A Happy New Year ! Its empty meaning for the workers. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is usual at this time of year for each of us to greet all and sundry, friends, relatives, acquaintances, and the rest, with a wish that the ensuing year will be a happy one. One can read several lessons in this little practice. One can deduce the overwhelming power of custom which impels whole nations to utter the same commonplaces at the same time. One can be cynical and sneer at the empty meaningless formula that is so easy to utter and so divorced from actuality. One can also be fatuous, and jovially join in the universal quacking whilst also sharing in the universal forgetting which usually follows. But there is another attitude. Our lives are dotted with many such harmless and essentially useless little customs, and we can take advantage of them in just such measure as we can turn them to practical use. The phrase, ”A Happy New Year to you” dies as it is born, for it is just a wish. Few or none ever follow it by a single thought on what would constitute a happy year or on how such a period could be established. There are difficulties, of course.

Happiness is a condition which almost defies definition. Millions have sought it; in fact it might be described as man’s chief pursuit. Of those who claim to have been successful we are in grave doubt. Some have seen in the amassing of worldly goods the clearest road to happiness. Having achieved it scores of them tell us it was not worth the trouble. Others have held that happiness consists in making the fewest possible demands on life; on limiting one’s needs to the most frugal necessities. This view is always suspect. One always wonders if they are cutting their philosophic coat according to their very material cloth. Others speak of a via media, a middle road, perfectly level, and only mildly eventful. From its even surface one benignantly surveys the unhappy rich on the surrounding heights, burdened with great possessions ; and one gazes pityingly into the valley below, where struggle the millions not so burdened. Philosophers, teachers, orators, and preachers, all down the ages have counted their lives well spent in telling mankind how to be happy. Yet mankind is not happy. Like children, mankind usually imagines happiness to consist in the immediate satisfaction of some momentary need. That need satisfied, a short interval finds the elusive bird of happiness has again taken flight, and the eternal chase begins anew. One meets people to whom Fortune has dealt the most stunning blows, and who yet seem to find life a huge joke. One knows others to whom Fate has never been unkind, and who are profoundly miserable.

This is not the most scientific way of examining the question of happiness. One can multiply individual instances until the brain reels, and draw no valid conclusion whatever. So far as one can offer a formula at all, happiness would seem to consist in a frame of mind, varying with individual temperament, wherein it feels good to be alive, born of good health and nourished by good conditions. Complete happiness is too near ecstasy to be possible or even desirable, but we can at least examine the conditions that make or mar our lives, and render them reasonably happy, or the reverse.

First, being living beings, it is essential to happiness that primary necessities should be available for all. These prime needs are self-evidently food, shelter and clothing. Now without following any of the philosophers into obscure discussions on the nature and pursuit of happiness, let us see to what extent we are supplied with the first, elementary ingredients of creative comfort and existence. The columns of this journal have groaned with official figures, giving the numbers of those of us perpetually on the verge of starvation. There is no need to give them again. The daily Press gives constant illustration of wide-spread permanent poverty, and it is a commonplace that millions of Great Britain’s workers have but a nodding acquaintance with a square meal. Food, the first physical requisite of life, is scarce, adulterated, and of doubtful quality.

What of shelter ? Here the situation is more obvious. An empty house is more easily visible than an empty stomach. Our civilisation cannot properly shelter its people. It simply refers to their sorry condition as a “Housing Problem,” and speaks of gradually overtaking it in some 30 or 50 years. The “problem” is tacitly attributed to the war, but the festering slums of Hanley, Ancoats or Sheffield, of Glasgow, Lanark, or Belfast, existed long previous to the war. Just the same terrible tales of big families occupying one room, of verminous tenements, of crime, and immorality due to overcrowding, of dilapidated dwellings, of people living in cowsheds—just the same florid facts used to decorate the daily papers before the war as since. And they had just as much effect. Enough was done to keep capitalist society secure, and little more. The facts are not obscure. Even the Daily Express (Dec. 19), that staunch upholder of things as they are, gives its readers the thrill they love in a column describing present-day conditions in Southwark.

  “Those who travel by tramcar or omnibus along Blackfriars Road or through Stamford Street, or the main roads leading from Blackfriars and the Elephant to London Bridge have no conception of the network of hovels, the jig-saw of warrens on either hand, in which thousands of people exist.

  Warrens ! A rabbit would not live in them. Some of them are nothing more than sewer abodes for human rats.

  Here is a court eight feet wide, with twelve so-called houses in it. No backs to the houses. Each house, two rooms. No place to wash, no place to cook.

   At one end of the court are three open lavatories. At the other end one, and another in the centre. Men, women and children, tenants paying rent that should ensure good cottage accommodation, all use them. Tramps from the alleys, lewd women, anybody could have access. One was locked up. That left four to the whole colony of, say, 100 people.

  “We women dare not approach these places after dark,” said one young wife whose life has been utterly damned in this network of misery.

  “Look at my home,” she added in an agony of despair.

  There were eight beings existing in the two small dismal rooms.

   “If only I could get out of it!” she cried.

ALL THE SAME.

   I went into house after house. There was no sign of alleviation anywhere. I was in miseryland. It was blank tragedy. One of the people spoke quietly in tones of utter despair. Others raved against landlords. Some cursed life itself.”

And so on for a column. And the remedy? None was mentioned.

And then clothing. No figures are needed here. One simply uses one’s eyes and supplements that by personal experience. Is it an exaggeration to state that the vast majority of workers are inadequately clothed and shod, and that most of what they do wear is shoddy?

Then with a perpetual paucity of the three primal necessities, would we not be better employed in searching for the root cause of this simple misery than searching for abstract definitions of happiness. Has there been a great natural famine? Is Mother Nature a niggard? Has some great catastrophe dried up the fountains of well-being? There is no evidence of it. Rather the contrary. We read about a month since of enormous catches of fish in the North Sea. We read also of boat-loads being thrown away so as not to spoil the market. We are told further that millions of acres of food-growing land have gone out of cultivation. We learn also that the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile workers are standing idle, waiting for their cloth to be saleable. Some time back the bootmakers of Kettering, Leicester, Northampton, were starving because of “overproduction,” that is, they had made too many boots. There seems to be something wrong somewhere. Nature appears to be doing her part. It is evidently in this “market” where lies the trouble. Obviously instead of goods being produced to supply human necessities, this can only be done through the medium of a sale. And if a sale cannot be effected the goods remain where they are and the would-be recipient goes without. Evidently, therefore, it is not sufficient for the farmer, the fisherman, the fruit-grower, the cattle-raiser, to know that hungry humanity needs their produce. The builder will not build simply because people want houses. The weaver will not weave solely because we shall perish without clothing. These needs must exist, certainly, but their satisfaction depends entirely upon a sale taking place. But is this not a reasonable state of things ? Do we advocate a system where goods are given away? We do not ! But we say a better system of supplying ordinary physical needs can be evolved than one that introduces starvation as a consequence of plenty. Than one that compels the producers of wealth to hire out their one possession—their power to labour—for the cost of their upkeep. Than one that condemns them to starve in the midst of the plenty they have created because they cannot buy back the whole of their product. We say that human society could be and should be a coherent whole. That all should take part in the necessary work of production, and that all should share in the common result. Can it be done? Let us conclude with an illustration.

Some few months back our astronomers directed their telescopes upon our beautiful celestial neighbour, the planet Mars. Several claimed to have discovered overwhelming proof of the existence thereon of sentient beings. Their difficulties were recognised even at a distance of hundreds of millions of miles, and they had overcome them in a highly ingenious way. Their great enemy, drought, had been met by the construction of tremendous canals that conducted the melting polar snows to the more fertile, warmer regions near their equator. Even the fact that the incidence of sunshine varied in the two hemispheres over a period of thousands of years had been provided for. But one significant thing seemed to escape the reflections of our astronomers. All their observations implied that the Martians viewed their planet as a coherent whole, a common possession. None was guilty of the lunacy of suggesting that the Martians were divided into separate, jealous, warring gangs, each gang subdivided into toilers and parasites. It is not impossible, of course, but all our scientists’ suggestions tacitly recognised that works of such magnitude, directed to a common end, would naturally be the work of beings who had risen superior to the stupid divisions with which we are familiar. Then let us take a celestial leaf from their (possibly nonexistent) book, and view our earth as a common heritage. Let all take part in the winning of wealth from Mother Nature’s storehouse. Then let all share in the result of a co-operative mutual effort. Let us banish slavery, poverty, ignorance and wretchedness to the limbo of forgotten things. You have nothing to lose but your chains : you have a world to win.

W. T. Hopley

A Look Round. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Progress of Poverty.

How much improvement has taken place in working class home life (!) since Engels wrote “The Condition of the Working; Class in 1844”? Despite eighty years of capitalist reform every industrial area to-day contains its quagmire of slumdom. Our masters pretend horror, for they say the wicked Socialists would destroy that sanctified citadel of the humblest—the home. But lo ! what is this ?

  “Five children, their mother and father, had been compelled to sleep in one room, so tiny that it would not hold a cot” (”Daily Chronicle,” 5-12-24).

A child was consequently smothered, and at the inquest a neighbour said :

  “In her home a girl of 20, a boy of 17, a boy of 13, and another child all slept in one room.”

In an appeal case (murder) at Warwick Assizes, defence drew the attention of the court to the appalling conditions under which the prisoner lived :—

  “Three families lived in 3 rooms and X, his wife and 10 children occupied one room, 7 sleeping in one bed” (“Evening News,” 8-12-24).

In one riding of Yorkshire 3,000 children have been excluded from the public elementary schools suffering from tuberculosis, admittedly due to overcrowding in the mining district. (Manchester Guardian, 1-12-24). The Capitalists are quite aware that such conditions prevail, and have made them an asset for vote catching for years. In the first case cited the foreman of the jury considered a rider useless: as plenty of pressure had been put upon the authorities for years without making any difference. Is there a remedy within the present system? Grant that your masters allow you to be better housed you will become more efficient workers, and eventually fewer of you will be needed to produce the limited wealth their markets can absorb. The years have proved that any attempt to alleviate your conditions in one direction often worsens them in another.

While Capitalism lasts your social suffering whatever its form is the necessary accompaniment of your slave existence, it must continue while you tolerate that system. There is nothing to choose between deterioration as a slum dweller, an unemployed worker, or an employed one for that matter. Your choice must be between freedom or slavery.

A study of Socialism will teach you that it will be just as hellish to be sweated and robbed of life under a Labour administered Capitalism as under any Liberal or Tory inferno.

* * *

Empire, Honour, and Cotton.

According to the Democrat, 29-11-24, there are amongst us many who aver that British Imperialism is “grossly materialistic,” and embedded in a greed that is as callous as it is brutal. Of course it isn’t true; at least so says the writer. “Our” Empire, we are told, means lots of things, such as “the keeping together in happy union many millions of human beings,” and not forgetting our old friends “Honour and Justice.” We begin to sniff when we read : “that was one reason why the British Government were right in their firmness with Egypt,” but our lofty altruism comes a cropper when the same page informs us :

  “The Sudan has become a great cotton-growing area, producing a raw material superior in quality to any other cotton grown in the wide world.”

And what a blow to those trusting souls of the I.L.P. and others, their peace preserving League of Nations “goes to pieces” at the first touch of reality :

  “Any intervention, therefore, of the League invoked by Egypt will be unacceptable to His Majesty’s Government.” (Morning Post, 5-12-24).

* * *

Philanthropic Task Masters.

  “The daily business of the worker is production of good articles for mankind to use. The Capitalist’s task is to provide the money, find the markets, organise the work, so as to spread the benefits all round” (Business Organisation, Dec.)

What a delightful world we live in—according to the Capitalist. For a jumble of concentrated cant, half truth, and deliberate falsehood, the above wants beating. No unemployment, no shoddy, adulterated commodities, no sad lives, the sole purpose of human existence is to enable our rulers to “spread the benefits all round.” And how, pray, are they spread vide one of their own apologists?

  “When we realise that 38 out of our 43 millions are poor, the statement of Booth and Rowntree ceases to surprise us. In analysis the United Kingdom is seen to contain a great multitude of poor people veneered with a thin layer of the comfortable and rich (P43, Riches and Poverty. C. Money).

To-day it is the workers’ task to furnish the energy required to convert the earth’s resources to social means of living, including the making of the money with which they are paid, and the supervising and organising of such wealth production. Any child or imbecile possessed of wealth could play the part of landlord, shareholder, or dummy director, nor need you tax your brain capacity greatly to understand why they attempt to conceal the fact. When you do you will smile with contempt at the vapid inference that the Capitalist is a Capitalist for your benefit.

* * *

Mock Prudence.

One of the traditional scares served up for the non-thinking worker is that of the immoral teaching of Socialism. We are not concerned with our masters farm-yard morality beyond exposing the humbug of their pious dread. Some people know that shop-lifting can be termed stealing or kleptomania, according to the social position of the individual concerned. In back numbers of the Socialist Standard we have shown that even the White Slave Traffic can be elevated to something less criminal and obnoxious when its patrons are wealthy and move in the best society (sic).

The debauchery of a ruling class has ever been a symptom of decadence from the orgies of the Roman Empire to the licentious escapades of our modern parasites, details of which their own Press often consider unfit for print. It is interesting to note the different tones adopted by our opponents in their attempts to discredit Socialism and that assumed when the “idealistic indiscretion” involves a six-figure gift for the use of another man’s wife. Socialism will allow both women and men the fullest access to the means of life. Under such conditions human affection unfettered by economic considerations need consider no other attraction than that which is mutual, thus removing the sordid and mercenary basis of sex relations to-day.

W. E. MacHaffie

The capitalist principles of the I.L.P. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is common enough to hear the I.L.P. and the Labour Party attacked and defended on the ground that they are Socialist parties. Yet we find leading members of the I.L.P. affirming that the Labour Party is not really socialist, and members of the Labour Party agreeing with them. Indeed, if the members of the I.L.P. considered the Labour Party a Socialist party they could not very well justify retaining their own separate organisation claiming to be socialist, too. Then, again, the Socialist Party of Great Britain opposes both of these parties and maintains that they are anti-socialist.

It cannot fail to be confusing to the enquirer about Socialism to witness this disagreement between those who are all apparently socialists, and an attempt is usually made to dismiss the disagreement as a question not of principles but of policy and method, and of only minor importance. “We are all,” they say, “bound for the same place, but we travel by different roads.” Yet this explanation is not by any means true, for our opposition is not concerned merely with method, but is one of basic principle. We have to reject offers to sink our differences and join forces because we travel by a different road to a different place. The success of the I.L.P. would mean defeat for us, and we can get what we want only after defeating them.

If there exists this clash of aims no good purpose is served by minimising it, or ignoring it; hence our assertion that the I.L.P. is not deserving of working-class support. We must, however, not attach undue importance to mere names. We cannot prevent our opponents from calling their politics “Socialism” however much they differ from own own. The importance lies not in the name but in the thing, what it is and what it does for the workers, not what it is called. The Socialist Party and the I.L.P. both come before you to tell you the cause and the remedy for your poverty and insecurity. What we want you to notice is that their explanations and their remedies differ from ours as chalk does from cheese, in spite of an apparent similarity in the use of words. There are people who think that the I.L.P. and the Socialist Party are both wrong, but what you ought to avoid at all costs is thinking that we can both be right. If we are right, then the I.L.P. are wrong and vice versa. We ask you to examine our principles and choose between us.

To make clear why the Socialist Party takes up this uncompromising attitude, let us examine the case it presents.

We live in a system of society which by general agreement is known as Capitalism, and whose outstanding features are private property and wage-earning. A certain few fortunate individuals are the owners of the land, the railways, factories and other means of production, and the non-owners have to work for a wage or a salary in the service of the owners of property. Society is divided into a class of workers who must work to live, and a class of capitalists who can live without working. We know from everyday experience that there is no wealth without work, yet the workers are poor and the non-workers are rich. The Socialist says that the poverty of the poor and the riches of the wealthy are the results of the system of private property, and the only remedy is its abolition. We do not condemn the Capitalists as “wicked” because they live by exploiting the workers, but we do regard private property as no longer necessary to society. We shall, therefore, deprive them of their property. Whatever services the Capitalists may have rendered in the early days of their system in directing industry and as the medium through which accumulations of capital were made, they render needful services no longer. Society can manage now without them, but they still continue to levy tribute on production to which they make no active contribution. It is now a quite normal Capitalist practice for the property owner to be, in fact and in the eyes of the law, a passive investor without knowledge of the industry or the right to share in the management. Occupying this position it is possible for the wealthy to live in luxury and yet grow continually wealthier. The Capitalist is, moreover, interested in production only from the point of view of the dividend-receiver. There is hardly an industry in which more or less complete combination does not exist, and an admitted object of combination is to control and limit production in the interest of the shareholder. We even have associations of employers providing individual firms with an annual grant conditional on their loyally refraining from producing anything.

Socialism will terminate once and for all the right of any individual to receive rents, profits, or interest by virtue of being an owner of property. THE ONLY JUSTIFICATION for a claim on the produce of industry for able-bodied persons will be that they give personal service. Work, and work alone, will entitle any fit man to consume the wealth which work alone produces. That is the Socialist aim, but it is not the aim of the I.L.P. Their slogan is not the abolition, but the stabilisation of profit and interest.

They endorse and wish to extend the movement in Capitalism towards removing from the hand of the Capitalist whatever active control of industry there is left to him, thus making him simply a passive owner receiving interest by right of ownership. They wish to hasten the Capitalist tendency towards nationalisation, and propose to give the Capitalist Government Bonds which will guarantee to him a secure and regular income without risk of loss, and without the right to share directly in administration, at the same time saving him the expense and trouble of dealing with the discontent of the workers. The I.L.P. does not attack the rights of capital; it defends them and holds out hopes of adding to their value. In the fight between the Socialist and the defenders of Capitalism, it stands on the side of property.

Thus, in “Socialism, Critical and Constructive,” in chapter 7, which is headed, “Socialist Society,” Mr. J. R. MacDonald writes :—

  “When Labour uses Capital and pays it its market value, property is defensible, when Capital uses Labour and retains …. the maximum share in the product upon which it can keep its grip, property is devoid of a sure defence.” (Page 274).

In “How Socialists would run Industry” (I.L.P. Programme Pamphlet, Number 5, 1924) a footnote on page 14 asks :

  “Why should not Labour hire Capital and devote the whole of the surplus to the improvement of the service?”

and again :

  “… the surplus earnings after paying a fixed rate of interest for the hire of loan capital, should …. be reserved for specific purposes. …”

In “Socialism in the Village” (I.L.P., 1920) we read :

  “The owners will receive Government Bonds in return for their land, the interest on which will be more than covered by the rents paid to the State” (page 5),

and (page 7) :

  “There is every reason to expect that agriculture under public management will yield a far better return on labour and capital than it now does.”

A prominent member of the I.L.P. is Mr. J. Wheatley, himself the owner of considerable property, and ex-Minister of Health. In a recent speech reported in the Daily Herald (20th November) he declared that

  “The only hope of saving us from catastrophe lies in a certain number of influential Capitalists recognising that Capitalism itself is becoming the greatest menace to their capital. Nationalisation is likely to prove the only way to salvation.”

He goes on to elaborate his proposals and adds :

  “It could be effected without making the Capitalists poorer, or lowering their standard of life.”

In a pamphlet, “The Catholic Working Man,” a publication of the “Catholic Socialist Society” (1909) which declares its “hearty agreement” with the I.L.P., Mr. Wheatley expressly clears himself from the charge of being a Socialist in the sense understood by the Socialist Party. He remarks that his political creed “differs from the Socialism condemned by the Pope in that it retains the right to own private property” (page 22) and he assures his critics that nationalisation will show “due consideration of vested rights.”

When we remember that of the Labour M.P.s in the last House of Commons well over half were members of the I.L.P., we see in their support of the policies of the Labour Government further evidence of their anti-socialism. Mr. Wheatley introducing his Housing Bill declared in reply to an interruption, that

 “The proposals which I am submitting are real Capitalism —an attempt to patch up in the interests of humanity, a Capitalist ordered society.” (See “Houses to Let,” page 8. A verbatim report published by the T.U.C. and the Labour Party.)

He again made his position clear in a speech at Glasgow on Sunday, November 2nd, when he commented on the election results,

  “My own view of the return of the Tories in such an overwhelming majority is that it will considerably hasten the end of the Capitalist system of society. . . . Had the Labour Government been allowed to proceed it would have produced a greater amount of content among the toiling multitude, and it would have established Capitalism longer than it is likely to exist now.” (“Times”, November 3rd.)

The Socialist does not, of course, believe that it is possible to improve materially the workers’ position inside Capitalism, nor that the return of a Conservative majority will hasten the progress to Socialism, but of the deadly work done by the Labour Party and the I.L.P in making the workers contented with the private property system there can be no doubt.

Another prominent member of the I.L.P. is Mr. R. H. Tawney, author of “The Acquisitive Society.” On pages 66 and 177, after condemning various forms of property, he argues that the payment of “pure interest” will be necessary under what he calls “Socialism.” It is justified, he says, provided the owner of the capital is not allowed to have any share in, or responsibility for, the organisation of industry.

We see, then, that the view generally held by the I.L.P. members is that poverty can be removed without the abolition of private property in the means of production; while the Socialist Party demands, as the only solution, the extinction of all property claims whatever their name and form.

Were it not for the repeated refusal of the I.L.P. to defend its principles on the public platform against the criticism of the Socialist, the question might usefully have been thrashed out in debate.

Edgar Hardcastle

The economics of social amusement. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The history of mankind’s social amusements and recreational activities corresponds closely with and can only be explained from the development of economic life and of successive forms of society.

Man is a gregarious creature, and to be at one with his herd—with a multitude of his kind when it is surging with a common emotion and to be feeling, thinking and expressing his feeling in unison with his fellows is one of the most stirring and pleasurable things he can experience. This psychological factor is strikingly manifest in all organised play and entertainment, but to explain the forms of recreation prevailing at any time we must consider the conditions of economic and social life in which they have their roots.

Primitive man must have had little opportunity for pure play of a systematic and organised kind, but with increased productiveness came relief from strictly useful employment and various forms of true social amusements came into being—often by the modification of more serious occupations.

The savage hunting tribe indulges in strange dancing and singing that is quite mystifying to the uninitiated observer. He may explain these—to him—weird performances as forms of diversion and relaxation ; but to the savage they have a very serious and practical significance. They are magical rites by which he believes he can influence the rainfall or the supply of animals or bring luck to the tribe in its hunting. They are, therefore, to him a necessary part of his economic life.

Even later, when agriculture is practised and patriarchal organisation has grown up ritual dances and seasonal festivals exist which are intimately connected with the fertility of the soil, the sowing of the seed and the reaping of the crops.

These ceremonial practices, serious as were their objects, undoubtedly generated in the people who took part in them a high degree of emotional excitement and pleasure and contained the germs of the true public amusements of the future. In that very interesting book, “Ancient Art and Ritual,” Jane Harrison describes for us the evolution among the Greeks from the spring festival of Dionysos—the spirit of vegetation—to the genuine dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles—from the dromena or rite to the drama or play.

With the institution of slavery came also a leisured class and, thus stimulated, the arts of pleasure reached a high pitch of variety, refinement and extravagance.

In Greece and Rome the enormous population of slaves had, in the main, little or no leisure nor amusement, but in the lives of the free citizens, both rich and poor, the public games, theatres and festivals came to play an increasingly important role. To all citizens admission to the arena and the theatres was free, or the fee only nominal. They were publicly organised by the State or the city authorities, were held usually at the religious festivals and continued to have vital social importance and some degree of religious significance throughout the entire period of their history. * They acted as a social bond, emphasising the common tradition and stimulating the sentiments of patriotism and citizenship. Thus they were a factor of considerable importance in welding all grades of freemen into a solid mass in opposition to the numerically overwhelming but unorganised and politically impotent slaves. Moreover as, particularly in the Roman dominions, slaves were used in the public games in great numbers and without the slightest regard either for their feelings or their lives, the arena became a means of widening the gulf twixt slave and free, increasing class contempt, arrogance and hatred, developing even further the callousness and cruelty of the free class and yet inspiring them with an increasingly intense fear of widespread revolt amongst the chained, suffering mass in the underworld.

When Roman civilisation reached its zenith the slave-system was so extensive and the supply of slaves so well organised that free-labour became economically unprofitable whilst morally it came to be regarded as the contemptible badge of servility and beneath the dignity of free citizens. In the cities an ever-growing multitude of workless and propertyless free-men became dependent upon the free distribution of corn by the State. Then came the clamour for amusement and more and more of it, and the wealthy slave-owners and politicians who dominated the State were compelled to yield to the insistent demands of the reckless horde of state-fed citizens.

The so-called “games” had now become a political necessity, and they assumed extraordinary proportions, and became ever more extravagant and terrible spectacles. At the great Roman circuses wild beasts from every part of the Empire were matched in combat, and thousands of slaves fought to the death for the diversion and excitement of immense throngs of citizens. In such a debauch ended ancient civilisation, based on the first primary form of exploitation—chattel-slavery.

Under the mediaeval feudal system which retained the village community and much of patriarchal society, the public games and entertainments were again markedly social, traditional and religious in character, but they strongly reflected the hard and fixed system of class differentiation characteristic of feudalism. The serfs and peasants had their own Maypole and other semi-ritual festivals connected with cultivation; and these, though they had a veneer of Christianity, were hoary with an antiquity going back far into barbarism—as we have previously noted. The Church, ever on the watch for subtle means of maintaining its hold upon society, held its Mystery and Morality plays which were often performed within the walls of the Churches and monasteries. These religious plays were, of course, intended to foster belief and provide religious instruction rather than amusement, but there is evidence that they were amusing enough and they were certainly the nearest thing to the true drama that the Mediaeval period evolved. The nobility, a class closely marked off from the rest of the population, had its own peculiar institution—the tournament, which fostered the veneration for rank and the warlike virtues so necessary to a class owing its existence and its sanction to the sword.

Economic evolution undermined the feudal system and killed it. With the growth of trade and commercial relations of production, the disappearance of serfdom and the rise of the wages system, the old social order of things, with all its ideas, its sentiments and its customs, lost its economic basis and slowly and tardily passed away.

The village community was broken up, the common lands disappeared and the population concentrated into the towns; social and personal ties were replaced by monetary relations—in the language of the jurists “status” gave place to “contract.” The rigid stratification of social orders with fixed rights and duties was dissolved and in its stead arose a system wherein the possession of money alone formed the class division and which knew as a regulating force only the balance of the market—the impersonal, non-traditional pressure of “economic law.” It was the new era of “liberty, equality and fraternity”—capitalism.

As it expanded itself the new economy cut the social soil from under the feudal forms of amusement and new forms began to appear. The mountebank and strolling player (the primitive actor, dancer, singer and clown) even under feudalism was the counterpart of the earliest travelling merchant, the pedlar moving from village to village with his wares. But the nerve-centre of the new system was in the towns, there the merchant was established, and the new classes—capitalist and proletarian—were arising, and there developed the new habits of thought and the new amusements—among them, the theatre. The first public theatre in England was opened in Blackfriars, London, in 1576, and others were soon established and were performing the works of Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan dramatists.

The new theatre was from the first free from the feudal tradition. It was commercial in its aim and methods, had no connection with the Church, which indeed opposed it, and it voiced the new dawning spirit of individualism. Since its birth the bourgeois theatre has flourished, and it is perhaps the most typical social amusement of the bourgeois era.

The only set-back in the history of the modern theatre took place under the freakish domination of the Puritans, to which we can here only briefly refer. The Puritans were a section of the lower bourgeoisie who developed to an extreme degree a religion and philosophy of life involving excessive reverence for the petty-capitalist virtues of industry, thrift and accumulation and who frowned upon all amusement and frivolity as sinful. During their short period of political rule in England and America they attempted with partial success the suppression of all forms of social entertainment. Their social influence unfortunately long outlasted their actual rule in both countries.

The subject matter of the drama is not here our prime concern, but it may be noted that with the rise of bourgeois relations of life and of individualism in outlook, traditional, mystical, symbolic and heroic themes tended to be supplanted by studies of individual character and of personal problems, especially sexual ones, that the individual in society is compelled to face. In these plays bourgeois morality, ideals of conduct and theories control the plot and action.

On the other hand, since capitalism has entered on its decadent phase and its insoluble difficulties have become chronically manifest, the satirist and social critic has increasingly used the medium of the drama and plays denouncing the evils and ridiculing the inconsistencies of the social order have appeared. The Ibsens, Shaws and Galsworthys are products of this phase. This class of drama is, however, as yet appreciated and supported by only a comparatively small section of theatre-goers, and even these are largely tolerant members of the bourgeoisie.

R.W. Housley

(End of Part I.)

* The Bull-fight in the Spanish countries—a relic of Roman domination—is a modern survival of this phase.

Knowledge. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism and the so-called “middle class”. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Salaried Slaves.

The present writer wears a stiff collar as a boot-maker wears a leather apron, or as a lamplighter carries a pole—it is the sign and badge of his profession. He is a bank clerk. Not having been blessed with that rare quality reserved for some members of the capitalist class alone—business ability— and lacking foresight, he was foolish enough to choose two proletarians for his parents, although there were millionaires available. He is now reaping the reward of his pre-natal folly in an office. He is a “brain worker,” selling his labour-power for wages, but not by the week, mark you, not by the week, but by the month !

Ignoring outward signs of superiority, the brain worker can be distinguished from the mere plebian by the following characteristics. He uses a machine to do his writing, another machine to do his calculations, is very respectable and deferentially reverent towards those set in authority over him. Moreover, he, as he is only too fond of saying, is the backbone of the Empire, the defender of the constitution, and at the same time the crushed worm between the millstones of organised Labour and Capital. To the first he pays its wages, the other he pays its profits, and in short he thinks that he occupies a very special position in the community, a position which needs and deserves to be defended from the wicked Socialists. A Socialist bank clerk is, therefore, somewhat of an enigma to those among whom he works. He is frequently asked what he hopes to get out of being a Socialist, what he stands to gain by the overthrow of Capitalism, what there is in his present condition to cause him dissatisfaction.

It is the purpose of this article to answer briefly as many of these questions as space will allow. It is hoped to prove that Socialism is the only political theory of any use to all workers, and in so doing to show that there is no “middle class,” that in Capitalist society, as we know it to-day, there are but two classes, and that anyone, whether he be a navvy or a bank manager, who is compelled to sell his labour power for wages, and who can only exist at a given standard of comfort by such a sale, is a member of the working class, is a proletarian, and, as such, is a slave in society, whose interests demands that he should help to abolish Capitalism.

The Position of the Propertyless.

Now a proletarian is one who possesses nothing but the power to labour and who, in order to live, sells that power to those who own and control the means of production and distribution, that is to the Capitalists. As his power to labour is bound up in, and cannot exist apart from, his physical being, he sells himself by the day, the week, month or whatever period is arranged. In the form of wages (called by some income) he receives just sufficient to maintain himself at the standard of life common to his group. Competition for jobs ensures that he shall not be able to demand more except for a limited period. The wage he receives includes not only his own cost of living but also the cost of rearing a family, of providing children to replace him in the mine, the workshop or office after he has gone, for to-day the family is still the unit of society generally, and calculations of maintenance costs are made with reference to it, not to the individual. If a worker remains single, or limits his family, he may make slight improvements in his own condition but, as will be shown later, these are of small account and in any event their value can only be estimated after setting: off against them the sacrifices involved.

This is the position of economic dependence in which the working class finds itself, but while the people who fancy they are the “middle class” would probably admit this as a correct description of the position of the other workers they do not recognise its application to themselves. But wherein does their position differ? Consider the shop-keeper. He regards himself as independent, yet he is usually as much bound as any employee. If he is a confectioner, for instance, he is, in effect, the employee of the producers, Cadburys, Rowntrees, etc., just as much as if he were a labourer in one of their factories. He sells their products at their prices, and is dependent on their continuing to supply him with goods and on working himself in the selling of them for his living. He is merely a kind of commercial traveller, and, like him, is immediately affected by any worsening of working class life through unemployment, lowered wages, etc. The publican, whose independence is even more illusory, is particularly dependent on the brewery company on the one hand and the condition of the labour market on the other. Lower wages mean less business.

It is true that there are some workers who also enjoy dividends from relatively small investments, but this does not alter their position in society, although it may colour their outlook on social questions. The fundamental question is whether the individual is or is not compelled to sell his labour power in order to live. If he is compelled to sell his services, then his position is that of the worker who must work or suffer privation, not that of the Capitalist who is able to please himself, and who may, in order to escape the boredom of doing nothing, add to his income by taking employment.

The fact that money wages vary does not relieve the better paid worker from the same compulsion that presses on the lower paid. Use makes it just as urgent a problem for him to maintain the standard he has been in the habit of enjoying, although there may be a wide margin between it and the bare physical minimum which will keep him alive and well. In passing, it may be mentioned that the tendency is for the variations between the different grades of workers to become less with increasing competition for employment. The simplification of labour processes, consequent on the introduction of improved machines and their standardisation, makes it easier for labour to be trained for any kind of employment, and this levels out wages.

The members of the so-called “middle class,” to the degree that they are really better off than other workers, therefore have just the same interest in destroying the evils consequent upon the wages system.

As for the suggestion that the “middle class” are distinguished from the workers in being owners of property, statistics will show how much exaggerated the claim is.

Who owns the property.

According to the 64th Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, the total number of incomes exceeding £500 per annum was only 563,000 in the year 1919-1920, the last year for which figures are available. When it is remembered that there are more than 20 million persons in this country entitled to vote, and that this excludes males under 21 and females under 30, it will be seen how small a proportion of the population is in receipt of such an income, even after allowing for those who are dependents. Obviously, in view of this, the opportunity to accumulate property is limited to but a small part of society. The following figures taken from the report of the Coal Industry Commission (Vol. 3, Appendix 66) afford some idea of the wages actually paid to those who fancy themselves in a superior position. The figures relate to 57% of the collieries in this country, and as the return was not compulsory, the probability is that only the better paying companies gave any information.

Prices had, of course, risen in 1919 nearly 200% over the 1913 level.

Again, only 27 persons out of every 1,000 pay Death Duties. In other words, only 2.7% of the population leaves over £300 : while at a recent dinner given to the Chilian Minister the guests who numbered a mere 150 were worth between them £200 million (Daily Sketch). The property of the “middle class” and their ability to save, are, like those of the rest of the wage-earners, largely mythical. In 1922 there were 11,733,564 depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank, their total deposits being £268,143,235 or an average of £22 16s. Id. each. The average for 6,298,376 of them was the grand sum of 1/10. (Statistical Abstract for United Kingdom, 1908—1922).

And in any event these savings are for the most part the provision made for the education and upbringing of children, for sickness, accident and old age, and therefore do not represent a surplus at all. They are merely part of the cost of maintenance of the worker. The low standard wage earner does not have to make provision for all these things, or else he does it in some other way. It is interesting to notice the opinion recently expressed by Lord Dawson of Penn on the “need for extended sickness insurance” for the “middle class” who, he said, were excluded from the Medical Insurance Act which provided for the manual workers, and who were to be distinguished from the rich, “who could provide for themselves” (Daily Herald, 18th November). The manual workers are provided by the State or by some other public body with education for his children sufficient to fit them for the work they are expected to perform; with hospital treatment ; old age pensions and the dole. Above a certain level of income allowance is made in the wages paid for the satisfaction of these needs, which below that level are publicly provided.

A.L.T.

(To be continued.)

Blogger's Note:

'A.L.T.' could have been Albert L. Torr, who joined the Manchester Branch of the SPGB in October 1916 (alongside a William Torr). It makes sense that a bank clerk,  a 'brain-worker', would seek the anonymity of a pen-name in the pages of the Socialist Standard.

A Brief Sketch of the Materialist Conception of History. - Part 7 (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 6.

Part 7

It will be noted that in this sketch we have taken a few examples from past history to show how our theory of historical development fits the facts. But it equally applies to the history of our own times. For, manifold though the changes are that economic development has brought into being, the foundation of human society is still an economic one; only man’s way of dealing with the fact has changed. The production and distribution of wealth is still of primary importance to human society Hence the changes that have occurred in recent years in the means of wealth production and distribution can be said to be the underlying cause of many modern historical events. The late European War is one outstanding example. Unlike the small, self-supporting nations of feudal times, the leading nations of to-day are more or less politically and economically interwoven with each other. Particularly all countries are more economically interdependent than, say, a hundred years ago. Thus a general economic development in one country will make its effects felt nearly the world over. So vast had been the economic development of Germany from the time of the Franco-Prussian War of 1871, up to a few years prior to 1914, that the German ruling class becoming a standing menace to the interests of the ruling class of this and other countries. The war was the direct outcome. Of course, the usual “lofty ideals" were paraded by the rival groups of capitalists as one means of urging the workers on to the slaughter. But whilst Great Britain entered the war on the plea of “ the defence of small nations,” the real reason for her entry was the desire to crush a serious commercial rival, and thus retain for herself a large control of the world’s markets. And similar motives actuated all the countries who participated in that “holiest of holy wars.” That the underlying cause of the war was an economic one, and not the so-called racial differences as was said during the war is now more or less openly admitted by all. 

In conclusion. 

Some years ago Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue, in explaining the “Historical Method of Marx,” well said, that in formulating that method Marx had placed at our disposal a “tool,” “an instrument of research.” The need for the use of that tool still awaits recognition by the great bulk of the working class, for it is in the hands of the workers that it will prove most useful for the progress of human society. In other words, besides being an instrument of historical research it is an instrument of their emancipation from wage slavery. Besides providing them with the understanding of the rise of mankind from their low beginnings in savagery up to our own civilisation, the rise of class society, slavery and the State, our view of historical development provides an understanding of the basis and movement of modern society. The conditions engendered in capitalist society already indicate the form of the society of the future. Social ownership and control of the resources of wealth production and distribution is pointed to as the next stage in social evolution. Let the workers then grasp a knowledge of the materialist conception of history. They will then use that knowledge in harmony with that economic development that has, in the main, made possible their freedom from capitalist domination. They will change the form of society in harmony with their requirements by establishing Socialism. With that accomplished the economic forces of society “which have hitherto ruled man ” will become more and more consciously under the control of mankind. “Only from that time,” says Engels, “will man himself more and more consciously make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”

Robert Reynolds

(Conclusion.)

More Trade Less Work. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the Conservative papers during the General Election made great play of the increase in unemployment during the last ten months. Now the papers are full of figures showing that imports and exports have largely increased in the same ten months compared to the similar ten months of last year. What better proof is required of the falsity of Ramsay MacDonald’s claim that the way to reduce unemployment is to develop world trade. Trade may be greatly increased, but if more economies and labour saving methods are used in production the increase in trade can actually be carried on by fewer employees.

The wider use of labour-displacing methods since the war and the growing number of combines and trusts are facts which make the cry of “More Trade” mean nothing to the unemployed.

Adolph Kohn

New Publications: Here is Your Opportunity! (1925)

Party News from the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are continuously asked why we don’t publish new pamphlets or re-publish old ones that are out of print. Our answer has been to point to that ever-pressing problem of finance. A party like ours, depending upon its members for financial support and faced with the inevitable poverty of a working-class membership—our party is forced to curb its publishing activity within very narrow limits. Such a valuable and much needed publication as our party pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” is urgently required at a low price, and its re-publication in that form would find a ready sale. It would have been re-issued long ago had sufficient funds come in.

Amongst other publications very much needed we have in view a pamphlet on the Principles of Socialism. The enormous amount of rubbish printed in the name of Socialism in recent years, with its confusing effect on the workers’ minds makes the scientific and revolutionary pronouncements of The Socialist Party an urgent necessity. We have, therefore, opened a fund called “A New Publications Fund,” which will be reserved for the purpose of new publications. We invite members and sympathisers immediately to send in donations marked for that fund. If you cannot afford much send in the little you can. If the readers of the Socialist Standard who appreciate the soundness of our party position will hurry along their contributions to the fund we can rapidly get to work.

We get letters of appreciation of our literature from all over the world. Here is your opportunity to put your appreciation into a postal order and send it along.

The Editorial Committee

English Journalism. (1925)

From the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “In England, Journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people’s private lives seems to me quite extraordinary.
  “The fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.
   “Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmen-like habits, supplies the demands. In centuries before ours, the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump.
   “That was quite hideous.
   “In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole.
   "That is much worse.”

Oscar Wilde.

Editorial: The Organisation of the Working Class. (1925)

Editorial from the January 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC.

Ever since the existing social order originated in the downfall of feudalism, there has been going on a struggle between the two classes of which it is composed, i.e., the capitalist or master-class and the wage-slave or working-class. As a result of this struggle, ever increasing in its intensity and ever widening in its scope, there has arisen a certain degree of organisation on the part of both classes. Up to the present the initiative in the struggle has lain with the masters and the efficiency of their organisation is correspondingly greater than that of the workers, whose lot has in the main consisted of a series of defeats resulting in increased poverty and exploitation. There is urgent need for improvement in the workers’ organisation, hence the propaganda of the Socialist Party.

Socialist theory is the result of scientific effort to explain the class struggle, i.e., to discover its cause, the line of its development and its eventual outcome. Socialists, therefore, are essentially and directly involved in this struggle, and have a distinct point of view to express regarding the organisation of their class.

A glance over the field of battle reveals at once the fact that the workers’ organisation at present is a conglomeration of fragments rather than an organic whole. It consists of innumerable unions professing to function in the interests of different sections, overlapping to an appallingly wasteful degree and confusing the workers by their various “programmes.” It is realised by some of the workers that one union for one class is essential if defeat is ever to be converted into victory. What is not so clearly recognised is that such a union must be a Socialist union.

To exist at all a union of the entire working-class must at least have a common object, and one looks around in vain for any other object but Socialism which is capable of becoming common to all sections. Unity is impossible so long as the mass of the workers see no further than the immediate struggle over wages and hours, etc., which necessarily vary in different localities and occupations. This is not saying that such struggle can or should be abandoned while capitalism lasts. On the contrary, no one is more determined in the prosecution of the defensive fight than the Socialist since those who cannot defend will make poor material for conducting an attack. What does, however, need emphasising is that victory cannot be obtained within the limits of the wage system. So long as the master-class possess the means of life so long will the workers be condemned to poverty and slavery.

The first essential then is a change in the outlook of the workers, in the goal of their struggle. They must become class conscious and take the initiative. They must determine to attack the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour.

The next point to become agreed upon is the line of action or policy to be adopted in conducting this attack. This can only be determined by the nature of the conditions existing. In points of detail these conditions are constantly changing. It is, therefore, impossible to lay down in advance a detailed programme to be adopted in the hour of the social revolution. Certain fundamental features of the existing order make it both possible and necessary, to outline the general character of the policy to be pursued.

In the first place it is important to realise that the existing order is maintained by political means, i.e., by the machinery of government in the hands of organisations of the master-class. A consideration of industrial conditions soon reveals why this must be so. To-day the occupiers or users of the various industrial plants are not the owners; if they were, there would be no social problem, i.e., no class struggle.

Ownership to-day consists not in occupation but in mere legal title, meaningless, unless recognised and upheld by the forces of the State. The overthrow of capitalist ownership, therefore, and the establishment of common ownership, involves the capture of the State by the working-class. Dispossession necessitates disarmament. The organisation of the working-class must, therefore, be a political organisation, i.e., a Socialist Party.

The nature of its object and the circumstances of its origin compel a Socialist party to oppose all other parties at all times and without exception, since these parties can exist only to preserve in some shape or form the system which the Socialist Party is out to abolish.

The existing confusion among the workers organised in the Trade Unions has enabled a crowd of professional politicians drawn from the ranks of both classes, to form a party claiming to have special regard for the interests of the workers. This party is, financially, nothing but a parasite upon the Trade Unions, depriving them of strength (which could be used for fighting against the masters) in order to further a political policy very little different from that of Liberal capitalists. Such difference as exists between them is of no consequence to the workers. In spite of this fact, however, numerous critics of the Labour Party profess to believe that the Trade Unions are part of it. The Labour Party, is allowed to claim that it is the political organisation of the Trade Unions as such.

The Socialist Party disputes this claim. A Trade Unionist as such has no particular political creed. He may be a Liberal or a Conservative, a Socialist or an Anarchist, or alternatively, utterly indifferent to political matters. The essential concern of a Trade Union is obviously the industrial conditions, particularly affecting its members ; it is a sectional organisation and thus cannot form the basis of a political party whose concern is class interest.

What, then, is the attitude of the Socialist Party towards the Trade Unions? Necessarily it is one of propaganda. To the extent that the Trade Unions defend the immediate interest of the workers, the Socialist Party supports them. It combats, however, every action on their part, political or otherwise, which assists the master-class. For the rest it advocates the obliteration of sectional and financial restrictions on membership. The organisation of the workers must be based upon class interests.

Much valuable time is wasted by some otherwise intelligent workers in advocating detailed plans of organisation. “Industrialists" of various shades endeavour to map out in advance the structure of the revolutionary embryo. They forget that society is an organism and not a piece of architecture; that organs only develop as the need for them arises. The function of industrial administration in the fullest sense cannot pass into the hands of the.workers until they have secured possession of the means of life in the manner indicated above.

The task of a revolutionary-body is, therefore, the accumulation of revolutionary material, i.e.. Socialists. The elaboration of this material into organic shape will depend upon the development of the conditions of its existence, the details of which, not being prophets, we cannot foresee. For us it is enough to proclaim the revolutionary slogan, “The world for the workers,” and to organise and act in accordance therewith.