Obituaries: Fred Evans and Alex Paterson (1961)

Obituaries from the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to inform our readers pf the death of two old members of our companion Parties; Fred Evans of Los Angeles and Alex Paterson of Winnipeg.

Fred Evans died in harness. He had just delivered the Western Socialist to a news stand in Los Angeles when he collapsed and died of a heart attack. He was a tower of strength to the W.S.P. on the West Coast; an indefatigable speaker and propagandist. He visited England a few years ago and spoke on our platform in Hyde Park. He also gave considerable assistance and hospitality to two of our comrades who visited Los Angeles during speaking tours recently. He will be sadly missed by our companion Party, which already suffered a serious loss through the death of Gordon Coffin, one of the founders of the W.S.P.. a few months ago.

Alex Paterson was one of the oldest Canadian subscribers to the Socialist Standard. Over the years he gave a great deal of financial help to the S.P. of C. He visited England thirty years ago and met some of our older members. He had been ill for many years and lost both his wife and daughter in the last few years.

A full account of these two old comrades will appear in the Western Socialist, but we wish to add our tribute in this brief note.

A Parable by Leo Tolstoy (1961)

A Short Story from the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

I see mankind as a herd of cattle inside a fenced enclosure. Outside the fence are green pastures and plenty for the cattle to eat. While inside the fence there is not quite enough for the cattle. Consequently, the cattle are trampling underfoot what little grass there is and goring each other to death in their struggle for existence. I saw the owner of the herd come to them and when he saw their pitiable condition, be was filled with compassion for them, and thought of all he could do to improve their condition. So he called his friends together and asked them to assist him in cutting grass from outside the fence and throwing it over the fence to the cattle. And that they called Charity. Then because the calves were dying off and not growing up into serviceable cattle, he arranged that they should each have a pint of milk every morning for breakfast. Because they were dying off in the cold nights, he put up beautiful, well-drained and well-ventilated cow-sheds for the cattle. Because they were goring each other in the straggle for existence, be put corks on the horns of the cattle, so that the wounds they gave each other might not be so serious. Then he reserved a part of the enclosure for the old bulls and the old cows over seventy years of age. In fact, he did everything he could think of to improve the condition of the cattle, and when I asked him why he did not do the one obvious thing, break down the fence and let the cattle out. he answered: “If I let the cattle out. I should no longer be able to milk them."

Notes on Economic History (5) (1961)

From the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Physiocrats

Although the Mercantile system was abundantly criticised, it was a long time before opposition to it became formed into a new doctrine. Such a new system of economic thought arose in France, its chief advocate being François Quesnay. He gave his doctrine the name Physiocracy—the rule of nature.

François Quesnay (1694-1774) was the son of a lawyer. He graduated as a doctor of medicine and became a physician to Madame de Pompadour and Louis XVth, His principal writings are the Economic Tables, 1758, and General Maims, 1758.

Quesnay's teaching is something more than economics; it appears to be part of a general philosophy. Setting out from the materialist notions of his time, he wanted to have social and moral phenomena regarded as being no less "natural" than physical phenomena; and the laws governing the former as well as the latter were to be seen as mechanical laws of nature.

The natural right of human beings in primitive society, he argues was the right to property—that is the right to the free disposal of goods which the individual has made or appropriated by means of his own labour. When at a later stage, men, for the better safeguarding of their natural rights, entered into the social contract, it was essential that they should not lose the right each of them had to earn his own living. Bound up in this right is another natural right of the individual—the right to foster his own economic interest and to shape his own future as best suited to him. This following of self-interest, according to Quesnay, leads to the establishment of a "natural order" in the economic association of human beings.

This doctrine of self-interest was eventually erected by Quesnay into a finished system. He endeavoured to study the laws of the economic "natural order", which were to be deduced by reason from the general plan of nature. This doctrine of "natural order" is important to him for two reasons. First, inasmuch as the pursuit of self-interest is regarded as an idea of natural right, a system of economic individualism is for the first time established. Secondly, the persons who, in their economic life, act consistently because they are guided by motives of self-interest, resemble atoms with fixed properties. The phenomena that result from their mutual contacts (in the market and elsewhere in society) are mechanically determined like those that result from the mutual contacts of the atoms. It follows, says Quesnay, that political economy, like the realm of material nature, is governed by natural laws.

To the question of what activity of the individual it is that regulates the economic machinery, and upon what foundation economic life depends. Quesnay answers—upon natural economic activities, namely agriculture. Agriculture is for him the source of all the wealth of the nation. Not money, trade, traffic and industry, but the tilling of the soil is the true source of public welfare. The former activities merely transform matter and move it from place to place; they are not creative. The agriculturist renders them possible by nourishing those who engage in them, and he supplies the raw material without which they cannot be undertaken. Commerce, industry and transport are to be considered as dependent upon agriculture.

The Physiocrats put the matter thus. The countryman gets hides, leather, and in the end his boots and other articles from his oxen; wood, and in the end his tools, from the trees on his farm; and so on. But, they said, to avoid the wasting of materials and energy, it is better that he should not himself undertake the work that transforms these basic materials, but should have it done for him by various specialists (the tanner, bootmaker, joiner, etc.) whom he must support of his agricultural surpluses.

The only productive, the only creative labour is, therefore, labour on the land. It is true that work which transforms materials derived from land, or moves them from place to place, can enhance the value of these things, but the cost of the supplementary labour is really defrayed by the agriculturist, who must feed the workers who perform it. The increase in value this produced is, therefore, according to the cost of the labour and is equal to the expense of maintaining the workers who do it. Such labour is once again covered and made good by labour on the land. The tanner, joiner, etc. who shape the raw material derived from land work merely earn their own keep in the form of wages; they make nothing new. All they do, says Quesnay, is to "add" not to "create". The agriculturist's work is a work of creation; the industrial workers perform only a work of addition, of transformation, or of transport.

Thus the class of landowners (consisting in those days chiefly of tenant farmers as contrasted with the landowning nobility) appear to Quesnay to be the only "productive" class. The land owners, on the other hand, form an "owning" or "distributive" class, while the industrialists and craftsmen comprise a "sterile" class.

These three classes are considered to be the "active" classes of the population, whilst the wage earners make up a fourth, a "passive" class, with no economic activity of its own.

Agriculture cannot continue to be prosperous, adds Quesnay, unless grain realises high prices, for only then can agriculture provide a large "net product"* and thus become able to provide large incomes for the landowning class, the manufacturers, and the working class, and in this way diffuse general prosperity. It was essential, therefore, to do away with all restriction upon the export of grain—Quesnay completely rejected the mercantilist theory of the balance of trade. The demand for free trade was an inevitable result of his views.

The Physiocratic system also gave a picture of the formation of value and of price. In certain connections Quesnay emphasized the nature of value as utility but with his doctrine of net product, value and price and derived from cost. In his view the transformative labour of industry added to goods only so much value as this labour itself consumed—only an amount of value therefore equivalent to its own cost. It follows from this that for Quesnay wages represent nothing other than the cost of replacement of the labour power that has been expended. Wages are merely the equivalent of subsistence.

Bob Ambridge

* Quesnay uses the term "Produit Nett" as signifying the surplus of the raw produce of the earth left after defraying the cost of its production.

The Keir Hardie myth (1961)

From the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The myth about Keir Hardie's attitude to war is very persistent. At an anti-Polaris rally in Glasgow last December, the Co-operative Movement representative had only to refer to him, ". . . if we could get Keir Hardie here . . ." to have his words drowned by applause. Whatever the sentiments of the audience may have been, it was certainly in error about Hardie's attitude to war.

In 1914, with the Great War drawing near, the Second International called for "Peace demonstrations" throughout Europe. On August 2nd, in Trafalgar Square, Hardie spoke at the "Peace demonstration". Sentimentality and emotionalism were offered in place of the sound education and organisation needed by the workers. Two days later the War began, and the Second International collapsed, its unsound base giving way beneath the strain. In the Labour Leader Hardie proclaimed, "The I.L.P. will at least stand firm. Keep the Red Flag flying!" Brave words indeed, but wholly false. For the I.L.P. turned out to be standing firm on one issue and that was on the question of party unity. To preserve this unity, to retain the greatest number of members within the fold, the most opportunist and unprincipled formulas were applied to justify the conduct of individual party members. The flag hoisted by Hardie and his fellow "Labour Leaders" was a clear and unmistakable Union Jack.

In articles directed at his electorate in Merthyr, Keir Hardie made his position clear. "A nation at war must be united especially when its existence is at stake. In such filibustering expeditions as our own Boer War or the recent Italian war over Tripoli, where no national danger of any kind was involved there were many occasions for diversity of opinion and this was given voice to by the Socialist Party of Italy and the Stop the War Party in this country. Now the situation is different. With the boom of the enemy's guns within earshot, the lads who have gone forth by sea and land to fight their country's battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home." (Pioneer, Merthyr 15th Aug., 1914). The man who recoiled from the talk of waging the Class War was quite prepared to have workers serve "their Motherland" in Imperialist War; he wrote that "We must see the war through, but we must also make ourselves so familiar with the facts as to be able to intervene at the earliest possible moment in the interests of peace" (Pioneer 15th Aug., 1914). Let no one be deceived by the mention of the "earliest possible moment" because for Hardie this was a very long way off and he was in fact prepared to support a long, drawn-out conflict in Europe. As he put it on 28th November, 1914, "May I once again revert for the moment to the I.L.P. pamphlets? None of them clamour for immediately stopping the war. That would be foolish in the extreme, until at least the Germans have been driven back across their own frontier, a consummation which, I fear, carries us forward through a long and dismal vista" (Pioneer, Merthyr).

Time after time Hardie fed workers the lie that they were part of a "nation" and as such were bound up in the quarrels of their masters. Not "International Working Class Solidarity", but "Class Collaboration" was his rallying cry, for Hardie was a patriot and proud of it. "I am not a pro-German", he wrote, "and still less am I a pro-Russian. I am a pro-Briton, loving my country and caring for her people. Any war of aggression against the rights and liberties of my country I would resist to the last drop of blood in my veins. But I have not seen, outside the columns of the yellow Jingo Press, any proofs that our interests as a nation were in any way imperilled or threatened by a war in which Austria and Germany and Russia and France were involved" (Pioneer, Merthyr. 22nd Aug 1914).

But although he was a patriot, Hardie would not appear on the official Government recruiting platforms. In the first place he could not stomach the crude jingoism and Imperialism that emerged from these platforms and secondly he wished to remain free to present the I.L.P. version of the events that had led to Britain's involvement in the war. He believed that if the people were told frankly about the "Secret Diplomacy" that had piloted Britain into the war, and were shown how the war, though "unjust," had put the country in peril, the needed volunteers would emerge and there would be no need for jingoistic exhortations or conscription. This in Hardie's view was the "right method" and belief in this method led Hardie to boast that he had been instrumental (together with his colleagues) in securing more recruits for the Armed Forces than his Liberal opponents.

Writing in the Pioneer of November 28th, 1914, Keir Hardie made his claim thus: "I have never said or written anything to dissuade our young men from enlisting; I know too well all there is at stake. But, frankly, were I once more young and anxious to enlist, I would resent more than anything the spectacle of young, strong, flippant upstarts, whether MPs or candidates, who had the audacity to ask me to do for my country what they had not the heart to do themselves. Of all causes, this surely is the one in which actions speak louder than words. If I can get the recruiting figures for Merthyr week by week, which I find a very difficult job, I hope by another week to be able to PROVE that whereas our Rink Meeting gave a stimulus to recruiting, those meetings at the Drill Hall at which the Liberal member or the Liberal candidate spoke, had the exactly opposite effect." Hardie was so determined to prove his point that he tried on a number of occasions to obtain the relevant recruiting figures.

The figures were refused him, but this did not daunt Hardie. In the meantime, his staunch supporter J.B. (John Barr). writing in the Pioneer enthusiastically endorsed Hardie's claim; he wrote. "I am still of the opinion that the Rink meeting gave a fillip to recruiting, and my opinion is based on the belief that the I.L.P. method is the right one. . ."

Two weeks later Hardie was able to proclaim that he had obtained the recruiting figures for his constituency and was able to make good his boast. He set out his claim in this manner: "(1) That for the five weeks before the Rink Meeting. recruiting had been steadily going down week by week; (2) that our I.L.P. meeting was held on Sunday, October 25th, and that for the next three weeks the number of recruits secured in Merthyr kept steadily rising. . . If Mr. Jones challenges this statement I shall produce the figures, though not inclined to do so for very obvious patriotic reasons. Unlike my colleague I am more concerned with aiding the army than with trying to take a mean advantage of a political opponent" (Pioneer, 19th Dec., 1914).

Ample evidence exists to prove that in supporting the War Hardie in no way acted as a renegade. His actions were in fact in concord with the actions of his colleagues in the party leadership and these actions were never repudiated, but were endorsed and underwritten by the party as a whole.

Melvin Harris