A Look Round. (1907)

From the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fact that Victor Grayson fought Colne Valley without the sanction of the Labour Party has upset several members of that “sensible, respectable, and adaptable” collection of odds and ends. Writing in the A.S.E. Journal for August, Mr. G. N. Barnes says that “each section should endeavour to fall in line with due regard to the general situation. Otherwise there may be more or less irregular candidatures leading to friction and a breaking up of the solidarity which has so far characterised the Labour Party. If Socialists, for instance, are going to run candidates ‘on their own’ without regard to the feelings of the Trade Unionist section, and, as in this case, without consulting the party as a whole, then Trade Unionists may be disposed to return the compliment.”

***

Mr. Barnes’ reference to “solidarity” is amusing. Even the Daily News for September 3rd wrote concerning it: “Its members are but loosely joined together : in its small aggregation it comprehends the extremes of opinion. Today they are often seen walking into different lobbies in Parliament.”

***

The following report appeared in the Times of August 27th:—

” The ‘Survivors of the all-night sittings’ of August 19 and 20 dined together at the House of Commons last night, among those present being Mr. Whitely, Mr. J. A. Pease, Mr. Herbert Lewis, the Master of Elibank, Mr. Fuller, Captain Norton, and Mr. Whitley (Liberal Whips), Mr. H. W. Forster and Mr. Pike Pease (Unionist Whips), and Messrs. Burns, Cavendish, Hobhouse, T. W. Russell, Ainsworth, G. Baring, W. Benn, Bowerman, Carr-Gomm, Clough, C. H. Corbett, Courthope, C. Duncan, Dunn, Fenwick, Gill, Goddard, C. L. Harmsworth, Haworth, A. Henderson, Henry, Higham, Illingworth, MacVeagh, Manfield, Markham, Nicholls, John O’Connor, Pearce, C. E. Price, Rainey, T. F. Richards, Silcock, A. Stanley, Whitehead, and W. T. Wilson. The menu for the occasion was something in the nature of a novelty, among the dishes being ‘Consommé Tortue à la Banbury,’ ‘Harengs aux Baleines Ecossais. Sauce Wason,’ ‘Gelée Lloyd-George,’ ‘Harcourts Verts petite culture,’ ‘Grouse de Hampstead Heath (Tué par M. Whiteley et Sir Hood),” ‘Pèches Anglaises sucrées, sans impôot (Garanties par M. Jean Burns),’ ‘Moelles pain dore du Sud Afrique à la Chinois,’ ‘Dessert de 45 héros,’ and ‘Gâteau (Gagne par M. Jeremie McVeagh).’ The wines were described as ‘Moselle Piesporter Cuvée Caisse Fermée Minisère de Finance. Ad Hoc.” ‘Champagne Cuvée Dorsdors’ and ‘ Porte ! Porte ! Dow’s 1878.’ The concluding line on the menu was ‘Prorogation—Le Roi le veult.'”

***

Subject to correction, the “Survivors” named Bowerman, Duncan, Gill, Henderson, and T. F. Richards are “Labour” members. Who paid ?

***

Lord William Cecil is recording, in the columns of the Times, the impressions of his recent visit to China, where he went with the object of seeing the Christian missions at work in that portion of the Far East. What he has to say is far from reassuring says the Church Times. He found only too convincing proof of the tendency among European residents in China to sink to the lower moral standard of the Orientals. Foreseeing a time when China, like Japan, will enter into close relation and intercourse with the West, he dreads a Yellow Peril no less serious than the peril of aggression, which he believes to be imaginary. The Yellow Peril he fears is that of moral contamination for Europe, through the adoption of Chinese morals and ideas.

To meet this Lord William thinks that every effort should be made to make known the religion of Christ to the Chinese ! But a knowledge of this religion has not prevented the Europeans from falling !

***

The correspondence in the Church Times on Socialism was brought to a close on September 15th with a letter from Mr. Harry Phillips, writing from the Church House, Westminster, He “was once a member of the I.L.P., but is not now,” as he “can no longer support Labour when it declares for secular education !”

***

In the course of his letter Mr. Phillips says : “Under the rule of a strong Socialist majority on the West Ham Town Council, there was more poverty, more suffering, and greater want of employment, than at any other period during the history of West Ham, and had it not been for the generous subscriptions of strong individualists and capitalists like Mr. Dewar, and others, the suffering would have been a great deal worse ; it was exactly the same at Poplar. I am not now alluding to the bribery and corruption of a few men, none of whom were Labour men, nor am I in any sense attacking any Socialist members of the Town Council, but the administration during the Socialist regime instead of reducing poverty, intensified it. Rates and rent went up enormously, and unemployment and suffering increased.”

***

Now, even a Christian Socialist might try to tell the truth sometimes ! There never has been a Socialist majority on the West Ham Town Council, and far from rates and rent going up enormously, it is a well-known fact that in West Ham and in districts further East rents have fallen considerably, although rates have risen. As we have repeatedly shown, a rise in rates is not always followed by a rise in rents, but, on the other hand, rents often fall concurrently with rising rates. The landlords always secure the full amount that competition for house accommodation will permit them to exact, irrespective of rates. And very often high rates mean low assessments, and low rates high assessments.

***

In their efforts to capture the working class for Christ the parsons are ably assisted by some of the Labour Misleaders. Mr. G. J. Wardle, M.P., speaking at Brixham Congregational Church on Aug. 25 delivered himself as follows:

“There were thousands of men who had to work hard from week to week, and yet at the end there was nothing for them but the workhouse and a pauper’s grave. Every working-man who was discontented with the present conditions was so because he knew that life to him was not what it ought to be and what it might be. Under a system of industry in, which they could see the Divine hand, he knew that there would not only be security of tenure, but no unreasonably long hours and small wages, whilst he would have those comforts which health demanded.”

***

Mr. Wardle, apparently, has no conception of a time when the working man shall cease to be such, as distinguished from the non-working section of the community. No, all that is wanted is “fixity of tenure” (which apparently means that the workman’s nose is to be fixed to the grindstone) and not unreasonably long hours or unreasonably small wages. These of course are very vague terms, suitable to the occasion. And what reason has Mr. Wardle for suggesting that the Divine hand (whatever that may be) is not to be seen in the present system of industry ?

***

At the annual demonstration of the Blaina district of the South Wales Miners’ Federation on August 26th dissatisfaction was expressed at the action of Mr. T. Richards, Labour M.P. for West Monmouth, in supporting Liberal candidates. Mr. Richards, in reply, said that he went to support the Liberal candidate at Bristol at the request of a Labour Leader (whom he did not name) and he was not sorry that he had helped to return Mr. Robinson, the Liberal member for Breconshire. Loud cheers greeted his speech, after which Mr. W. Crooks, M.P., addressed the meeting, no doubt on the “solidarity” of the Labour Party.

***

At a Primrose League demonstration Lord Londonderry spoke of the great and growing danger of Socialism to the State. He said :

“There is £152,000,000 in the Post Office Savings Bank, the savings of ten million persons, for the Socialists to take. A million and three-quarter persons have put nearly £53,000,000 in trustee savings banks. Some £68,000,000 has been placed by workmen in building societies, and there is some £50,000,000 invested in industrial and provident societies, co-operative and friendly societies, and trade union benefit funds, while small holders hold some £20,000,000 worth of Government stock.

“All these are workmen’s savings, and they are all to be confiscated by the Socialists, all to be shared by the thriftless, all to be looted by the ‘have nots’ at the expense of those who have something.”

***

These figures make a total of £343,000,000, and as we showed last month, there is only about £100,000,000 of money in the Kingdom, so that even under Capitalism these “workmen” would be in a bad way if they wanted to withdraw their savings in a hurry. It is unfortunate that his Lordship did not give the numbers of all these various kinds of thrifty workmen. But according to him the depositors in the P.O. and Trustee savings banks number 11,750,000 “workmen.” The Industrial and Provident Societies have about 2,250,000 members and the Trade Unionists number about 2,000,000. Exclusive, then, of the Building Societies, at least 16,000,000 ‘workmen’ have deposited all these savings. But the workers only number about 13,000,000, or, with their dependents, 33,000,000. And of these, according to Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 13,000,000 are always on the verge of hunger !

***

The sums mentioned by his Lordship do not represent the savings of the working class. Take the P.O. for example. The commercial and trading class know, what the working class, as a rule, do not, viz., that deposits are unattachable, that is, that in event of a bankruptcy, deed of composition, or any other circumstance, the creditors of a depositor in the P.O. Savings Bank cannot touch his or her deposit. Hence many of these wide-awake folk deposit up to the limit (£200) as a sort of provision against a “rainy day.”

***

The working class (S.D.F. resolutions notwithstanding) have nothing to lose but their chains. This also applies to many members of the “respectable classes,” the clerks and shop assistants, and many of their chains are “duds,” as watch snatchers have sometimes found, to their chagrin.

***

The S.D.F. is continually passing resolutions, and sending them to various representatives of the master class and the latest is a “stunner.”

***

Thus saith the S.D.F. Executive : “That this meeting of the Executive Committee of the S.D.F. enters its emphatic protest against the invitation given by King Edward VII on behalf of the British nation to the German Kaiser, and declares its intention to make this protest publicly effective upon his visit in London if necessary, seeing that the presence of a reactionary militarist such as the Kaiser is in no wise welcome among a free and self-respecting people.”

***

The issue of Justice which contained this resolution contained also “A Practical Suggestion for Socialist Unity” by E. R. Hartley, from which it was apparent that E.R.H. desires “Socialist” Unity in order to send to Parliament “someone who shall speak with confidence and authority.” This “someone” is “H. M. Hyndman.” E.R.H. waxes enthusiastic. “Hyndman, the economist, the educated gentleman, the polished and scholarly traveller, . . . Hyndman, with his sublime capacity for magnificent indiscretions” and so on. Evidently the resolution quoted above is one of Hyndman’s “magnificent indiscretions.”

***

Consider the position. In its literature and on its platforms, the S.D.F. declare that the people of this country are slaves. Mr. Hyndman has gone further and has denounced all those who are not class-conscious Socialists as “slaves and curs indeed.” Now, slaves and curs cannot be “free and self-respecting.” The S.D.F. Executive have allowed their jingoism to get the better of their Socialism, and in pursuit of their policy of currying favour with the jingo and “patriotic” section of the master class, of which the advocacy of compulsory military training forms a part, have thrown their Socialism overboard again, and declared what they know is a lie, viz., that the people of this country are “free and self respecting.”

J. Kay.

The Yellow Revolt. (1914)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

“China and the Social Revolution,” by Kiang Kang Hu.

This little pamphlet is an all too brief sketch of the revolutionary movement in China during the recent upheaval. It is exceedingly interesting reading, and would be a startling eye-opener to the brand of anti-Socialist whose only excuse for opposing Socialism is that England must wait for Socialism until the “uncivilised” and the heathen are converted to our cause.

Here we have the “heathen Chinee” applying Marxian remedies to working class evils, and showing a knowledge of capitalist conditions that would put to shame many a “civilised” Christian “labour leader.”

The great revolution in China in which the working class, as is customary in all such revolutions, was used to free the land from Manchu rule, leaves the Chinese worker groaning under still worse conditions, conditions common to the early development of capitalist production. And, as a result, to use the author’s words ;

“The faith of the people is gone in Republicanism. The belief that it was the Manchu’s only who were oppressive is shattered. There remains but one thing, THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. That and that only can bring relief to the toiling millions of China. Their only hope lies in this : the taking over of the entire mechanism of production and operation of it by the workers, for the workers—the Socialist or Industrial Republic.”

The growth of The Socialist Party of China was evidently too swift for the powers that were, for in 1913 martial law was declared in Peking, the headquarters raided, the Secretary, Chen Ye Long, was beheaded and the S. P. of China dissolved. It is however but for a time.

“China cannot remain long in the grip of the re-action. Yuan Shi Kai can overrun the country with his troops. He can zealously stamp out, every spark of revolt. And yet, even as he does that, the tremendous forces are gathering, forces to which his army is but a toy, which will hurl aside Yuan Shi Kai and the re-action as though they were nothing. The name of those forces is industrialism. Steadily in ever increasing speed, the great economic change to machine production continues in China. This means that China must be, will be modernised.

“And the Socialist Movement in China will reassemble its forces, fall in step with the great Red International and march with it to victory.”

The author puts things very straight, and a passage dealing with the missionary, the capitalist, and the invasion of China by the Allied Powers is thus neatly and forcibly summarised: “China can now come into contact with the holy trinity of capitalism, the Cross, the Dollar Mark, and the Bayonet.”

Much other useful information is given in this brochure, which is well worth perusal.

Twel.

A Look Round. (1907)

From the April 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Weekly Times and Echo is a Liberal newspaper. Between elections it plays to the Labour Gallery, prints articles from prominent Social-Democrats and Labour men. But at elections it supports the Liberal (which, of course, includes the Progressive) candidates, and should therefore be regarded as an enemy by those who claim to be Socialists.

***

“He that is not with us is against us,” used to be recognised as a truism by the S.D.F. But recently things have been altered. On the front page of the Weekly Times and Echo for March 17, 1907, appears an advertisement by the Edmonton Branch of the S.D.F., addressed to the Electors of Edmonton, and announcing a mass meeting in support of S.D.F. candidates for the District Council. In the advertisement the electors are advised not to blindly vote for “the man your landlord thinks the best, and who is selected by the landlords themselves.”

***

This denouncing of the landlord, while ignoring his companion, the capitalist, is an old Liberal dodge, but I hardly expected to find it in an S.D.F. Advt.

***

The advertisement concludes : “Take in this paper weekly. It is the best for all workers.”

***

So the S.D.F. are now reduced to urging the workers to be taken in by taking in a paper which appears several times during the week for the greater glorification of the Liberal section of the capitalist class !

***

What Judge Emden described as an extraordinary state of affairs was revealed at the Lambeth County Court on March 13, when a member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners named Murphy sued the Society for £50 which he claimed as accident benefit. Counsel for the Union submitted to the Judge that as the Society was an illegal society for the purposes of restraining trade, the Court had no jurisdiction to try it, which was proved by section 4, subsection 3, of the Trade Union Act of 1871. This provided that members of the Society, or vice-versa, shall have no power to resort to a court of law for the purpose of enforcing any agreement between them.

***

After a lengthy legal argument the Judge decided favourably to the Union, dismissed the action, and at the request of the Union’s advocate, gave costs against the Union member.

***

The plaintiff’s advocate described the Union as a “swindle” and was promptly reproved by the Judge. But the irony of it ! The workers are urged to join their Trade Unions, in order to make provision, amongst other things, for sickness, old age, accident, etc. And then the Union into which they have paid, week after week, a large proportion of their earnings, resists claims by its members and defeats them by the tactics detailed above.

***

The Liberal Government at home are mouthing threats against the House of Lords, mainly because they claim that “it thwarts the people’s will.” At the same moment they have established a second chamber in the Transvaal with the definite object of thwarting the wishes of the elected Assembly.

***

The scandal of the Upper House nominations, writes the Daily Chronicle’s Johannesburg correspondent, must be remembered in estimating the political outlook. The people elected a majority pledged to the repatriation of the Chinese, and Lord Selborne has nominated a Progressive Chinese majority in the Upper House. Consequently it is premature as a result of the elections to predict the peaceful elimination of the Chinese, since the power to precipitate a crisis and thwart the policy of the Assembly and the home Government by voting such legislation as is essential to repatriation is placed in the hands of the puppets of Lord Selborne and the mining houses, as, in case of a deadlock, the Governor can dissolve the Assembly without calling a joint sitting of both Houses.

***

“Improvements in administration, chiefly in the interest of the middle-class ratepayer, improvement even in the status of organised labour, does not take us far on the road to genuine Socialism. It is reform certainly, and it has, in some respects, a good effect in so far as it shows the way to better things. But, on the other hand, palliatives are likely to obscure the main issue and the idea itself of the maintenance of municipalities, and the raising the status of wage-earners, stunts the revolutionary intelligence and restricts the area of economic foresight.”

H. M. Hyndman, November, 1895.

***

“To get a little they must ask for the lot, if they ask for a little they will get nothing. As he was growing older he was beginning to feel the futility of crying for reforms when you find yourself face to face with a system which makes all reform impossible.”

H. M. Hyndman, March, 1904.

***

Those who will carefully read the above Hyndmanisms, and then read through the addresses issued by S.D.F. candidates at recent elections will not need to subscribe to the Daily News edition of Punch.

***

“Who aims a star, shoots higher far

Than he that aims a tree.”

***

On Saturday, London had spoken for the forces of reaction, and had played into the hands of the Harmsworth family once again, said our Lady of Warwick at the East Ham Town Hall on March 4. As London had to choose between a majority of “Progressives” and one of “Moderates,” both of whom serve the interests of the capitalist class, it is evident that her Ladyship would have hailed the victory of the former as a defeat of the forces of reaction.

***

According to the Burton Evening Gazette, something of a sensation has been caused by certain staff changes at Messrs. Allsopp & Sons’ Offices. A number of clerks, some of whom had given life service to the firm, were dismissed peremptorily, but with their salaries in advance, and the incident, although it is merely an elaboration of a policy which has unhappily long been in progress, caused much comment by reason of the position of the parties concerned and the length of their association with the brewery.

The lady clerk is to make her appearance at the desk, and she and her class will very largely take the place of those gentlemen who have been sent adrift. It is contended that the somewhat drastic changes which are now in progress in Messrs. Allsopp’s internal affairs are dictated by the demands for a strictly economical working plan. Whatever may be the verdict of the general public on the matter, it cannot be denied that much resentment is expressed locally at the continued dismissal of clerks, and this has especially made itself felt within the past few days.

A representative of the Gazette had an interview with Mr. C. J. Stewart, the chairman of the Board of Directors, who stated that the policy of economy had been going on generally since he commenced his tenure of office. “A considerable saving has,” he said, “been effected in the administrative staff in accordance with that policy.” He had had experience of lady clerks in other capacities, and he thought that they would be very suitable for the work it was proposed to give them. It would be merely a matter of figures, and what might be monotonous for men would not be so in the case of girls. In fact, it was really women’s work to do that sort of thing.

***

Of course, “it is really women’s work to do that sort of thing,” and any other sort of thing whereby the wages bill can be reduced.

***

As we have so often pointed out, the displacement of men by women and even by children is incidental to the capitalist system and must and does take place in offices as well as in mills and factories. The writers of some of the letters that have appeared in the Press concerning this particular case have made some extraordinary suggestions and have mostly shown a lamentable ignorance of things as they are. They have appealed to the “feelings” of the Directors, etc. In days gone by, when businesses were small, when they were personally superintended by the proprietors, there no doubt did exist some feeling of friendship between the employer and his employees, but since the advent of the large concerns, the joint stock corporations, where often the employees never see the actual proprietors, where the departmental managers are expected to make their respective departments “pay,” sentiment is entirely out of the question. Business is not carried on for philanthropy but for dividends.

***

It has also been suggested that the lesson, to be learnt by the clerk is that there is still room for him if he will make himself an all round competent man. But there are plenty of these today working for a mere pittance, and plenty even dossing nightly at Booth’s hotels. Moreover, the only practical school for acquiring efficiency in office routine is the office itself, and the conditions of modern offices render it impossible for the necessary experience to be obtained. The “From Powder Monkey to Admiral,” “Office Boy to Proprietor” fiction is long since exploded. In the small office, say with manager, cashier, clerk, junior and office boy, the “yob” certainly did have an opportunity, provided he were smart, of acquiring a general and particular knowledge of the office routine and of the business transacted, but as the small offices gave place to the mammoth concerns now so common in commercial centres, the work became departmentalised and all-round knowledge rendered unnecessary for the majority of the staff. The newcomer, however proficient he may have made himself at commercial schools and similar institutions for extracting fees out of would-be Pierpoint Morgans, finds himself set to work which, as Mr. Stewart says, is “merely a matter of figures.” Usually, his only hope of promotion is to become the head of the department, or one of that worthy’s ”coppers,” but between him and the coveted post intervenes an array of a score or more all anxious for advancement and all as little likely to secure it. His knowledge is useless because his only prospect is to remain at one particular job, at work which could be done by any other fairly correct person, male or female.

***

What the clerk has to do is to drop his cant of respectability and to recognise that economic development, which has reduced the skilled mechanic to a casual labourer, has also affected him. The growth of large concerns, the aggregation of capital, the increased use of mechanical appliances, in offices as elsewhere, the subdivision and departmentalisation now generally in vogue, have effected vast changes in the status of the wage and salary earner, of those who have to sell their abilities, physical or mental, to the master class. Under capitalism, production per head of the population tends to increase continually, but production per head of the actually employed workers also increases. Thus the army of the unemployed will be an evergrowing one and we ask our opponents to show how the problem can be dealt with, apart from a re-organisation of industry—apart from the substitution of Socialism for the present system.

J. Kay

Editorial: Sodom and Gomorrah and the Rand. (1907)

Editorial from the January 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Great consternation in London town. Conformity shocked. Nonconformity staggered. The national conscience stirred. The Oriental vices of compounded Asiatics have, under conditions of celibacy, broken out, and who’d have thought it, cries Conformity; and just what we expected, answers Nonconformity ; and—something shall and must be done affirms the national conscience ; and—leave it to us says the government ; we will do everything that should be done, on our honour as a government we will.

Such agitation ! Yet this grossly abhorent form of sexual excitement is bound to manifest itself where men are herded together under penal conditions and excluded from the society of their women folk. And this was quite well known both to the Conservatives who now protest that “they never did and hadn’t the slightest idea,” as well as to the Liberals who knew all the time don’t-you-know— and issued licenses for 16,000 more Chinese to be imported into the same conditions.

____________

Lust and Luxury.

Nor is the vice peculiarly Asiatic, as the distinguished gentlemen who make our laws and fill our newspapers for us would have us believe. It is not the special affliction of the heathen Chinee. It is far more widely practiced among the decadent whites of Western civilisation than our pastors and masters are prepared to admit. It is not unknown even in the most exalted circles of good old England. It is a flourishing product of that low moral caste, the accompaniment of unbridled luxury, which continually seeks the gratification of its sensual lusts and finds it only in the grossest of sensations.

The Chinese under normal conditions are a singularly moral people in a rather more ample sense than that word is usually used and their deterioration generally commences with their association with the capitalist method of more “advanced” nations. The faculties which they possess in a remarkable degree of absorbing new influences and assimilating new ideas may have resulted in those of them who have had the misfortune to be translated into the atmosphere of modern commercialism, acquiring the evil practices of their new conditions. But an argument of that sort is very much a two-edged weapon. The evils must have existed to be absorbed.

____________

Morality and Profits.

But all this apart, the consequences as we say, were well known and they were deliberately burked because Rand capitalism demanded cheap labour in order that large profits might be scooped. The Tory Party have the credit of introducing Coolie labour into South Africa. The Liberal Party got in largely by their outcry against conditions of “slavery under the British Flag.” Swearing they would never consent to the degradation of “the national honour” they consented. Swearing a new oath that they had never said the conditions under which the Chinese were being imported were conditions of slavery,—that the use of that phrase was a terminological inexactitude—they maintained a continuity of policy and were directly party to the intensification of the evil to the extent of nearly a score of thousands additional licenses. And now that by an unlucky chance the murder is out they are endeavouring to shuffle out of their responsibility by pointing the finger of contumely at the Tories and saying, I told you so.

____________

Cant and Humbug.

All of which, however, is simply part of the Party game. The central fact is that powerful capitalist interests demanded cheap Coolie labour and capitalist governments, Liberal and Tory, satisfied the demand. Now that the moral fester has broken and spurted its purification abroad it may happen that pressure of the “national conscience” deftly played upon by other capitalist influences may effect some alteration. But whether such alteration will be any less hypocritical than the grotesquely farcical steps which the Liberal Government took to relieve any “heathen Chinee” of the obligations of his contract, is a moot point to be determined by the quality and quantity of the opposition aroused by the—at present—suppressed Bucknill Report. But whatever happens one thing is sure—facilities for obtaining the necessary supply of cheap labour, white, black or yellow, for capitalist purposes, will always be given by capitalist governments, and although it may be possible to suppress some of the more repulsive manifestations of the workings of the profit monger, it will not be possible while capitalism lasts to clear out the cesspool of iniquity which is the profit monger’s inevitable accompaniment. Only by the eradication of Capitalism itself and the substitution for it of that system of Society connoted by the term Socialism will that be possible. The disease is directly traceable to the impoverishment and enslavement of the many and the riotous luxury of the few made possible by the private ownership of the means of wealth production. For Asiatic vices so-called as well as all the other unsavory products of the present system, Socialism alone is the remedy.

A Look Round. (1906)

From the June 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dr. Emil Reich has continued his lectures upon Plato. In the course of the one dealing with “The State and Individual Socialism” he said that we had slavery here as much as it existed in the time of the Greeks. The working men were slaves. It was no use to say : “They are not slaves; they have rights”; for the Athenian slaves had certain rights also.

* * *

It is just this bogey of “rights” that leads the members of the working class to consider themselves free. They claim to have the “right” of free speech, the “right” of choosing their employer and their landlord, the “right” of combination; the “right” of recording their vote for one of the master class or for a misleading Labour “Leader” and so on,

* * *

Take the “right” of free speech. Does it exist ? Is it not a fact that if only three persons congregate in a public place they cause an obstruction within the meaning of the Act ? And the many prosecutions and imprisonments which have taken place in connection with this alleged right have conclusively proved that no such right exists.

* * *

Then we are told that a man can work for whom he likes and live where he likes. Leaving out of the question the many who cannot work at all, because nobody can find it profitable to employ them, and who consequently cannot pay the rent, where does the “right” of the employed come in ?

* * *

Does a workman enter a factory, dock or warehouse and say to the employer, “I’m coming here to work, my hours will be from 10 to 5, with 2 off for refection, no work on Saturdays and my wages will be £4 per week ?”

* * *

Of course not. When he presents himself at the factory gate he either sees the familiar notice “no hands wanted” and sorrowfully departs, or he humbly enquires if there is any chance of a job. If he gets the welcome “yes” he is told when he must start and when he must finish and what the pay will be. When his employers consider he shall eat, or, at any rate, cease work with that object in view, a bell is rung to denote the fact, and when he is permitted to return the bell is again rung.

* * *

And as to the ” right” to live where he chooses, this also does not exist. He must of necessity live where and how his economic circumstances determine.

* * *

We are all born into this world without being consulted in the matter. We are supposed to belong to our parents. Before we are six weeks old we must be registered, before we are six months old we must be vaccinated, unless our parents have within four months of our birth obtained an exemption order; when we are five we must go to school, and we must not leave school and go to work until the State says we may. If we cannot find work and therefore cannot pay the rent, the landlord has the right to employ the machinery of the law in ejecting us. We then have the right to become an obstruction or a nuisance ; if we beg, the policeman has the right to run us in, as he also has if we steal or poach, or wander about without any visible means of subsistence, or sleep out of doors, and if, finally, we give it up as a bad job, and seeing that Capitalist Society will not allow us to live decently, we endeavour to put an end to our miserable existence by jumping from “the bridge of sighs,” once again the gentleman in blue has the right to take us into custody and we shall get “time.” Where do our “rights” come in ?

* * *

Either with the object of killing time or of playing the game of bluffing the workers, some Belgravians have formed an Association called the “Freedom of Labour Defence.” At the inaugural meeting Lady Francis Balfour, who a few days afterwards was prominent at the Women’s Suffrage Demonstrations, presided. Lord Wemyss, a life long defender of the liberty of the propertied few to exploit the propertyless many, gave as his ideal: “Work as long as you like, for what wages you like and for anybody you like.” I can see his lordship “a doin’ of it.” This reminds me of the speech of Lord Salisbury, when Viscount Cranborne. He said: “So long as they are not overworked, all the working classes want is plenty of work,” and in order that they may have it, of course, Salisbury, Wemyss & Co. refrain from working themselves. It is the “freedom” of the working class to be exploited that they, the shirkers and exploiters, would defend !

* * *

The formation of the Association is due to the Sweating Exhibition organised by the Daily News, at which a number of ardent one-step-at-a-time revolutionists like Herbert Burrows, Ramsay McDonald, Chiozza Money and others have been lecturing to the sweaters on their moral responsibility in this matter. But appeals to this unknown quantity been have made many times, and sweating continues. The Daily News itself points out that more than half a century ago Charles Kingsley wrote his impeachment of “Cheap Clothes and Nasty.” Seven years before this Mrs. Browning in “The Cry of the Children” and Hood in “The Song of the Shirt” had awakened the public conscience to a menacing danger. Civilization has broadened and deepened. England has become a world-State. Science applied to industry has multiplied by twenty-fold the capacities of production. Yet to-day “The Song of the Shirt,” the “Cheap Clothes and Nasty,” “The Cry of the Children” still remain. Women are still working their lives into the fabric of shirts and Bibles, and children are labouring in home industries “who have never known the sunshine nor the glory that is brighter than the sun.” All the large processes of change, the accumulated wealth of Empire, spoil gotten from all the seven seas, has brought no mitigation and no hope to these unfortunates.

* * *

The Daily News could not have penned a better indictment of Reform had it tried. Revolution, and Revolution alone, will be effective.

* * *

Seventeen syndicates in the French Engineering Trades,—including the Iron and Steel Trades, the machine-making trade in all its varieties, the cycle trade, the hardware trade, and others—have formed themselves into a Confederation in opposition to the Workmen’s Union. They declare that the attitude of the Workmen’s Federation, which is now revolutionary, leaves them no alternative but to found a Confederation of their own.

* * *

Such is inevitable that, as the Class War intensifies, as the final struggle between the master class and the working class approaches, changes must take place in the organisation and methods of both armies. Just in proportion as The Socialist Party impress the working class by their propaganda, so the latter, becoming class conscious, will recognise that the form of Trade Union that has served a purpose in the past, and which is based upon the superstition of the brotherhood of capital and labour, is unsuited to present day conditions.

* * *

It is the function of The Socialist Party to prepare the working class for the Revolution and to build up the necessary organisation. Some of our friends, tired of the vote-catching dodges of alleged ”Socialist” candidates, disheartened at the slow rate of progress, disgusted at the large number of good men gone wrong after being elected to legislative and administrative bodies, declare for an industrial organisation, having for its object the taking and holding of the means of life, without affiliation to any political party. And it is not to be wondered at that some of the more impatient are reviving the Anarchist doctrine of the futility of Parliamentarism and are advocating an economic organisation alone, with its ultimate general strike, or, as it is now being put, the general lock-out of the master class.

* * *

It looks very alluring, but do not let us forget that the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, is an instrument of oppression. Is it wise to leave that instrument in the hands of the capitalist class ? No. The Socialist Union must work in conjunction with The Socialist Party.

* * *

There are others who are of opinion that the new economic organisation should not be called a Socialist Union, as its object being “the taking and holding of the means of wealth production,” it would be sufficiently stamped as a Socialist Union without mention of that word.

* * *

Some of these very folks, however, have denounced those who have pursued a similar policy in electoral contests, and I think justly so. I have before me now the election address of Mr. T. R. Wall, who, although a member of the S.D.F., contested a seat on the Fulham Borough Council as “The Labour Candidate” and whose election address stated the Socialist position whilst carefully refraining from avowing it as such. To oppose men who do this on the political field and assist them to do a similar thing on the industrial field is illogical and confusing.

* * *

Last month John Burns was elected a member of the National Liberal Club. What an affecting sight it must have been when he first encountered those members of the Club who are also members of the S.D.F., viz., H. M. Hyndman, E. Belfort Bax, J. F. Green, A. S. Headingley, etc. Every candidate for the Club, before being elected, must take a pledge that he will support the principles of the Liberal Party.

* * *

In a recent issue of the Socialist Standard we gave details of the compacts entered into between candidates of the Independent Labour Party and the Liberals at the General Election. In the Labour Leader for Sept. 9th, 1904, Mr. J. Keir Hardie wrote “Temporary tactical understandings with, say, the Irish Party, or any other independent section of politicians I can understand, but a working agreement with Liberals or Conservatives would spell ruin.” In view of this utterance it is easy to understand why the recent “working agreements with Liberals” were not mentioned in the Labour Leader.

* * *

“Importation of Chinese Stopped ” was the double column head-line in the Daily News for December 22nd, 1905, above the report of, Sir H. Campbell Bannerman’s speech at the Albert Hall. It was there that he stated the Government’s conclusion to stop forthwith the recruitment and embarkation of Coolies in China for South Africa. At that time there were 47,217 Coolies employed ; At the end of February the number had risen to 49,995, and in the three months the desertions had nearly doubled. Thus have the Liberals carried out the promise “No Slavery under the Liberal Flag.”

* * *

I know that Bannerman said that the importation should be stopped as “far as practicable,” and no doubt some Liberals will argue that this has been done. But it was practicable to stop it in December. The Daily News of May 19th admitted that “of course, the present Ministers might have withdrawn the permits just as they might have ordered the repatriation of the Coolies already there. There was no physical impossibility in either case.” And the Western Morning News pointed out in January that “the Transvaal being a Crown Colony, the Home Government could, if it chose, cancel the Chinese Labour Ordinance, and send every Chinaman back to China.” But, of course, they didn’t, and there are now more Coolies in S. Africa than at any previous time. The lie, however, like other Liberal lies, served its purpose.

* * *

On May 25th a complimentary Banquet was given to Mr. W. M. Thompson, Editor of Reynolds’, at the National Liberal Club. Hobnobbing with the titled participants were Messrs. H. M. Hyndman, E. Belfort Bax, and A. E. Fletcher. The Rt. Hon. John Burns was the principle speaker, and was followed by Mr. H. Hyndman ! Oh, these revolutionary S.D.F’ers !

J. Kay

China in the 19th Century (1974)

From the October 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

In communist theory the feudal era in China ended with the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1911 — preceded by a period of embryonic capitalism, and followed by the capitalist era. In reality, though this marked the end of Imperial and dynastic China, its economic effects were minimal. But for the 1914-18 war, it is quite probable that Yuan Shih-Kai’s bid to inaugurate a new dynasty with himself as emperor would have been successful; from the founding of the republic, he had the support of the western powers against the revolutionary Sun Yat sen.

The preoccupation with the war in Europe deprived Yuan of foreign support when he claimed imperial legitimacy, and also let in the Japanese as a new predator. After the war the western powers, expecting to return to the status quo, imagined they could buy off Japan by admitting her to the wolf-pack and allowing her to have the former German interests in Shantung province. This was China’s ultimate disillusionment with the west; it sparked off the May the Fourth movement from which Chinese Communism was to spring, nationalism and all. Confident that Japan had been appeased, the western powers went about their business of exploiting China. This was the period of warlordism, which was only a reflection of other rivalries. And when Japan wanted more, the western powers sank their differences and jointly supported Chiang Kai-shek as the best bet for defence against Japan.

During this period, though capitalism waxed fat in China, it was practically entirely western capitalism. Very little indigenous industrial enterprise started up. What did arise was a flourishing finance capitalism. Bankers, direct heirs of the usurious pawnshops of traditional China, were able to negotiate foreign loans and act as agents for raising Chinese capital to go into foreign enterprises. But agriculture continued to account for 90 per cent. of the population, and the torments of the peasants intensified as it was upon their backs that the burden of others’ money-making rested. To speak of this as China’s capitalist era is a delusion.

Before the 1911 pseudo-revolution China is supposed to have been undergoing the pangs of nascent capitalism. It is convenient to start the story of what was happening with the First Opium War of 1840, although it really opens with the Lord Macartney mission in 1793. The western mercantile nations were affronted and indignant at China’s refusal to enter into trading relations with them. China deliberately saw no benefit in foreign trade; to the rapacious young capitalist class this was an incomprehensible denial of the laws of political economy and of God. By 1840, they were prepared to force China at gun-point to accept their trade.

China’s subjugation followed as a matter of course, helped by the degeneracy of the ruling dynasty and civil strife. By 1860, after the sack of Pekin by the Anglo-French Expedition, both the Dragon Throne and the bureaucracy were in despair. The traditionalists interpreted these troubles as the consequence of the Emperor’s departure from Confucian virtue; but there was a more realistic school of thought which held that western force could only be met by Chinese force. They were agreed on the need to maintain traditional Chinese society, but advocated the introduction of western technology so that China could build the only weapons — both military and economic — which the intruders understood. They became known as the Self Strengthening Movement. Their practical problem was the declining revenue into the Treasury.

After the 1860 war the Maritime Customs was set up; it was for a long time administered wholly by western nations, mainly British, with Sir Robert Hart at the head. Its object was to collect payment of the various indemnities charged against China, and to fix low tariffs so that western goods could compete against Chinese products. Western goods were also exempt from internal taxation, so that the revenue crisis was very serious.

At the same time the Taiping Rebellion was raging. The first massive successes of the Taipings were due largely to the incompetence of the Manchu bannermen, who had become effete in a century of peace. The Taipings were eventually defeated with some help from the western nations, and this gave ground for military reorganization. The Manchu generals were replaced by Chinese commanders, some of whom introduced new tactics and were rewarded for their success with provincial governorships. A number of them were sympathetic to the Self Strengthening Movement.

The movement’s first obstacle was the raising of capital to set up modern industries. Generally, liquid capital was in the hands of merchants who were uninterested in the risks of industry; their favourite investment was in land as the means to entering the gentry class. A second obstacle was that no enterprise of any size could be set up without official approval. However, the Court’s own difficulties gave it no alternative but reluctantly to approve of some of the proposals of the Self Strengthened. The Maritime Customs returns seldom covered the indemnities, which increased with every minor incident of a European affronted by a Chinese, and there was the Court’s own extravagance. Something had to be done: industry of a sort came to China.

Despite the merchants’ general reluctance to invest in industry, a few with comprador experience saw that fortunes might be made. Sheng Hsuan-huai was at one time reputed to be the richest man in all China, and his rise to wealth is typical of the small number of merchants who turned to industry. Sheng came from a powerful merchant class with wide comprador associations, and his own family had taken the first step into the gentry class by becoming landowners. He had passed the local examinations for the civil service but failed in the provincial ones; when he became a rich man, he purchased several official positions.

China at an early stage began appointing to office by merit. This was Confucian doctrine, and even in Han times examinations were held; by the Tang dynasty they were firmly established. They produced the scholar élite , bringing a professionalism into the government service that assured continuity in the administration in whatever crisis. In the 15th century, during the Ming dynasty, office purchase was introduced. This was a device to dilute the bureaucracy so that it would not become too powerful, though it was justified on the score of introducing experience in practical affairs. When the Manchu dynasty was in full vigour office purchase fell into disuse, but was revived again during its degeneracy as a source of revenue. Eventually the purchase system so degraded office-holding that the abolition of the examinations, and the abrupt demise of the scholar class, passed by almost unnoticed.

Until Sheng was wealthy enough to purchase office he could claim only a lowly “official gentry” status. He saw the possibilities of enrichment through industry, and during his life controlled at one time and another steamships, posts and telegraphs, railways, ironworks, iron and coal mines, and interests in shipbuilding and cotton-mills. He began with steamships. After the Taiping Rebellion parts of the Grand Canal from Shanghai to Pekin were in disrepair, and there was a serious problem in transporting tribute rice from the south to feed Pekin and the north. Another route had to found. Some of the rice began to be carried by foreign steamships, and Sheng was unable to persuade members of his clan of the possibilities in buying steamships.

Success was assured when the approval of the clan head was given — this made investment by other clan members an obligation. Nobody expected a capitalist’s return on his investment. In fact none of Sheng’s companies ever paid much in the way of dividends, nor was there ever a policy of accumulation and growth (although quite large amounts of capital were required initially, except for posts and railways where the government invested for its own needs). But the investors, by applying traditional Chinese nepotism, could pack the higher offices with clan members and operating the peculation which also was taken for granted, cream off rich personal rewards — to be invested in even more lucrative pawnshops or in land to achieve status.

Sheng was eventually able to ingratiate himself with a provincial governor who was a Self Strengthener. Li Hungchang had been one of the successful generals in the Taiping defeat, and his reward was the metropolitan province of Chihili. He was also Controller of the Northern Ports; he and Sheng were made for each other. They were not unique. Other governors and high officials also tried to build up partnerships with merchants, and the struggles between factions were quite unscrupulous. Li’s patronage was Sheng's good fortune, enabling him to obtain a monopoly of the tribute rice shipments.

In fact in all Sheng’s undertakings the essential ingredient was an official monopoly. He had to reward his patrons lavishly, and the Throne also demanded recompense in “return for Imperial grace”. By employing Europeans almost exclusively as technicians, he showed no vision of a capitalist China. After the Boxer Rebellion, when the dying dynasty traded nominal survival for subservience to the west, he became little more than a super - comprador, though this still enabled him to increase his riches: he became probably the most hated man in China. His son’s biography of him says his aim was to amass a sufficient fortune to ensure the wellbeing of his family for many subsequent generations; this is a worthy Confucian aim but not a capitalist one.

*

The social status of the Chinese merchant was like that of the mediaeval Jew; he was despised as a usurer, yet tolerated because no-one could see how the services he performed could be dispensed with. Their wealth, like Jewish wealth in Europe, could always be sequestered. At the same time, the Chinese merchant had greater mobility for escape from his calling. If wealthy enough, he could become a landowner and his heirs qualify for entry into the scholar-gentry class. There was therefore no strong urge for a separate merchant class to struggle for political recognition.

As important as the combination of social mobility with rigid social stratification was the absence of truly free labour as it arose in the west. Although China’s expanding population in the 19th century brought great pressure on the land, there was relatively little urban drift. The family persisted with remarkable stability; every member from the toddler to the aged grandmother had their allotted tasks, with a total interdependence. In the cities handicrafts manufactures were carried on under a family basis. There were also small factories employing families from the same clan operating a joint enterprise.

To be a totally alienated individual was the most terrifying prospect facing any Chinese. It was common for the new arrival in the city, especially when he was alone, to carry an introduction to a secret society. These go back into ancient Chinese history, and some have histories which span centuries as friendly societies, dissident groups, political opposition and resistance bodies, bandits — in fact any cause either to affirm or to deny conformity. The large factory in the Chinese city recruited its labour from the labour boss of the appropriate secret society. The labour bosses had their own territories; in return for the wages he paid over to the society boss the labourer received enough rice just to keep alive, adulterated opium to make his misery just tolerable, and a minimum of rites for the comfort of his spirit when he died.

Inescapable despotism, abysmal living conditions and low capital investment made a strong propulsion for Chinese people to get out of China if they could. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was a capital offence for a Chinese to leave his homeland; many, nevertheless, took their heads in their hands and went to the Philippines. As early as 1855 Australia restricted Chinese immigration. Subsequently New Zealand and South Africa legislated for their exclusion, and the first restrictive immigration laws in the USA concerned them. Canada did the same. Chinese went to the East Indies, Malay, Burma and anywhere open to them. The greatest wave, however, was in this century, started about 1900 by the construction of the Russian railway across Manchuria and the large expenditure of the Russian army of occupation. When the Japanese took Manchuria in 1932 emigration was re-stimulated by Japanese recruitment and apparent “opportunities”; altogether, from 1900 to 1945 the Chinese population of Manchuria grew from 10 million to 40 million. It hardly needs saying that wherever they have gone the Chinese have found only what capitalism offers to the rest of the world’s population. Peasants went to the cities and became indentured coolies, and left — to become cheap labour all over the world.

Mary B.

50 Years Ago: War and Socialism (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sunday Express on May 20th. 1951, reported that a “United Nations curtain of guns, armour and planes today battered massed Chinese assaults and thwarted attempts to make major breaches in the Allied line.”

Did you read that? If you did, we expect you have forgotten it already. But we do not forget. Later the report says that, “the United Nations forces were still killing scores of Chinese for every Allied casualty.” How glibly do our newspapers speak of the loss of working-class life. They are glad that large numbers of Chinese should be slaughtered. We are not. We are sorrowful. These Chinese are our class brothers. True, they speak a different language, wear different clothes, eat different food, but underneath it all they are members of our class, the working-class. The struggle being fought out in Korea is not their struggle. Whoever wins, their conditions will remain the same — poverty and struggle.

In Korea the scene is being set for the next major world conflict. Who controls Korea will control a large part of Asia. Korea belongs neither to us nor to the Chinese who are dying there. Brothers of the working-class, isn’t it time we stopped this insane slaughter? Korea is but a picture in miniature of what is to come. Then millions and millions will die. The last war cost probably 40,000,000 lives. The next one may cost more.

There is only one way to stop wars and that is to establish socialism. Don’t tell us that that will take a longtime. How long it takes depends on you. You can hasten it or delay it. There can be no doubt that it will come. We need it, the working-class of the world needs it. Join with us and help bring it about.

(An article by Groves from the Socialist Standard, July 1951)

The Dignity of Labour, at Home and Abroad. (1905)

From the January 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the chief complaints of the capitalist-class and its parasites is that the native at home and abroad does not fully appreciate the ”dignity of labour.” It is in vain that so mild and popular a reformer as John Ruskin has pointed out that to labour with the hands all day is degrading, for the capitalist maintains that labour is dignified—if it is performed by someone else.

Labour, manual labour, is good, wholesome, and above all, necessary; but whatever of dignity it may have possessed in the days of handicraft has been lost amidst the whirr of machinery. To labour hour after hour, day after day, year after year, at some mechanical work is wholly degrading, nor can any amount of education awaken the power of thought in minds dulled by the excess of purely mechanical labour.

That useful machine called the worker, whose engine, the mind, is stoked with the rubbish and lies of newspapers and politicians, can work only along the lines laid down for him by the master-class. That, at least, is the intention of the capitalist, and not until the worker realises that his interests are entirely antagonistic to those of his owner will he make any real progress. He will then cease to cry for “work” as the remedy for the evils of unemployment; he will not demand the expulsion of alien labour from England, nor will he work himself into a passion because Chinese labour is introduced into South Africa. He will rather find in all such troubles the natural results of the modern system of production for profit instead of for use.

The South African Labour question is a typical case. The possible employment of white men is not to be considered: the white worker is too apt to demand a fair wage and a vote; he does not realise the dignity of cheap labour; he forms trade unions and other unpleasant societies. The white labour market is already over-stocked and unemployment is rife in South African towns. The question is whether the Kaffir, Indian, or Chinaman is to appreciate the “dignity of labour” in the mines, and the “Bloemfontein Weekly Post” explains why alien labour is necessary. The attitude of the native is the cause of the trouble. To begin with, he is better off than his fellow in England. In our country the English native has no possessions, is divorced from, and not permitted to cultivate, the soil, and is forced, therefore, to sell himself in the labour market for the mere cost of subsistence. In “our” colony, however, the native is allowed to squat on the land, paying little or nothing to the farmer. He can cultivate the soil without becoming the farmer’s servant, and sometimes the farmer even enters into an alliance with the native and they work the land on the “half” system, which is unsparingly condemned by those in want of cheap labour, and who urge that the native should be nothing but a servant.

This custom among many of the farmers has made cheap labour scarce, and the “Bloemfontein Weekly Post” suggests the remedy for this “bad state of things.” It is found that the “dignity of labour” is lost on the native, for “he does not want work, and prefers revelling in the pleasures of sun and shade, and waxing fat on mealies and Kaffir beer.” When we remember how in England the master-class urges the workers to lead this simple, thrifty life, we may well be amused to find the same class falling foul of the native for that very reason, and it shows how little reliance is to be placed in the Christian ethics of capitalism.

So the native’s “life of ease” is a source of annoyance to his would-be employers, and the “Bloemfontein Weekly Post” suggests that the farmers in Orange River Colony—no longer a free state —should be forced to employ the natives as servants or else turn them off their farms, for “the native must work.” “There need be no forcing” says this paper, only he must he taxed so heavily that he is compelled to sell himself and live laborious days in order to exist. In fact, he must occupy the same position in his country as we English workers do in our country. Otherwise, it is suggested, “Indians should be imported on the same system of indenture as is adopted in Natal.” That is to say, if the native cares naught for the “dignity of labour,” he must be compelled to enslave himself or else alien labour must be imported.

It is absurd and useless for the English wage-slave to complain that his masters told him that the Boer War would open up a new market for his labour; it is, and always has been, evident that the capitalist is indifferent whether yellow, white, or black labour is used—cheapest is best. Socialists continually warn the wage-slave that when he fights he is not fighting for the benefit of himself, but of his master. If, instead of crying over spilt milk, he begins to study his own affairs from the point of view of his own class-interests, he will realise that every catch phrase, “dignity of labour,” “glory of England,” etc., is a species of bait to lure him on to his own destruction.

A real “dignity of labour” may be found if belabours for the “glory of England,” and of all other countries, in the ranks of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, for the overthrow of Capitalism and the establishment of that Socialist Republic which is the aim and ideal of the International working-class.

Sydney Chase

They Caused It (2021)

Book Review from the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

I Know Who Caused COVID-19’: Pandemics and Xenophobia. By Zhou Xun and Sander L. Gilman (Reaktion Books £16.)

Many pandemics have been blamed on minority groups. Jews, for instance, were widely held responsible for the Black Death in the fourteenth century. Here Zhou and Gilman look at a number of examples of ‘outgroups’ (or just ‘them’) being blamed for Covid or its spread, with xenophobia a common response to public health problems.

China was the source of the coronavirus, and recent responses have been similar to nineteenth-century views of Chinese immigrants bringing plague and other diseases to North America from the ‘sick man of Asia’. The source appears to have been a market in Wuhan, a mega-city where many rural migrants have congregated, where the health system has struggled to keep up, and which is located in an area where previous diseases have been transmitted from animals to humans. The Chinese government’s reaction has included attaching blame to Africans and Muslims, who supposedly previously brought swine flu and AIDS to China.

In the US and Israel, the ultra-orthodox Jews, the Haredim, were accused of spreading coronavirus. They often objected to vaccination, the wearing of face masks and the forced closing of synagogues. Their communities in Israel had very high levels of infection and even accused the government, when it tried to enforce measures, of being Nazis. On 6 January, there were Haredim among those who stormed the Capitol, and also anti-semites who wore T-shirts stating 6MWE (for ‘Six Million Wasn’t Enough’)! In the UK, vaccination was sometimes compared to the medical experiments carried out by the Nazis.

Black people in both the US and UK have suffered high levels of infection and morbidity, but the reasons for this are complex. They have poorer health in general than the population as a whole, understandably lack trust in government pronouncements, and were initially reluctant to be vaccinated, though this resistance lessened over time. In the US black people were often unable to get jabbed because vaccination sites were pretty inaccessible, requiring a car to travel to them.

Black Trump supporters were anti-vaxxers, and more generally Trump fans saw themselves as victims of the medical and governmental establishment. Masks were viewed as a sign of weakness, and became for many on the extreme right and other populists a symbol of what was supposedly wrong in the US, with people no longer being able to choose for themselves.

Unlike wars, pandemics do not leave tangible physical reminders behind, but they can result in many different kinds of loss. Setting people against each other is one unfortunate effect.

Paul Bennett

The Virus Media Perspective: Televisual Tripe (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Covid-19 and the Media: Myths and Mystifications

Perhaps I’m not the best person to be writing this article. Quarantined at home for the last few weeks, my media consumption has mainly revolved around my three-year-old son’s favourite TV animations. But in between episodes of Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig, I’ve been watching the Covid-19 news narrative unfold. Every crisis brings opportunity for a few and recently the news media have benefitted big time from a locked-down public hungry for information. The audience for television news, especially on BBC, has skyrocketed. And while their print circulations have been in long-term decline, the big newspapers have also strongly influenced public debate about the pandemic, providing many of the stories we access through social media.

Much of the mainstream coverage of this emergency has been informative and it’s not necessarily true that journalists have simply been fuelling panic or fear about the coronavirus. There is some room for debate about how much ‘overreaction’ there might have been to Covid-19 and experts are far from unanimous on this question. But this is a genuine crisis, if only because the capitalist states it is impacting have been so badly prepared for it: placing profits before people, they completely failed to invest in the scientific research and healthcare equipment needed to cope with this widely foreseen pandemic.

Nevertheless, there’s much to criticise in the media coverage of the emergency. After all, a media system owned and directed by the exploiting class is bound to discuss Covid-19 in ways that reflect capitalist interests and ideologies. Here are just a few of those ways.

Fighting Talk

Many media and political discussions of this crisis have been wrapped in the language of patriotism and war. Trump called Covid-19 the ‘invisible enemy’ and across the major media outlets, journalists have routinely talked of the ‘fight’ or ‘battle’ against the virus. ‘WAR ON CORONA’ went the headline of Scotland’s Sunday Mail on 15 March. Other British papers have praised the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ of the population. Of course, war metaphors are always popular among politicians and journalists seeking dramatic effect, especially when the state perceives a threat to its authority (British newspapers were full of them during the 2011 riots) and no doubt Boris Johnson talked about ‘beating’ the enemy of Covid-19 in order to project his strength and ‘leadership’ skills at a time when even other members of his class were questioning his abilities.

All this war talk may have distorted public perceptions of the crisis, however. In one of their online broadcasts in March, Novara media showed footage of an elderly Londoner (a woman clearly in the ‘high risk’ category) declaring that she would not stay at home to curb the spread of infection because that would be ‘giving in to the virus’ – as though Covid-19 were a group of jihadists hell-bent on destroying ‘our way of life’! Presenting the coronavirus crisis as a ‘war’ also conditions the public to accept the tougher new policing and surveillance measures being put in place by governments across the world and which many people fear will continue after the lockdown has ended.

Finally, militarist language tends to channel workers’ dissatisfaction with capitalism into admiration for the nation state. Before the first ‘Clap for our Carers’ event which swept across Britain on 26 March (and which then became a weekly occurrence), Leo McKinstry of the right-wing Express came over all Churchillian, asking readers to ‘salute our NHS heroes in this their finest hour’. And after the event, the front page of the left-leaning Mirror newspaper was given over to photographs of smiling NHS workers being publicly applauded. ‘Your country LOVES you, gushed the newspaper, along with ‘NATION SALUTES VIRUS HEROES’. Not to be outdone, the BBC’s Breakfast programme started a daily Hero Half Hour segment, in which viewers were invited to share praise for key workers ‘on the frontline’.

But there’s something fishy about this newfound love for often low-paid workers and as for NHS ‘heroism’, perhaps we should recall Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, whose central protagonist, a doctor called Bernard Rieux, states that his work ‘is not about heroism’, but about doing what’s necessary in an absurd situation. In fact, ‘Clap for our Carers’ has been a well-camouflaged propaganda campaign. It has certainly tapped into positive public feelings of solidarity with hard-pressed healthcare workers who are saving lives under difficult circumstances; however, those circumstances are due in no small measure to healthcare cuts imposed by successive governments, including the present one. The media’s militarist and nationalist framing of the event has tended to obscure such facts, deflecting any criticism of the state with the feel-good message ‘we’re all in this together’.

China Crisis

Britain’s tabloid newspapers have a global reputation for sensationalism and racism and they have not disappointed during this emergency. Back in January, for example, the Daily Mail and other mainstream media sources published lurid images of a Chinese woman eating a bat in what some claimed was a Wuhan restaurant, although the pictures turned out to have been taken in 2016 in a restaurant in Palau and were therefore not connected with the recent outbreak. But that did not matter. The ‘fake news’ story went viral, no doubt because it appealed to racist Western stereotypes of exotic Orientals with bizarre habits.

It’s hard to prove that the media affects attitudes or behaviours in the real world, but it seems likely that the anti-Chinese messaging of the tabloids has contributed to the present climate of xenophobic hostility towards East Asian people. This has led to harassment and sometimes brutal physical assaults. On the 3 March a Singaporean student was left needing facial reconstructive surgery after being attacked in London. And on 14 March an Asian-American family, including a two-year-old girl, were stabbed in a retail outlet in Texas by a man who apparently feared that the victims were infectious. Being the cynics that they are, politicians such as Johnson and Trump, who has referred to Covid-19 as the ‘Chinese virus’, might be hoping to benefit from this popular anti-Chinese sentiment, as they try to sidestep responsibility for their failures in handling the outbreak by shifting the blame onto China – even to the point of asking for ‘reparations’.

In parts of the left-leaning media, meanwhile, the China card has been played in a very different, but equally dishonest way. During an interview on the Kremlin-supporting Russia Today television news channel, Stalin enthusiasts George Galloway and Ranjeet Brar heaped praise on the efficient and organised Chinese response to the outbreak. This is reasonable up to a point. After all, a case could be made that China marshalled its immense state apparatus to deal with the coronavirus outbreak more effectively than many other countries and it seems to have kept its death toll low. Then again, we surely ought to be suspicious of health-related statistics reported by the authoritarian Chinese state. And Galloway and Brar conveniently forgot that the Chinese government had initially tried to suppress the warnings of medical professionals about the spread of the virus. None of this has stopped left-wing ‘anti-imperialist’ publications from praising the glorious People’s Republic. The People’s Dispatch even published an article with the title ‘How Chinese Socialism is Defeating the Coronavirus Outbreak’. I can only recommend that the authors of this piece actually visit China to witness its obscene wealth gap, rural poverty and hyper-exploited workers. Some socialism!

Corona Communism

Some very odd ideas about socialism have also been aired in more mainstream media. On 20 March, in the right-wing Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard urged that ‘Boris must embrace socialism immediately to save the liberal free market’. But this only shows the capitalist press’s confusion about the meaning of socialism. For Evans-Pritchard, socialism means the state taking over control of the economy from private industry. This has of course happened with dizzying speed in recent months, with the nationalisation of the hospitals in Ireland and the suspension of the rail franchise system in the UK, to give just two examples. Genuine socialism, however, means a world without classes, commodities, money and borders. What we have been seeing over recent weeks is not socialism, but the capitalist state putting in place measures to cover a proportion of workers’ wages, bail out businesses and keep key services running. The state is simply doing what it must in order to head off any ‘social unrest’ that might arise during the epidemic and to ensure that the wheels of production can grind back into motion afterwards. To a limited extent, governments have been ‘putting their arms around workers’ – but only so that they can get their hands back around our necks when normal business resumes.

Another, particularly daft media myth has been that the virus is a social leveller. This idea gained some traction in the major media when, on 25 March, the British public learned that the virus had pulled off its most audacious stunt so far, shamelessly infecting the first in line to the throne, Prince Charles. In the Express, Dr Hilary Jones was quoted as saying that the virus ‘is a great leveller’ that is ‘just as virulent for politicians and celebrities and the monarchy as it will the homeless and destitute’. A few days later, Clare Foges of The Times waxed lyrical on the theme, writing: Coronavirus: the great leveller. Infecting princes and prime ministers, making hermits of most, hushing the concrete council estate and the millionaires’ leafy square’.

Fortunately, not many people seem to have been fooled by this sort of twaddle. Sceptics on social media have argued that Prince Charles, who had shown only minor symptoms of C-19, had ‘jumped the queue’, having been given a coronavirus test despite NHS guidance that only hospitalised patients could receive one. The public have also given short shrift to celebrities claiming to be ‘just like us’ when faced with the threat of the virus. Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot’s attempt to prove that ‘we’re all in this together’ by leading a star-studded singalong to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was widely ridiculed on social media. And megastar Madonna, the world’s wealthiest female musician, was mocked for an Instagram video in which she called Covid-19 ‘the great equaliser’ while sitting in a petal-filled bathtub.

Far from thrusting us towards socialism or uniting the celebs with the plebs, the corona emergency has brought the savagely class-divided nature of our world into sharp focus. While it is true that anybody can catch the virus (this is surely one reason why the capitalist class is taking it very seriously), this has been a tale of two pandemics. On the one side, the super-rich have headed for their disaster bunkers in private jets; on the other, workers on temporary or insecure contracts have faced destitution (by early April in Britain there had been a staggering one million new registrations for Universal Credit), while the most vulnerable groups in society, such as refugees, homeless people, those with pre-existing conditions, or the many low-paid key workers who cannot simply ‘stay at home’, are widely exposed to the virus.

Their Media and Ours

Despite all of these myths and mystifications, the mainstream media are not entirely bad. Tough questions have sometimes been asked of the government. For example, on 26 March the editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, appeared on the BBC’s Question Time discussion panel, condemning Britain’s unreadiness for the pandemic as a ‘scandal’. And at the time of writing in mid-April, much of the British media has spent weeks castigating the government’s inability to guarantee adequate testing and protective equipment for NHS workers. But it has been primarily through the social media that working-class people have found solidarity via community information and support groups. And only socialist publications such as our own have managed to cut through the nationalist claptrap and geopolitical blame games of the mainstream media to expose the underlying problem: the global capitalist system, which exists to protect profits rather than human life.

S.H.