Fools learn by experience. And so do other people. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

What We Have Left Behind.

It was the custom, but a short while ago, to attribute to savage life a setting of perennial violence and promiscuous murder. It was the custom, in days yet no further from us than their rose-scents endure, and their laurels keep their freshness, to acclaim our exalted civilisation, and to gasp at the completeness of our conquest of ourselves by ourselves, and our triumph over external conditions—with the aid of God, and of parson, and of men like Mr, Lloyd George, and Lord Kitchener, and Mr. Berry, the celebrated hangman, of course. It was the custom to search the world for the Molochs of other worships and the Juggernaut cars of other civilisations, and to use them as pin-flags to mark the course we have followed and the giddy heights we have achieved above them.

Who does not remember for what bloody butcheries and devastating conquests excuse has been found in the tyranny of native rulers and insecurity of native life ? The “poor black” could never be sure, when he put his head out of his kraal in search of his morning paper, that some earlybird with a highly developed sense of humour and a capacious knife was not going to tumble that head into the milk-can. And it was suspected that, hidden away in the fastnesses of primitive forests, woolly-headed, dusky Camp­bells and Booths and other bogey-men were mixing up the trade of restaurateur with that of juggler, and administering the Communion with such grim realism as rendered superfluous the pronouncement “This is His flesh.” Such offences against the nostrils of “our common humanity” invariably called aloud for expeditions composed mainly, after its human components, of those well-known civilising agents, bullets, bibles, and booze (three out of the famous “Four B’s” of Christian pioneering—the missionary was the fourth).

Love’s Labour Lost.

Many an expedition, armed to the teeth for butchery, has left our shores on the pretext that the barbarities of little-known people shock the world and are a danger to civilisation ; many an expedition, reddened to the ears with butchery, has justified its orgy of rape and murder by grim tales of mountains of skulls discovered in some dusky potentate’s backyard. Civilised ruling classes have been touched to the tenderest cores of their tender hearts by savage brutality, and have expended much blood and treasure to correct the idiosyncrisi.es of the Mahdis, and clear up the messes of the King Coffees,

And now what a spectacle the Christian rulers of Christian lands present to the astonished eyes of savagedom !

All former hates and blood-lusts pale into insignificance compared with the consuming passions that run riot through the breasts of “civilised” men ; all former wars become mere local disturbances by comparison with this ghastly struggle which is turning countries into cemeteries and civilisation into an instrument of bloodshed; all former barbarities, whether of African despot or Asiatic ravager or European money-hunter, are eclipsed by the callous brutality of the means by which all the combatants alike seek to put out the lifespark of men in this last great crime which reveals the true visage of capitalism.

What irony survives the shock of events ! It was the complaint of multitudes, when we Socialists delivered the Socialist message in the pre-war days, that any attempt to establish society upon a basis of common ownership must lead to bloodshed. The fear of such a contingency has closed to our message the ears of many whose logical faculties could permit no other escape from the general truth of our conclusions, but who had not yet appreciated the veracity of Mr. Churchill’s dictum : “There are worse things than bloodshed.”

If Blood be the Price—

But to those who feared so much the giant figure behind the Socialist banner what has capitalism presented—and what has it yet to present ? In the first year of war about 85,000 British lost their lives in operations by land and sea, and a month later a military member of the House of Commons told us that “we have hardly yet wet our shoes.” A Paris journal. “L’Oeuvre,” in an estimate widely quoted by the Press of this country, states that up to the end of last February, that is when the war had been in continuance only half the time that it has now. France had lost in killed alone 304,000 men, Russia 850,000, Germany 975,000. Austria 1,400,000, while the total losses in killed of all the belligerents exclusive of Turkey were 3,689,000.

If we had not wet our shoes in September we had not even soiled them in February. Since then there has been colossal fighting on the eastern front and terrible work and suffering in Gallipoli ; since then there has been a costly attack and advance in France, while in addition Italy has entered the arena and made some progress in running up a tragic bill. What, then, must be the appalling death-roll now, with this second seven month’s lighting added to the first ?

Nor is it only in this direction that the war is robbing Socialism of its terrors. Many people in the past have stumbled over the idea that it is only the free play of capitalist competition that makes the world go round, and that without this stimulus to endeavour the means of production, wonderful as they are, would not suffice to support the race, and chaos and ruin would at once overtake us. But what do we find ; where does the war demonstrate the truth to be ?

It is revealed in practice that military strength —which to-day more than ever resolves itself into the largest, and therefore the most econo­mical output of wealth—is in inverse ratio to the free play of capitalist competition. It is seen that, so far from true is it that the ordinary private enterprise of interested capitalists, spurred on as it is by an unparalleled opportunity for gain, means efficiency, that it means, on the contrary, misdirection, waste, and chaos which must prove fatal to those foolish enough to rely upon it.

The Failure of Private Enterprise.

It is here that the scientific German has scored heavily over the short-sighted fools who have fondly imagined that private enterprise under the stimulus of competition would suffice for nearly all things in peace and in war. For years the German rulers have had arrangements made for a wide abandonment of the competitive processes of production in event of war. At the annual military manoeuvres a large number of German factories have been put under State control and run for a fortnight under war conditions. Whatever miscalculations the Germans made as to the requirements of modem warfare, they may, at all events, take credit for recognising from the first, and long before the outbreak of hostilities, the truth of the Socialist contention that the boasted private enterprise, under the stimulus of the competition generated by the lust for profit, is a drag upon production and a fertile source of chaos and inefficiency.

Germany acted upon this knowledge, and as a result our masters are forced to confess that, other things being equal, the only effective reply is to themselves abandon private enterprise for the time. In other words, they are forced to admit that capitalist production by private enterprise is a failure, and that only production organised on a basis from which the attributes of private enterprise are eliminated can enable them effectually to deal with a situation of their own making. To this extent, therefore, the evidence of the war is a triumph for Socialist theory which we shall know how to make good use of when the war has run its course.

Some further lessons.

But another aspect of the same question provides a useful lesson and further vindication of Socialist claims. When the war broke, out the financiers and capitalist economists showed that it could not last longer than a year. The upheaval of finance, the disturbance of trade, the disruption of production—these potent factors were to cool the ardour of the most warlike in a matter of nine to twelve months, and bring peace because the resources of mankind could not support war on the colossal scale for a longer time. By all the calculations of capitalist economists, based upon the soundest of capitalist theories, the Teutonic allies, with so much of their own manhood removed from the production of the necessaries of life, with their imports and exports almost completely cut off, should have reached bankruptcy and starvation and military paralysis long before this. Yet the prognostications of the wise men, who have imagined that the only possible basis for the activities of civilised man is money, and therefore solvency, and who have stoutly denied the Socialist assertion that an enormous proportion of the human energy under capitalism is run to waste these prognostications are pulverised by the peculiarly healthy vigour of the Austro-German entity.

Of course, the seers did not realise that a country organised for war could eliminate private enterprise and profit-hunting to any extent that its government thought necessary and its capitalist element was prepared to submit to, and thus organised on a temporary basis foreign and even antagonistic to capitalism, could go on with the war in defiance of financial dictums and capitalist economic theories, to the first of which the capitalists of that country are answerable only when the normal conditions of capitalism return, and the last of which they blast for ever.

But so it has been. The rulers of the German nation have found it possible to engage over ten millions of their seventy millions population in the direct prosecution of the war in the actual fighting forces, and in the production and transport of munitions and other requisites of war. We may put the ordinary working strength of Germany—the number, that is, following any occupation (the housewife’s duties excepted)—at from eighteen to twenty millions. We find, therefore, the remarkable spectacle in a capitalist country “organised for war,” of more than one half the working population (and the most physically efficient half at that) engaged in providing the forces and means for carrying on the conflict.

It is just this that has upset the calculations of the prophets. Plain soldiers, unhampered by economic theories and financial superstitions, knew that of the conditions essential to the carrying on of war, solvency was not one. Hence they made preparations “for three years or for the period of the war.” But the theorists have had a rude awakening. It comes as a surprise to them to find that while the ordinary processes of capitalism were suspended, and to the extent that they were suspended, bankruptcy was a word without significance. It comes as a shock to them to find that the country best organised for war is forced, when up against the military resources of the greater part of capitalist civilisation. can gain additional strength only by the wider abandonment of the principles of private enterprise, and the substitution therefor of organisation on a basis which, while far as the poles asunder from Socialism, contain this element in common with Socialism, that production for profit, with its wasteful competition, gives place to production for use, with its concomitant economical co-operation.

Thus is proved the Socialist contention that capitalist production, on normal capitalist lines, notwithstanding that such vast wealth results, is an insanely wasteful process. The very fact that the capitalists themselves are compelled at a time of stress to reject it in fields essential to the prosecution of the war speaks volumes. In this, when the war is finished, Socialist propagandists will find a powerful object-lesson to put before their fellow-workers.

It is more than possible that the war will provide even more important lessons for the working class than any here outlined so far. We all know how much the governments of the “quadruple entente” are building upon a revolt among the working class of the “enemy” countries. The contingency is not by any means remote, since it might suit the book of the Teuton mili­tarists, should they be unable to stave off defeat in the field, as well as it would suit the purpose of our own masters and their allies. We should then probably see the erstwhile capitalist foes united in a bloody suppression having for its object the striking with terror anew the working class of the world.

But for the moment the lessons of the war are these: Firstly, that the evolution of capitalism, so far from freeing us from the bloody violence alleged to attach to savage existence, tends to make wars more colossal as the improvement in the means of production sets free a larger proportion of the workers for war, and more cruel as the conquests of science place new means of butchery at the disposal of our respective masters. Secondly, the war demonstrates how small a proportion of the energy of any community, with modern instrument of labour, suffices to supply the necessaries of life for the whole. Thirdly, the war reveals that private enterprise and production for profit, so long and so sternly condemned by all Socialists, is not good enough even for the capitalists when the exigencies of a vital war make it imperative for them to make the most of their resources.

These lessons of the war will go far in the hands of those who have taken up the Socialist position, when the butchers shall have decided their quarrel by the old test seeing who can pour out working-class blood the longest. They will, added to the grudging return which the capitalists of this country are already preparing for their disabled warriors, open eyes even that German bullets have rendered sightless forever. Then, with the utter wantonness of this colossal destruction of life revealed in the worsened conditions of those who are everywhere bearing the brunt of the fighting and the bulk of the suffering the working class—and with the many false friends of labour exposed and discredited for all time by their attitude during this crisis, the cause of the working class will flourish with vigour that will relieve and compensate for this dark and savage outrage upon our class.

A. E. Jacomb

Our case in brief. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

At such a time of appalling misery and waste of human life as the present, it may be useful to review again the claims of the Socialists, and to set out once more the means by which they propose to reach their goal. The writer has nothing new to tell—nothing at all that he has not said many times over in these columns. Nor can he hope to say it in a different way from which he has said it all before. But the message must be repeated again and yet again, though the messenger grows sick at heart. Conditions are always changing, if the message is not, and therein lies hope sufficient for the day.

Socialists claim that human happiness rests primarily upon the security and sufficiency of the necessaries of life—food, clothing, and shelter They do not say that there are no other sources of happiness, or that security and plenitude in these things must necessarily banish all unhappiness. What they contend is that these material things are the basis of human happiness viewed generally, just as they are the basis of human life itself.

Socialists maintain that the wealth produced at the present day is sufficient to afford ample of the necessaries of life to every man, woman, and child in the community, while the means at the command of society are sufficient to enable that wealth to be produced by the expenditure of a comparatively small amount of the time and effort by which the working class gain their meagre livelihood to-day.

The first of these contentious, namely, that human happiness depends primarily upon the means of living, hardly needs any enlarging upon at this time of day. Everybody understands, even if he had never thought seriously about it before, that before one can have any experience at all, happy or otherwise ; before one can think or act or desire, one must eat—for the simple reason that every organic activity results from the consumption of food, from this to the proposition, that lack of the means of subsistence is bound to cause physical distress and, in highly sentient beings such as man, mental distress also, is a logical step. This physical and mental distress, which, where it exists and in proportion as it exists inevitably undermine all happiness, can only be banished by giving sufficiency of and security in the means of subsistence.

Now as to the amount of wealth which is produced today, let us take the evidence of the opponents of Socialism. Mr. Chiozza Money, the Liberal M.P., an accredited capitalist statisti­cian, estimated the national income in the year 1904 at £1,710,000,000. and he says in his book “Riches and Poverty” (page 29), “if the income the nation were equally distributed amongst its inhabitants a family of five persons would enjoy an income of about £200 per annum.” It is seen, then, that sufficient wealth is produced to afford ample means of subsistence to all.

It must, of course, be granted that much of the wealth produced to-day takes a form which would be useless in a society where the products of labour were equally enjoyed by all, but as all this wealth is simply nature-given material to which human labour has been applied, either to change its from (as in the case of cannon) or to change its position (as in the case of coal), or to change both form and position, as in the case of most things, it would be the simplest of matters to direct all labour into channels, and turn all useful materials into forms, which would contribute to the end in view.

Is it true that the means which we possess for producing wealth to-day are sufficiently developed to enable us to maintain the present output of wealth with the expenditure of far less time and energy per head of the able-bodied population than the working-class bread-winner of to-day has to give, on the average, to the gaining of his livelihood ? To commence with, think what happens to every commodity which is produced before it becomes available to fulfil the function for which human toil has fitted it— that is, before it can be consumed. It has to be sold, and perhaps sold several times. It is, in fact, produced in order be sold, not in order to be used though unless it was capable of being used it could not (except under false pretences) find a purchaser. This means that, an enormous number of clerks, travellers, salesmen, shopkeepers, and others too numerous to mention must be maintained in labour which adds not one iota to the wealth which is produced. According to the Census returns of 1901 there were 504,294 commercial travellers and commercial and business clerks engaged in this useless labour in the United Kingdom—apart from thousands of other clerks and touts, such as those employed by lawyers, political and other organisations, for example. How many shop-assistants are wasting their time waiting for customers who do not come ? How many baker’s and butcher’s carts chase each other over the same ground ? How many canvassers, agents, and house-to-house distributors swarm the streets ? And all this because goods must be sold when they are completed, instead of then being immediately available for consumption.

And as goods are produced under the present system only to be sold, so they are only produced while they can be sold. Hence there is at all times an immense army of workers unable to find employment because there is not sufficient sale for the sort of goods they are producers and distributors of. In the year when the stupendous amount of wealth mentioned by Mr. Money was produced the “percentage of members of Trade Unions making returns who were out of employment was 6.8” (“Statistical Memoranda,” Cd 4671, Local Govt. Board). It is generally admitted that the unorganised trades would show an even larger unemployment percentage, but this figure applied over the whole field would give about a million workers in the country in enforced idleness.

Then even before the war there were in the Army, Navy, Police force and Prison staffs, the very pick and flower of the race another half-a-million men adding nothing to the wealth of community, while 50,000 parson “labour” but to keep us in the land of nod.

Everywhere around us we find energy wasted, from the railway ticket-collector and the ‘bus company’s spy to the jeweller setting diamonds in the collar of her ladyship’s Pekinese pup and the flunkey buttoning up his dilettante master’s breeches. And on top of all this there is that great group of the master class, to the number of about 5,000,000, who produce nothing, and who would, if they contributed workers in the same ratio as the working class, add another 2,000,000 to those available for production.

These figures, even if they may be disputed on the matter of strict accuracy, are sufficient to show that society has means to hand to produce vastly more wealth than is at present produced with the same average expenditure of time and toil which the members of the working class who are in employment render for their bare, miserable subsistence, or the same amount with far smaller average expenditure of time and effort. But we must find a method by which all these idlers, compulsory or voluntary, shall be brought into production, and all these workers whose efforts are directed into wrong channels shall become fruitful in their labours.

* * *

Before we go any further let us make up our minds for the wholesale destruction of preconceived notions, it is quite apparent that, the enormous waste of human labour entailed, in the selling of all the products of man’s industry cannot be eliminated by anything short of the abolition of sale and therefor of production for sale. Nor can unemployment be abolished, it is equally evident, until men’s employment ceases to be dependent upon the sale of the goods they produce—which again means that production for sale must go. And again, it is quite certain that we shall have to have a very different set of social conditions and a very different distribution of social power before those idlers, the master class, can be brought into production and distribution, and compelled to contribute their share to the common labour fund, in return for the food they eat, the clothes they wear, and the houses they live in. So it is plain that the method we are looking for must involve very great changes in our social structure, and that before we can accept, such changes many of the ideas current among us to-day, and many of our common ways of looking at things, must go into the melting-pot together.

* * *

Why do working-class men and women have to sell their strength and skill (commonly but wrongly called their “labour”) to the masters for wages or salary ?

Because the masters own and control all the means by which people to-day can produce the things by which they live…..that is, all the land, mines, factories, machinery, raw material, railways, ships, and so on.

Why do the masters not have to sell their strength and skill, or, indeed, why do they not have to work at all, in order to live ?

Because they own the means and instruments by which all wealth is produced and distributed, and owning these things, own also the wealth which is produced with their aid.

Why are there at all times many workers who are unable to get employment ?

Because the goods in the production of which they seek employment are only produced for sale and when such goods cannot be sold the owners of the means of production will not employ workers to produce them,

Why will not the owner of these means of production employ workers to produce goods which cannot be sold ?

Because, firstly, in order to maintain himself in the position of property-owner (that is, to keep solvent) he must pay his way, which he can only do by turning the wealth his employees produce into money, or in other words, by selling it ; secondly, in order to live without himself producing wealth the employer must secure that produced by others (his employees). But as he cannot satisfy his needs with the actual goods his employees produce, any more than he can pay his debts with them, again he must sell them. And if he cannot sell them he could [not] continue to stand the expense of their production.

It is seen how all these things have their root in the basic condition—the private ownership by a class of the means and instruments of production and distribution. Clearly, then, private ownership in these things—in all things which are necessary for the sustenance and well-being of mankind, in fact—must go.

That, in brief, is the Socialist remedy. Private ownership in the instruments of labour and the raw material, in the land, mines, factories, machinery, railways, canals, ships, and the like of all these things, must cease. They must become the property of the whole community, and be controlled and operated by the whole community. Can anything be simpler than that?

Socialism, after all, is very simple. There is never any need to wrap it up in hard terms. It is just a social system based upon the common ownership of the means of living, as the present social system—capitalism-is based upon the private ownership of these things.

In a future issue it will be shown what will follow from the changed property condition.

A. E. Jacomb

Jottings. (1915)

The Jottings Column from the October issue of the Socialist Standard

It must not be thought that because the “Daily Herald” failed, mainly because it did not know or understand the working-class position, that George Lansbury has given up. Oh, no ! Within the pages of its successor, “The Herald,” he still advances a strange and mysterious dogma. Listen to this :

“Last week I said I wished Arthur Henderson would come out of the Government and against the conscriptionists, set the true ideal of national service by all for the good of all . . . . Whether or no Henderson comes into the wilderness and puts himself at the head of the working class in their march toward the promised land that march will go forward, for out of this present time of trouble and difficulty it is the only road which will lead the nations of the world to safety.”

The pure insolence of young Arthur putting himself at the head of the working-class army is rather in the nature of “coming it.” You must really wait, Arthur, my boy, until we’ve selected you. We must kick a bit about the reference, too, to “the promised land.” We seem to have heard the phrase before. But let Georgie make it clear. In the course of the same discourse he says:

“We need at this moment a spiritual awakening, bidding us all cease our strife for money, for fame, or for power.”

There, there, now ! That’s good, for is it not “light in our darkness,” and does it not prove that “Capital” will probably be forestalled by — the Holy Bible.

* * *

“Profit” Sharing

On Sept. 16th, 1915, the following letter appeared in the columns of the “Daily Express,” written presumably by a City business man. We must compliment this good gentleman on his very correct deduction at the outset, but crave his indulgence at having to severely “strafe'” him regarding his remedy.

A Challenge.

To the Editor of the “Daily Express.”

Sir,—More than a year of the greatest trial and danger that Britain has ever known has not only failed to still the strife between capital and labour, but would even appear, on the contrary, to have widened the breach between them, and if this eternal question is not promptly, carefully, and cleverly handled it is hound to affect disastrously the improved social conditions to which we all look forward when the victory of the Allies shall have brought the great war to an end. 

With a view, therefore, to making an effort towards grappling with this question in a practical manner, may I be allowed to use the medium of the widely read columns of your newspaper to issue this challenge to all or any of the responsible representatives of both capital and labour to state as frankly, briefly, and definitely as possible, through this same medium, their objections to the introduction of a system of profit-sharing into every trade, business, or industry in which it can possibly be instituted.

E. Gordon Bigginson. 

Copthall-buildings, E..C.

I suppose we scarcely come within the gentleman's description of the “responsible representatives of labour,” but anyhow, we’ll have a shot at dispelling his acrobatic remedial notion. Briefly, we object to co-partnership because it is a complete snare and altogether useless as a means of “stilling strife.” Co-partnership or any other form of so-called profit-sharing in almost every instance means extra profit for the “boss.” As anything extra in wages earned by the co-partners is purely money paid for extra work done, it becomes quite obvious that the master class does not share his profits with his co-partners. As the basis of all “profit”-sharing schemes is the intensification of labour’s production—as witness the introduction of professional “sloggers” as instructors—does the gentleman still miss the objective, i.e., that the displacing of many workers owing to the increased output means increased dividends for the ordinary shareholders ? If the remaining workers earn, say, an average of two shillings more per week, who pockets the wages of the labourers displaced, save for the little that is necessary to woo those who, by doing their work, force them out of employment ? Thus while the workmen still engaged receive a wee bit extra in return for a big bit extra, the big balance always, by some wise dispensation of providence, finds its way into the master’s pocket. Will the writer of the letter see how the scheme works at Port Sunlight, The South Metropolitan Gas Co., and many other such works and engage the confidence of the “heads” there. The remedy for an evil will certainly never be gained by increasisg the evil. Understand this, my boy, there are ten thousand ways of missing the bulls-eye but only one way to hit it.

* * *

The following is from the Bristol Congress and is worthy of a place in anybody’s cutting-book :

“To a resolution expressing approval of the Labour Party’s action in assisting recruiting, the National Union of Clerks tabled an amendment regretting that they had not first secured from the Government guarantees of adequate provision for disabled soldiers. This “huckstering” spirit was hotly denounced by several speakers.” – Daily Mail,” 10.9.15.

The report that the assembled Congress received a telegram from the disabled trade unionists offering profuse thanks for services rendered is grossly exaggerated. Some people have all the luck while gratitude pays all our debts. Needless to add the amendment was lost.

* * *

The attached cutting was something in the nature of a smack in the eye for the dear Congress delegates. It reads :

A SOCIALIST MANIFESTO

.

The Socialist National Defence Committee, the members of which include Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Robert Blatchford, Mr. John Hodge, M.P., the acting Chairman of the Labour Party, and Mr. Charles Duncan, M.P., has issued a manifesto to the members of the congress. In it they say :

“In this hour of supreme national peril, when the independence of the people is brutally and the established public law and liberties of Europe are ruthlessly violated, a handful of PSEUDO-SOCIALISTS in this country are breaking the national solidarity and weakening the national efforts in face of the enemy ; it has become a duty for TRUE BRITISH SOCIALISTS to expose and repudiate the errors of these dreamers.”

Having explained so lucidly what is the duly of “true British Socialists,” the “true British Socialists” proceed to perform that duty. They accomplish the painful task of exposure and repudiation with surprising cheerfulness, proceeding upon the true British lines of the true British bulldog. They say :

“Some of them are extreme pacifists, some are aliens by both blood or sentiment, and ALL OF THEM ARE CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY THE AGENTS OF GERMAN KAISERDOM, and traitors to the IMPERISHABLE IDEALS OK LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY which have united free Britain, independent Belgium, and Republican France in an indissoluble and glorious alliance.”

One seems to see in that hooligan jibe “alien” the moving finger of Blatchford, the “true British Socialist who once publicly announced (in the “Clarion”) his antipathy toward Spaniards. Could any other hand so carefully have drawn that fine distinction between “German.” Kaiserdom and all other kinds of Kaiserdom ? or so cunningly have obscured the fact that, even he could not find a term that would serve to bring autocratic Russia into that “indissoluble and glorious alliance” which had been created by the “imperishable ideals of liberty and democracy” ? Yet it was easy enough. What was wrong with “Holy” Russia ? That should have appealed to the author of “God and My Neighbour,” and in the matter of veracity it would have matched the rest. And “lest we forget,” congratulations are due to two such eminent literateurs as Wells and Blatchford on the production of that gem, “aliens by both blood or sentiment.” And then again the reference to “pseudo-Socialists” and “true British Socialists” is indeed delightful. Fancy referring to Ben Tillett as an agent of German Kaiserdom, after all he has done, too. This is too bad, and the Tower Hiller has our deepest sympathy. Never mind, the truth about some men is never known until after they are dead, and even then you cannot find it on their tombstones. All the signatories to the manifesto are expected to figure in the next Birthday honours lists.

B. B. B.

The trade unions congress. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year’s Trades Union Congress has come and has passed to “that bourne from which no traveller returns.” At Bristol the galaxy of the Trade Union world sat in conference. They sat — and hatched nothing.

This year’s gathering was important and historic, in fact, the latter quality was so impressed upon us by the capitalist Press that one was almost inclined to think, from the point of view of posterity, that it ran a neckband-neck race with the Judgment Day. Leaving on one side that this was the largest congress yet held, no doubt the importance was augmented by the fact that no congress was held last year, owing to the war, and that this year’s gathering was held in time of war. “‘The time has come,’ the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things,'” but the war and the problems arising therefrom, for the most part, occupied the attention of the assembled delegates.

This Bristol “chinwag” can, however, be differentiated, from its predecessors on two distinct grounds. Firstly, there was no mayor of corpulent rotundity to welcome the delegates. This duty devolved upon Widdecombe, chairman of the Bristol Trades Council, and in the course of his introductory remarks he said (I quote from “Justice,” 9.9.15).

“The Trades Council felt that there would be no interest on the part of the Congress in being welcomed by a representative of the class they were incessantly fighting for their rights and their trade unionism.”

Thus another cherished tradition is consigned to the melting-pot, and one is inclined seriously to doubt the truth of Mathew Arnold’s dictum that the age of miracles is past. Secondly, there was no Congress sermon delivered with special reference to labour by one of those who toil not neither do they spin. This, perhaps, can be accounted for when one remembers the sermon delivered at the Manchester meeting of 1913, in in which it was said : “The German, the French, the British workmen have no quarrel with one another.” (Official Report, p. 411) This is so true that it almost seems out of place at a Trades Union Congress, and therefore the possibility of its repetition from an ecclesiastic was dispensed with this year.

The president’s (Mr. J. A. Seddon) address is felicitously described by the “Clarion” (9.9.15) as “an admirably restrained and statesmanlike performance”—a phrase one has heard in other connections from far more avowedly capitalistic sources. He demanded that the Government should lift the veil of secrecy and stated that democracy was on its trial. Yes, “democracy” is on its trial ; and it has been found guilty of wilful negligence of its own interests. But despite his “admirable performance,” which was chiefly notable owing to his unacknowledged quotation from J. R. Lowell, the attention of the “world” was focussed upon two resolutions, the one dealing with conscription, and the other with the war.

The conscription resolution read :

“That we, the delegates to this Congress, representing nearly three million organised workers, record our hearty appreciation of the magnificent response made to the call for volunteers to fight against the tyranny of militarism. We emphatically protest against the sinister efforts of a section of the reactionary Press in formulating newspaper policies for party purposes and attempting to foist on this country conscription, which always proves a burden to the workers, and will divide the nation at a time when absolute unanimity is essential. No reliable evidence has been produced to show that the voluntary system of enlistment is not adequate to meet all the Empire’s requirements. We believe that all the men necessary can, and will, be obtained through a voluntary system properly organised, and we heartily support and will give every aid to the Government in their present efforts to secure the men necessary to prosecute the war to a successful issue.” (“The Times,” 8.9.15.)

Of course, this resolution was carried unanimously. In the course of the discussion Mr. Ben Tillett, full of ambition and table d’hote, of “rotters” and music-hall fame, said that “he was not opposed to conscription as a theory. If there were anything in it and if he believed that it would help us to end the war sooner he would vote for it straight away.” (Times, 8.9.15.) One is strongly reminded by this attitude, of that adopted by several other well-meaning folk who are against all war in theory and in favour of all war in practice. He also suggested that “in matters so serious the Government ought to approach the Parliamentary Committee of the Congress … to have a heart to heart talk.” Now the Cabinet is composed of Cabinet Ministers, and the foregoing suggestion contrasts strangely with his sweeping assertion at previous congresses that “no Cabinet Minister could tell the truth.” (Official Report, 1913, p. 136.)

A large number of critics have regarded the carrying of this resolution as evidence of a wholehearted antagonism toward conscription on the part of the “three million organised workers.” It appears, however, that in consonance with the Liberal Press, their opposition is against “Lord Northcliffe’s conscription,” and that, were it asked for by Lord Kitchener, they would swallow the pill without the bulge of a cheek. In other words, their antagonism is not to conscription per se, but to those who are engineering the present movement.

This view is, to a certain extent, borne out by the passing with but seven dissentients of the war resolution, which reads :

“That this Congress, while expressing its opposition, in accordance with its previously expressed opinion, to all systems of militarism as a danger to human progress, considers the present action of Great Britain and her allies as completely justified, and expresses its horror at the atrocities which have been committed by the German and Austrian military authorities, and the callous, brutal and unnecessary sacrifice of the lives of non-combatants, including women and children ; and hereby pledges itself to support the Government as far as possible in the successful prosecution of the war.” (“The Times,” 9.9.15.)

Its pledge to assist the Government as far as possible in the successful prosecution of the war does not bode well for the “anti-conscription” resolution in the event of the Government deciding to raise men by conscript means. Sexton (Dockers) moved the resolution, and in the course of his speech stated that this was not a capitalist war and added : “I am convinced that the Trade Unions of this country will have to put up the biggest fight when the war is over that they have ever put up in their history.” (“Star,” 3.9.15.) This is, no doubt, in anticipation of the way in which the capitalists will express their gratitude to the workers, and here Mr. Dooley on Capital and Labour would not be out of place.

“At Chris’mas time Capital gathered his happy fam’ly round him an’ in th’ prisince iv th’ ladies iv th’neighbourhood give them a short oration. “Me brave la-ads,” said he, “we’ve had a good year (cheers). I have made a million dollars (sinsation). I atthribute this to me supeerior skill, aided by ve’r arnest efforts at th’bench an’ at th’ forge (sobs). We have done so well that we won’t need so maiiny iv ye as we did (long and continyous cheerin’). Those iv us who can do two men’s wurruk will remain, an’ if possible do four. Our faithfnl servants,” he says, “can come back in th’ spring,” he says, “if alive,” he says. An’ the bold artysans tossed their paper caps in th’ air an’ give three cheers for Capital. They wurruked till ol’ age crept on thim, an’ thin retired to live on th’ wish bones an’ kind wurruds they had accumylated.”

Tillett had his say characteristically : “This was not a fight of the capitalists. . . . Instead of yapping like terriers, we should join hands in this great conflict.” He then proceeded to yap. There are some men in this world who are loud in shouting their willingness to give their last drop of blood for their country, but who are always careful not to risk shedding the first drop. Tillett has been to the trenches–on a conducted tour.

Roberts, M.P., regretted the backwardness of Russia, but, he added, she had found her own soul. No such resolution as following was on this year’s agenda ; it is found in the Official Report for the 1912 Congress, p. 204.

“That this Trades Union Congress in Newport expresses its sympathy with the severe struggle of their comrades in Russia, and protests against the brutal means by which the Russian Government tries to crush the increasing solidarity of the workers, as shown in their organisations, and expresses the hope that at the forthcoming elections for the Fourth Duma the forces of reaction may be defeated, and a strong Labour representation returned to work for the overthrow of capitalism and autocracy.”

The Russian autocracy, whose name was formerly synonymous with rape and rapine and ruthless repression, has now joined the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Small Nations, which prevention, it might be added, does not, like charity, begin at home. So criticism of Russia is tantamount to treason.

The Trade unionists, as befits their political complexion, still regard the world and its affairs through the capitalist spectacles with which their masters have so kindly provided them.

The “Daily News and Leader” should rejoice at the passing of this war resolution, for in its issue of September 6th (before the discussion) it said:

“It may be well that Labour should affirm its support of the Government in the conduct of the War. But everyone not willingly blind to the fact knows that unless Labour supported the war, the war would be over in a fortnight.”

This powerful organ thereby recognises the truth of our claim that in the ultimate it is the working-class upon whom the successful prosecution or, indeed, any prosecution, of the war depends. The workers are patted on their backs now, because they are needed : when the war is over it will be their heads that will be punched.

The discussion of the war resolution brought forth an attack on the Government’s promise to limit profits. This, in its turn, resulted, we are led to believe in a visit from Mr. Lloyd George, with halo intact. (No doubt the visit was arranged before, but anything will do for the workers.) This prophet of the promised land frankly recognised the dependence on Labour when he said “With you victory is assured; without you our cause is lost. . . The Government can lose the war without you ; they cannot win it without you.” In a carefully phrased speech he sought to show that the Government had kept its “fair, straight forward, businesslike” bargain, whereas the workers had not. The workers’ representatives handed their men over to the Munitions Minister, and he sought to speed up the working class by flogging them with words. He vilified the working class much on the same lines as during his Spring campaign, when it was alleged (but, of course, not proved) that England was waging a righteous war with a “drink-sodden democracy” at home. As Mr. Lloyd George proceeded to unfold his tale of woe, one can imagine. Mr. William Thorne, M.P., mumbling beneath his breath in characteristic Canning Town phraseology, “Blimey ! ain’t ‘e ot!”

Although the war occupied the greater part of the attention of the Congress, it was not allowed to crowd out everything else. The old stager regarding the free access of cabs to Hyde Park appeared on the Agenda and “the delegates to a Postal Workers’ resolution expressing the opinion that the nationalisation of the public services—such as the Post Office—is not necessarily advantageous to employees unless accompanied by steadily increasing democratic control and pledging the congress to work to develop public opinion on this point.” This can be taken us an unsolicited testimonial on the truth of our position.

According to the “Daily News and Leader” Mr. J. Robertson (Lanarkshire Miners) stated :

“Official figures showed that during the fifteen years that have passed since the South African War, 20,000 men have been, killed in the mines of the country, while no fewer than 4,500,000 have been seriously injured.”

Verily, Peace hath her horrors much more profound than war.

The foregoing is not intended even as a brief resume of the Trades Union Congress, but merely as a few comments. One fact stands out clearly (even if it were not discernible from other evidence) : that the workers are apparently almost unanimous for the war, “the war to end war,” as it has been felicitously termed. As the “Clarion” (10.9.15) put it in a very tuneless note, “The workers, as a body, are all right.” And this cannot be wondered at when one considers the multitudinous agencies all working more or less in the direction of keeping the workers “right” and from their rights. Unmistakably, the bulk of the workers think in capitalist channels and the discussion of the Trades Union Congress was nothing more nor less than the opinions of a heterogeneous collection of economists and politicians who know not whither they are going and never get there.

Presently, in “the future that yet shall be,” they will shake off their lethargy and the hypnotic influence of capitalism and then they will see the war against war; a death-struggle between two classes ranged respectively under the banner of Socialism, symbolical of freedom, and the black flag of Capitalism, standing for death and destruction. In that war no quarter is asked, no mercy is given and no cry for peace is entertained or can be entertained until the smoke of battle has cleared away and the din has subsided ; until society has emerged from slavery for the first time in its history since primitive communism, wielding its power for its own well­-doing.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

L. R. C.

Blogger's Note:

The poetry at the end of this article is a passage from 'Say not the Struggle nought Availeth' by Arthur Hugh Clough.

Superstition at bay. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word “God” as a general term has lost all definite meaning. To each individual it means something different. To a fanatic it may stand for a terrible personal power who chastises us for our neglect of his vanity. To a philosopher it may symbolise the universe as a whole moving inexorably according to natural law. To the charlatan, however, it is first and last a word to juggle with.

God is the favourite subject of a writer by the name of Harold Begbie. To the plain man his work appears unadulterated claptrap. High-sounding words are strung together in a meaningless but impressive way that is strongly reminiscent of some lady novelists when dealing with the sorrows of his Satanic majesty. There exists in his writing such an obvious striving after tinsel effect that his work conveys the strongest impression of insincerity. Here is a sample from his effort, in the “Daily Chronicle” of Sept. 23rd:

“Theism is the inescapable faith of rationalism. Use your reason, your reason only, and you must believe in Mind. Contemplate the universe as a rational being, and unless you say you cannot believe in anything at all, you must conclude that penetrating and interpenetrating all material phenomena is the Spirit of Eternal Life. Empiricism is as dead as Deism. Atheism is only possible to the fool. No living mind can rest in agnosticism. There is reason in the universe. Life is spiritual. The march of the human race is towards God.”

It is worth reading twice. As an example of turgid twaddle it would be hard to beat.

He says elsewhere in the same article:

“ . . . consider what would be the state of Europe if Christ had debated the possibility of the existence God, instead of asserting with a simplicity which makes a most instant appeal to every sort and condition of mind that God is our Father. Intuition is a part of psychology.”

Such a statement gives one furiously to think. What, indeed, one wonders, would really be the state of Europe if Christ had not simply asserted that God is Our Father ? Perhaps instead of the happy and harmonious communities that now unite in the worship of Christ, that do not grind the faces of the poor, and that give constant cause to the reverently minded to praise the abounding and wonderful goodness of God, we might have in its place–––. But enough ! The state of Europe is too horrible for levity. Even Begbie’s absurdity is revolting rather than amusing. The awful thing that exists, and which Begbie implies we should be thankful for as the result of Christ’s assertion, utterly defies description. An ounce of civet, good apothecary ! In our disgust we turn to old Omar the tent-maker, and repeat with him:

Ah, Love ! could you and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire.

Would not we shatter it to bits and then

Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire !

In the London “Daily News” of a few days before Harold Begbie had given us a two column interview with General Booth on the “Call for a Great National Religious Crusade.” Begbie says

“I asked him how the international character of the Salvation Army had been affected by the war. He replied, ‘War has strengthened the spirit of internationalism. Throughout the neutral nations there is a fresh enthusiasm for the Army ; and Germany itself the Salvation Army is expressing a renewed loyalty to the international idea.’ ”

The only comment that it is necessary to make on such a statement is supplied all unconsciously by the interviewer, who says :

“The son of William Booth finds just now his international religion buffeted by the winds of war. He of all religious leaders in this country is most concerned by the international character of the war. German Salvationists are shooting English Salva­tionists, and Russian Salvationists are shooting Austrian Salvationists.”

And what is the Salvation Army doing in this war to interpret the spirit of Jesus ? Its message in this crisis will surely show how pure and transcendental is the teaching of Christ, and how clear and unmistakeable is the call of Christian duty ? Here again the interview gives us some valuable information, for it says :

“There are something like 40,000 Salvationists in the British Army, 20,000 of them out-and-outers, and 20,000 adherents. Some of these, as yon may imagine, are troubled in their souls by having to kill. One of them mentioned this difficulty, and to him another Salvationist made answer: ‘Look here; what you’ve got to do is this : you’ve got to do your duty to God, and King, and country. If in the course of doing that you happen to kill your fellow-man, that’s no affair of yours.”

Surely nothing could be more fearless, nothing could be more truly Christian than this ! Such advice given to British, to German, to Austrian, Russian and French Salvationists must be admirably calculated to bring the Kingdom of God nearer realisation on earth !

There are not lacking signs, however, that indicate that General Booth is sensible of the difficulty of his position. And to those who have been awakened only by the present crisis to question the dogma of the goodness of God, he makes effective answer :

“People who accepted without murmur the atrocious suffering caused by those enemies of the human race [drink, prostitution, and sweating] suddenly wake up now and ask, How can you believe in a God with Christians killing Christians and Europe deluged with blood’ ? Has Christian never killed Christian till now ? What nonsense they talk ! This war is nothing—nothing compared with the murderous destruction of sin, God does not work like an autocrat in the moral sphere. God is omnipotent ; but omnipotence cannot make five of two and two, or make a lie a truth. Why does God permit this war ? Why does he permit sin ? God is not responsible for sin, and he is not responsible for war. Man is.”

While the above silences all those who accept the hellish conditions of capitalism as consistent with the goodness of God, it is quite futile against those who do not.

What evidence is there of the goodness of God ? What evidence is there of God at all ? Where, indeed, is God anything but an expression of man’s ignorance in face of the awful and ruthless immensity of nature ?

God, says General Booth in effect, is omnipotent, and is at the same time not omnipotent ! He is the essence of all goodness, but has created war and sweating and infinite misery.

He is omniscient, and knowing all things, including man, man’s sin and tendency to sin, war, anguish, destitution, wretchedness and sorrow incalculable. Yet He is not responsible. Man, his puppet, is responsible. To God is attributed all good : to man, whom God created, is attributed all evil. Such is really the meaning of General Booth’s assertions. Their nonsense is evident. It is also suggested in the interview that God’s plaything, man, is being punished because he has neglected the All Wise, All Powerful, and All Good God. Truly the absurdity of this cantankerous All-Goodness recalls the little girl’s natural history essay. “The elephant,” said the young lady, “is a noble animal, but when infuriated he will not do so.”

To all the Salvation Army chiefs’s points, however, the old tent-maker has made answer from the standpoint of a true believer :

Thou who man of baser earth didst make,

And who with Eden didst devise the snake ;

For all the sin wherewith the face of man

Is blackened, man’s forgiveness give and take !

The spectacle of the warring nations of Europe supplicating the same good and almighty God for armed victory over each other is ludicrous enough. Small wonder that it is subject for derision. Moreover, practically every religious sect has hastened to put its private brand of Almighty Power at the service of the capitalist interests which are responsible for the modern machine-made murder. Chaplains and priests of many denominations are helping to stiffen the men at the front. And at home the various churches continue as best they may to swell the patriotic chorus in aid of their paymasters the ruling class.

Nevertheless the power of religion to keep the workers servile is fast waning. Technical progress, the advance of knowledge, the march of events, drive it continually farther from real life. True it is that religion cannot entirely disappear until man’s relations with his fellows and with nature become clear, ordered, rational and un­ambiguous. True it is that man’s emancipation from wage slavery, from irrational poverty and ignorance will alone finally lay the ghost of superstition. Yet the present fading of religion is an unmixed good. The power of religion has ever been potent for evil. It has been throughout political history the abettor of oppression, the enemy of freedom, of science, and of humanity. It is still used as far as practicable as the hand-maiden of class domination.

As Socialists, indeed, our main, attack must be against the entrenched political power of capitalism, and to this all else must be subordinated; but the war on religion, which is the vis inertiae of human development, is part of the work that must be done in that great struggle.

The war on religion will break down the barrier that our enemies maintain against us. It will take the workers a step nearer their goal. It will open up fresh vistas to working-class intelligence and put men face to face with the bitter reality of modern social life and its trend ; and this can have but one result.

In so far, therefore, as the toilers escape from the paralysing embrace of religion their advance will be freer, their vision clearer, their knowledge more profound, and their determination to make the proletarian cause triumph more unshakeable. A word by the way, therefore, that helps disperse the fog of superstition, that unveils the absurdity of the claims of the priests, and that lets light in upon the indubitable fact that the workers of the world can rely on no Messiah, on no metaphysical cloud-pusher, but only on their own strong right arm, such a word by the way is not only a helpful thing, but it has an inevitable place in the greater struggle for human emancipation, in the greater battle for Socialism.

F. C. Watts

Remarkable evidence of working-class prosperity. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wage-Slaves are able for the first time to cover their nakedness with old rags!

The “Daily Chronicle” of September 24th. last, published the following startling piece of information regarding the overwhelming opulence of those who are getting unprecedented wages for drinking and shirking.

———-

Boom in "Old Clo'es."

One result of workers prosperity.

Not the least curious of the many unexpected consequences of the war (writes a “Daily Chronicle” correspondent) is an unprecedented boom in old and second-hand clothing.

Day by day one sees in the weekly and suburban Press an increasing number of wardrobe dealers’ advertisements offering good prices for all kinds of worn but still servicable clothing.

The reason is that the demand for cheap attire has grown, as a result of the industrial prosperity caused by the war, out of all proportion to the supply.

This is in spite of the fact that some three million men have temporarily discarded the ordinary dress of civil life for the more popular khaki. As may be observed any day in the East End and other industrial districts, there are hundreds of thousands and even millions of people who, formerly but casually employed, and, therefore, ill able to afford even complete second-hand suits of clothes, now find themselves earning regular and often good wages.

Such an advent of good fortune as has been experienced in many working-class homes during the war is generally celebrated by a rehabilitation en masse at the hands of the nearest wardrobe dealer.

———-

Well ! what do you think of it ?

F. C. Watts

The “Happy Warrior’s” munificent reward. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The two advertisements which follow were were culled from the “Daily Chronicle” recently, and show how “patriotic” the capitalists are, how truly “generous,” “noble,” and “truthful,” when offering jobs to their wage-slaves :

HANDY-MAN, used to controlling men ; ex-soldier minus limb preferred ; wages 25s. week. Write, stating age, Box C 7180, “Daily Chronicle,” Fleet-st

HOUSEKEEPER wanted for City offices ; must be hard worker ; ex-soldier with limb missing not objected to : wages 25s. week. Write, stating age, to Box C 7178, “Daily Chronicle,” Fleet-st.

After such an exhibition of generosity who will dare say that the employers did not speak the truth when they told their employees that their jobs would be kept open for them after the war. They knew that many would never come back, and that those who did, minus a limb, could then be had cheaply.

Of course, it is obvious that a man who has lost a limb cannot be as useful as one with all his members intact. The fact that he has lost a limb in “his” country’s service does not weigh with the master class when they are on the look-­out for cheap labour. But what a reward for fighting a whole TWENTY-FIVE BOB A WEEK. If the applicant happens to be a man with a family he must indeed be a grumbler who would not jump at such a chance of showing his appreciation by at once applying for one of the above-mentioned jobs.

T. W. Allen

When Parson Says Lie We All Lie. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

For generations parson has implored us to “let truth prevail.” After all these years parson has taken to showing us how to do it—as the following witnesseth. The occasion was a recent “patriotic meeting in the park” at Grays (Essex), and I quote that excellent local dish-cloth, the “Grays and Tilbury Gazette.”

“The Rev. Willis Bryars, who is a member of the Grays Volunteer Training Corps, also spoke urging his hearers to ask themselves were they worthy of the great sacrifices which men were making for them. Let the young men come forward and do their best. Even if they were but 17 he would forgive them, though he was a parson, if they told the recruiting officer that they were 19—(laughter) and he was quite sure the Lord would too. (Applause.)”

Ah ! that got ’em proper. People do like to know the Lord’s view of these little things that require parson’s forgiveness. But though every one can appreciate the terrible risk the Rev. Willis Bryars is taking in attaching himself to the Grays Volunteer Training Corps, and must feel how very fortunate it was that the devout man could feel such honest confidence regarding himself as enable him to implore his audience to ask themselves whether they were “worthy of the great sacrifices which men were making for them,” still it seems to my mind that what was needed was not so much parson’s telling us how to let truth prevail as showing us how to do it. Personal example goes such a long way ; and from my knowledge of the Lord I am sure he would freely forgive Mr. Bryars, though he is a parson, if he told the recruiting officer that he is only 40, even if he is  45, and for my part I would too.

Bill Bailey

The Reward of Charity. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The trite old adage, ”Charity covers a multitude of sins,” can be exemplified to-day in many ways. One can hardly look at a daily paper, for instance, without finding most pathetic appeals for contributions to the maintenance of hospitals, orphanages, homes, and the like.

Such institutions are a feature of modern society in the “piping times of peace,” when the hatchet is buried and the sword lies rusty in its sheath—and each worker has his hand at the throat of his fellow in the competition for jobs. Such institutions, indeed, are part of the masters’ insurance against the workers realising the extent to which they are robbed.

However, we are living in time of war. Yes, and that but makes the position worse; for the so-called charitable institutions of peace times find their struggle for existence more intensified through having to meet the rivalry of innumerable funds having some connection with the war, and all having, broadly speaking, the same object in view, yet all in deadly rivalry with each other.

Why this rivalry ? At the inception of the “National” War Relief Fund it was stated that the one fund would cover every case of distress caused by the war. Would it be uncharitable to mention the many salaries and pickings for officials which the funds provide ?

These “charitable” concerns, whether pro- or post-war organisations, have for their object the mopping up of the mess engendered by the capitalist system, notwithstanding that the ostensible reason for their existence is to relieve the “deah poah.” The organisers and others connected with them know full well that while they can keep the workers contented, and therefore docile, this, coupled with an abysmal ignorance of their class position, must mean the most efficacious safeguard of the exploiters’ position.

It looks very nice to see healthy specimens of the predatory class running about organising shows of all kinds for returning a little of the wealth they have stolen to those from whom they have stolen it —the workers. But we Socialists suggest the possibility of obviating the need for these degrading institutions. “Charity” being a necessary feature of capitalism, it will disappear only when the working class end the capitalist system. Let the workers, then, banish the hateful charity-mongers by overthrowing their social system and establishing the Socialist Commonwealth.

H.

[Be a man!] (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

To be content with overwork, harsh treatment, and a starvation wage is to be — well, a working man. Be a man !

That Queer Thing Human Nature. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

"You cannot change human nature," has been the cry that has met us who are Socialists for years when endeavouring to persuade our fellow-workers that conditions could be so altered that one would be able to live a pleasanter life than that of a galley slave.

The paid advocates of our masters, those chameleons who can so readily adopt themselves (change their natures?) to the momentary requirements of their paymasters, have echoed the cry from one side of the world to the other.

The best evidence against a man is generally conceded to be his own statements. It will therefore be agreed that the best evidence against the minions of the masters is provided by their own changeful attitude.

Let us dip into recent history a little. Whenever there is a great, mine disaster the capitalist Press exhibits, with the aid of lurid headlines, the deathless heroism of the miners, and we read tales of the self-sacrificing men who go down to almost certain death in the pits for the chance of saving some of their entombed comrades. It is then impressed upon us what an enormous debt the nation owes to the heroes who risk their lives daily bringing coal up out of the bowels of the earth.

In the meantime these self-same heroes, who hardly earn enough to keep body and soul together, ("The average wage of a coal hewer comes out at about 28s. per week—a figure borne out by statistics of the money paid in compensation claims. That is the very best class of workman."— Stephen Walsh, M.P., "Report of a Conference on a Minimum Wage," p. 16. Published by the National Anti-Sweating League, Oct. 1906) come to the conclusion that the time has arrived when it is impossible to make both ends meet. A strike is proclaimed. Oh, what a hullabaloo ! What groans of bitter anguish from the silk-hatted fatbellies at the thought of losing a few pounds out of the enormous profits they are piling up. The miners, the erstwhile saintlike heroes, are now typified as ruffians of the deepest dye. The Press that so recently eulogised their heroism, their monotonous and honest lives, now informs us that the miners are the scum of the earth. A footballing, whippet-racing, gambling, and drunken crew. Human nature (or the nature of coal-miners anyhow) has evidently undergone a very drastic and revolutionary change.

The strike is over and the men have gone back to work on the promise (capitalist promise!) of better conditions. A recruiting campaign commences. Once more the miners are heroes. Again we are told they are the bone and sinew of the nation (skeletons!). We hear of how fathers, mothers and sweethearts have heroically (and blindly!) sent their dear ones to the shambles across the sea for the sake of their country which they don't possess. Human nature—fickle jade—again hath changed.

In the meantime up rise the prices of coal. The Government says an increased output is necessary to meet the demands created by the war. (The governmental cry of "Pile up the Munitions" is converted or transformed, in the process of that mighty alchemist production, into the capitalist refrain "Pile up the Quids"). The coal owners make huge profits. The miners are over-worked and find that the relative value of their wages steadily declines in a rising provision market. They ask for a war bonus to meet the enhanced prices and are told to go to hell—and work. They strike. Scoundrels once more. Unpatriotic shirkers. "Letting the nation down at a crucial moment" runs the fable (of course, the coal kings are not unpatriotic—not likely—they are heroes now and for ever!)

In view of the foregoing, our friends, the enemy, must admit that human nature does change sometimes. It will be rather dangerous for them if they deny it as, in view of their own varied protestations, some unrefined people may be tempted to the suggestion that the capitalist Press must be a sink of lying hypocrisy.

Let us take a momentary glance at the history of humanity apart from the braying of the prostitute Press.

It is now well established among the students of sociology that back in the distant past barbarous man lived in communities, acting honourably towards each other, revering their womankind, conceding to all the right to enjoy the fruits of the collective industry, and polite and helpful to any strangers that visited them. Such were the North American Indians as described by Lewis H. Morgan, the Eskimos when visited by Dr. Nansen, the Germans of Tacitus, the Incas when discovered by the Spaniards, and all barbarians at a certain stage of development, when found by travellers before suffering the contaminating influence of the white man and the white man's god—private ownership. It may be opportune here to give a picture of savagery taken from Henry Drummond's Nyassa Land. (Hodder & Staughton, 1890), p. 56.

   "Hidden away in these endless forests, like bird's nests in a wood, in terror of one another, and of their common foe, the slaver, are small native villages; and here in his virgin simplicity dwells primeval man, without clothes, without civilization, without learning, with out religion— the genuine child of nature, thoughtless, careless, and contented. This man is apparently quite happy ; he has practically no wants. One stick, pointed, makes him a spear; two sticks rubbed together make him a fire; fifty sticks tied together make him a house. The bark he peels from them makes his clothes; the fruits which hang on them form his food. It is perfectly astonishing when one thinks of it what nature can do for the animal man, to see with what small capital after all a human being can get through the world. I once saw an African buried. According to the custom of his tribe, his entire earthly possessions—and he was an average commoner—were buried with him. Into the grave after the body was lowered the dead man's pipe, then a rough knife, then a mud bowl, and last his bow and arrows—the bowstring cut through the middle, a touching symbol that its work was done. This was all. Four items, as an auctioneer would say, were the whole belongings for half a century of this human being. No man knows what a man is till he has seen what a man can be without, and be withall a man. That is to say, no man knows how great a man is till he has seen how small he has been once.
   "The African is often blamed for being lazy, but it is a misuse of words. He does not need to work; with so bountiful a nature around him it would be gratuitious to work, and his indolence, therefore, is just as much a part of himself as his flat nose, and as little blameworthy as slowness in a tortoise. The fact is, Africa is a nation of the unemployed."

And now ye slaves of the workshops and factory hells, has there been a change in human nature since your ancestors left savagery behind? Compare the above mode of life with the slaughtering that prevails now among the soldiers of "civilized" nations. Compare it with our lives of toil and penury in dirty, ugly towns, deprived of the sight of the mountains, the green fields and the broad, blue ocean. Do not the oppositeness of the conditions suggest a corresponding difference in the natures of those who live under the respective conditions? Can you be light-hearted, generous and care-free in the midst of squalor and wretchedness, continually snatching for each others' jobs? Could one be weighed down with cares, miserable, and sneaking, in the midst of the flowery woods, the sunshine, and bounteousness of nature's goods?

The North American Indian who welcomed the English immigrants was converted into a narrow-minded and implacable foe by the cruelty and treachery to which he was perpetually subjected. As travellers successively explore and bring within reach of civilization the unknown lands, so the inhabitants are brought under the yoke of modern conditions, and the land and people are exploited for the advantage of those who now rule in society. Savage customs and moralities are converted into capitalist laws and morals.

Just, as private property in the means of life has converted the strong, healthy, free, open-hearted and sun-burnt barbarian into the lying and fawning capitalist hack, so will the abolition of private ownership convert the weak, choking, pasty-faced, and filthy child of the slums into the vigorous, healthy, and clear-brained citizen of the coming Socialist commonwealth.

As the means of obtaining a livelihood change, develop, and diversify, so does the human nature of the respective epochs change and diversify to correspond. The development of the factory system converted the merchants into factory owners and heartless sweaters of little children. The growth of capitalism brought the practice of chicanery in politics to a fine art, and converted the open ruffians of the Roman Empire into the refined Lloyd Georges of the modern who are the acme of hypocrisy. The growth of poverty, misery, and exploitation, converts the honest, hard-working son of toil into the apostle of the Revolution and the staunch supporter of the principle of the class struggle.

Hurry up and change your natures. The sooner you join us the sooner the war (the modern class war) will be over. Join now ! We want more men! Come in your myriads and assist us to uproot the edifice of capitalism and, to give human nature a chance to exhibit its finest possibilities.

Gilmac.

Editorial: The War Against The Workers. (1915)

Editorial from the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Lobby correspondent of the London "Daily News'’ on Sept. 13th made the following significant statement:

                           French Strike of 1910. 

There are grounds for saying that some of the Ministers who are in favour of the compulsory organisation of the manhood of the country have been influenced by the history of the national railway strike in France in 1910. They believe that in case of a serious strike in this country imperilling the national safety, the power of calling up the men as soldiers would break the strike. This was what happened in France in 1910: By Oct 11 the national railway strike was general, the food supply of Paris was gravely threatened, and the whole of the country disorganised. On Oct. 13 the ringleaders were arrested under the Railway Traffic Law of 1845, and at the instance of M. Briand, the Prime Minister, 130,000 of the railway servants were put under mobilisation orders for a period of three week's training.

 The action of the French Government in calling out the railwaymen in their capacity of reservists had a double effect. It appealed to the sense of patriotism and of military discipline which animates the majority of Frenchmen, and it gave those men who returned as reservists to their work on the railway, an assurance of protection against the violence of strike pickets, and a sense of solidarity with their comrades of the active Army in full uniform who were guarding the railway stations, signals, and points. By these means the strike was broken, and on October 18 the railwaymen were ordered back to work by their own Strike Committee.

The matter of tho French strike was dealt within the “Socialist Standard" at the time and the moral of the necessity for the rapture of political power by the workers was driven home, but in the present connection it is to be noted ; that the mobilisation order of 1910 was utilised to break a strike in time of peace. Clearly, then, the utility of compulsion to the ruling class is not confined to the period of war. It is as well, therefore, not to overlook the permanent consequences of  conscription when analysing the motives behind the compulsory service "conspiracy.” It is, indeed, almost unthinkable that our rulers would let such a splendid opportunity as the present war slip by for making us more completely n nation of serfs.

Munition workers are already subjected to forced labour. Their work in accelerated to the point of exhaustion. .They are fined for losing a few hours. They are punished if they seek better terms and forbidden to change their employer without a certificate of permission. And they ore abused by "labour lenders," by cabinet ministers and by journalists as slackers and worse, although they are the only portion of the nation who are actually doing the war work. The employers are not punished. The members of the idle class are not controlled or penalised. Not at all. The compulsion, the hardships, the punishments and the abuse are concentrated upon the working class who have nevertheless no share in the ordering of their industry.

The facts are so plain and the class nature of the governmental activities is so obvious that it is quite unnecessary to say more here under this particular head. Every workman who exercises his intelligence upon the statements of Ministers, of so-called labour leaders and of journalists, and ponders the findings of the munitions courts, can see a far more damning case against the ruling class in this matter than could be baldly stated. And after all is there not something of similar import in the whole history of the war?

We have long known the hollowness of much of the so-called Socialist movement in Germany, in France, and in this country ; yet such as it was all the governments have been mortally afraid of it. A prominent German statesman once said that there was a certain cure for the Socialist movement, and that was war! Prominent men in other countries have said similar things. It is part of the creed of re-action. Undoubtedly the German democratic movement in particular was most imposing, and appeared truly formidable to its ruling class. The French movement also was growing and threatening. In Russia it could only be kept under by the most violent measures of repression. In this country it was sought to emasculate the proletarian menace by absorbing its pretended leaders into the governmental party. In France this policy hud been very thoroughly carried out as the Millerands, the Briands and the Vivianis still testify. And does not this obvious capitalist fear of the working class suggest a possible reason for war, supplementary to the ordinary one of direct commercial interest ?

In France, England and Germany the workers were swept off their feel in a wave of patriotism and became an easy prey to the intrigues of the capitalist class. Russia, seemingly, continued its brutal repression simply in order to obviate any violent break with the traditions of its government. In all the belligerent countries the workers are expected, nay, compelled, to sacrifice on the altar of their master's country all the poor concessions which industrial necessity had enabled them to win. In this sea-girt isle tho hardly won rights of labour are being rapidly annulled. Tho soaring cost of living, the destruction of trade union conditions of labour, the speeding up of work, the forced labour and the menace of compulsory military service, all tend irresistibly to crush working class conditions of existence out of recognition, Even some patriotic workers are beginning to ask whether “victory" may not be too dearly bought if it is to be purchased only with the sacrifice of all the poor liberties for which their fathers fought, and at the cost of everything which to them had appeared to make working-class life barely tolerable now.

After the war the old conditions will be restored, they tell us; but who believes it? The so-called national necessities which are the pretext for the present measures will be obviously still more imperative after the war. Our masters are insistently urging the workers (with whom saving is too often a crime against the mind and body of themselves and their dependents) to put money by for the awful times that will inevitably follow the war. In view of these hard times to come what chance will there be for the restoration of pre-war conditions of labour? In any case is it not a foregone conclusion that capitalist greed and armed power will effectually bar the way ?

Although we may dimly perceive the golden gleams amidst the dark and thundrous clouds of the future, it would be folly to deny that the immediate prospect is gloomy indeed. Hemmed in by penalties and virtually gagged and bound, the free expression of opinion is rendered impossible for the present. But the seething discontent is not stilled, nor is it rendered innocuous by being denied an outlet. As they sow the wind they shall reap the whirlwind.

Many a man this day is troubled by a burning thought set alight in him by the flaming hoardings of murderous association. He sees the workers of the world being crushed to death or to worse than death between the exploitation and oppression of the ruling caste and the savage massacre of warfare. But what shall I say, he reflects, what must I say to my children years hence when they ask me, "What did you do, daddy, in the great war?" Shall I have to confess in sadness that during this great attack upon the toilers, that in this tragic episode in the class war I have failed to play a man's part?