Editorial: Disaster from profit and profit from disaster. (1923)

Editorial from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The risks of capital ! How often are the dividends of the idle justified on the plea that the investor is entitled to a “fair” return on the capital he has ”risked” ? When workers ask for an increase in the beggarly pittances they receive as wages then risks on the workers’ part are forgotten, and “what the industry can stand” becomes the watchword; the first charge on industry being an adequate return on the capital invested.

In the inquiry into the coal industry of a few years back employers spoke much of the risks of capital and but little of the risks of the wage worker. The fate of the bulk of the 42 miners entombed in the Redding Pit, Falkirk, on September 25th, is an illustration of the risks the workers run; they risk their lives, and they do so merely for bread and butter. Not only does the miner risk his life, but the miner’s family risks the loss of its mainstay.

Disaster after disaster have overtaken the mine workers, due in the main (as instance the Whitehaven disaster some years ago) to the cheese-paring economy of the mine owners in their desire to extract, the maximum of profit out of the coalmining industry. And yet, in spite of the ever-present dangers to limb and life, the miner only gets in return for his labour, in the best of cases, little more than sufficient to keep himself and his dependants from actual starvation.

In mine and factory, and on the seas, the workers risk their lives daily in order that capital may have a “fair” profit. Not in order that society may obtain the necessaries of life; because where profit is not forthcoming the wheels of industry cease to turn, though society may be groaning for the goods that do not come.

Disasters to humanity are often but sources of profit for the ghouls that control this misery-making function of wealth.

The earthquake in Japan that caused so much havoc a short time ago provides an instance of how precious property is in the eyes of its owners, and also how the economic advantages of a disaster become of more importance to capitalists than pity for misery suffered.

Only a little while ago we read harrowing tales of Japanese misery and a cry was raised to help those who suffered from the earthquake. Later information, however, reduces the protestations to a sham.

The Manchester Guardian Weekly of October 12th publishes an article from their correspondent in Kobe on the “Economic Effects of the Earthquake,” which opens up with the following paragraph :—

  “The immediate economic consequence of the earthquake is that 1,500 Europeans have come into Kobe, where a somewhat smaller number have fed, lodged, and clothed them. And no sooner were they comforted, than they organised two ‘expeditions’ (neither of which has sailed at the time of writing, exactly one week after the earthquake) to proceed to Yokohama and protect not only what movable property may have escaped the fire and the enterprising looter (who soon had the military on his track), but titles to land and so forth” (italics ours).

How much more important in the eyes of these gentlemen was private property than the misery of the poor Japanese, whom they appear to have forgotten !

A further quotation from this correspondent should interest those who believe in the idealism of the profit-seeking capitalist.

  “Of course, between profiteering and ruin the authorities are between the devil and the deep sea. If they have reconstruction they must let the profiteer get his percentage. It is a necessary part of the capitalist system. Big firms here have been advised that the earthquake here had no sooner happened than Japanese in England did their best to get a good grip on the metal market, but not very successfully. Everybody is on the watch for developments, and there is, in spite of the slump, quite a tense awaiting of the revival. The revival of Tokio means the rebuilding of Yokohama. It would be a disaster if, because of temporary embarrassments, British holders of original perpetual leases or even those of ordinary leases were to be forced to sell their holdings, as this would be a blow to British trade. It would be inadvisable for the Government to subsidise them as one subsidy only leads to another. But it is worth while for British firms to lay out money to gain or maintain a footing in the trade that is to come.”

In the eyes of the capitalist, then, the most important fact arising out of the earthquake is not the misery it has brought to those involved in the earthquake, but the profit it promises to those who “risk” their capital.

What a monster is this capital, brother, that it grows fat out of human misery, and dulls in its owners the human feeling of pity ! Doth it not reek with the blood of our fellows, and is it not time that the monster was buried ? Then join with us in digging the grave and burying for ever the exploitation of the many by the few, and with it all the misery and suffering that capital has called into existence.

By The Way. (1923)

The By The Way Column from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “Many working-men who voted Socialist would be the last to wish to see Socialism enthroned.”— (Dr. Macnamara, “Daily Sketch,” 24/9/23.)

A not unusual method of the capitalist vote-catching tout is to flatter and cajole the worker under the pretence of appealing to his “sound common sense,” his “level headed reasoning,” his desire to preserve his “hard won liberties,” all of which he unfortunately hasn’t got. We presume the pedantic doctor refers to those workers who voted for the reform programme of the Labour Party in the belief that they voted for “Socialism.” Those who did so were deceived and sold again, as they so often have been before, by Liberal and Tory frauds. The full realisation of the programme of the Labour Party would still leave the workers propertyless in the means of life, and consequently slaves to their masters. They (the workers) do not want to see Socialism established because they do not understand it. Dr. Macnamara is a defender of capitalism, and would have you believe that your continued toleration of that system is the outcome of your own power to reason. Our claim is that the workers’ support of capitalism, with the inevitable social misery it brings upon them, is not due to their calm and careful conation, but to the slavish ideas inculcated by their master’s education.

Have no fear of bogeys styled “Socialism,” but critically examine our position, apply the intelligence you so often use in your master’s interests, and then, with your new-born understanding, join us. Time and truth are on our side, but we can achieve our objective through you, our class organised –

* * *

”Do you want a bigger salary?” “Do you want to get on?” “Why not climb above the sloughs of unemployment?” Such are the inferential questions addressed to the salaried proletariat by various schools and colleges claiming to supply the necessary qualifications. The Pelman Institute advertising their course through the medium of Baroness Orczy state (Tit-Bits, 22/9/23) : ”There are millions to whom it would mean just the difference between a life of mediocrity and one of prosperity.” What glorious news !—almost brings tears to the eyes to think that there should be so many millions, who, it might appear, are living drab, uneventful lives out of sheer perversity. But even the capitalist press reveals a different state of affairs and shatters the fulsome promises of those whose business it is to trade in a particular form of knowledge required by the masters of to-day. Like the mass of the working class the products of the higher education must come into the labour market and compete in the merciless struggle that our present social system begets.

  “During the next few months some thousands of young men from Oxford and Cambridge will be looking for work in an inhospitable world. ‘The truth is that there is less and less room in modern life for a liberal education,’ said a former undergraduate (who had somehow found a job since ‘coming down’ last summer) sadly to a ‘Daily News’ representative yesterday. The most fortunate of these young men—that is those who have not absolutely got to earn a living at once—will drift to the Bar, with comparatively little prospect of briefs. The less fortunate will become schoolmasters, most of them with neither aptitude nor enthusiasm for their work. And there will still be a lot left over. These will scramble for odd tutorships—an occupation which is usually quite as fatal a ‘blind alley’ as that of a telegraph boy—and try to become free lance journalists. Perhaps some lucky ones will get jobs on the films.”—(“Daily News,” 28/6/23.)

Perhaps ! and more than likely, some unlucky ones will join the ever-growing army of the workless. The capitalists themselves will see that the quantity and quality of so-called educated workers is forthcoming for the purposes of their own profit, and,, like the rest of the working class, their supply exceeding the masters’ requirements, their price upon the labour market (salary or wages) consequently falls. We too seek to educate the workers, not as trained machines, producing and distributing wealth for the enjoyment and leisure of others, but to understand their usefulness and importance, using that knowledge to establish society upon a basis that will allow them to enjoy the results of that usefulness in increasing physical and mental comfort. Such education is indeed worthy of the name, for it has for its objective a higher social order, in which productive human effort will be in conformity with the greatest good of all.

* * *  

  “A railway carriage which used to take six weeks to construct, can now be completed in six days.”—(“Sunday Chronicle,” 23/9/23.)

Certainly a splendid item of information—but not for the railway coach builders, their labourers, or for other sections of the workers for that matter. Small wonder that the above is

  “viewed with the natural suspicion of workers who are afraid that machinery will rob them of a living.”—(Same report.)

Not a suspicion indeed, but a reality— as many workers in other industries could testify, and as other items from the same report bear evidence, for instance :—

  “A railway wagon loaded with timber runs in on ordinary metals and stops beside an inclined conveyor. On the conveyor the planks are thrown. Formerly ten men carried the deals away on their shoulders, the conveyor and two men empty a wagon in 15 minutes. . . There is a bolt machine, for instance, which can turn out 40,000 bolts a day ; its predecessors output was 1,600.”

No doubt the displaced workers will be able to ruminate upon the wonders of labour saving-machinery they and other members of their class invent, produce, and operate —in their master’s interest. What insanity ! All the means to make life easier, all the possibilities of reducing work to a minimum, but under capitalism only to serve the idle few, the owners of those means. The cause of your uncertain and insecure existence is plain to see, it becomes more obvious as the years go by, and means greater insecurity, increasing monotony of work, and an ever growing army of unemployed. The docker, the sailor, the cotton operative, all alike serve as wage hirelings for the purpose of profit and dividend, and all must eventually seek the same way out, the abolition of the privately owned means of life, supplanted by communal ownership by and through their own class concerted action. It is the only way.

* * *

Speaking as a delegate to the Congregational Union at Northampton, Dr. A. R. Henderson said (Westminster Gazette, 3-10-23) :—

   “In many cities and towns there were housing conditions which made decency impossible . . . in these slum areas a morally satisfactory social life was impossible. The separation of employers and employed into hostile groups eager to gain an advantage over each other was one of the most sinister facts of our social life. . . . Two courses were open to the Churches. They could so improve the conditions of the present system, that it shall give a fair opportunity to all, or they could abolish it in favour of some form of Socialism.”

It is not uncommon to-day to read such outbursts emanating from people, partly from a sincere desire to alleviate such misery, and partly from the increasing difficulty of explaining away the existence of such conditions as being merely temporary inconveniences that will vanish in future as the outcome of wise legislation, or the contrition of a once callous master class. Dr. Henderson inclines toward the latter thought. He says : “Employers knew very well what was wrong, and how to set it right if they would.” What these more or less well-meaning people fail to understand is the cause of these conditions, and their relation to the system in which they are an inseparable part. William Morris once aptly observed that : “The workers are poorly housed because they are poor,” and it would be equally true to say that they are poorly fed, clothed, educated and entertained, by the very fact that they are members of the working class ; a class who at present are content to fashion a perpetual panorama of pleasure for their idle masters, whilst themselves remaining content with the crumbs ; and why—why in the name of common sense—should the capitalists, even were it possible for them to do so, be expected to modify their system so as to “give a fair opportunity to all,” a system admitted by Dr. Henderson to rest upon class exploitation, and class oppression. Years and years of reforms have not prevented a worsening of the workers’ condition, neither can it be shown how reforms of the future can remove the cause of those conditions, they would not fundamentally alter the relation of Capitalist and wage worker, and if masquerading as a form of “Socialism,” could only be in such guise to delay the advent of Socialism a system in which class domination would cease to be. Only the working class themselves, understanding Socialism, and organised for its establishment, can end capitalism. It is their task, not their masters’.

W. E. MacHaffie

Letter: The Capital Levy (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Dear Sir,

With regard to the article on the Capital Levy, I would like you to answer the following questions :—

I agree that all taxes are paid by the rich, and come out of surplus value. The robber pays taxes with the wealth he has robbed. But if taxes go to pay for working-class education, old age pensions, etc., then it is the robbers who are made to pay for services rendered to the workers. So that taxation may be used as a lever by the workers to recover some of the wealth taken from them.

Now again, if the Capital Levy, instead of being used to relieve taxation, is used to pay for more and better social services—then the Capital Levy will help the workers.

It is surer to help the workers than higher wages, because the sliding scale—the fodder basis—neutralises higher wages; while social services cannot be neutralised so easily.

The Capital Levy can be used to pay for the land, and instruments of distribution and exchange socialised. To pay means with the money levied from the whole of the capitalist class—the only class that can be levied.

Thanking you,

Yours, etc.,

R. Nelt.

Reply to Mr. Nelt.

Mr. Nelt sets out to explain how taxation (or a special form of it, the Capital Levy) “may be used as a lever by the workers to recover some of the wealth taken from them.” He is, however, not logical in his argument. He says quite correctly that the capitalist class pay for education, old age pensions, etc. Then, without any explanation, he alters “pay” into “are made to pay.” The latter, if it were true, would support his argument, the former, which is true, does not. The capitalist class levy themselves to pay for social services, and being in control of the political machinery they decide the form and the amount of the taxation, and the objects to which the revenue shall be devoted. While the workers continue their present attitude of indifference and actual opposition to their own interests, the capitalists will have just that amount of freedom they now possess to order their affairs as they choose. They will tax themselves as they like, and spend their money on whatever object seems good to them. If the workers had the will and the power to destroy capitalism it would be silly to waste that power on the minor reforms Mr. Nelt proposes; while both will and power are lacking it is impossible to “make” the capitalists do even these small things.

Let me also remind Mr. Nelt that the primary object of the Levy, as advocated by Mr. Pethick Lawrence and the Labour Party generally, is not to increase, but to lower taxation. “It could not be justified except for the purpose of debt reduction.” (Mr. Snowden, Morning Post, 28th June, 1923.) Perhaps Mr. Nelt may imagine that after the advent of a Labour Government taxes really would be levied with the deliberate intention of plundering the capitalist on behalf of the workers. Mr. Snowden disposes of that also, and at the same time supports our view that the capitalist system will be as strong and as safe after a Labour victory as before.

  “If, of course, the commercial classes and those who would have to contribute to a Capital Levy will not have it, but prefer to go on paying a high income tax without any hope of any substantial reduction, they must bear it, and a Labour Government would have to look in other directions than the Capital Levy for revenue to enable the food taxes to be removed, the income tax on moderate incomes to be reduced and to finance schemes of social reform.”

It is obvious, too, that if capitalist opposition will be able to make the Labour Government give up the Capital Levy, the capitalist will then, as now, dictate their own programme of social reform.

Edgar Hardcastle

The workers’ knight-mare. (1923)

From the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following extracts from an article in the Birmingham Daily Mail (8/5/23) indicate the usefulness of reforms to the capitalists, and show the necessity which confronts them of adjusting the mechanism of their system to meet the requirements which its development calls for :—

   “Everyone recognises that the present State scheme of unemployment insurance is a temporary expedient for tiding over a severe crisis. Nevertheless, it has served one useful purpose, writes Sir Robert Hadfield, the well-known Sheffield steel manufacturer. It has proved that in the future insurance against unemployment must inevitably form part of our industrial policy. The removal of the fear of short time and complete unemployment is as essential to industrial progress as is the invention of labour-saving machinery. In fact, it is a necessary corollary to our national progress.”

In the above Sir Robert Hadfield admits that labour-saving machinery and industrial progress bring as an inevitable consequence unemployment; he foresees that there must be hopes of better conditions engendered among the workers, otherwise their growing discontent may become a serious obstacle to “industrial” and “national progress.” If these cant phrases of the various captains of industry who continually lecture the working class were critically examined, the conclusion arrived at by the latter would be that industrial progress means increased wealth for the capitalist class, but intensification of misery for the workers.

  “With a steadily increasing population and our well-recognised dependence on overseas markets, the well-being of the population of Great Britain depends on a steady improvement in industrial efficiency. This can be attained only by improved methods of production. Those improved methods will be resisted actively and passively, by the workers unless they have some real guarantee that their standard of living, as represented by the purchasing power of their wages, will not be depressed thereby.”

Efficiency ! For what reason? To enable your masters to acquire greater wealth in a shorter time than previously. But that is not the only reason, for the national groups of capitalists are fully aware that increased efficiency and improved production are the necessary outcome of the struggle for trade; this struggle has now become so keen that each group is more than ever determined to speed up their workers and exploit them to the utmost. The result is that the markets become overstocked with commodities, a slump sets in, there is increased unemployment, and there follows keen competition between workers for jobs, resulting in the lowering of wages and deterioration of their standard of living. Also through the speeding up processes and the general fetichism of efficiency, physical and mental breakdowns will become a more frequent occurrence. These mishaps will, of course, make work for the penny-in-the-slot panel doctor.

   “The increased scale of benefits introduced when the scope of insurance was widened to cover practically all industries was not so much a concession to fit the increased cost of living as a recognition of the need for provision of more adequate maintenance for the workers in times of enforced idleness. That need has been voiced repeatedly in the demand for ‘work or maintenance.’ Whether that will ever come within the region of practical politics is open to question. Meanwhile the problem must be dealt with on much less ambitious lines for which the existing State scheme will probably serve as a basis.”

There appears to be some contradiction here, for if we refer back it will be seen that Sir Robert deprecates any reduction in the standard of living as represented by wages, but now we find that something much less ambitious than “work or maintenance” must suffice; evidently that “real guarantee” amounts to words, words only.

  “The estimate was recently given in the House of Commons that against a regular unemployment roll of 200,000 in pre-war days we must calculate on provision for 600,000 in the future. To contemplate with equanimity an industrial condition wherein half the present number of unemployed must be described as unemployable, would mean that industry was entirely bankrupt of ideas, and altogether selfish in outlook both on the employing and employed side. Even the bitterest protagonists of both sides would hesitate to pronounce so sweeping a verdict.”

The reader can now see to what a pass industrial and national progress has brought the workers, for the present number of unemployed (one million, two hundred thousand) appears to have become a normal condition of the present system, and no doubt Sir Robert Hadfield voices the uneasiness of the capitalist class, or that section who apprehend danger to the smooth working of the capitalist system, which such a vast number of unemployed portends. He is evidently desirous of trying every means to arrive at a settled position, chiefly through agreement with the organised trades, who are asked to link themselves up with their enemies to help to reform, and thus acquiesce in a system which should be overthrown. In reference to “selfishness” of outlook the workers may just as well face the facts, viz. : that material interests dominate action, that employers and workers have interest antagonistic to each other, that the employers are suiting their “selfish” interests in diverting the workers’ attention from that antagonism by talk of betterment and reform of social conditions. That is all that selfishness implies in this instance, although Sir Robert would cunningly desire the workers to think that selfishness, i.e., action along the lines of material interests, is not in accord with capitalism.

  “Present indications point to the permanence of some kind of State scheme of unemployment insurance. The difficulties accurately defining the boundary lines of specific trades are the greatest barrier to the ideal system—insurance by industry itself. Even if the provision of the benefit were entirely a State concern, and its administration purely an industrial matter, many of the criticisms of the existing scheme would be met. Contributions could still be paid as at present but the distribution of benefits would be left to the employers or the trade union, or both. The unemployed would then he dealing entirely with their own employer or trade union officials, and would thus keep in close touch with the active agencies for the promotion of employment.”

It matters nothing to the unemployed whether the benefit is paid by the State, the employers, or the trade union, there will be just as much haggling and appearing before committees; and men and women will still be suspended from benefits or written off as “Not Genuinely Seeking Work.” It is apparent that the appeal is made to enlist the sympathies of the trade union members, for it is clear to the far-seeing capitalist that once these accept the principle of reform it will then be easier to get the remainder of the working class to follow suit. The trade unions will then in very truth be merely intermediaries for the supply of labour-power, and their branches payout offices for unemployed workers. As to being in touch with the active agencies for the promotion of employment, that will not bring the workers any nearer to their desire, for obviously the employer will only engage men when he requires them, and it will be useless for the trade union officials to send men after jobs that do not exist. At the present time any firm has only to advertise one vacancy, and there will be scores of applicants. In many cases, firms have established labour bureaus where names of applicants are registered. This constitutes a direct menace and threat to those within the factory. Sir Robert has no solution for the problem, which “is so complex that to expect a Government Department to evolve a system which will satisfy all demands is to hope for the unattainable.” He suggests “that industry itself in each of its component parts must set on foot an inquiry into its own potentialities and needs. Its employers can readily gain access to all the necessary facts regarding capital, machine equipment, and so on : its trade unions could without difficulty lay their hands on all the necessary information regarding the workers’ side of the question.”

In short, fellow-workers, you are asked to take part in a movement which if you are wise you will spurn. The progress of the capitalist system is not your concern, but the acquisition of knowledge that will lead you to overthrow it, is most important. The capitalist class are compelled from time to time to adjust by reforms the anomalies that arise within their system, but many workers are led to believe by astute captains of industry or wily Labour leaders that these reforms and adjustments are made entirely in the interests of the working class. If the latter are cajoled into joint action or agreement with their enemies, they will be acting contrary to their real interests. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the only party that places Socialism forward as the solution of present evils, for the workers will only be freed from those evils when their cause, capitalism, is abolished. The working class must grip the fact that the capitalist system, itself a result of historical development, has evolved means of producing wealth which, if democratically controlled by the whole of the people, would give useful work to the able, leisure, comfort, and happiness to all mankind. It remains to the workers to taring an end to a system wherein they are looked down upon as Calibans of whom the Prosperos say :

”He does make our fire,

Fetch in our wood and serves in offices

That profit us,”

and contemptuously call forth at will as Prospero to Caliban—

“What ho! slave! Caliban! 

Thou earth, thou !”

E.J.

Blogger's Note:

Of the three 'E.J.' articles I've posted on the blog this is the second time 'E.J.' has quoted from a Birmingham newspaper, so I'm calling it that 'E.J.' is Ernest Jesper, a founder member of the Birmingham Branch of the SPGB in 1909, and who remained a Party member until his death in 1967.

Weevils and fame. (1923)

From the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The American Cotton Problem” is the subject of an article in the Observer (15/7/23) by the Financial Editor. Sir E. Mackay Edgar, Chairman of Crosses and Winkworth Consolidated Mills, is given a powerful pat on the back for his prediction of a year ago that a famine in American cotton was coming.

During the last 17 years America has produced about 60 per cent. of the world’s cotton supply. Latterly there has been a falling off in America’s production, and in 1921 and 1922 American production has fallen to 54 per cent. and 56 per cent. respectively of the world’s production.

While the production of cotton has fallen, its consumption has risen. The article points out :

  “The United States is already expanding her textile trade and her consumption of cotton measured by her spindle capacity is much greater than that of the United Kingdom. She is also increasing her spindleage and to an extent that should occasion alarm in the industry in Great Britain.”

Poor Lancashire ! First India started pinching her Indian trade, and now America is trying to pinch her American trade. What base ingratitude !

The fall in cotton production and increase in its consumption keeps cotton prices high, and hence the squeals of Lancashire.

A large share in causing the cotton shortage is laid at the door of the boll weevil, whose method of sustaining life consists of destroying the cotton plant. But there is a weevil of another brand that also affects cotton production, but its object is the sustaining of profit.

From Professor Milhaud’s “Enquiry on Production—General Report,” we learn that:

  “The situation with regard to cotton has been exactly the same. In December, 1920, the production of Japan was already reduced by 40 per cent., and further reductions were contemplated. In Egypt it was the public authorities themselves who took the initiative. The provincial councils unanimously decided to restrict the cultivation of cotton for 1921. In accordance with this decision the Sultan signed a decree on December 7th ordering that the area under cotton should be reduced by two-thirds and prohibiting the cultivation of cotton in upper Egypt except in the parts irrigated by the Nile.”

  “The American Cotton Growers’ Association succeeded in bringing about the largest percentage of reduction on record in the production of cotton. This Association boasted of the firm and vigorous attitude of the bankers of the whole of the cotton-growing districts, who refused to grant the necessary advances and credits to enable the cultivation of enough cotton to ensure a normal crop.”

The Cotton News (1/6/21), referring to the restriction in the use of artificial manures in the cotton growing States along the east bank of the Mississippi, states :

  “which means to say that the growth and ripening of the new crop will be impeded and, furthermore, that the crop, already greatly restricted as regards the area under cultivation, will be seriously handicapped during the growing season. That applies even in those cases where the climatic conditions would be otherwise favourable.”

   “A similar policy has been applied by the International Federation of Linen Manufacturers, comprising the linen manufacturers of France, England, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, and Denmark, who declared at their meeting held at Brussels on November 18th, 1920, that the most important consideration was to restrict production and stabilise the market.”

Sir E. Mackay Edgar is a director in a large concern, and we are frequently informed that upon such men we depend for the carrying on of large industries, where an intimate knowledge of world affairs (not supposed to be possessed by we lesser mortals) is essential. Can we therefore doubt that Sir E. Mackay Edgar was familiar with the facts quoted above? Then his prophecy may not have been so marvellous after all. How often does a man achieve fame on account of the blindness of others !

Gilmac.

Letter: Commodities and quids. (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liverpool, Sept. 12th, 1923.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, 

17 Mount Pleasant, London, W.C.1.

Dear Comrade.

I note that J.F. passes over the important points I make, and resorts to hair splitting. This only makes his case worse, and puts him deeper in the mire. For example, he charges me with falsifying Marx by making him say that the sovereign is the general equivalent in Britain. My answer is that Marx proves it, both in his “Critique” and “Capital.” He shows that the sovereign is the unit of value, the standard of price, and reflects the value of all commodities in Britain. He illustrates many of his points with the aid of the sovereign and its aliquot parts. We are forced to agree with him because it is our experience, go where we will in Britain, all commodities are quoted and exchanged in terms of the sovereign. What better proof does J.F. want?

J.F. says that I misuse the term “Law.” Let us test this. Marx begins his great work thus : “The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of commodities,’ its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.”

Here Marx is telling us that there are at least two kinds of wealth, commodity wealth being one. To find what distinguishes commodity wealth from other forms of wealth we must analyse and generalise commodities. By doing so we find the common factors which wealth in the form of commodities possesses, and which other forms of wealth do not possess. In other words, to generalise is to find the law. So you see I used the term in the right place, and in the right sense. I repeat that J.F. has never given us the laws whereby we can distinguish commodity wealth from wealth in general; if he did he would prove at the same time that a sovereign was a commodity !

If we are merely to take Marx’s word for it, then he gives me the point at issue in his opening sentence; for it is plain that if all capitalist wealth is commodity wealth, then it is quite clear that a sovereign must be a commodity. So you see that J.F. is teaching anti-Marx without being able to prove his position. Before we can prove Marx to be correct we must be clear that although all capitalist wealth is commodity wealth, all commodity wealth is not capitalist wealth, just as all sparrows are birds, but all birds are not sparrows. The teacher cannot possibly make, or explain those subtle distinctions until he understands the laws which gives him his concepts of commodity wealth, and wealth in general. J.F. falls lamentably short in this respect.

J.F. says: “Outside of Britain the sovereign loses these various characteristics and becomes a mere piece of gold, which exchanges by weight, and is therefore no longer a sovereign. It is this simple fact that W.W. has failed to understand.”

J.F. is quite right, I did not understand that gold exchanged by weight outside of Britain. I really thought that it was the labour, measured by time, embodied in a specific quantity of gold that made it exchange with other commodities, in definite ratios, everywhere. That labour was the source of all value, which manifested itself in exchange. Now J.F. informs me I am wrong; that it is gravity, and not labour, which makes commodities exchange in definite ratios, “outside Britain.” I would fain ask J.F. what gives commodities their exchange value inside Britain, and if each sovereign does not contain the same weight of gold? I hope J.F. will give me the credit for knowing that if you change a thing’s form it becomes something else. But is very evident from the above statement J.F. does not realise that if you change sovereigns into bullion, the bullion will have the same nature that the sovereigns had, namely, the nature of serving as the general equivalent internationally. Indeed it might be just possible that I am not so dense as J.F. would have his readers believe.

Regarding J.F.’s remarks about me saying that the slave and serf, being unable to produce surplus value. Evidently he is unaware that it is Marx that gives us the problem to solve : “For the conversion of his money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must meet in the market with the free labourer, free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour-power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale, is short of everything necessary for the realisation of his labour-power.” Capital pp 187, 188, Kerr’s.

That undoubtedly means that the slave and serf could not produce surplus value, for they had not a commodity to sell, not even their labour power. It also means that the small tradesman to-day, who owns his means of production, and is his own labour power, cannot produce surplus value, simply because he does not sell his labour power, but uses it for his own benefit. A little investigation will show us that if he extend the working day beyond the necessary labour time—like the slave and serf—he will produce surplus products, but that does not mean that they contain surplus-value. As a Marxian teacher, J.F. should know all this, but evidently it is all news to him ; and without giving it a thought he flies into print, and tells his readers that I am “Absurdly Incorrect.” It would take us too far from the matter in hand to prove Marx to be correct, so J.F. had better get busy, and formulate the position for himself. In the meantime his job is to point out to his readers where Marx erred when he said capitalist wealth was commodity wealth, which, of course, includes the sovereign. I am afraid he has taken on a colossal task.

Yours fraternally,

Wm. Walker

Answer to W.W.

W.W. complains that “J.F. passes over the important points I make,” but he carefully refrains from stating what those “points” were, and a reading of his letters fails to disclose them.

Twice in the discussion with W.W, we have pointed out that he failed to understand the difference between a sovereign and a mere piece of gold. He now admits that we are correct, and thus gives us our case in this dispute. It would seem, however, not only by his misuse of Marx’s writings, but by his failure to notice the contradictions in his own statements, that it is not merely confusion of thought he suffers from, but intellectual incapacity to understand simple facts.

Thus in his sixth paragraph he says :—

   “I hope J. F. will give me the credit for knowing that if you change a thing’s form it becomes something else.”

and yet two lines after he says :—

  “If you change sovereigns into bullion, the bullion will have the same nature as the sovereigns had, namely, the nature of serving as the general equivalent internationally.”

So the thing that changes remains the same !

In the September S.S. we pointed out that W.W.’s implication that Marx said the sovereign was the general equivalent, was false. W.W. now says that Marx proves it in his “Critique,” and “Capital,” but he does not give a single reference from either work to support his contention—simply because no such statement exists in those works. Probably Marx’s view is most clearly shown in the table given at the end of his description of the evolution of the money-form of the general equivalent.

This is the fourth form in his analysis, and he calls it :—

W.W. now states definitely that sovereigns have “the nature of serving as the general equivalent internationally,” thus, showing not only a misunderstanding of Marx but a complete ignorance of foreign or international economic relations. Further evidence of this ignorance is shown in the paragraph where W.W. admits we are correct in stating that he does not understand the difference between a sovereign and a mere piece of gold, when he drags in the question of value—a point outside the whole discussion—and mixes up the basis of exchange between two or more commodities with the method adopted of deciding the unit of quantity of any one commodity. And here again he contradicts himself. He says that he thought that “it was the labour measured by time embodied in a specific quantity of gold that made it exchange with other commodities.” (our italics.) And what is the “specific quantity” of gold ? A certain weight of it. Therefore gold exchanges by weight, but sovereigns exchange by tale or number. Thus even in his attempt to drag the question of value into the discussion, W.W. has to contradict his own assertion and by using the term “specific quantity” brings forward the fact that gold exchanges by weight with other commodities.

Still more stupid is his endeavour to explain what he obviously does not understand, the term “law.” Here he mixes up “law” with “definition.” Outside of legal circles “law” is the term given to the invariable sequence of factors in a process; a “definition” describes essential characteristics. To distinguish one form of wealth from another form of wealth requires a description of their essential characteristics. This is not “law” but “definition.” And let us repeat. Twice we have given the definition of a commodity for his benefit, and he has not questioned that definition in any of his letters.

This stupidity, however, runs dangerously close to deliberate misrepresentation when he quotes the opening chapter of “Capital,” and then says :—

  “If we are merely to take Marx’s word for it, then he gives me the point at issue in his opening sentence, for it is plain that if all capitalist wealth is commodity wealth then it is quite clear that a sovereign must be a commodity.”

“If”—but unfortunately that “if” knocks W.W.’s case of cards to pieces. Turn to the quotation from “Capital” given by W.W. and one will be unable to find any such statement as “all capitalist wealth is commodity wealth” there ; nor can it be found anywhere in Marx’s writings, for it is untrue.

The apex of this muddlement is reached, perhaps, when W.W. quotes, from pp. 187-188 of “Capital,” a sentence dealing solely with a factor of modern capitalism, and claims that this justifies his appalling ignorance of history. The best answer to this is to quote what Marx himself says on the matter.

  “Capital has not invented surplus labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer free or not free, must add to the working time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian Noble Man, Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus, Norman baron, American slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord, or capitalist.”—(“Capital,” pp. 259-260, Kerr, ed.)

The originator of this discussion was seemingly satisfied with our answer to his question. W. W. with his inability to understand even the simplest of Marx’s writing’s, blunders from one bombastic statement to another, and winds up with a claim to “prove Marx to be correct.” Leaving aside the fact that Marx had already made this quite unnecessary by doing the job himself, one can only admire the courage, while deploring the want of wisdom, of W.W. attempting to tackle such a task.

Jack Fitzgerald

Wisdom from the past (1923)

 From the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

“It may be laid down for an undeniable truth, that where all work nobody will want, and to promote this would be a greater charity and more meritorious than to build hospitals, which very often are but so many monuments of ill-gotten riches, attended with late repentance.”

Wm. Petty, 1699.

Letter: The Capital Levy (1923)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Sir,

In response to your invitation to continue the discussion, it seems to me that there are three fundamental differences between us.

Firstly I hold that among the “economic forces” which under a capitalist system determine real net wages (i.e. the purchasing power of money wages) must be included the power exerted by capitalists through their possession of war loan. You apparently exclude this factor.

Secondly I hold that a levy on capital is a step towards ending the present system of wealth distribution which enables some individuals to live in idleness on the fruits of others’ exertions. You apparently think, either that it would not be a step at all, or that it would be so small as not to be worth taking.

Thirdly I envisage the capital levy as one of the several reforms which will not only improve the immediate position of the workers, but will at the same time help to build up the new order of society necessary to take the place of the decaying capitalist system. You, I gather, regard such efforts at best as futile, and at worst as buttressing up the capitalist system and delaying its overthrow.

If I have correctly stated our respective standpoints there is nothing further to be said.

Yours, etc.,

F. W. Pethick Lawrence.

Reply.

Mr. Pethick Lawrence says that “the power exerted by capitalists through their possession of war loan” is apparently excluded by me from the economic forces which determine real net wages. Now I readily agree that within the framework of the State, and subordinate to political control, which is the ultimate source of power, the accumulated wealth of the capitalists is an important factor in the struggle about the level of wages. But I do not see that it matters one jot whether that wealth exists as war loan, or whether it take some other form.

Lest it be said that this huge debt is the cause of present unemployment, let me recall two things : (1) that before the war we had some permanent unemployment, as well as protracted periods when it was acute; and (2) that France, with a like indebtedness, and a much worse financial position generally, has no unemployment.

If the Capital Levy meant a real appropriation of a large part of the wealth of the capitalists, there might be something in the argument, but in Mr. Pethick Lawrence’s own words, “Payment of the levy will, in effect, be carried out by means of a reshuffling of the title deed’s of wealth among-wealthy persons. …” (Forward, May 5th,. 1923).

This brings me to his second point. I still fail to see how this “reshuffling,” which leaves the total wealth of the capitalist class untouched, and merely changes the form of some of it from war loan to industrial capital, can at the same time be a step towards the ending of the present system of wealth distribution. If the capitalists lose nothing, from what source do the workers, gain ?

As for the last point, Mr. Pethick Lawrence has not yet answered the charge that the levy, if successful, would buttress up the capitalist system. Assuming that a capitalist state were in dire need of some measure to re-establish its financial stability, then it seems obvious to me that a capital levy which served this purpose would strengthen the hands of the capitalist class, and give new life to the system on whose continuance their privileged position depends.

Actually I think that it is unlikely that the British capitalists can now have any use for the levy. At the time, just after the war, when it might have proved very useful to them, they were not ready to accept it, and now the need has largely passed.

Edgar Hardcastle

To the Executive Committee. (1923)

Party News from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

October 16th, 1923.

Dear Comrades,

At a meeting of Hackney Branch, Friday, September 7th, a member of the branch reported that he had attended at a propaganda meeting of the Central Hackney Branch of the I.L.P., at Queen’s Road, Dalston, on the previous Monday evening.

At that meeting the statement was made by the chairman that the S.P.G.B. had been challenged to a debate the week before, but had refused to accept. On hearing this statement, the aforesaid comrade intimated to the chairman that he would accept the challenge on behalf of the S.P.G.B., subject to the ratification by his E.C.

On receipt of the above report the Hackney Branch instructed their secretary to write the I.L.P. secretary, asking him to confirm challenge and state if the debate was to receive the backing of their Executive Committee, and further, to suggest time, place, title, and general conditions of debate. The branch instructions were carried out, and the I.L.P. were written on Tuesday, September 11th.

On October 1st the Hackney Branch received the following reply :—

COPY OF I.L.P. LETTER.

October 1st, 1923.

Dear Sir,

Your letter of the 11th ult., asking for a debate between our party and your organisation was dealt with by our E.C. on Friday last, and their decision was that no useful purpose would be served by the holding of such debate.

I am, yours faithfully,

William G. Love,

Secretary.

Funds. (1923)

Party News from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The winter is upon us, unemployment is widespread, thousands have the greatest difficulty in keeping the hunger-wolf from the door, owing to the smallness and uncertainty of the wages they obtain.

Under such conditions it must seem curious and even callous to the outsider to ask a worker to spare pence out of his pitiful pittance for Socialist propaganda.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is made up of working men—the poorly paid and the unemployed. We are organised to overthrow the system that breeds overwork, poor pay and unemployment. Organisation needs funds.

Funds are necessary for instance for the following purposes: (1) the upkeep of the central office, in which the business of the organisation can be transacted, educational classes held, and so forth; (2) the printing expenses for the production of circulars, pamphlets, and the monthly journal—the "S.S.” ; (3) the obtaining of platforms and the hiring of halls for public meetings.

The above are some of the most important expenses incurred.

To meet these expenses our members pay what they can, but we are unable to subscribe sufficient ourselves to keep the party solvent. To meet the deficits we have collections at our meetings, and invite subscriptions to our Thousand Pound Fund. Up to the present we have been just able to scrape through, but we are rapidly reaching the point where we will be unable to scrape through. This is largely due to increased costs of printing, office expenses, decreasing collections, owing to the general depression, and the decreasing capacity of our members to subscribe.

The sequel can be easily understood. Unless more funds are forthcoming we will have to curb our activities still further, and possibly suspend publication of our monthly paper, The Socialist Standard.

Those who agree with our propaganda and desire to see the continued publication of The Socialist Standard, and also the printing of further pamphlets, are earnestly invited to do what they can in the way of subscribing to our funds, and extending the circulation of our literature.

*     *     *     *     *

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Unemployment - cause and cure (1923)

From the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are now upwards of 1¼ million workers registered as unemployed in Great Britain. How many there are not registered, and how many are working short time, it is impossible to say, but we may safely assume that there will be, before this winter is out, more than 1 1/2 million men and women, boys and girls, able and willing to work, but prevented from doing so. The present depression began at the end of 1920 and shows no sign of lifting, and it is no longer sufficient for Ministers to prophecy improvement; even the most credulous workers are now unwilling to believe in the early coming of the long deferred revival.

There is no lack of freaks, frauds and cranks anxious to gain attention for their fallacious diagnoses and quack remedies — free traders and protectionists, and advocates of imperial preference; deflationists and inflationists, Christians preaching Brotherhood, and others who want another war, bareheaded Daily Mailites, and their ridiculous Liberal Labour opponents, who weep for the wrongs inflicted on the poor German capitalists, emigrationists, and last and most futile of all, the motley crowd of "Socialists," who have time for these and every vain scheme, but no time for Socialism. We, on the other hand, urge now, as we have always urged, that there is a solution — Socialism; that it is the only solution; and that it is a solution for the present and not for the distant future.

The attempted explanations of unemployment are as varied as the suggested remedies, and it is necessary therefore to make clear a few important points. First, do rot be misled by those who have tried to saddle Poincare with the responsibility. The widespread unemployment began in 1920 and had reached a point in 1922 higher than at any other time since; yet the French occupation of the Ruhr did not take place until January, 1923.

Do not believe that it is an " abnormal " after-war development. Apart from earlier times of special distress due to political and economic disturbances, unemployment has been a constant feature of our system since the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century. There has during that period always been a mass of employable but unemployed workers; the number increasing enormously during trade depressions and decreasing with trade prosperity. It never wholly disappeared, in spite of the big drain of emigration to America and the Colonies. Dr. Macnamara, M.P., speaks of a normal pre-war unemployed army of 200,000 persons (Times, 11th September, 1923.) Unemployment is a normal feature of capitalist production. And what of the future? Macnamara promises that

" that even if the unsettlement of Europe were ended and normal trade returned, the permanent unemployment in this country would be three or four times as big as in pre-war times."

While Sir John Norton Griffiths, M.P., a Tory, tells us (Daily Herald, 11th April, 1923) :—

" We have now got, and always, apparently, will have . . . trade boom or no trade boom a million or more unemployed men who cannot be absorbed in industry."

Neither Macnamara nor Norton Griffiths seems greatly perturbed, but it may be worth your while to consider carefully the prospect before you.

Refuse to be drawn by the Labour leaders into the free trade-protectionist controversy, for it does not concern you. It is no question of principle, but one of capitalist interests, and will be readily scrapped by those who teach you to worship it, when profit-making demands a new policy. The sudden conversion of the traditionally free-trade Bradford woollen industry illustrates this. Moreover free trade is an illusion in the modern world. What does free trade mean to a cotton or soap combine which has a practical monopoly of raw material and the home market? What does free trade mean to an international meat or steel combine, which allocates to its members certain geographical areas and a certain percentage of the sales in the total markets? And remember that the inquiries instituted by the Government immediately after the war brought to light the fact that there is now hardly any important industry which is not controlled in some direction by a federation or central organisation.

Protection is in effect the state support of one industry at the expense of those who pay for the whole cost of administration, that is the capitalist class. Protection or direct subsidies cannot in the long-run overcome the world conditions governing the whole mass of a country's trade, or better the position of the working class. A subsidy for agriculture, or a bar on the import of agricultural produce (advocated by a section of the Labour Party) will, it is true, stimulate the agricultural industry and lead to the employment of more workers there ? But that is only one of the results. The production of more food at home means a decrease of the import of food products from abroad, and a corresponding decrease in coal or manufactured goods which would ordinarily have gone to pay for those imports. A mere transfer of some miners or cotton operatives to the ranks of the unemployed and the corresponding employment of a number of out-of-work agricultural labourers does not solve the problem of unemployment.

It resembles the emigration schemes which appear to rest on the notion that one can remove unemployment by migrating the unemployed from one country to another. It takes no account of the fact that the problem is a world problem, because this is obscured by certain temporary factors and local peculiarities.

Protectionist U.S.A., which two years ago had six million unemployed, strictly limits immigration, but this has not been the means of fulfilling the late President's fatuous wish that the boom of last year should be an era of " permanent prosperity." Depression is beginning there once more, and during 1922 alone no less than two million farmers and hands had to leave the land and resort to the industrial towns, to swell the unemployed army. Their chief immediate trouble was that there is too much wheat in the world for the capitalist system to dispose of, and yet some of our Labour men still believe that the panacea for agricultural stagnation at home is to grow more wheat !

Canada has its own problem to face, and cannot even find work for all of a few thousand men who were enticed out there for the harvesting. Unemployment is acute and growing in South Africa, where it is also complicated by the racial hostility between the relatively highly paid (and out-of-work) whites, and the low paid blacks. The South African unemployed actually asked to be migrated to Australia to join the ranks of the unemployed there, many of them want to come "home" to England. South Africa is also asking for immigrants—"with £2,000 capital."!

France has but little unemployment, because she has remained largely an agricultural country, with a land system of peasant proprietorship. There are relatively few wage-earners, the only ones liable to suffer unemployment, and for some time past French industry, especially textiles, has been doing big trade abroad at the expense of English exporters, owing to the depreciation of the franc. This has led to an amusing clash between one brand of currency-mongers, who want to save us by raising the £ sterling to par, and another brand who can see the millenium in lowering it until Bradford mill owners can undersell French cloths. However, to the extent that French trade prospers and stimulates development of industry (including the Ruhr industries) France, too, will become more and more dependent on the state of world trade, and her growing army of factory workers will be drawn into the pool of, potentially, surplus labour.

It is also quite wrong to suppose that unemployment is a product of over-population. Sir William Beveridge, at the British Association, dealt with this, and quoted elaborate statistics to show that

"Man for his present troubles had to accuse neither the niggardliness of Nature nor his own instinct of reproduction." — "Daily Telegraph," 18/9/23.) Unemployment, he said, was " a function of the organisation and methods of industry, not of its size."

The British Government has announced its policy of authorising the expenditure of £50,000,000 on relief works for the coming winter. This, in face of the evident hopelessness of expecting any important trade revival in the near future, is merely an admission of the failure of the capitalist class to solve the problem. It is just a form of relief without, what is from their viewpoint, the drawback of idleness, leading to a loss of the habit of work. The capitalists as a whole, and their thinkers and apologists, are in the same fatalistic state of mind as one individual employer who was recently declared a bankrupt. He ascribed his failure to his anxiety not to dismiss some old employees although he had no work for them. He just "hoped" that " something would turn up." It didn't for him, and it won't for the system as a whole. Nor is there any hope from Labour Governments. Labour Governments in Australia (including the one still left) were just as helpless as any other; they used precisely the same methods to reduce wages when prices fell, and treated the resistance of the workers with the usual brutality. Unemployment is as rife in Queensland as in any other capitalist state, and as little is done for them. In fact the unemployed are better off under our own Government.

The Australian capitalists, like those here and elsewhere, continually have one consideration in mind. At all costs the workers must be kept from determined discontent. First promises, flattery, or the illusive benefits of Labour Governments are tried, then the paltry bribe of relief and doles, and finally, if nothing else will serve, the open violence of the armed forces of law and order.

Our explanation of the problem is simpler than any of these. It may from one aspect be summed up in the statement that the inability of 1 1/4 million British workers to find work although they wish to do so, is due to the frank determination of another million persons not on any account to spoil their pleasant lives by painful toil. You work because it is your only means of getting the means of living. The things you need are the result of the application of your labour to the natural resources, but because these natural resources, along with the railways, the factories and steamships, etc., are privately owned by a small class of wealthy persons, they can and do live without having to work, and they possess the power not only to appropriate the proceeds of your labour, but also when they think fit to prevent you from working at all. In the early days of capitalism these people justified their rents and profits by the services they rendered. But by now they have, as a class, long ceased to render those services. Land¬owners are no longer the pioneers in agricultural science, they do not lead the way in raising the technique of the industry, or in encouraging their tenants to better methods of production. They lost 35 years ago their last semblance of being a necessary part of the machinery of government, when in 1888 the Justices of the Peace were all but abolished, and their powers handed over to the elected county councils. Industrial capitalists do not now bring brains, enterprise or directive ability to industry; these functions are mainly exercised by salaried officials, members of the working class. Far from promoting economic development, the growing tendency is for the controllers of the chief industries to restrict production in order to save themselves from the world shrinkage of markets. As for the so-called "risks" of capital, it is a commonplace for big business when in difficulties to get the State to help them out and take the risk from their shoulders.

The problem of permanent unemployment arises out of this one fact of private ownership. The owners return to the working class as wages an amount which will purchase only part of the total product. The balance cannot be consumed entirely by the owners and must in any event first be sold. The manufacturer of cotton cloth, for instance, might as well be propertyless as to have on his hands a great amount of unsaleable goods. To sell there must be markets, and owing to the rapid industrialisation of the last 50 years there is now relatively little demand for the manufactured products of the advanced nations.

The competition for the markets causes wars, but far from solving these only aggravate the problem. During the artificial prosperity of war time great strides are made in powers of production, and when peace comes the glut is worse than ever. The Right Hon. C. A. McCurdy, M.P., writing in the Daily Chronicle (14th September) pointed out that the steel industry of this country after the war was developed much above the demand of the market for its products. And it is foolish to suppose that trade depression and unemployment can be avoided by reducing wages or by lowering the cost of production in any other way. The enormous wage reductions in Great Britain which followed the Labour leaders' campaign for increased production, certainly did not stem the tide of unemployment. And if it were true that lower prices would cause a trade revival, the capitalists are perfectly free now to lower their prices by cutting into profits. They would do so if this policy would lead to a corresponding increase of sales. But the world economic position is such that no reduction of prices would cause any appreciable increase in demand. In fact in many industries (cotton for instance) this has been clearly realised, and the policy is being followed of deliberate and agreed restriction of output in order to raise prices. Sir Charles Macara stated this explicitly for the cotton trade (Business Organisation, March, 1923). He argues that the loss of foreign markets led to cut-throat competition at home without any material growth in home sales. The producers sold no more by lowering prices and merely sacrificed profits. It has been said that the Capital Levy, by reducing taxation, would enable manufacturers to sell cheaper, and thus would revive trade. The argument is fallacious, because it assumes that capitalists who now do not reduce prices, would do so then; ignoring the fact that they could do so now if they wished, and that they would not be compelled to do so then if they did not wish. They do not reduce now because it does not pay to do so, and unless the world situation as a whole were changed, it would still not pay them to do so after a Capital Levy. Assuming a reduction in taxation occurred, only profits would benefit.

If then, as we say, unemployment is a necessary adjunct of capitalist production, there is only one remedy. The workers must deprive the capitalist class of their ownership and control of the means of production. Once made the common property of society, they can be used for the purpose of satisfying society's needs; not the unstable demands of a market, but the direct human needs of the people.

For the application of this solution only one thing is lacking. The political machinery exists through which the workers can constitutionally express and enforce their will. The knowledge of the productive process in all its branches is contained within the ranks of the working class. But the majority of the workers still support the capitalist system of society. The Socialist party is doing all it can to undermine that trust in capitalism, and it invites the immediate and active assistance of all workers who recognise the accuracy of our contention, that there is no future for our class except in Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle