The Historical Method of Karl Marx by Paul Lafargue. (1920)

From the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reprinted from the “International Socialist Review,” Oct., 1907.

  “The mode of production of the physical means of life dominates as a rule the development of the social, political and intellectual life” (Karl Marx).


I. The Socialist Critiques.

Marx, half a century ago, proposed a new method for the interpretation of history, which he and Engels applied in their studies. It is not surprising that the historians, sociologists and philosophers, fearing lest the communist thinker corrupt their innocence and cause them to lose the favour of the bourgeoisie, should ignore this method: but it is strange that Socialists should hesitate to employ it, possibly for fear of arriving at conclusions which might rumple their bourgeois notions, to which they unconsciously remain prisoners. Instead of experimenting with it so as to judge it from its use, they prefer to discuss the question of its value and they discover innumerable defects in it; it misconceives, they say, the ideal and its operation; it brutalises eternal truths and principles; it takes no account of the individual and of his role; it leads to an economic fatalism which excuses man from all effort, etc. What would these comrades think of a carpenter who, instead of working with the hammers, saws and planes put at his disposal, should quarrel with them? Since no perfect tools exist, he would have plenty of chance to rail at them. Criticism does not begin to be fruitful instead of futile, until it comes after experience, which, better than the most subtle reasoning, makes us sensible of imperfections and teaches us to correct them. Man first used the clumsy stone hammer, and its use taught him to transform it into more than a hundred types, differing in their raw material, their weight, and their form.

Leucippus and his disciple Democritus, five centuries before the Christian Era, introduced their concept of the atom to explain the makeup of mind and matter, and during more than two thousand years, philosophers, the idea not occurring to them of resorting to experience that they might test the atomic hypothesis, indulged in discussions on the atom in itself, on the fullness of matter indefinitely continued, on emptiness, discontinuity, etc. and it is not until the end of the 18th century that Dalton utilised the conception of Democritus to explain chemical combinations. The atom, with which the philosophers had been able to do nothing, became in the hands of the chemists “one of the most powerful tools of research that human reason has succeeded in creating”. But now, after its use, the marvellous tool has been found imperfect and the radio-activity of matter obliges the physicists to pulverise the atom, that ultimate particle of matter, indivisible and impenetrable, into ultra-ultimate particles, of the same nature in all atoms, and carriers of electricity. The atomicules, a thousand times smaller than the atom of hydrogen, the smallest of atoms, are said to whirl with an extraordinary velocity around a central nucleus, as the planets and earth revolve about the sun. The atom might be a miniature solar system and the elements of the bodies which we know might differ in themselves only in number and the gyratory movements of their atomicules. The recent discoveries of radio-activity, which shake fundamental laws of mathematical physics, ruin the atomic base of the chemical structure. It is impossible to mention a more noteworthy example of the sterility of verbal discussions and the fertility of experience. Action alone in the material and intellectual world is fruitful: “In the beginning was action”.

Economic determinism [We prefer Marx's own term, "The Materialist Conception of History." — Editors "Socialist Standard".]  is a new tool put by Marx at the disposal of Socialists to establish a little order in the disorder of historic facts, which the historians and philosophers have been incapable of classifying and explaining. Their class prejudices and their narrowness of mind give to the Socialists the monopoly of this tool; but the latter before using it wish to convince themselves that it is absolutely perfect and that it may become the key to all the problems of history; on this account it is quite possible for them to continue during the whole of their lives to discourse and to write articles and volumes on historical materialism, without adding a single idea to the subject. Men of science are less timorous. They think that “from the practical point of view it is of secondary importance that theories and hypotheses be correct provided they guide us to results in agreement with the facts”. Truth, after all, is merely the best working hypothesis; often error is the shortest road to discovery. Christopher Columbus, starting from the error in figuring made by Ptolemy, on the circumference of the earth, discovered America, when he thought he was arriving at the East Indies. Darwin recognises that the first idea of his theory of natural selection was suggested to him by the false law of Malthus on population, which he accepted with closed eyes. Physicists can today perceive that the hypothesis of Democritus is insufficient to include the phenomena recently studied, yet that does not alter the fact that it served to build up modern chemistry.

It is in fact little observed that Marx has not presented his method of historical interpretation as a body of doctrine with axioms, theorems, corollaries and lemmas; it is for him merely an instrument of research ; he formulates it in a workmanlike style and puts it to the test. It can thus be criticised only by contesting the results which it gives in his hands, for instance, by refuting his theory of the class struggle. This our historians and philosophers carefully refrain from doing. They regard it as the impure work of the demon, precisely because it has led Marx to the discovery of this powerful motive force in history.


II. Deistic and Idealistic Philosophies of History.

History is such a chaos of facts beyond man’s control, progressing and receding, clashing and interclashing, appearing and disappearing without apparent reason, that we are tempted to think it impossible to bind them and classify them into series from which can be discovered the causes of evolution and revolution.

The collapse of systems in history has given rise in the minds of thinking men like Helmholtz to the doubt whether it is possible to formulate a historical law that reality would confirm. This doubt has become so general that the intellectuals no longer venture to construct like the philosophers of the first half of the 19th century plans of universal history; it is indeed an echo of the incredulity of the economists as to the possibility of controlling economic forces. But need we conclude from the difficulties of the historic problem and the ill-success of attempts to solve it that its solution is beyond the reach of the human mind? In that case social phenomena would stand apart as the only ones which could not be logically linked to determining causes.

Commonsense has never admitted such an impossibility; on the contrary, men have always believed what came to them, fortunate or unfortunate, was part of a plan preconceived by a superior being. Man proposes and God disposes is a historical axiom of popular wisdom which carries as much truth as the axioms of geometry, on condition, however, that we interpret the meaning of the word God.

All people have thought that a god directed their history. The cities of antiquity each possessed a State divinity or poliad as the Greeks called it, watching over their destinies and dwelling in the temple consecrated to him. The Jehovah of the Old Testament was a divinity of this kind; he was lodged in a wooden box, called “Ark of the Covenant”, which was transported when the tribes of Israel changed their location, and which was placed at the front of the armies in order that he might fight for his people. He took his quarrels so much to heart, according to the Bible, that he exterminated his enemies – men, women, children and beasts. The Romans, during the Second Punic War, thought it useful as a means of resistance to Hannibal to couple up their State divinity with that of Pessinus, namely Cybele, the mother of gods; they brought over from Asia Minor her statue, a big shapeless stone, and introduced into Rome her orgiastic worship: as they were at once superstitious and astute politicians, they annexed the State divinity of each conquered city, sending its statue to the capitol; they reasoned that, no longer dwelling among the conquered people, it would cease to protect them.

The Christians had no other idea of divinity when, to drive out the Pagan gods, they broke their statues and burned their temples, and when they called on Jesus and his eternal Father to battle with the demons who stirred up the heresies of Allah which opposed the crescent to the cross. The cities of the Middle Ages put themselves under the protection of municipal divinities; St. Genevieve was that of Paris. The republic of Venice, that it might have an abundance of these protecting divinities, brought over from Alexandria the skeleton of St. Mark and stole at Montpellier that of St. Roques. Civilised nations have never denied the Pagan belief: each monopolises for its use the only and universal God of the Christians, and makes therefrom its State divinity. Thus there are as many only and universal Gods as there are Christian nations, and the former fight among themselves as soon as the latter declare war; each nation prays its only and universal God to exterminate its rival and sings Te Deums in His honour if it is victorious, convinced that it owes its triumph only to His all-powerful intervention. The belief in the intrusion of God into human quarrels is not simulated by statesmen to please the coarse superstition of ignorant crowds; they share it. The private letters recently published, which Bismarck wrote to his wife during the war of 1870-71, show him believing that God passed His time in occupying Himself with him, his son and the Prussian armies.

The philosophers who have taken God for the directing guide of history share this infatuation; they imagine that this God, creator of the universe and humanity, can be interested in nothing else than their country, religion and politics. Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History is one of the most successful specimens of this kind: the Pagan nations exterminate each other to prepare for the coming of Christianity, his religion, and the Christian nations slaughter each other to assure the greatness of France, his country, and the glory of Louis XIV, his master. The historic movement, guided by God, culminated in the Sun King; when he was extinguished, shadows invaded the world, and the Revolution, which Joseph de Maistre calls “the work of Satan” burst forth.

Satan triumphed over God, the State divinity of the aristocracy and the Bourbons. The bourgeoisie, the class which God held in small regard, possessed itself of power and guillotined the king He had anointed: natural sciences, which He had cursed, triumphed and engendered for the bourgeoisie more riches than He had been able to give to His favourites, the nobles and the legitimate kings; Reason, which he had bound, broke her chains and dragged Him before her tribunal. The reign of Satan had begun. The romantic poets of the first half of the nineteenth century composed hymns in his honour; he was the unconquerable vanquished, the great martyr, the consoler and hope of the oppressed; he symbolised the bourgeoisie in perpetual revolt against nobles, priests and tyrants. But the victorious bourgeoisie had not the courage to take him for its State divinity; it patched up God, whom Reason had slightly disfigured, and restored him to honour; nevertheless, not having entire faith in His omnipotence, it added to Him a troop of demigods: Progress, Justice, Liberty, Civilisation, Humanity, Fatherland, etc. who were chosen to preside over the destinies of the nations who had shaken off the yoke of the aristocracy.

These new gods are “Ideas”, “Spiritual Forces”, “imponderable Forces”. Hegel undertook to bring back this polytheism of Ideas into the monotheism of the Idea, which, born of itself, creates the world and history by its own unfolding. The God of historic philosophy is a mechanic who, for His amusement constructs the universe, whose movements he regulates, and manufactures man, whose destinies He directs after a plan known to Himself alone, but the philosophic historians have not perceived that this eternal God is not the creator but the creature of man, who, in proportion to his own development, remodels Him, and that, far from being the director, He is the plaything of historic events.

The philosophy of the idealists, in appearance less childish than that of the deists, is an unfortunate application to history of the deductive method of the abstract sciences, whose propositions, logically linked, flow from certain undemonstrable axioms which impose themselves by the principle of evidence. The mathematicians are wrong in not troubling themselves regarding the fashion in which the ideas slipped into the human mind. The idealists disdain to inquire into the origin of their Ideas, coming no one knows whence; they confine themselves to affirming that they exist of themselves, that they are perfectible, and that in proportion as they become perfect they modify men and social phenomena, placed under their control; thus it is only necessary to know the evolution of Ideas to acquire the laws of history. In this way Pythagoras thought that the knowledge of the properties of numbers would give knowledge of the properties of bodies.

But because the axioms of mathematics cannot be demonstrated by reasoning, that does not prove that they are not properties of bodies, just like colour, form, weight and warmth, which experience alone reveals, and the idea of which exists in the brain only because man has come into contact with the bodies of nature. It is, in fact, as impossible to prove by reasoning that a body is square, coloured, heavy or warm as to demonstrate that the part is smaller than the whole, that two and two make four, etc.: all we can do is to state the experimental fact and draw its logical conclusions.

The Ideas of Progress, Justice, Liberty, Fatherland, etc., like the axioms of mathematics, do not exist outside of themselves and outside the spiritual domain; they do not precede experience but follow it; they do not engender the events of history, but they are the consequence of the social phenomena which in evolving create them, transform them, and suppress them; they do not become active forces save as they emanate directly from the social streams. One of the tasks of history unnoticed by the philosophers is the discovery of the social causes, of which they themselves are a product, and which give them the power acting upon the brains of the men of a given epoch.

Bossuet and the deist philosophers, who promoted God to the dignity of a conscious director of the historic movement, have after all merely conformed to the popular opinion of the historic role played by the divinity: the idealists who substitute for Him the Idea-Forces merely utilise in historic fashion the vulgar bourgeois opinion. Every bourgeois proclaims that his private and public acts are inspired by Progress, Justice, Patriotism, Humanity, etc. To be convinced of this we need only go through the advertisements of the manufacturers and merchants, the prospectuses of the financiers, and the electoral programmes of the politicians.

The ideas of Progress and of evolution are modern in their origin; they are a transportation into history of that human perfectibility which became fashionable with the eighteenth century. It was inevitable that the bourgeoisie should regard its entrance into power as an immense step of social progress, while the aristocracy looked upon it as a disastrous setback. The French revolution, because it occurred a century after the English revolution, and consequently in conditions more fully ripe, substituted so suddenly and completely the bourgeoisie for the nobility that from that time the idea of Progress took firm root in the public opinion of Europe. The European capitalists believed themselves founded on the power of Progress. They affirmed in good faith that their habits, manners, virtues, private and public morality, social and family organisation, industry and commerce were an advance over everything which had existed. The past was only ignorance, barbarity, injustice and unreason: “Finally, for the first time”, cried Hegel, “Reason was to govern the world.” The bourgeois of 1793 deified her; already in the beginning of the bourgeois period in the ancient world Plato (in the Timaeus) declared her superior to Necessity, and Socrates reproached Anaxagoras with having, in his cosmogony, explained everything by material causes without having made any use of Reason, from whom everything could be hoped (Phaedo). The social dominance of the bourgeoisie is the reign of Reason.

But a historical event, even so considerable a one as the grasping of power by the bourgeoisie, does not alone suffice to prove Progress. The deists had made God the sole author of history; the idealists, not wishing it to be said that Progress in the past had deported itself as a do-nothing Idea, discovered that during the Middle Ages it had prepared for the triumph of the bourgeois class by organising it, by giving it intellectual culture, and by enriching it, while it wore out the offensive and defensive fortress of the Church. The idea of evolution was thus to introduce itself naturally in the train of the idea of Progress.

But for the bourgeoisie there is no progressive evolution save that which prepares for its own triumph, and as it is only for some ten centuries that its historians can find definite traces of its organic development, they lose their Ariadne’s thread as soon as they venture into the labyrinth of earlier history, whose facts they are satisfied to narrate without attempting to marshal them into progressive series. Since the goal of progressive evolution is the establishment of the social dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, that end once attained Progress must cease to progress. In fact, the bourgeois who proclaim that their capture of power is a social progress unique in history, declare that it would be a return to barbarism, “to slavery”, as Herbert Spencer says, if they were dislodged from power by the proletariat. The vanquished aristocracy looked upon its defeat in no other light. Belief in the decree of Progress, instinctive and unconscious in the bourgeois masses, shows itself conscious and reasoned in certain bourgeois thinkers. Hegel and Comte, to cite merely two of the most famous, affirm squarely that their philosophic system closes the series, that it is the crowning and the end of the progressive evolution of thought. So, then, philosophy and social and political institutions progress only to arrive at their bourgeois form, then Progress progresses no more.

The bourgeoisie and its more intelligent intellectuals, who fix insurmountable limits to their progressive Progress, do better still; they withdraw from its influence certain social organisations of prime importance. The economists, historians, and moralists, to demonstrate in an irrefutable fashion that the paternal form of the family and the individual form of property will not be transformed, assure us that they have existed from all time. They put forth these impudent assertions at the moment when researches which have been carried on for half a century are bringing into clear light the primitive forms of the family and of property. These bourgeois scientists are ignorant of them, or reason as if they were ignorant of them.

The ideas of Progress and of evolution were especially fashionable during the first years of the nineteenth century, when the bourgeoisie was still intoxicated with its political victory, and with the prodigious development of its economic riches; the philosophers, historians, moralists, politicians, romancers, and poets fitted their writings and their teachings to the sauce of progressive Progress, which Fourier was alone or almost alone in reviling. But toward the middle of the century they were obliged to calm their immoderate enthusiasm: the apparition of the proletariat on the political stage in England and in France awoke in the mind of the bourgeoisie certain disquieting reflections on the eternal duration of its social dominance. Progressive Progress lost its charms. The ideas of Progress and of evolution would finally have ceased to be current in bourgeois phraseology had not the men of science, who from the end of the eighteenth century had grasped the idea of evolution circulating in the social environment, utilised it to explain the formation of worlds and the organisation of vegetables and animals. They gave it such a scientific value and such a popularity that it was impossible to sidetrack it.

Paul Lafargue 

(Translated by Chas. H. Kerr.)

(To Be Continued)

Notices. (1920)

From the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attention of comrades is drawn to the fact that we are running an Economic Class at the Head Office. The class meets every Thursday at 8 p.m.

Even those who feel pretty strong in economics should try to go through this course with a view to fitting themselves to take similar classes when the need and opportunity arise, as they undoubtedly will in the near future.

--0--

We have received a request for some back numbers of the Socialist Standard to complete a file for the New South Wales (Australia) Reference and Research Library. Can any reader oblige with copies of issues prior to 1911?

A Useful Book. (1920)

Book Review from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

"A Primer of Socialism," by Thomas Kirkup Third Edition. Revised and partly re-written by Edward R. Pease. London : A. & C. Black, Ltd., Soho Square, W.1.

In a prefatory note to this volume Mr. Pease informs the reader that the first nine chapters are reprinted from the second edition (July 1910) without material alteration, the remaining six chapters, which brings the story up to August 1919, being written by himself.

The volume, although somewhat scrappy, is interesting in two respects. First, it contains brief but clear descriptions of the most important working-class movements of the earlier period, together with items of biological interest about the leaders connected with them. Its second and most interesting feature is its arrangement. Economic changes in the past and the rise of the present system are lightly dealt with in the first and second chapters. Then follow four chapters dealing with the aspirations and efforts of the early reformers and Utopians. The story of their efforts is closed by Kirkup with a brief but fairly accurate survey of the "Marxian Philosophy," and the founding of the First International. Mr. Pease takes up the thread and, in the same brief but clear manner, recounts the history of the working-class movement since that time.

Kirkup tells of the blind groping of the early reformers after the truth and its final discovery by Marx. Mr. Pease tells of the blind groping away from the truth and the deliberate enthronement of confusion by the agents of the master class.

Necessarily brief, the chapter allotted to Marx merely gives a short summary of the meaning of surplus-value, the antagonism of interests between the working class and the capitalist class, and the necessity of working-class organisation for political supremacy with the object of taking possession of the means of wealth production. After this outspoken declaration the following chapters read like a betrayal of the working class by its leaders. The reformism of the British Labour Party—including the so-called Socialist parties that accept its electoral programmes for parliamentary seats—the suicidal nonsense of the Anarchists and Syndicalists, and the Utopian absurdities of the Guild Socialists are inexcusable. Once the position of the working class has been scientifically determined and the knowledge made available, those who pose as leaders and ignore it are guilty of treachery to the working class. Mr. Pease writes in full sympathy with the labour movement, but the discriminating reader will be at once struck by the inconsistency of a working class movement based on reform after the discovery by Marx that the working class must be revolutionary.

Kirkup is rather severe on the "Communist Manifesto," which he says gives "in a violent and exaggerated form, the views which Marx afterwards elaborated in his large work on Capital." But his previous summary of the Marxian philosophy takes the sting out of his own adjectives. Whether expressed in the cold, lofty terms of the critic or the forceful eloquence of Marx himself, the philosophy is always convincing, and as a Manifesto issued to the workers of all lands, the "Communist Manifesto" has never been surpassed.

On pages 69 and 70 Mr. Pease falls into a common error when he writes about "Marxian Socialism" not being the type of Socialism to make any progress in this country. This is the paltry excuse of the labour leaders who "know all about Socialism" but see nothing profitable in the work of propagating it. They try to throw the blame for their own treachery on the workers—but the workers look to them for the truth, expecting, in their simplicity, to get it because of the expressed sympathy of those leaders. They thus add meanness to their treachery, because it is impossible for them to know what the workers will accept until they try them.

On page 92 Mr. Pease tells the truth about the attitude of the Labour Party towards the war, and members of that party should cease to boast about their opposition. Our author is very emphatic. "The Labour Party," he says, "supported the Government in the prosecution of the war from first to last " The I.L.P., he states, was, however, split into two sections, supporters of the Government and pacifists, who worked loyally together in spite of what would appear to be a vital difference of principle. This is easily explained when we remember that the pacifists were merely in opposition on humanitarian grounds against war in general as a method of settling capitalist disputes. Their two main contentions were that peace should be obtained by negotiation, and that the conscientious objector should be released from the obligation to serve. All the so-called Socialist parties supported the Government in its prosecution of the war, and issued manifestoes declaring their loyalty. Even the prominent pacifists of the I.L.P. asserted that it was the duty of every man to assist the Government in carrying out its objects.

A rather curious slip is made on page 78 that the publishers might note. The organisation known as the I.W.W. is said to be the "Independent Workers of the World."

To those members of the English Labour Party who blame the Social Democrats of Germany for their support of the war an interesting statement is made by Mr. Pease. He says: "During the few days when war was still in doubt the German Social Democrats held big meetings all over the country to protest against it. But their action was in vain. Similar efforts on a smaller scale were made by Socialists in England and elsewhere." If this comparison is true, neither the English nor any other labour party have any grounds for accusing the German Social Democrats of giving support to their government, seeing that their own efforts to prevent the war were the feeblest.

Mr. Pease is optimistic about the near future of the labour movement. He says, "unless therefore, the course of events takes altogether a fresh turn, a few years hence will see the Socialist parties in control of stable governments, ruling some of the largest and most highly developed countries of the world."

Does this mean that in a few years Socialism will be established ? Not according to Mr. Pease, who has already told us that these "Socialist parties" are not built on Socialist principles. But what does government by these so-called Socialist parties mean ? We can best answer that question by an examination of their election programmes. When we do this we find that none of these parties run candidates pledged to the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of Socialism. The leaders of these parties who may be elected to the national assemblies have no mandate except for the reform of the present system. Before they can have such a mandate the workers must be educated to that degree of knowledge that will enable them to consciously give it; but the leaders do not educate the workers in that direction at all, they simply take advantage of their ignorance to persuade them to support capitalist governments. This is proved by their own statement that they can provide an alternative government to the present coalition. Some of the extremists of the movement talk of State ownership, guild Socialism, and even of common ownership, but the wiseheads of the movement, who interpret correctly the degree of working-class knowledge, are seldom mistaken. The so-called Socialist and Labour parties do not educate tho workers at all, they simply frame their own utterances on the superstitions engendered in the minds of the workers by other capitalist agents.

If the Marxian philosophy is correct, the workers cannot emancipate themselves until they understand it. The leaders of the various working-class parties in this country have not yet commenced to teach it; from any point of view, therefore, they have made no progress whatever. Real progress can only be measured by the numbers in the Socialist ranks, by the votes they register for Socialism, and by the strength and breadth of the movement. Any other sort of progress, such as obtaining parliamentary seats by compromise with Liberals, or on programmes identical with the Liberals, is merely progress for the leaders toward the goal of their ambitions—a share of the plunder and a place in the sun.

As a short history of working-class movements both Kirkup and Pease have given us something that is reliable, though that portion of the work that has been undertaken by Mr. Pease is a record of error and confusion spread by self-appointed leaders. To the intelligent worker this will be plain if he but recognises the significance of the chapters dealing with the Marxian philosophy.

F. Foan

The Reason Why. (1920)

From the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Conscription has been officially abolished.

Yes, but not because you did not like it. Our masters have learned during this last war that the day of individual skill with arms is long past' Killing men and wrecking towns and villages is a business that is made quite simple for those who finally DO the business, and those who really pay for the upkeep of the Army and Navy (not you, my fellow worker) are out to cut down expenses in this as in all other things.

A standing army of 220,000 professional killers, and a half-baked army of umpteen territorials will be quite sufficient to keep the wage-slaves in subjection both at home and abroad, and that is all that our masters require until the next "war to end war" comes along.

Then you will see if conscription is finished. Together with its inseparable ally, D.O.R.A., it will be trotted out afresh for your benefit—to be the only hope of saving YOUR liberty, YOUR home (if the brokers haven’t already been in), YOUR everything. YOU, who will he called up to "make one," or perhaps your son, who is such a dear little fellow now, will very soon be taught "discipline" and smattering enough of the methods of killing to go into the new mud-alleys or trenches to make a heroic fight for liberty against "militarism" or some other terrible "ism."

A few hours No. 1 Field Punishment will brighten up your intellect considerably, and you will learn to be courageous too—when there’s a firing party and a hole in the ground waiting for you if you show a sign of being otherwise.

Yon might be one of the "knowing" ones who say "Never again: I've been had once,” but, my friend, when those terrible conditions come again, as come again they must under the present system of society, you will be in no better position to resist these dispensers of khaki suits, homes for heroes, and unemployment doles than you ever were.

Do yon ever think over this ? If you don't you are sadly deficient in self-consideration. If you DO, what conclusions have you come to? What can you do to help yourself?

THE ONLY WAY to help yourself in the matter is to do all yon can to help bring in a system of society where "international” fights are totally unnecessary, where YOU can live a life of peace with plenty, where NO unemployment exists, and where no human being starves in the midst of plenty as they do now under the aegis of something that many of us, in our pityfully blind ignorance, call civilisation.

The necessary system of society for these wonderful benefits to become yours and mine is the SOCIALIST system; nothing short

THE SOCIALIST PARTY of Great Britain claim, and prove their claim, to be the only party in Great Britain whose principles will benefit the working class. We have no connection with I.LP., B.S.P., L.P., S.D.P., or any other old P. of people who are only interested in two things: firstly, grinding their own axes; secondly, trying to make the present rotten capitalist system bearable to you, thereby prolonging the life of that system which grinds YOU down so mercilessly.

If you are a thoughtful man come and consider our principles and policy. You will be welcome at any of our meetings, no matter whether Executive, Branch, or propaganda meetings. We cordially welcome your serious interest. If you have questions to ask, come to our meetings and ask them. I assure you of a civil and scientifically considered answer. The keener your intelligence the keener your welcome from us, for we want the help of intelligent men, and intelligent men will want to help to spread our propaganda when they have got the knowledge of what we stand for. Never mind if you are poor in pocket—we are poor men and women ourselves—but the richer you are in sense—common sense—the better we will like you, for we are not out to mislead anyone.

A list of Branches, together with the times and places of their meetings, will be found at the end of this paper. Come to any of our meetings and enquire: it costs you nothing— and knowledge awaits you.

Selim.

The Outcome. (1920)

From the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

To what the so-called practical politics of the Labour Party and I.L.P. lead is plainly demonstrated by the recent Stockport election.

It will be remembered that a vacancy occurred in the Stockport constituency through the death of Mr. Spencer Leigh Hughes. Immediately following upon this the Labour member for Stockport (Mr. Wardle), who held one of the "bait" posts which the Government allots to Labourites who serve them well, resigned on account of "ill health" (a term which covers a multitude of political sins). No doubt the two items are connected in many ways by various people, but the S.P.G.B. sums up the affair in two words—

POLITICAL BARGAINING.

In a review of the election result "The Lobby Correspondent" writes in the "Daily News" of April 12th:

 "The retention of Stockport was made possible by a deal between the Coalition parties in the constituency. This involved the resignation of Mr. Wardle, a minister, on the ground of ill-health."

Obviously Mr. Wardle's seat had been gained at the previous election by means of a deal between the Labour and the Coalition parties, and he was compelled to resign because of a new arrangement between the Coalition Liberals and the Unionists to split their vote.

Time after time these "deals" have been exposed in the Official Organ of our party ; also it has been shown how gratifying they have proved to the Liberal Party. Now, however, when capitalist groups have been re-shuffled in the course of development to suit variations in sectional interests, and Mr. Asquith is attempting to lead an

"INDEPENDENT POLITICAL FORCE" TO SUPREMACY,

the tone of his particular group has changed somewhat. Speaking at the National Liberal Club Mr. Featherstone Asquith said "There was an experiment made at Stockport, one of the most ingenious feats that I remember of political legerdemain." (How Mr. Asquith must revel in memories of similar exploits !) He continues, "You cannot always get a sitting member so accommodating . . . as to convert a single into a double vacancy." ("Daily News " 15.4.20.)

True, Herbert, but he who pays the piper calls the tune, and the "practical politics," the double-dealing and trickery which leads to pelf and place for labour leaders, allows for such

ACCOMMODATING ARRANGEMENTS.

And what of the great Sir Leo. C. Money, who, after being defeated at Tottenham, was rushed to do the "big man" stunt at Stockport. Commenting on the defeat of himself and Mr. Perry (Lab. Co-op.) he said: 

  "There has been no real Labour fight before in Stockport. For many years contests have been in the character of sham fights where in double-barrelled constituencies progressives were invited to divide their votes between the Liberal and Labour Parties." ("Daily News," 12.4.20. Italics mine.")

We confirm Sir Leo's statement but add that there has been no fight made by the Labour Party in any constituency in the true interest of the working class. More of that anon.

As an illustration of how an opportunist can take advantage of a compulsory lapse from previous opportunism to

AFFIRM HIS STRAIGHTNESS

the foregoing quotation serves very well, while the following from the Printers' Register for 6.2.19 is an interesting sidelight on Sir Leo. Money's past:

"The 'Labour Leader' announces that Sir Leo has consented to become a regular contributor to its pages.
   "This announcement recalls Sir Leo's description of the 'Labour Leader' in the House of  Commons, when he wanted the Government to deal drastically with that paper. He said 'The "Labour Leader" ever since the war began deliberately pursued week by week a policy of  misrepresenting the present and past motives of the British Government, of . . suggesting that war was provoked by British Diplomacy and aggression, of publishing an article charging the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary with deliberately deceiving the House of Commons, and in various other ways seeking to make it difficult for the United Kingdom to prosecute the war with success. During the past eleven month's the "Labour Leader" has published repeated discouragements to its readers to support the national cause or take part in the war.' "

The noodle-headed but sincere members of the I.L.P. will be interested in this slice of Sir Leo's history. It may even lead them to critically analyse the sayings and actions of the "practical" politicians and refer to S.P.G.B. literature for more irrefragable facts of their 

LEADERS' CHARLATANISM.

Why this sudden conversion to the ranks of Labour ? Why this new-found interest on the part of Sir Leo, Lord Haldane, and others of their kind in the ability of Labour to govern ?

Methinks the wind has shifted slightly and sails are being trimmed accordingly. The Labour Party is attracting lords, knights, etc., to add to the fakirs already within its ranks. But adding remnants of the feudal aristocracy, disgruntled officers, petit-bourgeois, budding capitalist and pseudo-Socialist politicians to its membership—embodying schemes for nationalisation of this or that industry, better gaols for the workers, etc., to its programme—does not help the workers forward one iota in the accomplishment of their historic mission.

And so we address ourselves to the working class: —The machines and tools with which you produce vast quantities of wealth—themselves the product of labour—are owned by the master class. You are compelled to sell the only commodity you possess — the power to labour—to the owners of those tools for a miserable pittance varying but little from the actual cost of subsistence, while they, the minority in society, take to themselves the fruits of your labour.

YOU ARE EXPLOITED !

You lose one master, but are compelled to find another, and because of your non-ownership of the means of producing the necessaries of life you are enslaved to the possessing class —the capitalists. Constantly you are confronted with the fear of unemployment, and conditions do not improve—they are getting worse.

Gulled by the cant and hypocrisy of Press, pulpit, and capitalist political agents (Tory, Liberal, and Labour), you have in the past voted back into political power, because of promises, the representatives of the class which is interested in governing you and keeping you in subjection. Your interests are opposed to those of the exploiters, and you will be exploited and oppressed by them until you realise your true position, and organise as a class into a political party with the object of capturing the

POLITICAL POWER

and overthrowing the present system of contradictions of wealth and poverty, and the conversion of the means of wealth production from instruments of profit-grinding into common property to be administered for the well being of all.

The remedy is in your own hands—the working class are the majority in society, and the majority must be brought to an understanding and acceptance of the principles of the S.P.G.B. as printed in this and every issue of this journal.

Line up! There is no hope for the working class except in the establishment of Socialism.

H. C.

Letter: Concerning Maresnests and other things. (1920)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editor. 

13, Park Parade, 

N. Finchley. 

Dear Sir,—I am sorry to read your criticism of Mr. Dell's book in your March issue. Your criticism is far more confusing and contradictory than Mr, Dell's clear thinking. For instance, if Voltaire is out of date and keeping with the present condition, how can Marx be up to date? Yet you quote Marx. If Marx lived later than Voltaire, Marx also attempted something more concrete in theories than did Voltaire. Many of his theories have miscarried, therefore they are equally out of date in their usefulness as Voltaire.

The Bolsheviks could no more use Marxism than any other old theory. Does the Editor really believe the workers will ever hold power by the use of the present parliamentary machine? I hare been accused of being an optimist, but I have yet to reach a pitch of exhilaration wherein I can believe that a volunteer army officered by Bourgeois will obey a Socialist parliaments laws for the abolition of capitalism. I would like to know why the Editor thinks that if armed the workers would readily fight, yet could not be got to strike successfully—especially when one considers that trade unionism the farthest the workers have yet reached to. What difference to the workers when faced
 with starvation whether badly armed or not at all ? In the division of classes you make a slight mistake by leaving out about half of the population. You have completely forgotten the unhappy, misled, aspiring, unsuccessful Middle Bourgeoisie. He is the hardest worked, heaviest taxed, and perhaps poorest individual in the country. I say this fully realising that this class of slave toils, yet produces not, and that this slave is a hindrance to the workers and the mainstay of capitalism in peace. This middle man would soon be deserted by the capitalist in time of hunger. During a prolonged strike this individual would perforce become convinced of the absence of any affinity 'twixt the capitalist and himself. Perhaps hunger and mutual suffering might weld the link with his
fellow wage slave of a differing grade. Mr. Dell is quite right when he says it is inconceivable that the workers will reach a stage of development when they will cease to be true to their education and see clear, while the machinery of public opinion is in the unscrupulous hands of the class who are under no misapprehension as to what is best for themselves and hence worst for the workers. So long as they guide, so long will the workers come in contact with the greatest obstacles in their march to freedom. All clear issues will be confused, all maresnests held up. Anything so long as it is
 not the real thing. I am not a believer either in the political machinery nor yet in trade unionism. I know that both have evolved with the present system. Yet I would like to see this machine used for the coercion of this present parliamentary machine. These two are of a kind. When the crush comes we would begin to think of the political machinery, a machine that will fit in with the new conditions as they arise. Then we might even arm the proletariat. But at present it is dangerous and useless and a hindrance. I would be very glad if you could find room for this.

J. Horn.

Our Reply.

Had Mr. Horn read the review he is so ready to criticise more carefully, he would have found many of his objections met in the review itself. For instance, he would have seen that our objection to following Voltaire was not that he lived a certain time ago, but that his views were those of the now ruling class. Our critic carefully ignores this point.

Which of Marx's theories have miscarried ? We are not told. When our critic can point to what he considers such a case we will examine it.

Whatever the Bolsheviks may have used, they certainly have made the loudest claims that their actions are the purest "Marxism." Mr. Horn should send his denials (without evidence) to them.

The question of the parliamentary machine is another point dealt with in the review. Our correspondent should read it.

The "volunteer" army of Great Britain is officered by wage slaves of the professional type not the bourgeoisie—and always obeys the orders formulated in Parliament. The Army does not question its orders, and if it is prepared to shoot down its fellow workers when ordered by the masters' Government to do so, surely it has no reason to refuse to shoot the masters at the orders of a Socialist Parliament. Only blind ignorance of the Army and its methods, and the system by which it is controlled, could account for such views as our correspondent puts forth.

The reason the workers could not "strike successfully" for the overthrow of capitalism is another matter fully dealt with in the review.

Mr. Horn first says that we have made a mistake in our division of the classes because we have left out the "middle bourgeoisie." Further on he calls this "bourgeoisie" "fellow wage slaves," thus agreeing with our description of this section. 

Jack Fitzgerald

"It is necessary to suffer . . . " (1920)

Thelma Bamberger

From the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is an old French proverb : "Il faut souffrir pour etre savant," which might be translated : "It is necessary to suffer to achieve wisdom," although one might wish it could be translated to mean that wisdom was the inevitable result of suffering. Truly the working class of the world have suffered untold miseries, particularly during the last few years; but, alas! they appear to be no wiser than before.

There were some amongst us who used to comfort ourselves, during the deluge of blood and fury that swept over Europe, with the reflection that surely the proletariat blindly seeking relief would lift their eyes to the right way, the Socialist way, out.

But we find that the terrible memories, the nights of horror, the weary years in blood-soaked trenches are all forgotten and, worse still, forgiven.

What do we read in the daily Press, the criterion of popular thought ? What does the average man talk about on his way to work in the morning ? Does he ask his neighbour why it is that, in spite of the fact that he was at the capture of Jerusalem, or that he assisted in driving the Germans out of their African colonies, he finds the struggle to live more difficult than before, that his wages are insufficient to keep him in comfort just as they were before, and that, despite the fact that "we" have won the greatest war (as yet) in history, his position has not improved one iota, but has, on the contrary, worsened ?

No ! listen to him and you will find that he is discussing the chastity of Mrs. Bamberger, expressing the opinion that there is "something in" the spiritual messages transmitted to the Rev. G. Vale Owen, or weighing the chances of his football favourites winning the English Cup. Anything but his own misery—and I defy you to produce a member of the working class to whom misery is not more familiar than the sort of tenth-rate happiness he sometimes enjoys.

A cynic said that nothing but a volcano could lift the working class from the position they now occupy in society. He was right and he was wrong! The volcano has come, yet the working class still grope in the mud and lava it has left behind. But there is still to come the volcano of organised political action. Nothing else will serve. Direct Action is an easily exploded fallacy, Nationalisation is a polysyllablic nothingness as far as the working class are concerned. The Labour Party have never understood the Class Struggle and never preached it. The other parties have been tried and found wanting. All that remains, therefore, is for the proletariat to provide their own volcano. The nucleus whence will burst forth the eruption is the Socialist Party.

It takes no more than average intelligence to understand why the working class are robbed and how to stop that robbery. It will take no more energy than they already sell to the master class to build up their organisation on sound lines. They have the brains to build beautiful houses, luxurious motor-cars, exquisite furniture for their masters. Why, then, will they not do things for themselves ? Why remain divorced from the wonderful potentialities of a world young in evolution, still ignorant of its own chemistry, and still possessing all that man can desire ? It takes no more than a little thought to understand the absurdity of slavery, and no more than intelligent class-conscious action to win through to happiness, comfort, and security for all men.

Discuss this in your third class "workman's" instead of the Lincolnshire Handicap !

Stanley H. Steele

Our £1000 Fund. (1920)

Party News from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Gloomy Professor. (1920)

Book Review from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice, by Stephen Leacock. London : John Lane, the Bodley Head, Vigo St., W.1. 5s. net.

This book, written by a professor of Political Economy at McGill University, Montreal, is one of the numerous attempts made to explain the "labour unrest" throughout the world, and to propose some remedial measures for it. To be, and remain, a professor at a University necessarily means that one must not put forth ideas or statements that are injurious to the interests of the master class. Should one do so one very quickly loses one's chair, and is forced to seek employment in another direction.

This does not prevent certain guarded criticisms being made, especially when "unrest" reaches a troublesome stage, but the edge of the criticism is always turned in the end against one or two "exceptional" employers while the majority are shown to be virtuous, hard-working, self-sacrificing benefactors of mankind.

Thus the present volume opens with several important admissions on the conditions existing today. On page 14 we are told.

  With all our wealth we are still poor. After a century and a half of labour-saving machinery we work about as hard as ever. With a power over nature multiplied a hundred fold, nature still conquers us. And more than this : There are many scenes in which the machine age seems to leave the great bulk of civilised humanity, the working part of it, worse off instead of better.

This point is further emphasised on page 76 where he says:

  Labour-saving machinery does not of itself save the working world a single hour of toil; it only shifts it from one task to another.

In the third chapter the author attempts to disprove the usual theories on Value and Price. Especially does he object to the views of Adam Smith and Ricardo that the quantity of labour governs value. After referring to the stock illustration of the primitive savage he contends:

  But in the complexity of modern industrial life such a calculation no longer applies; the differences of technical skill, of native ingenuity, and technical preparation become enormous. The hour's work of a common labourer is not the same thing as the hour's work of a watchmaker mending a watch, or of an engineer directing the building of a bridge, or of an architect drawing a plan. There is no way of reducing these hours to a common basis.

The falsity of this statement is proved by everyday experience. Engineers, Architects, trained Technicians, etc., make elaborate and close calculations to show how the time they have to spend in acquiring their special knowledge and training has to be taken into account when their remuneration is being fixed. Directly or indirectly these multiplications are always applied to the unskilled labourers' standard as the basis of the calculation. Thus in the agitation carried on to-day by the school teachers, many of the speakers are taking the dustman or coalman as a basis for their calculation of what the salary of the teacher should be. A striking illustration of this fact is given in places where technical and professional education is partly or wholly supported from the national taxes. This reduces, or in some cases abolishes the fees that were paid formerly by the students, who are then expected to take lower salaries because their training has cost them less. Chemists in Germany were a front rank instance of this.

It is quite true, as Mr. Leacock says later on, that the payments at a given moment are the outcome of "economic strength." But "economic strength" only determines the range of the "fluctuations," it does not fix the line about which these fluctuations take place. That is determined by the cost of production based upon the average unskilled labourer.

Having admitted so much of the evils of the present system the author turns to remedies. Apart from his own nostrums he only refers to one other proposed remedy, namely, Socialism. This is impossible—"Socialism is a beautiful dream, possible only for the angels" (p. 22). Still he objects to the proscribing and persecution of Socialism, and claims that "It will languish and perish in the dry sunlight of open discussion."

But what is the "Socialism" that Mr, Leacock combats? In this second decade of the twentieth century, sixty-one years after the publication of Marx's Critique of Political Economy, "a critic of Socialism, not an ignorant Christian Evidence ranter, or a Tariff Reform charlatan, but a full-blown "professor" of Political Economy, takes as the standard work on Socialism Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward! The laws of social evolution are not even mentioned. The stage of development that present society has reached, and the only alternatives before us are passed over and a philanthropic sentimentalist's dream of a future state of society, with all its details fully worked out, is put up to be shot at, while the scientific analysis of capitalism and the discovery of social laws by Marx, Engels, and Morgan are carefully ignored.

Even then what is the author's main objection to Looking Backward? It is to the elected managers. They, in his opinion, must work as angels. "Now," he says (p. 106) "Let me ask in the name of sanity where are such officials to be found?" And he answers that they cannot be found anywhere.

What, then, is to be done? For evidently something must be done to avert chaos.

  The time has gone by when a man shall starve asking in vain for work; when the listless outcast shall draw his rags shivering about him unheeded of his fellows; when children shall be born in hunger and bred in want and broken in toil with never a chance in life. If nothing else will end these things, fear will do it. The hardest capitalist that ever gripped his property with the iron grasp of legal right, relaxes his grasp a little when he thinks of the possibilities of a social conflagration. (P. 119.)

Mr. Leacock's remedies can hardly be described as heroic. "Work must either be found or must be provided by the State itself," he says, and points to the undeveloped lands of Canada, United States, and Australia as being capable of absorbing the labour of generations. Whether this means compulsory emigration we are not told. It is interesting to note in passing that he says much to discredit the Malthusian doctrine.

  Put into the plainest of prose, then, we are saying that the government of every country ought to supply work and pay for the unemployed, maintenance for the infirm and aged, and education for the children." (P. 130.)

The two great measures to be applied to this end are the establishment of a minimum wage and the shortening of the hours of labour. Even eight hours a day at a mechanical task is considered too long by our author. These measures are to be brought into operation gradually by the combined means of legislation and collective organisation.

It needs but a superficial examination to show that even a rigorous application of these measures would not affect more than the fringe of the subject. Despite the so-called shortage of commodities, General Haig has been appealing in vain to the employers to give work to hundreds of thousands of demobilised men and officers who are unemployed. Gibing at certain of the trade unions is mere clap-trap as these unions point to the number of unemployed already in their ranks. Above all this, however, is the over-riding constant factor of improving machinery and means of production. These grow far faster than the effective demands of the market can absorb their products. Hence, apart from certain times of fluctuation, the number of unemployed is not only maintained, but is bound to increase.

Against this great fact Mr. Leacock's puny measures are as useless as Mrs. Partington's broom against the sea.

And even then, with unconscious humour, our author turns his own arguments against Socialism upon his own case when he says :

  Yet it is clear that a policy of State work and State pay for all who are otherwise unable to find occupation involves appalling difficulties. The opportunity will loom large for the prodigal waste of money for the undertaking of public works of no real utility, and for the subsidising of an army of loafers. (P. 128.)

A terrible outlook, truly! And how can it be met? By the very means that our author declared impossible.

   Clearly enough a certain modicum of public honesty and integrity is essential for such a task; more, undoubtedly, than we have hitherto been able to enlist in the service of the commonwealth. But without it we perish.

Then perish we must, for Mr. Leacock has already stated that such people cannot be found.

The Socialist—a student of social evolution— has no use for either the well-meaning Utopias of the Bellamys or the despair of the Leacocks. He knows that the development of the powers of production, their increasing size and complexity, the steady concentration of the means of life into fewer and fewer hands, with its increasing slavery of the workers, will force the problem before mankind:—Either social ownership of the Means of Life, or Destruction.

The unrest, the rumblings, the strikes, are all signs that the working class are beginning to kick—still blindly, it is true—against the effects of this system. That restlessness, turned into right channels due to the education the conditions give, aided by the propaganda of the Socialist, will ensure that not destruction, but Socialism, will prove the solution of the problem.

Jack Fitzgerald

Editorial: Capitalism's Dark Hour. (1920)

Editorial from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

We used to hear much more than we do now about the awful prospects that awaited the peoples of the world in the event of their deciding to substitute Socialism for capitalism. Not only were we to wade to our goal through a sea of blood, but we were to find, when we reached our Land of Promise, that instead of being a land flowing with milk and honey, it was a stoney and sterile desert. Famine and rape would stalk the land; anarchy and chaos would overwhelm humanity; rain and destruction would embrace all—all except the capitalists, departed per Cooks, with their capital (per Pickford) to “Wangaloo, in unpacific seas.”

Talk of that kind is not very fashionable just now—not that Socialism is any more attractive to those who used to indulge in such vapourings, but they are rather afraid to throw stones for very obvious reasons.

However, if our opponents dare not talk of such things that is no reason why we should be deterred, while on the other hand there are good reasons for reminding our fellow wage slaves of the hypocritical taunts that our capitalist enemies have not the impudence to use just at present.

We are moved to these remarks by the awful spectacle of human misery which capitalism in her very prime offers to our eyes. For some days there has appeared in orthodox Press a most agonising appeal for funds to relieve the starving multitudes of what are now called the famine areas of Europe. In this appeal the Statement is made that FIVE MILLION children are in danger of starvation, and we read this tragic announcement:

  “News is just to hand that only those children between three and five can be helped; the mites under three must be abandoned to starvation, for there will not be enough food to go round if these are included.” 

and it is commented, “It has been necessary deliberately to select which children shall be saved and which must be left to die.”

Those who have with such cool effrontery declared that Socialism could not feed her populations have here something to think about. The present system, with all its wonderfully fertile means of production, is helpless to prevent catastrophes of such dimensions of horror as no act of nature within human knowledge has ever equalled—nay, it is not merely that it is unable to prevent them: it produces them.

How utterly helpless the system is to cope with its own products is vividly shown by two other statements in the heart-rending appeal. “Our docks are choked with food," it says. “Food is ready, clothing is ready.” That is the first statement. “I am convinced that Central Europe is in danger of a famine that may involve all nations in a common ruin,” Dr. Arthur Guttery is reported to have stated. So, though there are ample means at hand to save these starving people, and though their misery is the concern of all other nations inasmuch as it is a standing menace of disaster, even to ruin, to all other nations, because those means are the property of the few instead of being the property of society, nothing can be done. Here the accumulated stocks of mutton cause the Government embarrassment, so that they are compelled to lower the price in order to induce people to eat more freely of it; there men, women and children are dying in thousands, and threatening to scourge the world with epidemic, for want of that very surplus mutton—yet this accursed system has no other solution to the problem than private charity, which really is no solution at all.

There is another side to the question which should disturb the complacency of those who regard themselves as so detached from this great tragedy as to be not greatly concerned. Only three short years ago it needed but a slight turning of the fortunes of war to have brought this awful calamity upon the mothers and fathers and children of this land. And more, it may yet be the experience of those now living in this country to find their food supply cut off by foreign powers. A comparatively weak naval force, operating in the wide ocean spaces, could do it, and capitalism shows itself capable, in the struggle for markets, of condemning rival nations to death.

"Lost, Stolen, or Strayed" — An Intellectual. (1920)

Pamphlet Review from the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Socialism and the Labour Party,” by Bernard Shaw. National Guilds League Lecture at Kingsway Hall, London, on Jan. 29th, 1920. A Supplement to the "New Commonwealth.” Price 2d.

In dealing with reformers of any kind it is difficult to sort the wheat—what little there is of it—from the chaff in which it is buried.

The above is an excellent instance of this truism. Here we find the usual pot-pourri of good horse-sense and nonsense.

The lecturer says 

    “. . .  in all my experience almost all the opposition which reformers meet with arises not really from any particular objection which people have to the reformer’s plan; but from their extraordinary ignorance of the existing state of things in which they themselves live, which they often firmly believe does realise the plan of the reformer as far as it is humanly possible for it to be realised.”

He does not say anything about the revolutionist; however, apparently it would be unreasonable to expect an individual of the “super"-intellectual calibre of the one and only George Bernard Shaw of that ilk to appreciate the difference.

Shaw then makes an appeal—in the main really good—for unity among the robbed class against the robbers. Like most of his “wheat,” it is much too long to quote.

We now come to a fine homily on capitalist honour—although, as might be expected, the lecturer concludes it with an error in which he completely gives away the case for Nationalisation and Municipalisation. This will be dealt with later.

The error referred to is in the statement that “The production of wealth became a matter of the organisation of labour, and that was done by comparatively vulgar persons belonging to what is called the ‘middle-class.’ ”

The lecturer would doubtless be surprised if he were told that there is no middle class. The “organisation of labour” is carried on entirely by the working class, from the managing director to the office-boy.

There was a period in early capitalism when individual owners of the means of production conducted their various businesses themselves. They were called “Captains of Industry.” It would possibly be correct to call these people the middle class. But to-day the “Captains of Industry” have by the inexorable march of economic development been forced down into the ranks of the proletariat, and the modern "Captains of Industry” are the salaried servants —wage slaves of absentee shareholders. These shareholders can be dispensed with at any time that the workers make up their minds to get on with it. So we say, and challenge denial from any quarter, that there is no middle class.

We are told, “if you give a man £50, £100, or £1,000 a day—and that is the sort of income people have nowadays—you can see that then money saves itself." Ha! Ha! Ha! He further defines capital as “saved up money.” This sort of tripe one expects from an "intellectual.” But there—!

If one puts a penny away how long will it be before that penny becomes more? On Shaw's argument it should not take us long to raise that £1,000.

This epistle is written under the title “'Lost, Stolen, or Strayed ’—An Intellectual,” and now we come to the point of the title, for if Mr. Shaw is to be taken seriously one can only judge his sincerity at the cost of his intelligence.

After showing how the “old limited aristocracy” retired from business, i.e., that of exploiting the workers, and describing the birth of the “plutocracy” he says: “A career is open to the talented, and society is open to the rich. The particular talent to which a career is open is that of getting as much money as possible out of other people's pockets and putting it into your own.”

He goes on, “and most Socialist Societies and a good many eccentric philanthropists here and there, want to turn their backs on this particular principle. They want to stop robbing. They want to go in for general co-operation for the good of the community, in short, for Socialism. Is there any likelihood, any sign, of the formation of a party in this country which will absolutely throw over the idea of robbery and go in for co-operative and common production for the benefit of the whole country? ” And so on ad lib.

Note the muddle our “intellectual” has got into! He says “most Socialist Societies” want to stop robbery, and in practically the same sentence asks if there is any sign of the formation of such a party!

We are “bored stiff” by a long tirade from Mr. Shaw in which he, instead of showing the true working-class position, endeavours to set one section of the proletariat against the rest by discussing the degree of utility of the respective services performed by them. He shows how some are engaged in the actual production of the essentials for human existence, while others are merely domestic servants or even lawyers or doctors. There is one section which ho does not refer to—apparently for personal reasons— but I will mention it for him. It is the dramatists, actors, and the theatrical profession generally. But after all, what does it matter? They are ALL members of the working class, getting their living by the sale of their labour-power.

The pet theory held by Bernard Shaw and his colleagues of the Fabian Society and the Labour Party is that of Nationalisation. It is stated above that Mr, Shaw gives away the case for Nationalisation. I will now produce the evidence from the lecture which is the subject of this criticism.

The lecturer states, and rightly too, that the “old-fashioned robber baron . . .  has largely passed away, and what remains of him —and this is very important—is a tremendous public opinion that it is every man’s duty to fight for his country, meaning the robber class for which his country exists."

That is to say that when people speak of the country, or the nation, they mean the exploiting class. Therefore when anything is nationalised all that has happened is that the property which has been nationalised has been transferred from the ownership of a few individual members, or maybe groups of members called companies, etc. of the capitalist class to the collective ownership of the whole of that class.

There is one point in the lecture that should have been dealt with before.

We are told that Lenin “introduced 'compulsory labour"' into Russia. This has no terror for us, for we have become hardened to it by long experience. But apparently what Lenin did was to introduce compulsory labour, not for the workers, for they had been the subjects of compulsory labour all their lives, but for the exploiting class, who had never done any work previously.

And now I think that sufficient evidence has been produced to show that the person referred to in the title of this article ‘is Mr. George Bernard Shaw, who is the “Intellectual” who is “lost, stolen, or strayed.” 

H. E. Hutchins