Editorial: A Call To Arms. (1913)

Editorial from the March 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist is a confirmed optimist. His optimism is the natural outcome of his conviction of the soundness of his principles and his faith in his class. Pessimism can only come from doubt of one or the other, or both, therefore pessimism is not permissible in a Socialist, and where it shows its dour visage, calls aloud for attention to the victim’s dietary, either of the mind or the stomach.

But though the Socialist's confidence that the future is with him, reduces pessimism to a symptom of ill health, even the healthy, vigorous revolutionary may become impatient without suspecting himself of being out of sorts.

And when one thinks of the attitude of mind of the working class as a class toward our movement, of the apathy with which they receive our message, of the dull forbearance with which they accept the contemptious husks that the master class throw to them, it is small wonder that the enlightened worker sometimes grows impatient at the slowness of the pace, and curses the inertia of the proletarian mass in deep, broad and bitter terms.

Of course the Socialist knows that industrial evolution will make the working class revolutionary; but he has been used to regard himself and his Socialist principles—revolutionary products of that same industrial evolution—as the instrument through which it works, and it is here that the impatience and disappointment is bred. It is easy enough to find acceptance of our message wherever our means enable us to deliver it. Our arguments are too powerful to be withstood ; our reasoning is too close to be denied. But, after all, what difference is there between he who apathetically admits the correctness of our position and that other who passively differs from us?

Socialism does not thrive on inactivity. The passive assenter is a corpse in this act, and Socialism can only be brought in by live men and women. It is not passive agreement that is wanted, but fighters—organised workers. It is possible to carry on our propaganda without money, but without workers never.

While it may be doubted whether the apathetic believer in our principles whom this call to arms might influence is worth having at all, it might be pointed out for the edification of those upon whom the fact has never been thoroughly impressed, how completely essential to working-class emancipation is the instrument of a strong working-class political organisation. Those who assent to our position, even though the extent of their support is listening to us until the collection bag heaves in sight, concede, of course, that it is necessary to capture the political machine, through which the powers of coercion are organised, nourished and controlled, in order to disarm the master class, as the preliminary to divesting them of their privileges.

The capture of this political machine is not to be the work of a moment. It must be captured by siege, not carried by storm. Essential as organisation would be for the last method, if that were at all possible, it is doubly so for the slow tedium of the first. For where the position has to be fought for inch by inch, where the Parliamentary machine has to be captured seat by seat, the very perfection of organisation is needed to synchronise action, to sustain the attack, to guard against treachery, and to secure a sound foundation for our feet to rest upon.

The working class must proceed to its emancipation as a class. Individual acts and individual effort can never throw off the capitalist oppressor. Just as, hereafter, the individual must in all public matters be sunk in the community, so, in the fight for that hereafter, the individual must be lost within the class. Every step must be taken as a class; every battle must be fought on class lines; every activity, no matter whether on the industrial field or in the political arena, must be carried through as part of the class plan of action. What does this mean? What can it mean but organisation —organisation on the industrial field—organisation on the political field ?

The unity of aim which is so essential to the successful assault of the capitalist citadel can only be secured by setting up the fundamental principles appertaining to the cause, and founding thereon, with rocklike rigidity, the organisation for each sphere of activity. The basis then is provided for united action. The principles enshrined represent the class thought, the class intelligence, the class predominance over the individual. Each one, in joining the organisation, lays his individuality on the altar of those principles, and becomes a link in the armour, an atom in the whole machine.

Just as, without those principles there can be no sound organisation, because there can be no bond of union, so without organisation there can be no unity because there can be no control. Organisation upon basic principles is the instrument which takes the power away from the individual and vests it in the mass. When the individual joins such an organisation he surrenders himself to the organisation, to be tested and tried and controlled by the principles of that organisation.

Such a political organisation is vitally necessary to the successful prosecution of the working-class struggle for emancipation so long as it is true that that emancipation must be sought in the political field, because only through it can the working class control its own political actions, only through it can the class prevent itself from drifting, only through it can the class become superior to the individual, only through it can the class secure itself against the treachery of such as might not be able to withstand the offers of the capitalist enemy.

The importance, the prime necessity, of the working-class political organisation, then, must be admitted by all those who agree that the workers must win their emancipation through the capture of the political machinery. In the face of this what is the position of the person who, while agreeing with the principles of the Socialist Party, fails to become organised therein ? He is one failing in his duty to hie class, for he is one who refuses to make himself amenable, on the political plane, to the class conscious proletariat. He is a menace, therefore, to the principles he agrees with, and to the class he belongs to.

There is a different attitude of mind, however, to which we must now address ourselves—the attitude of mind of the unbeliever, the sceptic, the man who does not think it can be done, or does not think it is worth while.

This is the attitude of the mental loafers, the people who are too lazy to think for themselves, or to examine the plain, simple facts which we unceasingly present in these columns and from our platforms.

And what are these facts? The hard, cheerless lot of those who produce the wealth, and the life of luxurious ease of those who produce nothing. The growing productiveness of labour and the increasing poverty and insecurity of the labourer. Thousands starving because too much wealth exists — because they have filled the warehouses and glutted the markets, and are not wanted in the workshops and factories.

Strange invertions of the natural order of things, one would think. Yet they seem to have no significance to millions upon millions who should be the first to demand their meaning.

It would almost seem as if there is no manhood left in the vast bulk of the working class of the world yet it is little more than forty years since the deathless effort of the workingmen of Paris. We know, of course, that the working class still have within them the capacity to repeat that effort. The evil is not there, in the shirking of danger, but in the indolent acceptance of the status quo, and the cynical disregard of the facts of working-class existence.

It is always harder to take up such a fight as the workers to-day have before them, just as in ordinary warfare it is harder to march than to fight. The excitement of the direct attack better fits our animal spirits than the weary labour of outflanking. Yet, though all our activities in the struggle can be translated into no more attractive term than the humdrum word “work,” the battle is none the less real, none the less trying, none the less necessary, and none the less worthy of the highest in our manhood.

What workingman or woman of any spirit can think without shame of the position of the workers under the present system. Cut off from all the means of life; doomed to toil unceasingly in sordid and filthy surroundings for no higher end than to heap up wealth for idlers; constrained to crawl and cringe and fawn and lickspittle before those who cannot even produce their own livelihood, theirs is indeed a position to be hotly blushed for. Nevertheless there are those, even among the working class, who assert that the workers have not the capability to order things more to their advantage.

The idea is shameful. It is an insult, not only to our class, but to human intelligence. The wealth at present produced is sufficient to give comfort and even a degree of luxury to every member of the community. The whole of that wealth is produced by the working class. We are asked to believe that the working class intelligence is not capable of solving the simple problem of distributing that wealth among the people who produce it.

We say it is a lie; the solution is ridiculously easy. We have simply to sweep away those who stand between us and all that is good under the sun. We have to take away from them all the sources of wealth and all the means of producing wealth, and to use them for the satisfaction of our own needs. Who gave the world into the hands of these idlers, pray ?

To the work of throwing down the barriers which the masters have set up between our class and the world, of setting humanity free to produce what humanity needs without let or hindrance, we solemnly call all working people.

To Arms! The World for the Workers!

Our Attitude Toward The International. (1913)

From the March 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the two following letters from a reader in America, and are glad, in order to make our reply more “strong, official, and efficacious,” as well as to refresh the memory of certain of our critics at home, to give both these letters and our reply the publicity of these columns.

Morgantown, West Virginia,

United States, North America.

December 18, 1912.

To The Socialist Party of Great Britain,

                                           London, England. 

Comrades,—A quarrel has broken out in Socialist circles of our country, and we ask you to settle it.

Some time ago my neighbor, Comrade Joseph Mras, ordered of you 100 copies of your booklet “Socialism and Religion." I bought of Comrade Mras several copies of the said booklet and quoted it on some occasions. Now the comrades accuse me of insincerity. They tell me that I quoted a booklet, of which I knew that it is of no authority whatever. They maintain that your party has not the slightest connection with the International Marxian Socialism. Your booklet, they say, is the rankest forgery, because page 6 contains the sentence: “ It [the booklet] is issued, not as the view of an individual, but as the accepted manifesto of the Socialist Party on the subject,” whereas it contains only the personal opinion of some individual or small group of individuals. 

The Socialists are treating Comrade Mras not better than they treat me. They tell him he should burn the booklets he ordered off you rather than sell them. They display a genuine fury against the circulation of your booklet.

Comrade Mras wrote to the National Secretary, John Work, of Chicago, asking him for information, and sent him a copy of your booklet. Comrade Work sustains the views of our antagonists, as you see from the enclosed letter.

Now. there is a great deal of insincerity, not on our part, but either on the part of John Work and his followers, or on your part. I have studied many Socialist standard works, and I find the principles contained in your booklet in perfect harmony with the teachings of Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, Bebel, Bax, Morris, Hyndman, and the rest of the great Socialist champions. On the other hand, John Work, John Spargo, and Morris Hillquit are trimmers who strive to hide the basic principles of Marxian Socialism, for the purpose of catching votes. We think, however, that you deserve credit for the frankness with which you stated the said principles.

Be this as it may, we ask you to send us a clear, concise, and official statement concerning your attitude to the International Socialist Party and its Bureau. Please make your statement as strong, official and efficacious as possible. We do not like to be abused on account of your booklet, in which we placed in good faith our confidence. Kindly return also John Work's letter.

Please favour us with an answer.

With best wishes and kindest regards, 

Respectfully yours, (Signed)

 C. J. Kluser.

*      *      *      *      *

The Socialist Party (of America).

John M. Work,

National Secretary.

National Headquarters.                                                                                                          

111 North Market Street, Chicago.

               December 9, 1912.

Joseph Mras,

       Morgantown, West Virginia.

Dear Comrade,

   According to the Bulletin of the International Socialist Bureau, the Socialist Party of Great Britain is not affiliated with the Bureau.

The book is apparently the personal opinion of some individual or small group of individuals. It does not correspond with the policy of the Socialist Party of the United States.

Fraternally yours,

(Signed) John M. Work. 

National Secretary.

JMW—GM

*      *      *      *      *

The Socialist Party of Great Britain

                                   193 Grays Inn Road,

                                                   London, W.C.

                                   Jan. 31, 1913.

C. J. Kluser,

Morgantown, West Virginia.

Dear Mr. Kluser, 

  In answer to your query regarding our attitude toward the " International” as represented by the “International Socialist Bureau,” the following points from our official records will be sufficient.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 as the culmination of a revolt of the rank and file of the Social Democratic Federation against the reformism and corruption of the official section.

The S.P.G.B. was represented by two delegates at the ”International Socialist Congress” at Amsterdam in 1904. Their report appeared in the official organ of the S.P.G.B. (the “Socialist Standard") for September 1904.

In the "Socialist Standard” for January 1905 appears an address, in three languages, to the “International” stating the S.P.G.B. attitude toward “a communication from the Secretary of the British section of the Amsterdam Congress asking among other things whether the Party (S.P.G.B.) favoured the holding of a Conference with a view to forming in England a national committee to deal with matters arising out of the International Congress.” The address continues: “ We have declined to take part in any such conference on the ground that it should be the task of the Socialist Party alone to deal with these questions, and that, judging from the composition of the British Section at the Amsterdam Congress, at which the Party was represented, the proposed committee would consist of men who are in no sense of the word Socialist.”

Elsewhere in the same number of the official organ the correspondence is published in full and evidence given in support of the above contention, while measures necessary to remedy such a state of things are also outlined.

The matter was then discussed at the Annual Conference of the Socialist Party of Great Britain at Easter, 1905, and reported in the official organ for May, 1905. At that Conference it was moved ”that the Executive Committee be instructed to draw up a series of resolutions embodying the following points : —

1. That only Socialist organisations recognising the class war in theory and practice should be represented at the International Socialist Congress.
2. That disputes between the various parties in each country as to the genuineness of their respective organisations be settled by the Congress itself.

The scandal of a non-Socialist majority of the British delegation bossing the International relationships of the Socialist Party is also referred to in the leading article of the “Socialist Standard” for June, 1905.

In the "Socialist Standard” for January, 1906, the following manifesto to the Socialist workers was issued by the Executive of the S.P.G B. under the title of "The Essentials of Socialist Unity ” : —

   "Comrades,
    “In the January number of our official organ, the “Socialist Standard,” we addressed you concerning the International Socialist Congresses, and briefly dwelt on our reasons for declining an invitation from the Secretary of the British Section at the Amsterdam Congress, to take part in forming a national committee to deal with matters arising out of the International Congress, on the grounds that it should be the task of the Socialist Party alone to deal with these questions, and that, judging by the composition of the British Section at the Amsterdam Congress, the proposed committee would consist of men who arc in no sense of the word Socialists. That committee has now been formed, and its composition fully justifies the view we took of it in January last.     “In accordance with our promise we have forwarded a communication to the International Socialist Bureau asking that, in our name, a motion be placed on the agenda of the next International Congress, for discussion in open Congress, embodying the following proposals:
   "(a) That admission to future International Socialist Conferences shall be open only to all avowed Socialist bodies that accept the essential principle of Socialism, i.e., socialisation of the means of production and distribution; union and international union of workers; Socialist conquest of the Public Powers by the proletariat organised as a class party recognising and proclaiming the class war, running all candidates on this basis, and adopting an attitude of hostility under all circumstances to sections of the capitalist party.
   "(b) That all previous resolutions (defining the basis of admission to the Congress) be rescinded.
  “(c) 'That all matters upon the agenda be discussed in open Congress, and that the methods of discussion in commissions be entirely abolished.
   "(d) That each delegate shall have one vote, but if a poll be demanded each party represented shall be entitled to one vote.
  "(e) That representation upon the Bureau shall be upon the basis of parties represented at the Congress, each of which shall be entitled to one representative on the Bureau, etc., etc.
                                               “THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
                                                        THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN.
    “Head Office, London,
    “December, 1905."

This request to the Bureau was not granted.

At the Annual Conference of the Socialist Party of Great Britain held in London at Easter, 1907 (vide report in official organ, April 1907), the first business of the Conference on the second day was a discussion on the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart. The questions were whether the S.P.G.B. should seek representation at that Congress under the conditions laid down by the non Socialist British National Committee and the International Socialist Bureau, and what was the best method of getting into communication with the known representatives of that uncompromising policy of which the S.P.G B. are exponents in this country. In the result, it was passed that “This Conference of the S.P.G.B. recommends that no delegates be sent to the next International Congress, but that the E.C use their best endeavour to get in touch with those abroad who occupy our position.” (“Socialist Standard.,” April, 1907.)

All along we had, of course, regularly received the communications of the Bureau and published them when necessary. But although the matter of the International Congresses has been reopened in the S.P.G.B again and again, the above resolution still stands, and consequently the answer you received from John Work is partly explained.

No such objection to our literature as the one to which you refer has been, or is likely to be, urged against us in this country, for obvious reasons. J. Work and others are simply exploiting the lack of knowledge which exists on your side regarding political conditions here.

The pamphlet you refer to "Socialism and Religion''; was revised, endorsed, and issued by the Executive Committee of the S.P.G.B. As stated in the pamphlet, it represents, not the views of an individual, but the accepted views of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The position laid down in the pamphlet is the Socialist position and nothing else. It is based on the bed-rock of Marxism. The proof that the pamphlet expresses the Socialist position is contained within the pamphlet itself. The paltry subterfuge of those incapable of answering its arguments only succeeds in being ridiculous.

I am returning herewith letter from John M. Work as requested.

Trusting the above explanation will prove satisfactory, I remain, yours respectfully,

A. L. Cox,

Gen. Sec, pro tem.

Asked & Answered. (1913)

Letters to the Editors from the March 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much Ado About Nothing

To The Editor.

An article appeared in the January issue of our paper under the title "The Pace That Kills" in which the writer. F.C.W., says: "If a cyclist is scared off " (the road) "he becomes s passenger the more for the bus, and another source of profit for the trust." etc.

This, to me, conveys an idea which is damaging to the revolutionary position of the S.P.G.B. The idea impressed on my mind by reading the passage is that it is as consumers (buyers) we are robbed.

I deny that a passenger is “another source of profit for the trust", who happens for the reasons given to become a passenger the more on the bus owned by the trust.

Profit is a part of surplus-value, and this is taken from the workers during the time in the process of production. Hence the source of profit is surplus-value. This point is made clear by Karl Marx in "Value, Price, and Profit." In that work (c. XI, p. 37) will be found the following: —

“Rent, Interest and Industrial Profit are only different names for different parts of the surplus value of the commodity, or the unpaid labour enclosed in it, and they are equally derived from this source and from this source alone."

Even emphasised !

Those who have read this brilliant work will now understand the importance of the distinction.

On the same page you will find : —

"The surplus value or that part of the total value of the commodity in which surplus labour or unpaid labour of the workingman is realised, I call Profit. The whole of that Profit is not pocketed by the employing capitalist. The monopoly of land enables the landlord to take one part of that surplus value under the name of rent, whether the land is used for agricultural buildings or railways, or for any other productive purpose. On the other hand, the very fact that the possession of the instruments of labour enable the employing capitalist to produce surplus value, or what comes to the same, to appropriate to himself a certain amount of unpaid labour, enables the owner of the means of labour, which he lends wholly or partly to the employing capitalist—enables, in one word, the money-lending capitalist to claim for himself under the name of interest another part of surplus value, so that there remains to the employing capitalist as such only what is called industrial or commercial profit"

The distinction is clear.

F.C.W. is wrong in what he impresses on the mind of at least one of his readers.

I would suggest the substitution of the word "means" is place of "source," and the word '‘realising" before "profit." The passage would then read: "If a cyclist is scared off be becomes a passenger the more for the bus. and another means of realising profit for the trust." etc. 

Yours fraternally.

Comrade F. Coates.

Reply:

Obviously rent, interest, and profit are all derived in the last resort from surplus labour. and as this great truth is not disputed in the article in question. Comrade Coates's anxiety for the safety of the cause is a little premature. All is not yet lost. 

The sentence referred to does not indicate that we are robbed as consumers, nor does it say that passengers are the source of the trust's profits. The comrade has simply misunderstood. Two quotations from "Value, Price, and Profit" are quite gratuitous. Marx is emphasising in an elementary way to au audience of working men that labour, though not the sole source of wealth, is yet the sole source of exchange value, in opposition to Weston's argument that value was the sum of wages, plus profit, plus rent. Nicer distinctions be perforce left for “Capital,” contenting himself with making broad statements of fact, such as "Profit is made by selling a commodity at its value;" to which, perhaps, the captious critic would object that "profit is made in the factory."

Comrade Coates has not grasped the fact that surplus labour, surplus value, and profit are not, strictly speaking merely different names for the same thing. They are distinct stages of a process. Without the change of form, realisation, or sale of the repository of surplus value, the last stage, “profit." cannot come into being. As Marx says ("Capital,” Vol. I., p. 79):-

  "The leap taken by value from the body of the commodity, into the body of the gold, in the salto mortale of the commodity. If it falls short, then, although the commodity is not harmed, its owner decidedly is.”

Surplus labour (and the same applies to all labour) does not become surplus value unless it is embodied in a use-value to someone else, and there can be no profit unless this use-value is sold. In this sense, therefore, and in this limited sense only, the act of realising surplus value is a source of profit.

Taking the bus trust as a normal capitalist concern, it is clear that the number of fares is of vital importance to it, for on this depends its profit Yet from Comrade Coates’s bald statements one might infer that the trust would be just as prosperous if its buses ran empty! Obviously the advent of the passenger is essential to the making of profit. Each additional fare enables more surplus labour to be realised and more profit obtained, and may in consequence be not inaccurately described as a farther source of profit to the trust.

The sentence disputed would not be improved by the wording proposed by Comrade Coates, which only says the same thing more awkwardly. It was, moreover, quite beside the purpose of the article to give a scientific dissertation on value. Brevity was necessary in order to confine attention to the main issue.

Notwithstanding this, it is difficult for the poor scribe to believe that the phrase could be misunderstood except by by means of a deliberate mental squint.

W.

An Explanation

W. Austin (Small Heath) asks us to explain the meaning of the passage in the “Communist Manifesto": -

  "In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present. In communist society the present dominates the past."

Under capitalism the past dominates the present because the mesas of production, developed from the past, and possessed to-day by the few, dominate the lives of the producers, and forms the general structure sod relations of society.

Under communism the means of production would be consciously manipulated for the benefit and happiness of the members of society. The past development and experience would then be used knowingly by the members of the communist society for their well being. This would be the domination of the past by the present as, instead of the members being dominated by a method of production, the method of production would be controlled by them.

Jack Fitzgerald

Answers To Correspondents.

L. Marks, Manchester. 

Your claim that "a Socialist party cannot afford to wait until the conditions are ripe for a sound economic organisation” needs explaining before we can assent, otherwise you state the position pretty correctly. There is room in our party for all who hold with our principles and policy, and we know of nothing that is keeping you out and preventing you from putting into practice the theories you proclaim so well in your letter.

Karl Marx in Current Criticism: The Verdict of a Generation. (1913)

From the March 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Test of Time

Just thirty year have passed since the body of the great path-finder was laid to rest in the grave upon Highgate Hill. Thirty years – the life-time of a generation  – yields a fair test of the truth of the theories advanced by a thinker, and should offer an opportunity to judge a man’s work in something approaching true perspective.

I cannot attempt in these lines a comprehensive survey of the work of Karl Marx. A life of sixty-five years of stress and struggle is not to be examined in a column or two. But some of the main points in Marx’s work may be briefly yet profitably reviewed in the light of our present knowledge.

All kinds of opponents of Socialism profess to offer us something “more in keeping with the times.” But whether it by Syndicalism or Revisionism, Co-partnership or State Capitalism, each and every one of these is seen to be fallacious when tested by the scientific theories put forward by Marx.

Karl Marx is best known, perhaps, by his work Das Capital, a treatise on the production and circulation of commodities which, although  “criticised” in hundreds of volumes by professors and other leading lights of modern society, has never been refuted.

Professor Böhm-Bawerk, the Finance Minister of Austria, urged in his Marx and the Close of his System, that the labour system of value is wrong because Marx failed to take into account scarcity as a factor in fixing value! This expert economist might have seen in the first seven pages of Capital how well scarcity was allowed for. “Diamonds are of very rare oc-currence on the earth’s surface,” wrote Marx (Capital, p. 7), “and hence their discovery costs on an average a great deal of labour time. Consequently much labour is represented in small compass. . .  If we could succeed at a small expenditure of labour in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks.” By saying a thing is scarce you can only suggest that it takes a great deal more time to get than if it was plentiful.

Marx’s Awkward Question

All the economists who have blossomed forth since Marx wrote have merely revived theories that were abandoned as useless a century ago by men like Adam Smith and David Ricardo. John Stuart Mill, who pieced together portions of many economists and gave them to the world as his Principles of Political Economy, Prof. Stanley Jevons, with his “Final Utility” theory, the whole Austrian school of economists with their “Marginal Utility” notions; all these, together with the more modem “seers” like Professor Marshall, really base their economics on the old theory of  “Supply and Demand.” The value of an article, in their ides, is fixed by the difference between the supply of that class of goods and the demand for the same.

But Marx asked what fixes the value of an article when supply and demand are equal, and to this question no answer has yet been vouchsafed by the capitalist hacks.

No wonder the well-known German social reformer and critic of Marx, Prof. Werner Sombart, has to confess that “Marx’s theory of Value may perhaps be refuted, but that has not yet been done.”

A Grudging Tribute

This Berlin Professor of political economy writes thus of Marx: “There was reason enough why Marx was able to rank so high among the social philosophers of the nineteenth century and to exercise by the side of Hegel and Darwin so great an influence on the thought of our day. He combined within himself the best philosophy of history current in his time with the knowledge of the highest forms of social life. He knew his Hegel, and he knew his Western Europe, more especially France and England. He gathered all the lines of thought that had preceded from thinkers of previous ages, and was clever enough, perhaps because of his international experience, to pay but little heed to what was accidental in national development and to lay stress on what was typical in the life of society to-day.” (Socialism and the Social Movement, p. 52).

Marx, together with his great co-worker, Frederick Engels, came to the conclusion that the whole of past history since the passing of primitive communism, had been a history of class struggles. These classes – at one time chattel slave owners against the helots, later barons against burghers, now capitalists against wage-labourers – all had their roots in the changing conditions of wealth production and exchange.

The material conditions, says Marx, are the foundation upon which rise all social institutions and when material conditions change so also do the institutions of society.

In his books upon capital Marx laid bare the method of robbing the wage-labourers. He showed that out of the value created by the worker’s energies, the worker receives merely enough to barely subsist on. The surplus of the value created goes to the exploiting employer. Hence there is a conflict of interests between the wage workers and the employers. The latter try to increase the amount of surplus-value and the workers struggle unceasingly against their masters, and must do so while the employers have the power to extract this surplus over the wages paid.

Almost Like Prophecy

This class struggle is the cardinal principle of the Socialist policy. And just as it was opposed in Marx’s day, so now the class struggle theory is fought against by all those who wish to blind the toilers to their true interests. Just as it was true when Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party, so now it bears the stamp of irrefutable fact. Marx showed that the progress of  modern capitalism would result in a widening of the gulf that divides the employing class from the working class. He pointed out “in words which seem to many even non-Socialists like prophecy” (wrote Professor R. T. Ely in his Studies in the Evolution of Industrial Society) that wealth would concentrate into fewer bands the more the system grew.

Professor Werner Sombart, the Revisionist of Revisionists previously quoted, says on this point:–

“During the last 20 years, as we know, there has been a concentration of capital by the formation of trusts such as Marx in his boldest flights of imagination could never have dreamed of. Especially is this the case in the United States of America, where we get the best examples of these giant undertakings. According to the latest statistics, no less than 8,664 concerns which were formerly independent are now amalgamated in a few Trusts with a capital of 20,000 million dollars. Of these seven of the ‘greater’ industrial trusts contain 1,528 concerns formerly independent, and possess a capital of 2,663 million dollars. The six largest railway trusts are even better placed; they have a capital of 9,017 million dollars! ”

The truth of the class struggle has been driven home with more tragic emphasis than ever during the last few years. The wide-spread , strikes and lock-outs, the fiendish cruelty of the employers toward their rebellious slaves all over the capitalist world, has induced even capitalist authorities to “lament” the growth of “labour unrest” and of class strife.

Marx’s Magnificent Achievement

Socialism became in Marx’s hands a part of social science. The schemes of St. Simon Fourier, Cabet, and Owen were based upon abstract principles like “justice,” “truth,” and “right.” They appealed to the “moral” side of the wealthy, and hoped to see communities established in accord with their ideals. Cabet with his “Icarie”, Robert Owen with his “New Harmony” community, each thought to solve the social problem and end the social strife by his carefully planned colonies. But their failure serves as a lesson accentuating the need for science in social action instead of Utopian ideas.

Marx rescued Socialism from the hands of the Utopian and placed it upon a foundation of scientific fact. Not moral appeals, but organised political action was the way to fight the capitalists. Society, said Marx, moved not because of changing morals, but under the pressure of growing economic forces making a change in social forms inevitable.

Even such an opponent of Marx as Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald has made the admission (Socialism and Society, preface) that “Marx’s co-ordination of historical facts and explanation of historical movement from the point of view of the Hegelian left wing brought the whole theory of Socialism from the misty dreams of vague desire to the clearly defined empire of science.”

It used to be the regular custom in the party to which the above labour “leader” belongs to anathematise Marx and consign him to oblivion as a sociologist. But the place of prominence which history has tardily given Marx, the esteem which he has won in the minds of serious working men and women, have forced the I.L.P. to change their tactics and hence they cling to the name of Marx whilst outraging every principle for which Marx stood.

Mr. Keir Hardie, who derives his “economics” from Jesus Christ, says in his My Confession of Faith in the Labour Alliance: “The Labour Party practices the Marxian policy of the Class Struggle”. Such a statement, of course, is utterly false. the alliance with the most bitter enemies of the working class such as the Liberal manufacturers, for the purpose of “getting in”, is certainly part of the class struggle, but the Labour Party take sides in that struggle with the masters. Even their own members such as Philip Snowden and F.W. Jowett, have confessed to the reactionary position of their party.

Marx’s whole life was guided by the principle of “No Compromise”. Because of his refusal to truckle to the rulers of Germany he was hunted down and put on trial for sedition. Paper after paper was suppressed, and in their effort to crush “the terrible Marx”, the German powers even incited the French and Belgian Governments to thrust him from their shores. But how different did the leader of the British Labour Party get treated!

Karl Marx was persecuted with all the force of the law, but Mr. Macdonald is especially invited to lunch with the German Emperor, an invitation which he gladly accepted.

Doesn’t this alone show how false to the toilers’ interest is this Labour Party? Defiance, not deference to capitalism, was Marx’s motto, and he always opposed any flirting with the enemies of the Red Flag. In the early days of the International he strenuously fought against the attempts of Charles Bradlaugh to enter the organisation, because even then Bradlaugh was showing signs of joining hands with the Liberals.

Marx’s exposure of the Liberal Labour leader George Howell brings home his hatred of those who acted as decoys for the masters. He did not hesitate in 1875 to oppose the union of the followers of Lassalle with the Workingmen’s Party of Germany at Gotha, even though he lost many friends thereby. The Lassalleans were Utopians, and desired to inscribe on the Unity programme State Co-operation in Industry as the policy of the party. The trenchant attack of Marx remains a beacon for the toilers to-day, when men talk of “Socialist unity”, but want us to sacrifice our Socialism in order to become “united”.

Now and again the reactionary “leaders of Labour” to-day admit the soundness of Marx’s revolutionary policy. For instance, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald says in Socialism and Society (page 9):–

“We seem to have reached the maximum improvement which the present system can yield. Further ameliorative efforts of a purely reforming character can produce little fruit”.

The main theory of the Labour leaders at present is for a legal minimum wage. Talking of his late wife’s advocacy of this nostrum Mr. R. Macdonald tells us (“Margaret Ethel McDonald: a Memoir”): “Once she said with a whimsical smile: ‘when the last Wages Board will have given its last decision, we shall still have to go upon the housetops and shout with Marx ‘Workers of the World, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains’”.

Marx laboured to keep the working class upon the right road to their salvation. Amidst deepest poverty, hunted across frontiers, turned out of doors because of failure to find the rent, refused work even as a manual labourer, the mighty proletarian thinker never wavered from the work of his life. The story of his struggles has never been fully told, but the glimpses we get of his life are sufficient to stimulate us to the fullest extent to prosecute the work of educating our fellows in Socialism with the material he placed ready to our hands, and organising them for its realisation on the basis which he so clearly indicated.

Adolph Kohn