A Look Round. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Trades Dispute Act, passed by a Government “having something of a Labour Party force behind it” as one jubilant Trade Unionist has expressed it, legalised peaceful picketing. That is to say it made it quite lawful for “one or more persons acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a Trade Union or of an individual employer or firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working.”

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But the question of what is peaceful picketing is of course one for the Magistrates and the Judges. In the course of a strike or lock-out, it is hardly to be expected that strikers or locked-out workers will be able to control their feelings altogether when they see their places being taken by others. The moment they get excited they can be charged under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, as was the case at the Old Street Police Court on June 6th, when two men were each fined £10 and ordered to pay six guineas costs between them.

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Another Act of the present Government, the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1906, comes into force on July 1st. If a workman, after that date, meet with a fatal accident, and his relatives can afford to employ lawyers, or make a bargain with them on the “no win, no pay” system, they may get a verdict of £300 against the employer. And if the latter has not insured and cannot pay, he can make himself a bankrupt, and clear himself of all obligations. No wonder the Act has been described as one for the benefit of insurance companies and lawyers more than for workmen.

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Probably many of the smaller employers will regard a fatal accident to one of their workmen as a blessing in disguise if it enables them, by means of the Bankruptcy Court, to disentangle themselves from the difficult position in which they have been forced under this competitive system.

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The Stringertype is the name of a new matrix composing and casting machine recently invented by Mr. H. J. S. Culbert-Stringer. After a close inspection by a number of experts, the machine has been found to thoroughly justify the many important advantages claimed for it by the inventor.

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Another factor in the problem of men v. machinery !

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The chairman of Barclay, Perkins & Company, Ltd., is much afraid that “after legislation has finished with the Breweries,” the “Socialists” would turn their attention to other so-called monopolies, and the property of the Church itself will be in danger ! This twaddle about the wicked Socialists who would destroy property is part of the game played by the capitalist class. But Barclay, Perkins’ “property,” like that of other sections of the master class, may be depreciated and even destroyed in the ordinary course of capitalist development, without any “Socialist” agitation or action.

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Thus at the meeting of William Cory & Son, Ltd., held on June 11th, Sir Francis Cory-Wright said they ought to put large sums to depreciation and reserve, because they could not say what in the future might take the place of coal, and render much of their assets valueless.

* * *

He went on to refer to the new invention “Coalite,” to exploit which a new company was being formed. Mr. Parker, of Wolverhampton, claimed that it was absolutely smokeless, and that its use would put an end to thick fogs, which were solely due to the smoke emitted from domestic and factory chimneys. There were good grounds for this claim, and if “Coalite” proved successful it would have a great future.

* * *

As I understand it, “Coalite” is obtained by treating ordinary coal in a particular manner. But surely it is within the region of possibility that a fuel may one day be discovered superior to coal in every respect, which would at once depreciate the value of coal mines and allied industries. Then the coal mine owners would agitate for the nationalisation of coal mines and some alleged Socialists would be jubilant at the rate of progress of their ideas.

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On June 12th Mr. Bicknell presided at the meeting of J. C. & J. Field, Ltd., Soap and Candle Manufacturers. He said the year had been a disappointing one. For some years the profits had been steadily growing less, owing to heavy taxation, the increased price of raw materials, in addition to excessive competition.

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When the Soap Trust was operating here, Field's was one of the firms which remained outside. And when the retailers talked of forming a co-operative concern to manufacture soap against the Trust, Field’s advised them not to erect a factory or to put down new plant, but, if they would subscribe £50,000 Capital, Field’s plant could be utilised, etc. All this, of course, was disinterested. Field’s sole desire, as everybody knew, was to help the people fight the awful Trust.

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It is stated that the cause of the trouble at Vickers, Sons & Maxim’s Engineering Works at Erith, was primarily the introduction of a premium bonus system, similar in many respects to the “Rowan” system. In this connection the following extract from The Engineer-in-Charge and Works Manager for May will be interesting to readers.

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Piecework.—Each engineer must decide for himself as to whether any of the work undertaken in his department can be more cheaply turned out on a piecework basis. Many engineers have to manufacture spare parts in considerable quantities, and in these cases the work can often be done more cheaply by the piece; the workman possibly earns more money, but the total cost will be less when establishment charges have been added.

The chief objection to piecework is the difficulty of fixing a fair rate ; if too high, the workman earns very large wages and the rate has to be cut down, with the result that next time a man is given a job at a high rate he takes care not to work too quickly. To avoid this system the premium system has been introduced, which has the effect of giving part of the additional earnings to the employer and part to the workmen. The method introduced by the late Mr. James Rowan has been more used than perhaps any other : by this system a man is allowed, say eight hours in which to do a certain job, and his rate is 8d. per hour ; if he does the work in six hours he will be paid his ordinary rate plus 2-8ths—2d.; therefore, in this case he will get 10d. per hour. It is obviously impossible, with this method, for a man to be paid double his ordinary rate, and the effect is to increase the man’s bonus for small savings in time and to decrease it for large, that is compared with ordinary piecework ; hence, it is unnecessary ever to cut the rate after it has once been fixed, and this system is undoubtedly useful for work for which the rate is difficult to compute.

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There are no flies on the employers who adopt this system !

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In the current issue of The Contemporary Review, Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., deals with the Investments of the Masses. He estimates the total wealth of the United Kingdom at £11,500,000,000, of which £10,900,000,00 is owned by 5,000,000 people, and £600,000,000 by 39,000,000 of the population. Thus about 95 per cent. of the entire wealth of the United Kingdom is owned by about one-ninth of its population. It could easily be shown, he added, that of the 5,000,000 of people above the income tax line a small proportion, about one-fifth or say, 1,000,000 people (about 200,000 or 250,000 families) own nearly the whole of the accumulated wealth of the Kingdom, and that this small group exercise the effective government of the nation by its control of the means of production. “THOSE RULE WHO OWN.”

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Those rule who own. That is the position. Whatever political reforms may be secured will be useless so long as the means of wealth production are private property. Therefore the efforts of the workers for political supremacy must be directed with the object of using the power thus obtained to effect the social revolution. Private ownership of the means of wealth production must give place to social ownership.

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Some societies of working men have been led into supporting the Workers’ Educational Association, which exists for the purpose of encouraging boys and girls to continue their education (of a kind agreeable to their masters) by attendance at evening schools after they have commenced to work. Last month a Conference took place between the Association and employers of labour at Birmingham, at which a committee, with the Lord Mayor as chairman, was appointed to carry out the work. The true inwardness of the movement may be gathered from the Press reports of this meeting, which conclude thus : “It was stated that the decay of the apprenticeship system had caused employers to lose that control of young people which they formerly possessed.” And, of course, by the help of Mr. Albert Mansbridge and his W.E.A., they hope to get it back.

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An instance of the fallacy that only unskilled workers need lack employment in this happy land arose at the City Coroner’s Court on June 6th, when an inquest was held concerning the death of Harry G. Burrell, aged 59, a brass finisher, who dropped dead the previous Sunday evening in Whitecross-st. It was stated that the deceased was a capital workman, but had been unable to find regular employment for the past five years. One witness stated that he had known deceased since January and frequently during the bitter nights of February and March they would lie sodden with rain on one of the seats of the Embankment, only to be moved on and made to walk by the first constable who came across them. Between two and three thousand homeless “heirs to glory” went to the Embankment at night.

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Of course, the jury, being “practical” men, passed the usual verdict: “Death from natural causes.” It is quite recognised by the capitalist class that it is perfectly “natural” for men, able and willing to work, to die of starvation in the midst of plenty.

J. Kay.

A Middle-Class Utopia. (1907)

Book Review from the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern Thraldom.—A New Social Gospel, by Dr. W. Hampson, M.A. London: Wells Gardner, Barton & Co. Paper covers, 162 pp., 1s. 6d. Net.

The early portion of this book describes the servitude into which “borrowed” tools, houses, and land are supposed to have thrown the “labouring classes,” the “clean clothes classes,” and also the tradesmen, small manufacturers, and farmers. The evidence in the book, however, really shows that the poverty of the workers and the crushing of the small capitalists are due to the concentration of wealth and industry into fewer hands turning increasing numbers into propertyless hirelings of the possessing few. But to put it thus involves Socialism as the solution, so our author prefers to attribute the situation not to the inevitable march of industrial development, but simply to credit in some form or other. 

The most interesting part of the book is that dealing with agriculture, where many reasons are given for the decrease in number and increase in size of farms, but where the most important reasons such as the development of agricultural machinery which cannot profitably be employed on small farms, the general economies of operations on a large scale, and the development of the machinery of transport which brings other climes into more acute competition, are missed. This, however, is of a piece with the fact that Dr. Hampson nowhere realises the force of the economic trend.

From his point of view of the small property-holder, the author is much troubled by the question of the rates, but his own evidence shows it to be a question that does not concern the workers or even the tenant farmer. He says, p. 46: —

“At the time of the great depression in land values and profits from land, it became impossible for farmers to continue paying their former rents, and a percentage was remitted in most cases, so as to bring the amount payable each half-yearly rent day just within the limits of the possible. If a season were exceptionally bad, so as to involve the farmers in inevitable loss, a larger percentage of rent would be remitted. If times improved in some way, the remission would be less. Thus when the Agricultural Rating Act was passed, to relieve the farmers of a portion of their rates, a smaller percentage of rent was remitted the next half year.”

The middle class of course has its schisms and the author tilts against modern radicalism and against that municipal enterprise which is such a blessing to many middle-class investors, and also against the officialism that provides easy positions for their sons ; but Dr. Hampson’s attitude is nevertheless essentially that of the class between the devil and the deep blue sea. He protests against rings and combines, but is specially vehement against working-class trade organisations, and states that trade union action, by restricting free competition in labour “means a reduction of wages and in the standard of living,” while on p. 28 it is further urged that:—

“All combining, negotiating, organised advising and warning, striking, picketing, and other proceedings intended to restrict the freedom of the labour market, ought to be regarded and treated as criminal, so as to restore complete freedom to the man who wants to sell labour and to the man who wants to buy it.”

There is also on p. 12 a curious defence of the exploitation of labourers—exploitation by the middle class of course. It is stated that the shareholders having the necessary plant and materials or equivalent wealth—

“Lent them to the officials and working men and women of the factory, on condition that the latter, having borrowed them and worked with them, should pay to the lenders a part of the profits earned by their labour, namely, all that was over after they had been paid a subsistence wage depending, among other conditions, on the recognised minimum standard of living in the district at the time. Now this was a perfectly open bargain, well understood by all the parties to it, and the shareholders, who in fact lent the factory and appliances, have a right to claim that they shall not have hard words thrown at them, as capitalists, because they are taking a part of the profit earned by other men’s labour.”

In the description of the Utopia that is expected to follow the adoption of the author’s suggestions there is nothing but glorified middle-class conditions, with the middle class predominant in wealth and power. It is prohibited to live in hired rooms and houses, and all credit is forbidden except the capital of limited liability companies, of which all shareholders are required to be also occupied in connection with their company, while no shareholder may own more than five times the smallest allotment of shares. A kind of Single Tax is instituted (in spite of the author’s ideal of free internal trade) in the nature of a poundage on every cash transaction. This tax (which the author says is not a tax, and which is to be levied without officials) is to enable the one man government to supply such of the citizens as have deposited £250 in the State Bank, with a further £250 on their marriage for the purpose of buying house, furniture and allotment. There are to be no boards, committees, councils or parliament. National government is to be run by an elected president and local administration by a manager ; while no one can vote unless he owns, among other things, a bicycle !

There is still to be wage-slavery in the new Utopia, but the workmen are supposed to be able to get higher wages through the absence of trade organisations, and through being forbidden to hire rooms, so having to buy a room or rooms outright. The labourer is to give six hours industrial labour per day and put in the rest of his time on the land. The thrashing, winnowing and grinding of corn is to be done at home in small hand machines because :

“However little it may cost to grind in a steam driven mill, it costs less to do it at home in the time that used to be spent in the evening at a public house. It costs nothing at all, but actually saves the money that was once spent in drinking to while away the time.”

How typically middle class ! 

Even the great domestic servant question is almost solved in this Utopia. The author says :

“And are mistresses no longer the slaves of their servants ?

In this respect also there is great improvement. We have now no large class of excessively rich, keeping large houses full of ‘pampered menials,’ and so setting before other servants a false standard of lavishness, luxury, ease, pilfering, and ‘perks.’ On the other hand the middle-class ladies, having given up imitating the luxury of the rich, have themselves become as good practical housekeepers as their husbands are practical business men and cultivators. They can, if need he, manage their houses in many cases without outside help, and so, when they have that help they know how to keep, without petty domineering, the position of mistress in their own homes.”

The Doctor’s Utopia illustrates both how completely class interests as they are recognised mould a man’s views, and how narrow is the mental vision of the middle class.

For the realisation of this Utopia an association called the Land and Labour League is to be formed and to be endowed by a few charitably disposed millionaires for the purchase of property, the tenure of which is to be sold to League members who in turn are not allowed to give any of their property as security for a loan. Leaguers will pay “no rates or taxes,” these will be paid by the League out of proceeds of a receipt stamp tax to be levied on all members.

The League, says the author, is to be a co-worker with the garden city schemes at Bourneville, Port Sunlight, York, Letchworth and other places, so it is very small beer after all.

The League will, when funds allow, put £250 to the selected member’s on his marriage for the purchase of house and grounds that are to remain technically the property of the League—a sort of glorified building society in fact that is supposed to grow snowball like, until it absorbs the whole of Society.

But what of the, working man ? How is he to save the necessary £250 in order to participate in this paradise ? The author has told us that to-day “The lowest salary which will supply the bare living must be accepted by each applicant lest another cut in and take the place,” also that “conditions make it practically impossible for an average man to rise out of the labouring ranks in which he was born.”

The odds therefore appear to be rather long against the workers being able to save the requisite £250 each, indeed, they do not stand even an outside chance. But the author of the “New Social Gospel” has a most simple plan. It is to tax immigrants heavily and put an almost prohibitive tax on imports. Then, says the doctor:

“When all the production for the English market is secured for the English producer, there will be for a time an era of prosperity seldom equalled before. Demand will overtake supply for a time. The price of labour will rise higher than ever before; the unemployed and, under such tempting conditions, many even of those who are now unemployable, will be earning money ; and the workers being rich, the prices of common articles will rise also, though not in the same proportion as wages.”

Truly a simple plan—for simpletons. The workman knows that labour-power is the last to participate in a rise in prices, so that the problematic rise in wages will not be proportionate to the rise in general prices. The worker will also see that if prices rise, then the price of house and land rises also, thus the amount to be saved rises proportionately, leaving the possibility to the workman of saving at least as remote as before.

Further, restricted immigration is no new thing, and where instituted has made no appreciable difference to the workers. It is not the alien, but capitalist development that creates the unemployed, and the same process is going on in every country ; new inventions and processes, greater concentration and more efficient organisation decrease daily the proportion of wage workers required by the masters to produce for the market. Large numbers of workers are thus thrown on the streets while the owners of the instruments and materials of labour reap the whole of the benefit.

And with regard to a prohibitive import tax, owing to the very nature of international exchange, the import trade of the country cannot be destroyed without causing havoc in the export trade and the consequent ruin (under capitalist conditions) of those producing for export. We have also object lessons the whole world over of the futility of fiscal juggling as far as the workers are concerned. Capitalist conditions breed working-class poverty everywhere, and must do so long as the workers are the hirelings of the possessing few. But even supposing that by some miracle all wage slaves managed to save £250 and so live rent free ; is it not a fact that capitalism (whether under small or large manufacturers) turns the very thrift and temperance of the workers into weapons of offence against them ? and does not Dr. Hampson himself prove this ? Speaking of allotments he says :

“Suppose the profits from a plot of land to be equal to two shillings a week. Then a man and his family can live in the same moderate degree of comfort as before on a wage of fourteen shillings instead of sixteen if need be.

It is the professed object of the promoters of improvement on these lines that the improvement shall become general. Suppose them to succeed to the full extent of their hopes. Suppose that practically all the labourers increase their wages by such means to the equivalent of eighteen shillings, so that they could, in case of necessity, continue their present style of living on an actual money wage of fourteen shillings. The farmers would not be long in making the discovery that their labourers were able to live on two shillings a week less. And the next week they would require their men to prove their ability.”

Such, indeed, is the mainspring of the welcome that has greeted the present Liberal Small Holdings Bill. And its undeniable truth destroys at one blow Dr. Hampson’s Utopia as far as the workers are concerned. Whatever cheapens the cost of living of the workman, as soon as it becomes general, reduces his wage, competition compelling him to sell himself for a mere subsistence. Yet Dr. Hampson dares to say that if the worker did not have to pay rent he would be enabled to exact a higher wage ! The small capitalist is essentially reactionary, and his only possible ideal is one that runs counter to every economic tendency. And our author, voicing the interests and ideals of this class, has reckoned without his host, the financial magnate, who now rules the capitalist roost, and without, also, the army of the workers, who can only go forward, to industrial democracy,—not backward, to the infancy of capitalist society. Unlike the middle class intellectuals, the scientific Socialist, has outgrown the Utopian stage. Our author, however, evidently imagines that men figure the society they want and then make it to order ; so he thinks that if the public find his Utopia good they will set themselves to make one like it. The scientific Socialist does not erect a fanciful Utopia, but analyses actual Society, its economics and its history, and tracing its laws of development sees whither the basic factor, the development of wealth production, tends, and derives therefrom, not a detailed picture of the future, but the broad direction of economic evolution and the essential principles of the society foreshadowed by the present. And by the study of men’s actions, motives and history, he is enabled to discover the essential principles of the action that must be taken to render the transition speedy and beneficial.

Dr. Hampson has not done this, therefore his reforms are upon all counts a snare and delusion to the middle class in their struggle against the inevitable, while to the working class they offer at best nothing but a shuffling of masters by no means to the better.

F. C. Watts

The Bakers’ Agitation. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why the Manchester strike must fail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W. Watts

On Buying Out the Capitalist. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

[From “The Concentration of Wealth” by Henry Laurence Call, a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Columbia College, New York, Dec. 1906.]

The purchase of public utilities from the corporations is, indeed, now generally advocated ; and we presume the same alternative will be proposed with regard to the trusts, when the people shall have become thoroughly aroused as to what they mean, as also to the futility, as well as the inadequacy, of all attempts to curb or smash them. But this acknowledges the right in these corporations to insist upon such terms as they please, or even absolutely to refuse to sell until their franchises and privileges shall have expired ; thus postponing indefinitely, and rendering practically null, any attempt at a real remedy. The proposition is, moreover, in any just estimate, deliciously ludicrous. The simplicity of the countryman who “locked the stable door after the horse was stolen,” was sage wisdom by comparison. It is as though that countryman, with the thief parading his stolen horse in his plain sight, should have hypnotised himself into the belief that the possession of that thief was evidence of property, and sacred ; and while still in that hypnotic state, should have proposed to mortgage his farm and future labour in order to purchase back his stolen property.

If, through the misconduct of their public servants, the people have been defrauded of the possession of their public highways, as also of industry itself, then their right to repossess themselves of these properties and franchises is the same as that of the individual to repossess himself of his property, whether lost or stolen. The deprivations and wrongs of the past can never be remedied ; and all the wealth that has thus far gone to supply the lavish and sinful waste of these arch plunderers of the industrial world may not be restored to the people ; but all the plundered wealth that yet remains, including the franchises and properties, is theirs to recover and possess.

To attempt such purchase would, indeed, entail upon industrial society an impossible burden.

It is stated that the income of John D. Rockefeller is 72,000,000 dollars per year. If this is true, then the wealth of that individual alone, judged by its earning power, is to-day not far from 2,500,000,000 dollars; and before any reform can be effected will undoubtedly be 3,000,000,000 dollars. Now, inasmuch as the net earnings of the whole (American) people are only 3,000,000,000 dollars per annum, it would require all the earnings of all the people of the nation for a whole year, to satisfy the demands of this one individual alone, in the event of such purchase. But he is only one of thousands of the enormously rich ; and the class, of which he is representative, possess practically ninety per cent. of the 106,000,000,000 dollars given as our national wealth. Not all the labour of all the people would, then, suffice ; . . . as well might a slave, all whose toil belongs to an absolute master, hope to purchase its freedom, as industrial society to undertake such purchase, and then hope even to lighten its debt burden.

Aside from the contradiction it implies, and the hardship it must entail, the purchase by society of these possessions would perpetuate an aristocracy of wealth, having no occupation but the search for pleasure and power, and quite as formidable then as now. It would take all the profits from production and industry, leaving the whole of industrial society in the future, as at present, but “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for these lords of the industrial world. It would convert this into an immense corruption fund, in the hands of an idle class trained to ambition and power. Many might be content with this perpetual mortgage upon the labour of the whole nation, and spend their incomes upon pleasure ; but who can doubt that the great lords of finance who now dominate the industrial world, would still thirst for power, and, conversant with all the corrupt methods of our politics, would use the same criminal methods to build up a newer power, as those employed to build up their present possessions and power ?

Besides, such half-way action, or compromise, would be as wrong and unjust as it would be impolitic. All these possessions have been created alone by the labour of industrial society ; and to it, and it alone, they justly belong.

If, therefore, these possessions have found their way into the hands of the present possessors through unjust laws, through bribery, corruption, fraud, and other criminal misconduct, which the people could not see or prevent, then the people cannot do less than demand a full return both of the properties and all the accumulated wealth therefrom. Their right to this wealth is exactly commensurate with their right to take possession of the properties themselves. The return of the goods of which they have been despoiled is quite as important and altogether as just, as the prevention of further spoliation. It is enough that they have been so long defrauded of their just possessions, and compelled to toil in the service, and at the dictation, of the wrongful appropriators ; without assuming this voluntary and dangerous additional burden of perpetual toil, in order to come into possession of their own again, or rather into what would be but a hollow mockery of that possession. This wealth, thus plundered from a nation’s toil, either belongs to these plunderers or to the society from which they have plundered it; and to one or the other it must go in the end. Industrial society must make its choice between the two horns of the dilemma ; it must be the judge of its own rights, as also the enforcer of its own decrees ; and from its decision there is no appeal, as no recourse from its action.

The corporation, then, in all its ramifications, industrial, financial, and public service, should be taken from under the control of private interests, and made co-operative in the workers, by them to be administered for the common good; it should be, in fact, a social, not a selfish institution.

Industrial Democracy. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The logic of events has altered somewhat the character of the opposition that is made to the Socialist. He is now seldom told that the personal management of the capitalist is essential to the working of industry, for it is precisely those concerns in which the personal supervision of the capitalist is lacking that are driving the personally managed businesses to the wall.

It is acknowledged that the small master man has every year an increasing difficulty in making his way in the world. Each year sees an enormous number of bankruptcies, largely among the personally managed businesses, and each year sees private businesses turned into companies, and companies combined into rings, cartels, and trusts. The reason for this is not far to seek.

It is only the small businesses that can in any real sense of the word be said to be personally directed, and the small concern is in a parlous way beside the great public company. The large firm is able to considerably reduce the proportion of management expenses by distributing them over a larger volume of work. It is also able to extend the division of labour and to introduce and suitably employ the most efficient machinery. It is able to buy in large quantities and therefore more cheaply ; to make consignment of goods in bulk and therefore at lower rates ; and in many ways both in buying and in selling to overreach its smaller rival.

Though the working capitalist resort to sweating methods of the worst kind and work his men long hours and use all the petty tricks of trade, yet he can rarely successfully compete with the great company that makes profit for owners who know nothing of the processes and who take no part in the labour involved.

The sweating underground master-baker is out-competed by the eight hours day machine bakery. The struggling tobacconist, tea dealer, and the like are being crushed by the branches of the great distributing trusts. The small cycle maker is losing ground before the great Coventry companies, and on all sides a similar process is going on. The number of trusts in this country is already very great, and their number grows apace. And this fact, though it sounds the knell of the middle class, rings nevertheless with the promise of deliverance for those who toil.

It means that associated production is vastly more efficient and economical than individual or small scale wealth production. It demonstrates that the personal supervision of the capitalist is unnecessary to the carrying on of industry. It means that the workers run the main industries of the country, though it is true that they now do so for others’ gain.

In the company and trust, some of the black-coated proletariat are hired and placed in positions of authority ; the manager is given a larger salary and perhaps a percentage on the profits in order that his interests may be more closely identified with those of his masters, the capitalist class, rather than with those of his dusty coated brethren ; but nevertheless the fact remains that the most efficient concerns are run by proletarian hirelings and the profits are handed over by them to the idle and useless owners of the plant.

The growth of company and trust each year demonstrates more plainly the uselessness of the capitalist. The working class now runs industry to its own misery for the profit of its oppressors, but the day is near when it should take those industries that have been built up with its blood and sweat and transform them from means of profit for a handful of parasites into the means of its deliverance from slavery and degradation. The economic foundation is being laid, and as industry after industry ripens to the trust stage, so approaches the time when those who labour, having driven their exploiters from the political entrenchments, must seize the industrial machinery their labour has created and use it for the well-being of all.

W.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For July. (1907)

Party News from the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Open Letter to Robert Blatchford: Wanted — A Party. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Dear Robert,

If it isn’t a rode question, where have you been living for the past three years? 1 did hear you had been in London most of the time, but 1 can hardly credit that. Unless, indeed, you have “sported the oak” of your reading room to the exclusion of all information from the outside world. But that can’t be, for I have observed articles from your pen on current topics. You must have kept in communication with London affairs, and as you call yourself a Socialist, I take it you have kept touch with the Socialist movement in London. Or relied upon somebody to keep you in touch. If so, if you have relied upon somebody, he has let you down and made you look silly. He has made you write: “We want a real Socialist Party . . . we have an S.D.F. and an I.L.P. and a L.R.C. and a Fabian Society; but we have not a British Socialist Party. What is to be done ? ”

What is to be done? Well! Had you asked me I should have answered—wake up! If I, as a London Socialist writer, said, “we have a Justice and a Labour Leader and Daily Mail but we have not a Clarion,” you would think that my education in such matters had been neglected.

Everybody in London professing Socialism knows of the Clarion, and by the same token everybody in London professing Socialism knows of The Socialist. Party of Great Britain, or their education in such matters is defective.

We have not a British Socialist Party! Why, I’ve been a member of the British Socialist Party three years. This paper is issued by—just the Party you are enquiring for, a real Socialist Party.

And you didn’t know of its existence. Oh! Robert, Robert, where have you been buried ?

No, don't thank me. This is the fellowship. I confess to the greatest astonishment that you were ignorant of this good thing, but the discharging of my fellowship obligation in sending you the news calls for no thanks. Only mark that “Socialism” is not S.D.F’ism or l.LP'ism or Fabianism or even Clarionism. They are quite different things, as we show in our “Manifesto,” and in this journal. It was precisely because we had discovered that S.D.F’ism and the rest did not make for Socialism that we anticipated your desire for

A Real Socialist Party.

We are very emphatic on this point, and you will readily see how necessary such emphasis is. The clear duty of a real Socialist Party is to work for real Socialism. It has no justification for existence apart from that.

It is urged that conceptions as to what constitutes work for real Socialism may properly differ, Conceptions on this point among Socialists should not differ: do not in fact. The only work a Socialist can do is to preach Socialism. He can never preach anything that conflicts with his Socialism while he remains a Socialist; for that is to obscure his Socialism and to stultify himself as a Socialist.

Suppose he becomes an advocate for Payment of Members as the S.D.F. member does, a little Women's Suffrage, after the fashion of the I. L.P'er, Municipal Public Houses, like unto the Fabian, what then? In the first place his Socialism has receded, however temporarily, into a secondary position. Socialism is not being preached — the working class crying for bread is given— a stone. Secondly he is doing work that needs no Socialist Party at all. Thirdly the particular reform worked for will not appreciably affect the condition of the working class as such. Fourthly  it will therefore have wasted the working-class strength concentrated upon realising it. Fifthly it will, because it has effected no material improvement in working class conditions, have bred disappointment, and, from disappointment, apathy. And finally it will have made existing confusion worse confounded in the minds of the working class.

Therefore I contend that preaching Socialism and explaining the phenomena of industrial development in the light of Socialism is the proper work of a Socialist. If he does any other propaganda work he is not a Socialist.

In the issue of the Clarion which contained your note already quoted, you plead for the all- sufficiency of the logical method. You say “If we overleap logic we overleap ourselves and land in a bog of confusion and disappointment,” which is very true. I am all for the logical method, therefore, I think that the argument I have submitted is strictly logical. If yon think otherwise perhaps yon will confute me.

Now will you turn to our Declaration of Principles on the back page and read it closely. It is an important pronouncement. So important that we reproduce it in every issue. It is important to you if you want a real British Socialist Party, because it is the base of the real British Socialist Party—which you will have to sign before yon can realise your desire. Perhaps you will point out wherein we overleap logic.

I will anticipate one objection you may raise. It is raised by your non-Socialist S.D.F., I.L.P., F.S. and the rest. It is our statement of hostility to all other political parties.

You may think we are too narrow, too doctrinaire. You may think it an impossible position, as the others do, but is it? I ask you, Robert, to proceed with your examination logically, without regard to the feelings of members of other political parties; without concern for the probable effect upon the sale of the Clarion. Proceed as you did in your examination of Christianity.

We are only interested in the maintenance of truth. Truth can only be maintained inside the logical method. "If we overleap logic we overleap ourselves and land in a bog of confusion and disappointment.’’ Therefore,—the truth, even if it means that we become for the time as voices crying in the wilderness.

The cause of working-class misery is private ownership of the means of life. The interests of the workers, who do not own the means of life, are opposed to the interests of the capitalists, who do own them. This clash of interests is the class struggle. I presume we may take that as read.

These things continue because

The working class are ignorant.

Although their interests continually clash with those of their masters, they do not understand that this is inevitable. Nor do they understand that their masters' ownership of the means of life is at the bottom of the trouble. We may take this as read also.

Now why, with this continual conflict of interest, do the working class remain ignorant ? And why are they so desperately apathetic? Is their ignorance not because the truth has not been told? And is their apathy not born largely of disappointment with the results of past efforts of their class to secure some amelioration of their condition?

We need not enquire for the moment into the honesty of working-class teachers and leaders. We need only deal with the teaching and leading.

The school instruction of the working class is not such as would enable the child to get a glimmering of the truth of the position. It would be surprising if the capitalist class, dominant in the legislature (because dominance there is essential to the maintenance of their economic ascendancy) should take steps to instruct the children of the working class concerning working-class poverty, So we will consider the teaching and leading the workers receive alter they have entered the industrial and political arenas.

Now do the majority of working-class teachers | teach that the working-class position is inevitable under present conditions? that there is no name given under heaven whereby the working class may be saved except Socialism? that until Socialism there can be no cessation of the clash of interests between Capital and Labour?—that the class struggle persists unflaggingly? 

Leave out of account those who do not claim to be Socialists. If Socialism is the only remedy, and they are not Socialists, their teaching cannot be right because they do not teach Socialism. That’s agreed, I think.

But what of those who profess Socialism? My answer is that although they talk of it occasionally, they do not teach it. Nor do their leadings square with their occasional professions.

The important thing in a teacher of Socialism is that it should always be Socialism that he teaches. If he does not explain every manifestation of class conflict in the light of his Socialist philosophy, he is little, if any, better than the non-Socialist misleader. His teaching is neither logical nor consistent. He lands his audience in a bog of confusion.

And if, as very frequently happens, his actions directly conflict with his

Occasional Socialist Professions;

if he mouths the class straggle and the fundamental importance of its full appreciation, what time he is doing those things which can only obscure the appreciation of the class struggle, I submit that he can only be classified under one of two heads. Either he is a fraud or a fool.

These be hard words, Robert, but they are not bitter, for I also am a Determinist.

However, the working class ignorance and apathy which must be dispelled before Socialism can be realised, so far from being effectively combatted by working-class leaders and teachers are contributed to by most of them. For example. If I were to tell the unemployed that unemployment must last as long as capitalism and were then to recommend them to send a deputation to the representatives of the capitalists to ask that they [the capitalists] should abolish unemployment, I should either be a knave or a fool. 1 should have cut myself off from logic and landed my audience in a bog of confusion and disappointment. If I argue that capitalist representatives are in control of the political machinery to conserve their own interests as against those of the working class (as we all agree is and must be the case); and that we must regard capitalist representatives always as a hostile force against whom war must be waged unceasingly until they are utterly vanquished. And if in face of that I suspend hostilities and enter into alliance with them, I overleap logic and land my followers in the bog of confusion and disappointment.

If I postulate that poverty and misery must last till Socialism, that until Socialism nothing can materially or permanently affect the position; if I say that palliatives are therefore of little use, so little use indeed that I must have a party that shall concentrate upon the thing that matters (Socialism) rather than the things that do not matter (palliatives); and if notwithstanding I secure that my organisation, founded because palliatives were not good enough, shall concentrate working-class effort upon the realisation of palliatives, I am riding rough-shod over logic and doing my level best to engulf my followers in the pit of impotence and despair.

Well, dear Robert, that is precisely what your S.D.F., I.L.P., Fabian Society, and—yes, and your Clarion are doing. If you want details I have told you already where you can get some. If you want a special list of

Clarionese Fatuities

say the word.

You think highly of the Clarion, naturally. I think myself it is an excellent pen’orth too— sometimes. But it is not a Socialist paper. It is written to please those who fancy themselves “advanced’’ and caters for the organisations to which the “advanced” person belongs. It will give space to anything or anybody bearing one of the many recognised labels. But it wont give space to the S.P.G.B. representative who wishes to reply to a misleading reference to his Party, which is the more curious because you are enquiring for the Party.

No,

The “Clarion” is not a Socialist Paper.

It is a jumble,—a gorgeous, inconsistent, illogical jumble. Which wouldn’t matter tuppence if it didn’t help throw the workers into confusion.

But the pity of it, Robert, the pity of it! You might do good work for Socialism if only your vaunted adherence to principle was a matter of fact instead of a figment of fancy. With your fine literary sense, your faculty for the selection of the apt phrase and the illuminating quotation, the appeal of your imagery, the grace of your style these powers might make a mighty instrument in the education of the working class. Instead of which you handle pitch and are defiled; you persist in the folly of emphasising non-essentials and scamping essentials until I begin to fear you must for ever remain a stumbling block and a rock of offence.

That’s what I had in my mind when I said that having had the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the party you are enquiring for, brought to your notice, and having decided that it is the party you must apply for membership in, you must do all in your power for Socialism, as distinguished from S.D.F’ism, Clarionisin, and the rest. “We are all Socialists now,” quoth a certain knight now dead, and I suppose he spake as truly as he knew. Yet he was absurdly wide of the mark. Not every one who proclaims himself Socialist shall find place in the ranks of the Socialist army. Not those whose desire is personal aggrandisement, nor those who aspire to superintend the workers’ activities, nor the experts nor the superior persons nor the palliators, nor the compromisers, nor the hosts of the otherwise damned are of the confraternity of working-class educators. Rather are they conscious and unconscious perpetuators of ignorance, workers of evil, misleaders, and false friends. But those who, understanding the working-class relation to the economy of production; understanding the forces that have been at work through all history to present in this the twentieth century that appalling anomaly of a starving people in the midst of a riot of wealth of their own creation; understanding how the physical and intellectual well-being of the workers is conditioned by the measure of their control of the means by which they live; understanding that control of these means of life can only be secured by workers similarly enlightened; those who understanding these things and the necessity for eliminating every factor tending to confuse the issue in the working-class mind, have set themselves steadfastly to the task of translating their knowledge into clear, logical, consistent action to the end that their fellows may the more readily acquire the knowledge that shall make them free, only these are the Socialists and only these can form in England or elsewhere, the Socialist Party.

And that, Robert, is all I can say to you today, and I hope it will be helpful if not to you at least to some others and lead them to come over and help us. At present the labourers are few. You if you will may help to make them many. If you will not, well, we must needs do without you. This is the fellowship.

And so no more at present from—

                                                                                                                                     Yours truly,

'Filius Populi'

Party Notes. (1907)

Party News from the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Delegate Meeting will be held at the Communist Club on Saturday, 13th July at 3 p.m. Important business will be brought before it, and a full attendance of delegates is requested. 

—++—

Full particulars were promised last month of the correspondence that has passed between the Tottenham Branches of the S.P.G.B. and the I.L.P. The Tottenham Herald has since published the correspondence. Our branch challenged the I.L.P. to debate the proposition: “Does the I.LP. deserve the support of the working class?" Two of their local champions had expressed their willingness to meet a representative of this Party on the question, but the branch replied : “Your challenge to debate the claims of the I.L.P. to the support of the working classes duly came before the branch for consideration at our business meeting. I am instructed to inform you that our platform is open to you, or to anyone else who disagrees with us, and that you will be treated with consideration and courtesy at any of our meetings. In view, however, of the extravagant and slanderous statements made by your Tottenham speakers, we cannot see our way to meet you further. Furthermore, we suggest that it would be more honest and straightforward if, instead of allowing irresponsible spokesmen to bring the whole Socialist movement into disrepute by a policy of abuse and misrepresentation, you were to publish in your Journal the charges you bring against us, so that we should know definitely what your Party was prepared to support, and what we were expected to reply to.”

—++—

The Tottenham S.P.G.B. said: “I am instructed to acknowledge receipt of your letter in which you decline our challenge to debate. Your reference to the "working classes” is typical of that looseness of expression, or ignorance, or both, which characterises the utterances of so many of the members of the I.LP. May I remind you ; that there are but two classes—the working class and the master class. This branch is unaware of any "extravagant and slanderous" statements having been made by our speakers. We ask you to name the occasions, the speakers, and the essence of the alleged statements. The charge that we bring against the I.LP. is that it is not worthy the support of the working class. We have given the evidence in the manifesto of the S.P.G.B., and month by month, in the columns of The Socialist Standard. . . . If we are pursuing a "policy of abuse and misrepresentation” why not meet us in debate and expose us? Your failure to do so will be accepted by the public as evidence that you cannot justify your position, and that you know our charge is true.”

—++—

A reply to this communication is already somewhat overdue!

—++—

Up to the date of going to press the first instalment of the discussion on Trade Unionism had not been received from the advocates of Industrial Unionism.

Adolph Kohn

Mr. Barnes and the A.S.E. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The letter given below is a copy of one sent to the secretary of Ipswich Branch of the Operative Bricklayers' Society in reply to an invitation to speak at an engineers’ meeting to be held in that town on May 25th, with Mr. G. N. Barnes as chief speaker.

While thanking both Bro. Batchelor for suggesting and yourself for asking me to attend the Meeting of Engineers, there are certain important reasons why I could not appear on a platform with Mr. Barnes, to support him or his views and position in any way. As a Socialist I hold that the working-class can only get out of the slough of misery and degradation in which they exist to day by their consciously organising for the overthrow of the system that produces these conditions—namely, the capitalist system of Society. Until this is done the bad effects which our class suffers under, equally here in London as it does in Ipswich, and, in fact, everywhere that capitalism reigns, will, apart from some temporary fluctuations, tend to become worse. When the working class recognises this fact then it will organise itself into the political and economic organisations, having for their object the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

Meanwhile, until the workers arrive at that stage in the development of their knowledge of their own position in Society, which we Socialists term “class-consciousness,” the Socialists must carry on the work of education and agitation, to help in producing that knowledge or consciousness of the fact that their misery and poverty is due to one class in Society owning all the means of life—as the land, machinery, factories, railways, etc., and the wealth when it is produced—while the working class owns only the energy, ability or power to work—inseparable from the workers themselves—which they have to sell day by day or week by week, in order to obtain the necessaries of life.

With every improvement in machinery, with every fresh application of chemistry and science to industry,—as for example the introduction of concrete-steel construction with relation to our own trade the number of workers required to produce a given amount of wealth, or number of articles, continually decreases. We thus get the apparent paradox that while the amount of wealth produced increases the amount of unemployment increases also.

This antagonism of material interests causes a struggle to arise over the share which each is endeavouring to obtain of the wealth produced. And the only way out of this vicious circle is for the working-class to recognise this opposition of interest between themselves the producers—and the capitalist class the appropriators and to end this intolerable system by taking bold of the means of life to be owned and controlled by the workers in their social capacity.

There can be no crying of peace where only the conditions of war exist, and any assistance given to the capitalist class, either politically or economically, is a direct injury to the working class.

When Mr. Barnes assisted the employers on the Clyde in driving the men back to work by refusing strike pay and threatening expulsion from the A.S.E. although the men had twice voted for a strike to enforce their demands—then he showed that either from ignorance or intention he was helping to perpetuate capitalism, and therefore the evil effects, to our class, that it produces.

When Mr. Barnes and his Executive accepted the proposition of the employers on the East Coast that piece-work should be introduced—merely another name for intensified sweating—another direct injury was inflicted upon the workers for the benefit of the employers.

When running for the Blackfriars division of Glasgow, Mr. Barnes played for and obtained Liberal capitalist support at the last General Election, although the constitution of the L.R.C. forbids these alliances and bargains, thus deceiving the working class by joining hands with their enemy. Although he is quite aware that the average age at which the workers die is 29 to 30 years, yet he proposed in the House of Commons to give the workers Old Age Pensions of 5/- per week at 65 years of age—that is, sufficient to buy bread and butter, but not clothing and shelter, 35 years after most of them are dead!

To appear upon any platform with this person —except to denounce him for the misleader he is—would be nauseating to any man acquainted with the facts and understanding the Socialist position, unless he were out playing the same game.

These are my reasons for refusing to speak at the Engineers’ Meeting at Ipswich, which, except as stated above, could have only acted to the injury of our members and the working class in general.—Yours fraternally,

Jack Fitzgerald

The Roots of Social Change. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why We Are Wage Slaves.

The causationist, seeing everywhere in nature a concatenation of cause and effect, as the links of a chain running through endless time and through endless space, sees everywhere also that this infinite variety of happenings occurs in accordance with immutable laws, too impassive to be weak, too dispassionate to be stern. Law, and order, he knows to be universal, and chaos is a term which has no meaning to him save as the description of his own limited view and knowledge of phenomena.

The science of political economy enquires into the movements of man in the quest for the material means of subsistence, and shows that these movements also, no less than the rolling of celestial orbs, are governed by laws, and conform to the purposeless dictates of causal sequence.

Thus, there is a law of capitalist production which ordains that human labour-power shall be in constant competition with machinery, and shall as constantly be displaced and defeated by its formidable rival. And there is a law that, notwithstanding that the result is bitter as blood to the great working class of the world, yet must working-class intelligence and working-class strength go on improving and developing this machinery of production, to their own undoing, as long as the capitalist system of profit production shall prevail. There is a further law—a law of wages—under governance of which wages are determined by the cost of subsistence under certain prevailing conditions. There are many other stated laws controlling the economic movements of man, and many more, doubtless enough, awaiting human recognition and enunciation.

The knowledge of these laws is of vital importance to the workers. Such knowledge alone can explain to them how, and in what circumstances, the wealth of the world is produced— and who can it more closely concern than those who produce it all and who enjoy so little of it ? Such knowledge is the only sure foundation of Socialist faith—our pillar of fire by night, our pillar of cloud by day—the one unerring index where all else is confusion.

The reformer is a reformer only because he is ignorant of the existence of the laws governing social growth, or because he fails to realise their universal applicancy, and the unbending potency with which they reduce all human wishes, as far as they are in opposition to them, to merest empty vanity.

The science of political economy, then, so long the peculiar study of our masters and pastors— those who rule, is an essentially necessary study to the workers—those who are ruled. For if the knowledge to be gained from it is something less than “the wing wherewith we fly to heaven” this alone can serve us as hands and knees whereon to crawl from hell.

To start at the beginning, or, shall we say—to start at a beginning—since it is a beginning only for our purpose, and to reduce our lesson to the utmost simplicity, it can easily be understood that given as a condition the private ownership of all the means of producing those things which are necessary to support human life, a certain other concomitant must co-exist, as the inevitable effect of the given cause : private ownership of the means of life — namely, all those who are excluded from ownership are dependent upon those who possess the means of living.

This is a fact that cannot be controverted. The owners of the means of subsistence might be all that the noblest pagan and Christian philosophers exhort them to be, might be the very embodiment of all the graces, but still the dependency is there, unaffected, as dependency, by any magnanimity of the possessors.

Given then this private ownership of the land (in political economy the term includes the seas and lakes and rivers), from which all material wealth flows, and the machinery of production—the channel by which it flows; and given also this dependence of those who, not being possessors, have no free access to the means of producing the necessaries of life; and given further, human nature, not us it was before it fell if it has fallen, or as it will be when it rises again if it ever does rise again, but as it is presented to us at this time of day, the unfinished work of history: given all these conditions then nothing is more certain than that this ownership by a class of the means whereby all men must live, will be used, not, perhaps, consciously and wilfully to the detriment of the non-possessors, but, over the general field of operations, first and last for the benefit of the possessors. What is there else in ownership, but that it confers on the possessor some advantage or advantages which are conditional upon possession, and which therefore are denied to the non-possessor ?

All these conditions then we have in present-day society—the ownership of the means of life by a class, the dependence of the non-possessors upon that class, and the exclusion of these propertyless ones from access to the means of subsistence except upon condition of advantage to the class which possesses all productive wealth.

Here is a certain set of conditions which, in the very nature of things, stand as causes from which effects must follow. If the whole of the propertyless resolved to sit themselves down and die rather than exist in dependence, that would be an effect of the causes, and a perfectly possible effect—if the resolution were there. But history shows that the propertyless did not do so, but that some other condition prevailed, which made them surrender.

Since, then, submission to dependence was inevitable, and this dependence demanded certain advantages to be yielded to the possessing class, what form did this submission take and why? and what form did these advantages take, and also why?

With the means of life in the hands of a class there are several forms of subjection which might conceivably follow. But what shall it be in the case we are supposing? Shall it be chattel slavery? Shall it be serfage ? Shall it be wage slavery? That must be decided by the degree of development of the instruments of production primarily, and by the social conditions which have arisen out of this historic development. Thus, because the means of producing wealth had not advanced to that stage in which they enabled human energy to produce more than sufficient for its own reproduction, (and are therefore profitless to any but the user)—such means of production are common property, and form the base of a communal society ; but growing out of such a communal form of society, and keeping more or less even pace with that development of the means of production which does enable human energy to produce a surplus of wealth beyond that necessary for its own reproduction, we find a form of subject labour. Why does this subjugation take the shape of chattel slavery and not of wage shivery?

Because, in the first place, developing imperceptibly out of a system based upon communal ownership, the propertyless ones are mainly drawn from outside the community, prisoners of war, who are no longer eaten now that there exist means of making them produce tlieir own living and something over. And being captives they must be the property of their captors, and kept in subjection by the sword. In the second place a wage is essentially a price, a money equivalent of the thing which it is the price of. It is one side of an equation which is possible only through the operation of the laws of supply and demand in a competitive market; and being an equivalent only because it has freedom of motion to find its own level and equal through the ceaseless fluctuation of supply and demand, it can only be the equivalent of something of like fluidity. Wages, then, presupposes free labourers— labourers, that is, who are owners of their labour-power, and can within certain limits withhold it, though under certain pressure they must exchange it in the end; presupposes also a world of commodities (goods produced for sale and which are still “in the market") since it can only exist as the counterpart of innumerable other commodities, for which it is readily exchangeable at current rates; presupposes also a competitive market, where goods produced for sale find their quantitative likeness in their qualitative opposites; presupposes also, and therefore, and finally, a certain development of the means of production, and of the method of production, and of accumulated wealth, none of which conditions can exist until long after the means of producing wealth have reached the stage suggested above. That is why the form of subjugation at this period is chattel slavery, and not wage-slavery.

In what has been said may be found also the answer to the previous question, why did the subjection of the propertyless take the form that characterises it to-day ? But in order that a proper understanding of this vitally important matter may be attained, it will be advisable to analyse yet a little more minutely the causes which give birth to the effect. This will form a fitting subject for a second article. 

A. E. Jacomb

Editorial: The Curse of Work: The Right to Live (1907)

Editorial from the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party will soon need to cry “Save us from our friends”! The other “Leaders” who failed to secure election are turning upon them.

Mr. Russell Smart, in the columns of the Labour Leader, asserts that, since the General Election, they have lost ground because of the “tame and unheroic policy the Labour Party has followed in the House of Commons; in the eyes of the electorate it has scarcely justified its existence.”

But what does Mr. Smart expect? The Labour members cannot go beyond the people who elected them. As these people were not Socialists, in some cases as at Leicester, Halifax, etc., avowedly Liberals, the Labour members can do no more than ordinary Liberals would do. Surely Mr. Smart does not expect them to sacrifice any of their respectability by making themselves unpleasant in the House of Commons. It’s much more to their liking to stump the country telling the people how they “love” the Liberal Leader and how "gratified" they are at the measures which the Government introduce.

And does Mr. Russell Smart know where he is? It would appear not. He rightly asserts that to get public support and enthusiasm the Party must have something worth fighting for (assuming they desire to fight, which we doubt). As he says “the people will rally to a ‘Cause’; they will remain cold to a policy.” What is the “Cause” that is to rally them? The Social Revolution? Oh, no! All that is suggested is that the Party could rally to its support the whole Labour world, organised and unorganised alike, by putting into concrete form the “great and inspiring idea" — the Right to Work !

No wonder Mr. Ramsay MacDonald describes Labour Party Politics as a “confused jumble of futilities.”

The God-given Curse.

The Right to Work ! In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread. So runs the “ God-given curse.” And in the twentieth century, “when Labour is awakening to a sense of its power and responsibility," its attention and efforts are to be concentrated on the Right to Work!

In the dining room of the House of Commons, in the luxurious saloons of the Carlton Restaurant, the Pavilion, the Popular, the Trocadero, and the Mansions of the West End, word is to be conveyed to those who “ toil not, neither do they spin,” that the Labour Party is anxious that the “right” of the wealth-producers to work shall be conceded by Act of Parliament; that the separation of the master class from the working class shall be even more legally recognised; that it shall be by law enacted that the working class have the "right" to work, as distinguished from the master class, which has the “right” to enjoy the good things of life without toil, and over the “apples and nuts,” over the wine and cigars, the master class and its parasites will smile the smile of smug satisfaction, and drink the health of that, from their point of view, beneficent institution, the Labour Party.

Many years ago when, at the behest of the “leaders” the unemployed were—as they are doing now— praying to spooks, following priests, petitioning kings, appealing to politicians, looking to leaders,—anything but relying upon themselves, a demonstration was held in Trafalgar Square. On the plinth was Mr. Ben Tillett, amongst others. With broad-brimmed hat covering the top of his face, with coat collar (it was winter) turned up and covering the bottom part of his face, he bellowed: “To day we demand the right to work, next year we will demand the right to live.” Why wait until next year, he was asked, but did not reply. And to-day, ten years after, the same old fraud is being put forward as a “Cause,”—the Right to Work.

The Evil of Compromise.

Could we have a better illustration of the evil of compromise? If the people have any right to live, they have it now, not next year or at any future time.

And what does the “Right to Work” mean, under Capitalism? The unemployed are to be put to work, in accordance with an Act of Parliament which the Labour Party is to get passed. Is there not already sufficient wealth produced to satisfy the needs of every member of the community? There is enough wasted every night to feed all who lack food. It is therefore evident that what is required is not more work, but a sensible distribution of present work and the wealth already produced. This fact, however, seems to be ignored by our “Right to Work’’"friends.”

If the “Right” of the working class to work is conceded by Act of Parliament, to what work are the unemployed to be put? Already there is produced not only as much as there is an effective demand for but in many cases more. If, therefore, those not required by the capitalist "organisers”of industry are put to work under the usual conditions as to hours, etc., their product must tend to glut the market and, competing with the product of other factories, involve some capitalists in loss and throw other men out of employment. Does Mr. Smart expect the capitalists to pass a measure providing for this?

If, on the other hand, they are to be put to work producing only those things which they require for their own use, the necessary hours of labour would be so very few that the working class would recognise the extent to which they are robbed by the master class and—the capitalists’ game would be up. The master class are quite aware of this, and are not to be caught in this direction.

Useless Work.

Work will only be provided by a capitalist government for those of the unemployed who make themselves objectionable, and menace capitalist property. When it is found, it will consist mainly of the useless kind digging holes and filling them up again.*

What the unemployed and all other folks want is food, and also clothing and shelter. That these can be obtained by some individuals without working for them no one can dispute. We object to any able-bodied person obtaining them without doing his share of the necessary labour, but seeing that they can be so obtained, the unemployed have as great a right to obtain them in that way as the members and parasites of the master class. Let the unemployed throw over the misleaders who urge them to appeal to their masters to find them work. Let them recognise that only the common ownership of the means of life will solve their problem and proceed to convert their fellows. Pending the conscious effort of the working class that shall establish the Socialist Commonwealth, let the unemployed determine that they will not starve.

When our Right to Live is conceded we are prepared to recognise our obligation to perform our share of the necessary labour, but not till then. Let our rallying cry be “Down with the ‘Right to Work’: Up with the ‘Right to Live.’ ”

* In his pamphlet, “The Right to Work,” Mr. Russell Smart urges that the unemployed should be set to stone-breaking as a labour test.