Social reality and social revolution (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whenever workers endeavour to gain a few extra crumbs from the cake they themselves bake the capitalist class and its apologists remind them of the need to be realistic. By which they do not mean that workers should acquaint themselves with Marxian economics and the workings of the class struggle but rather that the employee class should accept less today in exchange for a promise of a share in Utopia tomorrow. In the meantime the working class have to endure the deprivation of their inferior social position, while the capitalist class can continue to enjoy their parasitic privileges derived from profit, interest and rent.

The only problem with the capitalist Utopia of tomorrow is that the closer it gets, the more it resembles the capitalist nightmare of the present. Just like the Christian fairy stories of life after death for those who accept hell on earth, so the economic gurus and assorted media hacks try to convince us that their masters’ fantasies have some basis in reality; prosperity is round the corner. Just be patient. King Capital has only reigned for three centuries. All we have to do is wait a little longer and as if by magic, all social evils will vanish. Magic is the appropriate word; it is probably the greatest con-trick in history.

Capitalism is not the only social system through which human evolution has passed. Before private property relationships evolved the hunter-gatherer groups practised a form of primitive communism. Society was organised on this basis for about 40.000 years. As people discovered new ways of living such as farming in settled communities so the communistic social relationships became a fetter to further development. Economic necessity produced the change to private ownership initially taking the form of chattel slavery, then feudalism and finally capitalism. Capitalism has not always been with us and there is no reason to assume it will be. Human society is constantly changing — at times slowly but at others open revolution occurs, as in the capitalist revolutions of 1789 in France and of 1917 in Russia.

But why do societies undergo changes? The realists might explain change by reference to the supernatural (God's will) or the superhuman (the Great Man theory). Socialists look at history in terms of cause and effect. In order to survive men and women must produce and distribute the necessities of life; food, clothing, shelter and so on. Consequently the most important aspect of social organisation is concerned with the ways in which the production and distribution of wealth is arranged.

As Marx wrote in The German Ideology:

We set out from real, active men. and on the basis of their real-life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily. sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality. religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence They have no history, no development; but men. developing their material production and material intercourse, alter, along with their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness. but consciousness by life.

In other words history is concerned with the development of material production and its effects on other aspects of human society. As the methods of production change they come into conflict with the existing social relationships — a contradiction that can only be resolved by revolution.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious. artistic or philosophic in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. 

(Karl Marx: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Lawrence & Wishart. pp.20-21.)

The key to understanding any social system is that the economic foundation of society is the basis on which the intellectual superstructure is built; changes in the former lead inevitably to changes in the latter. This does not deny the influence of ideas on history. but analyses the source of these ideas.

Capitalism is a social system based on the private or state ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. The riches of society are monopolised by a parasitical minority; the capitalist class. In contrast the majority working class who produce all the wealth of society have no stake in capitalism. As the means of life are owned by the capitalists, the working class must sell theirmental and physical energies to the capitalists in exchange for a wage or salary. In return the capitalists employ the labour of the wealth producing class in the process of producing and distributing goods and services in the form of commodities. They do this not out of any philanthropic concern for the workers, but with the intention of selling the products on the market at a profit.

Surplus-value does not originate from any special or superior qualities on the part of the capitalists; since labour is the only source of wealth (other than nature) then it follows that it must be the source of the proportion of that wealth which is appropriated by the capitalist class as surplus-value. This is only possible because workers are capable of producing new values in the production process in excess of what is required for the reproduction of their ability to work. Like all other commodities the price that this ability to work (labour-power) can command in the market is determined by what is needed to produce and reproduce it. which means workers are paid as much as they need to go on living.

A class struggle is an inevitable result of the division between those who produce but do not own and those who own and do not produce. Each class tries to increase its share of the socially produced wealth at the expense of the other. The class conflict is institutionalised with the use of trade unions on one side and employers' federations such as the CBI on the other. Generally workers are more successful in periods of boom when the employers seek to avoid interruptions in production. Conversely, during trade depressions workers have to accept less or face the dole, as competition for employment tends to reduce wages and salaries. Necessary though this struggle is. it can never change the inherent nature of capitalism. The ruling class remains and through the state it controls the police, the armed forces and the judiciary; all of which can be deployed in the class struggle.

Production under capitalism is anarchic, as the profit requirement must be placed before the needs of the majority. Capitalism does not exist to serve human need; if the state of the market dictates that goods cannot be sold at a profit production is curtailed, workers sacked and stocks destroyed. That is why tens of millions of human beings starve to death every year, while farmers are subsidised not to produce food and food is accumulated in storage mountains. Alongside over-production for the market there is under-production for human need.

This basic contradiction has remained despite reformist attempts to eradicate working class social problems. They have failed as they address effects rather than the cause: commodity production. Capitalist parties of left, right and centre all claim they can control capitalism; history proves otherwise. Numerous governments have introduced legislation to solve problems such as inadequate housing, unemployment, pollution and racism. Yet all these problems stubbornly remain. Over the last one hundred years politicians, whether sincere or opportunist, have promised us the world; they have delivered today's horror story.

Socialists are not cynics, sneering at the efforts of reformists and offering no solutions of our own. Unlike the reformists, the SPGB and its companion parties abroad do not make promises of Utopia. Indeed we make no promises at all. The social relationships of capitalism must be replaced with those of socialism. Private and state ownership will give way to common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources. Access to wealth will be on the basis of self-determined need and individuals will contribute to society according to their ability. Commodity production with its absurd mechanisms of buying and selling will be confined to the history books.

Socialism will not create itself, nor can it be established by a vanguard. The inhabitants of a society of democratic participation will necessarily have reached a level of consciousness capable of administering it. Socialism presupposes socialist consciousness on the part of the majority, before the revolution. The socialist majority will be able to use bourgeois parliaments and congresses to capture political power and convert the private property relationships into those of common ownership and thereby abolish the state. The great task which confronts the working class is to organise consciously, politically, and democratically throughout the globe so that a speedy end may be wrought to the system which denies us access to the full benefits of modern technology and of the world s resources.

Malcolm Prangell

The Capitalist Class. by Karl Kautsky (1908)

From the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Specially translated for the Socialist Party of Great Britain and approved by the Author.

1.—Commerce and Credit.

We have seen how the masses of the population in the countries where the mode of capitalist production prevails are more and more becoming proletarians, workers divorced from their means of production, so that they can produce nothing on their own account, and are there­fore compelled, if they are not to perish by starvation, to sell their only possession, viz., their labour-power. The majority of the peasants and small traders belong in reality to the proletariat already. What separates them from it in form, their property, is but a thin curtain, hiding, but not preventing, their exploitation and dependence, a curtain lifted and carried away by any strong gust of wind.

On the other side we see a small crowd of property-owners, capitalists and large land-owners, to whom alone belong the most important means of production, the most important sources of sustenance for the entire population, and to whom this exclusive possession gives the possibility and power to make the propertyless workers dependent, and to exploit them.

While the majority of the population is increasingly overwhelmed by want and misery, the small crowd of capitalists and large land-owners, together with their parasites, usurp all the enormous advantages arising from the achievements of modern civilisation, and, above all, from the progress made in natural science and its practical application.

Let us take stock of this small crowd of chosen people and inquire into the part they play in economic life and into the consequences for society arising from it.

We have already become acquainted with the three categories of capital, viz., merchants’ capital, usurers’ capital, and industrial capital. The last mentioned category of capital is the youngest, perhaps not so many hundreds as the other two categories are thousands of years old. But the youngest brother has grown more rapidly, much more rapidly, than the older two; he has become a giant who forces them into subjection and presses them into his service.

Commerce is not an absolute necessity for petty enterprise in its perfect (classical) form. The peasant, like the handicraftsman, can obtain the means of production, so far as he must purchase them, direct from the producer, and he can also sell his product direct to the consumer. Commerce is at this stage of economic development principally of service to luxury, but is on the whole, not indispensable to the continuance of production or to the preservation of society.

Capitalist production, however, is, as we have seen, dependent from the beginning upon commerce just as much as commerce at a certain stage needs capitalist production for its further development. The more this production expands, the more it becomes the prevailing mode of production, the more necessary does commerce become to the entire economic life. To-day it is not alone of service to superfluity, to luxury. The whole production, even the feeding of the population of a capitalist country, depends upon commerce proceeding undisturbed in its course. This is one of the reasons why a world-war at present would prove much more devastating than ever before. War leads to a paralysis of commerce, and that means to-day a paralysis of production, and of the, entire economic life ; it means economic ruin, which extends further, and is not less disastrous, than the devastation on the battlefield.

Quite as important as the development of commerce, has the development of usury become for the capitalist mode of production. Tho usurer during the domination of petty enterprise, was plainly a parasite, who took advantage of the difficulties or prodigality of others and drew their blood. The money he lent to others served, as a rule— as generally the producer already possessed the necessary means of production—for purposes of unproductive expenditure. When, for instance, an aristocrat borrowed money it was to squander it; when a peasant did so it was to pay money taxes or law costs. Lending money at interest was therefore considered immoral and condemned by everybody.

It is different in society with the capitalist mode of production. Money is now the means for fitting up a capitalist concern and for purchasing and exploiting labour-power. When a business man nowadays borrows money in order to establish a new concern or to extend an existing one, it docs not mean (providing, of course, his undertaking succeeds) that he reduces his income by the amount of the interest he pays for the borrowed money. On the contrary, that money is used by him to exploit labour-power, hence to increase his income, and always by a larger amount than the sum he has to pay away as interest. Usury now loses its original character. Its part as a means of taking advantage of financial difficulties and prodigality gradually gives way to the role of fertilising capitalist production, that is to say, of making possible a more rapid development than would take place, if it were to depend on the accumulation of capital based on the means of industrial capitalists alone. Abhorrence of the usurer ceases; he is whitewashed and receives a new, high-sounding name—creditor.

The main direction of the movement of interest-bearing capital has at the same time become a different one. The sums of money which the usurer-capitalists amassed in their coffers flowed in former times from the accumulating centres through thousands of channels to the non-capi­talists. But to-day the coffers of usury-capital, viz., of credit institutions, have become accumulating centres, to which through thousands of channels the money of the non-capitalists flows in order that it may from there find its way to the capitalists. Credit is to-day, as of old, a means of subjecting non-capitalists with or without property, to indebtedness to capital on the basis of interest. But it has now also become a powerful means of transforming into capital the possessions of the different sections of non-capitalists, from the enormous wealth of the Catholic church and the old aristocracy down to the few pence saved by servant girls and day-labourers, that is to say, credit has, by transforming these possessions into capital, changed them into a means of exploiting the one and decomposing the other of these sections. The credit arrangements of to-day, savings banks, etc., are lauded because, according to the supporters of the present system they transform the saved-up pence of the wage-workers, handi­craftsmen and peasants into capital and these persons into “capitalists.” But this accumulation of non-capitalists’ savings has no other purpose than to place fresh capital at the disposal of the capitalists and thereby hasten the development of the capitalist mode of production, and we have seen what that means to the wage-workers, peasants and craftsmen.

If the credit arrangements of to-day have more and more the effect of transforming the entire possessions of the different sections of non-capitalists into capital, which is placed at the disposal of the capitalist class, they have on the other hand the effect of turning the capital of the capitalist class to better account. They become the accumulating centres of all the money of- the individual capitalists, which these have no opportunity of using for the time being, and make such sums of money, which would otherwise lie idle, accessible to other capitalists in want of them. They also make it possible to transform commodities into money before these have been sold and to lessen thereby the period of circulation, and also the amount of capital which, for the time being, is required for the carrying on of a concern.

Hence it is that the amount and power of the capital at the disposal of the capitalist class increases enormously. Credit has to-day, therefore, become one of the most powerful stinmlants of capitalist production. Apart from the intense development of machinery and the expansion of the army of unemployed, it is one of the main causes of that power of the present method of production which enables industry upon the slightest impetus to rapidly expand.

But credit is far more susceptible to disturbances than is commerce; and each shock it experiences tells upon the entire economic life.

Some economists have considered credit to be the possible means of turning propertyless persons and those owning little property into capitalists. But, as indicated by its name, credit depends upon the confidence reposed by the giver of it in the recepient. The more the latter possesses and the greater the security he offers, the greater is the credit he enjoys. The credit system is hence only the means of obtaining for the capitalists more capital than they possess, the means of increasing the predomination of the capitalists and of accentuating the social contrasts, not of lessening them. The credit system is accordingly not only a means of developing capitalist production more rapidly and of enabling it to utilise favourable fluctuations ; it is also a means of hastening the ruin of petty enterprise, and it is finally a means of making the present mode of production more complicated and more susceptible to disturbances, of also carrying into the midst of tho capitalists the feeling of insecurity and of causing the ground on which they stand to vibrate ever more strongly.

________________

2.—Division of Labour and Competition.

While the economic development leads on the one hand to ever closer relations between commerce as well as credit and industry, it has, owing to the increasing division of labour on the other hand, the effect of more and more consigning the various manipulations, for which the capitalist has to arrange in economic life, to separate concerns and undertakings. In times gone by the merchant had not only to buy and sell commodities, but also to collect, stock and take them to frequently very distant markets; he had also to sort and display the goods, so as to make them accessible to the individual buyers. To-day we have not only the division of labour between small and large trading, but also separate large concerns for the transport and the warehousing of goods (storehouses and elevators); further, at the largest central markets, the exchanges, buying and selling has so much become an occupation in itself, so completely severed from the other functions of the merchant, that not only are goods bought and sold which are still at some remote place, or have not yet been produced, but goods are bought without the intention of being taken into posses­sion, and goods are sold which the seller does not own.

In times gone by a capitalist could not be imagined without a big iron safe, in which he deposited the money coming in and from which he took the money required for making payments. To-day the financial arrangements of the capitalists in the industrially developed countries, especially in England and America, have become the business of separate undertakings—of banks. Payments are no longer made to the capitalist, but to his bank, and are not received from him, but from his bank. And hence a few central concerns deal with the financial transactions of the entire capitalist class of a country.

But if in this way the various functions of the capitalists are consigned to different independent undertakings, they become thereby only outwardly, juridically, independent of each other ; economically they remain as before, closely connected with and dependent upon one another. The functions of any one of the concerns cannot proceed with regularity, if the functions of any one of the other concerns, with whom it stands in business relations, are in any way disturbed.

The more commerce, credit and industry become mutually dependent upon each other, and the more the various functions of the capitalist class fall to separate undertakings, the greater becomes the dependence of the individual capitalists upon the others. The capitalist business of a country—indeed, in certain directions already, of the entire world-market—becomes ever more one tremendous body, whose organs are most closely connected with each other. While the great mass of the population becomes ever more dependent upon the capitalists, the latter themselves become continually more dependent upon each other.

The economic factors of the present mode of production become to an ever larger degree so complicated and sensitive a mechanism that its undisturbed working depends to a continually greater extent upon all the innumerable small cogs of its wheels catching exactly into each other and performing their functions with precision. Never before was there a method of production that so needed regulation according to a plan as the present one. But private property makes it impossible to bring design and order into this system. While the single concerns become economically more dependent upon each other, they remain juridically —from a point of law—independent of one another. The means of production of each single concern are private property, their owner being able to dispose of them as he may think fit.

As production on a large scale develops, and the larger the single concerns grow, so the economic efforts inside each concern become systematised in accordance with a certain precisely thought out plan in every detail. But the working together of the single concerns is left to the blind forces of free competition. By an enormous waste of energy and means, and by increasingly serious upheavals, this competition manages to keep production going, not by putting everybody in the right place, but by demolishing everybody who stands in its way. That is called “the selection of the fittest in the struggle for existence.” In reality free competition annihilates less the incompetent ones than those who are in false places who are unable to maintain their positions through lack of special ability or perhaps for want of capital. But competition is not satisfied to-day with crushing merely those “unfit for the struggle for existence.” The fall of every such “unfit” one causes the ruin or paralysis of many, who stood in economic relations to the bankrupt concern, such as wage-workers, creditors, contractors, etc. Yet to-day it is said that everyone can shape his own destiny. That notion is derived from the time of petty enterprise, when a work­man’s prosperity depended upon his own personal qualities—but only his prosperity and that of his family. To-day the destiny of each member of capitalist Society depends less and less upon his personality and continually more upon many and various circumstances, over which he himself has no control. It is no longer a selection of the best which is accomplished to-day by competition.

(To be continued.)

On the Materialist Conception of History (1947)

From the May 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Russian delegates attended the Grand National Steeplechase at Aintree it is related that they had a special box and the Red Flag was run up in their honour. When ministers of the British Government, past and present, visited Russia, the Union Jack was run up in their honour. These actions are symbolic of the hypocrisy bound up with capitalism. Behind this facade of friendship a bitter struggle is being waged between Russia and the Western Powers to secure a dominant position in industry and trade for their respective nationals; a struggle that is daily becoming more widely accepted as the prelude to another and more terrible war than the last. Evidence of this can be seen in the tremendous expenditure of energy and wealth on perfecting the atom bomb and other mighty means of destruction. But the struggle is represented to be something other than it really is; it is represented to be the clash between dictatorship and democracy, capitalism and workers control, much as the last trade conflict was represented to be a struggle between Fascism and Democracy. It is an old old story this covering of secular ambitions with heavenly halos; and though the real basis of the struggles are so often revealed when the dust of the conflict has subsided it does not prevent the construction of fresh halos every time a new war appears as a blot on the horizon.

Nowadays the halo process begins as a deliberate policy to bemuse the prospective cannon fodder, but long ago it was largely a result of self-delusion; man, in the shape of the ruling class, has learnt much since “dust hath closed Helen's eyes." Nowadays the reputable writers of history seek in the economic framework of societies for explanations of the causes of past wars, ignoring the proclaimed ideals that have embellished them. These writers have accepted as their guide the materialist conception of history in fact, though rarely in name. This not only applies to the causes of war but also to the writing of history in general.

What then is this materialist conception of history which is one of the fundamental tenets of the socialist outlook? According to this theory ideas are the product of conditions, and not the other way round. Men have not started cut with original ideas of absolute liberty. Justice and equality and then striven to make a world that would fit them; what they have done is striven to make alterations in the economic and political framework that would fulfil their needs and then sanctified their proposals with moral maxims. Their ideas have been shaped by the world around and were limited by the social development so far attained and the immediate future which that development foreshadowed.

The human race inherits ideas either through the medium of writing or the passed-on experience of the elders; no child is born with ideas planted in its brain. One example is sufficient to put the latter fact beyond dispute. We all learn, sometimes to our cost, that fire burns the fingers that touch it: humanity has had this burnt into it for hundreds of thousands of years; yet practically every child that is born reaches blithely for the flames, thousands of years of human experience have not raised a suspicion of danger in the mind of the child.

Let us now glance briefly at the way knowledge is acquired and the source of that knowledge.

Thinking is a function of the brain, just as grasping is a function of the hand, and walking a function of the feet; each function acquiring competence by training and experience. In order to think the brain must have something to think about; the material the brain thinks about is drawn from the world around through the medium of the senses—seeing, hearing, tasting, feeling and smelling. The thought material thus acquired, compared and generalised upon determines the outlook of the individual, and the nature of this thought material is itself limited by the individual’s contact with the world, his own experience, which also limits his capacity to appreciate the experience of others. The most important contact a person has with the world is that concerned with the satisfaction of his fundamental needs—food, clothing, shelter and the reproduction of his kind—and therefore these are the contacts that dominate his life, bring him into social relations with his kind and shape his outlook. The grouping of man into societies is rooted in the methods devised for satisfying these needs and therefore the social outlook of a given society is dominated by the ideas that spring from the way in which the members of that society are organised together to obtain the means to sustain life. But societies are not a fixture, they evolve as new methods of production evolve from old ones. Thinking is done in a social world that is evolving and about a social world that is evolving; change is therefore one of the elements of thought, and the more rapidly the surrounding world changes the more thought becomes permeated with this element of change. That change is the nature of things was only accepted by a few outstanding thinkers of antiquity; to-day evolution is commonly accepted as a universal law—even the “unchanging church” and the “changeless” East have had to bow to it.

Social progress is the result of the mental activity of man exerting itself on the material provided by the external environment. The brain has the faculty of working up the material drawn, from the environment just as the digestive apparatus has the faculty of digesting the food that comes to it—and both can suffer from indigestion! Man’s social action is dependant upon the special character of the environment in which he lives. He can act upon and modify this environment, but only in accordance with elements already contained within it, as Marx so pithily put it; man makes his own history, but not out of the whole cloth, only out of that which is ready to his hand. Thus, narrowly speaking, a man’s social outlook is determined by his social position—but this must not be applied too sweepingly. A humorous commentary on this narrow outlook occurred in Poland in 1936. An amnesty had been declared for prisoners who were on the list for execution: the Polish executioner. who was paid £4 for each execution, was immediately up in arms, declaring that as his living depended upon executions he should be consulted before any amnesty was granted!

The way man thinks, what he thinks about, and the conclusions he comes to, depend upon the nature of his environment. This environment is made un of a number of factors—economic, geographic, intellectual political. religious and so forth, but the economic is the final determining influence because it is vital to him and engages most of his attention, though even this is itself somewhat affected by the other factors. However we have not space to go further into this. The economic conditions comprise the manner in which men in a given society produce their means of subsistence, and the ways in which they effect the distribution of these means of subsistence among themselves.

Mankind differs from animals in that whereas animals draw their subsistence direct from nature with the use of their physical organs unassisted by anything else, man makes contrivances that enlarge the power and scope of his organs and enable him to get more from nature with less effort than animals. In other words man builds an artificial barrier between himself and nature by his inventions and contrivances, and in the course of time this barrier, or artificial environment, has more and more influence on the way he thinks because of its social consequences. Thus it comes about that it is the inventions and not the intentions of man that have been the cause of progress, and that have given rise to ideas of liberty, of justice, and of equality. These concepts that are alleged to be absolute are in fact, like everything else, relative, depending upon changing social systems as well as upon social position. They differ in different historical periods and also in the same period with different people. To the Polish hangman it was unjust to take away his livelihood, to his victim it was unjust to take away his life.

Since the advent of private property, in the dim and distant past, moral, intellectual, political and religious ideas have been bound up with different forms of property ownership. These forms of property have split society into antagonistic classes which have engaged in bitter class struggles, each class striving to dominate society and serve its own interests As we look back through history we see that it is made up of these class conflicts and that it is they that are the vital thread from which progress has been woven— meaning by progress an ever wider adaptation to natural forces and the bringing nearer of the possibility of humanity, as a whole, achieving comfort, security and happiness.

Each new form of production has brought into being new social classes, a change in social relations, and a change in current ideas. The freeman and slave of antiquity looked upon the social world differently from the feudal lord and bondsman of the middle ages, and likewise capitalist and worker have different ideas from those of their mediaeval counterparts. To understand the ideas of a period it is necessary to examine the economic framework of the period from which the ideas are derived, because the economic framework is the dominating influence. Ideas carried over from old outworn systems are carried over into the new, in fact, as Marx puts it so well “the tradition of all past generations weighs like an Alp upon the brain of the living ” ; but these traditions are forced into the mould of the new system, though they may have some influence on the shape of the mould. The confused social outlook of a period, including the present, is the resultant of the mixture of ideas thrown up by the different classes that together make up society, but the prevailing, or the most insistent, ideas are those backed by the dominant class; and they remain so until another class becomes sufficiently conscious of its interests and strong enough to challenge the supremacy of the dominant class.

Looking at the international conferences from the point of view we have very briefly set forth we can see that the ruling powers to-day are each concerned with obtaining economic, privileges for the national groups they represent, and that the Atlantic Charter, liberty, democracy and all the other phrases that so liberally besmirch their utterances are only so many blankets to cover their economic designs. The last war, like the one before it, was waged for purely economic motives; the next one that is now in the making will ho waged for similar ends. While production and distribution is based upon the class ownership of the means of production it cannot be otherwise.

Each era in the history of mankind contains the voice of the past, the present and the future. The voice of the future is small and weak at first hut grows stronger as time passes until it eventually becomes the voice of the present; mankind only takes up problems that it can solve since the problem only arises as a problem because the solution is contained within it. It is the solution that has forced the problem to the front.

Gilmac.

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1922)

From the January 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 8.

VALUE—continued.

A commodity has two forms—a physical form (coat, basket, spade, and so forth), and a value form (its worth—though not necessarily its price). As we have already seen, it is a useful article and a valuable article. Its valuable property is made evident in exchange relations. Exchange is very complex now (as witness the recent clear understanding of it can be obtained by voluminous literature on currency), but a examining, in the first place, the simplest form of exchange—or value relation, and then progressing through the more complex forms to the modern price form.

The simplest value relation is the relation of one commodity to another one of a different kind. Let us take Marx's illustration. Suppose we assume that

20 yards of linen equals 1 coat;
now let us analyse this simple relation.

The first thing we learn from it (arising out of what we have previously learnt) is that the same amount of energy was used up in producing the 20 yards of linen as was used up in producing the coat. In other words, the same quantity of the same underlying substance is contained in each of these physically different objects. Value is hidden underneath the value relation. In order to elucidate this point it is necessary to forget, for the moment, the quantity side of the matter (20 yards equals 1) and examine the quality side (linen equals coat). It is obvious that "the magnitude of different things can only be compared quantitively when those magnitudes are expressed in terms of the same unit." The basis of the relation we are examining is the essential equality of the linen and the coat as products of human energy.

In the linen equals coat value relation the two articles take entirely different, in fact opposite, parts. In putting them into such a relation to one another an essential peculiarity becomes clear; and that peculiarity is that only the value of the linen is being stated—and it is being stated under the disguise of the physical form of the coat. The coat is giving a visible form to the invisible value hidden in the linen. The human energy that was used up in the manufacture of the linen is now represented by the coat itself. The coat as a coat is of no interest to us, we are only concerned with it as solid value, the representative of the value contained in the linen.

If the foregoing is clear, then it must be obvious that if we wished to state the value of the coat it would be necessary to reverse the positions of the two articles in the relation, e.g.,

1 coat equals 20 yards of linen.

We have already pointed out earlier in our investigation that human energy can only be measured when it is used up—when it is represented by some object that has been produced. In other words, tailoring or weaving cannot be collected in jugs, although the tailor and weaver have given away something the loss of which makes them feel tired, and necessitates the taking in of more replacing material in the form of food. Further, human energy can only be measured relatively—the product of one man's work with the product of another man's work; or the product of the same man's work in different kinds of articles; finally, the proportions of the total energy of society employed in producing different objects. In the example quoted we have the point illustrated—the quantity of human energy employed in the production of linen is compared with that employed in the production of coats. Appearance tends to hide this fact more and more with the growing complexity of exchange.

From the simplest form of value relation it will be seen that in expressing the value of one article in another each takes up opposite positions in the form of expression. The coat, in the expression 20 yards of linen equals 1 coat, occupies the position of equivalent, i.e., the equal to the value of the linen; the linen, on the other hand, occupies the position of relative, i.e., the article whose value is being expressed in its relation to that of the coat. The linen is only linen in this example, but the coat is value itself; 20 yards of linen, for instance, is 1 coat's worth of linen in the case in question.

As these two articles take up opposite positions in the above relation, an effect in one direction on one of them affects the other in the opposite direction. If some new method were devised whereby 40 yards of linen could be produced with the same expenditure of energy as it formerly took to produce 20 yards, then the value relation would be (other things remaining the same) :

40 yards of linen equals 1 coat,
or 20 yards of linen equals ½ coat.

A fall in the relative value of linen and a rise in the relative value of coats. If, on the other hand, there were a reduction by half in the energy cost of production of coats the relation would be :

20 yards of linen equals 2 coats,
or 10 yards of linen equals 1 coat. 

A fall in the relative of coats and a rise in the relative value of linen.

It is apparent, then, that one article cannot occupy both positions in the same value expression ; it cannot be at the same time relative and equivalent—i.e., the article whose value is being stated, and also the object in which that value is being stated. In other words, in a particular value expression an article that occupies one side is thereby excluded from occupying the other side. As Marx puts it :—

  ''The relative form and the equivalent form are two intimately connected, mutually dependent and inseparable elements of the expression of value ; but, at the same time, are mutually exclusive, antagonistic extremes—i.e., poles of the same expression."

By putting the linen and the coat into the above value relation we are, in reality, illustrating the fact that value-making labour is simple abstract labour. Although the linen and the coat are produced by different kinds of work (weaving and tailoring), and perhaps work of different degrees of skill, yet they are, at bottom, the product of just definite quantities of general labour, and hence they can be put into a relation based upon their equality. Weaving, so far as it produces value, is the same as tailoring.

Perhaps an illustration may make this point clearer.

The making of a coat is one particular form in which a tailor uses his energy ; the making of a pair of trousers is another and different particular form, yet coat-making and trouser-making are only different forms of the general activity known as tailoring. Similarly, all productive activity, no matter what particular form it may take, is simply different forms under which human energy is used up.

From the above analysis of the simplest form in which the value of a commodity is made evident, it will be seen that value does not originate in the value form (20 yards of linen equals one coat), but, on the contrary, this form of expression can only exist because commodities contain value—the form arises out of the nature of value. In other words, value does not originate in exchange, as the advocates of capitalism would have us believe, but value must exist before the exchange relation can arise; production precedes exchange; articles must be produced before they can be exchanged. An article exchanges—or is a commodity—because it possesses value; it does not possess value because it exchanges. It is by taking the form of exchange value—entering into a value relation—that the value of a commodity is given an independent and definite form—in our example the form is that of the coat.

As we have already shown, there is no opposition contained in each commodity between use-value and value. This opposition is given an objective or obvious existence when we put two commodities into an exchange relation, one appearing simply as a use-value (the linen) and the other as value itself (the coat). Consequently, the simple form of value—the one we are examining—is that in which this opposition or contrast is clearly demonstrated.

The form of value we have analysed Marx describes as the "elementary or accidental form of value." It is defined as "accidental" because the position of a commodity on one or the other side of the relation (as relative or equivalent) depends entirely upon accident, whether it is the one whose value is being expressed or the one expressing value.

Throughout all history the articles obtained by the expenditure or human energy have been use-values—i.e., useful articles— but it was only at a definite point in social development that such articles became commodities—i.e., useful articles produced for exchange. That point was the period when the human energy used up in their production expressed as objective qualities of these articles—as their value. Consequently, the simple form of value is also the earliest historical form under which a product of human energy appeared as a commodity. The earliest form of exchange was primitive barter on the boundaries of ancient territories or during the accidental meetings of peoples on the march. We will make a more detailed examination of the historical development of exchange later on.

Gilmac. 

(To be continued.)

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the December 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 6.

Value.

We propose now to briefly epitomise the Socialist theory of Value, which is exhaustively and scientifically worked out by Karl Marx in "Capital."

We have already pointed out that a knowledge of what constitutes the wealth of a given period, and the method by which such wealth is obtained, is necessary in order to understand the ideas prevailing at that period. Consequently, to understand the ideas of today, we must find out how the wealth of to-day is obtained, and of what it consists.

By the term "wealth" we do not mean air, water, happiness, misery, and so on. The wealth to which we refer is economic wealth— the result obtained by applying human energy to the material provided by nature, such as food, clothing, houses, ships—articles useful to man which require producing.

Now what is the first fact connected with the nature of the wealth of modern times that comes to our notice on examining present society? In the opening lines of "Capital" Marx plunged right into the heart of the matter. He said:

  In other words the wealth of to-day appears as a multitude of useful article for sale.

These articles that are for sale have different values—one is worth so much, another is worth more, and another, again, is worth less.

To find out the cause of the difference in value, and the substance of value itself, we must separate in imagination a single commodity from the world of commodities and analize its relation to others, and also its origin and development.

A commodity, then, is an article for sale; but to be saleable it must contain two quite distinct properties: it must be useful and it must be valuable.

When we say that a commodity must be useful we do not mean useful to those who produce them. Commodity production is the production of articles that are useless to the producers but useful to others—the potential buyers. An article has as many uses as there are human wants it can satisfy. Its useful side is its capacity to satisfy these requirements. For example, steel is useful for moulding into a bayonet or a ploughshare; gold is useful for ornamenting a temple of peace or financing a war, and so forth. A useless article could not be a commodity, as it would be unsaleable— there would be no demand for it.

The valuable property of an article has nothing to do with its uses. No matter how varied the uses an article can be put to its value is not increased by a fraction. No matter how useful or essential an article may be to humanity its value is not in the least affected. For example, a diamond ring may be worth thousands of pounds whilst a piece of bread the same size would only be worth a fraction of a penny. If the value of an article had anything to do with its usefulness, the positions of the articles in question would be reversed. Further, an article can be very useful indeed, and yet contain no value. Thus a merchant could bring bottles of air upon the market — he might sell the bottles, but he certainly could not sell the air (except in very exceptional circumstances) though there is nothing more useful to mankind.

We have seen that an article, in order to figure as a commodity, must be useful and must contain value. We have already seen what constitutes the useful side of an article, and the question now arises, what constitutes the value side of an article ?

There is a common misconception abroad that the supply of and demand for commodities determines their values. This contention is easily disposed of. The relation of supply and demand is continually altering, supply at one time being greater than demand, and demand at another time being greater than supply. As a consequence of these movements there must come a time when supply and demand balance each other. What then would determine the value of an article ? Obviously not supply and demand, as the equilibration of the two would nullify their effect. Such a theory would then drive us to the absurd conclusion that the articles, at the moment supply and demand were equal, had no value! The supply and demand theory, therefore, offers no solution to value.

The value of an article is something contained in it that is only expressed when the article is put into exchange relations with other and different kind of articles. It is something different from the physical or useful properties of an article. We might look at a pair of boots for years without gaining any information as to their value. We can only find out the value of a pair of boots by putting them into exchange relation with other commodities.

The absolute value of an article cannot be determined, any more than its absolute weight. Relative weight only can be determined, and also relative value—the value of one article as compared with others. Hence the necessity for putting an article into exchange relation with another in order, by this means, to express its relative value.

As all commodities are exchangeable, though differing widely in physical characteristics and usefulness, the value property which makes them exchangeable must be one common to all commodities alike without reference to their peculiar forms or uses. Apart from their physical or useful properties there is only one other property possessed by all commodities alike, and that is—they are all the product of human labour-power applied to natural resources. It is the fact that they are all the product of human energy that enables the different kinds of articles to be put into an exchange relation with one another. Human energy is the common measurable factor of them all.

All commodities represent certain proportions of simple human energy. Skilled labour counts as a multiplication of simple energy, as in it has to be reckoned the amount of simple energy expended in making it skillful.

The average labour required to produce an article—or, to be more exact, to reproduce an article—gives it its value. Where machinery is employed in the production of one article and not in the case of another of the same kind, the value each would be determined by the value of the machine-made article. All commodities are produced for sale and competition compels producers to produce as cheaply as possible. Where out-of-date methods are used the value articles so produced only counts as the same as that of those produced by up-to-date methods —the labour that counts as value the socially necessary labour, the labour which is necessary with tha prevailing resources and technique.

As human energy is not a thing that can be put into pint measures and ladled out we must ascertain the method of measuring it. The sweat caused in producing an article cannot be measured, but the time taken to produce such an article can be measured, and this is in fact the method of arriving at value, although it is done, at present, by a process behind the backs of the producers.

Human labour is measured by time. The product of one man's labour is equal to the product of another's during the same time, assuming that they have each the same skill and follow the prevailing methods with the average results.

Broadly speaking, an article is equal in value to another that takes, on the average, the same time and skill to produce.

The value of a commodity, therefore, is determined by its cost of reproduction in human 
labour time.

Gilmac.

(To be continued.)

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the October 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 5.

Perhaps it would not be out of place here to refer briefly to two statements made by the advocates of industrial action as arguments against political action.

The first is the statement that Parliamentary leaders always betray the workers and a Socialist delegate would do the same.

In the first place "leaders" almost invariably betray, and those who trust in "leaders" deserve to be betrayed. But, apart from that, is it only Parliamentary "leaders" that have betrayed the workers? Have the latter never been betrayed on the industrial field ? A cursory examination of the multitude of strikes that have taken place during even recent years will provide myriads of examples of betrayal on the part of those "leaders" whom the workers were foolish enough to entrust with power to make settlements (behind closed doors!) in industrial disputes. How often and how regularly are the workers sold in the agreements the trade union leaders make with the employers! The last railway and coal disputes are cases in point, and another illustration will be provided in the fresh coal dispute that, at the time of writing, is looming on the horizon.

When the workers get out of their heads the demoralising idea of leadership there will be less room for the betrayer and less heard of betrayal.

The main point of the matter is that Socialist Parliamentary delegates will have no means of betraying those who appoint them. They will be given their instructions and if the instructions are not carried out their career will be ended, and they will have betrayed none but themselves. Delegates will be selected according to their capacity to carry out the instructions of those who appoint them, and a loud voice or truculent demeanour will carry little weight with a class-conscious electorate.

The second point we wish to refer to is that claiming that Marx and Engels were not in favour of the workers striving to obtain control of the political machinery. The basis of this contention is a sentence in "The Civil War in France" that has been torn from its context. The sentence is: 

  "The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made machinery and wield it for its own purposes."

This statement appears before Marx's summary of the development of the State, and he then goes on to show why the working class cannot wield it for its own purposes. The reason is that the State is a repressive power used against a subject class. As there will be no subject class in the new society there will be no use for a repressive power. In other words, that capitalist State machinery will not be applicable to Socialism, as the place of a repressive power will be taken by administrative machinery. Marx nowhere suggests that the workers should abstain from laying hold of the State machinery. On the contrary, the argument that follows the above quotation makes it clear that the workers must take this power out of the hands of the capitalists, and illustrates how the Communards accomplished this end and then set about constructing administrative machinery to suit the new economic conditions where State power was unnecessary. 

As a matter of fact, Engels, in his introduction to the German edition of Marx's work, places the matter beyond doubt when he says : 

  "From the very outset the Commune had to recognise that the working class, having once attained supremacy in the State, could not work with the old machinery of government."

Engels concludes his introduction with the following pregnant remarks:

  "But in reality the State is nothing else than a machine for the oppression of one class by another class, and that no less so in the democratic republic than under the monarchy. At the very best it is an inheritance of evil, bound to be transmitted to the proletariat when it has become victorious in its struggle for class supremacy, and the worst features of which it will have to lop off at once, as the Communards did, until a new race, grown up under new, free social conditions, will be in a position to shake off from itself this State rubbish in its entirety".—"The Paris Commune," New York Labor News Co., 1919.

After the Hague Congress of September 1872 Marx addressed a meeting in Amsterdam, when he said:

  "A group had arisen in our midst which proclaimed working-class abstinence from political work.
  We deemed it our duty to declare how dangerous and how threatening such opinions may become to our cause.
  The worker must, sometime, get the political power into his own hands, in order to lay the foundation of a new organisation of labour. He must overthrow the old political system that upholds the old institutions, unless he is ready, like the old Christians — to sacrifice the ‘Kingdom of this world.’"—Quoted from "Socialist Documents." Appeal Socialist Classics (America).

Gilmac.

(To be continued.)

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the September 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 4.

In the last article we pointed out that the modern class struggle has been fought out for years in a vague sort of way. The bulk of those who took part in it aimed merely at higher wages and improved conditions of labour, but, in spite of their activities in the struggle, there has been a steady downward tendency in the life conditions of the workers. In other words the workers have steadily lost ground in the fight.

Poverty is more wide-spread now than formerly: the dividing line between capitalist and wage-worker is more clearly defined; the former class is narrowing while the latter is broadening; and finally there is almost as much chance now-a-days for a worker to push his way into the ranks of the capitalists as there is for the biblical camel to get through the eye of the biblical needle. Even the status of the self-styled Intellectuals (technical experts, managers, writers, and so on) is declining and they are becoming as plentiful as potatoes—and commanding a corresponding price.

In spite of continual defeats, however, the economic struggle over working conditions has been fruitful. It is steadily driving the mass of the workers nearer and nearer to recognising that the way out of their troubles lies in abolishing the cause of wage slavery instead of tinkering with effects ; and that way lies on the political field in the struggle for the possession of political power.

From the point of view of fighting economically the workers possess no power except that of causing temporary dislocation of production. Any dislocation in production that lasted long enough to be serious would compel the workers to succumb first as they would feel the pinch first and most acutely. They only way they could win would be to carry the matter to its uttermost extremity by starving to death— committing suicide.

The long history of trade union activity is accompanied by the history of the steady worsening of the lot of the worker. This does not mean that the worker should abandon the fight to sell his labour-power to the best advantage. As Marx has so clearly demonstrated in “Value, Price and Profit,” such inaction would be suicidal. The tendency of capitalism is to reduce the worker to the state of a coolie, and though, in the economic struggle, this downward tendency cannot be prevented, the speed of the process is retarded—the standard of living is lowered less rapidly. Above all, the worker who is not prepared to fight for the best bread and margarine he can obtain makes poor material to fight for Socialism.

As the workers get nearer to a knowledge of their position they recognise more clearly the extent and the limitations of economic action, and consequently wage this part of the struggle more effectively.

To understand the class struggle it is necessary to distinguish clearly between the two forms in which it is manifested: the narrow, limited (though necessary) fight about the conditions under which labour-power is sold, and the revolutionary political fight for the abolition of the wages system.

All historical classes that have attained social supremacy (including the Bolsheviks) have done so by virtue of the fact that they have obtained control of the political power at the disposal of society.

In the past, before the State power had undergone the development that made it such an admirable repressive weapon, it was essential for the would-be dominant class to obtain possession of the political power before such class could become the ruling class. Now that the State has reached such perfection it is even more essential than ever to obtain control of the powers of government.

In his study of the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War entitled “The Civil War in France,” Marx gives a picture of the development of the State since the revolutions that raised the capitalists to power. The following from this description is illuminating :

  At the same pace at which the progress of modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class-antagonism between capital and labour, the State power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour, of a public force organised for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. After every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle, the purely repressive character of of the State power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. (P. 40, Kerr edition.)

This State power (represented by the army, police, judicial machinery, etc.), now in the hands of the employing class, is used to crush any attempts on the part of the workers to secure better conditions by means of violence, and also to bring the easy-going natives in non-developed countries abroad within the pale of wage-slavery. It is the power that renders futile any attempt of the workers to disrupt present society or obtain any radical alteration in their conditions unless, as a preliminary step, they obtain control of it. So long as this power is monopolised by the master class they hold the key to the position, and can keep the chains of wage slavery firmly riveted on the workers,

Hence the revolutionary side of the workers’ activities must take the line of removing this repressive power from the hands of the masters. The means to accomplish this end lie to hand.

Unfortunately for our rulers, as they become further and further removed from active participation in productive operations, abdicating from one after another of their useful functions and cultivating an inveterate idleness, so they become less and less able to keep their society in working order without conceding a greater and greater measure of participation in political action to the workers. As capitalist society became more complicated and unwieldy, the capitalist class had to ascertain the social needs by conceding to the mass of society a greater opportunity to express itself. But this was, at the same time, digging the grave of capitalism. The franchise was not extended to the workers merely because they struggled for it; in reality the capitalists needed the aid of the workers to save their system from chaos.

To-day the State power is controlled directly by and through Parliament. Parliamentary candidates are elected and the workers form the great majority of the electors. Consequently when they wish to do so they can obtain control of the state power by sending delegates to Parliament for that specific purpose.

Apropos of Lenin and his would-be imitators it is well to note that the workers could not “smash up” the State without first obtaining control of it. Guns can’t be smashed with bladders of wind !

The line of action to be taken by the workers in the struggle for emancipation is to organise for the purpose of conquering political power. In this struggle it must be borne in mind that, as the aim of the working class party is directly antagonistic to capitalism, no help (except what is given unintentionally) will be forthcoming from the enemy—the capitalists. Consequently the working-class party must avoid compromise and political bargains as it would the plague. It must be a revolutionary, and not a reform, party.

To take part in compromise is to admit that there is a common standing ground between the opposing hosts, in other words, that capitalists can. go some of the way with us. Capitalism, however, has reached its highest point of progress in the development of the productive powers to their present extraordinary pitch. It has now become a fetter upon production and is in the crumbling stage as the growing misery of the mass of the population testify. It has ceased to be revolutionary and is now reactionary. This point will be developed further in another part of this investigation.

A party that advocates reforms leads the workers, in the first place, to waste time and energy chasing shadows, and, in the second place, to place reliance upon, and power in the hands of one or other leading personality interested either in some particular type of reform or in feathering his nest.

The only method of fighting the class struggle politically with any hope of success is to aim straight at the control of political power for the purpose of ushering in Socialism, organising solely for that purpose, avoiding all blind alleys and compromises, no matter in what fine raiment of glowing phraseology they may be clothed. ”Compromise is virtual death.” “Expediency,” happy word ! has been used from early days to cover the blackest acts of treachery and trickery recorded in history, and is the corner stone of the parties of so-called “practical politicians” who are fishing for working-class support at the present time.

In the political arena at the present day there moves an individual who owes his position to a political bargain around which much discussion rage a number of years ago. We refer to M. Millerand, the French Premier and very useful tool of the French capitalists. His entrance into a capitalist government (where he sat as an “honourable friend” beside Gallifet, the butcher of the Communards) was greeted as a great victory by the Labour Movement of the time. His subsequent activities have illustrated how hollow are the “victories” obtained by compromise.

To sum up, the class struggle between the working class and the capitalist class intensifies year by year. Its only solution lies in the political victory of the working class, the overthrow of the foundations of existing society and the introduction of Socialism. This victory can only be secured by the workers understanding their class position and organising into an uncompromising, class-conscious political organisation for the purpose of taking out of the hands of the capitalists the power with which they hold the mass of society in subjection.

Gilmac.

(To be continued.)

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the July 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 3.

In previous articles under the above heading we have obtained a glimpse of the Materialist Conception of History. Bound up with this theory is the next one which we propose investigating, namely, the theory of the Class Struggle.

According to this theory history is made up of the struggles of different classes in society for social supremacy ; and the origin of the different clasees is to be sought in the prevailing method of wealth production and distribution at the different periods.

The scientific method of enquiry is in the first place to separate phenomena into different categories, grouping together things that have the same characteristics. For instance, in the animal world all warm-blooded, feathered animals with two limbs in the form of wings are classified as birds ; all cold-blooded, vertebrate, gill-breathing animals living in water and with limbs in the form of fins, are classified as fishes. These are two biological classes. Clearness in distinguishing is a pre-requisite of clear thinking. If things are correctly classified a good deal of the essential work of investigation is already accomplished.

When we apply the method of classification to human society we must separate the members of society into social classes according to their general characteristics.

Now the essential business of society is the material needs of the human beings that compose it—the provision of food, clothing, shelter, and so on. In order to satisfy these human needs the production of wealth must be carried on. Therefore in classifying the members of society they must be put into groups according to the position they occupy in relation to the production of wealth.

Different periods in social evolution are clearly marked off from each other by the different methods of producing the social wealth. Thus ancient Rome was characterised by its chattel slavery, as it was by means of the chattel slave that the bulk of the Roman wealth of that time was produced. The Middle Ages was characterised by its bond slavery, as the bulk of the wealth of the Middle Ages was produced by the bond slave.

Within the society of Roman times and of the Middle Ages there were other classes alongside the chattel slaves and the bond slaves. The relations and interests, created by wealth production based upon the two methods mentioned, split society up into various parts corresponding to the parts played in the production of the wealth of those times.

This is the key to the situation. Once obtain a knowledge of the way the members of a given society at a given period obtain their livelihoods and a clear understanding is gained of that society, its social classes, its development, and its eventual break-up.

Let us now examine present-day society in the manner set forth.

To begin with, we must classify—find out what are the classes that compose society, and in order to do this we must see how the various members of society obtain their livelihood.

If we examine the method of living of all the people we see around us and with whom we come into contact at different times during the course of our lives, we find that they all fall under one or the other of two headings (leaving beggars out of the question)—those who have to work for their living, and those who have their living provided for them by those who work.

Clothes are made, houses are built, railways and ships are constructed, by obtaining from nature the material, then changing its place, its form, its character, and so giving it these qualities and properties necessary to satisfy our requirements. Nature provides the material, but its place and form are changed by the application of human energy—in other words, by the people working. There is no other way of producing wealth than by working. This is too obvious to need labouring further.

Who, then, does the working that produces the wealth of to-day ? Obviously those whom everyone is agreed in calling the working class—the class of people that works. If we go into a factory, mill, mine, or office we see people performing various functions in the work of turning out wealth. Some are tending machines, some hauling ropes, some pushing pens ; some are foremen, some overseers—but all of them are workers. All have to be at their various functions at given times and all have to perform their allotted tasks. None dare cease work without risk of losing his occupation and consequently his means of livelihood, whether he wears a collar or a “kercher” about his neck, sports corduroys or “morning” clothes, smokes woodbines or cigars. In short, they are all employees of that mysterious entity, “the firm.”

Now what is “the firm”? It is not composed of the factory workers as they are employees; nor is it composed of the office staff as they are employees ; likewise the foremen and managers are employees.

The mysterious thing called “the firm” represents people outside the sphere of work altogether, i.e., the people who regularly draw their dividends out of the company, but who are seldom or never seen anywhere near the field of productive operations. The dividend-drawers are scattered all over the earth—here to-day and hundreds of miles away to-morrow.

The mass of the population are those who live by working—who are dependent for their livelihood upon finding employment for their mental or physical energies. In other words they belong to the employed or working class.

A very small proportion of the population (becoming relatively smaller every day) belong to the dividend-drawing, employing, or capitalist class. In spite of the fact that they idle their lives away, wealth pours regularly into their coffers in ever-increasing quantities.

The question now arises: How is one section of the community enabled to occupy the position of employing class whilst the other section has to occupy the position of employed ?

The answer is not far to seek. The members of the employed class are bound to find employment because they do not own either the means of production or the wealth produced. The only possession they have is the capability to perform mental or physical work (the two are, of course, not distinct, although it, is customary to distinguish them in this way).

Consequently, in order to obtain the means to sustain life, they must work for the owners of the means of production, in spite of the fact that they themselves have produced those tame means of production, with the exception of what nature provides.

The employing or capitalist class own the means of producing and distributing the wealth of our times (the extent of the mighty amalgamations that have been portrayed in the papers recently should drive this point home to the most apathetic worker). They can at will (and do during lockouts) deny the workers access to the instruments of production, so that production may be at times suspended (as during so-called over-production) even though myriads of people may be perishing from lack of food clothing, and shelter.

In order that the machinery of present-day production can be set in motion it is necessary that capital shall be invested in certain ways. The employing class supply the capital with which to commence a process of producing wealth. This fact leads many astray, and has given birth to the idea that “we cannot do without the capitalist.” This method of setting the productive machinery in motion, however, is peculiar to the capitalist method of production. In pre-capitalist days other methods operated, and in post-capitalist days different methods will also obtain. In the last analysis, however, the workers produce the very capital that oils the machinery of production. We shall return to this point later.

The capitalists, then, have possession of the wealth of capitalist society (we leave aside for the moment the question of how they obtained or retain possession), and the workers are therefore compelled to sell their power to work under the conditions laid down by the class that own the means whereby the workers live. In return for the duties the workers discharge they are paid at certain rates of wages. The workers do not work because they are fond of work; they work to obtain wages (or salaries) because wages represent to them the means of obtaining to some extent the necessaries to sustain life.

It will therefore be seen that the modern worker is a slave, a wage-slave, and his slavery is every bit as acute as the slavery of the chattel slave or the bondsman of the past, though the leather thong is replaced by the lash of starvation. The sight of dependent loved ones starving has proved a more potent lash than any instrument invented by man.

From the foregoing it will be seen that modern society is composed of two distinct social classes—the capitalist class and the working class. A very cursory examination will show that the interests of the two classes, i.e., their class interests, are, and must be, quite distinct and in direct opposition. A line of action that harmonises with the interests of the one class is directly antagonistic to the interests of the other.

To the capitalist the employment of workers signifies the giving up, in the form of wages, of a certain portion of the wealth he possesses. His aim, therefore, is to reduce this portion to the absolute minimum—to pay as little wages as possible. This object he endeavours to accomplish by the introduction of improved machinery—labour-saving devices—improved methods, and speeding up the employed. The ideal he aims at is the time foreshadowed by Aristotle, when the tool could by itself execute its function—the capitalist could then enjoy all the wealth produced and would have no need to relinquish a part of it to pay troublesome wage-earners !

The worker, on the other hand, who is compelled to sell his energies in one way or another in order to buy the necessaries of life, aims at getting as high a wage as possible and resisting the introduction of new methods, etc., as the latter tends to take away from him his means of obtaining a livelihood. He aims at the ideal of the ceaseless multiplication of jobs.

Herein, then, is apparent the antagonism of interests within present society. This antagonism of interests has bred the modern class struggle—the struggle of the working class against the master class—that has been fought out for years in a vague and half unconscious manner by combinations of workers during the industrial conflicts that yearly attain greater proportions. Ultimately this struggle, like all preceding class struggles, must be fought out on the political field as it is at the bottom a struggle for supremacy; the only solution to the conflict and to the contradictions that exist to-day is the overthrow of the present ruling class, the capitalists.

Gilmac.

(To be Continued.)

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the June 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

In the last contribution we noticed the opposite outlook on life of the feudal worker, producing wealth for himself (working to live), and the modern worker, producing wealth for others (living to work). A superficial examination of the position has a tendency to lead some people (particularly of the small shopkeeping type) to pine for a return to these earlier conditions. But bad though the slave position of the modern wage worker is, it yet contains the kernel of future economic salvation.

The means and methods of producing wealth cannot stand still. They must go on developing and continually taking on new forms, and with them society must also develop and take on new forms.

To return to our former illustration: The flail, after a tortuous development, culminated in the threshing machine. The threshing machine organised squads of workers to attend to its needs. Not only did it do this, but it also reacted on the operations that precede and follow its use. The methods of gathering corn and of handling it after passing the thresher had to be speeded up to meet the standard of speed and efficiency set up by the thresher. In America to-day an eight foot cut and self-binder is in use that can cut twenty acres of wheat in a day, and in some areas one vast machine ploughs across the fields, taking the grain from the stalks and depositing it in bags ready for the grist mill.

The land-loving, home-loving serf, producing to live and owning his own simple means of production, was tied to the idea of private property and viewed with alarm (even as his out-of-date successor does) any projects that interfered with his petty private property rights. The modern worker, on the other hand, living to work and owning no property but his power to work, is being forced by his economic situation to the opposite idea of property directly social in its nature.

The means of production of the peasant were small, simple, and independently operated. The means of production to-day, on the contrary, are immense, complicated, and socially operated. Inhabitants and material at the most distant parts of the earth have a connection, directly or indirectly, in the production of the simplest articles around us. The thresher incorporates the products and the skill of different countries; it represents in itself social production.

The consequence of this is that the ideas and ideals that float around to-day, and are gradually taking a definite form, are social ideas and ideals. The fact of social production is steadily giving birth to the idea of social ownership.

The tremendous chasm that, exists between the serf and the wage worker in the method of producing the means to sustain life has bred a similar chasm between the ideas that flow from the different sets of economic circumstances. Even the “unchangeable East” has been drawn, by virtue of its economic development, into the web of international affairs, and the ideas of the West are fast becoming the ideas of the East. The same method of examination that we have applied to the case of the feudal serf and the modern worker, if applied throughout the whole course of social development from primitive times to the present day, will give a clear understanding of the course of history, and make history an intelligible science instead of the confused jumble it presents in the hands of its professional interpreters. A knowledge of the development of landed property in ancient Rome lays bare to us the mainspring of the of the events of that period ; a knowledge of the development from the local to the international market (and what it involved) lays bare the mainspring the events of the English and French revolutions. Finally, a knowledge of the basis of modern capitalistic production lays bare the hidden cause of the events that are taking place around us. It was the understanding of this that led Karl Marx to undertake his painstaking examination of commodity production.

The Materialist Concept not only furnishes us with the key to the past development of society, but also to its future direction. It shows us wither society is tending and enables to adjust our actions accordingly. It shows us the “earthly core of misty creations” and keeps us out of the tortuous ways of the metaphysician. In other words, it compels us to be practical scientists instead of abstract dreamers.

Gilmac

(To be Continued.)

A Brief Exposition of Socialist Theory. (Continued.) (1920)

From the February 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The example of the difference of the relations between men getting their livelihood by means of simple instruments of labour (typified by the threshing flail) and those producing their sustenance by means of more advanced means of production (typified by the threshing machine) which we have given by no means exhausts the field. Just as the social structure consists of much more than these primary and personal relations, so much more in the social life takes shape from the character of the instruments of labour and the methods in which they are used. Man stands not only in relations with his fellow men, but also with the world about him, and as far as these relations are within society they have their base in the conditions of wealth production.

In the classic age of the flail, for instance, the general means of producing wealth were about on a par with that implement. It was the day of the windmill, the spinning wheel and distaff, and the primitive loom. In the towns the smith's hammer rang out, without a rival in the production of ferrous ware. Everywhere was handwork, everywhere tools. Machinery, if not unknown, was of so little importance as to have practically no influence upon the method of production.

In such conditions as this what was the relation of men toward the world ? We have already seen that the instruments of labour in general belonged to those who operated them. Among the artizans of the towns, possibly, were many exceptions, but the lower we descend in the scale of the development of the instruments of labour, the more do we find the energies of the workers occupied in the production of the primary necessaries, food, shelter, and clothing. Therefore, in the period of which we are speaking, the production of these things were the predominating industries, and it was the general conditions prevailing in these industries which determined the general social relations.

It was not, therefore, the handicraft of the towns which determined the social form, but the economic conditions of rural industries.

Ignoring, then, the seeming contradictions of the towns, where goods were certainly produced for sale, let us turn to the countryside.

The worker of the Middle Ages, owning the simple means by which he produced his living, had an outlook upon the world entirely different from that of the modern worker. This difference commenced with his relation to the product of his toil. His very object was different when he took his instruments of labour in hand. The modern worker starts out to produced wealth which shall be the property of the owner of the implements he operates, but the feudal worker, owning the tools with which he worked, laboured to produce wealth for himself. Hence while the modern worker realises that his function in life, and therefore the reason he is permitted to live, is to work, the mediaeval worker could not take this view of himself and his relation to the world.

He worked to live. The product of his labour was a different thing at the moment of its production, from the product of the toil of his present-day prototype. The latter, producing wealth which, on production, belongs to someone else, necessarily produces what that other requires, and he cannot escape the conviction that he is only permitted to work (and therefore to live) in order to produce it. The feudal worker, on the other band, producing wealth for himself, produced those things which he required to satisfy his own needs, hence he saw himself only working to live, and took an opposite view of his place in the world to that of the wage worker of our present system.

A. E. Jacomb

(To be Continued.)