Bread Cast Upon The Waters. (1921)

From the March 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the midst of the terrible want, disease, and stark misery that the workers of to-day are getting inured to, that they are generally acquiescent in as being a condition of things utterly inseparable from the existence of their class, it is interesting to notice how much money is being spent on various forms of education, and by whom it is spent.

For some time past, prominence has been given in the columns of the "Daily Telegraph" to an appeal for funds, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, to effect general improvement in the organisation of the Boy Scout movement.

A casual glance down the lists of subscribers of sums of £5 and over, as published in the "Daily Telegraph" of Feb. 5th and 7th (to take two days at random) will reveal the fact that roughly three out of every four subscribers are large business firms.

Now this is rather startling, for it is a rare thing to find these "captains of industry" falling over each other to give money away, but astonishment evaporates when the inevitable reason for this "generosity" is disclosed.

Investigation shows that the various sums donated to this movement are, briefly, investments. They are expected to yield a profit.

No doubt a good many people would wonder how on earth a subscription to the Boy Scout movement can be called a profitable investment for these capitalists, but the words of the investors themselves, in fact the words of the Chief Scout, Baden-Powell, himself, will remove any doubts on that score.

Appealing for funds at a large gathering of business men at Manchester, "B.P." said: "We will find from experience that the boys who cultivate the ideas and habits of the Boy Scouts prove more useful to employers of labour." — ("Manchester Guardian," 1.7.14.)—A cogent and potent reason, which resulted in substantial subscriptions from those interested in increasing the "usefulness" of future workers.

To-day, nearly seven years after the meeting and speech referred to, we find the "educating" of embryonic workers through the medium of the Boy Scouts has proved so valuable to employers of labour that they "part up" with subscriptions with an alacrity positively staggering to those unacquainted with the reason for such "free-hearted" stunts.

Another kind-hearted man by the name of "The Lord Dewar" (what a smell of whisky !) delivers himself of this :

  Sir,—I have pleasure in enclosing cheque for £1,000 towards what I consider a national cause of first importance, believing, as I do, that the Boy Scout movement is a sure foundation upon which to build the best ideals of citizenship, and the best medium to inculcate into the minds of the rising generation courtesy, discipline, courage, and resource. The results of this movement will be of inestimable benefit to the British Empire in future generations.—("Daily Telegraph," 5.2.21.)

This is a letter which reads at first sight as though £1,000 was a very casual and common gift, but which is pregnant with meaning to those who care to find it.

The "best ideals of citizenship" from the point of view of this purveyor of lunatic broth combine in the worker a keen intelligence in making the wheels of production run smoothly and prolifically, an unquestioning acceptance of dire poverty when further production is stopped by the master class because it does not pay, and a deadly dull and apathetic lack of understanding of the worker's true position in society.

That Lord Dewar thoroughly appreciates the benefits that he and his class enjoy as a result of cheerful endurance and unquestioning obedience to authority on the part of the workers is shown by the magnitude of his "gift."

There is every reason to believe that the brutal plainness of expression contained in the following extract from a letter is the cause of the writer's desire to remain anonymous under the horribly suggestive and admissive pen-name of "Lone Wolf," who writes thus :

  There is only one class in the scout movement, the best. That is what makes it so enormously superior in its results to trade unions and middle-class unions and leagues of nations. And the underlying secret? It is, I honestly believe, practically the only great movement of the present time which has realised the practical necessity of subordinating the personal interests of its members to the needs of the community. . . Most people who do not want other people taught to think for themselves have some very good reason for it,—that it is easier to prey upon ignorance, for instance."—("Daily Telegraph," 5.2.21. Italics mine.)

Well, we know who the "community" is. Lliar George did his best to teach us at the times when the railwaymen and miners, besides several other combinations of workers, were doing their best to maintain the already poor standard they "enjoyed" by means of strikes. It was dinned into our ears incessantly that these men were fighting the "community."

Apparently this bare-fanged "Wolf" is one of the "community" and is desirous of having the thoughts of the rising generation trained in the way he indicates.

And yet we find that, through some tortuous and peculiarly kinked up process of "reasoning," the vast majority of workers fully believe that they are members of the "community" that the Welsh twister speaks of so glibly. The Georgian community is composed of people who matter in the present system of society, and the worker of to day who thinks that that includes him is indulging in a pretty but suicidal conceit.

Those capitalists who have not previously taken a long enough view of the enormous power that can be wielded through the Boy Scout organisation, in the manufacture of complaisant wage-slaves are shown where their interests lie in the following extract from an article published in the "Daily Telegraph" as part of the appeal for funds :

  No expression of approval is more welcome to those at the head of the Boy Scout movement than that which comes from business men (28.1.21).

Mr. Wilde, headmaster, Blakely Municipal School, Manchester—a gentleman not prone to making wild statements, writes, concerning the average Boy Scout:

  He subordinates his own desires to a sense of honour and of loyalty and obligation to authority. He perseveres, and does not slack off. . . Surely a movement that is worth developing (38.1.21).

Which is a strong recommendation—from the point of view of any exploiter of labour!

What a game !

In these days the close observer sees that no movement that is in the interest of the workers generally gets a free advertisement in the columns of the Press like this Boy Scout business does. It is not to be expected that the owners and controllers of the profit-seeking (yet "free") Press will allow any thing to appear in their columns that is in any way detrimental to the interests of themselves as a class. That things do happen, too great to be ignored, yet against the interest of the capitalist class, is true.

Then subtlety gets full play, sometimes taking the form of bare-faced distortion of truth, sometimes "damning with faint praise," again deliberately suppressing vital facts, and in ways scarcely discernible, the capitalist class guard their own interests all the time, even making their position stronger by spreading plausible misconceptions which ultimately take the aspect of absolute truth.

A worker who used his intelligence on his own behalf and has become class-conscious, that is, realises that the interests of the workers and the interests of the masters, or capitalists, are diametrically opposed, smells a rat as soon as ever he sees a thing boosted in the Press as this Boy Scout movement has been, and a short search soon discloses the object of the boost.

Penny-a-liners, journalistic place-hunters, religious and lunatic sufferers from "scribearrhoea," soon have the grim features of their works laid bare by the worker of normal mind who has used his intelligence in discovering his own true position in the present terribly cruel system of society.

Then does the Boy Scout movement, shorn of all its ribbons, badges, and sentimental trappings, stand out in its true light as a highly developed organisation for the production of wage slaves whose minds will have been moulded to such a degree of complaisant obedience to authority that the woes suffered by the capitalists of to-day (as a result of the workers trying to think for themselves in even the vague, groping, inadequate way that they do) will be entirely eliminated from their scheme of things, and labour troubles will be practically unknown.

We, as Socialists, know to our bitter chagrin what a hard task it is to dislodge ideas that have been grafted into people during their earlier years, and to day we are face to face with a most successful effort to still further influence the minds of the young against their true interests, a fact hidden from the children and their parents with unscrupulous subtlety.

The prosecution of the Boy Scout movement has in view the cultivation of all the "virtues" in the minds of the boys, but never a word is breathed to them about the abominable evil of a system that ensures the whole of their future being insecure until death.

Selim.

Don’t Be Futile. (1920)

From the September 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the latter days of last July, a body of people calling themselves The No-Conscription Fellowship, appointed a committee to organise the “Widest Possible Resistance” by people who objected to rendering war service against Russia.

That committee drafted a manifesto calling upon those who objected to performing military service against Russia, or making and transporting munitions, or who would resist all military preparations and the imposition of conscription, to forward their names with the object of strengthening their resistance by being formed into an organised body.

The committee were, according to themselves, “overwhelmed with replies, a very large proportion of them from ex-service men who are most vigorous in their expression of determination not to fight in the new war should it come.”

We must class both leaders and supporters of such a movement as being illogical, shortsighted, and utterly void of understanding of the conditions which govern them, which, of course, connotes the fact that they do not know the cause of their condition.

We claim to know the cause of this condition.

We know that, as the effect of that cause, wars are inevitable. We know that, as a result of their condition, the workers generally are not in a position to resist conscription.

We know the cause of the general poverty, want, and degradation, the insecurity of life, that is the lot of the workers.

When we speak of workers we do not differentiate between nigger drivers, quill drivers, bus drivers, and cattle drivers. Whether you are a manager, clerk, navvy, or soldier matters not. If you sell your services in order that you may live, you are a worker; your services are sold to an employer in precisely the same way as a pound of cheese is sold over the counter, and that very fact abolishes the consideration of “classes” among the workers. There is another “class,” we grant—the non-workers or capitalists ; the employing class ; the people who own the means of life.

We do not differentiate between capitalists, either. It is immaterial to us whether a capitalist drops his aitches, came over with William the Conk, gets his money from a pickle factory, or has blue blood in his veins. We are only concerned with the fact that the capitalists have appropriated to themselves the means of life over the whole of the earth.

And it is the workers, who are in the vast majority, who have GIVEN THEM THE OPPORTUNITY of appropriating the earth.

It is the workers who, in their abysmal ignorance, continually keep on giving away their chances of recovering that ownership of the earth, who continually place in the hands of the capitalists and their agents fresh accretions of power.

Capitalism is the name of the system under which we are living now.

It is a system in which the only place for the workers (who, after all, are the only USEFUL human beings on earth) is at the bottom. That is their right place in such a system, AND THE WORKERS MUST LIKE IT, or they would never put up with it.

We know differently, though. We know that the things which prevent the workers from regaining the power of enjoying to the full all that the earth and their own capabilities could give them are pitifully profound ignorance and deadly apathy.

The capitalists and their agents who compose our governments know only too well that where numbers are concerned they are nowhere against the workers and so by subtlety, cunning, and absolute unscrupulousness they lead the workers by the nose and get them to give them power, and with that power make the workers do all that the capitalists require of them.

Everything that is done in the world to-day, from managing a mine to sweeping a road, is done by the worker. The capitalist does nothing useful, yet he enjoys the best of everything.

To protect the property of the capitalists and to gain fresh property for them, their agents (whom the workers elect to Parliament) have the power to send fighting forces to any part of the world, and also have the power, incredible as it may seem, to gull the worker into believing that it is being done for his benefit.

If the standing army is insufficient, the agents of the capitalists bring in “conscription.”

Some few of the workers decided to stand out of the last great war our masters had. As a consequence of the SYSTEM that the majority of them had never dreamed of abolishing, they had a hell of a time—and some died.

Now we have the No-Conscription Fellowship advocating that the workers should ask for more trouble. What they are actually doing is leading the workers from the only path that will finally lead to the abolition of wars.

The doings of the armed forces of government are, in the final analysis, ordered by the majority of the members of Parliament, who, we have pointed out are capitalist agents.

While the workers keep voting “So-and-So candidate” into Parliament without having studied the matter at all, M.P.s will continue to be agents of the master class. That being the case, how can the workers expect that government will be in the interest of the workers ?

The government of the workers in the interest of the capitalist class will go on just the same, and when the next great war comes the conscientious objectors will again fill vacancies in H.M. goals or special settlements.

Your condition when the next great war comes will be precisely the same as it was when the last war came, whether you join the No-Conscription Fellowship or not.

The cure for the evils suffered by the workers under the present system is—SOCIALISM.

Don’t be afraid of the word, as your grandmother taught you to be.

Don’t put your thinking out for a man on a platform to do for you—do it yourself.

CAPITALISM, a system of private ownership and control of the things necessary for you to live by, leaves you, the actual producer of all that is useful in the world, at the bottom of things—never sure of to-morrow’s food, without any security of right to live.

SOCIALISM, a system of common ownership and control of the means of life, would put you on your proper plane in life, without a “superior,” still an actual worker, sure of food, clothing, shelter, and the very minimum of hours of labour.

When the means of life are commonly owned, do you think for a moment that you will fight each other for oil wells, or for wheat fields, or for anything else ?

In the words of Bernard Shaw’s puppet, NOT SO BLOODY LIKELY!

Get acquainted with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the only party in this country expounding Socialism.

Selim.

The Witches’ Cauldron. (1920)

From the September 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The International Financial Conference, which has been called by the League of Nations, is now fixed to take place in Brussels on Sept. 24th: All members of the League have been invited to send delegations, and all but a few have accepted. Invitations have also been sent to ex-enemy countries. —, “Star,” Aug. 31.

I wonder what is in the wind?

Has the League of Nations (which the ordinary worker was led to believe was formed to prevent wars) got so far on the road to the preservation of peace as to have discovered that financial interests are the cause of all modern wars?

Is it going to preach “brotherly love” to those attending ?

Is it going to plead with them to improve the conditions of the poor all over the world ?

Is it going to show those financiers a royal road to reduced armaments ?

Will it concern itself about alleviating the distress of the poor dupes who suffered in and because of the last great war for markets ?

According to what we have been told by Mr. Horatio Bottomley and a few more of the kidney who make a fat living out of doing the workers’ thinking for them, the League of Nations was half dead when born and sure of being quite dead very shortly.

Yet it appears that the League of Nations is such a vigorous and healthy thing that it can call together our capitalist masters for a Conference !

  It is clear from the personnel of the delegations that the Conference is to be of an authoritative kind. In many cases Ministers of Finance will represent their countries. — Same capitalist rag continued.

One can hardly imagine “Ministers of Finance” “representing their countries” for the benefit of the workers of those countries, although those workers have been taught that it is their country.

  In other countries, as, for instance, in the case of Great Britain, a delegation has been appointed composed of ‘experts calculated to represent the different aspects of British finance,’ one being a late head of the Treasury, another a Governor of the Bank of England, and a third the head of one of the great joint stock banks. —As before.

Whatever has a conference of financiers to do with ensuring peace throughout the world ?

AS SOCIALISTS, understanding the system we live under, we say—EVERYTHING! The peace you will get through the League of Nations is only the peace of death.

In all probability the venue of the next great war will be decided at that conference.

We Socialists, who know that peace is only a concern of those “pawns on the chessboard,” the workers of the world, would rather believe that the conference will decide on how to restore Russia—to the grip of the capitalists completely.

No doubt the methods employed to do so will include a “kindly” desire to see a “settled and constitutional form of democratic Government in Russia.”

Russia has oil.

Russia has enormous wheat-growing areas.

Russia contains enormous natural reserves of wealth.

AND THE HAND OF THE CAPITALIST ITCHES TO GET AT IT! ! !

Selim.

The Reason Why. (1920)

From the May 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Conscription has been officially abolished.

Yes, but not because you did not like it. Our masters have learned during this last war that the day of individual skill with arms is long past' Killing men and wrecking towns and villages is a business that is made quite simple for those who finally DO the business, and those who really pay for the upkeep of the Army and Navy (not you, my fellow worker) are out to cut down expenses in this as in all other things.

A standing army of 220,000 professional killers, and a half-baked army of umpteen territorials will be quite sufficient to keep the wage-slaves in subjection both at home and abroad, and that is all that our masters require until the next "war to end war" comes along.

Then you will see if conscription is finished. Together with its inseparable ally, D.O.R.A., it will be trotted out afresh for your benefit—to be the only hope of saving YOUR liberty, YOUR home (if the brokers haven’t already been in), YOUR everything. YOU, who will he called up to "make one," or perhaps your son, who is such a dear little fellow now, will very soon be taught "discipline" and smattering enough of the methods of killing to go into the new mud-alleys or trenches to make a heroic fight for liberty against "militarism" or some other terrible "ism."

A few hours No. 1 Field Punishment will brighten up your intellect considerably, and you will learn to be courageous too—when there’s a firing party and a hole in the ground waiting for you if you show a sign of being otherwise.

Yon might be one of the "knowing" ones who say "Never again: I've been had once,” but, my friend, when those terrible conditions come again, as come again they must under the present system of society, you will be in no better position to resist these dispensers of khaki suits, homes for heroes, and unemployment doles than you ever were.

Do yon ever think over this ? If you don't you are sadly deficient in self-consideration. If you DO, what conclusions have you come to? What can you do to help yourself?

THE ONLY WAY to help yourself in the matter is to do all yon can to help bring in a system of society where "international” fights are totally unnecessary, where YOU can live a life of peace with plenty, where NO unemployment exists, and where no human being starves in the midst of plenty as they do now under the aegis of something that many of us, in our pityfully blind ignorance, call civilisation.

The necessary system of society for these wonderful benefits to become yours and mine is the SOCIALIST system; nothing short

THE SOCIALIST PARTY of Great Britain claim, and prove their claim, to be the only party in Great Britain whose principles will benefit the working class. We have no connection with I.LP., B.S.P., L.P., S.D.P., or any other old P. of people who are only interested in two things: firstly, grinding their own axes; secondly, trying to make the present rotten capitalist system bearable to you, thereby prolonging the life of that system which grinds YOU down so mercilessly.

If you are a thoughtful man come and consider our principles and policy. You will be welcome at any of our meetings, no matter whether Executive, Branch, or propaganda meetings. We cordially welcome your serious interest. If you have questions to ask, come to our meetings and ask them. I assure you of a civil and scientifically considered answer. The keener your intelligence the keener your welcome from us, for we want the help of intelligent men, and intelligent men will want to help to spread our propaganda when they have got the knowledge of what we stand for. Never mind if you are poor in pocket—we are poor men and women ourselves—but the richer you are in sense—common sense—the better we will like you, for we are not out to mislead anyone.

A list of Branches, together with the times and places of their meetings, will be found at the end of this paper. Come to any of our meetings and enquire: it costs you nothing— and knowledge awaits you.

Selim.