The True Antidote. (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The true antidote to revolutionary Socialism, said Lord Milner to the Surrey Unionists on October 30th, is practical social reform, and he counselled his hearers to be more and not less strenuous in removing the causes of the revolutionary propaganda, while resisting it to the utmost. Commenting upon his speech, the Daily Chronicle asserted that revolutionary Socialism must be opposed by Liberal and Conservative alike. Quite so, but “social reform,” such as old age pensions, better housing, town planning, sanitary conditions of labour, the extinction of sweating, the physical training of the people, continuation schools, and other items constituting “an excellent program,” should be pushed forward by all parties opposed to Socialism, in order to remove the causes of the revolutionary propaganda ! Most of the items quoted above are found in the programs of the S.D.F. and I.L.P., and thus the capitalists will assist these bodies to carry them into practice knowing that they are “the true antidote to revolutionary Socialism.” Surely such an avowal should open the eyes of the organisations referred to and lead them to discard a policy which is helping the master class and which is supported by the master class because they know it will head back revolutionary Socialism. The owners of the means of wealth production do not fear Social Reform because it will leave them in possession of the power to exploit, but they do fear Socialism because that will deprive them of the power to exploit. To the Socialist then, the course is clear: advocate Socialism and leave its opponents to push reform.

Here and There. (1907)

The Here and There column from the August 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Students of Bible-lore can hardly have failed to observe that the steady deterioration in Saul’s character dated from the time that unfortunate monarch was observed by the gossips to be “among the prophets.”

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The Editor of the Review of Reviews should have noted the fact before assuming the role of prophet. Says he: “The men and women of Leyden listened for an hour and a half with rapt attention while I proclaimed the great truth that the coming of the Federation of the World is near at hand.”

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It appears that Lord Milner unkindly postponed “the garnering of the harvest of the Peace Conference of 1899 by his determination to crush the Boers.” These little eventualities are most trying to the modern seer. Then, again, the Organiser of Peace—and incidentally collector of pieces—has omitted from his calculations the somewhat strained relations subsisting between Master and Man all over the world.

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Which reminds one of the bright and beautiful boy who— magnificently heedless of details— ignored the “blooming dots” in a problem involving “decimals,” and so arrived at an alarmingly incorrect, not to say, wildly impossible, solution.

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But our enterprising journalist has, at any rate, learned the supreme merit of vagueness in his valicinations. “Near at hand” cannot be accused of Baxterian definiteness. But Upton Sinclair, of Chicago, where the potted meat et cetera—no negligible quantity either, that “cetera”—comes from, is distressingly definite when he assumes the prophet’s mantle. As thus: “the Social Revolution will take place in America within one year after the Presidential Election of 1912.”

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And who is to be the “Abraham Lincoln of the coming revolution” ? HEARST !

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No comment. Perhaps our American comrades will oblige.

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Really, if one is to judge from the enthusiastic reports which London teachers have brought back as a result of their visit to American schools, the New country must be a veritable El Dorado for the Knights and Dames of the Ferule. One reads of schools where “the entrance hall was decorated with large palms and other shrubs, giving it more the appearance of a conservatory leading into a gentleman’s mansion than the entrance to a schoolroom,” of “lavish expenditure” on equipment, of “delightful atmosphere” in schools. One enthusiastic lady is even led to remark, somewhat oracularly, that “only he who sees takes off his shoes.”

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In spite of all these advantages, in New York, 90 per cent. of the teachers are women, because “men of education usually draft off into pursuits where dollars flow more freely.” Note right here, that “salaries are much higher here than in any other city of the States.” No wonder the pedagogues of Washington “complain bitterly.”

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Of course, the usual snobbery, the internecine feuds among workers which are inseparable from the capitalist system, is to be observed. “I had plenty of opportunities of noting that in the States, as in England, the University graduate and the normal school graduate do not dwell together in unity ; they are inclined to nurse a mutual prejudice; they rarely dream of going to school with each other.”

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The average teacher has need “to go to school” again to learn certain facts. For instance : the “emancipation of the Certificated Class Teacher” can only be accomplished in the general emancipation of the class to which he belongs—the worker. While he may be able to snatch an apparent “victory” here, a doubtful “concession” there, (for which he is always “truly thankful. Amen.”), the economic trend of events must tend to make his wages conform to the general law operating in the present state of Society—they must tend to bare subsistence level. He has only his labour-power to sell in the mart. This he cannot dissociate from himself. He goes along with it. He is a COMMODITY.

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The Socialist Party of Great Britain is open for membership to all workers. Its aim is the emancipation of the worker, its strength the recognition of the futility of “reform,” its inspiration the knowledge that it is but a factor aiding in and accelerating the inevitable Revolution towards which Society is progressing.

A. Reginald

An Old Man in a Tub. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "Mankind must either look for salvation from within or without. Hellenism and Christianity bid him look within. The Marxian Creed bids him look without and expect regeneration from the agency of material conditions." From Editorial, Daily Telegraph, January 7th, 1922.

Once upon a time there was an old man who lived in a tub. According to the most reliable reports got from almost totally unreliable historians, that strange old man didn't want much of the stuff of the earth. In the middle of a market he would some times stand still, look blandly upon the good things of Greece, and melodramatically exclaim, "Good Lord ! how many things are there in the world of which Diogenes hath no need." Then he went again to his simple old home.

That is all I know of Diogenes, and all I care to know. He has always struck me as being a rather silly gentleman. Others seem to think him to have been a wise boy, and say (as Viscount Milner did in his address to the Classical Association, as the "Telegraph" did in its editorial comments on Milner's address) that it we were wise as he, Old Tubby, we wouldn't rush about on the earth for lamb chops and green peas and wines to wash 'em down, and clothes to keep ourselves warm, nor yet for houses . . . but instead we would get hold of a damned good book, soak our minds in sentimentality, forget almost we have bellies, and thereafter be content with plain living and high thinking.

That way of thinking won't do for us. Philosophy can help us a fair amount when we are in the thick of the natural and inevitable tragedies of life. Ordinarily, the human needs, physical needs, must be satisfied first. You may be idealistic; you may start life on oatmeal and water, and keep your pockets full of books; you may feed on an abundance of moonlight and music and a minimum of boiled rice; you may sit out the nights over Plato, Socrates, and the rest of the old crowd of chatterers; you may be Godly, Philosophic, Poetic; you may do all that and be all that—for only a short time. At the end of 12 months your anatomy will be distinct as a tree in winter. You will probably get the sack for being slow, and perhaps in the end you will have to look out for an old tub. And I think I should laugh to see the wind whistle through you as it does through a bare tree.

Far as I can see, the old man in the tub was wrong. And Milner is wrong, and even the "Telegraph" is wrong. We can't successfully ignore the facts of our place in the scheme of the universe, nor the character of our particular make-up. Before we can enjoy anything—the fresh air, the colours in skies or in fields, human companionship or any sort of books done by wise or passionate men—we must have a certain amount of flesh on our bones.

Nowadays thousands of people are far too thin. They are too thin to think. They are hungry, ragged, haggard, and full of bitterness ; but they are too thin to think. I will not now go into the sickening history of the workers. Those who suffer ought to know all about it. The awful curse of Capitalism was upon them from the first.

They have sweated in the pits and at the furnaces, and been heroic upon the seas. They have done weaving and made engines and ships. They have put numberless big buildings all over the country, and they have made some pretty good guns. But the people who have done all this are poor. And the monocled sensualist who would do anything to recover his youth, "except get up early in the morning, take exercise, or become a useful member of society," represents the class which, by its agents in Parliament, controls the guns which control you.

I haven't much more to say now.

Rub out all you have heard about politics. Try to get your second wind. If you don't, then the years will pass on as before —the shadow of Capitalism will be upon us all—the hate and sin and sorrow of this social system will go on, and millions of workers, will be needlessly crushed and treated worse than the beasts of the field. If you want to laugh then you will have to get blind drunk.

Our way is the best way. We want all people to be free and happy. Our Object and our Principles are printed plainly as possible on the back page of the "S.S." If you won't trouble to read them and thoroughly consider them, I may as well dry up, for you won't be bothered with anything I say here. If you think the "Telegraph," Milner, and the Old Man in the Tub to be right, if the affairs of the world are nothing to you, then you will let the capitalists still own and control all the wealth and all the sources of wealth.

If you think Tubby's philosophy to be wrong,

P.T.O.

TO

BACK PAGE.

H. M. M.

That aforementioned back page from April 1922.

Milner Tries To Excuse "Intervention". (1919)

From the January 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Government are now making a frantic effort to throw dust in the eyes of the people on the question of what they are pleased to call the “British intervention in Russia.” The Secretary of State, Lord Milner, claims to have received a letter on the subject from a correspondent, and whether this is a put-up job or not, his statement purporting to be an answer to this letter is such a wishy-washy production as to be little else than a subject for derision and laughter.

Lord Milner states that:

    . . the Bolsheviks, whatever their ultimate object, were in fact assisting our enemies in every possible way.
    It was owing to their action that thousands of German troops were let loose to hurl themselves against our men on the Western Front. It was owing to their betrayal that Roumania, with all its rich resources of grain and oil, fell into the hands of the Germans.

These are deliberate lies. The facts are plain enough to view. Russians were beaten to a standstill under the regime of that advanced and enlightened ruler whom our bosses’ papers at that time referred to as “our Gallant Ally,” and some time previously had honoured with the name we still love to know him by—Bloody Nick.

It was under Nick’s generals that the “Russian Steam Roller” was reduced to impotence. The poor, unlettered moujik played his unwilling part in the war “according to plan.” He was the cheapest cannon-fodder in the whole arena, in the sense that there were enormous numbers of him, and he was probably the only soldier in the whole conflict who could be driven half armed and ill equipped into the slaughter merely as a stop-gap, a. mass of quivering, valueless flesh to keep the "enemy” busy while rival generals and statesmen squabbled over the questions command, and personal and “national” dignity.

So, in spite of the Allied liars who are casting about for excuses for attacking those who are threatening capitalist interests in Russia, defeat, complete and irretrievable, was the legacy left the Bolsheviks by their feudal and capitalist predecessors. Even had they desired it; even had the capitalist revolution not completed the ruin of the giant Russian military machine, the Bolsheviks had not the means to carry on the war against the powerful, victorious, and perfectly equipped German host. Already, under the capitalist Premier, Prince Lvoff, in 1914, the Russian forces had begun to melt away. Skulking Kerensky and his fellow butchers tried to keep them together by the usual means of wholesale slaughter, but their failure was ignonimous. It was not for want of the will to murder that they failed. “General Kornlioff is given orders that deserters and runaways are be shot,” declared the “Daily Chronicle” on the 24th July 1917. The war-mongers had their opportunity, and their failure proves beyond all refutation, that peace was the ardent desire of the Russian peoples. The very success of the Bolsheviks is based on this almost universal desire of the people of Russia for peace. No honest man with a knowledge of the facts can contend that the Bolsheviks find their chief support among those who understand Bolshevist principles. They found a war-sick people—a people who had been driven to war by organised military brutality and tyranny—they promised them peace and—wonder among politicians!—kept their promise. And this our British capitalist apologists call treachery, and "helping the Germans.”

The fact is that neither the Bolsheviks nor the Russian people ever made any promises to the Allies, or entered into any compact or treaty with them. All such contracts were entered into by the Tsarist gang. These ghouls did not represent the people, and the Allies knew it. They did not worry in those days about “only negotiating with governments representative of the people,” nor did they think it “an obligation of honour”—what language from one of the central figures of the South African outrage) “to save” those with whom they entered into the treaties. For they rushed to congratulate those who overthrew their allies, co-plotters, and partners, Bloody Nick and his circle. It never entered into their heads when they expressed gratification at the downfall of their partners in this awful crime, that “it would be an abominable betrayal, contrary to every British instinct of honour and humanity” to, “simply cause our own immediate purposes have been served, leave them to the tender mercies of their enemies.”

All the Allies' reasons for invading Russia, as put forward in Lord Milner’s letter, since they turn on the alleged German exploitation of Russian resources, cease to afford any pretext for the continued occupation of Russian territory by the Allies in view of the present military position of Germany. The only shred of excuse offered is that they must not leave the “thousands of Russians” who, ‘in the course of this Allied intervention" have “taken up arms and fought on the side of the Allies,” to “the tender mercies of their enemies before they have had time to arm, train, and organise so as to be strong enough to defend themselves.” This cant might go down but for the light shed upon it by other events. These (probably mythical) Russians are not the only people who have fought on the side of the Allies. To use a phrase Lord Milner is very fond of, “I say nothing of the poor, cast-off crippled soldier at home abandoned to the tender mercies of private charity. There are others. The Armenians, for example, they fought on the side of the Allies, yet the latter have not scrupled to abandon the poor remnants of an agonised people to the tender mercies of their enemies, the vengeful official Turk.

What Lord Milner really means can be read in his reference to the arming, training, and organising of the Russians who have fought on the Allied side. These Russians are the Russian capitalists and their hireling butchers. It is to arm and aid these, and to establish capitalist rule in the vast domains now under Bolshevik administration that our lads are now being kept from their homes. It is to assist in crushing out a working-class rising, that British sailors are firing at Bolsheviks on the shores of the Black Sea.

A. E. Jacomb