The condition of the working class. (1924)

From the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can it be Improved under Capitalism.

According to the Tories, Liberals and Communists, the Labour Government have failed to show any initiative or ability in dealing with unemployment. The Labour Party pleads for time. Although it may be true that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” it is scarcely necessary for those who can use their brains to wait for the experiments of a Labour Government before passing judgment on them.

It is easy to take their reforms one by one and, examining them in the light of reason, see for ourselves exactly how much they are worth. It is doubtful whether all their supposed remedies can ever stop the increase of unemployment. They are more likely to achieve the reverse.

Such palliatives as afforestation, nationalisation and more economical use of coal, together with others that make for greater efficiency, while they may increase employment in their initial stages, will obviously become responsible for more unemployment as they become effective.

Palliatives like the Capital Levy—if they do what the Labour leaders surreptitiously tell the workers they will : take from the rich and give to the poor—will be resisted by the Capitalists to the last. The advocates of the Capital Levy, Labour and Liberal, however, have yet to prove that it would benefit the workers. Their next job is to convert the employing class.

For many years Labour leaders have urged the necessity of higher wages both from the employers’ and the workers’ view-points. Mr. J. A. Hobson, in the New Leader, June 20, declares that the remedy for unemployment is along this line. “All wealth not required as new capital, if spent, would give full employment. The workers must have wages sufficiently high to buy up the goods they produce when fully employed.”

Most workers would willingly agree ; but, unfortunately, Mr. Hobson does not tell us how to obtain such wages. There is not the ghost of a suggestion throughout the article whether the workers should strike for them, or whether the employers should freely give, after recognising the probability of big returns. He simply ignores these questions and merely tells us that if everybody had enough money to buy all they wanted after working, unemployment would vanish. He says, for instance :—

  “It is not true, as is sometimes urged, that there does not exist at any time enough purchasing power to buy and consume everything that is, or can be produced. For everything produced belongs to somebody, that is to say, somebody has the right to take and consume it, or its equivalent in other sorts of wealth. If everybody went on using all the income he received in purchasing consumable goods and services, as fast as possible, there would be no unemployment. But there would also be no provision for industrial enlargement to meet the rising demands of an increasing population.”

Now, the workers spend practically all their income on necessaries. The Capitalists, in their various concerns, set on one side the sums necessary for replacement and enlargement before declaring dividends, or calling for new capital. If they live up to their incomes, or invest a portion as new capital, matters but little, it is spent anyway; and spent “as fast as possible” and capital is always forthcoming for any concerns that promise dividends.

In spite of all this spending, wealth that cannot be used as capital increases in quantity in the hands of the employing class.

Mr. Hobson knows this quite well, for he says :—

  “A great deal of wealth cannot get produced because, if it were produced, it could not get consumed. Why? Because there is not enough purchasing power in the possession of those who would desire to consume these goods.”

A relatively small section of the working-class with modern methods and machinery, working at full pressure, can choke the world’s markets in a very short time. Who is to buy the goods? If the Capitalists buy them in order to keep the workers employed their action would be no more stupid than paying extra wages that their workers might buy them. From their point of view it would be more sensible to increase the dole.

If Mr. Hobson wishes to deal with unemployment, he must take things as he finds them. There is no escaping the fact that the employers, as a class, are solely concerned with preserving their present domination over the workers for the purpose of continuing their exploitation. Higher wages would undoubtedly temporarily improve conditions for the workers, but how are they to get them? Capitalists are too careful to allow Mr. Hobson to persuade them that the payment of higher wages would bring them more business. They are clever enough to stop production, or ease up, at the first signs of congestion. But they have not yet arrived at a stage where they can eliminate all competition and fix prices and wages at a level which would guarantee to them a definite proportion of the wealth produced. If they ever arrive at such a stage it is obvious that high or low wages will mean nothing to the workers because prices could be adjusted to any level in accordance with the old standard of living.

There is no form of industrial organisation that could raise wages to the level Mr. Hobson’s ideas would require. The employing class will only raise wages under pressure or necessity : pressure from the workers—where they have the power—or the indisputable necessity of raising the standard of living to produce greater efficiency. For these reasons Mr. Hobson’s remedy is impossible of application and, therefore, scarcely worthy of discussion in other respects. With every reform, brought to their notice by politicians of every school, the worker should always ask himself the question : will it work?

F. Foan

Common Nonsense about Socialism. (1924)

Book Review from the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The Common Sense of Socialism,” Alban Gordon. Labour Publishing Co. 120 pages. 1/-.

This book is written for the purpose of winning the support of the “Middle and well-to-do classes” for the programme of the Labour Party. The author explains that his party “stands for Socialism” . . . but not now! They “totally deny its practicability either now or for generations to come” (94), but if the vulgar mob will be patient they may see Capitalism at an end possibly a century or more ahead” (65). For the present Mr. Gordon has some suggestions to make for the better running of the Capitalist system and, incidentally, for the improvement of the sad lot of the Capitalist class. There may even be some, crumbs for the workers if they are humble, and will duly observe the gulf between them and the “intellectuals” who are going to “control” at suitably attractive salaries.

Mr. Gordon is one of those “Socialists” whose fear of the workers is much greater than their hatred of Capitalism, and his anxiety not to offend members of the exploiting class leads him into some curious assertions. Communism he loathes because of its advocacy of violence, and Pacifism, the refusal to advocate violence, he also loathes, but does not say why.

In re-stating the simple economic case against Capitalism he is good. He describes clearly, though without originality, the poverty and wretchedness the system provides for the great majority. He shows its chaotic inefficiency as a wealth-producing, as distinct from a profit-producing system, and illustrates the parasitic nature of the propertied class.

He quotes a useful exposure of the odious intensified slavery which Ford disguises as philanthropy :—

  “Men called ‘advisers’ visit the men’s homes and question them as to how they spend their wages. Ford has fixed the amount out of their wages that he thinks they should spend and save. He provides them with what his experts tell him is the most hygienic food for them to eat; and the best clothes for them to wear. . . . There is no more romance or real independence in the lives of the 55,000 men employed in the factories than in that of a thorough-bred Jersey cow.” (83).

But when he leaves the description of facts and attempts to supply remedies and state principles he is merely muddled.

He is emphatic that “Socialism is NOT the ‘have nots’ versus the ‘haves,’” and that it “does not propose to confiscate private property” (14), yet he recognises that “private ownership makes the rich richer and the poor poorer,” that “poverty is the direct logical outcome of Capitalism” (24) and that “two-thirds of the annual income …. goes to the small class of the rich” (22). He will not face the fact that the workers cannot obtain the whole of the annual income without depriving the idle class of the share they now receive, and that unless they do they will continue to be exploited. It is plain that the “haves” will resist and the “have-nots” will have to compel.

He repudiates Marx and the idea of a class war (pp.89 and 59) and is evidently quite unaware that the conflict which arises from the private ownership of the means of production is the class war. For on page 29 he writes :—

  “Such disputes (strikes) are an inherent feature of the capitalist system in which ‘capital’ and ‘labour’ are enemies instead of allies. So long as we permit the private ownership of capital by the few, so long will antagonism and private warfare as to the terms on which its owners will permit its use be the rule rather than the exception.”

His chief remedy is Nationalisation, and like most of his fellow advocates, he fails to point to any single advantage nationalisation has to offer the working class. Railway nationalisation will, it is true, permit of greater economy and efficiency ; but he omits to remind his readers of the 50,000. railwaymen dismissed between 1921 amd 1923 owing to working economies, in spite of an increase in the volume of traffic. (J. H. Thomas, Daily Chronicle, November 17, 1923.) Men are still being dismissed and more will follow if and when unified State Ownership is introduced. Nationalisation of the mines and electrification schemes will save 55 million tons of coal per annum, but nothing is said as to the fate of thousands of miners who will lose their chance of employment. It is interesting to notice that men are still being discharged from Woolwich Arsenal, a State concern.

His solution for unemployment is an intensive campaign for the sale of British goods in the Colonies or foreign countries (62) quite oblivious of the fact that it was precisely in order to extend foreign trade that the last war was fought. The problem was not solved either for victors or vanquished, and while Gordon babbles of capturing markets by the peaceful penetration of commercial travellers, his “anti-violence” party in office are busy strengthening the Navy and expanding the Air Force for the anticipated conflict with some other market snatchers.

He himself unconsciously damns the case for Nationalisation when he joyfully records that the Sankey Report urging Nationalisation of the Mines was the work of a body which

  “Included besides a well-known Judge, a steel manufacturer, Mr. (now Sir Arthur) Balfour, an engineer, Sir A. Duckham, and a shipowner, Sir Thomas Roydon, Brt.” (96).

He adds that it “was urged upon the Coal Commission of 1919 by the colliery owners as well as the miners’ representatives.”

Does anyone suppose that those members and representatives of the employing class want nationalisation because it will benefit the workers? They want it because it will benefit themselves, just as before the war the oil magnates of Germany were financing a Social Democratic agitation for the nationalising of the oil refining and distributing industry. Only last month a firm of Stockbrokers, Messrs. Arthur Wheeler & Co., of Leicester, were urging upon their clients the desirability of mine nationalisation from their point of view as shareholders. Their words are instructive :—

   “A short time ago, in conversation, a number of influential colliery proprietors brought up this question. . . . They were agreed that supposing it became practically possible, it would be the best thing possible for themselves. They actually looked forward to its realisation.

  Again and again past experience proves that when a Government department enters into a business agreement with private traders, the latter invariably get the best of the bargain. We, therefore, can assume the same would result if and when the Government took over the control of our mining industry.

  Colliery shareholders would receive from the purchaser (i.e., the State) new stock in place of their original holdings. The industry, would be guaranteed by the whole taxable capacity of the nation. Hence the new stock would be of the same nature as all gilt-edged stocks, with both capital and interest a Government obligation. The risks of labour troubles and foreign competition would be taken from the present shareholders and placed on the broad back of the State. This, in the main, is the reason why colliery proprietors do not fear nationalisation.”

Mr. Alban Gordon and the Labour Party wish to earn the confidence of the shareholding class, but that they can do only by sacrificing the interests of the workers.

Another joy they have in store for the property owner is the abolition of rates by the extension of municipal trade (116).

The book is a quite readable and interesting account of the Labour Party’s plans for salvaging Capitalism, but in spite of its title it has nothing to offer the seeker after Socialist knowledge. The author has the usual superiority of the “intellectual” offering to teach the “lower orders,” and his indifference to principles and his preference for everyday superficialities, are well illustrated by his note on Marx’s “Capital” that it is “The classic which everyone quotes but no-one reads.” Had he read this and other serious works by scientific thinkers he might have realised that what he seems to dismiss as the “earlier statements of Socialism” are in fact indispensable to the student. He would at least have avoided being 20 years out in his statement of the date of “Capital.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Capitalist education. (1924)

From the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the employer is only interested in the worker as a factor in production, as an economic category he is indifferent to all else about the worker save his cheapness, efficiency and docility. Anything that tends to weaken or decrease these qualities naturally meets with the determined opposition of the Capitalist class, while all that makes the worker cheaper, more productive and more contented with his lot as a wage-slave is eagerly welcomed and actively supported.

Consider, in the light of these facts, the compulsory “education” to which all workers are subjected. It is a vital necessity of modern production and arises from two essential needs of the system : on the one hand the urgent call for a productive class able to read, write and calculate and with a general understanding of mechanical causation; on the other hand the necessity of this working class being trained in the ethics, economies and other ideas of the Capitalist.

A circular on education was recently drawn upm by that stronghold of English Capitalism—The Federation of British Industries—which holds in its company the wealthiest and most powerful of the bourgeoisie of the country.

Referring to this circular Mr. J. L. Paton, High Master of the Manchester Grammar School, said in his address on education to Manchester business men :—

  “The Federation had suggested that all that was needed was a system of selection by which some children would go to industry and some would be "creamed off." The Federation further said that to give further education, even part time, after the age of fourteen was a waste of money, and it strongly advised that in selecting children for higher education care should be taken (as in India) that higher education should not raise a large class of people whose education was unsuitable for the work they would eventually do.

  They were, Mr. Paton commented, to be educated, in fact, as instruments of production ; the potter for his pots, the spinner for his cotton. The workman was a tool who happened to be animated” (Manchester Guardian, June 24th, 1924).

Mr. Paton went on to criticise the views of the F.B.I. and from the Capitalist point of view his remarks were quite to the point. Such a narrowly industrial view of the correct education for wage-workers is obsolete and even dangerous. It only takes into account the economic factors of cheapness and efficiency. But the other vital factor—the docility of the slave class—is of at least equal importance at all times and, in a period of rapid social change and turmoil, is perhaps even more valuable. Hence Mr. Paton—with, of course, much humanitarian garnish—says :—

  “The Federation of British Industries had made up their minds, and they had made them up wrong. Here was a working man, unskilled perhaps; it was not necessary to be very well educated to do unskilled work. But he was a husband, and that was a skilled job, a father, a citizen, an Englishman, and a child of God.” (Ibid).

The worker then is to be given lessons in physiology to enable him to produce a strong, healthy progeny of slaves, Capitalist economics and sociology to make of him a contented “citizen” and upholder of the existing order, patriotic dope and distorted “history” to make him ready and willing to go to the bloody battlefield on behalf of the Capitalist State and last and in these days least, barbaric myths from the Ancient Hebrew to cloud his mind and turn his thoughts towards the imaginary world to come and away from the pressing ever present evils and problems here at hand and all around him.

R.W. Housley

Debates and the I.L.P. (1924)

Party News from the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have recently been asked why we do not arrange a debate with the I.L.P., as branches of that organisation have both issued challenges and accepted them. As, however, it appeared that the I.L.P. headquarters were unwilling to endorse these challenges we approached them directly. Below is the reply of Mr. Fenner Brockway :—

1st July, 1924.

Dear Sir,

We have your letter and do not think that any useful purpose can be served by a debate which you suggest, and accordingly regret that we cannot accept your proposal.

Sincerely yours,

A. Fenner Brockway.

Secretary.

He does not explain why no useful purpose would be served, but it is not difficult to suggest an explanation. I.L.P. Head Office is no doubt occupied with other matters. On the one hand the staff have just put in an impudent claim for trade union rates of pay, and on the other Mr. Brockway must be fully engaged defending and explaining away to the rank and file the actions of I.L.P. M.P.’s in the Government and in the House. There are limits to everything, even possibly to the gullibility of the members of the I.L.P. and the adaptability of the non-conformist conscience.

With his subtlety taxed to the utmost trying to reconcile Pacificism with more cruisers, the enlarged Air Force, bombs in Irak, and shooting strikers in India, Mr. Brockway naturally has no time for Socialism ; not even to oppose it in debate.

£1000 Fund. (1924)

Party News from the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The industrial crisis and its cause. (1924)

From the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “It is considered likely that unemployment will become a menace again next winter, as it was in the winter of 1921, unless industry brisks up meanwhile. As a matter of fact, grave doubts are being expressed as to whether periods of acute unemployment may not in future be as much a part of the economic system of the United States as they are in other industrial countries. It is pointed out that the increase in producing equipment has almost reached the point, where it is a hindrance rather than a help to an even flow of prosperity. The steel plants of the country and the shoe industries can produce twice as much output as the country can consume.

 “Similarly, textile mills, automobile factories, and various other branches of industry, have an output capacity far beyond the country’s powers of consumption. To keep these various industries going at maximum rates it is realised that considerable export outlets, which are at present not in evidence, would be necessary, and as the progress of manufacturing develops in other countries less industrialised than the United States is at present it is likely that there will be still less demand for the surplus products of American factories. This can only result eventually in a considerable lowering of the American standard of living, now reputed to be the highest in the world.”

The American Correspondent of The Manchester Guardian. (July 10, 1924.)

Marx on Free Trade. (1924)

From the August 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from June “S.S.”)

In 1829 there were, in Manchester, 1088 cotton spinners employed in 36 factories. In 1841 there were but 448, and they tended 53,353 more spindles than the 1088 spinners did in 1829. If manual labour had increased in the same proportion as productive force, the number of spinners ought to have risen to 1848; improved machinery had, therefore, deprived 1100 workers of employment.

We know beforehand the reply of the economists—the people thus thrown out of work will find other kinds of employment. Dr. Bowring did not fail to reproduce this argument at the Congress of Economists. But neither did he fail to contradict himself. In 1833, Dr. Bowring made a speech in the House of Commons upon the 50,000 hand-loom weavers of London who had been starving without being able to find that new kind of employment which the free traders hold out to them in the distance. Let us hear the most striking portion of this speech of Mr. Bowring :—

  “The misery of the hand-loom weavers,” he says, “is the inevitable fate of all kinds of labour which are easily acquired, and which may, at any moment, be replaced by less costly means. As in these cases competition amongst the work-people is very great, the slightest falling-off in demand brings on a crisis. The hand-loom weavers are, in a certain sense, placed on the borders of human existence. One step further, and that existence becomes impossible. The slightest shock is sufficient to throw them on to the road to ruin. By more and more superseding manual labour, the progress of mechanical science must bring on, during the period of transition, a deal of temporary suffering. National well-being cannot be bought except at the price of some individual evils. The advance of industry is achieved at the expense of those who lag behind, and of all discoveries that of the power-loom weighs most heavily upon the hand-loom weavers. In a great many articles formerly made by hand, the weaver has been placed hors de combat; and he is sure to be beaten in a good many more fabrics that are now made by hand.”

Further on he says:—

  “I hold in my hand a correspondence of the Governor-General with the East India Company. This correspondence is concerning the weavers of the Dacca district. The governor says in his letter: ‘A few years ago the East India Company received from six to eight million pieces of calico woven upon the looms of the country. The demand fell off gradually and was reduced to about a million pieces. At this moment it has almost entirely ceased. Moreover, in 1800, North America received from India nearly 800,000 pieces of cotton goods. In 1830 it did not take even 4000. Finally, in 1800 a million of pieces were shipped for Portugal; in 1830 Portugal did not receive above 20,000.’

  “The reports on the distress of the Indian weavers are terrible. And what is the origin of that distress? The presence on the market of English manufactures, the production of the same article by means of the power-loom. A great number of the weavers died of starvation; the remainder have gone over to other employment, and chiefly to field labour. Not to be able to change employment amounted to a sentence of death. And at this moment the Dacca district is crammed with English yarns and calicoes. The Dacca muslin, renowned all over the world for its beauty and firm texture, has also been eclipsed by the competition of English machinery. In the whole history of commerce, it would, perhaps, be difficult to find suffering equal to what these whole classes in India had to submit to.”

(To be continued)

Labour in the United States. (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Army of the Workless.

Glowing stories are current here of the prosperity in America. Work and high wages for all is the tale told by fly-by-night travellers. The facts, however, are quite different. The “boom” which began in 1923 is over, and many leading industries are working on “short” time and with reduced labour. The organ of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (“The Advance,” June 6, 1924) reports from the great centre of the clothing trade—Chicago—that for every 100 jobs available for the week ending April 5th, 1924, the numbers of workers registered at the Chicago Employment Exchange was 1,587, an increase of 200 over the last week in March.

The huge commercial concern in industrial America, The Stone and Webster Company, writing on conditions in the textile centre of Lawrence, Massachusetts states, in their official “Stone and Webster Journal” for April, that :—

  “the textile industry is in such a state that thousands of people who depend upon that industry for a livelihood are now out of employment. Many families and persons are now in dire want and the outlook is not encouraging.”

They warn the textile workers that they must take lower wages because people have “stopped buying as much in the way of clothes as formerly. Consequently a great unemployment problem was raised at Lawrence.” This is in an industry where about the lowest wages are paid in America, and these starvation rates have been obtained after the most bitter and bloody suppression of millworkers’ strikes in America’s history. Machinery, girl labour and the brutality of the employers have told their tale in Lawrence and the Fall River “she” towns. Starvation wages for a while and long periods of “no wages” makes the life of the worker.

The Present Depression.

America is no exception to the “laws” of capitalist production. The organ of finance, “The Wall Street Journal,” for April, analyses the situation thus :—

  “The fact is that for several years we have been going along smoothly filling out the post-war demand for sundries such as new housing, railroad equipment, automobiles and many other essentials and non-essentials. That demand has to an appreciable extent been satisfied.

  The first point to consider is our manufacturing equipment. On this score there can be no question that in many lines we have too much capacity of production for the demand at hand. Ever since the war it has been a great problem to keep our plants fully and profitably occupied.”

It goes on to state that, without a large foreign market, the highly productive industrial resources become an incubus. The article shows that in all the basic industries demand has greatly declined and will decline further. Production has decreased considerably.

In the “Golden West” the same “slump” has taken place. The Bay Counties (San Francisco, etc.) District Council of Carpenters issues a bulletin for May, which states :—

  “Our unemployment situation, which was large enough throughout the winter, is growing steadily worse. Building operations are being curtailed or postponed, mechanics are being laid off, and are walking the streets with their ranks steadily increasing by the influx of men from other localities looking for work.”

This is in the largest shipping and financial centre of California. The same conditions exist in other centres. The motor-car industry centred in Detroit (a city of over a million people) has piled up production so rapidly since the factories re-opened in 1922 that large vacant plots had to be used to store the cars. Rapid production with a non-expanding market has resulted in a large and growing number of men being thrown out of work, with others on short time. Wall Street capital organised in the “General Motors Combine” and Ford’s practically control the trade, and when they reduce output there is no chance for work elsewhere.

“The Land of Opportunity.”

“Every man has a chance” is a common joke in the U.S.A. The workers’ chance may be gathered from the Report of the Industrial Relations Commission of 1916 which stated that 2 per cent. of the people owned 60 per cent. of the wealth. The control of wealth by the few was made plainer still by this Commission appointed by the Government. Their report states:—

  “With few exceptions each of the basic industries is dominated by a single large corporation, and where this is not true, the control of the industry through stock ownership in supposedly independent corporations and through credit, is almost, if not quite, as potent.

  In such corporations, in spite of the large number of stockholders, the control through actual stock ownership rests with a very small number of persons. For example, in the United States Steel Corporation, which had in 1911 approximately 100,000 stockholders, 1.5 per cent. of the stockholders held 57 per cent. of the stock, while the final control rested with a single private banking house. Similarly in the American Tobacco Company, before the dissolution, 10 stockholders held 60 per cent. of the stock.”

Since 1916, Henry H. Klein, Deputy Commissioner of Accounts of New York City, has written his volume of statistics, called “Dynastic America and Those Who Own It.” In this he shows how the industries of the country are owned and controlled by very few. He names 14 families whose wealth is estimated at 100 millions each, and points out in detail how the financial magnates own a controlling share of the stock of the concerns of the country. The same kind of concentration takes place in agriculture. Senator Brookhart stated in the Senate that 400,000 lost their farms in 1923.

The Economic Trend.

The result of advancing capitalism in America has been the replacement of competition by monopoly. The great capitals invested have enabled the capitalists to build huge plants with the latest machinery and under the most scientific running of industry. There is no chance for the worker starting for himself in industry. The so-called high wages in America, often quoted here, are in reality “high” only in money terms. Their purchasing power is only sufficient to cover the cost of living in a country where rent takes a large part of the wage. The necessities of life are also proportionately “high.” These “high” wages are little when compared to the ever-increasing output of labour, and the high degree of exploitation accounts for the fabulous riches of the employing class. Work there is intensive, and under the Taylor system of shop management, the speed is always increasing. Young men are chiefly recruited, for the older men are “worked out” very soon. Piecework, with its exhausting effects, is widespread, and as soon as output increases, rates per piece are reduced. The speed of modern production is so great that in a short time the market is glutted with goods. In 1921 there were over 6 millions out of work. In the short period since work started again, modern highly-developed methods have once more overstocked the market, and thus the spectre of unemplovment becomes a grim reality. Even when trade is brisk only a fraction of the working class is required in production, and the others are driven to all kinds of commercial pursuits. In this department, too, the Trusts by their close ownership and control, save wages by reducing the number of men required. “Crime” becomes a resort of large numbers who are pushed out of industry, and crimes against private property have become so numerous that they cease to be fully reported. The labour of women, especially married women, is largely used because of its cheapness, and the use of child labour is another powerful force against the worker. “Prosperity” spells little but hard work for our class in the U.S.A. as elsewhere.

The Workers’ “Share.”

The story that most workers own their own houses and their own motor cars is another study in satire. The terrible overcrowding of trams and trains during rush hours is an answer to the motor-car nonsense, and the fact that most workers live in hired rooms answers the “house-owner’s” joke. Even when they do “own” houses they are bought on instalments, and the owner soon seizes his property when “depression” stops the workers’ wages. Most workers’ houses, too, are wooden shacks of a primitive variety. Considering, too, that the secondhand and even new cars the workers buy on instalments are not much higher in price than bicycles here, it does not mean much to be a car “owner.” The expensive limousines and high-priced cars used by the parasites there make the workers’ cars look like tin cans. Life in the U.S.A. shows that, wherever capitalism develops further, it makes a greater contrast in the position of the worker and the capitalist.

When an industrial crisis takes place, as in 1921, the secondhand car dealers are flooded with cars which the “lucky” workers have to sell. The charity societies are packed with applicants clamouring for bread, and outside bakers’ shops long lines form to get a crust. The ranks of prostitution are swelled, and the great numbers involved in the crisis prevent personal borrowing. As soon as the factories re-open the capitalist cuts wages, knowing the large army of workless waiting for jobs. War is declared on unions and strikes are doomed.

“The Socialist Party of America.”

The trade unions in the U.S.A. are largely composed of loyal followers of the Republican and Democratic Capitalist Parties. Sheep-like they blindly elect the nominees of the financial interests, and they support the most servile agents of capitalism as their union leaders. The powerful and widely-read capitalist press carefully moulds the workers’ minds, and the result is that educational work in the trade unions is carried on under difficulties. Little of this Socialist work is now being attempted, however.

“The Socialist Party of America,” formed 24 years ago, has rapidly declined in numbers. Boasting over 100,000 members in 1916, it has to-day not more than 20,000. More than two-thirds of their members were expelled in 1919, and since that date the “Socialist Party” has become so opportunist and reformist that they promoted a Labour Party and joined in conferences of the Committee for Progressive Political Action, whose object is to decide which capitalist politician is most suitable to vote for. Even with all their vote-catching and time-serving methods, their numbers have disappointed them so sadly that quite a number have joined more popular bodies where jobs and notoriety are quicker.

The Socialist Labour Party.

The oldest party in U.S.A. claiming to be Socialist is the Socialist Labour Party. Once very active and advancing, it rapidly declined when it promoted Industrial Unionism. The I.W.W. was formed by S.L.P. efforts on the theory that only economic unity can make political unity. The economic organisation, however, caused immediate conflict in the political party. The theory that only an economic body can “take and hold” the means of production which the S.L.P. laid down, resulted in the I.W.W. being anti-political. Wm. Haywood and a majority of the I.W.W. soon repudiated all ideas of political unity, and the S.L.P. minority formed a new I.W.W. which later changed its name to the Workers’ International Industrial Union. This body still insisted that economic action alone could make the workers victorious. The result was that the. S.L.P. dwindled, until to-day it is a shadow of its former self. The W.I.I.U. refused continually to endorse the political party (the S.L.P.).

The economic organisation of men of all parties and all ideas instead of making for political unity with the S.L.P. caused the S.L.P. members in the union to fraternise with political opponents such as the S. P. of A. The S.L.P. was soon, therefore, driven to expel many of their oldest members, such as Herman Richter, Rudolph Katz, etc. The disbanding of the W.I.I.U., reported elsewhere in this issue, admits all that our party has said in criticism of the S.L.P. But the confusing ideas about the relative value of political and industrial action still exists in the minds of the S.L.P. members, and therefore a correct understanding of the class struggle is still lacking.

The Industrial Workers of the World.

The I.W.W. to-day is but a fraction compared to the 100,000 they once claimed. Although supposed to be revolutionary, it has been compelled to enrol any worker, irrespective of his views. Functioning to-day as a trade union, it is organised for the every-day struggle about wages and hours. Their chief cry is organisation. “Organise on the job” they say, for better conditions. Their war-cry of the General Strike has long been absent from their literature and their official organ, “The Industrial Worker” (September 29, 1919) published the following farewell to their General Strike battle-cry :—

  “It must be apparent to anyone who has given any thought to the matter that a social general strike as the culminating point in the revolution will fail if it ever happens. . . The workers must organise, not so much for a strike, as for carrying on production and distribution, after capitalism has been overthrown. The trouble perhaps with those who formulated the general strike theory, is that they could not free themselves from the dogma that capitalism was to be overthrown by establishing a tremendous picket line around the industries. They rejected craft unionism but couldn’t lose its methods.”

This was written after large numbers of Haywood’s pamphlet on the “General Strike” had been circulated by the I.W.W. This pamphlet has been withdrawn now that they have given up the General Strike idea. Sabotage, which they formerly advocated (see Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s “Sabotage”), they have now publicly repudiated. Their papers and lectures largely consist of appeals for help in defence funds which have become almost an industry in America. Their past reputation for “Smashing the ballot box with an axe” and their spasmodic strikes have resulted in many prosecutions for “Criminal Syndicalism.” The attacks upon the trade union activity of the I.W.W. simply shows the brutality and power of the ruling class in America. The bloody attacks upon American Federation of Labour strikers in West Virginia coalfields and in the steel areas shows that even “respectable” unions are crushed in blood once they resist the employers’ attacks on wages. The I.W.W. to-day is confined to limited areas where the American Federation of Labour is weak. The attacks upon them from the outside and the deliberate Communist effort to break it from within have left the organisation but a few thousand members. Nearly all the prominent men from W. Haywood to G. Hardy have gone into politics and secured jobs from the Communists. The Moscow International once declared its admiration and support of the I.W.W., but later decided that “One Big Unions” are to be opposed and workers should go back to the ordinary labour unions. Hence the disruptive tactics of the Communists in the I.W.W.

The Communist Party of America.

This party was formed by foreign language federations who were expelled from the Socialist Party of America. Largely of Russian and allied nationality, they soon showed their 100 per cent. Bolshevism by issuing a programme similar to that the Bolsheviks issued under completely different conditions. In a country where the outlook of the workers is conservative and where the elementary work of preaching Socialism remains to be done, the International Secretary of the Communists, Louis Fraina, explained the Communist idea thus :

  “The Revolution is an act of a minority at first; of the most class conscious section of the industrial proletariat which in a test of electoral strength, would be a minority, but which being a solid, industrially indispensable class, can disperse and defeat all the classes through the annihilation of the fraudulent democracy of the Parliamentary system implied in the dictatorship of the proletariat, imposed upon society by means of revolutionary mass action.” (Revolutionary Socialism).

The Communist Party refused to take any part in the first elections after they were formed, regarding them as a delusion. Their manifesto advocating armed force and minority action resulted in suppression by the Government. Through adopting such a programme they drove themselves underground into a secret society in which police spies played an active part. The Communists thought the revolution was just around the corner, and they foolishly announced (The Communist, No. 16) : “The day of theorising on the necessity of the revolution is past,” and they went on to preach the rule of the few in the organ of the United Communist Party thus :

  “Furthermore, it is impossible to reach and convert the great mass of the workers. Their minds are controlled by the corrupt capitalist press ; their education takes place primarily in capitalist institutions; the capitalist State has the power to close the doors of any proletarian school. This precludes the possibility of reaching and turning to Communism the mass of the workers. (Communist No. 16.)

“The Workers’ Party of America.”

When Moscow decided for legal parties, the Communists emerged into daylight and rapidly changed from a party advocating a “revolutionary upsurge” to the most reformist and opportunist party ever calling itself Communist. They decided soon to disband the Communist Party and form themselves into a vote-catching body called The Workers’ Party. The decisions of the Third International for a “United Front” of all parties and a reform programme resulted in the “minority mass-actionists” putting up candidates like Rose Pastor Stokes with demands like these:

1. Emergency legislation to combat and stop the reduction of wages.
2. Emergency legislation for the relief and amelioration of the condition of the unemployed.

Under instructions from Moscow International their members went into the unions to oust the old leaders. In this work they bargained for positions and supported reactionaries in return for support of their candidatures in the union. The Daily Worker (April 12th, 1924), their official paper, contains some revelations of their class struggle activities on the side of the capitalists. In Michigan their members are prominent in the American Federation of Labour, and have been active in support of Republican and Democratic politicians. This has gone so far that, when told by the Executive of the Workers’ Party to start a Farmer-Labour Party, their members and District Executive, anxious to “keep in” with their fellow office-holders in the A.F. of L., answered they could not fight the candidature of Baker, Republican Candidate for Governor, whom they had previously supported :

  “A decision to fight his candidacy would involve us in a fight with the trade union leaders. But regardless of our possible decision to make this candidacy an issue later on, it is the opinion of the minority that nothing should be done now to provoke a fight.” (Daily Worker, April 12th, 1924).

The party still continues its downward course. They entered the Farmer-Labour Conference at St. Paul (June 17th, 1924), where it was expected that Senator La Follette, Republican, would be nominated for the Presidency of U.S.A.

The Workers’ Party Executive defend their action in the Daily Worker (April 12th, 1924), where the spokesman for the majority of the E.C. produced this reactionary statement: “This step of supporting the candidates of a petty bourgeois liberal Third Party, under the conditions laid down in the thesis of the Central Committee, is a correct one.”

This party of political gymnasts, it is only necessary to add, is affiliated to the Third International !

The Proletarian Party.

Elements of the Socialist Party which differed with the reform and opportunism of the Socialist Party of America formed the Proletarian Party, after the Russian Federations rejected their programme for the Communist Party at the inaugural conference.

The Proletarian Party accepts the Statutes and Thesis of the Third International, and “unreservedly endorses” the twenty-one points of admission. They claim to be Marxians, and conduct many study classes in economics, but their attempt to be Bolsheviks of the Third International and Marxians at the same time involves them in a good deal of confusion. The “united front” policy led them to send delegates to the Farmer-Labour Conference at Chicago, and the Theses of the Moscow International on reforms or immediate demands makes them hesitant about adopting a revolutionary attitude. Their delegate to the Third Congress at Moscow was expelled recently from the Proletarian Party for supporting capitalist candidates, but only after this had been going on for years and had been brought to a head by protests of new members.

The Socialist Educational Societies.

Amidst this confusion and ignorance under the iron heel in America there are signs of promise in the growing study of Marx’s writings. Workers in the U.S.A., as a result of study of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, have seen the necessity of carrying on systematic Socialist education. In New York City and in Detroit there are bodies of students of Marx who, by conducting open-air meetings, study classes, and the spreading of sound literature, have earned themselves a wide reputation in the U.S.A., to say nothing of undying hatred by those who thrive upon the ignorance of the workers. The work of propaganda in America is hard. The abysmal ignorance of labour, the power of wealth, the poison of the Press, and the rise of mob law fostered by such millionaire-ruled bodies like the Ku-Klux-Klan, are some of the forces against us. And with the increasing number of so-called labour bodies like the Farmer-Labour Party and the Workers’ Party, our work is doubly hard.

Adolph Kohn

Editorial: The strike on the Underground. (1924)

Editorial from the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Representations had been made by the shopmen to the N.U.R. over a period of two years for action to be taken on their behalf.

The Strike Committee Statement,

Daily Herald, June 9th.

The strike of 7,000 men on the Underground Railways was “unofficial.” And the reason is given in the above quotation. Reduction of wages since the war caused the men to strike against the London Traffic Trust. The Press, the employers, and the National Union of Railwaymen united in denunciation of the men. Mr. Cramp, the Secretary of the N.U.R., says it was “mob law,” and advised the railway owners not to negotiate with the strikers. The union leaders were paraded by the Press as safe and sane, and commended for their strong stand. Continual orders were issued by the N.U.R., telling the men to return to work at once. Without strike pay, and with the employers, the Labour Government, and the Union arrayed against them, the men returned to work.

The Labour Government played its usual part of promising protection to those at work during the strike and to maintain the services if the strike spread. Here is the pledge given by the Labour Minister (Mr. Tom Shaw) in the House of Commons :

  “My answer is, ‘Yes, undoubtedly the fullest protection will be given to the men who work.’ The noble lord further wanted to know whether in the event of the dispute spreading and certain public utilities being threatened, the Government will maintain these public utilities. Again I answer quite as frankly that the Government will do all it possibly can to maintain the public utilities. When I say that I am speaking of food, lighting, water and power, the Government will do all it possibly can and will take every step possible to maintain all these essential services. There will be no question about the fullest possible authority being given to every department of Government to take the steps that I have said the Government are prepared to take, and I hope that the noble lord will admit that my answer has been as frank as he desired it to be.”—Official Parliamentary Debates, June 6th, page 1695.

Thus the strikers were awed into submission. The Secretary of the Strike Committee stated in the Daily Herald (June 9th) that he had received information that naval ratings would probably be introduced in the power stations. The capitalist Daily Mail also stated that, had the strike spread and the tube stations been forced to close, naval ratings would be used.

The electricians in some of the stations struck with the consent of their union, and the last night of the strike they had arranged to meet to consider withdrawing all men from the power stations. Instead of striking, they decided to remain at work. The reason given by the Secretary of the Electricians’ Union in the Daily Herald (June 13th) was that misapprehension existed in the public mind that the Craft Unions’ dispute was connected with the unofficial strike of the members of the N.U.R.

This is a very unconvincing reason, and after the Daily Herald’s announcement of the certainty of the power house stoppage it caused a good deal of surprise. But the Evening Standard (June 13th) representative has the following comment:

  “What influenced the Electrical Trades Union meeting as much as anything, I understand, was the hint which some of their leaders had received that the Government might take very firm measures, even to the length of using, naval ratings in the power houses. No actual decision to take this course had been made by the committee of Ministers, but there can be little doubt that it was expected last night by those present at the conference should the sub-station men be withdrawn.”

The companies issued a forty-eight hour ultimatum to the men to return to work or face dismissal, and threatened them with legal proceedings for breach of contract. The men returned to work within the time given.

The Strike Secretary stated after the strike :

  “Our masters have changed. We have been beaten not so much by the companies as by the National Union of Railwaymen.” Daily Herald, June 13th.

The length to which the Railway Union officials went in order to defeat the men is stated by one of the striking N.U.R. men :

  “The Central Strike Committee had their headquarters at the Labour College, Penywern Road. After being in there for some time, without trying to hide the fact, a letter was sent to the Governors of the College, from Unity House, asking them to throw the Strike Committee out, or else H.O. would withhold the Students’ fee, and the usual grant to the College.”—Workers’ Weekly, June 20th.

He states that the Labour College gave them a month’s notice. This throws a lurid light on the strike-smashing efforts of modern Labour leaders, and it also shows how much the vaunted independence of the labour colleges is worth.

The fact that the strike was largely unofficial has been used to excuse the Labour Government’s promise to protect those at work during the strike. This is sheer hypocrisy. During the recent official bus and tram strike the Labour Government prepared to use the Emergency Powers Act (see MacDonald’s statement, Parliamentary Debates, March 26th). They then had the Proclamation of a State of Emergency signed ready for publication.

The fact that during that strike they were prepared to carry on emergency services was admitted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Philip Snowden, who wrote :

  “Industrial troubles are causing the Labour Government a good deal of embarrassment. The strike of the London ’bus and tramway men threatened to develop into a stoppage of all the services on which the vast population of London have to depend for transport. Faced by such a possibility, as this the Government had no option but to take immediate steps either to bring the strike to an end, if that were possible, or to organise some kind of emergency service. It was a disagreeable situation for a Labour Government, but one which had to be faced. The Government had to avoid even the appearance of strike-breaking, but they had an obligation to maintain essential services on which the livelihood of the community depends.—Quoted in Parliamentary Debates, June 6th, 1924, page 1679.

This statement of Snowden’s was used by Conservatives in the House of Commons as a basis upon which action should be taken during the Underground strike.

The action of the union leaders should be a lesson for the men. But mere attacks on union leaders count for little. The rank and file have supported these leaders continually because they do not understand the class struggle in which they are engaged. “Loyalty to the leaders” has been a favourite rallying-cry of these highly paid officials, when loyalty to the interests of the working class should be the men’s watchword. No real advance will come in union activity until the workers know enough about their real interests and no longer, therefore, need to be led, until they insist on their officials carrying out their instructions. How futile it is merely to change leaders, is shown by the Communist who laments in the Workers’ Weekly (June 20th, 1924) that some years ago a minority agreed to work for Mr. Cramp to get him into the position of Industrial Secretary in order that the power and influence of Mr. J. H. Thomas “could be smashed.” As if the power of Thomas could be broken by electing a different official to act with Thomas ! The power of these leaders can only be broken when the rank and file themselves know enough to expose and oppose their betrayers. They thought Cramp was a revolutionary because he said, “I do not believe Parliament can do anything for the workers” (quoted same paper).

The limitation of strike action to win lasting advances is shown by all these recent strikes. The supremacy of the employing class, their financial strength, and the slender means of the workers all contribute to the defeat of the worker. The use of political machinery against them should show how necessary is its control, by a revolutionary working class. The support given by the railwaymen to the same Labour Party which works against them during strikes is another example of their lack of class-consciousness. And the bitter denunciation of the Labour Government and Labour leaders by the Communist Party during strikes is a ludicrous “joke,” Considering that the Communist Party tells the workers to vote this Government and these Labour leaders into power.

The fact that the workers have continually to struggle for the most miserable advances in wages, and even then seldom obtain them, should be a lesson to the workers not to establish a Labour Government carrying on Capitalism, but to abolish Capitalism and the wages system it involves.

£1000 Fund. (1924)

Party News from the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Answers to correspondents. (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

H. Monk (Edmonton). Your question is superfluous. Inside the cover of “Socialism and Religion” the New York Society state that they are not a political party.

Marx and his Work. (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Scottish land reformer, Dr. G. B. Clark, has once again displayed his hatred for Marx by writing lies in the columns of Forward. Dr. Clark, who for a period was treasurer of the Federal Council of the Old International, thinks he can impress upon his readers that he knows all about the history of the International. Dr. Clark’s worthless charges may be illustrated from his oft-repeated charge that Marx was lazy ! This is good, considering that even the worst capitalist critics of Marx have paid tribute to the monumental research and long painstaking efforts of the writer of those thousands of pages of economic science and Socialist theory. Marx worked as Leibnecht and Engels have told us night and day to scrape a living as well as produce the works which brought him scant reward in his lifetime.

This is how Dr. Clark now makes his own history of the Old International :—

  “Karl Marx had nothing to do with the inception of that association, and only joined it when he saw that it was going to be a success. The man who did the most to start it was Mazzini, and nearly all the preliminary work was done by his secretary, Wolff. When Karl Marx found that he could not control it, he did his best to kill it, and I regret to say that he was successful. It is now 52 years since its last Congress was held at The Hague, and two years later half-a-dozen people met in America and passed a resolution dissolving the association.”—(Forward, June 7th, 1921.)

No evidence is given by Dr. Clark for his statements. They recall very much the attacks made many years ago by the English Labour leader, George Howell, who was bitterly opposed by Marx because of Howell’s capitalist ideas. Marx’s answer to George Howell, the ex-member of the General Council of the International, is contained in The Secular Chronicle for August 4th, 1878. Marx’s reply is a complete answer to Dr. Clark’s point as to the founders of the International. Says Marx :—

  “I believe it worth while to illustrate by a few notes the most recent contribution—see the ‘Nineteenth Century’ of July last—to the extensive spurious literature of the International’s history, because its last expounder, Mr. George Howell, an ex-workman and ex-member of the General Council of that association, may erroneously be supposed to have drawn his wisdom from sources not generally accessible.

 

  “Mr. Howell sets about his ‘History’ by passing by the facts that, on September 28, 1864, I was present at the foundation meeting of the International, was there chosen a member of the provisional General Council, and soon after drew up the ‘Inaugural Address’ and the ‘General Statement’ of the association, first issued at London in 1864, then confirmed by the Geneva Congress of 1866.”

As to Mazzini every history of the International records the fact that the Constitution drawn up by Mazzini was rejected, and Marx was asked to write it, and did so. What success the International attained was so plainly the work of Marx and his supporters that whenever the International was attacked by the ruling class they denounced Marx as the moving spirit. See, for instance, the secret service agent, Onslow Yorke’s Secret History of the international. Did Marx try to kill it when he could not control it? Why was it dissolved? Gustav Jaeckh, in his “History of the International,” and Lessner in his “Sixty Years a Social Democrat,” also Susan Day in her history, all point out that the followers of Bakunin, the Anarchist, had made every effort to disrupt the International from within and make it adopt a policy fatal to working-class organisation. The tactics of these continental “force” advocates, and the general apathy which ensued amongst the workers after the fall of the Paris Commune, made it advisable to give up the International organisation for the time and leave it for economic development and ripening knowledge to make the workers more fitted to promote a worthy international body. The tactics of the Anarchists were an added factor to the opposition of servile labour leaders of the British unions who belonged to the International.

It was deemed advisable, therefore, at the time to hold the concluding congress far from the seat of the disruptive elements, and so the New York Congress passed the resolution of dissolution.

How farseeing Marx was in his opposition to the anarchist element was seen the year after the International disbanded. The followers of Bakunin, who formed the International Alliance, engineered a premature insurrection in Spain, which was crushed in blood. Engels’ pamphlets,”The Bakunist on Labour” and the “General Strike in Spain,” shows the danger of the anarchist element.

Dr. Clark has often pointed to the alleged unfounded accusations Marx made against Bakunin, but the publication of Bakunin’s “Confessions” recently in Russia showed Bakunin’s fawning subservience to the Czar of Russia, Alexander II, and justifies Marx. The bitterness of men like Dr. Clark against Marx shows their envy of his remarkable work and his growing world-wide reputation based upon it.

Marx, not Mazzini or Bakunin, is being studied to-day. His opponents in the International left behind them no writings or teachings which have lived or are worth studying.

Marx’s writings and ideas are the guide and inspiration of enlightened workers because they fit the facts of modern life.

Dr. Clark’s last point is the worst. He says that Marx’s principal theory “was propounded many years earlier by Thompson, who was Robert Owen's secretary.”

Every student of Marx knows how silly this is. Marx made Thompson known on the continent, and acknowledged the value of his work. In the appendix to the “Poverty of Philosophy” Marx deals with Thompson’s work, “The Inquiry into the Principles of Human Happiness” (1827), and shows that Thompson used terms such as surplus value, which are also used by Marx. But the scientific proof of surplus value and its analysis was the work of Marx. Thompson, who was farseeing for his time, was unable to escape from the effect of Owenite Utopianism. Marx and Engels gave Socialist theory a scientific basis.

Adolph Kohn

Blogger's Note:

This article was signed 'J.O.L.', which was a pen-name for Adolph Kohn. It was the initials for John O'London.

A will o’ the wisp. (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

The writer cannot resist the temptation to bring to the notice of readers of the “S.S.” the following tit-bit taken from the Weekly People (New York) of May 31st, 1924.

The extract is from the National Executive Report to the 16th National Convntion of the Socialist Labour Party of America:

  “The trouble experienced with the Workers’ International Industrial Union office definitely established the following facts :

1. That the W.I.I.U. is not even a propaganda league for Industrial Unionism. That it is a farce where it is not a tragedy, not merely because it is so very small, but above all because these members, or most of them, are already members of the S.L.P., and, accordingly, not even supplemental to the Party, as would naturally be the assumption of the uninitiated.
2. That in the present circumstances the existence of the W.I.I.U. at best is a useless and superfluous duplication of the S.L.P., serving no special function, adding nothing to the movement, either in membership or activity, serving instead as a drain on the financial resources of the Party membership and sympathisers.
3. That the W.I.I.U. has in the past been a source of friction and disturbances in the Party, having done much damage to the Party. And that it to-day is a positive menace to the Party, not merely because of the financial drain, but above all because the existence of the W.I.I.U, makes inevitable a division of loyalty (dual and potentially conflicting discipline) that would threaten the existence of an organisation many times stronger than the S.L.P.”

Is comment necessary?

Eric Boden

Socialism and Religion. (1924)

From the July 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bishop Montgomery Brown, the retired Bishop of Arkansas, U.S.A., a divine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, has been expelled from the Church for heresy. He is the author of “Communism and Christianism,” and the wide sale of this book has made him known far beyond the little town of Galion, Ohio, where he resides.

The Bishop came to write the book through reading the pamphlet issued by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, entitled “Socialism and Religion.” Amidst all the sentimental and superstitious writings published on this question in America, our pamphlet stood out as a unique and scientific declaration and commanded wide attention. The interest was so great that the last order from the “Socialist Party of Michigan” was for 1,000 copies, and it was due to this latter body that the Bishop obtained the pamphlet.

* * *

The best part of the Bishop’s book is the series of quotations from our party pamphlet. Nearly all the religious section of “Communism and Christianism” is unscientific, sentimental and confusing. Take the following : “Socialism is for me the one comprehensive term which is a synonym at once of morality, religion and Christianity” (p. 26). Then he says that Christianism “is a system of parasitism” (p. 31). He claims the same faith as Jesus, of whom he says, “his loyalty was to the truth and to the proletarian” (p. 25). Throughout the Bishop puts far-fetched meanings into Jesus’ words and makes a Christianity peculiar to himself. This is a quite common method amongst the “Christian Socialists” whom he condemns. He claims that Jesus taught that “it was the mission of Himself and disciples to establish a new heaven, that is, to remodel the Church, and new earth, that is to remodel the state; both remodellings being with reference to the service of humanity by enlightening its darkness and alleviating its misery here and now, rather than teaching it to look for light and happiness elsewhere and elsewhen” (p. 23). This must be some other Jesus personally known to the Bishop. The Jesus of Christianity, the Jesus of the New Testament, certainly gives no teaching about remodelling the State and enlightening the darkness. Jesus gave no social teaching. “Take no thought for the morrow,” “Resist not evil,” “Blessed are ye poor,” “Love your enemies,” and similar anti-working class notions are not instructions to remodel the State. So far from seeking happiness here, Jesus starts out with the supernatural, and it runs right through the New Testament. “My Kingdom is not of this world,” and “I go to my Father in heaven” is the spirit of the Book; the Socialist finds no message for him in the gospel of Jesus, from the beginning to the end. The Bishop admits this later where he says the “Gospel of Jesus” is “exclusively concerned with a celestial world” (p. 32).

This “rebuilding” of Jesus by the Bishop is dangerous to the workers. It is calculated to keep the workers on the side of religion by the false picture of Jesus and his alleged “Socialist” character. It is quite easy to understand how Bishop Brown remained within the Church and’ fought against his expulsion. Although he is an associate of the Rationalist Press Association, and a professed Evolutionist and self-styled “Marxian,” he understands these matters so little that it was possible to reconcile them with a Bishop’s position in the Episcopal Church. His muddled attitude went further, for he defended his position at the trial by claiming that the clergy did not literally accept the Bible, and that they had given up many orthodox dogmas. To attempt to compare the “modernizing” of Christianity with the materialism he claimed to hold, is a joke. The “reconciling” of ordination vows of a Bishop with the scientific and revolutionary attitude of our pamphlet on Socialism and Religion is a farce.

We differ therefore from the Labour and Communist Press in America, whose papers are very bitter against the Church for its expulsion of Bishop Brown. We affirm that the materialist and revolutionary nature of Socialism involves opposition to the Church and to Christianity. One who accepts the Socialist position, and realises therefore, the implications of its scientific basis, has no place as a member of the “holy” Church of Christianity. The superstition and submission taught by religion is in direct opposition to the philosophy of Socialism.

* * *

Our pamphlet was a bombshell to the professional politicians of the Social Reform parties. John M. Work, the secretary of the “S. P. of America,” tried to minimise its influence by saying the pamphlet was an irresponsible statement. The “Socialist Labour Party,” in reply to questions, continually answered in the words of De Leon that Religion was a private matter, and that a Socialist could hold any opinion he liked about the matter. And the I.W.W. in their leaflets repudiated being “anti-religious,” and said “members of the I.W.W. differ as much in their political and religious views as do members of any other organisation” (“The Labour Defender,” Dec. 1, 1918). The publication of dozens of pamphlets and books after the style of “Why a Christian should be a Socialist” and Bouck White’s “Call of the Carpenter” made our pamphlet a necessary antidote to this rubbish. The issues of an American edition by the Socialist Educational Society of New York a few months ago is therefore very welcome, being made more necessary than ever by the distorted edition issued by an enterprising orator who used its covers to advertise his spiritualist writings.

* * *

Mr. John Spargo, who until 1916 was a highly-paid lecturer for the “S.P. of America,” devoted a good deal of attention to our pamphlet in his book “Marxian Socialism and Religion.” He tries to answer us by saying that Marx was a deeply spiritual man, and that the materialist conception of history was not intended by Marx to be applied as we have done. He quotes part of F. Engels’ letters to attempt to show there are spiritual driving forces in history, but the publication of the complete letters in “The Socialist Standard” showed that Mr. Spargo was relying upon the awful ignorance of his dupes and followers in the alleged Socialist Party of America. Spargo knew better than he wrote, as can be seen from the columns of “The Comrade” of New York, for the period in which he edited that paper. His statements of the conflict between Socialism and Religion have been quoted in all the American textbooks for anti-Socialist speakers.

In Great Britain to-day the Socialist Party of Great Britain is still the only party which declares the truth about Socialism and Religion. The parties which seek numbers at the expense of principle are busier than ever preaching all things to all men, and trying to repudiate the charge that Socialism is opposed to Religion. From the Protestant George Lansbury, M.P., to the Catholic, John Wheatley, M.P., the gospel of Jesus is used to swell the ranks of the so-called Labour Parties. The pandering to the ignorance of the masses in order to get votes can find no place in a party working for Socialism. Socialists must rid the workers’ minds of their superstitions, religious, economic and political, in order to develop that scientific and revolutionary outlook upon life without which Socialism is impossible. We are not disturbed, therefore, to see that the organ of the British Empire Union—the “Empire Record” (June, 1924)—devotes much space to our pamphlet as an exposure of Socialist hostility towards religion. We take our stand upon the scientific truths of Socialism, regardless of the opposition from fool or knave. The “Empire Record” says: “These Socialists scorn the view that any moral or spiritual reforms are first needed in man himself.” Spiritual reforms are then still required after 2000 years of Christianity ! His talk about moral reform by those who support a system which results in moral degradation is a joke. And moral reform talk by the Empire Builders who shouted in 1914 for “war to the knife” is not a joke. For the preachers of “hate” in 1914 it is evidently a personal question. No wonder the “Empire Record” heads the paragraph from which we quote, “The decalogue out of date.”

* * *

“Communist” politicians anxious to “get in” are careful to dodge the question of religion. At Kelvingrove Bye-Election, where Ferguson ran under Labour Party auspices, a complaint was made that some orator attacked religion. The Communist paper “The Worker” (June 7th, 1924), says: “We cannot say we heard of any Communist orator attacking religion as mentioned by the special correspondent.” It further states that “it is absurd to suggest that Communist speakers generally attacked religion.” The same dodging of the materialist nature of Socialism was made by the Catholic Francis Meynell when editor of the “Communist,” who answered an enquirer by stating that while the logical person must recognise the conflict between Socialism and Religion, logical people are as rare as white blackbirds. This is an evasion of the subject, and is typical of Jesuitical methods.

* * *

In Ireland, where asylum attendants have been on strike some time, the strikers have issued leaflets using the Pope’s “message” in their support. This message is a quotation from the Encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII on “The Condition of the Working Classes” in 1891. The quotation opens thus:—

  “Religion teaches the wealthy owner and employer that their workpeople are not to be accounted their bondsmen,” and it goes on to exhort the rich to give the workpeople “a fair wage.” The strikers follow the quotation with the slogan, “Labour demands justice.” These good Catholic strikers fail to see that the same letter of the Pope can be quoted with greater force by the employers. For Pope Leo says : 

  “Thus religion teaches the labouring man and artisan to carry out honestly and fairly all equitable agreements freely entered into; never to injure the property nor to outrage the person of an employer, never to resort to violence in defending their own cause nor to engage in riot or disorder.”

The employers could quite easily quote the Encyclical letter of the recent Pope Benedict XV (1914) entitled “Ad Beatissimi,” an extract, from which is the following :—-

  “The second cause of the general unrest we declared to be the absence of respect for the authority of those who exercise ruling. Ever since the source of human powers has been sought apart from God the Creator and Ruler of the Universe, in the free will of men, the bonds of duty which should exist between superior and inferior have been so weakened as almost to have ceased to exist. The unrestricted striving after independence together with overweening pride has little by little found its way everywhere; it has not even spared the home although the natural origin of the ruling power is as clear as the noonday sun; nay, more deplorable still is has not stopped at the steps of the sanctuary. Hence comes contempt for laws, insubordination of the masses and wanton criticism of orders issued, hence innumerable cases of undermining authority. . . .

‘There is no power but from God and those that are, are ordained of God.’”

* * *

The increasing indifference of the workers to religion is shown by the speech of the Rev. E. W. Sara, Director of the Bishop of London’s Sunday School Council. The Times reports his speech to the Church of England's Men’s Society at Bradford

  “Mr. Sara described the present-day drift away from organised religion as ‘an appalling leakage.’ It constituted a grave challenge to the Church. While Churchmen continued to think chiefly of the respectable few in the front pews, the young people were being lost. In the London diocese alone 16,000 boys and girls had been lost from Bible classes since the war, 16,000 from the Church Lads’ Brigade, nearly 4,000 from the Girls’ Friendly Society, and 8,000 from the senior Bands of Hope. Those figures were typical of the whole country. There were 3,000,000 lapsed communicants, of whom the London Diocese alone counted 300,000.”

The decay of religion amongst workers of the Hebrew race has caused much uneasiness to the clergy. Professor C. G. Montefiore in his “Judiasm and Democracy” states that:

  “There is a considerable section of the Jewish proletariat. which is out of sympathy with the Jewish religion, or, indeed, with religion generally, and at all. This estrangement from religion is mainly true as regards one particular section of Jewish democracy, namely, the social democrats or socialists. . . . They are inclined to be opposed to everything which has been a comfort to, and has been held dear by, the upper class, the bourgeoisie.”

The Professor has to make this confession about religion :—

  “It has bidden people be obedient to their rulers and their kings, obedient and subservient. The book of proverbs, for instance, encourages submission to, and fear of, the constituted authority. A King is the Lord’s Anointed. Religion has devised a sort of hierarchy from the authority of fallible and visible men to the authority of an infallible and invisible God. It has entered, as I have said, into an understanding with the great ones of the earth. In return for their support and acknowledgment it has buttered and buttressed them up in their greatness and their privileges.”

This lecturer of the Jewish Religious Union justifies all we say of the function of religion in the class struggle. It is the agent of class domination.

W. Edgar

"Socialism and Religion."

The Socialist Educational Society of New York have, by permission of the S.P.G.B. reprinted the above pamphlet. The S.P.G.B. are the sole agents for the pamphlet in this country, and copies can be obtained from Head Office at 5d. each, postage 1d. extra, special terms for quantities.

Blogger's Note:

There's no mention of a W. Edgar in the membership records, and what with it being such an exhaustive and detailed article, it does make me think that it might be a regular writer writing under another pen-name. What with the reference to John Spargo and his journalistic work in New York, it does suggest that 'W. Edgar'  might have been Adolph Kohn. Kohn lived in the United States for a number of years during the First World War and its immediate aftermath, and had an in-depth knowledge of the American radical scene. It's also the case that Kohn was already over-represented in this issue of the Socialist Standard (he has at least three articles in this issue elsewhere), so it might have been the case that he employed yet another pen-name for this article, so it wouldn't be seen as a 'Adolph Kohn' issue.

Just a thought. 

On looking ahead. (1924)

From the June 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism is not a cult, a creed or a fad. It is not a new religion. Socialism is the greatest idea the human mind has ever conceived. In the light of its teaching the march of human progress has barely begun. Mankind is still in its swaddling clothes. History, so far, has been the record of its blind gropings after something—it knows not what. Whatever progress has been achieved has been mainly consequential, rather than intentional. It has often been gained in spite of its originators. Few have been the men of vision who could see ten years ahead. And after all, could one reasonably expect it? The necessity of providing for his creature needs has left man little time for looking far ahead. The future was thus early the happy hunting ground of the prophet and seer. One could not expect primitive man, for instance, to have foreseen all the consequences of the discovery of fire. This, perhaps the most momentous of man’s discoveries, at once differentiated him from the brutes and made civilisation possible. Think of the thousands of things, for the production of which we depend upon fire, and you must agree that human society is almost inconceivable without it. And yet there must have been some sort of human society which knew it not: Is it to be wondered at that for centuries fire was an object of worship? That man ascribed his knowledge of it to the direct interposition of the Gods ! Without going into the question of its probable origin, one which must always remain obscure, we can readily agree that primitive man could have had no conception whatever of its consequences.

Similarly, with the other great discoveries of mankind; the domestication of animals; smelting of metals ; steam ; gunpowder ; electricity ; optics ; few or none could see their ultimate effect upon human society. Yet how profound has been each one. Each, doubtless even the earliest, has been met with derision, scoffing and prejudiced opposition. But they have conquered, and the ideas and institutions of mankind have been re-moulded. Many of us remember the hoots and boos that greeted the early riders of the bicycle; the guffaws that welcomed the first pneumatic tyres; the sniggers that assailed the first motor-cars; the sneers and newspaper cartoons that accompanied the first aviators. But they have arrived—they have “made good.”

These have been material things. Things that could be handled, felt, seen, experienced. Why, then, this antipathy to anything new? Why this antagonism to anything out of the ordinary? Precisely for that reason. Because it is out of the ordinary.

Man is a lazy animal, a slave of habit and convention. Anything that shakes his complacency or interferes with his established habits is at first distasteful. He also a curious, inquisitive animal, a trait he shares with his simian cousins. His curiosity often conquers his inertia. Fortunately human society is leavened with a sprinkling of individuals whose curiosity is insatiable, whose thirst for the eternal “why” is unquenchable. Who are not satisfied with the humdrum, the conventional and the superficial? These are they who make their neighbours uncomfortable. Who shake their complacency, and their tendency to take everything for granted, eternal and unalterable. That is why they are at first not popular. One of the results of universal education has been to increase the number of these enquiring souls, and the printing press has developed the means of meeting their needs (one reason why you should push The Socialist Standard). Neither of these results were foreseen by either those who inaugurated universal education, or the inventors of printing. Similarly with the discovery of steam and its application to industry. None could see that its outcome would be the world of to-day. That is what we meant when we said earlier “progress has been consequential, rather than intentional.” Mankind has got on with the job that was nearest and left the future to look after itself. That is why the world is very far from ideal. That is why current history is a groaning, rumbling, creaking progression, punctuated by catastrophies.

Most people’s view of the next ten years is that things will be much the same then as now. “Perhaps the foreman will die, and I shall get his job” sums up the philosophy of a great many, poor simple souls. Death takes “hands” as well as foremen, and what are you going to do with your life. Life is the thing that matters. How are you spending it? Poor? Of course ! Unemployed? No! And still poor? Yes! damned poor. Then what’s wrong? This is where those enquiring, inquisitive people come in. This is where the Socialist gives evidence. Why with all those great powers and discoveries at mankind’s disposal should there be any who are poor and unhappy? Why with all the evidence of stupendous wealth around us, should there be any who suffer want, hunger and privation? Yet there are millions! Surely something is wrong !

Yes! What is wrong is the basis upon which society is built. All the means whereby we all live are in private hands. The rule of society is “everyone for himself, and we’ll take charge of the Army.” The reason they take charge of the Army (and the other Forces, of course) is in case the workers get tired of being hired to make wealth, and desire to enjoy what they alone make. Now Socialism means just that step, that the workers should take possession of all the machinery by means of which wealth is produced and distributed, and use it for the benefit of the whole of society. There is enough and to spare for everyone to lead a full, healthy and happy life. Poverty and all that flows from poverty will be abolished. The good things that workers now produce for others will be their own. The spectacle of useful, industrious citizens starving, or leading cramped, adulterated lives in the midst of plenty will be a thing of the past, a thing unbelievable to future generations.

The effort to bring this about will be met by force. The armed forces we have mentioned will be ruthlessly used against you. But the organised workers hold the master key. By first obtaining control of the political machine they will control the armed forces. With these under control, they can proceed to the re-organisation of society upon a workers’ basis, where to those who need will go the fruits of their industry.

Let us, therefore, look ahead. Let us raise ourselves a moment above the daily round, and realise that life worth living is within our grasp. Let us realise that Socialism is not a vague abstraction, not a dream of some arm-chair philosopher, but a practical, simple re-ordering of human affairs. That is why we said at the commencement of this article that Socialism is the greatest idea that the human mind has ever conceived. That man, after harnessing the great forces of nature, and opening the treasure chest of Mother Earth should now organise himself, organise human society, that is the “dream.” Is it so visionary; is it so impracticable? Help us to realise it. Look ahead.

W. T. Hopley