A Socialist Survey. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

How this “industrial unrest” does spread !

If the said unrest is due to those “beastly agitators” it would seem that capitalism breeds agitators faster than it does contented slaves.

A report from Tokyo, Japan (“Daily Chronicle” 4.5.12) says :—

“It is practically impossible for the lower classes to earn sufficient for their bare needs.”

And that: —

“The number of convicts has increased from 20,000 to 80,000 in the last five years.”

Here we have cause and effect.

* * *

The staple diet of the Japanese worker is rice. So abnormally high is the price of rice that the income of the average family (Y.17 per month or 1s. ½d. per day) is not sufficient to meet the increased expenditure (quoted at Y.25 per month). Consequently :—

“There is a great amount of industrial unrest in the country, which is causing economists a lot of thought.”

Again cause and effect.

* * *

The price of the labourer in Japan, as elsewhere, is determined by the cost of his food and other necessaries. But the capitalist in Japan is exploiting fresh fields, and, like the early industrial capitalists in this country, will squeeze surplus value from the toilers until they die off like flies.

The unemployed, army in Japan will allow it. Cheap labour is plentiful, and so our capitalist can ignore the fact that to keep a slave class it is necessary to replace energy with energy.

The slave, however, is beginning to revolt—which fact, doubtless, is responsible for “a lot of thought.”

“It is a matter of serious consideration for the authorities,” goes on the report, “whether this unrest can best be allayed by the reduction ef the taxes on food or by religious congresses or charitable collections.”

The religious influence is on the wane even in far-off Japan, and a Mr. Izawa is endeavouring to found a new religious body, whose plan is to “gather a religious community around the Emperor, who is the direct descendant of the creator of the world, for the purpose of cultivating loyalty toward the Emperor and of elevating their moral ideas.”

* * *

When the religious bluff fails they will fall back on the “reduction of taxes” and by removing the tax upon rice enable the workers to live more cheaply, and so obviate the necessity of raising wages.

It is merely a repetition of the “bible and the big loaf.” The development of capitalism in Japan is so rapid that the whole list of reforms and “revolutionary” measures over which the workers fought for years in this country will be passed in as many months.

* * *

That the influence of the Church in England is rapidly declining is seen from the following figures anent the “largest individual church in Nonconformity” (vide “Morning Leader”).

“Including the whole of the 35 districts under the control of the English Wesleyan Conference, the total membership is 482,889. As compared with last year the decrease is 2,646. The total decreases for the past six years are as follows : 1907, 2,034 ; 1908, 4,424 ; 1909, 1,144 ; 1910, 2,299 ; 1911, 3,028; 1912, 2,646—total decrease in six years, 15,575.”

Says the editor of the “Methodist Recorder” (again vide “Morning Leader”):—

“We know the explanation that will be forthcoming—that other Churches are in like case, that figures are misleading, that our activities were never greater, that our energies are organised and systematised beyond all precedent, that social unrest is partly responsible, that we are suffering from wearisome discussion of the membership question, that we have more chapels than ever, and more workers, too, and so on.

But all these put together can no more alter the painful facts than any one of them by itself ; and all of them are unsatisfying.”

* * *

The religious communities are fast realising that their flocks are no longer so docile or so faithful as they were, and they are compelled to offer some better inducement than a short shirt and a tin trumpet after decease.

The Rev. Thomas Phillips at the Baptist Union Congress (25.4.1912) said :—

“Eighteen thousand men receive 12s. a week or less ; 50,000 men receive 18s. a week or less. Out of every fourteen workmen in London one is, or has been, a pauper at some period in his career ; one in every five dies in a workhouse, a hospital, or an asylum. One million of our men receive £1 a week or less, and toil at tasks which give them neither security nor comfort. We are here enjoying ourselves, but within 300 yards of this place thirty to forty families are living in two houses. Seven per cent. of our population are in chronic want.

“These things stagger a man’s faith in God and man. I wish that London was not representative of England, but Mr. Rowntree has told the same story of York, and two clergymen have said that, in some respects, Edinburgh is even worse than London.

“The villages are no better off. A writer in a recent number of the ‘Sociological Review’ stated that he had found that, out of 300 people living in the villages, 193 did not get sufficient food to keep body and soul together.”

* * *

“These things” staggered our faith in God long since, and working-class faith in the power of parsons is by no means firmly rooted.

Mr. Phillips wants “Christian business men to devote their energy and power of organisation to settling this tremendous social difficulty.” The Christian business men will support the Christian business when they can see that it pays them, and the churches to-day are not the chloroforming agency that they once were. As Mr. Fleming Williams said at the Congregational Congress (9.5.12):—

“The people are developing a social conscience in the exact ratio in which the Churches are neglecting to cultivate it. The inevitable result will be our Churches will be left high and dry. The world will go on forgetting our existence. They will leave us to discuss our little theological conundrums which hardly affect the great needs and wants of the world.”

* * *

What the “Christian business men” want is a meek and docile wage-slave, and when the Churches cease to assist in supplying their demand they will take their “energy and power of organisation” and their contributions to a more productive agency.

The empty churches (and small contributions) are worrying the clergy to a far greater extent than the “labour unrest,” and as the Bishop of London said when presiding at a meeting at Grosvenor House (6.5.12):—

“Many were breaking down, not from their work, but from the anxiety of keeping their churches going.”

* * *

The following advertisement in the “Daily Chronicle” (4.5.12) is significant of the uses for which the Church is needed :—

“THE LONDON CITY MISSION

is engaged daily in working for the improvement of the moral and spiritual life of

LONDON’S TEEMING POPULATION

By the blessing of God the work is a potent factor for the upbuilding of sterling character, for the lessening of crime, and for the prevention of the outbreak of anarchism. 400 missionaries at work all the year round. Your help in this effort to spread the Gospel among the poor and artisan non-Church-goers of the Metropolis is earnestly solicited.”

* * *

“I am the last person to underrate all these questions of what is called distribution—the distribution of the produce of the world. But speaking for myself, I do most seriously hold there is a yet greater problem to be dealt with, and that is the amount you produce. The progress of mankind must fundamentally turn on the amount it produces, upon its growing control over the forces of Nature, upon all that science, invention, and industrial organisation enable it to do, to add to the daily produce and daily consumed wealth of the world. And important, vital if you please, as is the question of how what we make is to be distributed over the whole community, or among those who make it, behind all that there lies the yet more fundamental problem of how much you can make, and how you can increase the amount you are already making.”

The above statement was made by Mr. A. J. Balfour at a meeting on “Syndicalism and Industrial Problems,” held under the auspices of the Sociological Society (30.4.12).

It is typical of Balfour to spin long sentences meaning nothing on the subject under discussion and then to tail off with some definite (?) statement quite apart from the point.

The problem is not one of production but of ownership, and none knows that better than the ex-leader of the Tory party.

That there is sufficient wealth to-day to provide for all is undeniable, and even were it not so the enormous amount of raw material ready to hand, the vast tracts of uncultivated land, the over-supply of labour-power ready to be applied to that raw material and uncultivated land to produce more wealth, dispose at once of the absurd notion that the population has outgrown the resources of nature.

With the growing command by man over natural forces no fear need be entertained that the civilised, world will ever know famine again. Man’s struggle with nature for the means of life is over—and man has won. The struggle to-day is between man and man, between master and slave, between the plutocratic parasite and the propertyless producer.

* * *

While one section of the community are struggling to exist on from 5s. per head per week, another section can squander and waste an enormous amount of wealth at some silly freak show. The two following cuttings, both from the “Daily Chronicle,” show clearly who waste the “wealth we produce,” and how unevenly such wealth is distributed :—

“A letter has been received by the Russian Famine Committee in London from the members of the Famine Committee of the Free Economic Society, one of the oldest institutions of the kind in Russia, appealing for help.

“‘There has been an almost complete failure of crops (it says) in twenty provinces of Russia, covering the whole region from Nizhny-Novgorod to Astrakhan, as well as South Ural and Western Siberia. At least one half of the 40 million inhabitants of those provinces were doomed to starvation, for few of them could hope to find employment in other parts of Russia in the winter.

‘The population have been brought to ruin and despair. Many become insane and commit suicide. Some among the Mohammedans sell their children to harems, that they may not see them suffer and hear them cry for bread.

‘Typhus and scurvy are rapidly doing their deadly work among them.'”

“Daily Chronicle,” 13.5.12.

“The latest freak entertainment was given here to-day at the Hotel Vanderbilt in the shape of a dog banquet. The idea was originated by Mrs. A. L. Holland, the wife of a multi-millionaire, who gave the banquet in honour of her Pekinese dog, and sent out invitations to eight other Pekinese canines of the ‘smart set.’

“Without exception the dogs turned up, accompanied by their mistresses, and the nine ladies and nine dogs sat together at a table gorgeously decorated in the Chinese fashion, while a Chinese orchestra rendered weird selections of native music.

“Luncheon was served for the ladies, while special attendants catered for the wants of the principal guests, who had silver basins of bread and milk set before them, followed by cut-up biscuit and choice morsels of chicken. Only the breasts of chicken were served to these pampered animals.

“The dinner was voted a great success, and as a souvenir of the affair each dog guest was presented with a silver collar with his name engraved on it. Nothing like to-day’s freak entertainment has been seen since the pony banquet, or the dinner given in honour of Consul, the intelligent baboon.”

“Daily Chronicle,” 18 5.12.

* * *

Were there anything like an equal distribution of the world’s wealth there would be no difficulty in satisfying the needs of those who were for the time being deprived of the means of life by some failure of crops, or disaster of any kind. It is quite possible that the dividend of the multi-millionaire which provided the dog feast was wrung from the labour of the Russian workers who are suffering, quite unnecessarily, the pangs of starvation.

Quite recently the strikers of the Lena gold-fields were mowed down in hundreds for demanding better conditions, because to grant better conditions to those Russian workmen would mean lower dividends for some cosmopolitan financiers and inferior chicken for their Pekinese pups.

* * *

The labour unrest will continue while these conditions are allowed to remain. The demand of labour, the world over, is merely the demand for a living. To quote Jerome K. Jerome, speaking at the Cambridge University Liberal Club .—

“The human labourer in 1912 is, after all, only demanding what has been acceded to without question in the case of the ox and the ass since prehistoric times. I never heard a farmer suggest that the price of corn being what it is, he is quite unable to give his horse more than half its proper rations. The horse has a very effective way of insisting on his minimum wage. The horse does not go out on strike, he just lies down and dies ; and the farmer finds it cheaper—whatever may be the state of the agricultural market—to accede to his demands.

“Practically speaking, the farm labourer does get his minimum wage. He can’t live on 12s. 6d. a week and bring up a wife and six children. It can’t be done. Charity has to step in and make good the difference. Where the minimum wage is not paid—the wage that enables a man and his family to live—the charitable public has to make good the difference. It is a good thing for the charitable public ; it is a good thing for their morals, it is good for their hope of a future reward.

“But it is bad for the labourer ; it turns him into a pauper, it robs him of his self-respect. It is bad for the employer ; it makes him also nothing else than a pauper, going round to the charitable public, cap in hand, whining, ‘Help me to pay my wages. Have pity, kind gentlemen, on a poor employer of labour.’ It makes the employer also a pauper ; and, if it doesn’t, it ought to rob him of his self respect.”

* * *

The employer, as an employer, has no self-respect. He has but one object—to obtain a profit, to get dividends ; and he will struggle to the last to prevent the workers from reducing that profit. Just as the worker, in factory and in field, is but a machine with but one purpose of existence, so the employer, the financier, and the capitalist generally, are sponges absorbing the wealth the worker produces. There is no self-respect in a sponge, just as there should be no desire in a machine. But the worker will not always remain a machine. He will soon want to be a man and to take a man’s part in the enjoyment, as well as in the production, of the world’s wealth. He will, in time, give intelligent purpose to his growing dissatisfaction, and when he does—well, the occupation of the sponge will be gone.

TWEL.

Useful work, useless toil (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no point in work 

unless it absorbs you like 

an absorbing game.

If it doesn't absorb you 

if it's never any fun,

don't do it.

When a man goes out into his work 

he is alive like a tree in spring, he is 

living, not merely working.

                               (Work, D.H. Lawrence)

Work under capitalism is a drudge for the vast majority, an activity forced upon us rather than entered into voluntarily. Philip Larkin's poem, Toads describes more accurately the attitude of the majority towards their work;

Why should I let the toad work 

Squat on my life?

Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork 

And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils 

With its sickening poison —

Just for paying a few bills!

Ah, were I courageous enough 

To shout Stuff your Pension!

But I know, all too well, that's the stuff 

That dreams are made on.

The narrator of Three Men in a Boat, is fascinated by work. He says he can sit and look at it for hours. If Jerome K. Jerome had ever met a socialist he might very well be one of those people who object to a wageless, moneyless society on the grounds that no one would work at all if coercion were removed. This is of course a fallacious argument: when the clock-watching stops and people are free to do what they choose, nothing becomes too much trouble. When a majority of the working class understand and want socialism, it is hardly likely that everyone will sit on their backsides and do nothing.

Forty hours tied to work he hates.

Unable to undo his fate.

Locked inside those iron gates 

Stocking up his hate.

Blue skies, hot summer days 

Filter through the industrial haze.

The poor automaton can only gaze 

Perplexed by ultra violet rays.

Five days, eight hours.

The sentence is complete.

Alas, money is small recompense 

For labour so mis-spent.

                (Forty Hours in a Birmingham Factory, C. Mulchrone)

It is a misconception that only those engaged in manual or productive labour are "working class”. How many men could match the work-rate of a mother or housewife? We belong, the majority of us, to the working class because we are denied free access to the means of production and distribution. We produce, but we do not own; our whole life-style is conditioned by the need to sell our labour power to a minority class in order to live.

Work is an integral part of human existence, but only in socialism will it become part of the realisation of human potential. To achieve fulfilment, work for socialism.

Dave Coggan

Quotes. (1923)

From the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Might is Right. 

  “Between equal rights force decides. Hence it is that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working day presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working class.”

Karl Marx.

  “The rich will not move without ‘capital’ ; a goad—I have and hold—you shall hunger and covet—until you are strong enough to force my hand.”

George Meredith.

 

A rebuke for those who cannot think.

  “Science gives us the conscious domination over things and unconditional security in handling them.”

Joseph Dietzgen.

 

The Freedom of the Press!

  

  “Journalists are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, our lives, are the property of other men.”

Jerome K. Jerome. (The New Witness. 9/2/23.) 

Socialism means Equality (1975)

From the February 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

The idea of equality was once taken for granted in even the most muddled talk about Socialism. Because that was the case, attacks on Socialism — or whatever passed for it — were largely concerned with attacking equalitarianism. Jerome K. Jerome wrote a childish essay envisaging people being stretched or shortened to make them all the same size; and Baden-Powell counselled young men not to be “unsportsmanlike” over “a fellow who has had the luck to have more money than you have”. A 1950 Tory pamphlet called Equal Shares contrasted Labour MPs’ statements on equality with their shareholdings and private wealth.

That these lines of argument are not now heard is not due simply to their crassness. The commonest cry was Jerome’s, that equality would mean uniformity and reduce us all to one dull wretched level, and it has become plain to everyone that capitalism achieves that effect par excellence. But, principally, the Labour and Communist parties have dropped talking about equality as an aim. The word appears occasionally in catchphrases with limited meaning such as “equal opportunity” and “equal sacrifice”; but the idea of general social equality (however confusedly misunderstood) is no longer put forward.

To take this further, in the past the parties which claimed to stand for radical change wanted to be judged by the yardstick of equality. Departures from it were seen as failures or betrayals. Thus, when the members of the first Labour Government in 1923 dressed up and behaved like flunkeys to royalty, and MacDonald’s appetite for kissing upper-class bottoms became obvious, there was widespread talk of their having “sold out”. Does the thought occur to Labour supporters today at the sight of their fat, well-dressed leaders hobnobbing in luxury? Apparently not. Likewise in Russia, in the early days, Lenin publicly regretted finding it necessary to pay high wages to specialists: “to pay unequal salaries is really a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise.” (Address on “Soviets at Work”, 1918.) Sixteen years later Stalin wrote off this view:

  These people evidently think that Socialism calls for equality, for levelling the requirements and the personal lives of the members of society. Needless to say, such an assumption has nothing in common with Marxism, with Leninism.

(Address to 17th Congress of the CPSU, 1934.)

According to Needs

Thus, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties stand alone in advocating a society of equality; and it is as likely to be disparaged or attacked by a Labourite as anyone else today. What must first be made clear is the meaning of equality. It is not equal incomes, which is as absurd economically as a project for equal sizes would be biologically; or equal “rights”, which means the distribution of permit-packages by the ruling class.

Equality can be founded only at the point from which inequality at present derives: ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. Capitalism is based on the class ownership of those means, so creating two fundamental relationships — owning and not owning them. This is the inequality which causes all the apparent inequalities. People are rich or poor, inferior or privileged, top- or under dogs because of it and no other reason. Contrary to that social arrangement, if the means of production and distribution are owned in common, all people stand in the same relationship to them — and to one another.

Common ownership, the basis of Socialism, is equality. The condition which will exist under it is the one summarized by Marx: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” That means everything it implies. Every member of society has unrestricted free access to the wealth society produces; his contribution is the one which he or she can make. Nor is this a question of applying a principle. It is what arises from common ownership, just as inequality and restriction arise from class ownership.

Abilities Restricted Today

The usual immediate objection to this used to be that people would not put forth their abilities unless inequality existed, i.e. for special rewards in status and getting more than others. The argument has become a weak one because, manifestly, people do. It can be added, first, that persons with exceptional abilities do not need inducements but simply want to exercise their powers as much as possible; and second, that in the history of man’s efforts to solve practical problems, most of it has been done by people getting on with their work unostentatiously.

Socialists are often supposed to hold the view that differences between people do not exist. We would not wear anything so dotty. On the simple physical level, a tall person and a right-handed one can do what the short and the left-handed cannot; and it is also true that the advantages can be reversed under appropriate circumstances. The healthy person obviously has abilities which are denied to the unhealthy.

But what matter are not the differences, but their implications in a given organization of society. Skin colour is unchangeable. It should not mean anything, but for historical and economic reasons black people are at serious disadvantages in “white” societies. It is quite possible to imagine the situation turned about, with exactly the same consequences. White people in a society traditionally ruled by black ones would no doubt be the objects not only of fear and distaste, but of a pseudoscientific mythology concerning their emotional and intellectual make-up; and might darken their skins and have their hair treated to try to gain social acceptance.

What is certain is that under capitalism all differences are distorted and all abilities subjected by the class division. Rousseau’s “Man is born free but everywhere is in chains” is as untrue in that situation as the American Constitution’s “all men are created equal”. The contention that Socialism would not work because of the expectations of people with particular abilities is derived from looking at a minority under capitalism. The fact is that the great majority would be glad of a chance to develop and use abilities for their own and others’ satisfaction.

Is It Brains ?

There is a present-day form of argument against equality that should be noticed. It asserts not that Socialism could not work but that it could not be established at all because men are unequal: for the majority to understand the Socialist case requires an intellectual standard of which only a minority are capable.

The same might be argued about a large number of everyday functions. Dr. Johnson, Plato and Henry VIII would all have been incapable of driving a motor-car — not simply because of the mechanical requirements, but in comprehension of the fluid relationships between vehicles moving at a mile a minute. The Army recruitment advertisements — “Join the Professionals” — promise young men who may not have done well in intelligence tests that they will learn technical and organizational abilities. Even the adage that “the fool of the family” (a well-to-do one) became a clergyman was not undermined by the fact that he had to study, master rituals, and become some sort of public speaker.

Intelligence is a social concept. Obviously, intelligence tests do measure something; but it is impossible to abstract them from the conditioning and conventions of society. What they measure is related to the requirements of the education system and industrial and commercial efficiency. Dr. Spearman, the father of intelligence testing, wrote:

  Every normal man, woman and child, is a genius at something, as well as an idiot at something. It remains to discover what — at any rate in respect of the genius.

(The Abilities of Man) 

In short, it is a matter of selection for a society which presumes inequality. Suppose that this had been put the other way round: discovery of the fields in which “clever” people are idiots. What would be made of intelligence then? I.Q. testing is often disparaged through the example of the “dull” boy who later excels. What is much more frequent (because capitalism pushes its “dull” in the waste-bin and tries to hold the lid down) is the opposite example, the “brilliant” person who is thoroughly ignorant and incompetent outside his specialist line. And the comparison must be made between Dr. Spearman’s idea that genius and idiocy are measured by prowess “at something” and the idea, which prevailed before capitalism’s division of labour had taken hold, of a “whole man” who was accomplished at several different things.

If differences in the facility to perceive and relate things exist, they are quite immaterial to understanding the establishment and running of Socialism. The answer to the argument is provided ultimately by Socialists themselves, who come from the common or garden of the working class, participate equally in the varied work of running their organization, and would laugh at the suggestion of superior brains or expertise. The society we work for will be brought about by equals, and the common purpose is

that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.

Robert Barltrop

The Freedom of the Press (1923)

Quote from the October 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Journalists are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks. They pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, our lives, are the property of other men."

Jerome K. Jerome.

(The New Witness, 9/2/23.)

Jerome K. Jerome (1947)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

       (We publish the following letter from a reader for the interesting and instructive story about the late J. K. Jerome, but we confess our mystification about the point of the last sentence.—Editor Comm.)

Leicester.

Dear Comrades,

Although our ultimate success is assured I doubt if any of us are satisfied with the crop of Socialists that arise from our efforts. Some are inclined to sit back and wait for the blind forces of economic development to affect the social revolution, rather than seek to promote that change by cultivating the minds of their fellows to achieve this purpose. They do not realise that these so called blind forces may grope about for a thousand years without producing any marked change. On the other hand we have the over optimistic who in consequence of being in the forward line imagined that they could score a goal in North Paddington. Maybe such “Royal Stand-backs” as myself can see more of the game than they can. I read your admirable publication, the “Socialist Standard,” and although I have not had the pleasure of attending any of your propaganda meetings, I am aware of the fact that your immensity consists in your minority. Of course the number of people you are able to speak to is very limited and the “Standard,” even if the paper restrictions were removed, has only a small circulation. You cannot afford to print more. Everyone knows that it is the adverts that pay for the capitalist papers. Naturally they determine the policy. We all remember the old "Clarion” and its cycle trade adverts. But the classical instance is poor old Jerome K. Jerome. He ran a weekly called “To-Day.” It had a good run. It was then I think that Jerome discovered H. G. Wells, as he published probably Wells’ first story, “The Lady in Grey.” Then Jerome slipped. He printed Marx’s “Value, Price and Profit” as a serial. His advertisers dropped him like a hot potato and Jerome went bankrupt. In face of all this is it to be wondered that some of us cast envious eyes upon that powerful weapon of propaganda, the Radio, and desire to harness it to our cause? We know all the obstacles that stand in our way to achieve our purpose, believe me the financial side is the least But we must not be dismayed, our need is great and I would draw attention to a recent remark by some member of the Jewish community who claimed that it was not illegal for Jews to enter Palestine, but that it was illegal to prevent them doing so.

                                                                                                                            Yours fraternally,

F. L. Rimington.