Ourselves and the "Manchester Guardian." (1914)

From the August 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liberal skunk press exposed. 

Fair play is supposed to be a peculiarly English characteristic. And the Liberal Party and its Press claim to represent "all that is beat” in the policy and character of the English people. But note the application where Socialists are concerned.

A reviewer, signing himself R.C.K.E., attacks the S.P.G.B. with false statements while reviewing a book by a priest. The Executive Committee of the S.P.G.B. sends a reply, that is appended below. One might imagine that in the interests of their so-called “fair play” this Liberal organ would have published that reply. Nothing of the sort. We print their answer with the attempted excuse that a letter “containing the substance” of our reply had already appeared in their paper. In reality this statement is false. A letter signed “Socialist” appeared that criticised some of their reviewer’s statements, but it did not deal with the activities of the S.P.G.B. nor explain what publication of ours the priest was quoting from. Even then, incomplete as “Socialist’s” letter was, the reviewer’s only reply was a falsification of Marx's statements and position on religion.

Their reason for refusing to publish our reply is fairly clear. We referred to our pamphlet on “Socialism and Religion” for several extracts, from Marx’s own writings, showing that our attitude was in line with his views on religion, thus exposing the falsity of the reviewer’s claim to state the Socialist position on this matter. Hence the excuse of the Liberal editor in refusing us space for a reply to a cowardly attack made upon us under cover of a review.

One other point remains. The reviewer’s initials, R.C.K.E., are exactly those of a certain I.L.P. candidate in a particular municipal election. Every reader of our paper is, of course, aware of the anti-Socialist attitude of the leaders of the I.L.P., and their cringing and crawling to the Liberal Party has been exposed over and over again in our pages.

The using of the columns of a Liberal paper for an underhand attack upon Socialism and the Socialist Party is exactly what we should expect from an I.L.P.' er. The sliminess of the attack, the crawling away when challenged, and the similarity of the initials, all point to this I.L.P. candidate acting as an agent of the Liberal Party through the medium of the “Manchester Guardian" as he was equally in his election address when advising the workers to support the second —and openly avowed — Liberal candidate in the above-mentioned municipal election. 

Ed. Com. 

N.B. If Mr. R. C. K. Ensor objects to the above, the columns of the “Socialist Standard” are not closed against him as those of the “Manchester Guardian” were against us.

OUR REPLY TO THE “MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.”

25th June, 1914.

To the Editor of the "Manchester Guardian.” 

Dear Sir,

The Executive Committee of the Socialist Party has had its attention drawn to an attack upon that party by your reviewer, R.C.K.E., in your issue of June 4th., under cover of a review of a book by Henry C. Day, and at its meeting on June 23rd it was resolved that the following reply be sent you.

The attack is contained in the following sentence :

  “For instance, in discussing Socialism and religion and trying to show that Socialists are anti-Christian, he devotes almost eight continuous pages (a third of the chapter, and the culminating third) to quotations from a manifesto of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Now either Father Day knows that this ‘Socialist Party of Great Britain’ consisted of a few dozen wholly unimportant persons, a microscopic secession from the old S.D.F., itself a small and non- representative body, or he does not.”

No evidence is given by your reviewer for any of his statements about the Socialist Party, bat any schoolboy could see that neither the number nor the importance of the members of the S.P.G.B. is in question. Father Day is evidently quoting, not from our official Manifesto, but from our pamphlet on “Socialism and Religion,” of which we have sold several thousands, published a second large edition, and are still selling large numbers. This pamphlet sets out the Socialist position on religion, which was doubtless the reason Father Day need it in preference to the various shufflings of those who claim to be Socialists without the slightest justification. If your reviewer had discovered any error or mis-statement in the pamphlet it is regrettable that he did not point it out, his obvious duty, instead of trying to sneer at its authors; though the latter method is one in common use where argument is absent.

May we enquire, also, since when it was decided that numbers formed the ultimate test of truth. We would remind our critic that a statement is correct or otherwise by reason of the truth it embodies and the evidence brought to support it, irrespective of the status of the makers. And what is meant by the somewhat pompous statement that the S.D.F. were a “non-representative body”? Organisations represent the views of their officials, or their members, or some set of ideas or principles. The Socialist Party of Great Britain claims to represent the principles of Socialism, the scientific basis of which was laid down by Marx and Engels. Both were strong opponents of Religion, as the various quotations from their writings in oar pamphlet prove. The above claim was set forth in our Manifesto issued in 1905 (which has run through five editions), but up to this moment not one of the organisations exposed therein, nor any of their members, have been able to meet a single argument put forth, or to show any error in our case. Perhaps your reviewer would like to try his hand.

As stated above, the question of numbers is beside the point; but even here your reviewer is open to the same charge as he brings against Father Day. Either he knows our activities and work or he does not. If he does then his suggestion that we no longer exist when he says our Party “consisted of” etc. is entirely contrary to the truth. If he does not, then he is evidently quite prepared to make statements while in absolute ignorance of the facts.

We may mention that, apart from numerous branches in London, we also have them in Bedford, Nottingham, Gravesend, Manchester, Southend-on-Sea and Watford.

In London alone we run over 50 propaganda meetings a week—a number larger than the published lists of B.S.P. and I.L.P. combined. We publish our own monthly organ the “Socialist Standard,” and have issued several pamphlets. In addition, unlike the I.L.P. and Labour Party, the membership of our Party has full and direct control of the policy and actions of the Party.

In fairness to our members and your numerous readers, we ask for the insertion of this reply. Yours on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of Great Britain,

A. Kohn,

General Secretary.

Editor,

“ Manchester Guardian.”

THE USUAL LIBERAL COWARDICE.

A. Kohn, Esq.,

   The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain,

       193, Grays Inn Road, W.C.

Dear Sir,

We are obliged to you for your letter referring to our review of Father Day's book. We have, however, already published a letter containing the substance of your criticism shortly after the review appeared, and we fear we cannot return to the subject again at this date.

                                                                                       Yours very truly,

                                                                                                  for the Editor

                                                                                                              A. G. W.                                 

The Motive Behind The "Boy Scout" Movement. (1914)

From the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

For over a century and a half Lancashire has been the centre of the greatest sweating system the world has ever known, and a glance through the pages of working-class history reveals facts that makes the blood boil to think of; how for years the little children of the working men were driven into factories at the age of six and eight, when mere babies, to work their poor little bodies away from early morn till eve, week in week out, year in year out, till they eventually went down to early graves, providing luxury and enjoyment for the heartless scoundrels who opposed tooth and nail all legislation attempting to improve the lot of factory workers.

It is, therefore, with curious feelings that we read in the “Manchester Guardian" of the 1st July last, the report of a meeting held in Manchester at which Gen. Sir R. Baden-Powell delivered a speech in support of an appeal for £250,000 for the Boy Scout Movement.

The meeting was composed of business men, and the slimy unctuousness of the address was worthy of its listeners, the offsprings of the worst hypocrites known to history.

Oar poor little kiddies who, in the majority of cases, get their schooling while earning their dearly bought bread, are to be roped in and taught “to co-operate with each other for the good of the country." Why? A little further on the noble general explains. He said, when asking his audience to contribute liberally, “I do not want you to do that merely out of a spirit of charity, but rather from a business point of view.” Thus he exposes the hypocrisy of the whole thing. He says in so many words that the movement is not advocated for what good it may do the boys but in the interest of the master class. When we hear of capitalists, who have gained their wealth through the sweating and murdering of their white slaves, stepping forward and contributing hundreds of pounds to a movement of this sort, it behoves us at once to look beneath the surface and see what prompts their sudden and alarming generosity. Men who are willing to stop at nothing, not even murder, for the sake of a few hundreds per cent., don’t throw away good money for nothing, and a careful examination of Baden-Powell’s address will show the particular way in which the masters will benefit.

We will make a few extracts from his speech for purposes of illustration. He says “We try to teach them (the Boy Scouts) one or more handicrafts. Call them hobbies if you like, but hobbies lead to energy and inventiveness and to using fingers as well as brains, so that no man with a hobby is likely to become a waster in later life.” Of what use are wasters to the masters? money invested in them would not yield an adequate profit. “Then we try to give the boys health by teaching them to look after themselves. Millions of hours' work are lost now-a-days through ill-health," not to speak of the annoyance and loss of profit caused by sick employees interrupting and putting out of time the steady and mechanical flow of daily operations. “We try to teach them to be helpful to others . . .  in that way he has learnt service to his fellowman, and the idea enlarges into service for men generally, and for his (!) country, and into self-sacrifice. . . . The barriers are to a great extent artificial, (!) and the more classes mix with each other the greater friends will they become, the better will they recognise each other's merits, and the better will they be able to co-operate for the good of the country." Hear! hear! Mr. General, but, of course, not that common corduroy clad country that lives in back alleys and feeds (sometimes) on boiled beef (!) and carrots And now for the climax. “At any rate let me come still nearer to you gentlemen in Manchester. We will find from experience that the boys who cultivate the ideas and habits of the Boy Scouts prove more useful to employers of labour, they do their duty not ! from fear of punishment, hut because it is their business to play the game to the best of their ability. Their discipline is founded on that playing for their side, and not for themselves. They come into business for what they can contribute to it, not for what they can get out of it. "

The above extracts give the key to the whole business. The value of the movement is that it will turn out boys with all those virtues suitable for steady, obedient, self-sacrificing workers, who will die rather than do anything to injure their employers, and it will make human labour-power more efficient and cheaper. The boys are taught how to husband their energies and live cheaply. What effect will this have on the lot of the working class? Wealth will be turned out by fewer workers; there will be more competition for fewer jobs; wages will fall. Thus by reducing waste to a minimum, lowering the necessary wages, and increasing the unemployed army, the Boy Scout movement is shewn to be anti-working class and in the interests of the masters.

If further proof is required let us glance at those who contributed so lavishly to the fund. The Fine Cotton Spinners & Doublers Association, who on several occasions lately have locked out their workers, contributed £250. Pilkington Bros., the famous glass manufacturers, one of the largest firms in St. Helens, contributed £100. One of the brothers is a Liberal and the other is a Tory. Who said Liberal capitalist and Tory capitalist interests are not identical? Lord Ashton, the carpet manufacturer of Lancaster, whose workmen were recently out on strike, contributed £25. And to clinch the argument a big engineering firm named Mather & Platt, Ltd., sent the following letter to Baden- Powell, which appeared in the ‘'Manchester Guardian" of the same day (1.7.14). “As we find that the boys in these works who are Scouts make the beat workmen, every encouragement will be given to extend the movement amongst them, and we are therefore glad to support your appeal by giving a promise of £500 to the Endowment Fund. There seems to be little doubt that the Boy Scout training tends to produce a better class of workman all round, and we hope that many other large employers of labour will answer your appeal in a generous spirit." We think no more damning evidence could have been produced than that contained in this letter.

The whole speech by Baden-Powell, following the old time-dishonoured game, is invested with that slobbering religious humbug we know so well, that pretends to be interested in the spiritual welfare of the children. Fancy putting on the pretence of the children’s welfare before those who are responsible for the state of affairs obtaining in Lancashire at present. Father Vaughan, speaking at Liverpool on Sept. 10th, 1913, said that passing through Lancashire he could not help being struck by the small stature of the lads around Liverpool and Manchester towns, small, badly-grown, bow-legged, and narrow-chested lads. Many boys and young men looked bleached, not to say anaemic, as though they suffered from want of oxygen, nitrogen, and wholesome food. ("Leader," 11.9.13). And those who are the cause of these conditions responded nobly to B.-P.’s appeal ! ! !

Another of your heroes, O working men is, therefore, at the bottom, but another of the tools of the master class. All the so called great men of today, whether soldiers, sailors, clerics, or politicians, are only the holders of briefs for the capitalists. “All are but ministers to wealth, and feed its mortal flame."

The measure of a movement's value to the working class is to be gauged by the attitude the masters adopt towards it. Religious movements, land movements, Boy Scout movements, etc., are backed liberally by the masters, then obviously these movements are in the interest of the masters and against the workers’ interests. The Socialist movement has the undying antagonism of the masters, then obviously workers should back it. In spite of Powell's soft phrase about wiping away the barriers between the classes, the class war exists and must continue to exist until the exploiting class is wiped out of existence.

The whole vast edifice of modern civilisation is built upon the basis of exploitation and all means are employed to provide the most efficient exploitable material. When workers firmly grasp this elementary fact the cries of those who 'boost' the various movements for "improving” the workers' lot, without attacking the exploiting system itself, will fall upon deaf ears, and the good work we are doing will have received its recompense.

Gilmac.

The Socialist View of the German Atrocities. (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present conflict between the Powers of Europe is a tragedy of the first magnitude; but like most stupendous tragedies, it has its humorous aspects for those who are not entirely led away by the superficial. One of the most laughable spectacles of the day is the universal outcry about what our innocent masters and their saintly hirelings of the Press and pulpit are pleased to call the “atrocities of the Huns.” Mark ! it is not here denied that there have been appalling outrages committed by the Kaiser’s hosts. That is not the question with which we are at the moment concerned. It is the capitalist hands upheld in horror, and the round-eyed astonishment of our good, kind masters, that engage our amused attention.

They are astounded and shocked to a marked degree at every manifestation of the rules of warfare adopted by the German military authorities, and run whining like chastised curs about the world, complaining in a childish snivel of every method that presses hardly upon themselves, but which, for various reasons, does not, for the moment, commend itself to the allies.

What the reasons for all this singsong of nauseating hypocrisy are is pretty obvious, and will be returned to later. But for the moment let us deal with the ludicrously clumsy effort of Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian author, to exploit the bestial fruits of a bestial system for the benefit of the master class of Britain, France, Russia and Belgium.

Maeterlinck is often spoken of as the “Belgian Shakespeare,” and it may be noted that the English bard himself was not above prostituting his talents in order to curry favour with the great ones of the earth. Henceforth, then, the admirers of Maeterlinck may claim for him a further point of Shakespearean resemblance, by the evidence of a very foolish article of his which was published by the “Daily Mail” and the “Evening News” (Sept. 14th).

Speaking of the atrocities Maeterlinck says:

   “It is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent and guilty, or degrees of guilt. They stand on one level, all those who nave taken part in it. . . . It is, very simply, the German, from one end of his country to the other, who stands revealed as a beast of prey . . . We have here no wretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant King, who alone is responsible. Nations have the government they deserve, or rather, the government they have is truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation.
  “If eighty million innocent people select and support a monstrous King, those eighty million innocent people merely expose the inherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence; and it is the monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that is true in their nature . . .
   “They must be destroyed as we destroy a nest of wasps, since we know that these can never change into a nest of bees.
   “And even though individually and singly the Germans were all innocent and merely led astray, they are none the less guilty in the mass.   “This is the guilt that counts . . . because it lays bare, underneath their superficial innocence, the subconscious criminality of all.
    “No influence can prevail on the unconscious or the subconscious. It never evolves. Let there come a thousand years of civilisation, a thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements of art and of education, the subconscious element of the German spirit, which is its unvarying element, will remain absolutely the same as it is to-day; and would declare itself, when the opportunity came, under the same aspect, with the same infamy.”

This is the pronouncement of one of the “master-minds” of Europe. It is, presumably, the best this burning patriot of Belgium could do to reduce the “modern Huns” to their proper level, immeasurably below the race under King Albert. Let us see, however, if this pronouncement is logically sound, where it must inevitably lead us to.

On the West Coast of Africa is a large tract of country called the Congo Free State. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of that country it was found that in the great forests of the region there grew abundantly the trees from which rubber is obtained. As usually happens when white men discover defenceless natives in a country whose virgin forests are rich in rubber trees, the aborigines were enslaved and compelled to gather the rubber for their white masters.

The particular case of the Congo Free State formed the subject of a British enquiry by Commissioner Casement, whose report disclosed atrocities more villainous, if that were possible, than anything which has yet been charged against the Germans in Belgium.

The sickening details it is not necessary to more than touch upon. Terrorism was the foundation of the Congo system of exploitation. How the feet of natives were cut off because the amount of rubber they collected did not (as indeed, it never could) satisfy the greed of their masters; how the unfortunate blacks were suspended over slow fires and roasted to death; how a country was devastated in order to pile up wealth for foreign invaders: all this can be read elsewhere by those whose memories need refreshing.

To pile up wealth for whom? For Germans? Oh no! for Belgians. If the German “culture” found its expression in the stark outrages of the smiling plains of Belgium, Belgian “culture” asserted itself in the blood-reeking shambles of the Congo rubber fields. If the German “culture” as exemplified at Louvain and Tirlemont, was incidental to the stirring and (as our capitalist masters will have it) not ignoble romance of war, the Belgian “culture,” as displayed in the African forests, was an integral part of the noble arts of peace. So much for the merits of the respective instances.

Now how may the arguments of Maeterlinck be applied to the case of the Belgian “culture” on the Congo? The acts of violence and outrage were admittedly monstrous. The chief responsibility for them was brought home to that inhuman monster, Leopold, the late King of the Belgians, who made millions out of the death-agonies of braver, cleaner, better, and far lees savage men and women than himself. Here was a “monstrous King,” if ever there was one.

Are we to say, then, with the author of “The Blue Bird," that this “monstrous King” of the Belgians “stands [or did stand] for all that is true in their nature” ? Are we to declare that he, and those who governed with him, were “truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation” ? Are we to assert that the Belgian, “from one end of his country to the other, stands revealed as a beast of prey” ? Are we to conclude that “a thousand years of civilisation, a thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements of art and of education,” would find the Belgian people so callous, so brutalised, so low in the scale of human development, that the “morality and mentality of the nation,” as exhibited, according to the arguments of Maurice Maeterlinck, on the Congo, “ would declare itself, when the opportunity came, under the same aspect, with the same infamy” ? If so, then the “modern Huns” would be performing a worthy service to humanity at large by blotting the Belgian race off the face of the earth.

It is not only the Belgians, however, who have proved themselves to be quite the equals of the Germans in the matter of perpetrating outrages that “stagger humanity.” In this respect Russia is so notorious that it is hardly necessary to do more than whisper the name. How the Press of the world rang, a decade or so ago, with the infamies that made the names of the Tzar and his Cossacks stink in the nostrils of men! The mention of Father Gapon will suffice to refresh even the memory of the sycophant Maeterlinck. The latter says: "Through the whole course of history two distinct will-powers have been noticed that would seem to be opposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe : the one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny, and suffering, while the other strives for liberty, the right, radiance, and joy. These two powers stand once again face to face ; our opportunity now is to annihilate the one that comes from below.” How much less than “a thousand years of civilisation,”  has sufficed to evolve from “the subconscious element ” of the Russian spirit which gave us the callous butchery of the unarmed workers in St. Petersburg on “Bloody Sunday,” which has asserted itself in a never-ending stream of misery rolling its pitiful flood across the dreary waste to the appalling doom of Siberia, that has glutted its blood lust in innumerable pogroms against helpless and inoffensive Jews—how much less than “a thousand years of peace” has been sufficient to develop out of this unpromising material that “will power” which “strives for liberty, the right, radiance, and joy ”!

Of course, now that “gallant Belgium,” “democratic France,” and “upright and honest Britain" are linked with Russia in the greatest of all atrocities, we are bidden to forget all these things. More even than this, these very barbarities which Russia has inflicted upon her subject races, and particularly upon her,working class, are adduced as evidence of the “great sacrifices” Russia has made on behalf of freedom. And as if this did not achieve the very height of imaginative extravagance, a writer in the “Daily Chronicle” of September 24th coolly informs us that “Russian bureaucracy and autocracy is (sic) a legacy from Germany and German influences. Ever since the days of Peter the Great. Russia has been governed under ideas which have been supplied her by the Prussian Junkers, and now the time has come when the whole Russian people see the chance of freeing themselves from these influences for ever.”

That Germany must bear the blame for all the innocent blood that has soddened the soil of Russia since Peter the Great’s day is ludicrous enough in all conscience, but the spectacle that we are invited to gaze upon, of the Tsar and those who rule Russia “under ideas supplied by Prussian Junkers,” waging war in order to gain the freedom to govern according to the beatific traditions of Western Liberalism is too much for our sobriety. Albeit, it demonstrates with what rubbish these prostitutes of the Press are prepared to insult the intelligence of the working class in order to bolster up the case of their paymasters.

France, also—democratic, chivalric France—has her gobbeted pages of history. The Massacre of S. Bartholomew is a classic example of foul treachery and degraded brutality that will stand so long as dastardly human deeds find s recorder at all. The history of Paris, however, bristles with shameful atrocities, among which it is sufficient to instance—not the suppression, don't think it was that — but the bloody vengeance wreaked upon the workers of Paris for the Commune of 1871. After the fighting ceased 30,000 working men, women, and children of Paris were butchered in cold blood, while the conditions under which those were interned who were to be transported to New Caledonia are too revolting to be printed here. Let those who find themselves impressed with the idea that barbarity is the special attribute of the “modern Huns” read the history of the Paris Commune, and a new light will break in upon them concerning another of Britain's allies.

Nor is Britain herself above the perpetration of atrocious outrage, both at home and abroad. The Boer War furnished examples enough, in spite of official whitewash. The Boer general, Beyers, has just stated that every Boer farmer’s house was a Louvain, and Smuts, with all his fervent turn-coat patriotism, could not deny the statement he could only endeavour to draw the curtain over it

The history of the British rule in India, where famine has succeeded famine, and multitudes have sunk down in their wretched hovels and die of starvation whilst their white masters were exporting the grain Indian people had grown, puts Britain on a level with any Huns, ancient or modern.

But let us come nearer home. How many working-class butcheries have been perpetrated in these islands of recent years? Only three years ago the same military support which has now been given to capitalist France was promised and rendered to the railway magnates of England in order to enable them to force their men to continue to work for 16s and 17s. a week That ended in butchery. Tonypandy is another instance that will be fresh in the memory of many, while we have the testimony of the Liberal politician who “saved the Government” from defeat, Mr. Handel Booth, that in Dublin during a recent labour struggle, women of the working class were dragged from their homes by the hair of their heads and brutally batoned by the police. The same witness also affirmed, what was amply borne out by others, that one of the victims of the struggle was felled by a police truncheon, and then deliberately beaten to death by several policemen as he lay helpless on the ground.

How did the modern Huns of capitalist Britain meet the charge of these cowardly atrocities, committed at their behest and in their profit-mongering interests, and witnessed by one of their own politicians? By resorting to that rich product of Western Liberalism — a sham enquiry—and appointing legal bullies to bully the awkward witness out of Court.

The “Hun” in the British master class is revealed in a thousand places. At the very time that the war broke out instances were causing unpleasant attention to be turned to our masters’ methods. There was the callous butchery in Dublin, engineered by rival politicians, when four people were done to death, among whom a woman was shot dead, and a boy who was killed received a bullet wound in the back and a bayonet thrust in the thigh. The war came opportunely to divert public attention from this Irish “Louvain.” Again, when war broke out thousands of men in the building trades in London had been for many months deprived of their sole means of livelihood—condemned, together with their wives and children, to starvation because they refused to sign a degrading and economically undermining contract form. No snuffling Harold Begbie thought to ask of the starving victims of that “battle for liberty,” the ironic question : “What will you lack'. Sonny?"

British history, ancient and modern, at home and abroad, is a veritable fabric of atrocity, which can find no parallel in the history of any other race on earth. The early invaders of India may have perpetrated orgies of bloodshed that only the whole European civilisation has been able, after nineteen hundred years of Christian humbug, to surpass; the industrial magnates of America may have provided, in the piping times of peace, examples of lawless violence so open, so naked and unashamed, as to startle even us ; but for long exercised, persistent, callous brutality, which is none the less fiendish because it has evolved the cunning to mask itself with legal shams and social sophistries, one can find nothing approaching the industrial history of England.

Let those who want to whine about the atrocities of the Germans first explain away the methods by which the peasantry of feudal England were deprived of their lands and driven from the countryside to become factory slaves ; let them cleanse, if they can, the fortunes of the great cotton families of the blood and agony-drops of the thousands of working class children who were murdered to make those fortunes ; let them blot out from the memory the scores of shamble scenes from Peterloo to Dublin, in which unarmed British workers have fallen to British bullets; let them tell us what higher “culture” than that of the “modern Huns” is indicated in the preventable sacrifice of railway shunters’ lives, the raising of the load line of ships, the contemptuous ignoring of the laws of the mining Acts because the fine for launching 400 miners into eternity is only £24.

Maeterlinck and other sycophantic “intellectuals,” playing their prostitute part in the upholding of that system which gives them their “place in the sun,” may rail and rave as only they know bow, about the German atrocities, but their motives are clear enough. They desire to do two things to inflame the workers of Britain, France, Russia and Belgium against Germany, and to hide the truth.

And the truth is that atrocity is not a national attribute anywhere or at any time. On the contrary, atrocity belongs, not to nations, but to systems. It is of the very nature of all systems of plunder, and it was and is the common attribute of the Huns of Attila, the Huns of the Kaiser, and the Huns of Asquith, Penrhyn, Claude Hamilton & Co, and the Huns of Rockefeller and of Carnegie in America, Werner, Beit & Co in South Africa, Tipoo Tib in Central Africa, and White Wolf in China because all these ancient and modern Attilas were or are engaged in the robbery of their fellows.

The Maeterlincks and other lickspittles of the capitalist class hope, by their outcry against the German atrocities, to obscure the fact that THE atrocity is not Louvain or Tirlenoont or Rheims, but the war itself ; not the blood of unarmed victims spilled at the instance of German bullies of the master class, but the whole hell of horrors which has been let loose upon the world by the MASTER CLASS of Europe—Belgian, French. British, and Russian no less than German. Of this colossal atrocity, the bestial and inevitable fruits of the robbery of the working class of the world, Louvain and the other German outrages are but a part,  and a comparatively insignificant part.

Refuse, therefore, to have your mental balance upset by the squealing of those who raise the cry of “German barbarism.'' There can be nothing but barbarism in those who have launched fifteen millions of working men in the field of death in order to decide who shall control the markets where the wealth stolen from the workers may be sold. And those for whom the ; Maeterlincks speak would welcome ANY atrocities that would, by obsessing the public mind with the false idea that atrocity is a national trait of the German race, prevent the workers from realising that it is the common characteristic of the whole capitalist class, as is revealed in every mill and mine and shunting yard in Britain, in the Carnegie massacre at Pittsburg and the Rockefeller holocaust in Ludlow City, in the Italian brutalities in Morocco, in the rubber shambles of the Congo and the Putumayo, in the death-trap compounds of the Rand, in the slaughter of Socialists by the new-risen and triumphant capitalists of China and Japan, and in the uncountable acts of barbarity by which the capitalists of every country the wide world over establish and maintain their position of plundering dominance over the working class.

A. E. Jacomb

Party Paragraphs. (1914)

Party News from the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Branch of the Party has now been formed in Birmingham. For particulars readers in the district are referred to the Branch Directory on the back page.

*     *     *     *

Party Members and sympathisers are reminded of their duty to assist us in our propaganda work by every means in their power. This duty is more urgent now than ever. The Englishman's proverbial “love of fair play,” and his devotion to the “rights of minorities, have already been manifested at several of our meeting places. Two of our comrades have been arrested and victimised, and a few meetings have had to he cancelled.

Nevertheless, our work is telling, and as the vast majority of our hearers welcome our message, they should firmly make up their minds not to allow a few mistaken individuals to spoil the good work. We are strong enough to hold our own if those who are with us will translate their good will and convictions into active support. Not only in France and Belgium is there fighting to be done, positions to be held, manhood to he proved, and victory to be finally achieved.

*     *     *     *

Our literature on the War is in great demand and every effort should be made to place it in the hands of the workers It will act as an antidote to the “poison of the Press" served up by the master class in their lust for blood.

*     *     *     *

From the Socialist Party of Canada, the Socialist Party of North America, and the Socialist Party of Italy come manifestoes opposing this capitalist war.

*     *     *     *

Economic classes have been opened at Tooting and Battersea, and a public discussion is held every Friday at 8 30 p m. at the Socialist Hall. 41, Albert Road. Peckham.. S. E.

O.

Lyddite For The Fray. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

How the Masters Lovingly Treat the Police in Times of Strike.

"One of the elective auditors of the City of Leeds, who has been dealing with the expenditure of £30,000 on police and volunteer workers during the great municipal strike of last winter, has made public some details of the accounts. The maintenance of some 600 special police alone cost £22,000 including payments of £10,000 to various watch committees. Forty casks of beer, each containing 36 gallons, went into the New Wortley Gas Works alone and other orders given by the Gas Department were for 25,700 bottles of mineral waters. The total number of pints of beer ordered for the police was 4,954. A vast quantity of tobacco was consumed, the orders being for 141 lbs of tobacco, 134½lbs of twist and Rotunda mixture; 151 lbs twist, Union Jack and Redbreast, 166 lbs of tobacco, 190 lbs Bond of Union. The cigarettes consumed ran into hundreds of thousands and over 1,100 cigars were supplied. A large number of luncheons were charged at 2s. each, and all sandwiches were paid for at 4d. each. Among the food orders are 13,475 lbs of roast beef at 1s. per lb. The games and recreations provided for the men behind barricades and police guards included footballs, darts, draughts and draught boards,, cards, dominoes, and a gramophone. One account for towels, blankets, mattresses and other items is £444 14s. 6d., while 493 overalls and bed jackets cost £130. New suits of clothes were claimed by 141 men at a cost of £200.”

*    *    *    *

Voluntary (!) Enlistment.

“It would be an admirable thing if all unmarried men between 18 and 30 without the manhood to offer themselves, were forcibly pressed into the Army and put into battalions where the kicks should be far more than the ha’pence." - “Daily Express,” Aug. 20th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

The Men are Called to Fight for their Country.

“How precarious is the life of the London docker may be illustrated by the figures of the weekly earnings of a casual docker, which I take from that invaluable study, ‘West Ham,’ by E. Howarth and Mona Wilson. 9s. 11d , 18s. 8d., 5s. 10d, 33s. 9d., 30s 4d., nil, nil, nil, 5s. 9d., 28s., nil (the net weekly average being 12s. 0¼ d ) On an average day at the London docks, you will find a SURPLUS of at least 10,000 labourers. The scenes which are taking place every day of the week are only the symbol of the miseries that afflict these wretched victims of the industrial machine, of the degradation of character and of the waste of human life.”— “Daily News,” May 23rd, 1914

*    *    *    *

The Three Different Faces of Ben Tillet. Labour “Leader” and Friend of the Poor.

1st Face.—Writing in “Justice,” June 15th, 1912, while the Transport Workers were on strike:
    “The governing classes . . . have the habit of thinking of the worker as a slave and are prepared to kill him with bludgeon and soldiery if he dares to struggle with his chains . . . 300,000 children are wanting food and protection; 100,000 women are wanting support; 100,000 men are fighting for dear life and principle. Our fight is against the capitalists, who not only want to destroy our liberties, making slaves of us, but they would destroy our home and home life as they have done and are doing to the vicious beat of their malignant hate.”

2nd Face — Writing in “Daily Herald,” Sept. 5th, 1914:
  “Every able-bodied man must either fight or be ready to defend his country . . . The objection taken by very many intelligent workers is that . . . there are at least 5 to 10 millions of working-class folk in slum and starvation who could not be worse off by a German invasion or the Government of the most brutal savages  . . . These contentions are true, but nevertheless there is need now to protect the United Kingdom against invasion."

3rd Face — Writing in "John Bull," October 10th, 1914:
   “We must fight because the British worker has more of constitutional and democratic freedom together with social opportunity to guard than the enemies enjoy.”

Comment would spoil the beauty of these three extracts.

*    *    *    *

The Cause of the Workers' Diseases.

“Professor Metchnikoff, the prophet of the microbe or germ theory on whom the mantle of Pasteur has fallen, recently lectured at the Royal Society of Medicine on ’Warfare on Tubercle,’ in which he said that no remedy for tubercle had been discovered. Doctors know however, that the TRUE cause of tubercle is living in slums, unhygienic surroundings, sweated wages and the accompanying starvation.”—Dr. Boyd Known, M.R.C.S., LR.C.F., in “Daily Herald,” January 28th, 1913.

*    *    *    *

The Cowardly Rich.
 

 “Paris is bearing up. Most of the shops and very many of the houses are closed and shattered. The rich man has packed up his traps and with his menservants and maidservants, his oxen and his asses, the wife of his bosom and the children that are his, has slipped away, either southward, whither the Government has sped, or to the more peaceful watering places in the South Coast of England.”—“Daily News,” Sept. 9th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Breaking of Treaties.
   

“Russia has broken treaties in the past, so has England . . . There is not an important treaty of modem Europe but has been partially denounced, revoked or altered in times of peace. The treaty of Utrecht 1713, of Vienna 1814, of Paris 1850, of Prague 1866, of Berlin 1878, have in part or in whole been denounced. The Black Sea clause of the Treaty of Paris and the Batoum clause of the Treaty of Berlin were openly and frankly denounced and repudiated by Russia in her own sole interest. Let us all admit that Europe accepted the Russian denunciation.”—Arnold White in the “Sunday Chronicle,” Oct. 14th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Atrocities.
  

“In the course of his letter of resignation, General Beyers made a bitter attack upon the British Government. It is said, he wrote, that war is being waged against the barbarity of the German. I have forgiven but not forgotten all the barbarities in this our own country during the South African war. With very few exceptions, all farms, not to mention many towns, were so many Louvains of which we now hear so much.—“Daily News,” Sept. 22nd, 1914.

  “Here is an idea for Lord Kitchener. Why not arrange to have all German prisoners whom we capture during the war sent over to England via the North Sea, in barges propelled from behind by tugs over the mine strewn area.”— “John Bull,” Sept. 5th, 1914.

  “The British left wing have again covered themselves with glory . . . The forests of Chantilly should rank with the plains of Waterloo. The sterling work done in the shadow of these ancient trees will go down to history. Despite sentimental French advices they FIRED a part of the wood and slew the Germans concealed therein like rats as they scuttled forth.”— “Pall Mall Gazette,” Sept. 10th, 1914.

   “The Zouaves and Chasseurs d’Afrique arrived in hundreds of taxi-cabs . . . You will hear with less revolt of the horror I passed earlier in the day, some 240 Prussians dead in one farm together, black and unburied. They were killed by shell fumes possibly, but had been bayoneted for double security.” “Weekly Despatch,” Sept. 20th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Liberality of the Liberals.
  

“Let us bear in mind what this war will do for tens of thousands of young women is to rob them of their husbands, to create a loss which in many cases can never be filled, to alter utterly the meaning and the value of life for many of the bereaved. This is something we cannot pay for and no possible pension that we can devise can touch this main point. . . . Is 7s. 6d. what a great and rich nation should offer to . . . its women who will bear the real burden of the war? It seems to me that to ask this question is to answer it. I have not yet found a single person who attempts to justify the 7s. 6d.”— “Daily News,” Nov. 11th, 1914. (Article by C. Money.)

*    *    *    *

The Alliance of Labour and Liberalism.

 

 “On what outstanding feature of domestic policy during that time (i.e., the last 8 years) has the feeling of the Labour Party been with the Opposition and against the Government? Was it so in the Trades Disputes Bill, Old Age Pensions, the Coal Strike, the Insurance Act, the Labour Exchanges, the Budget of 1909 or the Parliament Act? Is it so in the case of the Home Rule Bill, Plural Voting or Welsh Disestablishment? The fact of course is, that on every fundamental question of home politics, the Government has had no more constant supporters than the Labour Party.—“Daily News,” Jan 28th, 1914.

   “They must recognise that the Labour Party was not a Socialist party. Many of its members had been driven into its ranks and still continued to maintain the closest possible connection with the Liberal organisations in their constituencies . . . The policy of the Labour Party has been deliberately to keep the Liberal Party in office.”—“Labour Leader,” April 16th, 1914 (reporting speech of Philip Snowden).

*    *    *    *

THE Casualties of Peace and the Casualties of War. 

  

"Peace hath her casualties no lees saddening than war. There were for example, no fewer than 476,920 cases of disablement, and 3,748 men killed in seven of the principal industries of Great Britain during the year 1913.

  “These figures are contained in the official statistics issued on Saturday of the working of the Workmen’s Compensation and Employers' Liability Acts for last year. They may be compared with the British casualties during three months of the present war of approximately 60,000.

   “The industries to which these figures apply were those connected with mines, quarries, railways, factories, harbours, docks, constructional works and shipping, and the army of workers in them number 7,509,353.”—“Daily Citizen,” Nov. 16th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

The War and the Financiers. 

  

 “This morning the public has before it the biggest and best loan ever offered for subscription. The British people are invited to find the money to the amount of £350,000,000. The finding of the money requires no sacrifice whatever . . . The return offered to the subscriber is exceedingly handsome . . . the yield being as high as 4 per cent. . . . offered on the best security in the world. . . . The war has brought the investor good. . . . From both the patriotic and the financial point of view it is a magnificent in vestment. — “ Daily Mail," Nov. 18th, 1914.

Frank Vickers

The Nature of the Crisis (1976)

From the November 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can working people understand Socialist economics? A well-known contention against the case for Socialism is that learning about surplus-value is too tough for majority understanding to happen. Compared with the capitalist economics presented to the working class, it is child’s play. Newspapers and television today belabour the public with the balance of trade, the money supply, the minimum lending rate, gold reserves, the state of the pound, and the Financial Times Index.

The working class get the drift, which is that their ordinary- going-without is being intensified on account of capitalism having troubles. It is unlikely that many understand the economic mysteries beyond that point, not because of incapacity but because the economists and politicians who intone these phrases don’t themselves understand them. Most incomprehensible of all is the crisis itself. If “the country’’ is on the floor, unemployment high and bankruptcies increasing, why are many businesses doing fine? On 27th August the managing director of an engineering company wrote to The Times: “I find it difficult to comprehend the latest unemployment figures . . . my company finds it difficult to recruit personnel with skills varying widely from draughtsmen, typists, welders and salesmen."

In the same week the Conservative mp Sir Geoffrey Rippon, in a speech to business men at Liverpool, complained that they were not grumbling about the economic situation:

Time was when the chairmen of banks and financial institutions and great companies spoke up in their annual reports about the state of the economy. Now they are mute. Is it out of fear or greed?

(Times, 1st September)

A look at the financial pages shows that very many enterprises are thriving, regardless of the Share Index. “Another company whose attractions belie its share price is Martin-Black, the wire rope specialists whose profits raced ahead from less than £400,000 in 1971 to £2.4 million last year”. (Observer City Notes, 29th August.) In the first week of October, when Edward Heath made flesh creep with his pronouncement “Britain has come to the end of the present road”, several companies announced high profits. Morgan Crucible’s pre-tax profits were 50 per cent, up at £3.8m. in the first six months of this year. Jefferson Smurfit Group’s profits rose 140 per cent, to £4.3m. Cray Electronics and Strong & Fisher (Holdings) had record profits for the year. The John Mowlem construction group doubled its profits, and Mowlem’s chairman said: "in spite of the serious economic outlook facing the country, the United Kingdom order book is in a satisfactory position”. (Times, 8th October.)

Disproportion of Production

Yet without doubt there is a serious depression. Its causes are rooted in the social system under which we live. The capitalist ownership of the means of living means that all production takes place for sale and profit, and from this basic fact arise the staggering problems of the world. To feed the hungry may sound logical, but it is not the logic of commodity production. Instead, we have a chaos in which manufacturers and distributors must estimate their markets and hope that demand will not just continue steadily but expand. When it expands generally there is a boom, and every manufacturer naturally pushes on to the utmost. Ultimately the boom ends, because demand falls off or alters. This breaking-point is the crisis.

Whether a depression follows will depend on the number of industries affected. A slump in one industry affects others, of course; but at times it is possible for profitable companies to “carry” others. However, the entire process is an anarchic one, and a crisis is anything but the universal fall-down commonly depicted. To some extent the phrase “the market” is misleading. There is not one market for all commodities, but many different ones, even within the same industry. “The car market” comprises markets for cheap and expensive cars, small and large ones; rather than all companies competing in the same market, one market may prosper when the demand in others diminishes. These vagaries of production and markets are not consequences of a crisis, but part of the cause of it. Earlier this year a Labour Minister said the British car industry had been producing an unnecessary variety of models. This can be re-stated as that during the boom period the industry had flooded markets which were now refusing to absorb it all — but, as the Labour government is well aware, no political suggestion will alter the economics of the situation.

A crisis is “serious” when a large enough section of industry is affected to produce stagnation and heavy unemployment. There are always other sections which are relatively unaffected or even benefit by it (in the nineteen-thirties’ depression chain stores such as Woolworth’s and Marks and Spencer, selling very cheap goods, were highly profitable for obvious reasons). The record unemployed figure of nearly 3 millions at the beginning of 1933 represented 23 per cent. of all insured workers. Turned round, this means that three-quarters were still in work. However, the existence of an industrial reserve army of that size provided a powerful whip over the employed and a means of enforcing low wages.

No Remedy — Except One

A similar comparison can be made today showing the naiveté of Rippon’s suggestion that capitalists should complain about the state of things. Why should they? Many of them have full order-books and rosy balance sheets, and at the same time are handsomely obliged by the Government’s having secured the trade unions’ compliance in holding wages down. Insofar as firms go to the wall following a crisis, in general they are smaller ones — a process which also took place in the nineteen-thirties. If larger companies’ profits fall they pay out a larger proportion of profits in dividends, so that the shareholders’ incomes do not fall by an equivalent amount. The British Association’s Britain in Recovery, 1938, using Colin Clark’s estimates, said: “On the whole we may, perhaps, conclude that consumption by the rich was comparatively well maintained during the depression and expanded during the recovery”.

The spectacle of the anarchy of capitalism gives rise continually to the idea that it can be subjected to economic planning. Fundamentally crises are due to the imbalances of capitalist production: the seductive thought is that these imbalances can be diagnosed and rectified. Attempts at it have patently failed, and it is worth pointing out why none can succeed. First, all capitalists and politicians would have to agree on what the faults were. Such agreement is not only unlikely in ordinary terms; it is impossible for the reason stated, that one capitalist’s catastrophe is another’s good news. But even if it were possible, what then? The owning class would still have no choice but to pursue their interests — that is, to go on producing for the available markets even though knowing this is what leads to crises.

Economic phrases cover the condition of humanity. The anarchy of production means, characteristically, a bakery closing for want of business while people are in need of bread. The balance of trade, the state of sterling etc. are pseudo-concerns; the working class is asked to understand them so that it will be complaisant in being trodden on a bit more. What all workers can and must understand is that their interests are diametrically opposed to those of capitalism. In due course there will be a recovery from the present depression, gathering momentum towards the next crisis. Is this how you want to go on? Would not a society producing for use instead of markets be immeasurably better?

Robert Barltrop

The 'Right to Work' campaign (1976)

From the December 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone on the dole will probably not take long to come across the Right to Work Campaign which, during the past year or so, has been particularly vociferous in its condemnation of unemployment. Under the guidance of the National Rank-and-File Organizing Committee marches, public meetings and petitions against unemployment have been arranged by this campaign. Back in March there was a special protest walk between Manchester and London. In September many of the leftists who support the campaign marched down to Brighton to picket the TUC.

The obvious feature of these demonstrations is that they are dominated by organizations such as International Socialists, the Workers’ Revolutionary Party and the Communist Party, together with groups of members from the Labour Party and trade unions. Like the women’s liberation groups, CND. Shelter, the squatting campaigns and the “Troops Out of Northern Ireland” movement, the Right to Work Campaign is not concerned with fundamental social change. A survey of their demands as printed in their literature and stated in speeches at their public meetings reveals that this campaign is concerned with trying to secure the creation of jobs. Along with this, the campaign makes reformist demands which might be expected: equal rights for women, a thirty-five-hour week, stopping cuts in government expenditure, etc.

Methods advocated include the nationalization of private industries, the occupation of factories, and overtime bans. All these methods have been tried before. A “Right to Work” campaign is nothing new, nor are ideas of direct action by workers to try to preserve jobs. Similar campaigns have been launched in the past in various countries. In Italy shortly after the end of World War One workers by the thousand occupied factories in an attempt to keep their jobs secure; and, of course, in Britain during the nineteen-thirties there were marches and demonstrations against unemployment and the creation of the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. The fact is that whenever capitalism is in a depression the “left” seeks to increase its following by urging workers to resist unemployment.

The record of these movements is not only that they have achieved nothing, but the capitalist class has ignored them. In several cases instead of the condition of the working class being improved, more authoritarian governments have emerged. In 1921-22 in Italy, the efforts of workers to overcome unemployment by occupying factories were rapidly succeeded by Mussolini’s right-wing government which established fascism. More recently, in France attempts at syndicalism in the spring of 1968 were followed by the French electorate giving a stronger mandate to the Gaullist government. The earliest “Right to Work” campaign took place during an economic recession in France in 1848. Groups of workers in Paris were encouraged to take more militant and violent action. Troops were sent against them and a “government of order” was eventually established under Louis Napoleon.

Under the capitalist system the right to employment does not and cannot exist. Those who have sympathy with the Right to Work Campaign should ask themselves whose duty it is to provide this work. Production under capitalism does not take place to satisfy people’s needs but to produce goods to be sold at a profit. The nature of a trade recession is that for the time being goods cannot be sold as they are in boom periods: production therefore has to slow down or cease. The Right-to-Work campaigners do not say how a right to produce and distribute unmarketable commodities can be given effect. The situation is underlined by unemployment figures from all over the world, both in the past and at present.

But that’s not all! Not only is the Right to Work Campaign by its very existence dooming its supporters to disillusionment. If a quick recovery from the depression gave the appearance that it had partly succeeded, this would only confirm the working class in an acceptance of capitalism. After all, what is so wonderful about employment — being exploited? No, hasten the day when the majority of workers will reject syndicalism and reformism in all their guises including campaigns like this. Hasten the day when the majority will realize that the only wav out from a world of unemployment and generally meaningless employment under capitalism is by democratically abolishing that system and establishing Socialism. In such a system unemployment would not only be a feature of the past, but there would be an abundance of purposeful and interesting work.

Vincent Otter

Editorial: Too Little and Too Much (1954)

Editorial from the January 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Crazy Food Situation

An argument used more and more frequently nowadays by opponents of Socialism is that while the case against capitalism may have been true long ago it is no longer true today because capitalists and governments have in the meantime acquired a social conscience and have removed the old evils.

A case in point is the way in which, during periodical trade depressions, merchants and politicians could be complaining that there was too much of everything in the market while if they had looked around they would have seen millions of people cold and hungry and in desperate need of the goods that the shopkeepers could not sell. Marx dealt in detail with this characteristic of capitalism and showed that too much in the market meant only too much to be sold at a profit; it did not mean too much or even enough for human need.

   "It is not a fact that too many of the necessities of life are produced in proportion to the existing population. The reverse is true. Not enough is produced to satisfy the wants of the great mass decently and humanely.”— (Capital,” Vol. III., page 302.)

During the last ten years there has been much talk in international conferences, such as those of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of United Nations, about the impossibility of the situation arising again of people starving while unsold food was being piled up in warehouses. Governments have formally adopted policies of “full employment” and the large political parties in this country have agreed in demanding maximum production by the workers, assuring them that they could not produce too much.

Now let us turn to the food situation. The Food and Agriculture Organisation has campaigned for years to make governments and peoples aware of the state of world food supplies. First they pointed out that until last year world food production had not even kept up with the growth of population and only did catch up in 1953. But catching up meant merely that it was no worse than it had been in 1939. There isn't enough produced even if it were evenly distributed and made freely accessible which it is not

Professor de Castro at the F.A.O. conference in Rome on 23rd November, 1953, pointed out as other experts have done that “sixty out of every hundred human beings are going hungry." (Daily Herald, 24th November, 1953.)

If three out of every five people in the world have not enough to eat is it possible that there is food being piled up because it cannot be sold? Listen to the Times and Financial Times on the subject

The Times, in a leader on 14th December, was explaining why the present Government and Minister of Agriculture is in a different situation from that which faced the Labour Government six years ago:

   "They cannot overlook that world supplies of food have in the interval become ample, that mere are large and growing surpluses, and that world prices of most kinds of food have fallen sharply and are still falling.” -(Times, 14/12/53.)

The Financial Times, four days earlier, published an article on “The World Wheat Surplus." Here is an extract:—

   "For the present it would seem that there is an absolute world surplus of wheat—not one merely created by the dollar barrier.”—(Financial Times, 9/12/53.)

The Financial Times writer went on to say that though the wheat situation is unhappy at present, supply and demand may be in balance again in three or four years time. And how will this balance be brought about? A main factor will be that the production of wheat is expected to fall in some of the chief producing countries. “In North America the recent high yields are not expected to continue and the U.S. is also planning to reduce acreage."

Doubtless the writers of these estimates of the food situation would, if asked, express sympathy with the needs of the world's poor; but, as exponents of capitalist doctrine, they could logically have added “but what have the undernourished millions to do with profit and capitalism?"

The Story of Albert (1954)

A Short Story from the February 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is the true story of Albert, who after many years of patient and steady work bought a motorcar. How happy they were the day it arrived home. There it was outside the door, the magic carpet to happiness.

Nor more queuing at dirty, noisy railway stations, let die conductor bawl “No standing inside!” as loudly as he liked. Albert's wife and two daughters were so excited they could hardly eat, so the car was saving money already, just like the salesman said.

Not only that; it was there at the door advertising Albert’s prosperity and success. Let ’em all take a good look, especially that stinking little snob of an insurance agent opposite! Ha! ha! he still did his rounds on a push-bike, dm poor twerp!

Albert was no gilded parasite. He'd started at the bottom and come up the hard way! A boy in a fruit warehouse at twelve bob a week and his tea. That was twenty-six years ago. Only had two jobs all his life. As solid as a rock. In twenty-six years he’d risen from errand-boy to chief salesman, earning twelve pounds a week, not twelve shillings, and bonuses of anything up to £150 a year on sales.

What had those Socialist cranks been saying round Lincoln’s Inn? Two classes in society or something! One lot who did all the work because they had nothing; and the others who had it all and therefore did nothing!

What tripe! Look at him, got where he was by hard work, hadn't he? Hadn’t done him any harm, had it? Buying a house, and now his OWN car. How could they say that workers don’t own anything?

He could have had a car before the war if he'd liked, when they were cheaper, but a man who has spent his whole working life almost, in one job, is cautious and very careful. And so our Albert, “quite rightly, when all’s said and done ” lived strictly within his means and refused to be tempted. .

Now, it was a piece of cake. He was still very careful. It was only a second-hand car and not a very big one. Just an ordinary comfortable reliable family saloon. It was reliable enough. It broke down most reliably nearly every time Albert essayed the pleasures of the open road. Small things, at first, only details, but every time it came back some new fault developed till major complications set in. Garage bills came thick and fast, like Good King Wenceslas’ snow “deep and crisp and even.”

At last Albert was in it, his small bank account was swallowed up, he was at his wits' end.

What would the neighbours say? To keep up with the car, Albert fiddled the books. For six whole days he reigned, until the auditors caught up with him.

He had embezzled (Oh! Albert!) nine pounds. At Bow-Street Albert took his place on the seat worn smooth by an endless line of sinners, to plead guilty to three charges.

“Magistrate was quite nice about it” “Are you sure that this has not been going on for more than six days?” he asked the detective.

“Quite sure, Sir,” was the reply.

“ Has he lost his job?” “ Yes Sir.”

“People who betray their trust usually go to prison,” said his worship. “ Your good character stands you in good stead, there will be a fine of £5 on each of the three charges.”

Albert asked for time to pay. Perhaps he could sell the car, although this was not so easy now, to pay the fines.

He has managed to get another job. Lucky to get it, really. After all, as his new guv’nor said, he couldn’t expect very much more under the circumstances, starting at the bottom again, at forty-six.

Of course, he’d have to sell up the house. Couldn't keep up mortgage repayments on those wages, apart from the fact that the Building Society had turned nasty. Houses weren't fetching quite so much now, either.

This is almost the end of our story.

Today, standing in the bus queue Albert no doubt muses betimes upon the perplexities and paradoxes of our modern age.

His brief, though disastrous, incursions into the realm of property ownership have taught him nothing more than a greater respect for auditors.

Horatio.

About Books (1954)

Book Reviews from the March 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even in these days of scientific research, men cling to some very peculiar superstitions. Some of the beliefs and superstitions held by man in his less enlightened past now appear to be downright ridiculous. Worship flows from superstition and Mr. H. Cutner in his book,“A Short History of Sex-Worship" portrays for us some of the queer ideas, customs and forms of worship of bygone days.

For primitive man fertility was something to worship. Good crops and plentiful cattle meant an adequate food supply. Large families ensured many hands to sow and till and hunt and work. Famine and barrenness were things to dread. Small wonder that in his imaginings he conceived gods of fertility who had power to make or mar his existence. Such gods would need to receive sacrifices and to be worshipped in order to induce them to cast a favourable eye in the direction of the worshipper.

From such superstitions arose many religious cults and practices. The sun and the seasons came in for a good share of worship; so also did the human sex organs. This worship of man’s generative powers is known as phallic worship and has played a great part in the ideas and practices of many religious cults.

Mr. Cutner traces the history of phallic worship from earliest times, through the days of ancient Egypt, biblical times, the ancient Far East, Rome and India and shows us how many of the old-time phallic practices have passed into modem religions in a disguised form. He quotes from many sources but we think that the ideas of some of the authorities are a little far-fetched. It appears to us that some of them have seen a phallus around every corner and have mistaken everything that even remotely resembles a male or female sex organ for a sex symbol. We get the impression that some completely irrelevant factors have been viewed solely from an angle suitable to the investigator’s foregone conclusions.

Nevertheless, Mr. Cutner, in presenting this material to us in a concise and easily readable form, has done good work. Collected into his 215 pages is more useful material on the subject than is usually found in far weightier tomes.

The book is published by Watts and Co. in paper cover for 2s. 6d. and is available to members of the S.P.G.B. from Head Office book department.

From Australia comes a novel by a certain Frank J. Hardy entitled “Power without Glory.” The theme of the story is expressed in a quotation from Charles Kingsley that precedes part one of the book,

“A working man who deserts his own class, tries to get on and rise above it, enters into a lie.”

The story opens in 1890 and leads us through a series of Australian political events up to very recent years. It tells of a young working class man who, by unscrupulous and callous methods, rises out of his class to become a millionaire. Our knowledge of Australian political history is not sufficiently detailed for us to distinguish if all the political events narrated are completely factual. The names of a number of prominent and well-known Australian politicians appear in the story with very little said to their credit.

The author tells us in his concluding note that his book, and others to follow, will not advocate the class struggle but will recognise its existence; that Capitalism, having served its purpose, is convulsively passing, to be replaced by a higher social order. Socialism. Mr. Hardy's sympathies obviously lie with the Australian communists.

The book is illustrated but not well produced having a paper cover and poor quality print, which leads us to suppose that the author had some difficulty in finding a publisher.

We referred recently to books by Jack London and one by Irving Stone. We have recently read Irving Stone's story of Jack London entitled, "Sailor on Horse Back.” This is an earlier book of Mr. Stone’s and the style is not so mature as in “Darrow for the Defence.”

Jack London was undoubtedly a sincere, well loved and exceptional man. An illegitimate child, reared in poverty, he became a news-boy, a pirate, a laundry worker, a seal hunter, a tramp, a gold prospector, a lecturer, a farmer and, after many other things, one of the world's foremost novelists and short story writers. As a writer he earned fabulous sums, every penny of which, Mr. Stone tells us, was mortgaged before London received it because of his super-generosity and harebrained schemes to build boats, houses and farms.

Jack London was called a socialist. Some of his writings, such as his small booklet, “The Strength of the Strong” are masterpieces of educational propaganda dressed in story form. We would classify him as a “Rebel Labourite ” but much of his writing was useful in helping workers to an appreciation of their class status in capitalist society. His life was a series of sensations culminating in suicide in November, 1916. The story of his life makes interesting reading.

W. Waters

Work, Welfare and Wages (1954)

From the April 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a glossy and expensive technical magazine called “Mass Production.” Probably you don’t read it—which is a pity, because there is a lot written in it about you. But you may not appreciate this at first, because you are referred to as “it,” and “it” is human labour. 

In the March issue of “Mass Production” is an article by “Commentus” entitled "Work, Welfare and Wages,” which deals with problems of incentives and labour-management relationships. It is written (as, indeed, is the whole publication) from the point of view of management, and when “Commentus” writes “we” he means those who are looking after the employers’ interests. He questions “the value of attempts to foster the family spirit in the families.” The homely phrase “human-touch personnel technique” is used in connection with this family spirit, and it is really not surprising that “Commentus” finds that such calculated bonhomie doesn’t fool anyone. Plaintively he asks “Even if the managing director condescends to wear a carnival hat at the get-together party, does it really encourage the chaps in the factory to greater effort?”

   “Then there it the alleged subtle attempt at production boosting by giving people the line that their work it of social significance. No doubt it is—but most people will go on thinking (if they think about it at all) that the firm is in business to make money and not for the benefit of the community. That the community does in fact benefit is not relevant unless the firm was started from purely altruistic motives—which is highly improbable! Likewise, talk about their part in the firms' achievements makes very few of the workers swell with pride. They have a rooted idea that the firm is in business to make money —the actual product is in a sense only a by-product"

And so we see that the much-discussed theories of harmonious relationships in industry have failed to measure up to the realities of capitalist production. Despite the lines that are given them, workers can’t get rid of the “rooted” idea that the firm is in business to make money. Perhaps the roots of this idea lie in the fact that firms do make money. In any case, wage claims are being pressed, and it seems that false substitutes are less and less likely to be accepted.

Comparisons with American productivity are becoming more frequent, and talk of high-wage paying Capitalism in this country is increasing in technical circles. If higher wages are to be paid then the employers will do all they can to ensure that no appreciable inroads will be made into profits. To achieve this more mechanisation will be carried out; fewer operatives but more technicians will be employed. “Commentus” writes:

   “It should provide both cheaper products and higher wages—not to mention profits! But will the mere button-pushers, although in clean, comfortable surroundings, then complain of the monotony of their effortless task ?”

It would be a very disturbing thing indeed if the “mere button-pushers” did not do very much more than just complain. It would indicate that they had been fully transformed into appendanges of machines and instruments of capital. If this is the price to pay for higher wages, then workers may well reconsider whether they are aiming at the right target. All the family spirit, hygiene and welfare measures that could be devised could not compensate for such loss of humanity.

Are these the sort of “improved” conditions that can be expected from Capitalism? If they are, then socialists want no part of them. People are not instruments for purposes outside themselves—they are less than human to the extent that they submit to being just another commodity in the world of capital. Only Socialism will abolish their commodity status and make them whole men and women.

Stan Parker