At random. (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“May I say there is a good deal of nonsense talked about capital ?” Thus Lloyd-George at Swansea. And at once adds more “nonsense.” As thus: “The greatest capitalist in this country is Nature.” The implication that all wealth is capital should commend itself to Clarion Vanner (by the grace of Blatchford) Hick.

* * *

This product of what he himself described as the “stately cloisters of Oxford,” told a motley gathering of I.L.P’ers, S.D.P’ers, etc. in Peckham that capital was “wealth used to produce more wealth.” He affected to be much concerned when a member of the S.P.G.B. referred to him as a “catspaw of the capitalist class,” and cried aloud for proof of the charge, hastily adding, at the same time, that no Socialist would be allowed on the platform in opposition.

* * *

Cumulative and damnatory evidence could be given until further orders, that this brand of political quack is effectually doing the work of the master class in several directions, but the mere fact that one of the high-priests of Capital and the Vanner should be engaged in confusing the mind of the worker on vital points is sufficiently significant of itself.

* * *

Nothing suits the game of the capitalist class better than to point to the worker’s pick, his shovel, his dinner-pail, to apostrophise his mental qualities, his endurance, his etc., etc., and call them “capital.” For why ? It BLURS THE CLASS STRUGGLE.

* * *

“Capital does not consist in the fact that stored-up labour is used by living labour as a means to further production. Capitalism presupposes the existence of a class which possesses nothing but labour-power. It is the lordship of realised labour over living labour that transforms stored-up labour into capital”—Author of pamphlet, “Karl Marx.”

* * *

Kautsky, in the second section of his brilliant work, “Das Erfurter Programm,” (issued by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in pamphlet form as “The Working Class,” price one penny, honestly and correctly translated into English.) has pointed out that modern capitalism has developed a sorry type of proletarian—-the educated wage-slave. The death of Churton Collins, a distinguished scholar and acknowledged authority on Shakesperian lore, is one of frequently occurring incidents which emphasises his miserable position who must prostitute his intellect to make a living, and hire out his commodity—education—to the highest bidder. The professor, dying by his own hand, was fearful as to the future maintenance of his children.

* * *

Meantime, a correspondent of the Daily News is suggesting that, to meet unemployment of teachers in London, the L.C.C. shall “reduce present salaries,” and prevent teachers doing both day and evening work !

* * *

The Review of Reviews is concerned about “The Winter Feeding of Starving Children.” (It is not going to let the S.D.P. monopolise that pitch.) In the September issue, p. 295, it says “It would be well if other firms were to follow Messrs. Allen & Hanbury’s example by a systematic endeavour to educate the public in the general principles of the scientific feeding of children.” On p. 303 is a long advertisement crying up the wares of the above named firm. The Review of Reviews “invites the aid of ‘helpers.'” Helpers for what? Who said “alliances” ?

* * *

From the same source we learn that it has been ascertained that the children “could be fed excellently well at a penny a meal, with a extra halfpenny for dinner.”

* * *

Crouch low, you discontented dogs ! Listen to the I.L.P. “Socialist,” Liberal Stead at elbow, telling you the master class can provide sumptious meals for your poor little kiddies at a penny a head, with a extra half-penny chucked in for dinner. Then, begone ! run to your houses, fall upon your knees, pray to the tuppenny gods to intermit the plague that needs must light on “your” country for the ingratitude displayed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in denouncing such a sorry combination of mouthing knaves and tricksters.

* * *

F. H. Rose, in the Clarion of 18.9.08 writes, with regard to the cotton dispute, “The masters bribe away the best and most knowing of the operators’ officials by giving them better jobs and bigger salaries. It is a ghastly business. Yet if I were to say what every employer knows, I should be charged with ‘giving the game away.'”

* * *

Judged by his own words, F. H. Rose is a traitor to his own class. A deliberate charge is made against unions’ officials which, unfortunately, is no doubt only too true. What plea can he bring forward to justify his silence or the matter ? If fears for endangering his own chances as union official and “Labour” member, why take the pains to emblazon abroad his cowardice ?

* * *

A significant cutting from John Bull. We pray you, note, aye, nota bene ! “Just as the franchise is the political specific for revolution, nationalisation of the public services is the antidote to Socialism.” Instead of which, that egregious political combination which is neither “independent” in action, nor “labour” in spirit, and which exists as a “party” only by grace of anonymous donors (see Manifesto p. 3) and middle-class “sympathisers,” at its last Annual Conference passed the following resolution : “That in the opinion of this Conference the time is ripe for the nationalisation of railways, and that our representatives be asked to urge forward a measure to that effect in Parliament.”

* * *

The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that pensions in Germany had not only raised the standard of life, but had had “the important result of improving the quality of the workman.” Exactly. Read “Bountiful Bournville” in last month’s issue of this paper in connection with this statement. Further comment would be what the Book of Common Prayer simply and beautifully calls “supererogatory.”

* * *

The Manchester Guardian recently wrote “Mr. Hudson repudiated any alliance with the Liberals, but he had heard the good news which Manchester sent on the first night of the election in the not uncongenial atmosphere of the Liberal Club. Being called on for a speech, he said he most earnestly desired to see Mr. Cairns (Liberal) in as well as himself.”

* * *

Mr. Hudson is a “Labour” M.P. The “Constitution and Organisation” section of the Manifesto of the “Labour” Party contains the following : “Candidates and members must abstain strictly from promoting the interests of any Party not eligible for affiliation.” Is the Liberal Party ”eligible for affiliation” ? Verily, in the words of their own Chairman at the Belfast Conference, “The Labour Party were a queer party and they are a queer party.”

* * *

At a “Socialist” demonstration recently, J. R. Clynes, another “Labour” M.P., and I.L.P’er to boot, said “The unemployed are a waste to the country. Would it not be better to enable a man to work for his maintenance and something over for the country.”

* * *

“Something over” = profit.

“The country” = the capitalist class.

* * *

In spite of protestations to the contrary, the “Labour” Group is out to maintain the present system. Its actions speak louder than its words, which, Heaven knows, should be loud enough to wake the somnolent wage-slave to a recognition of the real position.

* * *

“Radical Socialism,” “I.L.P. Socialism,” “Labour Socialism”—in short “Bourgeois Socialism”—all were summed up fifty years ago in the most luminous little working-class work ever penned (the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”).

“Free Trade—for the benefit of the working class, Protective duties—for the benefit of the working class, Prison reform—for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois Socialism. It can be summed up in a phrase the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class.”

Augustus Snellgrove

Mrs. Partington again. (1911)

From the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Bull for June 10 published an article headed “Is the Small Trader Doomed? The Multi-Shop Octopus.”

Once again the wild, despairing cry of the small shopkeeper is heard deploring the passing of his kind. After describing the methods by which the great firms oust the “little men,” the position of the combine’s employees is summed up thus :

“The lot of the employees is very unsatisfactory, the majority of these companies refusing to employ a man who has been in the service of their rivals, no matter why he left his previous situation. They are discharged on the merest pretext, as the continuous advertising amply proves, and their wages compare unfavourably with those paid by the small trader. One of the managers recently remarked that he did not think it advisable to keep a man more than 6 months as by that time they had exhausted all his ideas. Pick his brain and throw him on the human scrap heap !”

“The remedy” for the small trader is, John Bull tells us, “for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to impose a tax on multi-shop trading, as is done in Germany.”

Is this a case for Bottomley’s “Business Government” or—the Lunacy Commissioners ?

A. Kay

Blogger's Note:

Once again mention of a 'Mrs. Partington' crops again in the early issue of the Standard. Once again, here's a link to give you the background details.

Rays. (1909)

From the February 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

In “Justice” (2.1.09), Mr. H. M. Hyndman enters his protest against “modesty,” and boastingly gives a list of his aristocratic relations and friends who have had more or less close relations with Indian affairs. The list includes titled hired assassins of every degree, military swashbucklers, capitalist political and literary hacks, Lords and Ladies of English high society, and a few Indian natives who had found favour in the eyes of their country’s enemies—truly a noble and notable gang of associates to boast of while posing as a Socialist,

* * *

The writer then proceeds to tell us how clever HE was, how HE had provided a Conservative Government with an Indian policy, which they put into practice, and how he “had been assured that he had rendered a great service to the State,” and had been offered “all that any man could get in this country.”

* * *

Doubtless all this is true. In fact, judging by the present painful position in which the Indian people find themselves, we are inclined to believe that some scheme of his has been in operation, and after reading his shameful confessions, we shall view with more suspicion than ever any future proposals emanating either from H. M. Hyndman or that coterie of his disciples who still call themselves “The Social Democratic Party.”

* * *

However, not to be eclipsed, but to dim the self-constructed halo round Hyndman’s head, up springs the gentle George Bernard Shaw, to trumpet forth in the columns of the “Observer” (10.1.09) his services, and those of the Fabian Society, to the capitalist class. According to G.B.S. it was the Fabian Society (in other words himself) who supplied the Liberal Party with the Newcastle Programme, which served so well to delude the working class for twenty years ; and when it dawned on those far-seeing and obliging Fabians, that to have a programme without meaning to carry it out meant disaster to their Liberal friends, they prepared the way for a Party (the Liberal Party) without any programme to carry out. Now it is rumoured that the Labour Party require a programme, and again the Fabian Society is at hand. Yet the one and only George need not worry. Those Liberal-Labour lambs won’t do anything rash. They don’t really need a programme. What (from a working-class point of view) they really need is called “cremation.” Nevertheless, George Bernard Shaw is going to Portsmouth to provide the freaks with more Fabian foolery. ‘Tis a mad world, my masters, but it spells tragedy for the toilers.

* * *eade

“Mr. Ben Tillett has fallen foul of the Parliamentary Labour Party (to which he is affiliated and under whose auspices he has agreed to stand for Parliament) and in a pamphlet just issued, charges them with libelling their class in connection with the Licensing discussion, and says that Henderson, Shackleton and Snowden have ‘out-Heroded the worst ranters.’ The present leader of the party, ‘when a Gospel-Temperance-Liberal Election agent, was of little importance,’ whilst Shackleton, ‘as a useful but obscure trade union official, was of little consequence ; now he is the darling of Cabinet Ministers, “hot gospellers,” temperance fanatics and educational endowment thieves,’ and so on and so on.”

* * *

Commenting on the above “John Bull” asks (23.1.09) “When Labour men fall out, how are the workers to get their due ?” The answer to this is, of course, by choosing to understand Socialism and trying Socialist delegates instead of “Labour Leaders.” This answer is equally applicable to the question “How are workers to get their due ?” whether the “Labour men” fall out or not. For united or divided they are just as impotent to effect any advancement of the cause of that great working class whom they have they the impudence to claim they represent, while in fact they merely represent its ignorance and credulity.

The Truth about Canada. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have been this last year engaged on railway work in Manitoba, miles away from big towns, and have seen something of what life farmers and others lead, besides leading a very rough life myself . . . Statistics are given showing the number of immigrants per annum, and as much “copy” as possible made out of it. But nothing is said of the hundreds who return to Europe, and I know as a fact that this is the case, and I know many more would do so if they had the money to pay their way. They are helped out to Canada, but then they have to make the best of it when once there, and they can, as a rule, only just manage to subsist. I have been inside many farm houses in Manitoba, and, as a rule, they contain nothing but the barest necessities, comforts being conspicuous by their absence.

Many people in Canada have expressed the opinion to me that immigration is being overdone. The country cannot absorb the thousands who enter, and owing to the very long and intensely severe winter, thousands are thrown out of employment during those months.

A Civil Engineer in “John Bull.”

Unemployment and the Remedy. (1932)

From the August 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

An article in “John Bull” (May 1932), written by an unnamed managing director, states that, in answer to an advertisement for a clerk at £3 10s. per week, no less than 100,000 men applied for the job. The writer appeals to our sympathy for these unfortunates, and appears greatly troubled about it. In the softness of his heart and possibly his head, he would have liked to have written a sympathising reply in rejecting the 99,999 applicants, but an unsympathetic board will not allow the expense. He reveals the cause of the trouble. It is that office machinery can now do the work of a considerable number of men, and that cheaper female labour can be used to operate them. That is as far as the writer goes and “John Bull," too, for that matter. It appears that on realising these painful facts one should shake one’s head, murmur dear, dear, or something else appropriate, and speedily forget it.

But we do not forget it. We also remember a few more things, and we know the remedy.

The “Daily Herald” (January 15th, 1932), quoting from a report given to the Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance, states that 100,000 men and 3,000 women are continually unemployed, that this is the standing figure of unemployed insured persons. There are also, roughly, seven million people for whom employment is intermittent, although only serious among 10 per cent. We. gather from this that there is serious unemployment and non-serious. Ordinary poverty and extraordinary poverty. One has ordinary poverty in work and extraordinary out of work. The “News-Chronicle” (June 13th, 1932), reports that there are nearly one and a fifth million people in receipt of Poor Law relief, which means acute poverty for them; so that’s a third degree of poverty we can have. The “Daily Herald” (February 6th, 1932) quotes Mr. Smith, of the National Federation of Professional Workers, as saying :— “Non-manual workers receiving over £250 per year do not come under the Unemployment Insurance Acts and the plight of these people when thrown idle is often tragic.” These are not included in the “Daily Herald’s” figures, and there must be hundreds suffering privation of which nothing is heard except when we read the reports in the papers of suicides directly due to financial worries. Harassed mothers of families die miserable deaths in the ever-handy gas oven rather than go on facing the day-to-day strain and worry of trying to close the gap between the ends that won’t meet. Bankrupt business men throw themselves in front of the train that should have borne them home and which gives them instead the freedom from the worry that their overwrought nerves can no longer endure. Young lovers who should have been able to look forward to long years of happiness together end their lives rather than face the dreary vista of life living apart through lack of means to marry. These are facts taken from the daily newspapers quite recently and to which, one and all, the coroner monotonously chants, “Suicide whilst of unsound mind, ” instead of “Suicide owing to living in a system of society which puts profit before mankind’s happiness.”

Shall we also murmur “Dear, dear, how dreadful!” and forget, or shall we emulate the slogan-loving Prince of Wales and persuade everybody to buy and sell British, in the absurd belief that Britain can escape the general depression? Unfortunately the slogan is as ineffective as the ejaculation,, because the cause of all this poverty and unhappiness, which is world-wide, is capitalism, which is also world-wide.

Capitalism is a system of society in which goods are produced in the first place solely for profit. A few people, the master class, own and control the land, factories, mines and everything which is used to produce wealth. The mass of the people, the workers, are property less and have to work for a master in order to get enough money to buy back from the owners the amount of goods which their earnings will cover. They are paid just enough to enable them to live according to the standard of life in which it has pleased God, etc. Thus a clerk’s standard of comfort is different from a manager’s, and from a farm labourer’s; but all are workers, and all must sell their labour power in order to live. Even when the worker is in work he must be constantly fighting against reductions in pay. The “dole” is about the lowest amount that can be paid to a person to keep him alive, and employed workers must always be on the alert against being pushed nearer to that amount. Hence, even when a job is obtained it does not mean freedom from worry and anxiety. Machinery has been developed to such an extent that goods can be produced much faster and in considerably greater quantities than they were years ago, when practically every available worker was used. The workers who have jobs have only sufficient to purchase little more than the actual necessities of life, and the unemployed have considerably less, so that their spending power is restricted, and we have the ridiculous position arising of millions of commodities having been produced which cannot be sold because millions of people haven’t sufficient money to buy them. Quantities of goods which people need are destroyed so as not to flood the market. Factories remain idle, when there are men and women willing and anxious to work them, and prating fools preach false doctrines ot economy when there is an abundance of everything. The economic evils of to-day are unnecessary, and those who talk of reforms, and expedients for alleviating those evils are either babes or charlatans.

There is not one reform or measure, free trade, tariffs, shorter hours, birth control, that will get the workers out of their main difficulty or make capitalism a satisfactory system. The conditions are ripe for a change, and all that is lacking is the workers' understanding of the position and their determination to alter it. Socialism, the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing everything we need, is the only solution to the economic ills, and many others which are the outcome of these deeper troubles and which beset us on all sides. Socialism can only be brought about by Socialists, and our job is to make Socialists, so that we may put an end to this poverty in the midst of plenty and get the very best out of the few years of life that is our heritage in the aeons of time that have gone and are yet to come.

May Otway

Sparks From The Anvil. (1916)

From the April 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few journalists of the capitalist Press have exhibited such insight into the character of contemporary politicians as Mr. W. Purvis. This gentleman, in an article (“The Man Who Saved France”) setting forth the merits of the late Adolphe Thiers—one time President of France —gives vent to the following gem of political wisdom:

   There was something of Mr. Lloyd George and a great deal of our English Premier in Adolphe Thiers. In his unconscious and amusing egotism he reminds one often of our Minister of Munitions; and he does so, too, in the case with which he could turn on the tap of poetic and patriotic eloquence, as well as in certain flashes of poetical inspiration.

“Sunday Chronicle,” 16.1.16.

How far this comparison is true may be gathered from the following extracts from the character sketch of M. Thiers given in Marx’s “Civil War in France” :

  Thiers, that monstrous gnome, has charmed the French bourgeoisie, . . . because he is the most consummate intellectual expression of their own class corruption. . . . The massacre of the Republicans in the rue-Traumonain, and the subsequent infamous laws of September against the Press and the right of association were his work.

This is particularly appropriate in view of the Featherstone massacre, and the fact that Asquith is the head of, and Lloyd George a member of, the government which has suppressed more journals in the interests of capital than any other of recent years. “Thiers was consistent only in his greed for wealth and his hatred of the men that produce it. Having entered his first ministry under Louis Phillips poor as Job, he left it a millionaire.” Lloyd George started with nothing; he now gets £5,000 a year and still is in his own opinion “a comparatively poor man.” (Marconi affair.) He is getting on.

*  *  *

  We are sorry to hear that the original inventor of Kinematography, Mr. Friese-Greene, is to-day living in absolute want. “John Bull,” Jan. 22, 1916.

The same old story of the inventor under capitalism. He wears his brain away and rots in poverty while the capitalists, having cheated and robbed him, realise the full fruits of his invention. How many fortunes are to-day being built up through the medium of the Kinema industry? Yet Friese-Greene has to be dependent upon charity—the statement above quoted being followed by an appeal for his support, addressed with unconscious irony to those “who are to-day benefiting so largely in connection with the moving picture industry.”

*  *  *

The manner in which the “standard of living” of the workers is “rising” is illustrated by this cutting from the “Daily Dispatch" of 4th Feb., 1916. “Those who find beef or mutton beyond their means will be at least interested to learn that horseflesh may now be bought at properly-equipped butchers’ shops.” This, mind you, from a paper that is continually informing us of the extravagance of the working “classes” in this time of high wages, war bonuses, etc., etc., of which an example is seen in the next column of the same paper of the same date:

   A woman who was stated to earn 13s. 1d. for a week's work of 61 hours at Salford applied in vain at the Manchester Munitions Tribunal yesterday to be allowed to go to another firm. . . . The firm’s representative, in answer to a question by Mr. P. W. Atkin (the Salford stipendiary) regarding the girl’s total wages, said she worked a normal week 50½ hours and 8¾ hours overtime, making a total, including the extra payment for overtime, of 61 hours. Her total wages with the war-bonus were 13s. 1d., which the firm considered was fair remuneration having regard to her age and experience. . . The Chairman, whilst remarking that the firm might consider giving the worker more wages, declined to grant the certificate.

*  *  *

The tendency to supervise more strictly that which the worker sees, hears, and reads, and only to allow that which is considered, “good for him,” is increasing. The Altrincham licensing magistrates have decided that “in future all licences would be endorsed to the effect that anything to 'educate the young in a wrong direction,’ or anything which is likely to produce tumult or a breach of peace,’ should not be shown.’ Daily Dispatch,” Feb. 4, 1919.

*  *  *

  At a moment of unexampled anxiety the Treasury are faced with the virtual bankruptcy of the National Insurance Scheme. The Government are heavily in debt to the panel chemists, while the remuneration of the doctors — generous enough at the outset—has, upon one pretext and another, been reduced almost to the level of the old Friendly Society terms. Meanwhile, instructions have been issued that only cheap medicines, and not too much of these, shall be prescribed.

“John Bull,” 12.2.16.

The doctors are kicking, the chemists are kicking, but the workers, the dupes of the scheme, where are they? They go blandly along — “forepence a week he gives, forepence a week,” but not for ninepence.

R. W. Housley