. By the way, this Blanquist conspiracy was the only one, in which the police could never get a foothold. The blow fell out of a clear sky.

From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.

We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding generation.

These conceptions of the march of revolutionary events have long become obsolete, at least for the German Workingmen's party, and will not find much sympathy in France, except among the less mature or the more impatient laborers. We shall also note, that they are placed under certain restrictions in the present program. Nevertheless our London Blanquists agree with the principle that revolutions do not make themselves, but are made; that they are made by a relatively small minority and after a previously conceived plan; and finally, that they may be made at any time, and that "soon".

It is a matter of course that such principles will deliver a man hopelessly into the hands of all the self-deceptions of a fugitive's life and drive him from one folly into another. He wants above all to play the role of Blanqui, "the man of action". But little can be accomplished by mere good will. Not every one has the revolutionary instinct and quick decision of Blanqui. Hamlet may talk ever so much of energy, he will still remain Hamlet. And if our thirty-three men of action cannot find anything at all to do upon what they call the field of action, then these thirty-three Brutuses come into a more comical than tragic conflict with themselves. The tragic of their situation is by no means increased by the dark men which they assume, as though they were so many slayers of tyrants with stilettos in their bosoms, which they are not.

What can they do? They prepare the next "outbreak" by drawing up lists of proscription for the future, in order that the line of men, who took part in the Commune, may be purified. For this reason they are called "The Pure" by the other fugitives. Whether they themselves assume this title, I cannot say. It would fit some of them rather badly. Their meetings are secret, and their resolutions are supposed to be kept secret, although this does not prevent the whole French quarter from ringing with them next morning. And as always happens to men of action that have nothing to do, they became involved first in a personal, then in a literary quarrel with a foe worthy of themselves, one of the most doubtful of the minor Parisian journalists, a certain Vermersch, who published during the Commune the "Pére Duchene", a miserable caricature of the paper published by Hébert in 1793. This noble creature replies to their moral indignation, by calling all of them thieves or accomplices of thieves in some leaflet, and smothering them with a flood of Billingsgate that smells of the dungheap. Every word is an excrement. And is with such opponents that our thirty-three Brutuses wrestle before the public !

If anything is evident, it is the fact that the Parisian proletariat, after the exhausting war, after the famine in Paris, and especially after the fearful massacres of May, 1871, will require a good deal of time to rest, in order to gather new strength, and that every premature attempt at a revolution would bring on merely a new and still more crushing defeat. Our Blanquists are of a different opinion.

The rout of the Royalist majority in Versailles forebodes to them "the fall of Versailles, the revenge of the Commune. For we are approaching one of those great historical moments, one of those great crises, in which the people, while seemingly sunk in misery and doomed to death, resume their revolutionary advance with new strength."

In other words, another outbreak will "soon" come. This hope for an "immediate revenge of the Commune" is not a mere illusion of the fugitives, but a necessary article of faith with men, who have their mind set upon being "men of action" at a time when there is absolutely nothing to be done in the sense which they represent, that of an immediate outbreak.

Never mind. Since a start will be made soon, they hold that "the time has come, when every fugitive, who still has any life in him, should declare himself."

And so the thirty-three declare that they are: (1) atheists; (2) communists,; (3) revolutionaries.

Our Blanquists have this in common with the Bakounists, that they wish to represent the most advanced, most extreme line. For this reason they often choose the same means as the Bakounists, although they differ from them in their aims. The point with them is, then, to be more radical in the matter of atheism than all others. Fortunately it requires no great heroism to be an atheist nowadays. Atheism is practically accepted by the European working men's parties, although in certain countries it may at times be of the same calibre as that of a certain Bakounist, who declared that it was contrary to all socialism to believe in God, but that it was different with the virgin Mary, in whom every good socialist ought to believe. Of the vast majority of the German socialist working men it may even be said that mere atheism has been outgrown by them. This purely negative term does not apply to them any more, for they maintain no longer merely a theoretical, but rather a practical opposition to the belief in God. They are simply done with God; they live and think in the real world, for they are materialists. This will probably be the case in France also. But if it were not, then nothing would be easier than to see to it that the splendid French materialist literature of the preceding century is widely distributed among the laborers, that literature; in which the French mind has so far accomplished its best in form and content, and which, with due allowance for the condition of the science of their day, still stands infinitely high in content, while its form has never been equalled since.

But this cannot suit our Blanquists. In order to show that they are the most radical, God is abolished by them by decree, as in 1793: "May the Commune for ever free humanity from this ghost of past misery (God), from this cause of its present Misery." (The non-existing God a cause !) There is no room in the Commune for priests; every religious demonstration, every religious organisation, must be forbidden."

And this demand for a transformation of people into atheists by order of the star chamber is signed by two members of the Commune of the first place, that a multitude of things may be ordered on paper without being carried out, and in the second place, that persecutions are the best means of promoting disliked convictions. So much is certain, that the only service, which may still be rendered to God to-day, is that of declaring atheism an article of faith to be enforced and of outdoing even Bismarck's anti-Catholic laws by forbidding religion altogether.

The second point of the program is Communism.

Here we are more at home, for the ship in which we sail here is called "The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848." Already in the fall of 1872 the five Blanquists who withdrew from the International had adopted a socialist program, which was in all essential points that of the present German Communism. They had justified their withdrawal by the fact that the International refused to play at revolution making after the manner of these five. Now this council of thirty-three adopts this program with its entire materialist conception of history, although its translation into Blanquist French leaves a good deal to desire, in parts where the "Manifesto" has not been almost literally adopted, as it has, for instance, in the following passage: "As the last expression of all forms of servitude, the bourgeoisie has lifted the mystic veil from the exploitation of labor, by which it was formerly obscured: Governments, religions, family, laws, institutions of the past and the present, finally revealed themselves in this society, reduced to the simple antagonism between capitalist and wage workers, as instruments of oppression, by the help of which the bourgeoisie maintains its rule and holds the proletariat down."

Compare with this "The Communist Manifesto", Section 1: "In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoise has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverend awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation, etc." 

But as soon as we descend from theory to practice, the peculiarity of the thirty-three manifests itself: "We are Communists, because we want to reach our goal without stopping at any intermediate stations, at compromises, which merely defer the victory and prolong the slavery."

The German Communists are Communists, because they clearly see the final goal and work towards it through all intermediate stations and compromises, which are created, not by them, but by historical development. And their goal is the abolition of classes, the inauguration of a society, in which no private property in land and means of production shall exist any longer. The thirty-three, on the other hand, are Communists, because they imagine that they can skip intermediate stations and compromises at their sweet will, and if only the trouble begins, as it will soon according to them, and they get hold of affairs, then Communism will be introduced the day after to-morrow. If this is not immediately possible, then they are not Communists.

What a simple hearted childishness, which quotes impatience as a convincing argument in support of a theory !

Finally the thirty-three are "revolutionaries."

In this line, so far as big words are concerned, we know that the Bakounists have reached the limit; but the Blanquists feel that it is their duty to excel them in this. And how do they do this? It is well known that the entire socialist proletariat, from Lisbon to New York and Budapest to Belgrade has assumed the responsibility for the actions of the Paris Commune without hesitation. But that is not enough for the Blanquists. "As for us, we claim our part of the responsibility for the executions of the enemies of the people" (by the Commune), whose names are then enumerated; "we claim our part of the responsibility for those fires, which destroyed the instruments of royal or bourgeois oppression or protected our fighters."

In every revolution some follies are inevitably committed, just as they are at any other time, and when quiet is finally restored, and calm reasoning comes, people necessarily conclude: We have done many things which had better been left undone, and we have neglected many things which we should have done, and for this reason things went wrong.

But what a lack of judgment it requires to declare the Commune sacred, to proclaim it infallible, to claim that every burnt house, every executed hostage, received their just dues to the dot over the i! Is not that equivalent to saying that during that week in May the people shot just as many opponents as was necessary, and no more, and burnt just those buildings which had to be burnt, and no more? Does not that repeat the saying about the first French Revolution: Every beheaded victim received justice, first those beheaded by order of Robespierre and then Robespierre himself! To such follies are people driven, when they give free rein to the desire to appear formidable, although they are at bottom quite goodnatured.

Enough. In spite of all follies of the fugitives, and in spite of all comical efforts to appear terrible, this program shows some progress. It is the first manifesto, in which French workingmen endorse the present German Communism. And these are moreover workingmen of that calibre, who consider the French as the chosen people of the revolution and Paris as the revolutionary Jerusalem. To have carried them to this point is the undeniable merit of Vaillant, who is one of the signers of the manifesto, and who is well known to be thoroughly familiar with the German language and the German socialist literature. The German Socialist workingmen, on the other hand, who proved in 1870 that they were completely free from jingoism, may regard it as a good sign that French workingmen adopt correct theoretical principles, even when they come from Germany. 

(From “Der Volksstaat,” No. 73, 1874. Translated by Ernest Untermann.)

Life-Like Portraits of Marx & Engels. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sketches. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The issue of an alleged organ of patriotism— the "Daily Sketch"—for the 18th November, 1919, contains an attempt to score off a contemporary, in which the author—"The Man in the Street"—as may be expected, misrepresents the working-class position.

He says: "I want the people who 'create all wealth,' to take special note of the fact that Mr. Churchill's challenge (in the 'Illustrated Sunday Herald' of the 16th November, 1919) was couched in the following terms :

  There can be no contrast more striking than that presented by the sober, solid weight and influence of British Trade Unionism and the ruthless, crazy, devastating doctrines with which it has allowed itself to be saddled. These doctrines, and the mood and feeling which support them, can clearly be seen whenever a Labour newspaper is produced. They arise from a thoroughly jaundiced outlook on things in general.
  "The British Empire and all that goes to build it up is regarded as a sordid, quasi-criminal, company-promoting affair. The fighting services, in which the average working man takes so much pride, are treated as mere wastrels in themselves, and tools of ambition. The British Constitution, with its ancient traditions and all its wonderful adaptability, which have won for it the admiration, and to a large extent the imitation, of the entire world, is depicted as a base device to favour monopolies and existing vested interests.
  "An internationalism of the most extravagant kind; an extreme pacifism that in the war manifested itself as an unaffected defeatism; a wholesale repudiation of national and private obligations ; a frank and spontaneous adoption of the point of view of every country but their own, combined with an extraordinary levity in regard to practical and immediate consequences—these are the characteristics of Labour propaganda." 

The foregoing contains more errors to the acre than any statement of similar area on record.

We are just now concerned with the second and third pars, set out above.

Winnie tells us that "the people who create all wealth" say that "the British Empire is regarded as a sordid, quasi-criminal .... affair," etc., etc.

Well, my winsome Winny! And "The Man in the Street"—"What abaht it"? Isn't it true? Is this indictment in any particular inaccurate ?

No. On the contrary, every word of it stands proven from the pages of history, or the teaching of modern science.

For instance, can any one study the history of India—especially the annals of the East India Co.—and the struggles between the English and the French around Pondicherry and else where, purely over questions of commerce, without coming to the conclusion that the British Empire—and for that matter every other form of capitalist government—is a "sordid, quasi-criminal, company-promoting affair".

Seeing that "the fighting services" are used entirely for purposes of destruction, and never produce anything, by what process of logic can they be described as being other than "mere wastrels in themselves, and tools of (capitalist) ambition"?

As for the third par quoted above, "The Man in the Street" goes on: "The B.W.M." (the British Working Man) "can at least count up to five beans; and then asks if Churchill in the hunk of him I have quoted, put down five beans or five bits of bogey ?

"I say that he has put down five beans."

Our author goes: "I say that they are true and irrefutable beans, and that if they hadn't been true and irrefutable the 'eager' Labour news paper would have hopped on to them like the machine-minder's labourer hopped on to the blackleg—namely, with a spanner."

Yes ! my dear "Man in the Street," they are five beans—"true and irrefutable," and because they are "true and irrefutable" you are going to cop it even as the poor wretch of a blackleg copped it —with a spanner; for unlike the miserable Labour newspaper that "lies low and says nuffin," the present writer will smash your argument.

Here is the first "bean."

"An internationalism of the most extravagant kind."

The interests of the workers of every country are, in the main, the same: to sell the only commodity they possess, that is their labour-power, on the best possible terms; and any change in the conditions of labour in one country must necessarily find its reflex in other countries. Therefore the workers must organise internationally for the purpose of ending the exploitation of their class, which exploitation is the object for which the employing class buy labour-power.

The second "bean" is: "An extreme 'pacifism that in the war manifested itself as an unaffected 'defeatism.'"

Inasmuch as Socialists strongly object to taking any part in capitalist wars, it may be correct to describe them as "pacifists," apart from this reservation, that the Socialist Party is AT WAR—in the class war—with the capitalist class of the world.

Then we come to the third "bean" : "a whole sale repudiation of national and private obligation."

Terrible indeed! As regards the first item in this truly marvellous "bean," who was it entered into these aforesaid national obligations? The fact that they are national precludes the workers from taking any part therein, for the working class is a slave class, and while they occupy that status cannot be a part of the nation, and therefore cannot be concerned in the fulfilment or otherwise of agreements arranged between different sections of the exploiting class.

Next, the fourth "bean" : "A frank and spontaneous adoption rf the point of view of every country but their own."

Now, will winsome Winnie or his docile disciple "The Man in the Street," tell us what country the workers can claim as theirs? They do everything necessary for the production of the whole of the wealth of society, but they have not a jot or tittle of ownership in either the raw material, the means of production, or the wealth when it is produced. The ownership of these things is vested entirely in the people who comprise the "nation." The workers are out casts in the land of their birth —whatever part of the world that may be—living a mere Ishmaelitish existence.

The fifth ''bean" is a continuation of the fourth, as follows : ". . . combined with an extraordinary levity in regard to practical and immediate consequences—these are the characteristics of labour propaganda."

Really, this is a serious indictment of the working class! In face of these charges how can we hold up our heads and look our owners in the face?

But hold on! Our gallant (!) critics need not worry. Churchill's diatribe, and his understudy's comments thereon, do not apply to us, but to the Labour Party. And the Labour Party is quite tame and subservient to the interests and dictates of the capitalist class. It is not out to destroy capitalism, but to reform it —

" To rub off the warts and pimples,
To iron out the cracks and dimples."

Did they not allow their spokesmen to support in every possible way the ghastly outrage on mankind during the past five years ?

Did not Brownlie write an infamous letter to the last T U C, demanding increased production? Has not the late Food Controller written in the Press to the same effect ? Does not the Labour Party allow their members to take office in capitalist governments ?

Any organisation which claims to be out for the emancipation of the working class must of necessity, if it is to make good its claim, be hostile—in every sense of the term—to every section of the slave-owning class, "whether avowedly capitalist or alleged labour."

It must fight, fight, fight, at every opportunity, with every available weapon that will serve its cause.

Such an organisation is the SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Hutch.

Comparisons. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discharged and demobilised soldiers are starving and homeless in the country they "defended"; officers who cannot find work here are being sent abroad to cultivate the wilderness ; Field Marshal Haig is appealing to employers "on behalf of the unemployed ex-officers and men, who number between 300,000 and 400,000" ("Daily News," 11.11.19); workers throughout the country are continually striking in order to try and keep up with the increasing cost of living; employment is becoming relatively scarcer, and, among the workers, the struggle to live is becoming fiercer.

Dr. Saleeby, giving evidence at the meeting of the National British Rate Commission on 7th November last stated that he estimated the cost of feeding a small baby properly to day to be 30s. per week ("Daily News," 8.11.16). What chance has the average member of the working class of feeding his babies properly? It would take his whole wages to feed twins, according to Dr. Saleeby's estimate.

Such is the position the working class finds itself faced with twelve months after the ending of the war that was to work so many miracles.

And what of the masters ?

Lord Leverhulme, Lady Rhondda, and such folk are spending millions acquiring new companies; undertaking after undertaking is combining and vast new companies are being floated, the shares being subscribed for in a twinkling of the eye—in fact, among the capitalists there is literally money to burn at the present moment. Commenting on this fact the City Editor of the "Daily News" (3.11.19) makes the following observations:

  Not since the rubber boom of 1910 has such a flood of company prospectuses appeared asking for subscriptions. . . .
  Many important industries have drawn together so that for several years there has been a continuous absorption of smaller concerns by bigger neighbours . . .
  Over and above these special considerations, it must be remembered that the higher range of prices for commodities and of values in the country, which has accompanied the inflation of credit produced by the expenditure connected with the war, has played a great part in assisting the boom in business under takings during the past few years. . . . Profits, represented in the new money now circulating, are much larger, while fixed charges on Debenture and Preference capitals have often remained unchanged, with the result that the divisible profits of these under takings have been largely increased. 

In the "Daily News" (10.11.19) there appears an article by their Special Commissioner on the Lancashire cotton boom, from which I take the following extracts:

 Never, I suppose, in the world's industrial history has there been a parallel to the cotton boom in Lancashire to-day. It dazzles the imagination like a new goldfield. . . . Lancashire is in a position to squeeze humanity. And to be brutal, Lancashire fully intends to squeeze. . . .
  Humanity is crying out for cotton as it has never cried before. Not only its chest of drawers, but its hack is bare. Africa, India, China, Australia, South America—all those populous regions where cotton goods are the chief clothing material—need cotton, after five years of short supply, with an unexampled urgency, and the demand of the colder countries is only less eager. They are willing to pay from three to four times as much as five years ago, and the quantity they are prepared to take at this price has no limit that can yet be fixed. 

Further on he says the mill owners are "piling up mountainous fortunes."

In the same paper for 13.11.19 the same writer says, referring to Yorkshire :

  It is hardly necessary for me to tell you that there is only one boom that approaches the Lancashire cotton boom, of which I wrote recently, and that is the Yorkshire wool boom. Indeed the manufacturers of woollen goods are, if anything, better pleased than those of cotton goods, because their supply of raw material is more certain, both as to quantity and quality. Profits in some branches of the wool trade rule, too, a good deal higher than in any section of the cotton trade. 

Compare the above quotations  with the following:

  A case of poverty so distressing that the police officer who went to the house to make an arrest himself offered money to buy food and firing was before the Guildhall magistrate yesterday. . . .
  When Detective Bryant visited the house there was no furniture, food, fire, or light, and Mrs. Page, her husband and five children were absolutely destitute. The husband, crippled with rheumatism, had been unable to find work. " ("Daily News," 21.11.19.)

Or take another example—the case of an ex-service man, demobilised last February after three years' service, out-of-work since leaving the Army in spite of "weary journeys round the labour exchanges":

  The man's wife was nearly blind and partly deaf, and he had eight children, whose ages ranged from six months to 16 years. The furniture in the house, said Mr. Biner, consisted of beds, four chairs, and a table— nothing else. Ten were sleeping in one room. The children had poor clothing and boots and were under-led, and there was no coal in the house. " ("Daily News," 11.11.19.)

And they who, though "piling up mountainous fortunes," will not even care for the shattered living, insulted the memory of our deluded dead with "two minutes in which the wheels ceased to revolve while all mourned the loving dead"! Yes, a two minutes' stoppage of work cost the hypocrites comparatively nothing, but it was cold comfort for the bereaved.

The quotations relating to Lancashire and Yorkshire show what was behind the crusade for increased production. Increased production (other things remaining the same) means a cheapening of the cost of the labour-power, and consequently an increase in the already enormous profits. The propaganda for increased production illustrates to what depths of callousness our masters are prepared to sink in order to extract more surplus-value—callous of working-class misery, and oblivious of the cant in which they have lately indulged when driving the budding manhood of the working class to the European shambles.

Yorkshire and Lancashire are standing examples, all through the last century, of the way the industrial magnates have built up their vast wealth out of the sweat and misery of working men, women, and even children. The following extracts, which have been taken from an article headed "The Decay of Lancashire," which appeared in the "Penny Magazine" for June 28, 1919, give an idea of the condition of the workers where the "boom" is on :

  There are long hours of work under unhealthy conditions, the exploitation of female and child labour, and Lancashire's methods of screwing out the last ounce of production at the lowest possible price by speeding up machinery and by actual robbery of the operatives. Add to these the recurring periods of unemployment, low wages, often bad housing, and you have the explanation of the high death rate . .
  The work has to be carried on amidst the ceaseless roar of machinery in artificially heated and often humidified room. It is monotonous and enervating. As to its monotony, it is sufficient to point out that mechanical invention has reached such a pitch of perfection that the machine is almost human and the human is little more than a machine. . . .
  The temperature of the mill is often from 80 to 90 degrees. In such an atmosphere youths and girls are forced into maturity before their time, like plants in a hothouse. And they pay the penalty by becoming old before their time. They also pay for the contrast between the heat of the mill and the inclemency of the Lancashire climate by a great burden of sickness. They are, many of them, pallid, stunted, and narrow-chested, easy victims of consumption and bronchial affections.
  It may be said that the great masses of the industrial population of Lancashire are ailing from the cradle to the grave. Nowhere do the quack doctors, the herbalists, and the venders of pills and patent medicines reap such a rich harvest as in the cotton towns. 

The leopard cannot change his spots nor the appropriator of unpaid labour his methods. The capitalist class in the early days filched from the workers the product of their labour and kept them at their toil with the whip of starvation. In its old age it spreads misery, want, and desolation among the working class to an increasing extent. The only hope for the toiler is lo work for the overthrow of the system that is rooted in the servitude of the wage-worker.

Gilmac.

S. P. G. B. Propaganda Meetings For January. (1920)

Party News from the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Phrase Magic. (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

 “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed ; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society. Therefore mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.”—Marx.

The above remarks were the outcome of years of patient historical investigation by one of the greatest thinkers of modern times.

One of the conditions necessary for the disappearance of the present social order (capitalism) is the understanding of certain basic principles on the part of the working class. Until the workers as a whole understand the position they occupy in modern society and the only way out of that position (i.e.. by class conscious political action) another social order will not give place to the present one—in spite of fuming and foaming, wild words and empty phrases.

In our Declaration of Principles we lay down the few simple essential principles it is necessary to understand and act upon in order to achieve emancipation from wage slavery.

Briefly summed up these principles are as follows:

All social wealth is produced by the working class and owned by the master class. Between these two classes there is a class struggle which can only be abolished by the emancipation of the workers from wage-slavery ; i.e., by the supplanting of capitalist private ownership by social ownership. This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself, and, as the capitalist class retains its position by the control of the machinery of government, the working class must organise to capture the political machinery in order to use it as the agent of emancipation. Finally, as all political parties represent class interests, the working-class political party must be hostile to all other parties.

These are the broadest principles that can be adopted by the working class to work out its emancipation. If action is taken outside these elementary principles the working class movement is plunged into a morass.

But these principles are too simple, open and definite to please those who like to walk about with theatrical expressions on their lips, and to move on waves of emotion. Nor do they prefer the henchmen of the master clams, who prefer the diffusion of confusion as such methods hinder the spread of Socialism.

Our position does not lend itself to highly coloured phrases or empty diatribes, hence the wild “Revolutionaries” (the dangerous livers of the S.L.P.) and popularity chasers steer clear of our party.

There are some people who have neither the patience to acquire knowledge nor the self control to follow the only course (slow though it may be) open to the class-conscious worker. Those to whom the writer alludes are the emotional, red-flag-waving individuals.

People of this type have cut a figure in past movements and exist in profusion to-day, They live in the limelight, mouthing all sorts of handy phrases—in fact empty phrases echoing from empty heads largely constitute their stock-in-trade and take the place of ideas and knowledge. So effective in stirring up emotion are these phrases that their users seldom attempt to get behind them to ascertain their true meaning.

The phrase wizards, with an inflated estimate of their own puny accomplishments, flourish in all the pseudo working-class parties of the present. They strive to play upon emotion and attract a large following by voicing their particular pet phrases and hazy notions, hurrying a bewildered group of supporters along with them to some misty land of promise—they don’t know exactly where.

In the Chartist movement in England the “Revolutionary” raved and ranted, gained applause—and the movement suddenly collapsed. The inexorable laws of capitalism ground the Chartist movement to powder, and swept the popular “leaders” away.

About twenty years ago the I.W.W. was ushered in with a great flourish of trumpets, and all the would-be “revolutionists” hurried to the front, panting with excitement and gasping their fervid and frenzied phrases. The real facts of the situation, however, and the unsurmountable obstacles to “taking and holding the means of production” through so-called industrial action (or inaction !) soon shattered the movement into warring fragments.

At the present moment we have the same bogey and crowd-gathering business cropping up again. The new catch-cry is “government by the Soviets.” And again all the phrasemongers and “revolutionaries” are to the fore. Again they are trying to force the pace by appeals to emotion. But unfortunately for these soft-hearted, soft-headed, and excited hurricanes neither fine phrases nor good intentions will take the place of knowledge. Appeals to emotion may bring a bloody shambles, but they cannot bring Socialism.

People of this kind imagine they can produce results with a wizard’s wand. Although the mass of the workers are not prepared to accept Socialism at present, these people imagine that the magic word “Soviet” is going to perform miracles. One is reminded of the whimsical jokers who are going to sweep all obstacles aside with the ponderous word "Ergatocracy” !

Even if we assumed, for the sake of argument, that the Soviet system were applicable in the particular case of Russia, owing to Russia’s historical development, would this prove that it was suitable to other countries where social development had been somewhat different? As a matter of fact, however, the “Soviet” wave is a striking example of how phrases are used to smother facts. ” Soviet” means “council,” but if this plain English word were used everybody would understand its significance—and the movement would be stripped of its glamour.

The emancipation of the working class must be accomplished by the working class itself; the working class will not emancipate itself until it desires Socialism ; the working class will not desire Socialism until it has gained an understanding of the necessary principles. In other words, Socialism is impossible until the necessary knowledge is acquired by the workers. Therefore the work for Socialists to do is to diffuse knowledge as much as possible in the shape of an explanation of their principles.

The result of the recent elections throughout Europe is a crushing retort to the “get there quick” merchants. Had the majority of the workers desired Socialism there would have been a sweeping rejection of capitalist candidates, instead of which exactly the opposite has taken place.

Faced with these facts the “revolutionaries” strive to “get there” round the back way some how—to land the workers in a new society strictly on the q. t.!

However, another disillusionment is in store, and “all power to the Soviets” will run its course and collapse as all similar schemes have done before.

Working for Socialism is, by its very nature, steady, plodding, uphill work, strictly in accordance with the principle of the class struggle. Just as inexorably and inevitably as the capitalist system approaches the breaking point, the Socialist position gains ground among the workers, and at the proper historical time (when the workers want it) Socialism will succeed capitalism. As has already been pointed out, we cannot force the pace—we must work and wait.

In England, as a result of a long historical development, we find certain means at hand with which the Social Revolution can be accomplished, but we also find that the workers have not yet reached the stage when they are prepared to utilise these means to their own advantage. No amount of misguided emotion can obscure this fact. The workers possess the weapon, in the political machinery, with which they can usher in Socialism—when they desire it.

In conclusion, the writer emphasises the fact that artfully worded and high-sounding phrases have always been used to mislead the workers and rally them to the support of the masters. In the English, French, and American revolutions the mass of the people fought out the battles to the cries of “Eternal Freedom,” “The Inalienable Rights of Man,” “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” and such phrases, but all these “rights” were eventually fused in the right of the privileged few to exploit the toiling masses. The masses gave their lives without question at the call to arms. No further back than the recent war a striking illustration was given, when, with the catch-cry of ”The protection of small nationalities” the “heroes” of Amritsar and Lahore fame set a wave going that swept thousands of workers into the shambles. It is, therefore, essential to shun empty phrases as the plague.

A year ago a miserable attempt was made to bring about unity among those who had, year in year out, swindled and betrayed the working class. The basis of the attempt was phrases borrowed from Russia, the plan miscarried, but it illustrated the rottenness that permeates those groups that throw overboard the principle of the class struggle in order to engage in compromise.

Between the workers and the masters there is no common meeting ground, no half-way house. To be successful we must hold to the ground of the class struggle and fight the battle out to its ultimate conclusion on this solid ground. As George Meredith pithily put it; in “The Tragic Comedians”: “Compromise is virtual death : it is the pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency.”

Gilmac.

Bald and Unconvincing: Also "There are others". (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

That Fine Thing — Opportunity.

Capitalist cant and humbug still manifest themselves at every turn, and the Bolshevist movement still supplies them with some of the finest opportunities for such manifestation. Almost weekly some female member of the class who kept Russian soil soaked with blood (working-class blood, of course) for generations, escapes from the “clutches” of the Bolsheviks, and brings her troubles to these shores. Invariably she has a harrowing tale of the atrocities of “the terror.” She usually has managed to pick up a document of fearful import —Bolshevik army orders relating to the taking of women and girls for sinister purposes are the moat common; we all know how carelessly the “Reds” leave such things lying about the streets! —which is very thoughtful of her, for it enables her perhaps otherwise unconvincing narrative to be published with illustrations.

Unfortunate Lack of Evidence

But also invariably, when the Russian Countess (all the princesses have long since been laid in their nameless graves, with unmentionable accompaniments) has told her tale of horror, she has nothing to show in substantiation thereof except her ropes of pearls and her jewels (which the “Reds” might have found had they taken the trouble to search her) and precious document —which might quite possibly be a forgery. Invariably she has no mangled limbs to display before the public whom she expects to swallow so much. She does not hobble along on one leg as do so many poor fellows of the working class in this country and others. She gets about very well, thank yon; and if she did lose forty pounds of fat owing to the Bolshevik horrors (and not, mark yon, because she had to fare as other people in a land which she herself describes as starving) she soon finds it again among her fellow parasites in the West End. For, happily enough, all these horrors which she relates (even to people of “birth and breeding” being compelled to work) have happened — to other people!

The Latest Witnesses —

Not Russian countesses, but two Irish “girls,” are the latest to escape from that other “distressful country” that is not Ireland. They come with the same wearying tale of atrocities that have been inflicted upon—others. They have (the “Daily Chronicle” of Jan. 3 informs us) “a number of terrible photographs, showing the horrors of the Red regime.” And “It is impossible henceforward to hope that such stories of the Red Terror may prove to have been exaggerated; the credibility of these new witnesses is beyond question.”

And yet—there are some strange features about their narrative. One might start with those “terrible photographs.” It is a strange; thing that they do not publish them. What have they brought them to this country for, if they are not to be seen? Is it in order to talk about them, and to add to the famous Government collection of Russian photographs which are not fit for publication—for fear somebody should identify them as pictures of outrages perpetrated upon Russian workers under the Czarist regime ?

— Have the Old Falling.

It is strange reading also that two ladies, one of whom had “lost 40lb. in weight as a result of her sufferings," and the other of whom looks, from her published photograph, as though her sister’s loss has been her gain, could “run for five miles,” as the “Daily Chronicle” reports that they finally did, to escape the Red Terror. 

It is strange, also, that one of these women could lay (sic) on her “bed with the door barricaded” while “ten Bolsheviks occupied the room next to mine. . . . There night after night they carried on drunken orgies of an unspeakable character,” and yet be able to say (as both she and her sister do) that she was “never subjected to personal violence.” It is strange again how she knew the exact number, when there were so many, of Bolsheviks in that room if she had to hide herself away from them, or that they could be bo very terrible if she did not.

It is strange yet again that if the iron of these dread doings had bitten so deep into her soul --not to speak of her “weight"—the lady had a thought to spare for the observation which is replaced with prints in the above quotation. That observation was: “There was a beautiful drawing-room full of beautiful furniture.” If the fact that Bolsheviks ware holding “drunken orgies” in rooms and among furniture where only the rich had carried on theirs, is a crime of the Bolsheviks or a trouble of the lady, we may judge at once the standard by which she appraises both the villainy of the “Reds” and the depth of her own “sufferings.”

It is strange, farther, that these two ladies “have been in Kieff during each period of Bolshevik rule.” One would have thought that one experience of this “nightmare” was enough, and that they would have seized the first opportunity of clearing out of the danger zone. But they appear to have cleared out only when one of them was detected in hiding Russian officers, in other words taking an active part in the struggle against the Bolsheviks. A similar participation in warfare in any other country has its prescribed penalty. The ladies were wise to scoot.

And now for the particular horrors which the “credibility of these new witnesses” puts beyond question.

When the Reds had departed one of the ladies went to a sort of human slaughter house, where “in the garden 127 nude and mutilated corpses, including those of some women, were flung into a hole.” Obviously, she could not count these 127 bodies all flung into one hole, so it is clear that the unquestionable credibility with which the capitalist editor of our capitalist contemporary so lightly guarantees the unconvincing narrative must be made to cover even second-hand information.

Such, indeed is shown to be the case as the story proceeds, for we are told that “the man who removed the bodies from the shed told a horrible story of what he described as the staircase of death. “It seems [seems, mark you] that the victims first had to strip and then form up in line with arms folded.

“First one line had to lie on their faces, and they were then shot.

“Then the second row filed in and took their places, just behind the first row; and so row after row of corpses was piled up until there was what he describes as a staircase of bleeding bodies reaching almost to the ceiling of the shed,”

So the lady’s credibility is to guarantee the truth of what another party told her, even!

But there is a fly in the ointment, for it is obvious that the proceeding as stated could not result in “a staircase of bleeding bodies reaching almost to the ceiling of the abed.” The geometry of the thing is all wrong.

However, it matters little what the trimmings were. It would be strange indeed if the Bolsheviks, at war and pressed on every hand, did not find occasion to put some backs up against a wall. And stripped of all its embroidery, that is all it amounts to. In the reports of their opponents parallel cases are thus sententiously recorded: "Many Bolsheviks were captured and executed.” Ana it ill becomes those who took part in the filling of ten million graves all over the world, to whine because the process which they set in motion does not cease at their command.

But the seal is placed on the hypocrisy of the ruling class by the facts revealed by the inquiry into certain happenings in India, and the cool and even callous way in which those facts are accepted by our masters’ Press. Nothing that has yet been alleged against the Bolsheviks in any way compares with or rivals for sheer ferocious animal brutality the confessed and even vaunted butchery of 500 natives by a British officer. In a country where that awful specimen of bloody-minded savagery had no other right at all to be save the right of the “mailed fist,” and in their own village, some thousands of people demonstrated in defiance of their conquerors’ orders. How the British apostle of “frightfulness” hurried to the scene eager for the bloodletting; how he deployed his men on a neighbouring hilltop, and in a few brief seconds had them pouring “rapid fire” into the crowd; how he ceased the butchery, not when the crowd dispersed, not when 500 fell dead and 2,000 wounded, but when he ran out of ammunition; and how he then marched his men away from the scene without attempting to give any assistance to his victims (it was not his business, he said): all this is told in the capitalist Press. We have no need to resort to suspect sources for that information. And these revelations come to hand at the opportune moment to form an effective reply to the tales of Bolshevik barbarity. 

A. E. Jacomb

Editorial: Our New Year Message. (1920)

Editorial from the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the commencement of another year it may be expected that we should send out to our fellow workers the Customary New Year message. It is, however, one of the penalties of advancing years in the life of a journal that it becomes increasingly difficult to find anything fresh to say upon the recurrence of such a monotonous event as the birth of another year, or to put pen to paper upon such an unsuspicious occasion without dropping into platitudes. But to-day “ye gods” are kind—ye gods for the moment being those very honourable and proper personages, the Prime Ministers of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

These gentlemen have issued a New Year’s Message to “Our Fellow Citizens of the British Empire," and as luck would have it, their opening sentence fills the aching void for this year, at all events—provides a sort of text for a New Year sermon.

Says their bigbugships: “The war, in shaking the very foundations of ordered civilisation, has driven all thoughtful men to examine the bases of national and international life.” Well, let us assist in that examination.

Ye gods, as might be expected, find that the “hope of a 'brotherhood of humanity’ reposes on the deeper spiritual fact of the 'Eternal Fatherhood of God,’” and declare that “In the recognition of the fact of that Fatherhood and of the Divine purpose of the world, which are central to the message of Christianity, we shall discover the ultimate foundation for the reconstruction of an ordered and harmonious life for all men.” That is their message—now for ours.

If anything has become clear “both through the arbitrament of war and through the tests of rebuilding a life of peace” (as the Premiers say), it is that all the goodwill and spirit of brotherhood in the world go down before the force of economic interests. It must necessarily be so. Take the case of two men struggling for one job. Does the spirit of brotherhood dictate that one should stand aside for the other? Then what of the men’s children? No, the divergent interests of the two men dictate that they fight it out to the very last gasp. To fail to do so is death, and not very heroic death either.

The “real foundation for the ordered development of the world’s life,” therefore, is the unification of their material interests. Not while one class lives on the toil of another class can there be harmony; not while the wealth produced is the subject of a struggle between those who produce it and those who do not can there be peace. The only way is to make the interest of all the same. How can it be done?

The reason of the conflict of interests in the society of to-day is that the people are on two different economic planes. One section own the means of life, the other section own only the means of operating those means of life—their labour-power. It is dear, then, that those who do not own the means of living must either wrest those means of living from the owners or sell their labour-power to those owners for the means of subsistence. This means of subsistence is part of the product of their labour.

There must, then, always be, in the first place, a struggle over the division of this product of the workers’ toil—this struggle is the wages struggle. And in the second place there must be a struggle for freedom on the part of the enslaved workers.

The ground is clear enough now. Harmony can only be established by destroying the private ownership of the means of living. This is the Socialist remedy.

The "ultimate foundation for the reconstruction of an ordered and harmonious life for all men" we declare, in contradiction to ye gods the Six Premiers, lies in making the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth the property of the community, and using them to produce wealth for the use of the community, instead of for sale. 

That is our New Year message. To that consummation, which will open a way to a harmonious life for all men and women by harmonising the economic interests of all men and women, we urge all members of our class to devote their attention in the new year that has come upon us. So shall we find emancipation and happiness in years to come.

If Man Friday — (1920)

From the January 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Man Friday could be suddenly introduced to our industrial life, taken into the factories and shown the wonderful processes by which we pour out society's dazzling stream of wealth, have explained to him the astonishing contrivances by which we have conquered space and time and the forces of nature, what would surprise him most? Would it be the wonderful looms reeling off miles of fine cloth, or the carpet looms weaving a double fabric to be split into two as it is woven, or the railway trains flying over the land at a mile a minute, or the 50,000 horse power engines of the giant ships, or the mighty mills grinding a nations' corn, or the newspaper machines turning out their scores of thousands of papers per hour, or the airmen climbing up into the clouds, or what?

No, it would not be any of these things that would give Robinson Crusoe's batman his greatest or most lasting surprise. When he had seen all our technical marvels he would naturally ask to be shown the results, and then he would get a jolt. He would find that in spite of the prodigious wealth that could be produced, people were in want; then he would discover that, contrary to all his previous experience, people were most in want when there was most wealth in the land, and finally he would see that it was not those who did not produce the wealth that were in want, but those who did, and—the knockout—the more they produced the deeper their want. And then he would laugh!

He would laugh because he had tumbled to the secret of the whole thing. His mind would go back to the time when he lay on the beach, the prospective joint of his hungry brethren, before Robinson robbed them of their dinner. He would recognise in our productive system only another form of cannibalism. All our marvels of science and ingenuity he would recognise only as adjuncts of an elaborate scheme of cannibalism, in which men ate other men piecemeal, instead of at a sitting.

Yes, he would see men's and women's sinews being, through these wonderful instruments of labour, worn into wealth for their masters appropriation, their flesh ground into profit for their master's pocketing; and he would marvel not so much at the development of our industrial devices as at the surprising way in which cannibalism has been elaborated through ages of development, to convert the unconscious victim of an hour's feast into sentient flesh quivering for a lifetime under wheels that pinch and peel.

A. E. Jacomb