The Forum. (1909)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some Open Discussions

Statements of difficulties, criticisms of our position, contributions upon any question of working-class interest, are invited. Members and non-members of the Party are alike welcome. Correspondents must, however, be as brief as possible, as bright as possible, and as direct as possible to the point.

______0______

ENQUIRER (Manchester) submits the following queries, to which replies are appended :

(1) In “Capital” we read, “along with the surplus-population, pauperism forms a condition of capitalist production, and of the capitalist development of wealth. It enters into the faux frais of capitalist production ; but capitalism knows how to throw these for the most part, from its own shoulders to those of the working class and the lower middle class.” (p. 65 Vol I.)

This statement, and one to the effect that high or low rates do not affect the condition of the workers as rates are paid by the capitalist class, would appear to be contradictory.

____________

It only appears contradictory. The statement quoted from Marx amounts to, in effect, asserting that the capitalist class retain as much of the wealth produced as possible, making real wages keep as close to the subsistence level as is economical. The maintenance of the non-producers—whether they be “unemployed,” children, aged persons,or what not—enters into the “dead expenses” of capitalism, and while not entering into the factors determining real wages, except in the case of children, is, so far as possible, shouldered onto the workers, and largely borne by them, as witness the extent of Friendly and Benefit Societies, and Trade Unions. Even the maintenance of official paupers is, if at all manageable, transferred to a son, daughter, or other relation in the case of parents, while now the endeavour is being made to fix upon the individual the responsibility of maintaining a pauperised grandparent. Where these items are shouldered on to the workers it assists in keeping those expenses down to as low a level as possible, and incidentally, by swelling the quantity of money wages, further cloaks the extent of exploitation.

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(2) If it is cheaper for the capitalist class, as the payers of rates, to give old age pensions to worn-out veterans of industry rather than have them go into the poor law institutions, why have the recipients of poor law relief within a certain period prior to Jan. 1st, 1908 been debarred from receiving the old age pensions ?

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The present Government has the whole question of the Poor Law in the melting pot. To empty the Poor Houses would be to dislocate the Poor Law system before the alternative machinery is laid down and perfected and possibly precipitate trouble. At present there are the two systems working side by side, and the relationships are largely at the disposal of the Poor Law authorities. We cannot explain their motives. Perhaps they consider a twelve month’s course of training in soliciting charity a necessary preliminary to attempting to eke out an existance on 5s. per week.

The fact, however, that the Poor Rate is levied locally while Old Age Pensions are a national charge, is one reason why the transposition could not be made so suddenly as to complicate the question, and risk alienating the political support of any section which might be affected by the change.

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(3) If the capitalist class pay the rates why do they not take the credit unto themselves for so doing, instead of telling the workers that they are as much interested in the rates being kept low as the capitalists themselves ?

____________

The answer to the first question meets this, at any rate in part. By interesting the working class in the maintenance of the non-producers, their support is enlisted in keeping the necessary expenses as low as possible, although the fact remains that as an item over and above the bare maintenance of the individual it must encroach upon the difference between the minimum on which the individual can live plus the raw material he obtained, and the total production, and so reduce the ideal degree of exploitation towards which the capitalist class strive.

Editorial: Out-Heroding Herod. (1908)

Editorial from the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the little scene in the “House” on Nov. 12, it can hardly be argued that the workers have gained even a more sympathetic administration of capitalism by the advent of the workman Cabinet Minister. After Mr. Asquith, who has no reputation for kindliness toward the workers, had promised the removal of certain restrictions in the dispensation of relief, the L.G.B. order, instead of instructing such removal, made it a voluntary action by the authority. Taxed with this in the “House,” Mr. Burns replied that he had adopted the best way of carrying out the Prime Minister’s promise. Mr. Asquith, however, disagreed, and the order is to be replaced by one incorporating the removal of the disability of having received Poor Law Relief within a specified time. Mr. Burns had better be careful. Already dissatisfaction is being expressed in high Liberal circles owing to his not playing the game carefully enough, and if he assumes a callous, unsympathetic attitude toward an unemployed problem which compels even the Premier to affect commiseration, he will have to give place to one who will smile and frown with his master, and shed tears to order. A few more examples like that under notice will blow the gaff on Liberal hypocrisy completely. Burns’ special function in the Cabinet was to conciliate working-class demands for independent representation and to show that the Liberal Party was so concerned to have the voice of Labour in its counsels as to obviate the necessity for separate representation.

To realise that the “short, square built man in the straw hat” who talked himself hoarse on behalf of the dockers in 1889 and the man who is out-Heroding Herod in the cruel, callous administration of relief to the unfortunates of capitalism are the same John Burns is difficult, and shows how complete a control over their representatives must the workers exercise before their convictions can be made to prevail.

Fifty Years of “Progress”. (1909)

From the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Socialist Examination of a Capitalist Statement.

Flights of Fancy.

The Daily Chronicle could scarcely find words to give expression to its admiration of the Blue Book recently published by the Local Government Board, wherein, we are told, the great prosperity of the worker since the introduction of Free Trade, is clearly shown. Wages have risen, prices have fallen, and that great social sore, pauperism, has decreased. In fact, after a perusal of the figures we are almost led to believe that within the next few years all the social evils that now afflict us will have been entirely eliminated, almost, that is, unless we happen to be in possession of further facts and figures.

We are informed by the Daily Chronicle that since 1849 the percentage of paupers to the population has decreased.

Now the total number of persons in receipt of poor relief during the year 1906-7 was 2,076,316. Every day during the year, taking the average, 25.1 per thousand of the population were in receipt of relief. While there has been a decrease since 1850 in the number of outdoor paupers, the number of indoor paupers has almost doubled. When referring to this question the Press were very careful to avoid giving an explanation of the decrease of outdoor pauperism. The cause was fully explained by “F. C. W.” in the issue of March ’06 Socialist Standard, wherein he says

“The Poor Law was further strengthened by the Amendment Act of 1844, but it was not (says the “Encyclopedia Britannica”) until 1867 that the local administration bodies took the matter up with much enthusiasm. The Pauper Inmate Act of 1871, and the Casual Poor Act of 1882, made conditions of relief more onerous by increasing the compulsory stay of vagrants and by other means. Ashcroft and Preston Thomas say in their work ‘The English Poor Law System’ p. 285, ‘The marked increase of indoor paupers (accompanied of course by a still more marked decrease of outdoor paupers until recently) is due to the movement beginning about 1865 in favour of the workhouse principle. It is clear that in the case of this class of paupers (able-bodied adults) it was mainly by the rigid enforcement of the workhouse test that this improvement was secured.’ ”

The Return to Naked Fact.

There are now many other ways by which the workhouses are being relieved, such as, for instance, the Church Army and Salvation Army Homes, and Dr. Barnado’s Homes (which boast of having 8,000 children always under its care) and the rest of the 1,800 charitable institutions dispensing funds to the amount of ten million pounds per annum.

When the Pauper Inmate Act and the Casual Poor Act had been in operation some time, there was another large increase in pauperism. The “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” issued by the Board of Trade states that

“on every day throughout the year 1892 the average number of persons in receipt of poor relief was 953,719, this number rising steadily each year with but very slight fluctuation to 1,103,724 in 1906, being an increase not only in the number but also relatively to the increase of population.”

If the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission is adopted and the suggested alterations in the Poor Law are enacted, then we shall again be told that pauperism is decreasing, while as a matter of fact the relief of the poor will have been transferred from public institutions to private charity, which we are told can be so developed and organised that out-door relief will become unnecessary.

Turning from the question of pauperism our attention is diverted to “the record of rising wages under Free Trade,” as the Daily Chronicle has it.

Two sides to the story.

Now it is true that there has been an increase in the rate of money wages, but that is no criterion of an actual rise in wages or of an increase in the purchasing power of the wages received. Turning again to the “Twelfth Abstract of Labour Statistics” we find that since 1895 (the first year for which comparative tables are given) the increase in the retail prices of the necessaries of life, apart from the increase of house rent, which is by far the most important factor in the expenditure of the workers, has kept pace with the increase in the rate of wages, which is in many cases based upon the price paid per hour. But the same publication informs us that the number of hours worked per week have been greatly reduced, to say nothing of the increase of unemployment. So when we take all the facts into consideration we find instead of an increase in wages we have an absolute decrease.

The Daily News makes a very poor attempt to minimise the extent of the unemployed problem by attributing the great increase during 1908 to the engineering and ship-building disputes, and this in spite of the fact that the Board of Trade and Labour Gazette tells us in every issue, that persons on strike or locked out, sick or superannuated, are excluded from the figures.

The health of the workers is the next subject that confronts us. We are reminded that the number of cases arising from such diseases as enteric fever, diptheria, small-pox, etc., have been greatly reduced, in fact some of them have actually been stamped out. If, then, there has been such a large decrease in this class of disease, we must ask the reason for the alarm of the friendly societies at the “enormous increase in the number of applicants for sick pay.”

Unemployment brings Sickness–

The Evening News of June 3rd asks “Are modern conditions of life undermining the general health of the working people of this country ? Mere warnings of medical men,” it continues, “unsupported by statistics, do not count as evidence, but the testimony of the great friendly societies which are in close and constant touch with the workers is a more weighty matter.”

On this question Mr. J. Luther Green, president of the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, says,

“The matter is most serious and is causing the greatest concern to all friendly societies. . . . The causes of the alarming increase in sickness liabilities are probably to be found in the changed industrial conditions, the constancy of the evil of unemployment, the operation of the Compensation Act, and the increased pace and pressure of life. . . Distress arising from unemployment has been especially noticeable during the past year. Cases have come under the notice of the committee where the sickness has been solely the result of unemployment. Distress is followed by privation and health must of necessity be impaired.”

It appears that while the membership of the above society has increased, since 1903, 12½ per cent., the number of claims for sick pay has increased 24 per cent., and the amount paid in sick benefit by over 33 per cent., in spite of the adoption of more stringent methods to eliminate the fraudulent “invalids.”

But the Hearts of Oak is only one of the many benefit societies, so we must take a broader view of the subject. Reviewing the returns of the 14 leading benefit societies we find an almost corresponding increase in sickness, and we agree with the president of the H.O.O. that the great increase is due to insufficient nourishment and the increased pace and pressure on the life of the worker. Every worker knows that the pace and pressure in the factories, workshops and offices is far greater to-day than it was even a few years ago, while the age at which he is thrown upon the industrial scrap-heap, when his vitality and energy have degenerated, is earlier; and so witnesses the record, in the Blue Book, of the great decrease in the number of persons employed over the age of 65.

Employment Wounds and Death.

With the speeding up of machinery and increasing pressure upon the worker grows the the increase of sickness, insanity and the “accidents” upon the industrial field, the number of the latter in 1907 reaching the enormous total of 160,731, being almost double the figure for 1898. The number of fatal “accidents” rose from 3,810 in 1898 to 4,453 in 1907, and the number of non-fatal accidents increased from 79,633 in the former year to 156,278 in the latter ! a total far in excess of the combined British and Boer casualties in the late South African war.

The increasing development of capitalism renders it far more difficult for the worker to raise himself from the ranks of the wage-slaves until now it has become almost an impossibility even in individual cases.

The increase in unemployment and the longer period the worker is in the labour market, makes life ever more insecure. While in employment he is compelled, where possible, to deprive himself and family of many of the necessaries of life in order to accumulate a little to tide over the ever-expected period of “out-o’-work,” an attempt that more often than not ends in failure. 

In conclusion, then, and taking into consideration all the facts attending the position of the workers, we can safely say that instead of enjoying greater prosperity, their position in society continues on the downward grade, Liberal and Tory reformers notwithstanding. And so their only hope is in the complete change, the Revolution, i.e., Socialism.

H. A. Young

Jottings. (1909)

The Jottings Column from the July 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. A. D. Steel-Maitland and Miss Rose Squire were appointed to investigate the relationship of industrial and sanitary conditions to pauperism. Their report to the Poor Law Commission is issued as a Blue Book. Their summing up gives the following conditions as being contributory to pauperism in the order given.

1. Casual and Irregular Employment.

2. Bad Housing Conditions.

3. Seasonal Fluctuations in Trade.

4. Unhealthy Trades and Insanitary Conditions of Work Places.

5. Earnings Habitually Below what are required for Healthy Subsistence.

6. Dangerous Trades.

7. Excessive Hours of Work.

Regarding cause 2 the investigators say ”These contribute to pauperism through disease and demoralisation. They are important causes of Pauperism, but less so than the first.”

The Socialist is well aware that the bad housing conditions are consequent upon (or effects of) the irregular employment under existing conditions. Shortness of wages compels the wage worker to accept a slum dwelling.

Some of the slums are the result of “improvements,” it is pointed out.

“Improvements in towns, accompanying the increase of wealth, by the demolition of badly built quarters, the erection of palaces for banks, warehouses, etc., the widening of streets for business traffic, for the carriages of luxury, and for the introduction of tramways, etc., drive the poor into worse and more crowded hiding places.”—” Capital,” Vol. I, p. 674.

This shows clearly that the palliative of better housing does not palliate the real evil of the present system at all, but this by the way.

* * *

With reference to No. 7, “Excessive Hours of Work,” the comment of the investigators is “We have been unable to trace any connection between long hours of work and pauperism.”

Whilst, however, they cannot trace “any connection between long hours of work and pauperism,” they tell us that drink is one of the principal causes of pauperism, but for the most part it is the effect of causes such as dangerous and unhealthy conditions of work, excessive hours, low wages and bad housing. So showing drink to be a cause of pauperism and excessive hours to be a cause of drinking habits, these blind tools of capitalist hypocrits cannot (?) trace any connection between long hours and pauperism.

* * *

The June issue of the Pioneer, the organ of the “Labour and Socialist” movement in Burnley and edited from the S.D.P. club in that town, contains an article on the Budget by Robinson Graham.

The sixpenny super-tax is hailed gladly by the writer of the article. He goes on to say “we Socialists (!) are determined that the working class shall be reminded that this Liberal tax is a tax which has been advocated by Socialists on the platform and in the Press since the inception of the Socialist movement.” Again, “the Government has merely embodied the public wish formed by the Socialist agitator.” Quite unconsciously Mr. Graham belittles the “Socialist” effort alluded to above and points out that “ten Budgets like this one would make little or no difference to the lives of the working classes.”

As the item advocated since the inception of the “Socialist” movement is contained in the Budget, those “Socialists” who advocated it stand condemned, on their own admission, for side-tracking the workers, in so far as time has been wasted on a useless measure.

There is some sound advice in the concluding paragraph of Mr. Graham’s article, which the workers of Burnley and elsewhere (and Mr. Graham himself) should take to heart. They are urged to “direct their attention to ways and means of overthrowing the capitalist system which makes poverty the common experience of the great majority of our people,” and since it is admitted that the Liberal Government have brought in this Budget with a view “to restoring the confidence of the British workmen” in themselves, it should be a lesson to the workers to fight shy of even S.D.P. agitation for super-taxes and the like, which can be used for the restoration of confidence in a capitalist Government.r

Socialism is the only remedy, and that alone, for our social evils. Super-taxes will not make any alteration whatever in the basis of society, in fact, they presuppose exploitation in order that the taxes may be levied and realised.

Those who, claiming to be working-class leaders, direct working-class political activity against anything except the capitalist system must be swept away.

* * *

We are informed by the Baker’s Record, that the S.D.P. have convened a meeting to consider the food supply of the nation, at which they propose to put forward a resolution urging the Government to purchase large reserve stores of corn with money invested in the Post Office Savings Bank. This all very fine as an example of revolutionary daring, but it isn’t to be supposed that the capitalist class are going to put up for ever with the revolutionary (!) plots that are hatched at Mooney’s bar. One of these fine days the S.D.P. will find itself suppressed, unless some particularly funny turn so excites the hilarity of the police as to prevent them executing their duty. Moreover, they are in for a “rough-and-tumble” with the I.L.P., for I hear that the latter have long ago ear-marked “the money in the Post Office Savings Bank” for the capitalists to buy themselves out with.

JAYBEE.

Editorial: “Our Wonderful Prosperity” (1907)

Editorial from the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Board of Trade return issued in support of Free Trade and giving figures showing the phenomenal amount of wealth that is created by those who do not enjoy it, was recently seized upon by the Dally Chronicle in an endeavour to convince the working man that he is prosperous. The figures, however, to the seeing eye show how fundamental is the great class antagonism ; and although the “national wealth” is spoken of and the amount per head calculated, it is seen that there are not one but two nations—those who live by labour and those who live upon those who labour—and that the hirelings who live by labour stand without the pale of this wonderful prosperity.

In reviewing the figures the Daily Chronicle did not refer to the significant increase in pauperism, lunacy, degeneration and unemployment that has been apparent during the past decade. It referred, it is true, to the fact that the cost of pauperism had nearly doubled since 1861, but tried to minimise this by stating that the proportion of paupers had decreased from 364 per 1,000 in 1861 to 249 per 1,000 in 1906. These figures, however, by no means show that the conditions of the working class have improved even compared with such an unfavourable period as 1861, for it is evident to all who have any knowledge of the history of the Poor Laws that the decline in pauperism has been due (as Ashcroft and Preston Thomas point out in “The English Poor Law System”), to the progressive imposition of more onerous conditions of relief and more rigorous tests, to the compulsory stay of vagrants and to the rigorous restriction of outdoor relief.

These facts however, are carefully hidden by the capitalist statistician, and he will complacently point to the decline in pauperism until recently as proof of a decline in poverty, while in reality it shows no such thing, for it is the result of the golden rule of capitalist poor “relief,” to make conditions of “relief” so onerous that the workers will—as indeed they do—rather starve than accept of it. It is most eloquent, of the workers’ condition, that in spite of this the past few years have seen an actual increase in pauperism.

Work and Wages

All who have studied working-class conditions know that the poverty and unemployment of that class is terrible indeed, and that figures drawn from returns made from a few “aristocrats of labour” are utterly inadequate to convey the depth of the poverty or the extent of unemployment among the toilers as a whole, many of whom sink yearly into the hopeless and increasing mass of slumdom through the pressure of economic circumstances. Rates of wages are also used by many to give a totally inaccurate impression, for no allowance is usually made for unemployment, “short time” or sickness, it being so arranged that if a workman gets for six months a wage of 30/- weekly and is compelled to be idle for the rest of the year, his wages are nevertheless represented not as 15/- but as 30/- per week.

One or two items of working-class consumption are given that show a decline in price, but no allowance whatever is made for the adulteration and reduction in quality which are daily more apparent in all things consumed by the workers ; while the fact that house room and many household necessities and provisions have increased in price is rarely mentioned.

The figures given by the Liberal M.P. for Paddington are, indeed, significant enough in themselves, for they show that one million people possess nearly one half of the income of the country. Yet Liberal organs parade the growing “wealth of the country” before the impoverished and worn-out toiler as proof to him that he is prosperous.

The “prosperity of the country” means the prosperity of those who own the country, not of the working class, and those who deny the class antagonism should endeavour to explain how it is that while the so-called national wealth increases by leaps and bounds the condition of those who produce this wealth shows no improvement, but that their employment grows less secure and their toil more intense.

Pauperism versus Poverty. (1906)

From the March 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Rt. Hon. John Burns, in the picturesque language characteristic of him, once said ”Figures never lie, but liars sometimes figure.” During the late election, however, in contradicting the figures of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Mr. Burns did a little figuring of his own.

He said

“In 1849, when the country had just emerged from Protection, there were 1,088,000 paupers, or 62 per thousand of the population, in 1900 there were 25 per thousand. In 1849 the able-bodied poor numbered 13 per thousand of the population, but to-day only 2 per thousand of the paupers were able-bodied.

“As to the cost of the Poor Law Administration, the increase was due to the fact that as under Protection the standard of comfort of the whole community was low, so under Free Trade it was correspondingly better. They had better workhouses, many of them almost palatial whereas formerly they were almost a cross between a penitentiary and a prison.” (The italics are ours.)

That the standard of comfort of a section of the community has improved is, of course, true ; but this cannot be said of the mass of the workers. They toil harder and can buy no more with their wages. Their employment is less secure and their out-of-work spells are longer. The average worker’s wage is barely sufficient to enable him to continue in working condition and reproduce his kind; whilst there are 12 to 13 millions of the working class who cannot obtain even that bare sufficiency. This too, in face of the fact that the labour of the people has increased the wealth of the “country” by leaps and bounds.

We have, it is true, if we have the misfortune to outlive our usefulness to our masters, permission to end our days in those palatial residences which Mr. Burns said are due to Free Trade.

But what of Mr. Burns’ figures ?

They only show an increase in well-being if the Poor Law administration has not been made more severe. Let us see whether the Poor Law regulations have been made stricter, for if they have, the veriest tyro would know that the value of the figures is thereby destroyed.

The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 abolished the grant of relief in aid of wages, and considerably modified the Act of Settlement, it also laid down the principle of the Workhouse Test. Parliament, however, left the gradual introduction of the principle in the hands of the Central Department. Nevertheless the refusal of relief in aid of wages and the partial imposition of the workhouse test in order to discourage applicants for relief caused a continuous decline in pauperism from 1834—twelve years before the inauguration of Free Trade.

The Poor Law was further strengthened by the Amendment Act of 1844 ; but it was not (says the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”) until 1867 that the local administrative bodies took the matter up with much enthusiasm. The Pauper Inmate Act of 1871, and the Casual Poor Act of 1882 made conditions of relief more onerous by increasing the compulsory stay of vagrants and by other means.

Regarding this, Ashcrott and Preston Thomas say in their work, ”The English Poor Law System,” p. 285,

“The marked increase of indoor paupers (accompanied, of course, by a still more marked decrease of out-door paupers until recently is due to the movement beginning about 1865 in favour of the workhouse principle.”

Again, p. 288,

“It is clear that in the case of this class of paupers (able-bodied adults) it was mainly by the rigid enforcement of the workhouse test that this improvement was secured.”

The facts clearly show that the statistics of pauperism for the past 70 years are in themselves no guide to the condition of the working class, but they illustrate that poverty is inseparable from capitalism, be it Free Trade or Protectionist. Indeed, in defiance of tests and restrictions there has been a marked increase in pauperism during the past decade.

In spite of Mr. Burns, decreasing pauperism has not been due to diminishing poverty, but to the application of the golden rule of capitalist poor “relief,” to give the poor exactly what they don’t want, so that they would rather starve than come again.

It is, indeed, in consistent application of this golden rule that Mr. Burns himself is being used. The fact that he provides an excellent means of decoying some with vague labour aspirations into the toils of Liberalism, is not the only merit he posesses in capitalist eyes. Few have made it more peculiarly their business to dilate upon those virtues which the capitalist desires in his wage-slaves that they may work cheaper and harder, and none have so vehemently championed the capitalist view of the poor as the new “Labour” minister.

No course moreover, leads so easily to popularity and patronage as the flagellation of working class vices, provided always the fact is blinked that these are the product of a vicious system. Nothing wins the applause of the interested and the superficial more easily than the loud-mouthed opprobrium of the loafer, the outcast and the unfortunate, so long as attention is diverted from the condition of things that created them. Mr. Burns has repeatedly disclaimed any sympathy for these victims of the capitalist juggernaut. He has “none to spare” for these. Even the “Pall Mall Gazette” was led to exclaim that he might be trusted to deal with the “whining wastrelism” known as the unemployed.

In the “Charity Organization Review” he said in 1894 and repeats it in varying phrases,

“Every man who has been out of work cheers the man who is in favour of out-door relief. Every loafer at the street corner who lives on it says: ‘Three cheers for a pound a week out-relief.’ I have always been against it except when administered with the greatest rigidity.”

No wonder, therefore, that the capitalist press proclaim him as the “Right man in the right place,” for as President of the Local Government Board he has found his vocation in the administration of the Poor Law in the interests of the master class.

We who know the utter futility of charity, know also that the only hope of the working class lies in Socialism, and, therefore, concentrate our efforts on that, necessarily in hostility to the capitalist class and all who become its willing tools. The interests of the master class demand that the Poor Law shall be administered with the “greatest rigidity,” so that the poor may be compelled to submit to the most inhuman conditions rather than accept its “shelter,” and the ruling class have found a man after their own heart, one also who does not shrink, when juggling with their statistics, from concealing awkward facts.

F. C. Watts

New Elizabethan Age (1952)

From the September 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the accession of the new Queen, it was inevitable that comparisons should be made with the other period when the English sovereign was named Elizabeth. Following the period of mourning for the late King, the Press has played heavily on the theme of the possibility of a second "golden age" under the second Elizabeth. Popular illustrated periodicals have shown, alongside pictures of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Drake, Cecil and Bacon, photographs of the writers, politicians, film actors and racing motorists who are the leading figures at the outset of the new Elizabethan era. Particular emphasis has been laid on literature because, in the last two decades of the sixteenth century, there were more outstanding figures in this field than probably at any other time in its history.

The views of an eminent historian on this matter are obviously of special interest and Mr. A. L Rowse is one of the foremost of present-day historians. In his Presidential address to the English Association, given at the Association's luncheon in May and now published by the Oxford University Press, Mr. Rowse’s topic was: "A Second Elizabethan Age?" The address was widely reported, and the Prime Minister requested a copy of it; Conservatives in particular were pleased by its emphasis on individual enterprise as a feature of the earlier Elizabethan age.

Certainly the picture is an appealing one. A young queen with a long reign before her; hopes, stimulated by the 1951 Festival, for a revival of the arts in Britain; an age in which the development of science offers seemingly unlimited possibilities; all these have given many people reason for hope that the second "age of Elizabeth" will be an age of prosperity and happiness. We should like to examine this possibility, and propose doing so with reference to Mr. Rowse’s arguments on the subject.

Mr. Rowse looks upon the earlier Elizabethan age with unqualified approval. He sees it as an era full of vitality and opportunity. "What it must have been to be alive—and sentient—in those years: of that we can have no conception," he says. Ability was valued and fostered; there was none who did not feel the spur of ambition, and achievement did not go unrewarded: “society was alive and bursting with energy," the age was "the greatest glory of our state and tongue." He points to the opportunities for advancement: "And there was freedom in that society to move up—or down; careers were open to talents and hard work. Look at the starting-point of so many of the figures of that age: Shakespeare, the son of a small townsman, butcher and dealer in wool and skins; Ben Jonson, stepson' of a bricklayer; Marlowe, a cobbler’s son; Spenser, a poor scholar maintained by the Merchant Taylors; Drayton, a page-boy in a country house; Hooker, another poor scholar maintained by a bishop; and look at the fantastic fortune of Drake, a needy vicar’s son who was not even schooled—he carved his way for himself.”

This vigorous and exciting condition of society is compared with that of the present time. The arts to-day are in an unhedthy state—there is much criticism, but little creation; "the standardized products of a mass-civilization, a herd society" cannot be compared with the proud craftsmanship of those Elizabethans; our age "has no standards’’; political criticism —“particularly from the Left intellectuals"—has done almost irreparable damage; in "a more or less one-class society, levelled down to the standards of the trivial insignificant average," it is well-nigh impossible for ability to flower.

These are the premises on which Mr. Rowse builds his conclusions; let us examine them first. Was the age of Elizabeth the First really so golden?

It was an era of social change. The Reformation had broken the power of the Catholic Church. The enclosure of land was driving the workers into the towns. The nation-state was coming into its own as the dominant type of political organisation. Underlying these developments were great economic changes. The rule of the old feudal aristocracy had been successfully challenged by the new merchant class, and the steadily expanding demand for goods could only be satisfied by capitalist methods of manufacture. Great metal works were springing up; the first deep coal mines being sunk; cloth manufacture was becoming highly organized; government shipyards and armament plants were established. The competition between nations for trading routes had led to the world's suddenly becoming larger, and great hordes of precious metals were discovered in the New World. Science, stimulated by the need to solve technical problems, developed and influenced men's minds powerfully. And the Renaissance, the “rebirth” of learning, had opened the storehouse of the knowledge and artistic achievements of the ancient world.

Mr. Rowse is, of course, aware of all this. Indeed, he says: “The situation of the country and the nature of our society predisposed to the flowering of mind and energy that made the age what it was." It is therefore surprising that he should so strongly blame the people and institutions of the present-age for failing to “flower” as did their ancestors. The first Elizabethan age was at the beginning of capitalism, and the rising capitalist class was a young, virile, and, in fact, a revolutionary class whose historic mission was the development of economic, technical and intellectual resources. To-day, when capitalism has outlived its usefulness to society, it is hardly to be expected t\ t it should be “alive and bursting with energy."

That is not the whole story, however. The impression given by Mr. Rowse is that Elizabethan society was a paradise for all, rich and poor alike. The incorrectness of this is amply demonstrated by the famous Act 43 of Elizabeth—the 1601 Poor Law. Thorold Rogers says: “In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the labourer secured increased wages in the midst of decreasing prices. In the sixteenth, the reverse which he suffered was far more considerable than the advantage which his forefathers had gained . . . 1 cannot but think that a growing disaffection, which Elizabeth and her counsellors were not slow to discern, the remedy for which seemed to be the continuance of expedients adopted in the three previous reigns, was the cause which induced them and parliament to acquiesce in the Act of 1601.” In fact, the age of Elizabeth was also the age of vagrancy and pauperism. The disbanding of the little feudal armies, the loss of the monastic charities, and—most of all—the enclosure of land, filled England with vagrants and robbers whose homelessness and desperation made them a danger. The 1601 Poor Law made pauperism a recognised institution; that the Act was the outcome of fear rather than sympathy is shown by its provision that “lusty and valiant beggars" were to be “grievously whipped and burned, through the gristle of the right ear." Holinshed, too, gives a vivid picture of the brutal severity with which this menace to social order was kept in check.

Further light on the real condition of society in Elizabeth's England may be obtained from the literature of the time. There are several writers, eminent in their day, who are not mentioned by Mr. Rowse: Robert Greene, for example, Thomas Harman, John Awdely, and many others: Greene was a dramatist and prose-writer, but he was also the first writer of “spiv” literature. He and the others mentioned thrived from the sale of voluminous pamphlets exposing the tricks and malpractices of London's numerous “coney-catchers,” the members of the vast workless horde who lived by their wits. We find, therefore, that the “spiv,” the figure who perhaps more than any other symptomises the working-class's disillusionment, was proportionately as numerous in Elizabethan London as in the 1940's.

It can be said, therefore, that the goldenness of this “golden age” was felt by only a minority of the people who lived in it. Mr. Rowse claims that there was freedom for talented and hard-working people to rise from the ranks of the poor, and quotes several examples. It could be suggested that not all of these examples are what they seem—that Shakespeare's father, for instance, was quite a well-to-do man. The important point, however, is that throughout the centuries when capitalism was developing, it was always possible for a small number of people to become wealthy in spite of humble beginnings. Further examples can be found in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That it is not possible to-day is due to the fact that capitalism has exhausted virtually all its potentialities for creative achievement; Mr. E. M. Forster recently, in a radio talk, remarked that it is no longer possible for a man to become very wealthy by honest means.

Mr. Rowse laments that our age has no standards. Had the Elizabethan age better ones? The careers of Drake (for whom Mr. Rowse expresses great admiration) and his fellow “sea-dogs” were ones of robbery with violence, justified and made romantic by the Elizabethan rulers' lust for gold, silver and trade routes. Elizabethan politics was a succession of Machiavellian intrigues and plots. The poor were treated with open cruelty. How much evidence is there in these things of the existence of superior standards? The truth is that moral standards and Christian virtues are not practicable under the system which causes them to be preached. Just as the ideal of brotherhood is meaningless in the present-day slaughter-house world, in Elizabethan England there could be no standards when—to quote Mr. Rowse—“everybody scrambled and jostled and climbed and pushed their way to the front.”

In view of all this, one cannot help but ask: “Who wants another Elizabethan age, anyway?” The answer is nobody except members of the capitalist class, with whose interests Mr. Rowse, we now see, is wholly preoccupied. The period 1558 to 1603 was one of poverty for the many and prosperity for only the few, of ruthless oppression and barbaric practices.

But what of the arts? Is it not true that this was an age in which they flourished as never before or since? Certainly the list of names is imposing: Shakespeare, Lyly, Sidney, Marlowe, Jonson, Spenser, Nash, Greene, Lodge, Webster, and ever so many more. Mr. Rowse's case is that these men were essentially creative, and the Elizabethan age gave them scope for their creativeness. To-day, the emphasis is wrongly on criticism, the antithesis of creation. “ Was there ever,” he asks, “ a more apposite instance than Shakespeare, the “ child of nature,” as against the academics and the intellectuals? "

Certainly, it is true that the Elizabethan age had plenty to stimulate artists in general and dramatists and poets in particular. It was a period full of new, different and exciting things. The language had left behind all its teething troubles. The invention and development of printing had brought a reading public into being. The growth of towns and release from the former ties with Church and craft guilds enabled the theatre to become, for the first time in English history, a settled institution. There were wealthy men ready to become patrons. And there were the histories, the learning and style given by the Renaissance.

Concerning Mr. Rowse’s remarks about creativeness and criticism, however, there are two or three things to be said. The first is that even the most gifted “child of nature” is ineffective unless society has a place for his gifts. One cannot imagine Virgil making his mark as a poet in the age of Beowulf or Ezra Pound receiving acclamation in the days of Dr. Johnson. The creative talents of Shakespeare, Marlowe and the rest were of a nature that was acceptable to their contemporaries. To lament the lack of creativeness in the present age is, therefore, to put the cart before the horse; rather should Mr. Rowse lament that society does not to-day find a very prominent place for the type of ability which he admires. Second, one must call into question the assumption that the works of these poets and dramatists were the product of a concern with creation only. Catherine Ing, in her recent book “Elizabethan Lyrics,” calls this into question and gives good reason for the counter-belief that they were, in fact, very conscious of the same questions of form and style that preoccupy the present-day writer. There is ample evidence in Shakespeare’s own work that he was well aware of the circumstances which favoured his genius; Mr. Edwin Muir, in “The Politics of 'King Lear' "; sees “Lear” as nothing less than a dramatic representation of the struggle between the aged and dying forces of feudalism and the ruthless, inevitably victorious ones of the new order.

Mr. Rowse’s conclusion is that, while there may not be much reason, there is hope for improvement in society in the reign of the second Elizabeth. He sees hope in the fact that “the degeneration attendant upon mass-civilisation has gone less far here than elsewhere ”; in the quality of British scientists; and in the possibility that, as the younger English-speaking nations become of increasing importance in the world, the prestige of England will increase. Finally, he finds hope in the thought that: “. . . human genius is unquenchable—there is no knowing what it will do next; civilization is itself a tough plant—it springs up anywhere, like stinging-nettles among the ruins, or willow-herb flowering inextinguishably on the bomb-sites of London.”

In short, Mr. Rowse considers that society has come to a bad pass. There could be nothing better than a return to the conditions and spirit of the Elizabethan era, and, though the circumstances of the present day do not seem propitious, there is ground for hoping that this may come to pass. The situation at the beginning of the first Elizabeth’s reign appeared black, but with good fortune and good statesmanship Elizabeth and her advisers “nursed the country out of its sickness ”; the same may yet happen again.

Thus the possibility, in Mr. Rowse’s view, is envisaged in terms of hope rather than of any reasonable expectation. We are unable to see any hope at all while the capitalist system remains with us—and Mr. Rowse’s wish, of course, is that it shall do so. The loss of vitality and creative energy in this age is the result, not of the carpings of “Left intellectuals” or the lowering of any hypothetical standards, but of the stage which capitalism has reached; a stage in which it has nothing further to offer to the development of society. The hindrance to man’s free development, in the arts and in every other sphere, is not any trend within capitalism but is capitalism itself. Thus we cannot see the second Elizabethan age offering anything but what was offered under previous sovereignties, except that the same things will probably be somewhat worse.

There is, however, a social era to come that has everything to offer to every man, woman and child: the socialist age, which does not have any parallel in past history. The time of its coming does not depend upon any individuals, politicians or sovereigns, but on the mass of the people; they will bring it into being when they realise that, under capitalism, there is no prospect of a “golden age” or of any age other than a continuous one of war and want. There will be free seats for all to participate in its coming.

Robert Barltrop

Progress and pauperism. (1927)

From the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now over nine years since the Great War ended, and, in spite of the feeling aroused in the minds of many that capitalism was staggering to its doom, the machinery of production, or perhaps it would be better to say the organisation of capitalism, appears to have practically recovered from the many dangers that threatened it during the perilous period of changing over from war to peace conditions.

How marvellous the recuperative powers of capitalism must appear to those who are carried away by the seductive theory that we have only to sit tight and await the working out of the “blind forces of production,” which are supposed to be driving the system to an undesired grave, without the assistance or intervention of the human element” ! The advocates of this view lug poor old Marx in by the scruff of the neck to support their erroneous ideas, on the plea that the Materialist Conception of History is the basis of the theory. The two men who worked out the Materialist Conception of History—Marx and Engels—were tireless in pointing out that in the process of human history there were two fundamental factors—man and his environment—and that it was human beings who struggled, and not environments. It is the action of shackling environment upon man that gives the punch, forcing man to act; the pressure of slavery, for instance, that urges the slave to free himself.

However, this is not quite what I intended to write about when I sat down. Sidney and Beatrice Webb have just published a volume on “English Poor Law History,” and Clifford Sharp, reviewing it in the Daily News (11/3/27), makes some observations that are interesting and also startling to those who are not acquainted with the earlier history of this country.

It is interesting to note, for instance, that destitution, in the sense that we moderns so bitterly know it, was practically unknown in the Middle Ages, that not until the beginning of the commerce that has made some people so wealthy, was it necessary to codify by statute the various methods of helping those who were poor. Perhaps the quotation itself would be more informing than a few remarks upon it—so here it is :—

  The chief fact that is likely to strike the unlearned reader of this story is that once upon a time there was no Poor Law at all in England —or anywhere else for that matter. The poor were “God’s poor,” and their needs were dealt with by the Church and by personal alms. So it was in this island from the Middle Ages down to the time of the Tudors. There was, of course, then practically no such thing as “destitution” in the modern sense, for the poor were mainly serfs or villeins, and had feudal lords who employed them and provided for their ordinary needs (!); and it was only sick folk and unattached travellers or vagrants, who were ever actually destitute.

Of course, farther back still, before the feudal lords so kindly employed the serfs and villeins, there was a time when the people employed themselves and, with the limited means at their disposal, saw to it that no one was destitute except when accident or famine or something similar occurred, in which event all went hungry together.

But is it not remarkable that learned professors and politicians should boast loudly of the enormous strides made during the last few hundred years in productive methods, when there has grown up in our midst a poverty problem of an appalling extent. When one sits back and thinks, the position appears in a comical light— there was little destitution in England until England became wealthy and prosperous ! Then one reviews one’s own life, with the struggles to keep the wolf from the door, and begins to wonder who or what is the “England” that has become wealthy. A little further thinking and wondering, and at last the realisation dawns upon the wonderer that it is only the few who “own property” that have become wealthy. The mass who produce the wealth are poorer than they were, in the sense that they have to struggle harder for what they get, and that the actual amount of destitution is proportionately greater.

Since its beginning in the time of Elizabeth, the Poor Law has answered its purpose : it has kept the hungry multitude from doing anything that would seriously endanger the system that provides wealth and comfort for the few out of the blood and tears of the many. And as long as the capitalists are far-seeing enough not to be too niggardly with their “almsgiving” schemes, the system might stagger on for an indefinite period.

This brings me back to the idea underlying the remarks I made at the beginning. In spite of all that the employers do, and may do, to throw dust in the eyes of the workers, the shoe pinches, and sooner or later the workers, being intelligent human beings, will have a look at the shoe to see what the real trouble is. Slowly but surely the idea is taking root that the cause of working-class misery lies in the nature of the modern system of wealth production, and sooner or later, owing to the fact that they have brains which draw upon their experience for thoughts and ideas, the workers will grasp the fundamental fact that they must exert themselves to transform wealth production from a basis of private ownership to a basis of common ownership in the means of producing wealth. The slumbering Chinaman is stirring : it is time for the West to awake !

Gilmac.

Three pamphlets (1927)

Pamphlets Review from the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Published by the Labour Research Department, 162, Buckingham Palace Road.

“Rivals of the Co-operatives” (price 1d.) contains figures of the large profits made by the Maypole Dairy Co., Ltd., and various other big grocery concerns. Apart from these figures, the leaflet is grossly misleading. It assumes (without a shadow of proof) that working-class poverty is due to high prices, with the implication that low prices and working-class prosperity go hand in hand. Secondly, it admits that the Co-operative Societies have made profits of £220 million between 1913 and 1925, but does not attempt to explain in what respect Co-operative profits—drawn from the exploitation of Co-operative employees—differ from Maypole’s or Peark’s profits drawn from a similar source.

The Co-operative movement is part and parcel of the capitalist economic system, and as such is opposed by Socialists and should be exposed, not defended, by the L.R.D.

“Co-Partnership and Profit-Sharing” (price 1d.) is a handy little summary of the progress of profit-sharing and co-partnership devices intended to obscure the class struggle. It presents a table showing how little of the income of certain well-known firms actually reaches the workers under the guise of a “share in profits.”

“The Reform (!) of the Poor Law” (price 1d.), by John Scurr, is a denunciation of Conservative proposals to hand over the functions of Boards of Guardians to County Councils and County Boroughs, although he has to admit that “Labour policy has been directed in the same pathway” (page 12). The whole discussion reveals the barrenness of Labour Party reforms and the unsoundness of their theories. Does it really matter the least little bit to the working class whether property owners pay certain sums locally as rates or nationally as taxes? And is it not time to recognise that it is not the form of administrative machinery which counts, but the class interests of those who control it? While the capitalist class are in political control, no amount of words or parish council debating ability shown by Mr. Scurr and his party will prevent the capitalist class from using their administrative machinery to carry out their policies as they think fit. Mr. Scurr ends with the very revolutionary slogan. “Let our cry be, No further starvation of the poorest of the poor.” It is a pity he does not explain what degree of starvation is permissible, and why the rest of the poor are to be thrown to the lions. Will it ever dawn on these professed Socialists that Socialism really is the only remedy?

Edgar Hardcastle

How sweet is charity? (part 1) (1977)

From the December 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once when we wanted to avoid the importuning of charitable organizations, we only had to walk across the road to evade the flag-seller on the corner. But now these collectors seek us at our own front doors, they invade our place of work, they nobble our children at school. They write us begging letters, send unwanted Xmas cards, and issue catalogues of goods for sale. Shops selling jumble have appeared in the High Street. Large newspaper advertisements press us for support. Heart-rending unfortunates stare at us from hoardings. Charity has become Big Business.

Many workers display attitudes of confusion and guilt about charity, and before they next dip their hands into their shallow pockets they should pause, question why all these appeals are necessary, and if the voluntary contributions they are giving are doing any good. In spite of the Welfare State and the ramifications of charitable organizations the poor are still with us. As the standard of living has risen so the standard of poverty has changed. The wealthy nobles in the 12th and 13th centuries did not have the comforts the poorest take for granted nowadays. Poverty is a relative thing, and can only be assessed by comparison with the wealth that is produced. All members of the working class are poor, and some are more unfortunate than others.

All the more reason the worker may think, to spare what he can, even to deny himself, to alleviate a small part of that hardship in those less fortunate. Distress in others makes us uncomfortable. Few can hear a child cry or watch a fellow human in pain or trouble, without being moved. In man’s early days the young were protected, for in them lay the future, and the old were respected for their knowledge and experience.

Goodwill
As private property developed the tribal structure broke down. Hard though their lot might be, to some extent the chattel slave and serf were protected by their servitude. The slave had to be fed, clothed and housed. The serf was bound to his feudal lord’s land which was his means of life. But where this did not apply, those in distress and want had to rely on the goodwill of those who might pity them. Pity has a curious effect on the recipient. The writer remembers as a child being taken by the Country Holiday Fund from the slums of London to a beautiful village in Shropshire. We stayed at a farm; the lady of the manor invited us to tea; the vicar let us ring the church bells, and called on his congregation to be kind to the “poor little children from the East End of London.” (The effect was to create humiliation not gratitude.)

After Christianity was established in Britain, the care of the sick and needy was undertaken mainly by the monasteries. Under feudal custom one-tenth of all yearly produce was an obligation for the upkeep of the Church, and the Church was equally bound to use part of the tithes for the care of those who could not support themselves. Early hospitals such as Bart’s (founded 1123), St. Thomas’s (1200) were combined almshouses, shelters for the sick, and orphanages. Christians like to claim that charity is synonymous with Christianity, but taking with one hand and doling out crumbs of relief with the other is practised by all religions. In England, the hand that took prospered so well, that by the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII the Church owned one-third of the country.

In time the old system of fixed work-days for the feudal lord fell into disuse, and the serfs became peasant tenants paying money rents for their leaseholds, and receiving money wages for labour on their lord’s demesne lands. All they produced by their own labour on their own holding belonged to themselves (except for tithes). While the nobility fought, the peasants had no say and little interest in the struggle. When it was resolved, the exhausted nobility were ordered by the new upstart Henry VII to disband their armies of feudal retainers, who were cast penniless and propertyless onto the roads.

Almhouses
The wool trade was growing, and those landed gentry who sought riches saw that turning the land into sheep-walks would achieve their object. They began to enclose the common land, and drive the peasant tenant from his olding. The Reformation dissolved the monasteries and confiscated Church lands. Many of the clerics readily adapted their views and made the transition to office in the Protestant church, but the monasteries employed large numbers of lay servants, and Church lands were farmed by lay tenants, and these joined the throng of those with no means of subsistence. Some of this force of landless humans suited the needs of a rising merchant and manufacturing class who required cheap labour for commodity production, but the influx of recruits could not be absorbed as quickly as they were dispossessed, so begging and thieving were the inevitable outcome. Such relief of pauperism as was undertaken was provided by craft guilds and individual philanthropy. It became something of a fashion for nobles and rich merchants to establish almshouses during the reign of Elizabeth I, either out of a desire for immortality in stone or to “lay up treasure in the life to come”.

By the beginning of the 17th century, so troublesome were vagrancy and destitution, that the Poor Law Act of 1601 laid upon local parishes the duty of providing from the rates for the sick, needy and homeless, and putting to work the able-bodied. This established for the first time the principle, that the care of such people was part of the responsibility of the State. The State has developed into the overseer for the capitalist class of the wage-slave, and it has been discovered by slow degrees (as the chattel-slave owner learnt earlier) that to allow working-class welfare to sink below a certain level seriously affects their efficiency and consequent profitability. Running through the history of Britain from the 15th to the 19th century is the account of how the land that was the peasant’s means of subsistence was first illegally and then legally expropriated; and the once self-sufficient peasant and agricultural labourer dispossessed of any means of support, except by hiring themselves to the manufacturing class.

Thus the rise of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution saw an enormous increase in human misery. A "free” worker who could not find a job, or who was unable to work because of illness, found himself and his family destitute. Some workers formed friendly societies in an attempt to help each other. Machinery meant that women and children could take part in production. Working conditions in the factories were so bad that medical observation reported the “rapid spread of malformation of the bones, curvature of the spine, heart disease, rupture, stunted growth, asthma, and premature old age among children and young persons”.

As capitalism developed so did the need for and nature of charity. The contrast between the resultant luxury on one hand and poverty on the other became more apparent. Societies for the relief of this or that affliction sprang up in the 19th century. These were sponsored and supported by the rich: characteristically, the capitalist could not enjoy his dinner and claret with a hungry waif staring through the window—besides, the organization gave his wife and daughters something to do! Yet still distress continued, and so widespread was the problem that the capitalist class became concerned about their potential labour force, and introduced the Welfare State to care for the working class from the cradle to the grave.

Charities Register
What has been the result? Next time in the library look for the Charities Register. There are over 100,000 listed covering every conceivable (and inconceivable) need. Each has to satisfy the Charity Commissioners’ definition of a charitable cause. Most are competing for your cash. These are only the registered charities, and take no account of the hundreds of thousands of informal projects that go on, such as pub and club collections, sweepstakes, school funds, coffee mornings etc., held for strictly local objectives and not included in official statistics. The welfare umbrella, it seems, leaks badly.

This puts the donor in something of a quandary; there is the problem of which charity to support, for it is certain one cannot help all. A choice must be made between this misery or that. Does one Help the Aged or Save the Children? Help the blind or the deaf? Support cancer research, kidney machines, multiple sclerosis, or spastics? Are you more touched by Dr. Barnardos or the Distressed Gentlefolks’ Aid Association? And people have now become aware of distress beyond these islands. Television brings painful sights uncomfortably into our sitting-rooms. Do earthquake victims move you more than flood disasters? Whose need is greater, famine victims or war refugees? We must not forget our four-footed and feathered friends, catered for by the RSPCA, RSPB, PDSA. Blue Cross, World Wildlife Fund, etc., etc. There are even charities for those who do not care much for some of the human race. There is a classified list under the heading "Promotion of the Efficiency of the Forces”. A typical rifle-club charity will have as its declared aim: "To encourage skill in rifle shooting by any of Her Majesty’s subjects so that they will be better fitted to serve their country”.

When workers contribute to charity they must not lose sight of the fact that their donations merely reduce the obligation of the government, so that the taxpayer, i.e. the capitalist class, is being subsidized instead of the charitable cause. If they argue, as some do, that the government will only offer the bare minimum, and it is necessary to fill the void where the State will not or cannot intervene, then they should acquaint themselves with the conduct and efficiency of the mammoth organization of charity today. The effect of the capitalist ethic on even such a worthy object as trying to relieve distress is startling!

Alice Kerr

(To be continued)

Link to Part 2

Care, or Couldn’t Care Less? (2012)

From the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Care is a fairly unambiguous word: to look after, to feel affection, and concern for somebody or something. A recent inquiry by the Scottish Parliament into care begins with the opening statement: ‘One test of the morality of a society is how it treats its elderly’. How do you determine morality in a society that has seen ruling class consent to brutal dictatorships and the mass slaughter and starvation of millions upon millions of our fellow human beings?

Ours is a long history. In ancient societies the elderly were the chief sources of knowledge: Where was the best hunting to be found? What plants cured what sickness? How to make the tools to enable the tribe’s survival. This led to various forms of Ancestor Worship. In China the practice of veneration for the wisdom of the elders dates back long before 1000 BC. And in Polynesian societies, the outlook is one of reverence for the elderly and the expectation of help and guidance; although it doesn’t involve worship.

As property society began to evolve in the West so too did the status of the majority of the elderly during the brutal centuries of slavery and feudalism. The word community derives from the Latin cum, meaning with or together and munus meaning gift, which readily translates as to give amongst each other. With the advent of capitalism the word has become as hollow as the heads of those that nowadays chant it like a mantra. Community has become another weasel word like morality.

As workers were turned off of the land pauperism became endemic for those unable to work hard enough to support themselves. From 1601, the Poor Law was enacted and each parish became liable to care for the ‘deserving’ destitute. The elderly were deemed ‘deserving’. Care was as diverse as the whims of those that administered it. For a few, care consisted of paying a family member to look after an elderly or female pauper in their own home. For the majority, care amounted to begging from the moralising rich to stay out of the gutter.

By 1834 The Poor Law was radically amended. And many elderly workers were consigned to the intentionally austere and punitive workhouses. By 1885 free Poor Law healthcare became available in some parishes, and in some boroughs free hospitals were built. Why? Because, finally a light had gone on in the darkness of the collective capitalist brain that sickness amongst the poor reduced their capacity for work. As an afterthought, and out of piety, a 1900 Poor Law directive allowed for less punitive workhouse conditions for the elderly: elderly couples could now share a room together, and single elderly paupers were given separate accommodation from younger paupers.

As capitalist society advanced so too did bourgeois ideology—the cloak that conceals the realities of life. Care for the elderly was set to become a central issue in the war of ideas. In the UK the hub was the welfare state. We are told that after the 1906 General Election the British Liberal Party enacted certain social reforms that led to the birth of the modern welfare state. It is argued that New Liberals, and Lloyd George in particular, overturned the earlier ideology linked to Gladstone that the population should trust its fate to the market and the ‘invisible hand’ that was at the tiller. Or in other words: work or starve.

During the Boer War of 1899-1902, the ruling class discovered that more than one third of those who volunteered to fight were medically unfit to defend their profits. Sickness amongst the remaining workers was also hindering the accumulation of profits, and thus competitors like Germany were gaining an edge. This tricky climate for British capitalists led to an opportunity for a handful of reformers, notably the Fabians. They believed that the process of reforming capitalism by degrees in order to achieve socialism was more likely to succeed than the revolutionary means. In a changing environment they managed to push through a few reforms that restrained the old laissez-faire ideas and paved the way for the advent of the welfare state. Amongst the reforms were free medical checks for schoolchildren, and the provision of pensions for workers over 70 whose income was below £21 per year.

What seemed to many workers like pennies from heaven was in fact a relocation of a portion of the profits from the capitalist class’s pockets back to those that had originally created them. Even the dullest of capitalists realises that you don’t strangle the goose that lays the golden eggs.

However the ruling class has a maxim – not a penny more. By the 1960s several surveys discovered that hospitals and Homes for the elderly were in a ‘deplorable condition’. Bourgeois sensibilities were offended, and a new idea arose: Community Care. Bourgeois ideologists busied themselves with the new concept. Reformers devised clauses and sub-sections. Rarely was it mentioned that community care was the cheapest option, a somewhat important concern as expenditure spiralled.

Community care went into warp drive in the 80s under the tutelage of the good housekeeping and parsimony of Maggie Thatcher. The 1989 White Paper, Caring for People, reaffirmed the importance of cost when it stated: ‘The Government will expect local authorities to make use whenever possible of services from voluntary, ‘not for profit’ and private providers insofar as this represents a cost effective care choice’. Thus capitalist profits were being protected, whilst new avenues of profit were to be explored.

Unsurprisingly the local authorities found it increasingly difficult with the available funding to provide a decent level of care. Thus, as the story goes, the private sector stepped in to lend a hand. In 1975 there were just 18,800 private sector residential homes. By 1990, 119,900 had rushed forward to offer support. God bless the entrepreneur, sang the ideologists.

Another ruse that gave impetus to the expansion of the private sector home was that from 1980 means-tested board and lodging supplementary benefits became available to independent care operators where once only local authority, public funded, voluntary sector homes received those benefits. During the ‘90s I worked part time at a residential home where 90 percent of the residents were receiving means-tested board and lodgings.

I was the cook for two days a week for over seven years. Virtually all of the residents during that period were in various stages of senility, dementia, or Alzheimer’s. It was patently obvious why so many ‘entrepreneurs’ had moved into residential care – there was a lot of money to be made by those who knew how. In the home where I worked, costs were under a very tight rein. From the dilution of washing up liquid, to the barest minimum of staffing levels. No stone that led to an extra pound in the owners’ purse and wallet was left unturned.

The regime began at 7am. There were usually 32 residents in our home, and it was the task of two night staff to get them up and toileted for breakfast by eight. After breakfast the ‘liquid cosh’ was administered to the disruptive ones, and the remainder were removed to one or other of two day rooms and left with a television blaring till lunchtime. Lunch was at 12, then back to the dayroom and the TV until tea at 5. More TV and then bed by 8pm. The only respite from this was once a week, when a man came and played the piano for one hour. There was meant to be a weekly outing for eight residents in the minivan. The residents would sit, dressed and expectant, often up to two hours before they were due to leave. However the outings were frequently ditched because the owner, who was also building up a mini-empire of bedsits for people on benefits, needed the van to transport building materials.

Their final years spent in this home for Tommy, Maisie, and Rose and so many more that I cooked for were utterly miserable. If it wasn’t for the often unpaid efforts of some of the staff, then their lives would not have been much better than the workhouse paupers of a century before. The owners went on to buy another far bigger, and grander Home, and to own numerous houses and flats in that area. Care had obviously benefitted them.

My observations are not isolated, and matters have not improved. In a recent article (Telegraph, 19 March) Professor Finbarr Martin, president of the Geriatrics Society, had this to say: ‘The issue is that there is a negative about people in care homes. There is a nihilism about care homes that is completely unreasonable and unjustified.’ Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, said: ‘The government can no longer claim to be shocked as report after report highlights the pitiful state of care for older people.’ Michelle Mitchell, of Age UK, commented: ‘the system was putting the health and dignity of older people at risk.’ I could fill a further page with quote after quote, from people high and low, about the appalling care for the elderly under capitalism today. But I don’t believe that I have to do that. You already know. You also understand the true meaning of care. Don’t you?

The question then becomes simple. What are you willing to do about it? Campaign for futile reforms? Or join us and help to build a new society where young and old can live out their lives with respect and real dignity in a world where the true meaning of community – from each according to ability, to each according to need – can become a reality rather than the fantasy it is under capitalism?

Andy Matthews

Free Money for All (2017)

From the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

It will never happen

“Free Money for All” was the headline of a review in the Evening Standard (9 March) of a book advocating a universal, unconditional basic income (UBI) paid by the state to every citizen as a matter of right. The writer’s not the only one of course. There’s an international organisation advocating it, the Basic Income Earth Network or BIEN (basicincome.org).

It’s also the official policy of the Green Party. Richard Branson is the latest billionaire to lend his support to the proposal (LINK). However, the scheme is impracticable under capitalism and would be unnecessary – in fact, meaningless – in a socialist society.

It is not the state handing out ‘free money’ that is impracticable but handing it out to everyone unconditionally. The state has long given ‘free money’ to the ‘poor’ but this has not been unconditional – you have to be poor to get it and have to prove that you are poor. In Britain up to 1948 this was paid out locally and administered by Poor Law Guardians. In 1948 these payments were nationalised and called ‘National Assistance’, later ‘Social Security’, and now ‘Income Support’. It’s still basically the Poor Law, though, with the government as the stingy Poor Law Guardians.

What the state is doing is making up the income of the poor to a set minimum – the poverty line – by giving them ‘free money’. It’s a very basic Basic Income.

It is conceivable that this could be made conditional only on proving that you are poor, as is the case now for old age pensioners. So if you are of working age there would be no need for you to prove that you are unfit for work or have been actively seeking employment. As long as you were poor, you would get ‘income support’ unconditionally. Some UBI proponents argue that this might even be cheaper as it would remove the need for so much form-filling, checking and snooping. That’s a language governments understand and pilot schemes are already underway in Finland, Canada and the Netherlands to see if this is true. In the general election the Green Party promised one in Britain. It’s what Richard Branson wants too. Although this would be unconditional (apart of course from having to be poor in the sense of having an income, if any, below a given level), it is not universal. It might even be introduced but it would merely be a cost-saving reform of the so-called Welfare State. So, yes, such a ‘partial basic income’ is something possible under capitalism.

What BIEN, the Green Party and others want is universal ‘free money’, a payment by the state to everyone as a step towards a different kind of society or at least a different kind of capitalism. The big difference is that the ‘free money’ would be paid, not just to the poor, but to every wage and salary worker too, in fact to everyone, even capitalists (‘Green Party unveils manifesto plans to . . . give cash handouts to millionaires by introducing a universal basic income, as the Daily Mail (24 May) put it, typically). One major objection to this can be summed up in a single word –  Speenhamland.

Wage subsidy for employers

In 1795 the magistrates in this Berkshire village decided to pay some ‘free money’ out of the Poor Law rate to poor but working farm labourers so as to bring their income up to a subsistence level. This amounted to a subsidy to their employers who were thereby able to continue to pay below subsistence, i.e. starvation wages. The practice later spread to other counties in the South of England. Marx mentions this in passing in Volume I of Capital:

  ‘At the end of the eighteenth century and during the first decade of the nineteenth, the English farmers and landlords enforced the absolute minimum of wages by paying the agricultural workers less than the minimum as actual wages and making up the balance in the form of parish relief.’

In fact, all state payments to workers are a wage subsidy to employers. The tax credits that Gordon Brown introduced are widely recognised as being this, but so are family allowances (which have relieved employers of the need to include an element or so much an element for maintaining a family in the wages they pay).

When in June last year there was a referendum in Switzerland on the principle of introducing UBI its advocates didn’t disguise the fact that its introduction would reduce wages. In fact they openly admitted, even proposed it:

  ‘Wages are going to adapt themselves to become a complement to Basic Income. For example with an Unconditional Basic Income of 2,500 Swiss Francs, someone who at present gets 8000 Swiss francs from their employer will not get more than about 5,500 or so wages which will come to be added to their Basic Income’ (LINK).

Beyond the wages system?

So, everybody would be given ‘free money’ by the state up to the poverty line and this would be topped up by wages paid by their employer. Some, such as the advocates of ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’, see this as a  first step towards breaking the link between work and consumption. They envisage the part coming from the state in people’s income gradually increasing until this is where their most of their income comes from – a gradual dying out of the wages system.

That’s not going to happen. If the wages system is going to be abolished (as it should be) it won’t and can’t be done gradually, but what about the state paying everyone a povertyline basic income? Could this happen? Capitalism is based on the wages system, on most people being forced by economic necessity to work for an employer to get money to buy the things that they need. A universal basic income paid to everyone would undermine this. While it would not remove the pressure to work for an employer it would put workers in a better bargaining position with their employers over wages. This wouldn’t be a bad thing of course, but it would have economic consequences. The higher wages would be at the expense of profits, but profits are what make the capitalist economy go round.

But more, where is the money to come from? Since the state produces nothing it would have to come from taxation but in the end taxation falls on profits (taxes on wages, as both Adam Smith and David Ricardo recognised, are passed on to employers). So, unless wages fall as the Swiss basic-incomers advocate, UBI would represent a massive redistribution of income from profits, the source of investment, to popular consumption. This would severely disrupt the capitalist economic system which is driven by investment for profit.

If, on the other hand, wages did fall, it would represent a redistribution of income within the capitalist class from those employing fewer workers to those employing many; which would cause other problems and disputes. So, as far as capitalism is concerned, it does not make sense and wouldn’t work. It’s just not going to happen. Even so, there is quite a bit of common ground in the arguments advanced in favour of UBI and those in favour of socialism. Both start from the same realisation that we are living in an age of potential abundance but that this abundance is not realised as resources are wasted in mere wealth-shifting activities such as investment banking, advertising, and legal services (our list is longer since socialism would render money and the whole financial system redundant). If these, and other forms of waste, were eliminated then society could produce enough to eliminate poverty, improve education and health care, and provide everybody with a comfortable   retirement. This is undoubtedly true. This redirecting of resources currently wasted, together with the removal of the profit barrier, would mean that more useful goods and services could be provided and an abundance – a sustainable abundance – achieved.

Socialism would also decouple consumption from work. In other words, what you consumed would no longer be tied to how much you obtained from the sale of your working skills or even to how much work you did (or were deemed to have done). After all, this is precisely what the slogan “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” means. But this of course is not going to be possible under capitalism.

So, to sum up: while an unconditional income for the poor is possible under capitalism as a reform of the welfare state, a universal unconditional basic income for everyone is not. The objectives which those who favour it want – a sustainable abundance and breaking the link between consumption and work – can only be achieved on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

Adam Buick