Socialists and Working Class Unity (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

An appeal has recently been sent out by the Communist International for a “United Front” of the working class against “Fascism" and in defence of working class standards of living and a number of other objects. This has been taken up readily by the I.L.P., but the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress have rejected the proposals of the I.L.P. and the Communist Party for joint action. Before explaining the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain towards unity proposals, it is worth while observing the conditions which have given rise to a revival of the idea of the “United Front." The plan is not new. On the contrary, the past half-century has witnessed innumerable attempts to form one united organisation into which the various parties calling themselves Labour or Socialist could merge. We are, however, interested at the moment only with the movement organised just 11 years ago. The circumstances are strikingly similar to those of to-day. The world is sunk in a serious economic crisis—as it also was in 1921-22. Hitler has just risen to power and has demonstrated the incapacity and utter impotence of the Social Democrats and the Communist Party in face of a situation which they professed to be able to tackle. In 1921 and 1922 Mussolini was strengthening his forces and subsequently, in October, 1922, came to power, showing, just as Hitler has shown, that the Labour and Communist parties were unable to offer any serious opposition. Again, in 1921, as at present, Russia was in the throes of a serious internal economic crisis. In 1921 this crisis, aggravated by the famine, compelled Lenin to introduce the New Economic Policy, an open avowal of Russia’s inability to do without capitalism. (August, 1921.) Then, as now, the Communist International and the Communist parties were under the orders of the Russian Government, and the latter instructed them to open up the “United Front” campaign in the belief that it would strengthen the position of the Russian Government at home and abroad.

So in March, 1922, after roundly abusing the Labour parties for two years, the Communist Party was prepared to meet them, join up with them, accept their rules and programme, and tell the workers to vote for those whom hitherto it had described as tools of capitalism. Now the cry of unity is being revived and we are again asked to justify our definite and absolute refusal to have anything whatever to do with it.

It is not that the S.P.G.B. is opposed to unity or that we like segregation for its own sake. On the contrary, it is our claim that only through Socialism will it ultimately be possible to unite the human race by ridding the world of the economic barriers which divide class from class and nation from nation.

Nor are we opposed to unity of the working class for the purpose of achieving Socialism, for we know full well that Socialism can only be achieved when at least a majority of the working class are prepared to join together to bring it about. But unity, to be real and useful, must have a common purpose and common basis, and there can be no common basis for unity between the S.P.G.B. on the one hand and the Communist and Labour parties on the other. When Socialist unity becomes a possibility our Declaration of Principles shows the basis on which alone it can be achieved. It declares the object that Socialists have in view, and in general terms, the means by which power for Socialism can be reached. It is not sectarian, but it is also not so loose that it will cover the vague lack of principle of the sentimental dreamer who has not grasped the essentials of capitalism and of social development.

Let us be more specific. Why will the S.P.G.B. not join up with the Labour Party or the Communist Party? The principal objection the Socialist has to the Labour programme is that it has not a Socialist objective at all. Socialism means the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution. In spite of a superficial similarity of words, the Labour Party is not aiming at common ownership, but at State control with private owners. The capitalist class are not, according to the Labour Party, to be dispossessed, but are to remain as a property owning class, but are to be deprived of their immediate control over the management of industry. The country is to remain the same in all essentials. There will still be a working class and a class living on property incomes. Goods will still be produced for sale and profit making, but the management will be in the hands of a series of so-called public utility corporations, directed by highly-paid business men like Lord Ashfield. This is a grotesque representation of Socialism. It is capitalism in a thin disguise. It solves no working class problem. It is not Socialism and as such does not bring Socialism one day nearer. Socialists do not, and cannot, desert all their Socialist principles in order to create a fictitious unity behind such a facade of illusion.

Now for the Communists. It is necessary here to insist on a frank recognition of what the Communists really stand for. It is their honest conviction that mass strikes and demonstrations, leading on to street fighting and civil war are the means, and the only means, to Socialism. We reject that in its entirety; not only is it not the best means, it is not a means at all. Civil war and its corollary, the dictatorship of the Communist Party (misnamed in Russia the dictatorship of the working class), are not the soil out of which Socialism, or even a Socialist movement, will spring. They hold out no prospect for the future and they are full of deadly damage to the working class in the present.

For it is the criminal irresponsibility and dangerous civil war talk of the Communists which, feeding on the workers’ disillusionment with the openly capitalist and the Labour Parties, fosters the development of Mussolinis and Hitlers.

The Communists talk ignorantly of the work ing class being tyrannised over by a Hitler or Mussolini. They forget two things of vital importance. The first is that every riot and street fight organised by them, every bluffing appeal to arms, helps to create the conditions of violence and panic out of which the so-called Fascist movements rise to power. The second fact they forget is that their violent talk and actions are directly, and indirectly, harmful to the Socialist movement, for they drive vast numbers of the working class over to the side of the parties of violent suppression. If it is impossible for Trade Unions and Socialist organisations (as well as Communist and Labour organisations) to function in Italy, Germany and elsewhere, the Communists are largely responsible. It is they who for years prepared the ground for Mussolini and Hitler by planning attempts at the seizure of power by armed minorities.

Whatever the intentions of the Communists may be, they are enemies of the working class movement.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain lays emphasis on the fact that it is a movement fundamentally different from the Labour parties and from the Communist parties.

We come before the working class with a reasoned explanation of the economic ills of the world, and with a reasoned plan for placing the social system on a new basis in keeping with the development of man’s productive forces.

We appeal to the working class to understand and act upon Socialist principles. We preach that the method of achieving Socialism is by constitutional, majority, control of the political machinery through the vote.

We come not to create chaos and civil war, but to bring order to a disordered world.

We are not political gangsters threatening the lives or well-being of any individual. We are not bent on revenge, or on penalising our political opponents or the members of the propertied class. While it is necessary that the means of production shall be brought under social ownership and control, Socialism will offer to the whole community—ex-capitalists included—the comfort and security which rational use of modern productive forces renders possible.

Indeed, it is our boast that the increasing insecurity of life under capitalism and the chaotic conditions at home and abroad will, in time, drive more and more capitalists, as well as the workers, to recognise that the Socialist movement is the only guarantee of ordered development for society as a whole.

Our answer to appeals for unity is, therefore, what it has always been. The S.P.G.B. is always prepared to welcome Socialists to join us on the basis of our Declaration of Principles, which points the only road to Socialism. Never, under any circumstances, are we prepared to unite with those who—however well-meaningly—are travelling to a different objective or who preach a policy of civil war, which, if acted upon, destroys all present hope of Socialist propaganda and organisation and delays progress towards emancipation.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Douglas Scheme pt.1 (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bursting the bubble

An interesting development since the war has been the rise of the “Social Credit” movement led by Major Douglas. Its interest for Socialists arises partly from the fact that it stands in the way of Socialist propaganda and prevents many workers (particularly the younger ones) from going to the trouble of studying Socialism, and partly from the peculiar features of the movement, features interesting in themselves. Here we have a political movement which almost completely ignores many of the ordinary methods of political parties. Instead of trying to capture Parliamentary seats and build up a party machine of its own, it relies on permeating the members of other parties. Its basis is not a long programme of immediate aims tacked on to a vague philosophy, as is usual with capitalist political parties, but a straightforward demand for an apparently simple, but fundamental, change in the monetary system. It does not change with every change in the political and industrial situation, but maintains a high degree of consistency. It is based on an economic theory which almost every economist and practising banker describes as absurd, yet it holds its own and goes on gathering adherents. It has produced a considerable body of books and periodical literature, and is hotly debated in trade union branches and many political organisations. It has so far reached recognition that Major Douglas was invited to give evidence before the Committee on Finance and Industry (MacMillan Committee). In studying the Douglas movement it is, therefore, necessary not only to decide whether the economist, Mr. D. H. Robertson, is correct when he says that ” the arguments of Major Douglas …. are founded on a fallacy so crude that, until one has looked into them for oneself, it is almost impossible to believe that they can really have been put forward,” but also to explain how it happens that a theory so open to question has been able to win support.

One aspect of the second question can be dealt with right away, without going deeply into the theory at all. In essence, Major Douglas says that all the evils of trade depression, unemployment and poverty are caused by a “kink” in the monetary system, which results in a permanent shortage of purchasing power. He says that production of goods of all kinds could be easily and almost immediately increased to an enormous extent if it were not for the fact that this “kink” prevents the mass of the population from being able to buy the goods. By a simple correction of the defect in the monetary system, poverty could at once be abolished. That is the hope Major Douglas holds out. It is its simplicity and all-embracingness which makes it so attractive.

In times of economic disturbance and political unrest all those people who find their old mental landmarks shifting or overthrown, and who cannot themselves cut a path through the tangle, are desperately anxious to discover new guides, who will lead them to safety. Major Douglas’s scheme has everything to recommend it from this point of view. The Liberal Party has ceased to be effective since the war. The Labour Party has been a failure in office and its old propaganda for nationalisation has had to be discarded without anything so simple and superficially attractive to take its place. Unemployment has been heavy and persistent and no Government has frankly faced the issue. The prewar days of two big political parties, with more or less clearly defined policies, have gone, and we now have a situation in which the old lines of cleavage have largely disappeared. It is hard nowadays to tell what programme exactly the various parties stand for.

The economists are in as complete a muddle as the politicians. They produce their theories and explanations for the bewilderment of students, and the ordinary man in the street, who knows nothing of nice points of theory, sees only that the economists are hopelessly disagreed among themselves even about the elements of their subject; that their explanations and forecasts time and time again have been shown to be false; and that their attempts to advise and guide the politicians have had no obvious effect on the solution of the world’s great problems.

Into this situation comes Major Douglas with a staggeringly simple proposition. Solve the problem of trade depression and poverty by distributing purchasing power free. Usher in the age of plenty !

The proposal is attractive to the worker who is unemployed; to the small manufacturer or shopkeeper who believes that but for the alleged dominance of the banks over industry he could hold his own in competition with the combines; and to the struggling professional man who sees that his supposed superior knowledge and training give no guarantee of a steady and comfortable livelihood. One merit the theory has in the eyes of its adherents is that it saves them from the necessity of making themselves familiar with the theories of the recognised economists. If, as Douglas says, all the economists (including Marx) have failed to notice the defect alleged to exist, and if this defect is of vital importance then why waste time studying economic textbooks ?

With all these advantages it is not surprising that the theory of Major Douglas has made considerable headway and is known not only in England, but in the Dominions and U.S.A., where energetic groups carry on propaganda on its behalf.

A brief reference has already been made to the nature of the theory. Before going into details and analysing it a digression must be made in order to explain the position the banks and the money system occupy in the capitalist world. Without some such background all discussion of the Douglas proposition will be useless.

The Economic Basis

The first point to notice is that beneath all the processes of buying and selling, banking and commercial operations, lies the private ownership and control of the physical means of life. This is so obvious that it ought not to need mentioning, but it is often overlooked in discussions about currency and finance. Human beings need food, clothing and shelter, recreation and amusements. These things are provided by the application of human labour to the land, raw materials, and the instruments of production and distribution, but the individuals whose labour-power produces the wealth do not own it. All the land and raw materials and all the products are privately owned by individual capitalists or companies. The typical features of capitalist production are, then, the existence on the one hand of a large number of workers who get their living by selling their mental and physical energies for a wage or a salary, and, on the other hand, a relatively small number of capitalist investors who get their living by owning property and employing workers to use that property for the production of wealth. With their wages and salaries the workers can buy part of the wealth produced, and the balance remains in the possession of the capitalists. The workers consume the greater part of their share immediately, by eating food, by wearing out their clothes, and so on, while the capitalists, through the abundance of their wealth, are able to “save” a considerable part of it; that is to say, they take it not in the form of articles for personal consumption, but in the form of factories, machinery, etc., and all the various forms of additions to the existing stock of “means of production and distribution.”

If we ignore for the moment the whole of the elaborate machinery of buying and selling, banking, etc., and look only at the main underlying physical features of capitalism, what we see is millions of workers producing and distributing the articles needed to sustain life, and working under the control of the capitalists who own the land, factories, railways, etc. The articles produced can be divided into three classes: (1) Articles needed for the subsistence of the workers (mainly necessities); (2) Articles for the subsistence of the propertied class, both necessities and luxuries; and (3) Articles needed for the repair and extension of existing means of production and distribution (factories, railways, etc.) and the erection of new kinds of means of production and distribution as new needs arise and are satisfied.

But, in fact, the above picture is over-simplified because capitalists and workers are not two closely organised world classes acting as two single units, but are composed of millions of separate individuals and groups acting on their own. If they were two single units, each represented by a responsible authority, we could imagine them planning production and distribution so that only so much of each kind of wealth is produced as is needed, and so that the responsible authority for each class divides the articles among its members as required. Actually the process is carried out with the assistance of the money system. Each capitalist firm produces goods of one or a few kinds (say, boots) and sells them for money. The money is used to pay for the costs of manufacture, raw materials, wages, profits, etc., and the individuals who receive the money spend it to buy goods of various kinds. The final effect arrived at by this money process is at bottom the exchange of commodities. Each individual who owns commodities goes into the market and effects an exchange, giving one kind of goods and receiving another kind or kinds. The worker goes into the market with labour power to sell. He receives wages and uses them to buy bread, clothes, etc.

The advantage of the money system over the direct exchange of goods—barter—is that simple barter is faced with the difficulty that the individual who brings boots to the market may not want to receive the articles brought into the market by the man who wants the boots. Money, on the other hand, is the “universal equivalent.” He who has money can, if he has sufficient of it, buy any of the thousands of kinds of articles offered for sale. Consequently, the use of money as a medium of exchange is a great advance on systems of barter. But it must not be forgotten that the various substances which have been used as money (in modern times silver or gold) have been able to occupy that position only because they were like every other article in the all-important characteristic that they possessed value, while in addition gold and silver have qualities of durability and scarcity which make them most suitable for use as money. (The use of banknotes to represent certain quantities of gold or silver and to circulate in place of coins does not raise any issue which needs to be gone into at this stage.)

The values of articles are not accidental or fixed by the free choice of the owners of them. Value is a relationship between the various articles depending upon the amount of labour required in their production. Leaving aside various complicating features we can say that a certain weight of gold has the same value as a certain weight of wheat, or a certain number of razor blades, because the labour required to produce each of these three quantities is the same.

We see, then, that the payment of a sum of money by one person to another is, in effect, a way of transferring command over goods from one person to another.

The Banking System

The origin of the banking system was the practice of depositing money for safe keeping with the goldsmiths and paying them for this service. The goldsmiths subsequently adopted the practice of paying interest to the depositor, and they re-lent the money at a higher rate of interest to a borrower. This was only an indirect way of the depositor himself lending his money at interest to the borrower. Whether the goldsmith acted as intermediary or whether the lending was done directly the general effect was the same, i.e., the owner of the money (representing a command over goods) was lending it to a borrower, who would thus, for a specified time, have at his disposal the means of buying goods. It was not an act of ” creating ” goods or values, but only of lending them, the banks being intermediaries between lenders and borrowers.

Fundamentally, the same process underlies the modern banking and credit system. People who deposit cash and cheques in the banks are, in effect, placing at the disposal of the banks a command over goods, expressed as a certain sum of money. The banks pay to the depositor a fluctuating rate of interest on most of the deposits, and place the deposits at the disposal of other persons and companies who wish to borrow. Again, it is, in effect, a process of transferring the command over goods from the saving section to the borrowing section. As the banks need security for their loans to industry the borrower in fact (or in effect) pledges his factory, his stock-in-trade, etc. The bank is just like a pawnbroker, except that the bank largely works on borrowed money. The banks are intermediaries between one set of property owners and another set. The borrowers pay interest to the banks, who pay a smaller or no interest to the lenders. The whole of the interest comes ultimately out of the productive process. The capitalist who borrows from the banks and sets production in motion is able to do so and to meet all his expenses and pay profit to shareholders and interest to the banks, because the values produced by his employees are greater than the values consumed in the process (including the values consumed in the maintenance of the workers, their wages). The base of the pyramid of capitalist industry is the workers (including, of course, the so-called brain workers) who produce values which cover all the costs of production, and cover wages and then still leave a surplus to be divided among the landowning capitalist, the industrial-capitalist, and the money-lending capitalist in the form of rent, profit and interest.

That is a brief outline of the underlying framework of capitalist production, but Major Douglas and others who think like him cannot see this framework. All they can see is a confusing series of effects and appearances, confusing only because the underlying causes are not understood.

In a further article, the origin and nature of the Douglas theory will be explained.

Edgar Hardcastle

(To be continued)

Russia: The Land That Did Not Abolish Unemployment (1933)

Editorial from the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up to 1930 the existence of a large body of unemployed was officially admitted by the Russian Government, and particulars of the numbers out of work and of the small relief payments made to them were published in the Soviet Union Year Books. Then, in 1930, it was claimed that the building of factories and railroads, etc., had absorbed the unemployed workers and had, in fact, created a scarcity. Communists blazoned forth the tidings that Russia was “ the land without unemployment.” Superficial observers like Lord Passfield and G. B. Shaw were so overjoyed when they found a government trying to run capitalism on Fabian “strait-jacket” principles that they accepted the Russian claim and hastened back to tell Europe and America how to solve their problems by copying the Bolshevists. The S.P.G.B. was, it seems, entirely alone in refusing to accept the claim. We did not deny that Russia, or any other capitalist country, could show a comparatively small amount of unemployment during a period of great capital expansion. In that respect, Russia's experience is one which every country has shared at some time or other. What we did deny was that Russia could permanently escape the consequences of being part and parcel of world capitalism. Just as in 1918 the S.P.G.B. pointed out that economic conditions and the backwardness of the population utterly ruled out any possibility of Socialism being established in Russia at that time, or in the near future, so in 1930 we said with equal certainty that the world crisis would, in due course, upset the attempt at segregating Russian capitalism from the rest of the world. Russia could not and cannot do without the outside world. Hence, the impossibility of carrying out planned production and distribution. The Bolshevists planned to export certain commodities (oil, for example) and to import machinery, trained engineers, etc. The drastic fall in raw material prices and the curtailment of purchases of Russian exports inevitably deranged the plans. Faced with the need to meet its obligations abroad, the Russian Government had to curtail imports and cut its expenditure. The method followed was the usual one of reducing staffs. In February (see Times, February 26th) orders were issued for the dismissal of large numbers of employees in the State enterprises, and for the strict enforcement of the rule that wages must not exceed the planned total amount. The result has been an increase in the number of unemployed till it has reached large figures—how large it is difficult to say in the absence of official statistics. The correspondent in Russia of the Manchester Guardian (March 29th) states that the recently introduced Passport System , (under which nobody is allowed to live in Moscow and other big cities without a passport) had already resulted in 750,000 people being refused passports in Moscow alone, with the probability that the figure would rise to 1,000,000. The correspondent says that passports are refused to all unemployed persons, but he does not know how many of the 750,000 are unemployed, beyond the statement that in the towns the number of unemployed is "considerable.” For those driven out of the towns the prospect, he says, is starvation, “since everyone knows that outside the cities famine conditions prevail.”

Mr. Gareth Jones, formerly foreign adviser to Mr. Lloyd George, who has just returned from an extended tour of investigation, states that the economy drive in the factories has often resulted in the dismissal of from 25 per cent. to 40 per cent. of the staffs. (Daily Express, April 8th.) There has, so far, been no re-introduction of unemployment pay, but doubtless Russia will, sooner or later, have to make some provision for its "industrial reserve army of unemployed,” just like the other capitalist countries.

So Russia joins the long line of countries on behalf of which, at different times, it has been claimed that unemployment has been abolished without abolishing capitalism: Canada and Australia, France, Italy, America, the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and now Russia. Can we now hope that the I.L.P., the Communists and the Labour Party will be unable to put over any more hoaxes of this kind?

Socialism Inevitable (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Engels wrote to the effect that the establishment of Socialism would mean the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom he was not guilty of a mere rhetorical flourish. He was expressing a profound sociological truth. The fact that under Socialism social forces will be under man’s control to an extent never previously reached, and further, that this would be the inevitable result of the development of society, as the dissolution of Capitalist society is mainly a question of time, plus the action and interaction of social forces in their entirety. 

Let us explain, in a more general way, our meaning.

The continuity with which the presence and pressure of adverse social conditions has pervaded human society is such that the idea of moulding human association to exclude privation and want impresses some people as being the product of a sentimental imagination. This arbitrary assumption is wholly wrong. The idea in question is the result of a logical deduction made after a study of the social history of mankind, and considerably animated by the pressure of the effects of capitalism upon us as members of the working class.

The socialist philosophy of life is born and nourished by the knowledge that capitalism can never be made to function in the interest of those who produce the means of living, or even of making the essential needs of social life its primary concern. This view may be challenged on the ground that capitalism is a social system and, as such, must concern itself with social needs.

We may speak of capitalist society as a social order, as one that has evolved from other and different forms of social life, but our reason for doing so is that its structure has a basis from which certain more or less regular and regulated economic, political, legal and sex[ relationships arise. It is, therefore, known in the science of sociology as a social order.

Since the breakdown of tribal society, under which private property had little or no meaning as a social status, social convulsions and revolutions have been experienced through which one form of class rule has superseded another. But whilst each ruling class has fought for social control in order to remove the obstacles that impede its further development, the social organisation following the conquest of power is the result of normal development and not the conscious design of the ruling class in question. Economic and political development has continued without those who have gained most from it being aware of the nature of the process.

Society to-day has an orderly appearance, but the anarchic character of its foundations produces effects that are constantly felt. At the very basis of this social system, in the course of the production and distribution of its wealth, there exists, despite the social form which production takes, a considerable degree of anarchy among those under whose “guidance” the process of production and distribution is carried on. The preservation of class rule compels a measure of co-ordination among the rulers in order to conserve the institution of private property, but in the quest for enrichment the scramble between capitalists is carried on with an intensity that bears comparison with the struggle for life in the animal kingdom.

In this scramble for wealth the machinery of production is overworked and the world becomes flooded with goods which the producing class cannot obtain in sufficiency and the owning class cannot dispose of at a profit. Where this condition obtains wealth is often destroyed instead of being consumed, because consumption was not the underlying purpose of its production.

Looking at the matter superficially one might take it for granted that the needs of society as a whole would be the first concern, but ,this is not sq in class society. Were it really so, the trash that passes under the name of human requirements would never be placed at our disposal.

It is true that the wealth produced in capitalist society has a use-value, but such use-value as it may have is a mere incident to its existence. It is not for its usefulness that it is produced, but for its capacity to bring profit to the capitalists. No profit, or ultimate prospect of profit, then no production is permissible.

In thus criticising capital’s mode of activity, we socialists imply nothing of moral significance. We are too well aware that things cannot be different from what they are as far as the main purpose of capitalism is concerned. Our case is strengthened, not weakened, by the recognition of the fact that business in capitalist society cannot be run without profit. But we are concerned with the consequences which flow from the quest for profit, because, as workers, we know our exploitation is the source from which profit is derived, and hence is inseparable from capital’s existence. And this brings us to a lesson from another side of the effects of capitalism.

It is estimated that approximately thirty millions of people throughout the world are unemployed, and not even the most daring of our social optimists can reasonably point to the probability of these millions being entirely absorbed in a “trade revival.”

Were it not for the tragic side of this feature of social development, it would be possible to share some sensation of humour from the irony of the situation. Here is the vital force of capital’s organism, the source which gives it life and growth, a mass of human labour power rendered stagnant because of the inability of those who normally profit from its use to set it in motion. At the behest of the capitalists more has been produced than is sufficient to satisfy what the economists call the effective demand of the market. Therefore, workers must be unemployed, with their already meagre means stinted still further.

It is idle to insist that the conditions so far referred to arise from such a social disturbance as the late European war, or that they are occasioned by the particular government in office at any given time. Their existence is independent of any political administration, and would be here though the late war had never been. Wars and policies of governments may aggravate such conditions, but they do not cause them to exist. Given the condition that an individual or a class has the right and power to own the land, mines, mills, factories, and other means of obtaining those things which we need to live, and the whole of the conditions referred to follow as an inevitable consequence. Class ownership of the means of life, it cannot be too often stated, is the root cause of poverty, unemployment, wars and such-like social anomalies.

The class division in modern society tends to become wider and wider as time goes on, which no amount of social “amelioration” can stay. So much so that world economic conferences are now a generally accepted fact in capitalist psychology. Many who previously accepted the doctrine of no interference or intervention in matters of finance and industry by the State, now gladly welcome its assistance. Surely this must be taken as a sign of the trend of events, when the capitalists employ their State machine more and more to check the havoc wrought by their own machinations.

Yet these things were all seen by thinkers long before they reached their present dimensions; in fact, whilst they were yet in their infancy.

In the early part of the 19th century, Charles Fourier, an eminent French historian and sociologist, and one of the early utopian socialists, predicted that the unbridled competition of his time (immediately after the French Revolution of 1789) must result in great concentration of the means of production in the hands of a few. He saw, also, the growth of one of civilisation’s greatest contradictions, poverty “born of superabundance itself.” Fourier proved to be a forerunner of a writer on a similar theme, who came a few decades later and had the added advantage of surveying a more developed capitalism, namely, Karl Marx. It was he who first scientifically diagnosed the source of the economic ailments of mankind, and correctly exposed the process by which the working class is exploited. The mechanisation of industry (I almost said, of life itself) Marx saw with the full force of its consequences. But he did not blame the machine or its inventor. With the clear insight of the social scientist he saw that in the form of its ownership, together with the same form of ownership in all the means of production, lay the cause of the trouble.

Since Marx wrote, the ever-increasing development of machinery has proceeded apace, spreading misery among the producers throughout the entire capitalist world, and making more difficult the problem of finding markets.

What, then, of the future of human society? Are we to relapse into a state akin to barbarism, which some fear? or is society to move forward along the path marked out for it by the laws of social development ?

In the light of the lessons of history, we socialists declare for the latter course, not merely on the ground of the wish being father to the thought, but because, as indicated above, history shows that when any given form of society reaches a stage where further development is hampered, those whose interest it is to take the step for advancement, invariably do so; even though the immediate consequences of the act may serve as a deterrent.

It is a fact becoming demonstrably clearer as time proceeds that capitalism has outgrown its usefulness to humanity, and stands as a barrier to social advancement. How this increasingly affects certain sections of the capitalist class itself, causing them to cry out for world organisation, the cancellation of war debts, and the thousand and one other nostrums now proposed for the rehabilitation of capitalism, is no concern of ours or the working class in general. Our only concern is the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism.

The workers are denied the possibility of enjoying the fruits of their labour, as they are hampered in sharing the real benefits bequeathed to society by all past history. It is they whom social laws have selected to bring the next stage in the development of society.

The generalisation of Frederick Engels, with which we opened this article will then be an accomplished fact. The subjection of the powers of production to social control and regulation through Socialism will likewise vindicate the words of Marx, who declared of the capitalist thus: —

  “Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers of society, and creates those material conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle.”

Robert Reynolds

Our Annual Conference (1933)

Party News from the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Friday and Saturday, April 14th and 15th, was held the 29th Annual Conference of the S.P.G.B. to discuss, in the light of past experience, our propaganda plans for the future.

It was reported that the growth in membership had not been so rapid in 1932 as in the previous year; but the financial statement showed a position of solvency, with a definitely larger turnover. There was an increase in the number of outdoor and indoor propaganda meetings, in spite of the difficulty of keeping the very important study classes going; and proposals went forward for improving the general layout of the Socialist Standard, which was recently enlarged. Contact has been maintained with foreign sympathisers and comrade parties in Australia, New Zealand, U.S.A., and Canada. The urgent need for full-time party officers meets with the difficulty of providing the funds in a party whose income can come only from working-class pockets. Nevertheless, there is cause for optimism in the consistent steady increase in numbers and activities which each succeeding conference reveals.

The Annual Conference is something more, however, than a review of past activities; something more than a source of encouragement to old members and of instruction to new ones. It is a perennial demonstration of the meaning of organisation for Socialism, of the principle that “the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself."

Just as the S.P.G.B., unlike other parties, is not a battle-ground of divergent views and rival personalities, but an organisation whose consistency of action flows spontaneously from its singleness of aim, and which is held together, not by a superimposed machinery of discipline, but by community of purpose, so our conference lacks characteristic features of non-Socialistic party conferences —the pious thumb-twiddling, the back-scratching and back-biting. Here is no eulogising of some leaders, and denunciation of others: for the Socialist Party has no leaders at all. Leaders cannot arise in a party whose members subscribe to the one straight issue of Socialism, based on a clear declaration of principles. For as each knows what is aimed at and what must be done to get it, there is no one to be led.

The democratic organisation of the S.P.G.B. is not an accident, but is the natural offspring of its unique singleness of object and clarity of principles. Only a militant organisation of revolutionary Socialists, an organisation democratically controlled at all times and on all matters by the membership, can accomplish the revolutionary act which shall abolish the class ownership of the means of living and establish the common ownership and democratic control of those means, in the interest of the whole community.

Frank Evans

The Meaning of Exploitation (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reports often appear in newspapers of companies formed to “exploit” lands, mines, oilfields and so forth. What does this signify ? When the word “exploit” or "exploitation” is used in this or similar ways, what is really meant ?

To exploit is to make use of, but the directors of a company formed to “ exploit ” certain oilbearing territories do not propose merely to use the land in question, nor do the shareholders of the company intend to take any part in the actual work of oil getting. In fact the mass of the shareholders will probably never even see the land from which the oil comes.

Further, the company is not formed for the pleasure of providing oil to a needy world, nor for the vindictiveness of polluting the sea and the air. It has only one purpose—to provide dividends for the holders of shares in the company. It is only because the particular oil wells appear to hold out the promise of being fruitful in this direction that they figure at all in the prospectus of the company. From the same point of view it is immaterial whether the oil be good or bad, Russian, Dutch, or American. The claims of patriotism, religion and humanity take second place before the claims of the purse.

The question that presents itself, then, is why should oil wells be instrumental in producing dividends as well as oil? This brings us to the question of the source of dividends. A glance at the published returns of companies carries the matter a little further. They show us that dividends come out of profits, past or present. But whence come profits ?

As soon as the company is formed work goes rapidly ahead to get the production of oil under way, because until oil is sold no funds flow to the company, apart from loans and what the shareholders provide. When oil is sold over a definite period the difference between all the expenses of getting it and the money produced by its sale represents profit; but we still need to know from whence this profit comes—how it is possible for the production and sale of oil to be the means of also producing profit. The answer is a simple one.

In order to get oil produced, workers as well as oil wells are required. If the workers were to receive in return for their labour the equivalent in value of the oil produced, there would be nothing left for the shareholders of the company—there would be no profit from which to draw dividends. It follows, therefore, that the employees of the company cannot receive a value equivalent to the oil produced.

How are the wages of the company’s workpeople arrived at? Experience tells us. They are paid on the average what it costs them to live and bring up families, regardless of the result in the form of oil due to the application of their energies in the company’s service. This wage may differ according to place and type of worker, but it still remains what it costs the worker to live. For instance, at a meeting of Courtauld's recently it was complained that Japanese competition was seriously affecting the firm on account of Japanese labourers being able to live on smaller wages than their employees.

Whatever the wage of the worker, however, it is far below the value of what he produces, and it is owing to this fact that the investors and directors of the company expect it to prosper and anticipate dividends. It is out of the surplus labour of the oil worker, the labour above the value of his means of existence, that the profit and the dividends of the shareholders will come. An illustration will make the matter plain. If one man can lie in the sun while two others work to provide him and themselves with the food and so forth they need, then the first man is living on the surplus labour of the other two. This, on, a larger scale, is the position of the oil company. It is neither the land nor the oil that is exploited, but the worker. It is he in reality who is made use of by the company.

Exploitation, then, is squeezing from the worker surplus labour. Other things remaining the same, the more surplus labour squeezed from the worker the greater is the exploitation, regardless of the level of wages paid, and the more successful is the company in providing dividends for its shareholders.

It is, therefore, plain that exploitation is the root of all accumulations of wealth by private individuals. At one time it was the exploitation of chattel slaves, at another the exploitation of serfs. In modern times it is the exploitation of wage workers, or, more truly, wage slaves.

With this end in view the earth has been covered with manufacturing centres, and the bulk of its population reduced to beasts of burden, but without the security of livelihood of the latter.

Exploitation has brought into existence the glittering civilisations that have expressed the agony as much as the achievement of man across the centuries. The process will continue until the workers awake to the fact that it is they who produce and distribute the wealth of the world, and that they have no need to carry parasites on their backs to do so. The day the workers arrive at this knowledge exploitation will cease.

Gilmac.

What Stalin Forgot To Mention (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Joseph Stalin delivered a report on the Russian Five-Year Plan to a meeting of the Russian Communist Party in January, 1933, and Modern Books, Ltd., have published it in an attractively got-up 2d. pamphlet. Stalin (or more probably some member of his staff) had the ingenious idea of quoting the leading capitalist newspapers and outstanding figures in the world of capitalist finance and industry as testimony to the success of the plans for industrialising Russia. Looked at from the point of view of publicity the idea was a clever one, but what does it mean when the capitalist chorus sings the praises of Russia? Does a socialist and working-class movement ever expect or receive commendation from the mouthpieces of capitalism? In short, Stalin over-reached himself, and showed up in a clear light the position the Russian Bolshevik politicians have come to occupy, in their own minds, in relation to the capitalists outside Russia. One of the passages of praise for Russia reproduced in the pamphlet is a speech by a prominent banker, Mr. J. Gibson Jarvie, chairman of United Dominions Trust, Ltd., delivered at the City Business Club in Glasgow on October 20th, 1932. Stalin quotes extensively from the speech those passages in which Mr. Jarvie said what an amazing success the Five-Year Plan has been.

Now read the passage that Stalin carefully omitted to quote :

  While Russia might be officially described as the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, and might claim to be a Communist State, nevertheless that country to-day was, unquestionably, practising state capitalism, incorporating a modified form of private capitalism. He felt that as Russia advanced from one Five-Year Plan to another, private capitalism in some form or another would become increasingly strong, but – and this was the point capitalist countries must bear in mind – if she advanced according to plan she must, as a nation, become invulnerable.” (The Times, October 21st, 1932.

In other words, Mr. Jarvie gives a fairly good description of Russia’s social system and the direction in which it is tending, and his fears are the ordinary ones of the capitalist in one country threatened by the competition of another capitalist country. In one thing, however, he is wrong. Capitalism in Russia is no more invulnerable than it is anywhere else. It will produce the same evils and call for the same remedy as capitalism elsewhere, i.e., the organisation of a Socialist movement.

Stalin should take more care how he selects his quotations.

Edgar Hardcastle

What would the S.P.G.B. Do If . . . ? (1933)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A reader sends us the following question: —

In the event of a sudden acceleration of the revolutionary spirit among the masses leading to a strengthening of the Communist Party of Great Britain at a period of capitalist disunion, and the subsequent outbreak of armed revolt, where exactly would the counsels of the S.P.G.B. lead its adherents—to the barricades, in support of the workers' struggle for emancipation; to the “orange box," to prove from dialectical Marxism that it can't be done that way; or to the arm-chairs of the debating room, there to study and collate “contemporary history"?

Reply.

Our correspondent has got himself beautifully tangled up through not making clear to himself what he means by the terms he uses. What, for example, is the meaning we are expected to give to the term “revolutionary spirit"? If it means a sound understanding of the social problem plus a determination to achieve a social revolution by the only possible means, the capture of political power, then an acceleration of the revolutionary spirit, sudden or otherwise, will not lead to a strengthening of the Communist Party, but to a strengthening of the S.P.G.B. As, however, that will not be followed by idiotic attempts at armed revolt the rest of the hypothesis does not arise and need not be answered.

If by “revolutionary spirit" our correspondent means (as no doubt he does) an outburst of “violent reformism," then it may lead to a strengthening of the Communist Party, or the I.L.P., or the Fascist organisations or any number of other reformist organisations prepared to play the silly game of "direct action," “ armed revolt," and so on.

If such a reformist body were able (like Hitler) to rally sufficient reformists to its support, then the administration of capitalism would pass from one set of capitalist politicians to another —and capitalism would be in for another lease of relatively stable life.

If the violent reformists were a minority and attempted armed revolt against those who control the political machinery and the armed forces, then they would get what such people always get —sharp, brutal and bloody suppression.

As such an attempt would be foredoomed to failure and in any event would not be a “struggle for emancipation," but a struggle for reforms, the S.P.G.B. would oppose it in its entirety. The S.P.G.B. has no leaders and no followers, and would not therefore be offering to lead anyone anywhere. Its members being Socialists and knowing that “it can’t be done that way," would naturally go on saying so. We can conceive of no better service to the workers than to tell them in and out of season to beware of the silly sentimentalist or dangerous lunatic who advocates armed revolt and urges the workers to pit their unarmed defencelessness against the armed might of the capitalist State.

Editorial Committee

War and the Workers (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

An indication of what the workers, their wives and children, may expect to go through in the next thieves' quarrel of their capitalist masters is vividly brought home in a manual recently provided for the St. John Ambulance Brigade, and summarised in the Daily Telegraph of December 15th, 1932. Similar training, it is stated, is being given in numerous other countries.

The following precautions have to be taken in the event of an aerial gas attack: —

• Windows to be sealed with putty or paper, and doors covered with woollen material soaked in soapy water.
• All fires to be extinguished and chimneys and ventilators blocked.
• No lights except electric.
• Occupants of rooms, who should have 20 square feet floor space each, to keep quiet and still.
• All suspected of contact with the gas to discard outer clothing and wash well before being admitted to refuge.
• No occupant to leave a sealed room without authority, the key being left outside.
• Rooms to contain many pails of water, soap, paper and pencil, and a red light for signalling in an emergency.
• Victims unavoidably in contact with gas to hold their breath and close their eyes as much as possible.

When the aerial raiders have departed, leaving a trail of death behind them, it may be necessary to purify the streets. “This may necessitate the burning of grass, the sprinkling of roads, earth, and wooden floors perhaps two or three inches deep with a mixture of chloride of lime and earth, sand, sawdust or soot." (Italics ours.)

General Smuts, eleven months earlier, in an address on disarmament at Sheffield University on October 8th, 1931, said even then that the armaments of the world were greater than they were in 1918, and even more so than in 1914. Europe, with the exception of the disarmed powers, was ready for instant war.

He also was under no illusion as to what would happen in the next “war to end war." He said: —

  The armed peace continues in an aggravated form, and, as long at it continues, mankind seems to be marching to some horrible doom.
  Unless a real measure of disarmament puts an end to the armed peace we are making for another cataclysm which will be infinitely worse than the horrors of the Great War.
  It will pay scant attention to armies and navies or to the other paraphernalia of war. It will go straight for the populations and for the immense urban aggregations.
   It will fight with new unheard-of chemical and biological weapons. It will cover the fair land and the great cities with poison and disease germs.
   There will be no escape, not even for the statesmen and the war-makers, and a pall of death will rest over all. Even now the laboratories of three continents are busy with their deadly researches. And in due course some lunatic or criminal will press the button , and the flower of the human race will be trapped and destroyed.—News Chronicle, 9/10/31.

Dealing with armaments, General Smuts said that escape lay along the arduous path of disarmament, which was “the greatest and heaviest task before the League of Nations."

Yet in spite of all the platitudes about disarmament, armaments grow apace. To take the naval side alone, the end of the ten years' battleship holiday is celebrated by the laying down in France of the keel of the battle cruiser Dunquerque (Daily Telegraph, November 16th, 1932). She will be the most powerful battle cruiser yet built with the exception of H.M.S. Hood. She can send hurtling through the air for 23 miles a projectile weighing half a ton. One such cruiser is not deemed to be sufficient, and it is proposed in. due course to build two more Dunquerques. The report further states that it has been semi-officially intimated that Italy will build a “reply" to the Dunquerque. Also, three German pocket battleships are now under construction.

Meantime, the British Government are not lagging behind, and the recent estimates provide an additional £3,093,700 for the navy, and another £1,462,000 for the army.

In the midst of it all, that monument to the hypocrisy of the victors in the last great shambles, the League of Nations, continues its weary way along the path of resolutions, committees, commissions, and reports. Its complete ineffectiveness to stop the settlement of disputes by force of arms was demonstrated long ago in the case of Vilna, and more recently in the case of China and Japan. Evidently the member nations prefer to rely upon their own strength rather than upon the “moral force" of the League.

Seeing that the League of Nations is powerless to prevent wars and equally powerless to bring about any effective disarmament, how can wars be averted?

Briefly, the Socialist case is that all wars by capitalist States are undertaken for the purpose of protecting foreign investments, securing markets for the disposal of the surplus products produced by the workers, and of securing fresh sources of raw material. Judge each war by the result, and it will be seen that this is the result of nearly every war during the last century.

That the workers have nothing to gain as the result of a war, whether the State in which they happen to be born is victor or vanquished, is evident from the state of the labour market in those countries which participated in the last war. In vanquished Germany there are 6,000,000 unemployed workers living on or below the level of bare subsistence, and no one will maintain that in victorious Britain the workers' lot is very much better, or even in that el Dorado, the United States of America.

The Marxian analysis of capitalist production lays bare the cause of all wars,. The worker produces commodities of a far greater value than his wages enable him to buy back. Out of the struggle for this surplus comes the struggle for markets at home and abroad, and with the capitalist development of previously undeveloped countries, tariff walls are erected. The struggle grows keener; finally the tension reaches breaking point, and war is declared.

War is, then, a quarrel between the various sections of the capitalist class over the disposal of the surplus wealth stolen from the workers in the course of their exploitation. It 'is, therefore, a quarrel in which the workers have no concern, and to end it they must remove the cause, i.e., the class ownership of the means of production. This they can do by organising to capture political power from the master class, and to establish a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production—in short, Socialism.

Ramo.

Crime: Its Cause and Cure. (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Times” of 24th February, 1933, quotes a statement by Lt.-Col. W. D. Allan, in the Report of H.M. Inspectors of Constabulary for the year ended 29th September, 1932. He says: —

  During the last few years the police have been confronted with new types of crime which might be termed the shock tactic type well known to everyone, and in addition to this, especially in our large industrial areas, offences against property, with and without violence, have been on the increase. I think this is due to a great extent to unemployment and its consequent results, and it is to be hoped that when trade and employment improve, there will be a corresponding decrease in serious crime.

One would have thought that, having been sufficiently discerning as to realise that crimes against poverty are mainly due to the poverty of those who perpetrate them, he would have endeavoured to find some solution to the poverty problem—some means of abolishing poverty, so as to do away with its natural outcome—crimes against property. Unfortunately, such an investigation does not come within the scope of the gallant colonel's duties, and, apart from the pious hope expressed above, he confines himself to recommending changes in the organisation and distribution of the police force, forgetting that so long as the cause remains untouched, all attempts to combat the resultant effects can necessarily result only in changing the form of those effects.

It may be well here to quote two extracts from a speech made by Sir Herbert Samuel, the then Home Secretary, in the House of Commons, on 15th April, 1932: —

  It was characteristic of the movement of crime that fewer offences were committed by elderly people. That was partly due to the enactment of old age pensions and to the improvement of social services generally, which had lifted above the level of actual penury a great number of persons.
  A second cause in recent years was the economic depression. A chart showed exactly how, as employment rose and fell, crime rose and fell.

(Daily Telegraph, 16/4/32.)

Here we have two competent authorities both practically admitting that the major portion of criminal acts (crimes against property) is caused by poverty.

What, then, can be done to abolish poverty? Is it possible to abolish it within the capitalist system? If the capitalist class give the unemployed an allowance sufficiently above starvation level to deter them from taking the risk of infringing capitalist laws, it might also deter them from taking the risk of working! Hence the tendency to limit unemployment payments. Wherever capitalism exists, the aim is to give the unemployed no more than is sufficient to keep them alive.

Hence the poverty of the working class must have its origin in the system of society itself. This system has its basis in the ownership by one class of the means of production—land, mines, and factories—and the production of goods solely for profit, the workers serving merely as instruments in the mode of production, to be cast on one side when they are no longer wanted. Therefore, to abolish poverty, the capitalist system itself must be abolished.

It is to the interest of the workers to achieve this result. This they can only do by organisation within one party pledged to the overthrow of the capitalist system, and its replacement by a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Such is the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and we invite all those who agree with us to join with us in the common cause.

Ramo.

America and Haiti (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Valuable “inside” evidence of the capitalistic aims at the back of the professedly “humanitarian” intervention in Haiti by the U.S.A. was recently revealed by a gentleman who is not at all likely to overstate his case. We lift the following from the Nation, New York, January 18th, 1933: —

   “That the military forces of the United States are merely 'a glorified bill-collecting agency’ was the declaration of Major-General Smedley D. Butler, U.S.M.C., retired, before a Brooklyn forum, according to the New York Herald-Tribune. He related further that he had been 'canned’ in Haiti because ‘I didn’t want to make the Haitians raise sugar’ for a New York bank. . . . The authorship of this testimony makes it valuable. General Butler served extensively both in Nicaragua and in Haiti. He was reputed to be the roughest of all the treat-’em-rough marine officers. The Nation has long contended that the whole Haitian episode was motivated by the desire of American concessionaires to cash in on their dubious investments.”

No wonder the Japs give a half-veiled sneer when the U.S.A. protests against their intervention in Manchuria in order to make their economic interest secure. The Haitian affair, and those in Nicaragua and Panama were merely Manchurian affairs on a smaller scale as the Japs have been unblushingly bold enough—in defiance of traditional diplomatic “tact”—to openly point out.

R. W. Housley

A May Day Message (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first day of May once had a significance which has now become only a tradition. It was a day of hope and rejoicing at the awakening of Nature from its winter sleep and the promise of bright days and good crops. The wet, dark days of winter were past, and the dry, sunny days of summer were coming, and it was an occasion for fun and frivolity. The festival is old and takes us back to the flowery times of old Greece and Rome. Our forefathers celebrated the day with festivals in the villages with dances round the maypole.

But these are dull times, and our opportunities for gaiety are limited by our toilsome hours providing profit for masters. Yet a pale shadow of these celebrations still drifts about on May Day. Just as the ancient joyous and colourful festivals reflected the spontaneous outburst of less rigid times, so the modern ghost reflects the strictly commercial character of to-day. In the parks beribboned railway vans and the like have a "busman’s holiday.”

The Labour movement celebrates May Day in its own particular way. The first conference of the International Workingmen’s Association adopted a resolution stating that the limitation of the working day was the first step in the emancipation of the working class. When the first conference of the second international met in Paris in 1889 they seized upon this resolution, reaffirmed it, and set aside the first of May in every year for Labour demonstrations in favour of an eight- hour day. Since then the first of May has been haunted by the spirit of reform.

Every year larger and larger processions form up behind banners representing almost every conceivable reform, and, with bunting flying, march to arranged spots where platforms are set up to enable Labour leaders and cranks of different descriptions to rant and rave or discourse sweetly to the enhancing of their own reputations and the satisfaction of masses of discontented workers who have not yet discovered the real source of their discontent and the remedy. The proceedings end with the passing of pious and empty resolutions which do not carry the working-class movement a step further on the road to emancipation.

The association of protests against mere effects of capitalism with the May Day demonstration continues to cloud its proceedings. It expresses the clamourings of hosts of people who have their own little corner of discontent, and sworn enemies unite on the platforms to entertain the large audiences. Nationalists, unemployed, Communists, trade unionists, anti-vivisectionists, labourites and reformers of myriad hues unite in more or less vague protestations against the powers that be— protestations that are utterly futile because there is no effective power to back them up.

Our May Day message is now twenty-eight years old, but it is still the same, and it is still fresh and to the point. The capitalists own the means of production and distribution, and owing to this they are able to keep the worker a toiling slave. Ownership of the means of production and distribution is assured to the capitalists through their control of political power, a control that the worker gives them when he votes them into power at election times. The way to freedom lies through dispossessing the capitalists of the power they wield and the instruments they control. This can only be accomplished by obtaining control of Parliament for the purpose of establishing Socialism. This is the common task of the workers the world over regardless of race or colour. The purpose and the determination necessary are the same on every other day of the year just as much as it is on May Day.

As spring awakens hope let it awaken those who are sunk in apathy to the real promise of the future, and stir them to grapple with the fundamental problems of working-class life.

On this May Day then, as usual, we send forward a message of fraternal greeting to our fellow-workers of all lands, whether they be Jewish or German, Hindu or Russian, white or coloured. We urge them to join with us in the work of overthrowing the power that keeps them in bondage and to refrain from placing trust in ideas of leadership or in vague aspirations that only have the heartbreaking end of disillusion and apathy.

Gilmac.

Socialism and Charity. (1933)

From the May 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

“There is no nobler work than this. It is unthinkable that it should be hampered or curtailed through sheer lack of funds.”

These are the concluding words of an appeal by Kingsley Long in the Daily Herald (February 23rd, 1933) entitled “Mother must be Saved!”

This appeal is for help for the hospitals. Its good work in saving the lives of numbers of women in childbirth is cited as being one direction in which the hospitals have fullest claim upon our sympathies and to which we should respond with financial aid.

What is the Socialist’s attitude towards charities ?

This can best be answered by another question: Why do the workers need charity? Because they have not access to all the things that could give them joyous and healthy lives (the sure preventative of most diseases). Our answer, then, is that all our spare time and money, which is very limited, should be spent on furthering the cause of Socialism, the sure and only cure for all the economic and most other ills which humanity suffers.

The objection to this, of course, will be that while we are waiting for Socialism, humanity still suffers. Whether we continue to devote our time and energy towards getting Socialism, or whether we divert them into charitable channels we shall still have the vast majority of the workers needing immediate help and succour, simply because, as a class whose sole possession is its labour-power, the workers depend upon the sale of that commodity, whether or not they live frugally or plentifully, or in semi-starvation. We have only to look in the daily newspapers to find hundreds of cases of want and necessity, which are a crying disgrace to a so-called civilised community.

The Star (February 18th) calls attention in large black lettering to the ”Ill Fed Mothers of Poorest London.” It is a report prepared by Deptford Public Health Committee. It says: —

It is clear that in the case of families in receipt of public assistance the amount of relief afforded cannot assure its recipients the minimum varied diet recommended by the Ministry of Health. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that there are many homes in which, after the rent is paid and allowance made for heating and clothing, there is an insufficient sum available for food.

Dr. Keith, the Medical Officer for Health, points out that the member of the family who suffers most when there is a shortage of nourishment is usually the mother, and adds: —

The signs of malnutrition are rather insidious. There is a loss of vitality, with mental depression, apathy, due, as the old-fashioned mothers express it, to “poorness of blood.”

Again, in the Daily Herald of March 29th, 1933, there is a paragraph dealing with building with money borrowed at a cheap rate of interest for slum clearance. At the beginning of the paragraph it mentions that the Poor Law Authorities have found that they can only just, by buying wholesale, manage to keep a child for 4s. 8d. in a Poor Law Home.

It then goes on: —

But the slum housewife does not buy wholesale. Nor does she have 4/8 per head for her children alone, apart from.the grown ups, after she has paid her rent. How, then, can she. keep her family in reasonable health when her husband's wage is £2 a week and the rent for the home, to house a family of two adults and five children is 16/- a week. Someone has got to be sacrificed, if the children are to be nourished, and it is usually the mother and the unborn children.

Here, then, we have indisputable examples of some of the causes of the mothers of the working class losing their lives in child-birth, i.e., lack of pre-natal care and nourishment. What a hopeless endeavour charity is. First of all you are asked to help the hospitals, and when the hospitals fail, as they must, against such odds, you have got to clean up the slums, get a living wage for the workers, abolish unemployment, feed the schoolchildren, and spread the knowledge of birth control. But stop, stop, the task is too Herculean. Getting Socialism will be far simpler and quicker. It is the direct method of solving the poverty problem. Terrible suffering is undergone by women in childbirth, and chloroform capsules have been used in a number of experimental cases, with great success, but so far the treatment is too expensive for universal use upon working-class mothers.

The position, fellow-workers, is this: We are living in a state of society wherein one class is a subject class and one a dominant class. The subject class, the workers, must sell their labour-power in order to live. The wage they receive may suffice to enable them to feed, clothe and shelter themselves, and have a family. All these things must be managed within the limited amount of the wage. In many instances it will barely cover a certain amount of actual necessities. All things other than these have to be provided by the State or by private charity, or are not provided at all.

Thus, no allowance is made in a worker’s wage f6r hospital treatment. He may never need it, but the State is prepared to assist in a limited way when he does. A worker cannot save for unemployment, but a good and beneficient State has made unemployment insurance compulsory because they cannot rely on voluntary help being given when they have to dispense the necessary maintenance. The State (that is, the capitalists who control the State) is prepared, sometimes, to supplement the worker’s wage, when and if absolutely necessary.

It is rather significant that on February 28th the Daily Herald reports that the Ministry of Pensions is economising by closing, or partially so, its hospitals and transferring their patients (relics of the last war) to already overcrowded voluntary or municipal Poor Law hospitals. Here we have an example of how workers in the better-paid positions, who sacrifice part of their earnings to help their fellows, only succeed in helping the State to curtail expenditure. The Press, Pulpit, and now the B.B.C., are pleading and cajoling the people to help these causes. They never have to make a good cause out of sewers or refuse dumps. Disease is no respecter of persons, and these vital health services are scrupulously attended to, because the master class would speedily be affected, in many ways, by lack of attention to these details.

Tear down the veil of lies, cant, and humbug, fellow-workers, and let your sympathies go only to a cause which is worthy of your support as a class, namely, Socialism.

May Otway