Classes, but not class antagonism. (1930)

From the April 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Manchester Guardian” (January 11th) has a delightfully phrased hope about class relationships. The Socialist points out that under Capitalism there is an owning class which lives by owning, and a non-owning class which has to work for the owners. The remedy for the resulting class conflict is to abolish private ownership and the class division. The “Manchester Guardian” has a brighter idea :—

“We have got to eliminate from the industrial state that rancour between the privileged and the disinherited, of which the heated controversies about the ‘dole’ are the latest form.”

A really choice piece of Liberal impudence. Let us keep the privileged and the disinherited, but let us find out how to induce the latter not to harbour hard thoughts about the former !

S.

A Christmas Carol. (1922)

From the January 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again we have been treated to the customary sentimental piffle in the press regarding what is known as the festive season. The Daily News has made for us the round of the pulpits, so that our hearts may be made strong and our spirits raised to face the coming year. But, alas ! there is always a fly in the ointment; and though the D.N. has done it's best it could not avoid mentioning unemployment. But stoutly ignoring the other 364 days, it gleefully informs us that "for the first time there was no need for anyone to be hungry on Christmas Day." If we ask, Is there any need for anyone to be hungry on, say, the 2nd of April, we shall be told we are extremists and disturbers of the social peace !

Nevertheless, we do ask it; and since the D.N. will not answer us we will address our query to you. When you drew your savings from the slate club on Christmas Eve, did you bother to think that you have no guarantee that you will not be hungry on the 2nd of April? For our part, we should think that the hard-earned turkey on Christmas Day and no other day would be one of the most cogent reasons for discontent. We do not insist that life is most happily spent in eating turkey and Christmas pudding each day of the year, but with no desire to hurt the feelings and heartfulness (poet's license, and be careful of the "H," Mr. Printer) of the D.N., we cannot see that there is any cause for congratulation in the fact that everybody had one meal for keeps in 1921. Mind you, we are not making too scathing a criticism, we are resolutely dismissing from our memory the poor wretch we met this morning who had subsisted on Christmas Day on little more than a crust of bread. We will not let creep into our minds the image of the thousands whom we know have not the wherewithal to eat nor to sleep at Christmas time, nor, indeed, at any other time.

If, however, we must justify our existence by acting the "skeleton at the feast," we will respectfully inform the D.N. that not only is their statement a lie, but that it is an insult. And that, we think, all things considered, is just about as politely as we dare put it.

S.

Don't Be Misled. (1920)

From the November 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

While attending a crowded meeting held by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in North London the other night, the writer was afforded a glimpse into the mind of a man in the audience who might be taken as representative of the ordinary type of individual.

This man showed by his manner that he was intelligent to a degree, but he also showed that his education was sadly in need of extension.

He asked the speaker (who had referred to the probability of the coming winter being a very hard and

BLACK ONE for the workers) a question, the gist of which is as follows:

  "Don't you think that, while keeping to the idea of bringing in Socialism, the workers would be well advised to agitate for reforms to mitigate the hard times that are undoubtedly in store for them this winter ? Such reforms as getting the Government to give up the campaign in Mesopotamia, to resume trade relations with Russia, to start building houses on a large scale in England, which would put thousands into work, and to take full advantage of countless other ways of economising and making work for the enormous army of unemployed ?" 

It may also be noted here that the questioner declared that he was "in sympathy with the Socialists," in fact he was a Socialist !

Now, as men who have studied the matter from the point of view of working-class interests—and the interests of the only other class, the capitalist class, are in good enough hands— we are able to state most emphatically that agitating for reforms of THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM will not better the material conditions of the working class generally.

It matters not what reform the working class may agitate for or against, the final say as to whether it shall or shall not be rests with the capitalist class and their agents.

The term "capitalist agent" comprises every member of Parliament and a great many who would like to be members. Very few workers, however, have sufficient knowledge to understand that the three candidates who stood for the constituency of Ilford at the recent bye-election were, without exception, agents of the capitalist class.

However, let us get back to this matter of reforms.

During recent years we have had some shining examples of reforms that were or WERE NOT WANTED by the workers being placed on the Statute Book because the capitalist class judged them expedient for their own interests. Take for example the National Health Act.

When that "rare and refreshing fruit" was dangled before the eyes of the workers by the capitalist agent, Mr. Lloyd George, it was a reform strongly objected to by the workers in general, but because it suited the interests of the capitalist class, and because, as at Ilford recently, the workers had blindly given away their power to have things otherwise, that reform went on the Statute Book.

Again, the granting of a pension to aged poor persons was a reform that the workers generally desired.

The capitalist agents examined the idea, laughed up their sleeves, and old age pensions became an accomplished fact.

And now the poor old pensioner knows that he would be better off in the workhouse. We can get what satisfaction we may out of knowing that the workhouses are practically empty (some having been sold), and that old age pensioners—who must have led "respectable" lives—cannot possibly live on the miserable pittance that reform has given them.

Old people without friends or resources did not starve in the workhouse, but now they are COMPELLED to do so on the terribly inadequate sums they receive, while, by way of contrast, a law-breaking criminal, a convict, according to Sir J. L. Baird, Under Secretary at the Home Office, costs the Government the sum of £111 per annum for his upkeep.

Take the latest reform that has come about, the Unemployment Insurance Act that comes into force on November 8th.

Unemployment benefit will be at the rate of 15s. weekly for men and 12s. for women—and not for more than 15 weeks in any insurance year.

According to the "Daily Chronicle" of Oct. 8th, Preston, to take only one town, had a sixth of its population out of work, and "an increasing number of firms are adopting short time and curtailing output."

Our capitalist masters hare seen the possibility of serious trouble arising as a result of the terrible misery, want, and disease that will unavoidably follow in the train of such widespread and lasting unemployment.

They know that it is easier for them to subsidise misery than to meet strife, hence the 15s. per week for the breadwinner to keep himself, his wife, and his children on, and bread costing 1s. 4d. per quarter ! AFTER 15 WEEKS WHAT?

Let the workers gravely consider these reforms, and then reflect that all the material wealth of the world is the result of the application of the workers' energy to nature-given material.

Wealth can be produced in stupendous abundance by the workers, but that production is limited by its profit-extracting possibilities for the capitalist class. When the capitalist sees no chance of disposing of the articles that his employees have produced, for a substantial profit, he curtails production or closes down his works altogether.

To-day the warehouses of the world are filled to overflowing with the goods necessary to life. The capitalists cannot dispose of them; the workers are forbidden by capitalists' property-protecting laws to take what they are so much in need of, although there is plenty for all.

And the worker, in his profound ignorance and general apathy toward these problems that concern him so vitally, is content to starve, or at best to agitate for reforms !

The wonderful knowledge attained up till now by human beings is not sufficient to prevent the vast majority of them being in danger throughout their lives of starving in the midst of plenty—of the plenty created by themselves.

This vicious system that we live under has not always been, and it need not continue. But before it can be superseded by Socialism, which is a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of life, Socialism must be understood and desired by the workers generally.

To agitate for the reform of a system which has such a basis as the capitalist system has, to endeavour to palliate its inevitably harsh bearing upon those who possess nothing, is a waste of energy and time.

Worse than that, the struggle for reform obscures the main issue.

One thing, and one thing only, will change for the better the condition of the workers generally, and that is the OVERTHROW OF CAPITALISM and its supersession by Socialism.

Our friend the questioner, although declaring himself to be a Socialist, proved beyond doubt that he did not understand what Socialism means, and consequently he could not be a Socialist.

He is not alone, however, in labouring under a multitude of disarranged ideas. There are many unfortunately like him who do not understand what Socialism means but who are always ready to assert that they are Socialists.

There are also a great many who, while thoroughly understanding the Socialist position, are satisfied to improve their own position at the expense of the workers whom they mislead—men who make a good fat living out of wearing out the workers' energy and obscuring their understanding by leading them in strivings for reform that, at best, only prolong the life of a system that makes the existence of the worker a long-drawn-out terror.

Some of these paid misleaders of men have actually enough subtlety and bare-faced villainy about them to call themselves Socialists.

This refers to such agents of the capitalist class as the apostles of reform who, a short time ago were strenuously advising the workers to PRODUCE MORE with the result that is plain for any poor fool to see to-day, when, as the consequence of having "produced more" than our capitalist masters can find a ready market for, the workers are unemployed and unable to obtain the things they need to keep themselves alive.

The abolition of capitalism and the inception of Socialism is a work that necessitates knowledge of the system now obtaining, of the system that can replace it, and of the necessary work that shall make Socialism an accomplished fact.

To gain this knowledge the workers must think for themselves !

Socialism will not come until it is generally understood and desired.

Organisation will give knowledge an effectiveness that will sweep want and poverty from the earth.

Such an organisation is to your hand in the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Your lot to-day is insecurity of life, misery, degradation and want, but if you will have it.

S.

Ghosts. (1921)

From the December 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world is suffering from a plethora of fat boys who will persist in trying to make our flesh creep. We have no objection to them practising their black magic in the privacy of their back parlours, to the prostration of their maiden aunts, but the limit is reached when they insist upon the rest of the world witnessing their performances. We refer to that cult of neurotics of both sexes, viz., "Spiritualism," and to the publicity that the "sensation press" is giving it.

Some time ago the Weekly Dispatch worked overtime getting out extra copies, while it was running a series of articles by Mr. Vale Owen which purported to convey "communications from departed spirits." Now Mr. James Douglas, the editor of the Sunday Express is performing similar stunts albeit in the guise of a "not-yet-convinced agnostic." Yet it is easy to perceive that Mr. Douglas, as a smart journalist, is, among other things, endeavouring to emulate the commercial success of his contemporary and draw the coppers from the pockets of the mystified working class to the coffers of Lord Beaverbrook, "the apostle of success."

Although one may have a doubt as to whether Mr. V. Owen was a knave or a fool, Mr. Douglas has a more accessible public record, and we know he is no fool. It is perhaps only just, however, to concede him the point that he is the tool of an exploiting master class, to whose interest it is that confusion should exist in the minds of the workers.

It is not our mission, or of any propagandist value to debate "Spiritualism" as distinct from any other phase of religion. Socialism as a system of society means the end of supernatural beliefs. Our work has as its objective the overthrow of Capitalism, and we do not care to spend much time on its various side shows. We therefore are not primarily interested in exposing the credulity of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or the senility of Sir Oliver Lodge. Mr. Joseph McCabe and others can do that quite well enough in their professional capacity. But where we are concerned with the question of Spiritualism is that Capitalism prolongs its lease of life while the minds of the working class are confused and side-tracked from the path of progress towards their emancipation.

That the phenomena supposed to have been experienced by Mr. Douglas at the "Black Seance" cannot be substantiated by any scientific fact is obvious to the logical mind, but that the working into a hysteria of nervous apprehension of a great proportion of the populace is a direct advantage to the Capitalist class in their business of keeping the working class submissive and enduring is obvious to the Socialist.

If a table can defy the law of gravity and float round the room of its own volition, well and good; scientists must alter their texts books accordingly. And if a spirit can sing "The long long trail" without a larynx, anatomists must also revise their opinions ! But what we do discover about these seances is that no dead Socialist has come back to tell the readers of the Capitalist Press how they are exploited in the interests of the humbugging Capitalist class! And there must be many of our comrades wandering about the Astral Plane we think! Perhaps—horrible thought—the spirit of Capitalism reigns up there too, and has clapped our departed pals into ghostly jails so that they shan't blow the gaff on the fat men below !

But, maybe, we wax flippant. The situation has really no funny side. It calls for the same stern comment that the Armistice Day hypocrisy demands, and indeed, as do all the dodges that Capitalism uses to maintain its existence. The Cenotaphs and bunting, the ceremonies and sentimentalities, the panem et circenses, that seem to be more in evidence than ever before, all serve their turn, and the brutal rapacity of the Moloch we endure battens on the ignorance they signify.

Spiritualism will have its brief turn on the stage of history and make its exit, and something else will take its stead in the public mind and eye; but in the meantime the facts remain that Society here below is rotten to the core, that a small section of it lives in luxurious idleness on the profits rung from the remainder, who, as a consequence, suffer the pangs of hunger, the diseases attendant on slum working class should fix its mind upon. Directly the master class discover that flying tambourines and mystic ventriloquisms no longer absorb the attentions of an awakening proletariat they will command the spirits they have summoned to emulate the Arabs by "folding their tents and
silently stealing away." It will be almost time then for the Capitalist class to do likewise.

S.

"The Fourth Estate" (1921)

From the July 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The value of the Press to the capitalist class as a bulwark is nowhere more evident, I should think, than in the Sunday newspapers. It is obvious that the average member of the working class finds that the seventh day of the week is the only day on which he can peruse the paper from front to back. On other days he has little leisure in the mornings save for a glance at the headlines and to-day’s nap on the sporting page as he sits in the 'wage slave' car.

But on Sundays it is different. He may lie abed and read to his heart's content— and incidentally to his brain’s confusion— all that the talent of Fleet Street and Withy Grove has to offer him. There is very little doubt, too, that this factor is counted for in the production of Sunday papers and is responsible for the matter they contain.

To a certain type of mind (the product of a rotten system, be it understood) the disgusting sordidness of the police court and the divorce court make appeal, and you will consequently find papers which make a feature of reports of the proceedings therein. But those with which we are most concerned are those which inculcate political notions favourable to the capitalist in the minds of the workers.

The impregnation of the unsuspicious brain of the worker is not done openly; it is disguised in clever journalese, catchy colloquialisms that he can understand and repeat to his mates on Monday morning, sensational headlines, and other things that go to make the stuff easily assimilated. .

A case in point is that of the “Sunday Chronicle” (29.5.21.)—a Hulton publication—a paper that affects a hearty, democratic, John’s-as-good-as-his-master air and serves out cheap clap-trap in large doses. The first article is one by that bitter enemy of the working class, Robert Blatchford. He is nothing if not topical, and he loves to shed a tear over the miseries of some sufferer or other. This time it is toil-worn horses.

Apparently, apart from the old gee-gees, there is nothing we need worry about this week. “God’s in his heaven,” the Kaiser’s at Doorn, and “all’s right with the world.” And with the implied hope that something will turn up next week R.B. makes our flesh creep for a couple of columns (with matter mostly culled from “Daily News” reports, by the way) and leaves us with the information that his stuff is “copyrighted in America and Canada.”

But we may spare a word about Blatchford, although he has been exposed and denounced in these columns more often, perhaps, than his importance deserves. One would guarantee that if he were to write a true article about the sufferings of old, toil-worn human animals thrown on the industrial scrap-heap because capitalism has no further use for them, and to tell the readers of the "Sunday Chronicle” that it is because one small section (the section that pays him for writing) of society owns the machinery of wealth production and distribution and can and does treat the remainder of society (the working class) worse than horses— if he were to do this, I repeat, then one could guarantee that R.B. would get the. sack, not only from the “Sunday Chronicle,” but from any other capitalist periodical.

But, as you must be aware, Bob has discovered long since that writing for the Capitalist Press pays so he is not likely to blow the gaff on them. 

On the same page we get a very usual type of journalese, the short, snappy type. It is remarkable, you workers, your masters don’t believe you have the intelligence to handle long paragraphs, so they jerk them to you in small doses! Jane Doe has been working in a mill (she didn’t wear the pretty frock she is posing in at the top, I think!) She thinks it is a jolly fine idea. And so do the mythical mill girls she quotes. They can go to sleep in the work time if they wish—and often do, mark you! And as one remarks over a dish of Irish stew and a jug of tea in the card room, “We’re not in a prison and we get plenty of fun.”

There’s a lot more like this I could quote did I “feel so dispoged,” but it will suffice if I just tell Jane Doe (although I hate to have to speak like this to a lady) she’s a liar. Still, to give credit where possible, I will admit that she has the excuse that she does it for her living.

The facts are nearly all contrary to Jane’s statements. I need only ask anyone who lives or works in a cotton mill environment whether I am right when I say in contradiction to Jane Doe that mill life is unhealthy; its victims are not, as a general rule, healthy, plump, and so on. Their teeth are not good (I think she says “splendid”); in fact they are far, far from it. The mills they work in are like prisons, and even worse. They do not sleep in their work time if they choose. And last, their homes are as a general role, not the little heavens of comfort and restfulness Jane Doe would have us believe.

If the verbose lady doubts this point the present writer will himself conduct her down dozens of streets in industrial Lancashire where .the “mill lasses” and their husbands prefer to sit outside on the pavement rather than endure the discomfort and foulness of their living rooms. And I can further assure her that if she is not squeamish she can be shown worse sights, and can hear worse sounds, than she dare ask her masters to publish or than her refined mind could contemplate without revulsion. But Janey is like Bobby, I suspect! Master pays better than truth!

On page 2 is an article in dialect written in praise of Jane and her boosting of the Lancashire cotton girls’ supposed idyllic existence, all written with the express purpose of counteracting the effect of propaganda that attempts to expose the vileness of the present industrial system.

It is on page 2 too that we strike a pathetic note. One who signs himself “Country Parson” is bewailing the vanishing of feudalism and the spirit that taught us— 

 “God bless the Squire and his relations,
And keep us in our proper stations.”

He tears our heart strings with the news that the Earl is forced by the crises-of to-day to sell his hunters, to reduce his staff of retainers, and to close a wing of the ancient baronial castle. But he relents in the last paragraph and wakes us to hope again with the happy declaration that the yeomen of England are proof against the virus of Communist propaganda and the tracts and pamphlets that are pushed under his doors, generally after dusk, which they know are written by drawing room intellectuals and are paid for by foreigners! And he prophesies in a confident peroration that “the staunchness and integrity of the yeomen which won for them the title “the backbone of England” may yet assert itself again.

Now one could go on from page to page, from paper to paper, quoting the virus of capitalism that our masters seek to infect us with. Just as in the Army they innoculated us to guard against the ravages of fever, so they innoculate us with the insidious propaganda we have instanced to guard against the ravages of clear and logical reasoning. For they know the mighty intelligence of the working class that enable it to produce the wealth of the world, can only be divorced from the intelligence of class-consciousness by the constant repetition by paid hucksters of fine words and maudlin sentiments each as are drivelled by our Robert Blatchfords, our Jane Does, and our “Country Parsons".

In conclusion, it is for the working class to read between the lines and search out the truth for themselves, and to throw to the ground the pillars of hypocritical "poppycock” which form the foundations on which capitalism stands, and to build upon the place where it stood a social edifice which has for its architect Intelligence and for its purpose the common weal.

S.

The Wealthy Socialist. (1921)

From the November 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

The general attitude of the worker towards those possessing wealth is amusingly paradoxical. It is the heritage of serfdom, together with his present servile existence, that engenders the attitude of respect he will always adopt. Yet let him learn of a member of the bourgeoisie who has taken up a stand on behalf of the workers and displayed a knowledge of working-class conditions, and he will regard him sceptically, as who should say: “He’s got money; how can he know anything of us who haven’t? ” Although that very same worker, and this is where the paradox comes in, refuses to think any other way than with the bourgeoisie. He reads and quotes the propaganda they disseminate in their press. He prefers to vote for a candidate who is of the master class, because he feels that such a candidate, being educated and well endowed with the world’s goods, must be, necessarily, better able to represent him in Parliament. It is still quite common to regard M.P.'s in the same category as "toffs,” and a little high-sounding rhetoric and an Oxford accent is a good deal more than half the battle at election time.

A grand example of the falsity of such a position is brought home to us when we consider the life and work of Frederick Engels. Engels was bourgeois by birth and environment, and died worth a considerable amount of money, yet no man, perhaps not even Marx himself, understood the proletarian psychology better. He was the son of an affluent Manchester merchant who needn’t have bothered a bit about the working-class had he chose. But the very fact that his studies and investigations had discovered to him the workings of the social system, forced him, being honest, to write the monumental works so invaluable to the student of Socialism, in spite of his wealth.

This must not be confused with the Fabian argument that the emancipation of the Working Class can only be accomplished by the ” intelligentsia ” of the middle class. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of that class itself. All that is necessary is that it shall become class-conscious and organise to capture the political machinery at present in the hands of the capitalist class. The slum workers and social reformers of the middle class do not understand the economic forces which dominate Society. If they did, they would not waste time in patching up a system which is rotten right at the roots.

It is not necessary to go down a mine, to understand that miners are exploited, nor is it impossible for. a millionaire to know that his millions come from the blood and sweat of a robbed proletariat. There is. nothing, save, of course, a misunderstanding of the. Socialist philosophy, to prevent any member of Society, of whatever social standing, proclaiming himself a Socialist and joining the Socialist Party to work for the emancipation of Society itself; The working class must take the trouble to think for themselves, not waste time wondering whether a man with unsoiled hands really can know anything about factory hells and slums, analyse their position, form their own conclusions, and act upon them, then the day of capitalism will close upon the horrors and terrors it has given birth to, and the morrow will, dawn brighter and happier for the whole human family.

S.