War and Religion. By “The Times”. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Times” (4.10.14), lifting itself above the mere economic advantages we are supposed to gain by the war, endeavoured to prove spiritual gains as well. “No feature of the war has been more striking than the religious feeling it has evoked,” they said. War, which increases the uncertainty of life, has so unsettled the minds of the workers that their doubts and fears of the future have intensified. Without a philosophy based on science man becomes an easy prey to priestly ties. Regarding his own physical anatomy as something amazingly wonderful, and far beyond his poor understanding, he is easily persuaded that he has a soul that transcends even his physical possessions ; and the eternal existence of that soul in peace or torment depends upon his conduct while crawling about the earth in subjection to those who have taken possession of it.

Life is the only state that human beings can know, because it is only in life we possess consciousness and can know anything at all. The scientific mind accepts nothing without evidence, and neither science, religion, or philosophy has yet produced one shred of evidence to prove even the likelihood or possibility of consciousness, spirit, or any other known or unknown force existing apart from the substance or matter to which it belongs.

Scientists—in the laboratory—are practically agreed that the Cosmos is Matter in Motion, and nebulae, constellations, systems, geological and biological periods, and even the existence of different substances, are but changing manifestations of Matter in Motion. “Every living creature,” said a recent president of the “International Science Association,” “is, after all, merely a chemical mechanism,” and anyone that has read an intelligible work on physiology, explaining the functions and interdependence of organs, can appreciate that statement. An acquaintance with evolution, showing how both organs and functions have developed simultaneously, is sufficient evidence of its truth for anyone whose income is not affected. Consciousness or thought is the function of the brain, just as digestion is the function of the stomach. Digestion is impossible without digestive organs and food—though the wage-slave is often forced to try the experiment without the latter. Neither can consciousness exist without nerve ganglia, or brain and so nothing external to be conscious of. Science thus establishes the oneness or Monism of the Cosmos—but only for the cultured ruling class of society: the ignorant superstitions of the dark ages, slightly modified, are good enough for the workers.

In the supreme anarchy of a capitalist war events seem more than ever to be the result of chance, and gods, mascots, and oracles are brought out, dusted, and worshipped; and “The Times,” with characteristic hypocrisy and satisfaction, remarks that the “War has evoked religious feeling.”

“Nothing in man is more real than the instinct that urges him to sacrifice himself for an ideal which to him is dearer than life itself,” says “The Times.” We pass over the obvious error that, there can be any sacrifice where something dearer than what is given is the objective, and the equally obvious admission that man does not always act according to intelligence—even in important matters—but proves himself allied to the rest of the animal world by virtue of the fact that he still acts from instinct—when intelligence fails him.

Bat is it not characteristic of capitalist hypocrisy that the actions of their dupes should bs attributed to instincts and ideals, when it is common knowledge that necessity has compelled the vast majority to enlist. True, they sing and laugh as they march, but that does not prove that they have acted with either freedom or intelligence. It proves only that they have caught the war fever and are incapable, for the time being, of understanding or realising the actual situation—so aptly described and forcibly denounced by Israel Zangwill: “That they are food for powder, so coarse in texture ; carcasses so gross and sub-human, that their best use is to be thrown to the guns—a providential fire screen for the finer classes.”

The business of the ink-slinger to-day is to manufacture high-sounding phrases that appear to be loaded with importance, yet when analysed mean little or nothing. “War is a supreme test of reality,” says “The Times.” All the nations bluff, but only the contact of forces determines which is really the strongest—just as the opponents of Socialism can always destroy it any where but in debate. If there is sense in the statement, then the following from the same source obviously contradicts it. “Faith in force is a poor substitute for faith in right. Force is a sorry god” ; and the sentences that immediately follow are a reversion to the original statement that it is force that rules: “For, when a stronger strength arises to shatter it, nought but despair and doubt remain.”

But twice is not sufficient for “The Times” to contradict itself, so it throws over the first and third position and once more takes up the second: “When as we are firmly persuaded, the Allied Armies shall have overthrown the German’s divinity, the German people itself may learn the futility of trust ‘in reeking tube and iron shard,’ and turn again to the higher trust which their greatest teachers have inculcated upon them and upon the world.”

Next “The Times” says: “Faith and the spirit of sacrifice are the essence of religion, just as scepticism and selfishness are its negation.” The above definition of religion we might dispute, were it not that the word “essence” is not so clearly defined in capitalist politics and philosophy as in chemistry. The essential belief, and therefore the essence of religion, is belief in the supernatural. A code of morals, even including the “spirit of sacrifice,” without such a belief cannot be called a religion, no matter who imposes it. But this “spirit of sacrifice,” is undoubtedly a tenet of the Christian dogma, and eminently suits it for the capitalist system.

First let us see what is its actual meaning. To labour for others ; to risk life, or even to die, for others. Under this heading comes the whole of the working class. They live in poverty while they produce fabulous wealth for an idle class. They risk their lives daily and die in thousands for them on the field of battle. What we see then, is that the “essence of religion” so-called is really the purpose or object. So long as religion induces millions of workers to continue their life long sacrifice, the capitalist will generously permit them to think of themselves as sheep bled on the altar of civilisation, i.e. , capitalist idleness and luxury.

But what of the other side: “Scepticism and selfishness are its negation.” Every shareholders’ meeting, of every concern, at home or abroad, is evidence of capitalist greed. One eighth of the population takes two-thirds of the national wealth, and leaves one-third for the other seven-eighths. Avarice has been the watch word of the commercial class since the break-up of the guilds. How to get more out of their wage-slaves while reducing their rations has been, and is still, their most engrossing problem. Vultures snarling over raw flesh are less repulsive than capitalist governments quarrelling over markets and using the working class—after exploiting them—as “a providential fire screen.”

So much for their selfishness. It is unnecessary to marshall evidence to prove their scepticism, they show their contempt for the promises of future happiness and threats of punishment every day of their lives. They have no use for a religion that instructs them to “sell all they have and give unto the poor” ; nor do they care a tinker’s anathema for a “place on high,” if it is to be obtained by sacrificing a “place in the sun” here below. The capitalist has no “faith” in another life, and the “spirit of sacrifice” is not “business.” He is the embodiment of the ” negation of religion,” “scepticism and selfishness.”

“War,” concludes “The Times,” “with all its horrors and suffering, has at least this bright side. It lifts mankind out of its daily self, and suffuses the drab life of the multitude with a spiritual glow. In such an atmosphere the still voice of the divine spirit of the universe may be clearly heard, despite the clamour and clash of arms.” The colour has changed from drab to crimson. Poverty has intensified, and the murders committed annually on the industrial field, for profits, are being augmented by thousands daily ; yet mankind has gained something, ” a spiritual glow”—searchlights. But what does the “still voice” say ?—we are not told. Possibly the black-coated hypocrites are waiting for their orders from the representatives of that class in whose interests they teach and write such lies and rubbish for the confusion of the workers.

F. Foan

Cant and culture. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rheins, Louvain, Statuary and Architecture! Art, Science, and Culture! How extremely interested our masters are in the defence of art! And what interest, too, the workers have evinced in these remarkable relies of medieval craft!

Lives are being lost—workers’ lives. Blood and tears are being shed—the blood of working men and the tears of working women. Children cry for bread; deep despair numbs the brain of wife and sweetheart; hospitals are filled with the maimed and the crippled, but we must steal oar hearts to such things as these, for such is the toll of war.

But “our” churches and “oar” cathedrals are being destroyed and desecrated by the unholy hand of the hated Hun. The German has dared to eat his filthy sausage from the sacred altar, and to use the statue of the Holy Virgin as a peg upon which to hang the washing.

This is indeed s matter to call for the immediate attention of the working class. We can stand the lose of life—there are plenty more workers. The bereavement of the husband can be borne (there are others). The loss of a limb—well, there are crutches, and, as in the past, our generous masters will come forward to our aid with a licence to sell matches. With calm and philosophic mind we can tighten our belts when we are hungry, but rob us of our art treasures, and like enraged tigers we, the working men of Britain, will slay the despoilers, or, as at Deptford recently, break the windows sod smash the furniture of peaceful civilians whom the authorities have taken the precaution previously to disarm. The workers are, above all, lovers of art.

There are works of art in London, and it is surprising how few of these lovers of art visit them. Some, it is true, attract attention if well advertised —the crown jewels for instance, the greatest pleasure from which is derived by estimates as to how much they are worth. Certain palatial buildings, too, are visited mainly because they belong to the King, or possibly did belong to some other royal gentleman; and such artistic delights in architecture as the bank of England will hold in awe the twenty-four-bob a-week toiler because of the gold in its vaults. But of the real art treasures and rare buildings in London, how many are known to the average worker? Of the proletarian visitors to the Abbey, St. Pauls, the Galleries and Museums, how many can appreciate their beauties ?

Why should we, and if honest, how can we, generate a feeling of indignation at the destruction of those things that, however beautiful they may have been, we would never have seen, and possibly would not have appreciated if we had seen ? Why join in the howl of holy horror at their destruction, while dumb to the greater crime ever being perpetrated upon the toilers by the destruction of their powers of appreciation? Have the toilers time to develop culture?

The German, we are told, lacks culture. Perhaps this is true, but have we “anything to write home about" in that matter? Is the smashing of windows and the looting of shops a sign of culture?

Rolls of toilet paper are bring sold in the streets of London, upon each slip of which is a photo of the Kaiser, and the hawker’s cry of: “ What to do with the Kaiser,” raises a grin on the faces of passers-by. Is this culture ? or is the cry of “German Kultur” just cant?

The Socialist deplores the uncultivated mind of the worker, and is conscious of the intellectual satisfaction lost thereby; but who are we to blame for the loss?

The monuments of art and skilled craftmanship in this country stand untouched by the hands of the destroyer, but they might as well be a heap of ruins as for as the average worker is concerned. Our board-school education stopped at the “three r’s,” with the possible extension to some technical training that would be of use to our masters. So soon as the child of the toiler is old enough to learn and understand he is hauled off to the field and factory to sweat for an employer. He is “educated" enough to pull a lever so many times a minute, to label jam jars or work s machine to stamp oat blacking tins, until he becomes exhausted; or maybe he views London architecture fourteen hours a day while hanging on to a strap behind a carrier's cart. And the magnificent wage of seven shillings per week does not allow him to cultivate his mind by trips to the Continent of Europe in search of “old masters."

In short, the horrible grind from morn till night, with occasional intervals of “rest," seeking for a master; the constant petty worries as to how to make ends meet on twenty-four bob a week, banishes for the working man all desire for intellectual advancement, and the few standing out from the rest find little encouragement in the surroundings and conditions of a toiler's life.

To talk to the worker of saving art treasures is as intelligent as to expatiate to the deaf on the beauties of music. The labourer who at a meeting held to debate the question of whether the earth is spherical or flat, sized up the situation when he said: “Let us get hold of the world first, and then it might be interesting to know whether it is round or not” That labourer was wise. The world is not the workers' world, neither are art treasures for the workers. Their domain is the factory and the slum. Their art is the poster hoarding and the prints in the ½d. illustrated or “Pears Annual”. How can we get excited about art treasures ?

And as to culture, how is the following as a specimen; this too, in times of peace? It is from the report of Roger Casement, British Consul in the Congo, and relates to the “Domains de la Couronne,” Belgian Congo, published 1904.

“I asked them (the natives) why they had left their homes . . . All, when the question was put, women as well as men, shouted: ’On account of the rubber tax levied by the [Belgian] Government posts.’ . . . ‘ How much pay did you get?’ ‘We got no pay. We got nothing. It used to take ten days to get twenty baskets of rubber (twenty baskets of rubber had to be delivered four times a month). We were always in the forest, and when we were late we were killed. We had to go further and further into the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then we starved . . . When we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came up to our towns and shot us. Many were shot; some had their ears cut off . . . Our chiefs were hanged . . . The white men [Brave Belgians] told their soldiers ‘You kill only women: you cannot kill men.’ So when the soldiers killed us’ (here he stopped and hesitated and then, pointing to the private parts of my bulldog—it was lying asleep at my feet) he said, ‘then they cut off those things and took them to the white men, who said’: ‘It is true you have killed men.’ ‘You mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to be mutilated like that, and those parts of yon carried to them?' (All shouting) ‘Yes. many whits men.’ ‘You say this is true? Were many of you so treated after being shot?’ (All shouting) ‘Ukoto! Ukoto!’ (Very many; very many.)”

German, British, and Belgian “culture” are much the same pattern when profits are at stake. Atrocities are denounced when committed by the enemy, but the foul and fiendish slaughter of the worker in the Congo, and the equally bloody murder by British capital in Peru; the Russian butchery on the Lena Goldfields in 1912; the outrages of Paris in 1871; the many and various deeds of shame and brutality perpetrated by the Capitalists of all countries when profit is to be made or territory to be annexed, when property is to be defended or stolen: all these things are to be forgotten, and we, the workers, upon whom fall all the evils and horrors of modem mass murder—we are to cheer and wave our sweaty caps, and shake the bloodstained fiat of the erstwhile allies of our slave-drivers.

The Socialist cannot do it if he would. He remembers that these deeds have been done in the interest of the Governments of the various countries. Governments representing the interests of the master-class, our enemy. He- keeps in mind the Class Struggle, and is determined to fight it to the bitter end.

Twel.

Birds of a feather. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Charity, we are told, covers a multitude of sins. And War, it seems, covers a multitude of lies. One doing duty just now is called “The Need for Unity.”

Tory and Liberal papers are full of enthusiasm at the “united front” shown to the enemy by Unionist, Liberal, Labour and Socialist alike. If we were to question the inclusion of the last, doubtless we should be referred to members of the so-called Independent Labour Party and mis-named British Socialist Party, who have vie with the most rabid Jingoes in urging the working class to take up arms for their masters, or in spreading the stupid illusion that it is the German Kaiser who caused the war.

The poor, deluded wage-slaves are to be urged to join “Kitchener’s Army” for the purpose of fighting for “their” country and “their” liberty.

The factory worker, whose “country” is usually limited to the amount that would fill a flower pot, and whose “liberty” is of the kind that allows him to go to work (if he is lucky enough to have a job) when the factory hooter howls in the morning, and to leave off when it repeats its dirge at night, now finds himself with a whole load of other liberties launched at him.

In thousands of cases he can stay away from work altogether—in fact, they won’t let him in because they have closed down the factory. He is at liberty to leave his domicile, and is even assisted by the bailiff and broker’s man, who, with kindly solicitude for his failing strength, save him the trouble of moving his few belongings by taking them in lieu of the rent he cannot pay.

Fired with enthusiasm for these liberties, and not having the faintest idea where his next meal will come from otherwise, he rushes to the recruiting office in such numbers that the “Directive Intelligence” of the masters is overtaxed to the extent that their servants cannot even register the recruits nor give them a number. So, to get out of the difficulty, they have raised the physical standard—not daring to tamper with the mental one.

The agricultural labourer has a different notion of what is meant by “our country.”

It is a place on portions of which he is permitted to work on six days a week, from about sunrise to sunset, except when he looks after cattle, when the permission is graciously extended to seven days a week. More days per week would be granted him—if they existed. The other portions are places he may admire from the roadway, not for too long, of course, or the gamekeeper might think he was “loitering with intent” and Hodge would lose his job. But he may reflect on the enjoyment Lord Shoddy or Sir Arthur Ale-Adulterate derives from the ownership of these fine preserves, and vow that while he can hold a gun the Germans shall never take that country from Lord S. or Sir A. A.-A. He may further reflect that his own life reeks with variety. Night is followed by day, Autumn follows Summer. It does not always rain, nor is it always dry—though he may be. The place he sleeps in will emphasise this by letting in both wind and rain. And he will wonder how the Germans can stand the monotonous life he is told they lead. Now a chance to find out presents itself, for by joining the Army he is promised a free passage out to where they actually are, at——— (the next words were cut, out by the Press Censor.—Ed. “S.S.”) so he enlists.

Before war was declared by Great Britain on Germany, the Labour Party, the I.L.P., the B.S.P., the Fabians, etc., held an anti-war demonstration in Trafalgar Square, that, possibly much to their own surprise, was by far the largest gathering held there in recent years. Even after war was declared the British Section of the “International Socialist Bureau” issued a manifesto against war, signed by Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Arthur Henderson (“Labour Leader,” 6th Aug., 1914). The I.L.P. still opposes the war—in the columns of the “Labour Leader.”

But the I.L.P. is a portion of the Labour Party. The Labour Party is a small part of the Liberal Party, and is entirely dependent upon the latter for the seats—with attendant salaries—that they hold.

At the orders of their masters, the Liberal Party, the Labour Party join the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee formed to combine all the persuasive powers of the capitalist politicians in urging the workers to join the Army, and “Mr. Arthur Henderson, Mr. Frank Goldstone, and Mr. J. Parker have been appointed as its representative speakers at the united demonstrations which are to be held to arouse enthusiasm for the war,” and “the head office of the Party, its entire machinery are to be placed at the disposal of the Government in their recruiting campaign.” (“Labour Leader,” 3rd Sept., 1914.)

In the same article we are told :

“The decision of the Parliamentary Labour Party to co-operate with the Government in the series of meetings it is organising to encourage enlisting, and the endorsement of that decision by the National Executive of the Labour Party, constituted a grave betrayal of the principles of the Party and an outrage upon its traditions and hopes.”

The “Labour Leader” would be hard put to it to justify such language. The guiding principle of the Labour Party, so strenuously defended by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, is to keep the Liberals in office at any price ; and its traditions and hopes are to persuade the Liberals to give them a few more seats in Parliament. How, then, can their present action be a “betrayal” of these principles or traditions ?

On another page of same issue we are told that : “The I.L.P. representatives on the Labour Executive opposed the decision and reported to Head Office” ; while the National Council of the I.L.P. “recommends branches to take no part in the proposed campaign.”

But if branches are to take no part prominent members do. Mr. W. C. Anderson objects to the language about the Labour Party quoted above, and says: “It must be very plain that the I.L.P. cannot remain inside the Labour Party and yet brand its actions in these heated terms” (“Labour Leader,” 10.9.14). Why not ? The only rule rigidly enforced by the Labour Party is that its candidates for Parliament must not run as Socialists, and there is nothing in the “Labour Leader’s” statements against that. Again, Mr. R. C. K. Ensor opposes Mr. Keir Hardie’s views on Russia, and makes the following profound pronouncement:

“The Russian democratic and constitutional movements have welcomed in this war a unique opportunity of securing at once two things which can only be secured together—the liberalising of Russia and the creation of a permanent Anglo-Russian friendship. It would be difficult to name any two objects more important for the world’s future.”

And all this was Mr. Ensor’s secret till the war broke out. Alongside of such stupendous results the “neutrality of Belgium” and “the safeguarding of small States” fade into insignificance. May we also enquire how long it is since Mr. J. Parker ceased to be a member of the I.L.P. ?

Still more follows. A recruiting meeting was held at Leicester on September 11th and the Mayor read a letter from Mr. Ramsay MacDonald in which, among a series of canting hypocrasies, the following occurs:

“I want the serious men of the trade unions, the brotherhoods and similar movements, to face their duty. To such men it is enough to say ‘England has need of you,’ and to say it in the right way.

“They will gather to her aid ; they will protect her ; and when the war is over they will see to it that the policies and conditions that made it will go like the mists of a plague and the shadows of a pestilence.” (“Daily Chronicle,” 12.9.14.)

Lord Roberts could hardly say more. Yet Mr. MacDonald is still a member of the I.L.P.

We thus have the illuminating spectacle of that organisation through its National Council and branches opposing the war, its prominent members supporting that war by encouraging enlistment, and the organisation as a whole forming part of the Labour Party that lends “its whole machinery” to the aid of the Government. Truly, a “supreme ironic procession,” as Meredith would say.

In these acrobatic and contortionist actions a serious rival is found in the B.S.P.

Like the I.L.P. it joined in a protest against England going to war. Then it wobbled for a while, and now it presents a pretty spectacle. In a paper called “Justice” (Aug. 25th), Mr. Hyndman says that all they can do at present is “to denounce the infamous German invasion of Belgium, to applaud the splendid resistance and self-sacrifice of that noble little people, and to hope for the speedy and total rout of the Prussian military caste.”

One may ask why the latter sentiment is restricted to Prussia ? Has Russia no military caste ? Is France free from such a thing ? And has Mr. Hyudman ever heard of Mr. Blatchford and Lord Roberts in England ? The British Navy League, so strongly supported by Mr. Hyndman, is, of course, a “caste” to spread peace and amity among the nations, not to prepare for and urge on the war.

When Mr. Norman objects that Belgium’s treatment of the people of the Congo was hardly the best example of brotherly love, Mr. Hyndman replies by saying: “We all know that the late King Leopold’s rule in the Congo was abominable. Was Louvain sacked on that account ?” (“Justice,” 17.9.14.) If we may venture to answer the latter query we are inclined to say No ! But in the interests of fair play we should also have to admit that we have not yet heard that the Germans gave this as a reason for their action.

He also says in,the same issue: “The treacherous and ruffianly attack upon neutral little Belgium settled the matter for me. It would have been infamous if we had failed to declare war on her behalf, and in order to save France from destruction.”

Several questions at once crop up at this answer. How many attacks upon little States by big powers have been other than “treacherous and ruffianly”? And who are the “we” that are going to “save France from destruction ” ? Of the two classes in this country which should take on this task ? Obviously the capitalist class, as it is their quarrel. But they are exactly the class that are not doing so, while the workers, of whom Mr. Hyndrnan has said over and over again that they are as well—or as bad—off in Germany as in England, evidently have no interest in the matter at all.

And Belfort Bax, who is supposed to be well-acquainted with German affairs, says : “The military camarilla which dictates to Germany, and which has engineered the present war, is of Prussian origin.” (“Justice,” 10.914. Italics ours.)

Where the “intellectuals” lead the lesser lights will follow. Mr. W. Thorne, M.P., assisted Major Hogg, Captain Passingham, Colonel Palmer, and several other agents of the capitalist class in running a recruiting meeting at the Public Hall, Canning Town, on Monday, Sept. 14th, and moved a resolution stating his profound belief that: “We are fighting in a just cause, and to vindicate the right of small States and the public law of Europe.” (“Stratford Express,” 19.9.1914.) The latter phrase sounds important, and having neither sense nor meaning behind it, it is just the sort of claptrap Thorne could give off.

He also said that when the news of the battles at Mons and Cambrai came “he put his International Socialism in the reference library for the time being.” (Ibid). Carping critics may object that he never had any “Socialism,” International or other, to bring out, but they may be ignored in this crisis. “When his party met he was one of the first to be in favour of the Chairman and the two Whips being part of the Recruiting Committee, and he did not regret it.” (Ibid). Referring to the treatment of the soldiers and their dependants, he said: “These men, when they come back maimed, should not be allowed to go into the workhouse, or walk about the streets selling laces and matches.” What they should be allowed to do Mr. Thorne did not say. Perhaps he thinks they had better sell bananas ! Anyhow, “If that happened again it would be a standing disgrace to the country.” (Italics ours. Ibid). “Standing” disgrace because, we suppose, it has such a huge number of disgraces already that there is no room for any of them to sit down.

Besides, seeing the large amount of distress existing in Canning Town now among the dependants of the soldiers, we can give a guess as to the conditions that will prevail when these men “come back maimed.” Starvation will be their share. One disgrace more or less can hardly disturb the equanimity of “this country.”

One result of the “unity” shown above is that no contests will take place at the next Municipal election in West Ham so far as Labour, Progressive, and Alliance Parties are concerned. They are all agreeing to leave the Wards represented as they are at present. “The Kaiser,” to quote the above mentioned issue of the “Stratford Express,” “has brought peace to West Ham” !

Finally, the B.S.P. issue a manifesto wherein they state : “Recognising that the national freedom and independence of this country are threatened by Prussian militarism, the Party naturally desires to see the prosecution of the war to a speedy and successful issue.” After a list of the usual hopeless hopes that it terms a practical programme, the Manifesto winds up as follows: “The British Socialist Party advises its representatives who are invited to take part in the general recruiting campaign, to accept such invitations provided they are permitted to speak from the common platform in support of the national programme and policy set forth above.” (“Justice,” 17.9.14.)

So their wobbling ends by their coming down on the side of the Government. Yet not altogether. In “Justice” for Sept. 24th it is stated that Stepney, North West Ham, and Bow and Bromley branches of the B.S.P. are opposed to this Manifesto. But doubtless such impertinence will be nipped in the bud by the Executive Committee publishing the amount of dues these branches owe the Centre.

The various and varying phases of capitalist development give many opportunities to the working class to discover their enemies. The gigantic war now in progress, involving the maiming and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of our class, has shown clearly how those enemies, from Bonar Law to Asquith, from Sir Edward Grey to Ramsay MacDonald, from Carson to Redmond, from Keir Hardie to Hyndman, and from W. Thorne to R. C. K. Ensor, are lined up in one camp—the capitalist camp—with the various organisations they represent.

The Socialist alone remains to point the moral, draw the lesson, and show the workers that not until they take control of affairs for themselves will they have the decision of Peace or War in their hands, and to show them how the necessity to do this means the carrying of the CLASS WAR to its conclusion, whereby wars of all kinds will be abolished.

Jack Fitzgerald

Class War. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Society is divided into two classes—the master class and the working class. Between them is the CLASS WAR.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For November. (1914)

Party News from the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

'F. Vickers' was Frank Vickers. Harry Young ('Horatio') mentions him in a February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard. Vickers was one of a handful of SPGBers who went directly over to the Communist Party after the war. 'B. Young' was Byron Young. From a family of SPGBers, his father had been a member of the SDF.  His brother, Percy, was also a longstanding SPGBer. (His parents must have loved their poetry.) A prolific outdoor speaker for the Party, he emigrated to Australia after WW1. He is mentioned briefly in the Socialist Standard in his brother's obituary and his nephew's obituary.

The Purpose and Method of Colonisation [6] (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last issue.)

“There are some 830 millions of the neo-Caucasian race of the world, who are either uncultured or backward or retrograd in their mode of life, who stand at present entirely aloof from our civilization, who in the eyes of most white men are helots, without rights to be maintained or feelings to be considered. At the present time these 830 millions of black, brown, and yellow men are unable to wage war on the white man on anything like equal terms. To his aggressive advance they can only oppose a passive resistance ; often they are quite without defence against his conscious or unconscious cruelty. Out of this total of 830 millions of backward peoples at least 365 millions dwell within the limits of the British Empire or its sphere of political influence. If we are going to—I will not say exterminate, for that is now impossible—make the lives of 365 millions of black, brown and yellow human beings miserable and serf-like, so that by degrees they dwindle and die out, are we so sure that we can plant in their places an European population which will prove as suitable to climate and surroundings ? . . . It is very doubtful whether the white man can exist there in large numbers . . . and whether he can suffice for the agriculture and the mass of the work of development. . . . We must, therefore, protect, educate, uplift and encourage the aboriginal population.”

Thus spake Sir Harry Johnston at the Annual Meeting of the Anti Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society on April 23rd, 1914.

Although Sir Harry accuses “most white men” of looking upon coloured mankind as “helots” whose rights and feelings need not be considered, it is pretty evident that for all practical purposes only “our pioneers of colonisation” can be meant— those who have been in the past and are now actually treating the coloured races in this manner ; those who have been and still are waging war upon them to which they cannot reply upon “any thing like equal terms” ; those who, “consciously or unconsciously,” perpetrate cruelties against them.

The phrase “most white men” can only refer to shareholders who do not despise dividends made by torturing innocent human beings in a manner the world had never known before—to a ruling class which has filched the lands of nearly half the coloured peoples, and under whose sway slavery is increasing and millions have already been forced into reserves and compounds. But for an Imperialist to accuse his fellows of disregarding the natives’ rights and feelings is not only an extremely grotesque case of ye pot calling ye kettle black, but also betrays him for the ignoramus and humbug that he is. For none other would suggest that a civilisation based on the right of might, and into the range of which the “backward peoples” must be brought, by fire and sword, is compatible with maintaining the rights and considering the feelings of the weaker.

How, indeed, would our Imperialists establish their civilisation in the colonies if the natives there were to retain their rights to their land ? What would become of capitalist enterprise, and where should the supply of labour come from, if the natives’ rights to the unrestricted use of all nature’s gifts as means of subsistence, were to remain unchallenged ? Is it possible that a policy of scrupulously respecting the feelings of the natives in the matter of industry, and mere theoretic teaching and encouragement, could solve the “labour problem” ? Would it not be a calamity striking at the very roots of civilisation, and making all commerce and progress impossible, if the natives were at liberty to cease work when they had produced enough to “provide their ordinary and very primitive requirements of subsistence” ? Where would their Worships’ profit and dividend come in ?

In fact, as the recent commission upon native labour in East Africa pointed out, the main contention of the planters there is that there is an ample supply of labour in the Protectorate, and that the only difficulty in the way of making them emerge in sufficient numbers to work for the white man, is the comparative affluence, which they still enjoy. It was, therefore, and is still, constantly being urged, that the natives should be forced out of their already small reserves (in the South African Province of the Transvaal, for example, 1,000,000 natives have assigned to them 500,000 morgen of laud which they can call their own, while 31,000,000 morgen are in the possession of 300,000 whites!) or that taxation should be so increased as to force them to spend a larger portion of the year in labouring for the white settlers ; it is suggested that they should do their share of work for the Government; that they should be compelled to wear clothing in order that they should be forced to buy such things, etc, etc.

No, the "labour problem” in the Colonies can only be solved by further encroachment upon the rights and liberties of the native (aboriginal) populations, and the solution must carry with it the character of encroachment even if effected indirectly by the gradual economic development.

However much some Negrophile capitalist souls may pretend to regret the violation of the coloured people’s rights and feelings and however much they may claim to be anxious to see the same glorious triumph which civilisation has resulted in at home, where all “rights” are perfectly safe and all feelings scrupulously considered, it is evident that the natives’ salvation is unavoidably bound up with hardship and suffering in the beginning.

All who recognise the great gulf that separates the primitive coloured man from the highly advanced whites must see that the former, in the very interests of his uplifting, cannot be trusted to the same extent, and left to enjoy the same privileges, as the “high standing” modern working class. Just as their right to their land cannot possibly he maintained, so their well-known and deeply deplored “right to be lazy” must be infringed!

If the civilised worker, as the result sod reward of centuries of “education and advancement,” has acquired the privilege in question, and can be relied upon not to abuse it, it is inconceivable that the granting of a similar right in these Colonies could in any way make civilisation a reality amongst the uncultured and retrograde peoples. Could anyone seriously entertain the idea that without infringing their “right to be lazy,” these simple minded people would develop anything approaching the prodigious industriousness of the modern working-class ? Does not the very existence of the “labour problem” in many Colonies show that “education” and “uplifting” have not hitherto so far advanced things as to bring about this highly desirable result ?

The members of the modern working class, so far from abusing their privileges, jealously dispute with each other, not only locally, but nationally, for what are vulgarly called “the jobs on hand,” and from their repeated applications for the “right to work,” it cannot be doubted that they are looking forward to a time of still greater activity. Is not the claim of the whole working class “more work” ?

Just at present the prodigious industry, coupled with the most rigorous abstinence, of the European working class, has once again literally overwhelmed their masters, and in their endeavours to find new outlets and “work for all,” a deadly conflict for the right to do the work of the world in future has arisen. It is, indeed, at such stagnant periods that the complete triumph of civilisation is moat glaringly demonstrated, because rather than relax their pace of toil, or partake more liberally of the fruits of their labour, they submit to a wholesale destruction, not only of an enormous mass of stored-up wealth, but even of productive human forces.

But while the modern working class, in all these things, as a result of their “culture” and age-long “education,” see eye to eye with their masters; while they again and again justify the masters’ implicit trust, and in spite of all temptations, do not deviate from the path of virtue, and from serving the Lord God Capital, it cannot reasonably be suggested that the ideas of “uncultured backward” people would coincide with the conceptions of a modern master. After all, a high civilisation such as “ours” presupposes an all embracing “system of education,” and last but not least, of religion, such as Christianity. Whereas the modern workers, in obedience to their lords’ and masters’ command, “set themselves at variance against one another” rather than relax their ever increasing productivity or consume more than one eighth to one third of the fruits of their labour, thus periodically leading their masters to the embarrassing problem of how to dispose of the surplus; whereas, in short, the majority of the working class fully come up to the expectations of their masters, it would be most unreasonable to trust savages with the same privileges as are enjoyed at home.

These “helots,” after having for centuries laboured under the wicked conception that the sole purpose of all natural resources was to serve as means of subsistence, and who were consequently accustomed to consume the whole of the fruits of their labour (think of the horror!) —these sinful people, who never dreamt that mother earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, can hardly be rid of their impossible notions, and converted into useful and “profitable” units, by the persuasive efforts of the Lord's chosen servants alone —indeed, corporal punishment has been found a far more efficient means of curing obstinate reluctance to acknowledge the supreme authority and laws of God—Capital.

If one thing emerges more strikingly than another from the history of the efforts by which the capitalistically backward countries have been and are being brought into the range of modern civilisation, it is the fact that the fundamental condition of such enterprises is the expropriation of the mass of the people from the land and and their conversion into wage workers. The much-vaunted “education of the savage races” is really only a high-sounding phrase used by some to hide this awkward fact of expropriation. We only need again refer to the obstinate resistance which the “aggressive advance” (the term is in itself significant) of “civilisation” meets everywhere on the part of the aboriginal populations, and to the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient supply of workers, to illustrate this fact. Deprivation of free access to the means of subsistence is, in fact, the only way to convert free men into wage slaves; and the existence of each a “labour problem” merely proves, as has been pointed out, that the separation of the natives from their own conditions of labour and their root, the soil, is not yet successfully effected, in other words, that the impoverishment of the people is not yet complete. In the eyes of our Imperialists, such countries are, of course, in a very backward and uncivilised state, and “education and culture” must be improved therein. No one in his senses would ever associate a “high civilisation,” such as we find at home, with a similar “labour problem”; quite the contrary, complete (capitalist) civilisation is unthinkable without a permanent reserve army clamouring for “the right to work ”

The lesson is obvious and should not be lost upon the modern working class, who labour under the delusion that they still have “a stake in the country.” It is that “civilisation” presupposes the completed expropriation of the mass of the people from the land and the means of wealth production.

But it is by no means necessary to go to the Colonies to discover the basis of “our civilisation.” Does not the fact stare one constantly in the face that the people have been deprived of their heritage ? What other explanation is there for the “terrible social difficulties” and stupid anomalies surrounding us ? What other cause is there of this awful and degrading poverty in the midst of plenty ? What else could turn every technical progress into a calamity ? What other factor could turn every labour saving device into a means of increasing the unemployment and poverty of the many ? Is it, or is it not, the fact that the few (the capitalist class) have confiscated the land and the instruments of wealth production, and that they allow these things to be used only when it suits their interests — their pockets ?

Never was there, consequently, a more bare faced, hypocritical cry than the present appeal to the workers to take up arms in defence of “ their country.” Why, Lloyd George himself told an audience in Bedford last year that “most of the land of Britain is in the hands of very few persons.” He went on : “I should say it is in the hands of something like half of the population of Bedford.” He pointed out, speaking of the agricultural workmen (and his remarks obviously apply equally to all other workers) that “he no longer had a stake in the country, . . . and that he had been converted from a contented. well fed, independent peasant to a hopeless, underpaid landless drudge on the soil, whose wages are less to-day than they were, in proportion to their purchasing capacity, in the reign of Henry VII ! Where has the land gone?" the speaker asked. “Stolen! Landlord Parliaments have annexed Naboth's vineyard.”

Thus we see that the policy of colonisation that is being carried out before our eyes and has been described in these columns—the robbery of the land from the native and the destruction of his own means of living—is nothing more or less than the policy which has successfully reduced is —“the heirs of civilisation”— to a class of wage-slaves labouring our whole lives in poverty in order that others may enjoy lives of riotous luxury.

Even a Liberal minister, when it suits his party purpose, can tell us truths about our present position, but dare not admit the obvious universality of this practice wherein the whole of labouring mankind is being more and more completely reduced to a condition of abject economic slavery; but the workers cannot forever remain duped. They will realize the fact that the fate of their black brothers is their own fate, that the causes which have reduced them to slavery are reducing their black brothers to slavery.

The white labourer, like the black, is forced to toil for capitalist profit by force or fraud, and it is more than ever clearly true that the working class of all countries are the wage-slaves of a mass that makes its country synonymous solely with its profit. This all-important fact the workers must end by seeing clearly, and then they will stand surely together as one man on the freedom of humanity, by the overthrow of this world-wide capitalist class. This must be so, for economic development fights for us and, to use again the well-worn but fundamentally true words of Marx, the workers have nothing to lose but their chains, while they have a world to win.

Rudolf Frank

(Concluded.)

Blogger's Note:

By the time the last in the series of these articles had been published in the Socialist Standard in November 1914, Britain and her allies had already been at war with Germany for three months, and in 1915 Rudolf Frank, originally from Bohemia, was to be interned as an 'Enemy Alien' at Alexandra Palace. 

I don't have exact dates for when he was imprisoned but Frank wrote in the December 1964 Socialist Standard article, 'Reminiscences of an old member', that:

When the 1914-1918 war broke out I was put in an internment camp. The long confinement at least offered opportunities for further enlightenment and discussion on politics. Lectures and meetings were held and prisoners were also free to debate subjects in all kinds of private circles, language classes, etc. Soon groups particularly interested in Socialism were regularly gathering around our platform. The discussion became particularly lively when Comrade Neumann, also an active member of the S.P.G.B. (translator of Kautzky's Erfurter programme) later joined the army of internees. Apart from lectures, a very successful May Day meeting was held with Neumann as the principal speaker. Among the many adherents to the Socialist case were Mundl, Guilke, Bankofsky, who all joined the S.P.G.B. after their release . . . 

On his release from prison in 1919, Frank was deported from Britain and was never able to regain re-entry despite many attempts. "Comrade Neumann" was also expelled from Britain at the end of the war and, according to Robert Barltrop in his book 'The Monument', was rumoured to have died in the Spartacist Uprising. Frank eventually settled in Austria, still a socialist, still spreading the word, and played his own part in the eventual formation of the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten.

The following links give more background on Rudolf Frank:

• Nov 1964: Reminiscences of an old member
• Dec 1964: Reminiscences of an old member (part 2) 
• Mar 1971: Obituary: Rudolf Frank

Peace: In The Hands of The Workers. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Members of the Working Class,—

To-day is being waged the greatest military struggle of all history. The flower and manhood of the five greatest races of this continent strive with all the resources which science has placed in their hands to slaughter their fellows. You are told by our masters’ Press that the German soldiers do not know what they are fighting about, or even who their enemies are—but do you know these things either ?

Many reasons for the war have been given, but only the Socialists have given the true reason.  It is this :

In every advanced country the improvements in machinery and methods enable the workers to produce far more wealth than is needed to maintain them in working efficiency. Of this wealth all beyond what Is essential for the upkeep of the workers’ efficiency is retained by the masters.

As machinery improves, this surplus grows greater, and presents to the masters this ever-increasing problem : Where can they find a market for it ?

Here we have the cause of the present struggle.  It is commercial rivalry and nothing else.

Fellow workers, 600 years ago the means for producing wealth were very crude, yet a man could produce enough to keep his family and himself for a whole year by twelve weeks labour. What vast strides have been made since then in the instruments of labour, and how many times has been doubled the fertility of our toil! Yet the late Campbell-Bannerman said that “about 30 per cent. of the population is living in the grip of perpetual poverty.”

What, then, has been the effect of this remarkable increase in the fertility of human labour, if it has not lifted those who labour above the pinch of poverty ?

The effect has been this: The workers have had to become the wage-slaves of those who own the machinery, factories and the like. What they produce, then, passes out of their hands. It belongs to their masters. They have lost control over the product of their toil, and it becomes their bitterest foe.

If the workers in the Middle Ages produced more than they required, they could store it for a niggard season, leave it to rot in the fields, or take things easy and produce less. It could not hurt them because it belonged to them, and they had full control over it. To-day, however, the wealth which the workers produce in excess of what is essential to enable them to go on working, belongs to their employers. It accumulates until the markets are glutted and the warehouses full, and then it throws its producers out of work because no buyers can be found for it. And not only this : it faces the masters with the problem of finding an outlet for it in the World Market, and so the workers from whom it has been stolen are called upon to shoulder rifles and go and shoot their fellow workers in other lands in order that this stolen wealth may be taken to, and realised or sold in, the markets of the world.

Centuries of progress in “the arts of peace,” generations of the march of science and the “conquest of the forces of nature,” while they have enabled our masters to heap up gigantic wealth, have brought only starvation and misery to the workers. The good things of life can be produced with ease and abundance, but under the present system they result only in murder and chaos.

The remedy is for the WORKING CLASS to take over the whole of the means of production and distribution, in order that what they produce may belong to them. They will then have control of the product of their hands and brains, and will use it for its logical purpose—to satisfy the needs of those who produce it.

When the workers have ceased to be plundered, there will no plunder for a class of plunderers to make war over, and peace will be the portion of humanity at last.

WORKERS, STUDY SOCIALISM !

THE EXECUTIVE  COMMITTEE

SOCIALISM IS THE ONLY HOPE OF THE WORKERS!

The Forum: Does Economic Power Rest Upon Political Power? (1914)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

[TO THE EDITOR.]

Boston Rd, Bronx. 

New York.

July 27,1914.

Sir —

I would like to have your opinion on a certain question to settle a dispute between a friend of mine and myself.

Volume I of “Capital" by Karl Marx, Chapter 3, page 152 (Kerr’s edition), 12th line of the first paragraph, states as follows: “In the Middle Ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their political power together with the economical power on which it was established.”

I maintain that the line gives the inference that the political power is based upon the economic power. My friend says that the economic power is based upon the political power. What I would like to know is whether Karl Marx was wrong.

Yours,

J. Brandon.

Reply:
Our correspondent’s question and quotation leaves several previous questions unanswered. And firstly, the quotation is incorrect. Marx's statement is:

    “In the middle-ages the contest ended with the ruin of the feudal debtors, who lost their political power together with the economic basis on which it was established.” (Italics ours.)

It is easy to see that this alters the entire aspect of the question; while it is extremely significant that Marx carefully distinguishes between “political power” and the economic basis on which that power rests. In its correct form no such inference as Mr. Brandon gives can be drawn from Marx’s words, and that inference, therefore, falls to the ground.

But there are still other questions left. Every student of Marx knows how frequently he warned his readers against attempting to apply the conditions of one system as an explanation of the facts of another system. Mr. Brandon takes a factor from the feudal system of society and tries to use it as an explanation of a condition of capitalism. Hence another failure in his attempted argument. Karl Marx was right, but Mr. Brandon is wrong.

Briefly stated the matter stands as follows :

Under feudalism the individual's right of citizenship was based in towns upon his being a master of a craft, and. in the country, upon his being a member of the manor, with certain portions of the arable land for his maintenance, along with rights of common land and woods. When the increasing taxation by King and Government, along with the competition of the new, uprising, commercial adventurers, drove the master craftsman to the money-lender, and he was unable to pay the latter, he lost his position in guild and town and became an outcast. He thus lost his political power along with the basis upon which it had rested.

The peasant in the country had to perform various services for the Lord of the Manor, who, later, began to commute these services for money payments. But here again, money payments meant debts. If unable to pay these debts, then the peasant lost his holdings in the manor, and also became an outcast, thereby losing his political power along with his previous economic position.

Under feudalism the wage working class did not exist. Under capitalism the position is entirely different.

When the capitalist method of production and distribution became the prevailing one, the capitalist class, as such, had no political position they could claim from feudalism Partly they made one by “lending ' and “donating" large sums to needy monarchs in return for, first, trading privileges, and later, political power; partly by purchasing manors and the political rights attached. But the old aristocracy still were an important section politically. Hence the agitation against “the rotten boroughs" by the capitalists, who urged the working class—now fully fledged wage slaves, without any political rights at all—to demand the franchise. At first extended to the possessors of any form of wealth, as distinct from the old landed forms, it has gradually been extended to a point where mere tenancy for a given time at a small rental suffices to place a man upon the voter’s register. Here we see political power existing without any economic power at all, with only the tiniest economic basis to rest upon, and even I hat tending to disappear—in Adult Suffrage without residential qualifications.

The explanation is to be found—as Marx has pointed out—in the economic conditions of modern capitalism, a matter beyond the space at our present disposal to deal with.

Other phases of this matter are dealt with in the “ Socialist Standard ” of May, 1909.

Jack Fitzgerald

Party Paragraphs. (1914)

Party News from the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Branch of the Party has now been formed in Birmingham. For particulars readers in the district are referred to the Branch Directory on the back page.

*     *     *     *

Party Members and sympathisers are reminded of their duty to assist us in our propaganda work by every means in their power. This duty is more urgent now than ever. The Englishman's proverbial “love of fair play,” and his devotion to the “rights of minorities, have already been manifested at several of our meeting places. Two of our comrades have been arrested and victimised, and a few meetings have had to he cancelled.

Nevertheless, our work is telling, and as the vast majority of our hearers welcome our message, they should firmly make up their minds not to allow a few mistaken individuals to spoil the good work. We are strong enough to hold our own if those who are with us will translate their good will and convictions into active support. Not only in France and Belgium is there fighting to be done, positions to be held, manhood to he proved, and victory to be finally achieved.

*     *     *     *

Our literature on the War is in great demand and every effort should be made to place it in the hands of the workers It will act as an antidote to the “poison of the Press" served up by the master class in their lust for blood.

*     *     *     *

From the Socialist Party of Canada, the Socialist Party of North America, and the Socialist Party of Italy come manifestoes opposing this capitalist war.

*     *     *     *

Economic classes have been opened at Tooting and Battersea, and a public discussion is held every Friday at 8 30 p m. at the Socialist Hall. 41, Albert Road. Peckham.. S. E.

O.

Editorial: The Next Great War. (1914)

Editorial from the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The prophets are busy with their prophesying. The same folk who for years have been telling us that the way to ensure peace was to be prepared for war, and who for long have iterated and reiterated the idle phantasy that the very development of the instruments of destruction had abolished the danger of a world wide war by making war too hideous for advanced peoples to tolerate, utterly oblivious to the fact that they have backed the wrong horse every time, now behold in war new hope of eternal peace. This time it is the smashing of Prussian militarism which is to draw every savage tooth and cut every bloody claw, the wide world over, and confer upon this blood-soddened planet surcease from the agony and waste and weariness of war.

We know that, so far was it from being true that to be armed to the teeth was any guarantee of peace, that it was only while the nations were unprepared for war that peace reigned. We know that, so far was it from being true that the development of the instruments of destruction had rendered war too awful for advanced peoples to contemplate, that among the teeming millions of the most advanced races of the earth the greatest triumphs of the engines of butchery were received with the greatest joy. Three torpedoes send fifteen hundred stout and gallant seamen to their graves, and a nation laughs; the guns of British warships kill "fifteen hundred Germans in their trenches in thirty minutes," and half a continent applaud; a single French shell strikes a regiment dead by sheer shock, it is reported, and the most advanced of nations only fear that the report is too good to be true. There is not one of the nine belligerent races, but would hail with acclamations of joy the advent of some new agent of slaughter that would enable their side to mow down men, not by regiments, but by armies.

The claims that peace was to come through armaments no sooner prove themselves to be ludicrously false than we we are told that peace is to come through war. Prussian militarism is to fall, and after that all the swords are to be beaten into plough-shares, and all the bullets cast into printers' letter for the advancement of culture, and all the Tommies turned into tinkers and tailors and raisers of Ostend rabbits and spring onions. And there is to be no more war, and no more iron crosses, and no more wooden ones. So they say who know all about it.

The Socialist, however, knows better. He knows that Prussian militarism has been and is nothing more than the force instrument by means of which German capitalists calculate to win and maintain a preferential place in the world's markets for the products of her factories. The bellicose trait in the make-up of the Kaiser and his militarists, and the remnants of feudalism which still attach to German institutions (to the confusion of many British pseudo-Socialists, who claim that "the German capitalists have yet to win their emancipation") are simply superficialities which are useful to the German capitalists. They mean about as much as the feudal remnants which remain in this country; and, like these latter, they are permitted to remain because, so far are they from indicating that the capitalists have not won their emancipation, that they are only instruments in capitalist hands to prevent the working class from gaining theirs.

It is German capitalist money controlled by the capitalists themselves which has paid for the vast German war machine without which the Kaiser and his war chiefs would be impotent. This money would never have been forthcoming save to further capitalist interests, and those who think that the smashing of "Prussian militarism" is going to set free the Germanic races for the development of industry, and to disarm the nations of the world, are woefully out of it.

Nothing can be plainer than that the mad race for armaments has grown directly out of the development of industry. The expense of modern warfare is so great that only high industrial development can support it. Hence no nation has attained a front-rank place in the race except its armaments are founded upon industrial development. Great Britain, France, and Germany are direct cases, while the might of industrially backward Russia rests largely upon the gold of her allies.

It is clear, then, that it is industrial development itself which produces the modern phenomenon, militarism, neck and neck companion of the modern phenomenon, Imperialism. This is because industrial development means a large and increasing amount of surplus products for which markets have to be found. The power and the need for vast armaments, therefore, go hand in hand, and they develop, not out of Prussian militarism, or Russian militarism, or French militarism, or British militarism, or Japanese militarism, but out of industrial advance.

Granted, then, the uninterrupted development of the present social system, the facts point irresistibly to further great wars. They indicate that no sooner will the present struggle have ceased than diplomats will be at work forming new alliances, and the Krupps and Armstrongs busy evolving fresh "surprises" and mightier means of war.

It was only because German happened to be more advanced industrially, and therefore the more immediate rival, that Great Britain is not on her side now. It may be recalled that, in the anxious days before the war, that powerful vehicle of British capitalist opinion, the "Daily Chronicle," made out a very strong case for taking sides, not against Germany, but against Russia. The fears which prompted this point of view are very significant. The success of the Allies will almost certainly place Russia in a position of unparalleled strength. With her military prestige at its summit, with her capitalists freed by her last two wars from the final restrictions of her feudal nobility, with ruthless taxation driving her peasants into the hands of the usurers, and the usurers driving them from their lands into the towns and factories, with the rapid advance of capitalistic industry in Russia which these things portend, the "Russian menace: commercially will equal the "Russian menace" territorially.

Japan, whose industrial development has been the wonder of the age, and has brought her from obscurity to alliance with "proud Britain," and America, who has already begun to "think Imperially," are also destined to take a very strong line in the struggle for markets.

Hence the road of plotting and scheming and "building up' for the next great war must begin even before the grass grows over the myriads of corpses of this one. And this road of blood and tears must be followed the human race until the working class of the world, for the opportunity to exploit whom all modern wars are fought, determine to find their emancipation in Socialism. In the name of suffering humanity we call you to our banner!

The Call of the Patriot. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Workers — During the last three months there has been staring at you from every hoarding, from trams, 'buses, and stations, from vans, warehouse walls, and notice boards on churches, from the pages of the newspapers and every other available space, the statement that: "YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU."

This statement, showing, if you will but think, how important and vitally necessary you are to the ruling class, has been re-iterated again and again, with innumerable variations, from countless pulpits and platforms up and down the country. Urgent appeals by the hundred thousand have been made to all " fit" men to enlist; every device and every weapon that the "liberty-loving" masters could invent, from the call of a sham patriotism to the wholesale backing of employers; from lying to bribery; from silent coercion to the insults of the white feather brigade, and from this to the deliberate suppression of hostile opinion, have been used either to entice or drive you into the ranks. For you, fellow workers, are today, as you always are, indispensable to the bosses, both for the production of profits in the "piping times of peace" (!) and for cannon fodder and the slaughter of the "enemy" in times of war.

Without you the masters are helpless; without you the State collapses and the rulers of the one country cannot hope to win in their struggle against the rulers of another country; and knowing this, and recognising YOUR supreme importance, the bosses have been moving heaven and earth, spending money like water, lying like Christians, combining cajolery with economic pressure, and ringing the changes on every form of cant, from "stirring" appeals to your manhood to virulent denunciation of your indifference or backwardness, in order to make YOU go and fight battles from which you will receive the usual rewards of empty honour, broken health, wounded bodies, or the eternal silence of the grave.

The reasons advanced why you and the working men of Europe should fight each other have been many, and we could fill a column with the contradictions of the politicians, the black coats, and the "intellectuals" on this matter. Any excuse has been good enough as long as it has had the effect of making you and the German working men defend your respective masters. From the violation of treaties by Germany to deliberate provocation on the part of England; from Russian court intrigue to the capture of international trade; from the rottenness of secret diplomacy to the enthronement of Atheism; from the policy of "blood and iron" to the jealousy and hatred of the Allies: each and every excuse in its turn, according to whether the apologist was pro-British or pro-German, has been offered as justification for the infamy now going on, and as a reason why you should take part in it.

In England it is declared to be a war for "liberty, righteousness, democracy," and other bunkumalthough the bosses occasionally give the game away by stating, as the "Sunday Chronicle" of August 30th, that "the men in the trenches are fighting on behalf of the manufacturer, the millowner, and the shopkeeper." In Germany it is declared to be a conflict in which the ruling class of England, Russia, and Japan have combined to reduce her to the level of a fifth-rate power, and to render her politically, militarily, and above all economically, impotent for ever. And each aide, using every possible device, has dragged you and your fellow-workers abroad into the arena.

You had neither lot, voice, nor counsel in the events leading to the conflict; YOUR place while it lasts is that of automata, conscious only to obey blindly and, if need be, to suffer; and your lot after it is over will be the usual lot of your class, the lot of the poor, the down-trodden and the oppressed everywhere.

Of the forces now engaged not more than five per cent come from the ranks of the well-to do; YOU furnish the remaining ninety-five per cent. YOU have to bear the infinitely greater proportion of the deaths, the disease, the permanent injury and the awful strain, while those who goad you on with sweet words or threats, rest securely and comfortably in their easy chairs in club or office, killing the enemy every day with their mouths, but taking particular care, in the vast majority of instances, never to risk their precious carcases within a hundred miles of the actual conflict.

We Socialists would therefore ask you to put on your considering caps and think for yourselves, instead of allowing the capitalist Press, Tory, Liberal, and sham Labour, to think for you.

When the war is over, and you are tramping the country, as you will be in many cases; when you and those near and dear to you hunger and thirst; when you feel the whip of semi-starvation and the gaunt spectre of want is your daily companion, will your "King and Country" need you then? Does not your daily experience teach you that you have no country, that you are landless and propertyless? Does it not show you that here, as in Germany, the land and its fatness belong to the masters, your portion being a mean tenement in a mean street, with the bare means of existence, and then only if you are lucky enough to get work?

When the bosses ask you to fightto offer your lives for "democracy and liberty against militarism"; when they pose as the defenders of oppressed people, and express themselves deeply concerned to uphold justice, humanity, and right, ask them why it is that they have so long practised in Englandpractise to this day the tyranny and oppression they now denounce abroad.

The present British Government, the "champions of liberty," through their then Home Secretary, Churchill, prepared, previous to the railway workers going on strike, and turned out at the request of the railway magnates, no less than 58,000 troops, crushing by militarism the attempt of those workers to slightly improve their admittedly rotten conditions of existence.

This Government, "the apostle of humanity," during the last London Dock strikewhen the men merely asked that agreements previously entered into by the Government itself should be honouredplaced at the disposal of the capitalist Devonport and the gang around him, an unlimited supply of police and military, and deliberately starved the women and children, in some cases to death, in order to break the resistance of the men.

This Government, the "defender of freedom, the upholder of justice, and right," endorsed martial law, the denial of all liberty and the firing on defenceless crowds in S. Africa; it batoned 700 men in Dublin, turned out the military against YOU at Belfast, Llanelly, Leith, the Rhondda valley and elsewhere; it has callously refused to give underfed children sufficient food; it mocks with pretty words, but cynical, brutal inaction, the condition of the ever-growing army of unemployed; it has sanctioned wholesale imprisonment, exile and butchery, in India, Persia, Egypt, and the New Hebrides, and allied itself with the infamies perpetrated in Russia and Japan: in a word, it reeks with lying pretence and self-satisfied Pharisaism, for in very truth, it is the ever-willing tool of autocracy. Capitalism, and class rule and the deadly enemy of the working class everywhere.

Ask this or any capitalistic Government for their credentials, examine their records, and you will learn that, beyond all dispute, whether it be England or Russia, France or Belgium, Germany or Japan, there is, so far as YOU are concerned, no difference between them whatever. They are all made in the same mould, filled with the same lust the lust of exploiting YOU. When it suits them they flatter you; but when you ask them for a little of the justice they now prate about, then they insult, imprison and often murder you. To-day they want you badly, for they are at war with each other and want YOU to do THEIR dirty work; but remember that whoever wins or loses, your lot will be the same; the politician will still soft-soap you ; the industrial machine will still grind you, and poverty and all that it means will still enchain you.

If, therefore, you are wise, if you are men, if you are really anxious for freedom from slavery, then look around you here, and you will soon learn the truth, that it is your class which is denied this freedom, and denied it by the very class who now call upon you to act. One law for the rich and one for the poor. Adulation, servility and the world's wealth for the rich; grinding toil, insecurity and eternal hardship for the poorthese are the commonplace of every day life. Is it not so?

Your duty, then, is to fight against this, and the only way you can fight successfully is by understanding your position in society, realising that wars and hate, malice and theft, oppression and greed, class rule and the travail of the workers the world over, are to-day born of capitalism. This it the root evil; it is this you have to war against if you would be free, for all else is futile; and when you do this, BUT NOT BEFORE, then liberty will be with you as your possession; there will be no oppressed peoples, for the might of the working class, organised consciously for the overthrow of the modern octopus, will have conquered, and the international commonwealth will be here.

Frank Vickers