The end of the line (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

At last the dreaded news is out. Dr. Beeching has dropped his bombshell on the Cabinet; at least so headlined the daily press. But in fact the general outline of the Beeching plan has been known and discussed widely for some months. The Transport Minister, Mr. Marples, immediately confirmed his support of the plan on the day of its publication—hardly the action of a person struck dumb by devastating tidings.

Let us make it clear that we are unconcerned whether or not Capitalism manages to make the railways a profitable concern. We do not urge modernization schemes whose motive is that wealth can be used to serve the interests of a minority. We prefer to show how such changes can and do affect the mass of the population and how these changes can often be unpleasant for some sections of the community.

Probably the new plans will produce a slick rail system. But for how long? And just what new problems will be created by its implementation? Even Dr. Beeching cannot be emphatic in his replies. Change as such cannot be avoided, but we should find out why a change is desired, whom will it benefit and who will suffer and whether it is particularly necessary.

The rapid growth of road traffic has dealt railways everywhere a heavy blow. By point-to-point delivery, transport costs for both goods and passengers are cheaper by road. As the rail running costs increase, so freight and passenger receipts have either fallen or not kept pace, and often the railway's only answer has been to raise rates and fares. This puts the railways at an even greater disadvantage, especially on freight carrying. The car industry is the number one consumer of steel, and the oil interests are powerful factors in Britain's economy, and this is possibly why the Government tends to be more favourable towards the road interests than to an industry like railways.

Many sections of the capitalist class are fed up with subsidising, through taxation, a transport system that is no longer so useful to them as in days gone by. Many lines have massive engineering works which were erected a hundred or more years ago. Such works do, and will in the near future, need large sums spent on them for restoration, but the takings on these lines would not justify this expenditure. So, in the interests of the profit motive, some fifty to seventy-thousand people will over a period be sacked. Some areas will be more isolated than they are already and no doubt the slashing of lines in Wales and Scotland will be ready fuel for the fires of the small nationalist parties. Mr. Marples has promised that roads in the trainless areas will, if necessary, be improved to take the heavier road traffic, but he gives no guarantee that such construction will synchronize with the closures. The promise of replacement by extra buses is not certain as the routes have a tendency to be just as unprofitable for the bus companies as they were for the railways.

We have heard a lot of chat from the Parliamentary-maid-of-all-work, Lord Hailsham, about new industries in the depressed areas, but it is noticeable that the cuts are heavier in the North and the Scottish lowlands than in the “prosperous" South. Does this mean that the Hailsham promises are just so much political flannel to keep the unemployed in a state of suspended animation?

When the Labour Party nationalised the railways, we were promised efficiency, cheapness, security of jobs for the railwaymen, and improved travelling conditions, but the iron road became the odd man out. The mines were modernised; even the small film industry was subsidised; and huge sums were poured into aircraft production, while the steam train clanked on, encrusted in Victorian filth. So in the 1950's the railway became a whipping boy; a god-send to every comic and mummified politician who aspired to enter the House of Commons: trains always late, freight often mislaid or stolen, and public relationships ranging from antagonism to despair the more recent modernisation programmes have been held up by political uncertainty. Government decisions have ranged from plans for dieselization and electrification, to shutting the whole lot down. At least Dr. Beeching has arrived with something definite.

In spite of the sectional and local feeling, the majority of the people will not be very much concerned with the drastic cuts. The wide ownership of cars has removed the utter dependence on the trains. The car, in fact, has become a universal season ticket, but with the owner himself providing the vehicle and being responsible for garaging, parking, maintenance and driving-problems that were unknown to the train traveller.

After the lull of a few days that followed publication of the report the railway unions have made arrangements for protest strikes, and some local councils and M.Ps. have organised agitations. Some sections of line may be saved, but there is always something of the forlorn rearguard in token strikes and strongly-worded protest; the cage door is being closed after the bird has flown. The stick that falls across the shoulders of the working class is unfortunately wielded by themselves. Most workers believe in and support a society that stands four square on profit, exploitation and privilege for a few, and the railwaymen are no exception. Whilst this mass support is given to capitalist society, those who are not under immediate fire will never extend more than a passing sympathy for the afflicted and with many workers it probably never gets that far. Perhaps the attitude of a fair number of people can be expressed in the statement by a Conservative M.P., Kenneth Lewis, when he stated that the N.U.R. strike threat was a “strike without reason, a strike against change." (Evening News, April 4th. 1963.)

Capitalism with its ever-pressing need for new modes of production to prevent its profit from falling has mesmerised its supporters into dumb worshippers who fall prostrate at the very mention of words like “Streamline.” Few of them stop to wonder why and for what purpose slickness is established in our every day lives. It is pathetic to wail and protest, to alternate between humble petition and violence, if over the past years one supports in word and deed the very base of our social maladies. If those who ardently organise protests and demonstrations against this and that were to examine more closely their position as workers, the nature of capitalism and its Socialist alternative, their power to defend themselves as a subject class would be much stronger, and a new society that degree nearer. It is not only rail systems that are stunted by our current society. 

How will transport operate in a Socialist society? Firstly, it will be owned by the community as a whole, which means that it would be absurd to charge ourselves fares. The problems of threatened bankruptcy, or the need to reinvest surplus would be unknown in such a society. One cannot say with certainty just what form of transport would be most common, but this we do know; man's prime concern, in transport as everything, will be to serve the needs of the entire community.

If a given form of transport should be technically obsolete, then the operatives would certainly not be cast on a dole queue. This only happens in capitalist society, where the exploitation of wage labour is dominant. A Socialist society would also ensure that alternative methods of transportation were already fully in operation before other means were removed. The present dominant form of travel—the car—in its current form, is hardly likely to be regarded as beneficial under Socialism. The effect of enormous numbers of people driving their vehicles along a confined road space serves only to jar our nervous systems and it is not to be wondered at that the road casualty figures have become an outstanding disgrace and tragedy.

The history of capitalism, with its demand for accelerated production and improved methods of buying and selling has been the basic cause of speed in the modern world. Remove these social and economic factors for one of common ownership and mankind can revert to a more leisurely pace—and be the happier for it.

Jack Law

Obituary: Tom Mallett (1963)

Obituary from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

We sadly report the recent death of our comrade Tom Mallett. For those who knew and worked with him, his death will leave a deep feeling of loss. Tom joined the Party in the middle 1930’s. He never became a speaker or writer; he chose instead to spend his energies on canvassing and selling Party literature at his place of work and at party meetings in the South London district.

For many years. Tom earned his living as a news-van driver for one of the big London evening papers, and it was along his run, from Temple Gardens in the City to Twickenham, that over the years he managed to persuade news-vendors to take and to display the Socialist Standard. His greatest delight was the time he managed after much persuasion to get a display of the Standard in Parliament Square, and another display of a selection of party literature outside Russell Square tube station. At his place of work he managed to sell a regular number of Socialist Standards and he also managed to take up a regular collection for the Party's General Fund. Unfortunately over the years no record was kept of these small but regular sums, which must have amounted to quite a respectable contribution to Party funds.

Branch canvassing was yet another of Tom’s interests, and for many years he gave example to, and urged others in S.W. London Branch to sell the S.S. from door to door. At the time that regular outdoor meetings were being held at Clapham Common, Tom could always be relied upon to be there with his case of Party literature, and when some few years ago Comrade Ritchie died leaving a large literature round, Tom casually managed to add quite a large portion of the round to his own, already large and scattered, rounds in Battersea and Clapham. So, before ill health began to mar his efforts he was selling twenty dozen Socialist Standards regularly.

Sadly, in recent years persistent ill health prevented him from being as active as he once was, yet he still managed somehow to take and sell a regular five dozen Standards. Now he has gone, remembered probably by only a few Party members, but known to a great many readers and sympathisers. His role in the Party’s work was silent but his efforts live as an example to us all. He will be sadly missed. And to his wife and two children we send our deepest and heartfelt sympathy.

Vic Phillips.

SPGB Meetings. (1963)

Party News from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Building in Russia (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

During September and October, 1962, members of the Eastern Counties Federation of Building Trades Employers visited Russia and made a fairly extensive study of their building methods. Resulting from this visit, they have published a very revealing pamphlet, Building in Russia. They say:

“We believe we are the first group of British builders to examine the structure and organisation of the Soviet construction industry, our report covers a wide field, with the emphasis on housing. We hope it gives a broad but accurate picture of what we saw in a tour of some 6,000 miles extending from Leningrad, through Moscow to Volgograd in the South".

The British building trade unionist can, with this material, compare his wages and conditions with those of his brother in Russia.

In order to speed up housebuilding, emphasis has been placed on prefabricated factory built units, rather than the traditional brick-built house of this country. “The aim is to build compact residential areas with blocks of flats, 5,8 and 10 storey, densities being on average 150 persons per acre. Two room flats predominate . . .”

As the State owns and controls all capital for construction, area building Trusts are formed to decide upon design and the price of each contract. The chief of the Trust and his managers then negotiate with the Unions to determine site conditions. However, with a fixed price for each job there is a definite limit to the pay which can be offered! This has an all too familiar ring; haggling with the boss for terms that would hardly satisfy the militant on most British building sites. For example bonus earnings up to 50 per cent. of wages can apparently be earned with an efficient Trust. In comparison, British Union agreements have often settled for a minimum of 20 per cent. of earnings, but where union organisation is strong on the building site, bonuses nearer 100 per cent. and over are expected and negotiated.

The State apparently fixes the wages, determines the amount of bonus to be earned and insists on a 3.7 per cent. profit from all contracts finished at scheduled cost. When a profit is realised, an enterprise fund for the building worker within the Trust is formed, to be shared into workers’ bonuses, housing and holiday facilities; Living conditions of the unfortunates who work for an inefficient Trust clearly reveal the unequal equality of Soviet “Socialism.”

The standard of accommodation for the Russian working class is low compared with Britain’s New Towns’ traditional 2 and 3 bedroom terraced house. During 1964-1965, says the report, a suburb of Moscow will provide “90,000 people in flats, 10 per cent. of which will have one room, 60 per cent. 2, and 30 per cent. 3 rooms. Living rooms are used for sleeping in.”

To speed up house production, the Soviet Government have mass housing projects, with strictly narrow limits of layout and design. They say that the housing problem will be solved by 1970. One thing, however, which has resulted is monotonous city suburbs which are “depressing and oppressive despite open spaces.”

Building conditions for the wage earner under Soviet State and British private capitalism are so nearly alike that differences are hard to detect.

For a 40 hour week, typical wage rates in Moscow range from £6 per week (minimum) for labourers, £12 carpenters, £16 bricklayers to £20 for a general foreman and £40 for a building Trust manager. Lost time due to bad weather qualifies for half pay, whilst overtime qualifies for double time.

Building trade rates of pay in Britain are stated to be, at present, labourers £11 9s. and all skilled trades £12 7s. Soviet workers may pay less in rent which does not exceed 4 per cent. or 5 per cent. of the family income, but what they can purchase on commodities is small indeed. “Foodstuffs are two or three times dearer than in Britain, a poor quality suit costs £40, an overcoat £80 and a pair of shoes £15.”

Perhaps the most important difference between the two industries concerns strikes and tea breaks. Whereas the British trade unions clearly recognise the vital need to withdraw labour in times of dispute, and take refreshments and rest for dirty and arduous tasks, Soviet unions are denied these essential rights. The pamphlet drily comments “Tea breaks and strikes are not in the industrial vocabulary.”

All these comparisons show only too clearly that capitalism functions in the Soviet Union, with a working class living on a very poor standard. Although it was not the object they had in mind, the building employers’ pamphlet certainly exposes the claim that Socialism is enjoyed by building workers, or by any other workers, in Russia.

J. P.

50 Years Ago: Profit sharing (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Co-partnership is the curative syrup for all capitalist ills just now. Fabians recommend it, Liberal and Tory newspapers have given it their blessing, and business men who have tried it are loud in their praises. It has a double effect in its application—it increases profits and stifles labour “unrest.”

Some sociological and political experts, indeed, regard it as the solution, par excellence, for the labour troubles. The hard-headed, unscientific capitalist, who has “no soul above immediate profits,” is, however, somewhat sceptical, and not without reason. For profit-sharing in at least one case was productive of labour trouble.

The instance in question was recounted at a fashionable gathering of co-partnership apostles, at Lord and Lady Brassey’s, in Park Lane—a meeting arranged for the purpose of devising ways and means of sharing profits with the workers—something eminently desirable from the Park Lane point of view. One speaker said that he offered shares to his employees, one of whom took up a hundred. Next day in the workshop he remonstrated with a fellow workman for wasting the gas. The reply was: “Oh, there are too many blooming policemen about this business!” (just what we say) and the following day the whole of the employees struck work.

[From the Socialist Standard, June 1913.]

Behind the “Labour Unrest”. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cause and the Remedy. 

In England, after 66 years of Free Trade, a century of Trade Unionism and of Social Reform, strikes and lock-outs are the order of the day. Cotton operatives, printers, seamen, railwaymen, carmen, miners, tailors, dockers and transport workers, are all struggling for betterment.

The “labour unrest” is “explained” by various politicians in various ways. Lloyd George tells the “Daily News” man that the cause is the low wage of agricultural labourers ; Bonar Law says it is the want of Tariff walls ; the Anti-Socialist Union hirelings fix the blame on the Socialists.

The first, playing the Cobden game of turning attention on the

SLEEPING PARTNER

—the landowner—in working-class robbery, is effectively answered by Chiozza Money (“The Star,” May 29) when he shows that agricultural workers’ real wages have suffered less than the town workers’ during the rise in prices. Mr. Bonar Law is silenced by the growing labour upheaval in Protectionist countries. Finally, the Anti Socialist Union may be reminded that the majority of those striking are, unfortunately, anti-Socialists.

Is it want of trade, Messrs. T. Reformer and F. Trader ? The Board of Trade returns show an enormous increase ! Is it want of wealth and power to produce, Mr. Malthusian ? Lloyd George told you during the “unrest” debate in the Commons that the wealth produced and the ability to make it was unparalleled in human history. Income Tax. returns have risen rapidly and recent wills prove that it is distribution, not production, at fault.

The two brothers Coats left 3½ millions ; the Duke of Fife a million, and it is reported in the “Telegraph” that Rockefeller’s income one year alone was

£27,000,000.

Mr. H. G. Wells may talk of the need for “high pressure service,” and Balfour babble of seeking “greater command over nature” : the one cause of the ferment around us is the growing pressure of poverty amidst stupendous wealth.

Said Lloyd George at Cardiff, December 2th 1911: “To-day you have greater poverty in the aggregate in the land than you have ever had. You have oppression of the weak by the strong. You have a more severe economic bondage than you probably have ever had ; for grinding labour to-day does not always guarantee sustenance or security. At any rate, that condition of things was foreign to the barbaric regime of the darker ages.” He had a few minutes before reminded us that “this is the richest empire under the sun. If there is poverty, misery and wretchedness it is not because the land is sterile and bare and does not provide enough for all.”

On the other side Mr. Bonar Law told us (Manchester Nov. 16, 1911) that: “During the last ten years there has been a considerable increase in the total wealth of the country, but in that time the condition of the working class has not improved. It has actually deteriorated. From information supplied by the Board of Trade we know that during that period

THE COST OF LIVING

has gone up 10 per cent. and wages remained stationary.”

Then at the National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution (Caxton Hall, May 31st, 1911) the Lord Mayor informed us that a hundred millions were spent on poor law relief and charity, and he asked : “Are we as a community getting the best return for that huge expenditure ? Are we making destitution any less? Are we stopping the perpetual creation of new clestitutition ? In spite of greatly improved Poor Law administration, in spite of momentary good trade, there was on the 1st of January, actually a larger number of people in the workhouses than at any previous period of our history. Moreover, the plague of vagrancy seemed to be actually increasing.”

Mark the words of the mental specialist, Sir J. Crichton Browne, at Tottenham Hospital on November 16, 1911: “We have in many of our industries adopted a policy of “speeding up,” whereby men do their work in less time than formerly, and with fewer intervals of rest allowed them in the workshops and therefore with more exacting and exhausting calls on their nerves, which probably in some measure accounts for the great increase of reputed injuries to workpeople which we have to deplore. We have been

BRINGING UP OUR BABIES

on anything but mother’s milk, and by the employment of women in factories and by giving them an unrestricted sphere of activity, have curtailed that family life in which the young nervous system thrives best.”

The result of this hustle is seen in the 65th Annual Report of the Lunacy Commissioners, which shows the number of inmates of lunatic Asylums to be 133,157, an increase of 2,604 in a year. The meaning of these terrible figures is driven home in the table showing that in 1859 the number of lunatics was only 36,762. Thus while the population increased but 85.8 per cent., the number of lunatics increased in the period 262.2 per cent.! How capitalism crushes the working class becomes plain from the fact that 121,172, or 91 per cent., of the total lunatics in 1911 were

PAUPER LUNATICS.

This was an increase of 2,271 over 1910, nearly all the year’s increase being pauper inmates !

Our teetotal fanatics often think the cause of increased lunacy is drink, but Sir J. Crichton Browne exploded that idea. He said : “Drinking is admittedly on the decrease. Sir Thomas Whittaker pointed out last year that £46,000,000 had been saved in the national drink bill, but it did not bring any diminution in the number of the mentally afflicted.” In the same speech he said that whereas in 1890 the number of suicides was 2,205, in 1910 there were 3,577, and he blames the stress of modern society. was 2,205, in 1910 there were 3,577, and he blames the stress of modern society.

The worsening of the workers’ lot is shown by the fact that the children of the toilers are driven, into the factories to a greater extent in order to “make both ends meet at home.” The Board of Education in their report quoted by Mr. Chiozza Money in the “Daily News” on May 29th, says that out of a total of 691,000 children aged 14, only 155,682, or 22 per cent., attend day school. As Mr. Money remarks, this system “compels two persons, and sometimes three persons, to work for the wage which

ONE PERSON OUGHT TO EARN.”

Schemes of social reform do not help matters. Says the Chairman of the West Ham Board of Guardians in the Annual Report just issued : “Although a large number of out relief recipients have been transferred to the Old Age Pension list, the number of applicants for out relief has been steadily ascending. One of the principal causes is said to be the disinclination of employers to engage or retain persons of advanced years or suspected of infimity.” As to indoor pauperism, the “Daily Chronicle” (Nov. 11th, 1911) said : “Indoor relief in London has risen enormously. For the year 1886-7 the average number of indoor paupers (excluding casuals) was 54,861, or 13.7 per 1,000 of the population; last year it was 78,114, or 17.3 per thousand.”

Millions never reach the Poor Law portals, but are murdered in the cradle. The National Liberal Federation says, in “A. Nation Insured” : “We have many large towns . . where 200 out of each 1,000 die within 12 months of birth. . . The wholesale sacrifice of infants is followed by the robbery of a great part of the life of those who survive. . . It is not pretended that the National Health Insurance can dispose of

THE DAMNING FACTS.”

Of course it cannot. The only remedy is our remedy—the institution of a new social system, not fiddling with the effects of the present one. The evils which give rise to the “labour unrest” which convulses society is a necessary concomitant of the present social system. They arise inevitably from its competitive institutions, and will continue to arise as long as those competitive conditions remain.

It is futile, therefore, for the master class to look for any cure for the “labour unrest,” or for the workers to seek industrial peace. Under the system the fight must go on, and battle follow battle. Let us prepare, then, to end the strife by ending the system.

Adolph Kohn

Aphorisms of Socialism. [I.] (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Being an explanation of the Declaration of Principles of the S.P.G.B.

Aphorism I.

Society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.

To declare that any one fact, and especially such a seemingly superficial fact as the the matter of the possession of property, can be the basis of the social system, will doubtless fill many people with astonishment. It seems to be reversing the order of things. It appears, to the ordinary untutored eye, that the ownership of property must arise out of and depend upon the social system, and not that the system arises out of and depends on the form of property ownership. Yet very few words will suffice to make it clear that the truth is revealed in our first aphorism.

Society is a number of people living together in community, having dealings or relations with each other in the every-day affairs of life.

The sum total of all these relations forms the system under which the people live – the social system or the system of society.

It is quite clear, therefore, that the form of these dealings or relations will determine the form of the social system, and that whatever fact or facts shape the relations between the human beings who are the units of society shape also the whole system of society – which is nothing but the sum total of those relations.

Now if you go into a baker’s shop and take possession of a loaf of bread, you enter into certain definite relations with the baker.

Those relations will vary, according to whether you have bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen the loaf. In the first case the relations between the baker and you are those of seller and buyer, in the second .case those of giver and receiver, in the third case those of lender and borrower, in the last case those of robbed and robber.

But the significant fact is that, though each of these relations is different, owing to the different circumstances of your acquiring the loaf, they all arise from the one constant and unchanging factor that the loaf is the property of the baker to start with. Had the loaf not been the property of someone it could not have been bought or sold, begged or given, lent, borrowed or the object of a theft.

In St. Paul’s Churchyard many pigeons may be seen. They belong to nobody. You cannot beg, borrow, or buy one of them, for there is no owner to give, lend, or sell them. If you take possession of one you have stolen nothing. You cannot, enter, on account of these pigeons, enter into any of the relations that characterised your taking possession of the baker’s loaf. Even the law cannot oblige you in this respect, for the only charge that can be preferred against you – and that only by an obvious straining of the law to meet an awkward situation – is that of unlawful possession: the charge, not that you have something belonging to someone else, but that you have something that does not belong to you.

Now it is beyond dispute that what makes the difference in the relations between you and your fellows in the given instances is the fact that the loaf is the property of some person or persons while the pigeon is not.

If we look around to try to discover what are the social relations that occupy the largest and most important place in the social scheme, we find that they are the relations which arise out of the production and distribution of wealth.

The reason for this is plain to see. It is because every living person must be a wealth consumer as the first essential condition of his or her existence.

These relations pervade the whole of society. They cannot be escaped. What form, then, do these social relations take?

Wealth is produced by the application of human energy to the material provided by nature. All wealth, as the term is understood in political economy, is produced thus, and only thus. Even the working-power of the horse is not an exception, for the horse itself is wealth, being the product of human energy applied in horse-breeding and rearing. Its energy, therefore, takes no higher rank in the production of wealth than that developed by a steam engine.

The two things, then, which are fundamentally necessary to the production of wealth are human labour-power and nature-given material.

But to-day, in addition to these, highly developed machinery and other means of production and distribution are necessary before wealth can be produced and placed at the disposal of the consumer, for, under the system, and in the broad sense, human energy can only be applied to material through these means of production.

All normal people within certain limits of age possess one of these essentials of wealth production – labour-power. But before it is possible for them to produce they must have access to the natural material and to the means of production.

Here, then, is the primary need of every person that draws breath, if that person is to be self-supporting – access to the nature given material and the productive machinery.

Now let us place these things, desired of all people, in the circumstances of the baker’s loaf and the Churchyard pigeon respectively, and see what happens – what effect it has upon the great mass of relations between man and man which go to make up the social system.

In the first case, with the means of production owned by individuals, two sets of relationships may arise, according to whether these things are owned by those who use them or by those who do not.

In the Middle Ages the means of production largely belonged to those who used them, and access to agricultural land was the common right. As a consequence the relations between the social units were entirely different to those obtaining to-day. Men had the means of gaining their livelihood in their own hands, and so the wage-worker, the man who had no source of subsistence other than the sale of his labour-power, was practically unknown.

But we are not concerned at the moment with that property condition that was the basis of the feudal social system. We know that to-day the things necessary for wealth production are not, broadly speaking, owned by those who use them. That fact, at least, requires no demonstration.

In this case those who do not share in the possession of the productive wealth must get the sanction of the owners before they can apply their labour-power in the production of wealth.

On this fact the whole structure of modern society is based. All the relations between the social units take their shape from it, as we shall presently see.

In the first place, those people who do not share in the ownership of the means of production find others standing between them and the sources of life. To make mere assertion of that which is to well known to need argument, they have to sell their labour-power to the owners of the means of living in order to obtain subsistence. What other means are there ?

Thus is set up that large and important group of social relations and social institutions which we have before noted. First, society is divided into two classes – employers and employees; those who possess and those who do not possess. So the two-class nature of society, with property as the differentiating agent, is shown to be founded on the ownership of the means of living by the master class.

Secondly, the wages system, with the labour market – into which every propertyless person is driven, to seek his livelihood by the sale of his labour-power – together with the whole range of relationships between people on the industrial field – the relations between employer and employed, foreman and underling, and even those arising between master and master competing against one another for labour-power at the lowest price, and between worker and worker competing for jobs – all these relations and institutions are set up by the possession of the means of living by a class.

One other great and striking characteristic of the present social system arises out of this basic property condition, but one to which we are so accustomed that we are surprised to find that this feature is peculiar to the present system. It is that all the wealth of society is produced as commodities, that is, as articles for sale instead of for the use of the producer.

This is a very important distinction. It takes away from mankind the sane, logical purpose of productive effort, and replaces it with an incentive more mad even than the inmates of Bedlam. Bread is no longer produced to feed people but because profit may be made from its sale. And the remark applies to all other goods.

Where goods are produced for use the incentive produce remains as long as a human need is unsatisfied. But when production is for sale, it ceases when goods cannot be sold, though the children of the nation are crying for bread and perishing for want of clothing and shelter.

And, strange as it may appear, though with the productive instruments belonging to those who use them, there may be famine as the result of scarcity, with the instruments belonging to those who do not use them there must be famine on account of the very plentitude of wealth.

The reason for this is not far to seek. The wealth the wage-worker produces must, in order to satisfy the employer, exceed the amount of his wages, and therefore must exceed the amount he is able to buy back and consume. This surplus of commodities, far in excess of the requirements of the masters themselves, accumulates in the warehouses until the mass is so vast that the markets are glutted. Then production is strangled. Then there is no demand and no prospect of sale for further products. The incentive to create wealth has ceased. There is a falling off in demand and prospects of only small sales for further products. The machines are stopped, the factories partially or wholly shut down, the workers thrown out of work, and all the miseries of famine stalk the land because too much wealth exists

If the means of living were in the case of the pigeons in St. Paul’s Churchyard an entirely different social system would of necessity result.

Were the means and instruments of production the property of no individuals, but of the community as a community, the wages system could not exist. Each one having equal right of access to the means of living, none would be compelled to sell his labour-power to another person in order to live. In addition, none would purchase labour-power because none would have the opportunity to do so, and, secondly, because, even if any could, since no individuals would possess the means of production, none would be able to exploit labour-power.

So society could not be composed of two or more classes – could know no class distinction at all, in fact. It could not contain masters and men, and could not be founded on the labour of a section of the community. No able-bodied member of the community would be exempted from rendering his due quota of useful service to the community, in return for the material wealth which society placed at his disposal, for in the absence of private ownership there would be nothing on which to base such privileges.

And in a social system founded upon common ownership in the means of living, goods could not possibly be produced for sale. As now the wealth created belongs to those who own the machinery and factories – the masters, so then the product of labour would belong to the owners of the means of production – the community. The community could not sell the goods to itself, and there would be no party outside the community to whom to sell. Hence goods could only be produced for use, and production would continue as long as there were social needs to be satisfied.

What has been said shows how the social system of to-day is “based upon the ownership of the means of living by the capitalist or master-class,” and also how this class-ownership results in the enslavement of the working class, who are doomed to a life of drudgery and want, because every avenue of life is closed to them save that of the wage-labour market. But while it has been shown that the basis of society determines the form of social structure, no attempt has been made to explain what determine the basis of society. This point will arise in another connection.

A. E. Jacomb

Asked & Answered. (1912)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

[To the editor.]

Manchester, 12.5. 1912.

Sir,—Your article in the current issue of the “S.S.” on “Why we oppose Labour Leaders,” prompts me to reply as follows.

In the first place what do you mean by “Labour Leaders” ? My conception of the term may or may not coincide with yours, but to put it to the test let me define what I take the term to mean.

I would say that a “Labour Leader” is one who, in the opinion of the rank and file of the organisation he belongs to, political or industrial, is the most capable exponent of that organisation’s principles. The most capable man to be found in the organisation who, in addition to expounding its principles and objects, can effectively retaliate and confound its critics. Thnt is my conception of a prominent man in “Labour circles,” who nowadays is popularly termed a “leader.”

But this applies equally to the S.P.G.B. Does it not elect its representatives in debate ? Do not the industrial organisations elect their “leaders” in like manner ? Aye, even more democratically than does the S.P.G.B. its debaters and official speakers, for the S.P.G.B. Executive have absolute control over the appointment of them, while a trade union does elect, either by ballot of the membership or at its business meetings, its officers and representatives. So, to speak, as your article does, of “placing themselves at the head” of their organisations is hardly correct—as your contributor admits later on, when he says that “leading, after all, is by consent,” which is somewhat different to “placing themselves.”

Personally, I am inclined to think that leaders are more or less necessary to any movement. Take, for instance, the official organ of the S.P.G.B. Its articles generally come from the same pens month after month, and those articles are taken by almost every member of the Party as the official utterances of the whole Party, yet the decision of that is vested in either an editorial committee or the whole Executive. Where do the rank and file come in ? It has to be published before they can agree or disagree, and if they disagree, as did a section of your members over the “W.B.” (Upton Park) reply (Feb. 1910), they have an almost insuperable task before them to convince, not the Party, but the Executive Committee. Anyhow, that by the way.

To my mind, so great a number of the working class have the unfortunate practice of “following” that I am inclined to think that even on the stroke of capitalism’s doom they would be “following” rather than “conscious” of their “historic mission,” and would enjoy the “fun of the fight.” For the same contributor, in his article “Might is Right,” tells us that it is only “opportunity” that is wanted to establish the workers’ right to the full products of their labour, brought about, of course, by might. Whether each and every one of the struggling workers is to be a conscious instrument or merely a “tool” in the execution of their mission we are not told. Men will “follow the crowd.” Again, there are men who lead and at the same time preach doctrines identical with your own. They lead because the “led” recognise their ability and worth. I myself have questioned the “led” on such occasions, and frequently they have been unable to say in anything like an intelligent manner, much less clear, why they allowed them to lead, or themselves to be led.

Fraternally yours,

Edwin Garvey.

——————————————–

My dear Mr. Garvey, though, as a student of Darwin, I am well aware that some people do have funny children, I really am surprised at you. If you have been a purchaser of the “S.S.” ever since “Might is Right” appeared, and have learnt no more than this, then we have been taking your money for nothing, and I must see about getting it refunded.

Your conception of a “Labour leader” indeed. Well, you must have got it from the “Labour leaders” themselves. It is just what they say about themselves whenever they can get a mug to listen to them.

But you must have had somebody in your mind, Mr. Garvey, surely. Who was it ? Was it the Right Honourable John Burns, who so warmly defended the Featherstone butchery ? Was it Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., who exhibits such fine contempt lor the “drink-sodden democracy” ? Was it Mr. J. R. MacDonald, who called the Civil Servants sponges and said that it is “high time” they were told they would have to submit to the same terms as labour in the outside market ? Was it Mr. H. Quelch, whose only definite principle is what he calls the “One-and-one Principle” ? Was it Mr. W. Thorne, M.P., who assured his audiences from his election platform that he did not stand as a Socialist candidate, and then said, on the balcony of the Stratford Town Hall on the night of the “count” : “It is a great victory for Socialism and Labour” ? Was it any one of the forty-two so-called Labour M.P.s who sit cheek by jowl with tbe Liberal party in the House of Commons, and dare not vote for their own amendments for fear of embarrassing their allies ? Who was it, good friend Garvey, whom you took for type when you painted what you term your conception of a “Labour Leader” ? Perhaps you nodded in some tin chapel, where your hero was sacrificing himself to make a “Pleasant Sunday Afternoon,” and you got him mixed up with the stained glass angels on the windows.

Now I will give you my conception of the term “Labour leader.” First and foremost he is one who desires to lead. There may, course, be various reasons for this desire. It may arise from sheer egoism—the craving to loom large in the public eye ; or it may proceed from the lust of pelf. But commonly it is due to an admixture of reasons, in which the chief and guiding one is the consideration of the eternal, omnipresent, almighty question of bread and butter. But there it is—he wants to lead, he must lead, he will lead, and, say you and the likes of you, he shall lead. It is that, and you, who make the “Labour leader,” or, that I may not fall behind you in| humble respect for His Nibs, the “labour Leader.”

The second point is that the “Labour leader” must have no principles. Principles are very ugly customers in the eyes of the “Labour leader.” They demand a certain consistency of action which is beastly awkward to the political weathercock. In addition to this, and vastly more important, men who have principles and understand them cannot be led. They are the masters of the situation. They know whither they want to go, for the road is clearly pointed out by their principles. Their collective understanding of these principles, and their collective wisdom, and courage, and determination in the prosecution of the line of action which these principles demand, far outweighs that of any individuals. What men with principles want, therefore, are not leaders and bosses, but servants to do their bidding. This the “Labour leader” understands well enough, and so he has no concern with principles. Indeed, so far, Mr. Garvey, is your conception from, being correct in this particular, that the “Labour leader” cannot arise in an organisation which is firmly grounded upon any set of principles.

It is a very clumsy dodge of yours to profess a conception of a “Labour leader” in such form as precludes him from being a leader, and then asking where he differs from an S.P.G.B. representative. But again you show that it is your misfortune to have to look on these things through eyes which, to put it with becoming courtesy and gentleness, do not focuss accurately. An S.P.G.B. debater is appointed by the E.C. for a specific and temporary purpose. He is not an official of the Party, for there is no office of Party Debater, as there is of Party Organiser, Party Treasurer, and so on. If there were it would be filled, as these offices are, by the Party membership. But the E.C. appoints debaters because the membership elects them to perform that duty among others.

And as for your remarks concerning the publication of the Party Organ, you answer yourself when you say : “It has to be published before they,” the rank and file (your expression, Mr. Garvey, not mine) “can agree or disagree.” Exactly, and I should not be surprised if you have hit upon the very consideration that moved the Party membership to saddle the E.C. with the task of getting it published. Every dog has his day—go up one.

“Where do the rank and file come in ?” you ask. Every member of the Party comes in where and when he receives his copy of the issue. Every member of the Party has an opportunity to agree or disagree before he takes any part in pushing the sale of the Organ. What more would you have after confessing that the paper must be published before they can agree or disagree ?

Your statement that a section who disagreed with the Party position on a certain matter had an almost insuperable task to convince the E.C. falls a trifle short of the truth. They had an absolutely insuperable task, and when they tried to convince the Party, the task was just as insuperable.

The article “Might is Right” does not contain the statement you attribute to it, nor anything like it. Your statement is rubbish and falsehood. As a matter of fact, the opportunity is always present when the workers are sufficiently educated and organised to seize it. And the inconsistency you fancy you can detect in the article you criticise vanishes directly you ask yourself whether, before a person can place himself at the head of a body of men he must be permitted to do so —in other words, he leads by consent.

Your inclination “to think that leaders are more or less necessary to any movement” betrays the Anarchist. The Socialist knows that the strength comes, not from “prominent men,” but from the class as such. While the class has no definite guiding principles, it will be the prey of so-called Labour leaders. The Anarchist, the Individualist, the man who is “inclined to think that leaders are more or less necessary to every movement” has no faith in his class, but only in individuals. Such alone are they who, “even on the stroke of Capitalism’s doom, would be following,” creating confusion, ignorant of the real object, blind to the real enemy, halting when they should march, sparing when they should strike, stampeding when they should snatch the fruits of victory from a beaten foe. Once again I proclaim, as many Socialists have proclaimed before me, and as my comrades are proclaiming from our platforms day by day, there is no hope save in the class. There is no hope save in the class. There is no hope save in the working class understanding, not their but its own politics. Therefore the Socialist, who has faith in the inevitability of Socialism, has faith also in the working class. He has faith in its intellect, faith in its courage, faith in its tenacity, faith in its mission, and therefore faith in its triumph. Those who doubt in any one of these matters cannot be Socialists, are unworthy to stand in the ranks of those who are fighting the battle of the working class. They doubt their class ; they have contempt for the capacities of their class ; they can be nothing but enemies of their class. If they be men who have had ample opportunity to learn the truth, then the beet place for them is in the ranks of the B.S.P., where they can sit in open-mouthed adoration of those “leaders” whom they appraise above the class they are part of.

A. E. Jacomb

Editorial: The Fruit of "Victory." (1912)

Editorial from the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month comment was made in these columns on the permission by the miners’ leaders of the men to return to work too early, as well as on the impossibility of the “impartial” chairman being impartial. Within the short span of a month both points of criticism are borne out by the development of events.

Lord St Aldwyn, better known when Tory Chancellor as Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, was the “impartial” chairman for the South Welsh District Board set up by the Bill that settled the recent coal strike. He is reported by the miners’ leader, Mr. C. B. Stanton, to have surrendered the men to the coal owners.

Says Mr. Stanton : “Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Sir. E. Grey and others, told our National Executive they considered 5s. per day very reasonable for any man who worked in the mine as a minimum wage. Lord St. Aldwyn has given us a 3s. minimum. This is not a living wage, but a measly, wretched surrender to the Welsh coal-owners, whose profits, greed, and obstinacy at all times are notorious. How any man could, upon the evidence, give such a verdict I cannot understand.”

But Mr. Stanton ought to know that the “independent” chairman, even with the collusion of the Government as he suggests, is quite capable of betraying the men and converting a promised increase of wages into a decrease. When did Mr. Stanton put any value upon a Liberal promise to the workers, or trust the “ impartiality ” of a Tory politician ? Why, exactly when it was least justified— when the strike had driven the master class and the political wire-pullers, Liberal and Tory alike, to an extremity.

It was easy for the Liberals to premise the “5 and 2” and to sympathise with the men in their “reasonable” demands. And very convenient to leave to the “impartiality” of a retired Tory politician, the execution of the premise.

Says Mr. Stanton further: “ The rank and file know where the mistake was made before ; we shall not repeat that mistake again.” But it seems to us that the mistake need never have been made at all. Mr. Stanton was among the leaders who advised the men to accept the Bill, with its machinery of "impartial” boards and “independent” chairmen, even against the better judgment of the men. It was the leaders who should have known what the masters and their political servants were likely to do once the men were back again at work.

We of course, can draw no satisfaction from the turn events have taken, except from the fact that in bearing out our prognostications they have given further proof of the existence of the class struggle and the solidarity of the capitalist class against the workers. Had the miners’ actions been guided by this knowledge they would not now be lamenting that they have been tricked by the masters and sold by—but the law of libel bolds us dumb.

Cutlets. With S.P. Sauce. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Home Rule looms large in that vital organ, the public eye. Whether the Bill will kill the Pope or whether the Germans will land at Belfast are questions that agitate the minds of patriotic Britishers. Of course, the Labour Party cannot be left out, and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald gave the Home Rule Bill his sanction and blessing. In view of this, the following extract from the “Labour Leader” of November 10th last, will not be out of place.

In an article entitled “Liberalism and Progress” the writer, Mr. H. Dubery, lets fall this brilliant gem :

“What is ‘the pathway of progress ‘from the Socialist standpoint’ ? ‘The test I bring to every measure introduced in the House of Commons,’ recently said one of our leaders, ‘is this. Will this Bill on the whole increase that share of national wealth and comfort that goes to the working class ? If it does that by even a fractional amount, I will support it. If it does not, then it is to me a non-essential.’

“Taking this statement as a test, let us apply it … to the Home Rule Bill. we shall see that when the smoke of battle has cleared and the horrible din has subsided, not one working man will be a whit the better off, nor will the nation be a step further along the true ‘pathway of progress.’ ”

Yet the Labour Party, whose organ is this self-same “Labour Leader,” support the Home Rule Bill. They are playing the same game of chasing the Will-o’-the-wisp, of leading the workers “up the garden.”

* * *

Mr. A. Henderson, M.P., the P S.A.-tin bethel-monger, speaking at a Brotherhood meeting on April 13th, remarked that Christianity had failed to arrest the masses. From the masters’ point of view it hasn’t : it still does its dirty work well. But one of the leading clerical lights, the Bishop of the Falkland Isles, thinks that its sphere is not large enough, and urges the necessity of a fund to extend the movement in South America.

In an appeal that is being widely circulated among the frauds of Christendom the Bishop says : “The Bishop of the Falkland Islands” Fund. For religious, educational, and medical work in Western South America, which must be carried out before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1913. The future success of British influence depends upon the answer to this appeal.”

The appeal has the support of Lord Northcliffe, the well-known Salvation Army field-officer, and from the accompanying explanation we gather the following extracts :

“The Chairman of the London Chamber of Commerce represents the business men of the capital of the Empire. He asked to be convinced as to the use of the £100,000 for which the Bishop asks. The case was put before him, and at a Mansion House meeting he said : ‘This is the finest commercial investment the traders of this country could make.'”

“The Archbishop of Canterbury writes : ‘I am impressed and interested by the Appeal which the Bishop of the Falkland Islands is now making, and earnestly hope that he may elicit a really adequate response from those who have financial and other interests in South America, and especially on its Western coastline. The conditions are unique, the possibilities are immense, and the Bishop, in addition to his personal gifts as a religious teacher, is eminently well qualified to arrange and control the work wisely. I very cordially wish him God-speed.'”

“The Archbishop of York writes : ‘The cause for which the Bishop of the Falkland Islands appeals is one which ought specially to commend itself to all who care for the welfare of our own people in the vast territory entrusted to his care. I trust that the very large number of persons in this country who have personal interests in that part of the world will be ready to acknowledge its claim.'”

And so Christianity continues, propped up by interested men, supported by the capitalist class as a means whereby they can keep the chains of wage-slavery bound more tightly around you. The position laid down in our pamphlet “Socialism and Religion” has yet to be shaken, and the worthy bishop, in his blindness, comes and amply substantiates that position. Christianity closely reflects modern capitalist interests. We are out to slay capitalism. Look to it that the end is speedily brought about.

* * *

Amidst the turmoil and strife of the last coal strike at least one idea was prominently heralded as the means of salvation for the working class (and let it be quietly known—for the master class). I refer to the “dark horse” known as Co-partnership.

To those who have freely imbibed at the fountain of Co-partnery the following document will serve as a kind of “digestive tablet.”

“SOUTH METROPOLITAN GAS CO.”

“TO ALL CO-PARTNERS.”

“We now know the cost of the coal strike to this Company, and it has been very heavy. A very big price has to be paid (the larger part going out of the country) for coal purchased abroad in substitution for that undelivered to us by reason of the unfortunate disagreement between the owners and men. But our obligations to our consumers could not be set aside at any cost. To have done so would have in some respects irretrievably damaged our business, and as a result seriously harmed the employees who are our partners in it.

“My object in issuing this statement is to urge that all Co-partners will try by special endeavour to replace the lost tens of thousands by zealous working, and scrupulous economy in the materials used in our undertaking. Much has been accomplished, more can be, to avoid waste either of Time or Stores, and I feel sure I shall not ask in vain for the help of all our employees in the very anxious time through which we are passing.

Charles Carpenter, Chairman

April 24th, 1912.”

There is Co-partnership !

Profits are shared,—oh ! yes, and the workman may get a problematical increase (although in comparison with the wealth produced he is poorer), but when it comes to losses, well, one class of Co-partners share that, and that class is called the Working Class, alias “the Great Unwashed.” In spite of the use of the plural (“our” and “we”), when losses are incurred you must “try by special endeavour to replace them by zealous working.”

Co-partnership is merely a narcotic for the working class, to imbue them with the idea that they have an interest in the business, and under its influence they are speeded up, made to economise in materials, and all the sooner driven onto the scrap-heap. No, Socialism is the only hope, and Co-partnership is only—a hope.

* * *

“The B.S.P. Babes” have been at it again. In spite of their frequent protestations of the similar nature of Liberal and Tory, they still play the game of voting “agen the Government.” The following is culled from “Justice” of May 25th, 1912 :

“At South Hackney the Liberals in their panic have rushed the election so as to prevent a three-cornered contest. In that, unfortunately, they have succeeded ; but we hope every Socialist and Labour elector in the division will vote Tory and so deal a blow at the present Government.”

Poor old B.S.P. ! Just as a burglar does not become honest by calling himself King George, so the S.D.P. has not become Socialist by changing its name. That work has still to be done, and we are the Party to do it.

* * *

After a week of revelry, of riotous living, of gay feasting, of nautical cake-walks, and of splashing saucy mermaids, the Sea-King has now returned from seeking his fleet. It is quite possible, nay, probable, judging by the newspaper reports, that he is now able to tell the difference between an aeroplane and a battleship.

* * *

Of interest to race-goers. Just as “White Star” did not come home in the “Two Thousand Guineas,” so the King of Denmark did not come home in the Monarchy Stakes. He was unknown to the police, which is strange for a Royal scion.

A. L. Cox

The Meaning of Life. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Probably ever since men have possessed the faculty of reasoning they have, each one of them, at some time or another, asked themselves what life means to them. Most men have conceived of life in its direct relation to themselves. A few, however, with a wider knowledge and a greater power of concentrated thought, have attempted to discover some

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE

in life which shall apply, not only to themselves individually, but to the whole of humanity as they know it. How unsuccessful they have been in this attempt a study of the history of philosophy clearly shows. From the philosophy of Thales in the 6th century B.C. to the Bergsonian cult of the 20th century A.D. is a far cry. Yet if we smile at the conclusion arrived at by Thales that the principle of all things is water, it may well be asked whether the theory of Bergson that “life is nothing more than consciousness using matter for its purpose” is very much more satisfying to the ordinary man or woman.

No. Though abstract ideas (or ideas as abstract as they can be conceived) may possibly be a source of a certain amount of intellectual pleasure to idle dreamers and philosophic doubters, yet how little do such ideas come within the scope of the man or woman

STRUGGLING FOR EXISTENCE

in the seething whirlpool of modern capitalist society ! One can imagine what would be the outcome, for instance, if such a man as Bergson, instead of addressing himself to a well-fed, well-clothed, more or less well-educated “upper class” audience, were to turn his attention, say, to a meeting of miners striking for a minimum wage of 5s. per day, or a crowd of sweated East-end tailors and tailoreeses, and try to talk to them about the “identity of contraries” or the “joy of creative evolution.”

It is the same with philosophy as with art and literature, as with culture in general. Such things are only for the rich, for those who, neither toiling nor spinning, live on the labour of the uncultured working class. Even if any “culture” manages to filter down to the great mass of the people (the working population) it usually reaches them in such a

VILE AND EMASCULATED FORM

as to be worse than nothing at all. The workers’ business in the world (so our pastors and masters tell us) is to work, to work hard, to work contentedly, leaving to their “betters” the philosophical, the literary, the artistic knowledge. But they do not tell us that philosophy and art are, actually, the gift of past and present society to the philosophers, and should, in turn, be offered with a free hand back to society.

What does life mean to the working class today ? What is the working-class outlook on the world ? Ask the alkali worker of Widnes or St. Helens and he will tell you that to him it means working for twelve or more hours a day in return for the sum of perhaps twenty shillings a week, a dragging out of existence, with teeth rapidly rotting away, half-blind and asthmatical, liable at any moment during his period of employment to inhale sufficient poisonous gas to make speculation on life, or on anything else, evermore impossible for him.

What does life mean to the men and women in the white-lead factories ? A period between birth and death, wherein they work for a miserable pittance in an atmosphere laden with death-dealing dust, becoming paralysed, purblind and insane at the time when they should be in the fulness of health and strength; it means for the women the agony of bearing

STILL-BORN CHILDREN

or children literally soaked in the poisonous fumes among which the mother is obliged to work. What does life mean to the railwaymen, to the miners, to the industrial workers in general ? Hard and unremitting toil; the contemplation of the killing and maiming of their comrades, with the fear of the same happening to themselves ; and perpetually hanging over them the possibility of unemployment, slow-starvation, an early and wretched death.

The majority of men are totally unable to realise what life could be made. Even if a few have a vague idea of what existence should be and the strength of will to put such idea into practice, yet the environment in which they find themselves, the circumstances surrounding them, very soon crush out this vitality, leaving them disillusioned and bitter, doggedly going through their day’s work

WITHOUT HOPE OF REWARD

or the possibility of change (except for the worse) ; or, in despair, blindly smashing themselves against the forces that enslave and degrade them.

Surely life holds for us something more than this if we could only understand it. The Socialist, at any rate, with his knowledge of the forces working in society and his further knowledge of the way in which these forces could be used, could be diverted, in his own and his fellow’s interest, sees life as something different, something greater, than a continual round of hard and degrading work, of sordid sorrows and still more sordid pleasures. If philosophy is of any use at all it is to teach men how to live. And the Socialist philosophy does this. It speaks to the only people in society who are now worth speaking to—the people of the working class—adjuring them to work out their destinies in spite of the almost overwhelming powers of capitalism that are arrayed against them. Learn, it says in effect, that no man is fit to be your master any more than you are fit to be the master of any man ;

ANALYSE SOCIETY

with all its evils and miseries, find the cause of these evils and miseries, and then act in such a way as to abolish, once and for all time, the root-evil that makes life a curse. While you have two classes in society, while there is a dominant class and a class dominated, while there are masters and slaves, you must have brutality on one hand and cringing servility on the other, and undying hatred on both sides. With such a state of things what chance is there to evolve any other form of life but one that can only be compared to the ape and the tiger stage.

Life is movement. Nothing living can ever become stagnate. If the human race is not going forward to something higher than itself then it ie certainly going back to some lower form of life. It rests with the working class to say whether we shall sink back into a state of barbaric chaos, whether we shall, perhaps (it is possible), perish in our entirety ; or whether we shall move upward to a form of life undreamt of to-day.

THERE IS THE TASK,

a hard task admittedly, but worth the doing. Life to the Socialist means unremitting toil in the cause of Socialism, perseverance in spite of all discouragement, the marching onward in the face of all doubts and difficulties. Even if we of this generation do not see and taste the fruits of our sowing, yet even then we shall have our reward—in the knowledge that we have fought on the side of energy against apathy, of youth against the decrepit, of life itself against death.

F. J. Webb

A Socialist Survey. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

How this “industrial unrest” does spread !

If the said unrest is due to those “beastly agitators” it would seem that capitalism breeds agitators faster than it does contented slaves.

A report from Tokyo, Japan (“Daily Chronicle” 4.5.12) says :—

“It is practically impossible for the lower classes to earn sufficient for their bare needs.”

And that: —

“The number of convicts has increased from 20,000 to 80,000 in the last five years.”

Here we have cause and effect.

* * *

The staple diet of the Japanese worker is rice. So abnormally high is the price of rice that the income of the average family (Y.17 per month or 1s. ½d. per day) is not sufficient to meet the increased expenditure (quoted at Y.25 per month). Consequently :—

“There is a great amount of industrial unrest in the country, which is causing economists a lot of thought.”

Again cause and effect.

* * *

The price of the labourer in Japan, as elsewhere, is determined by the cost of his food and other necessaries. But the capitalist in Japan is exploiting fresh fields, and, like the early industrial capitalists in this country, will squeeze surplus value from the toilers until they die off like flies.

The unemployed, army in Japan will allow it. Cheap labour is plentiful, and so our capitalist can ignore the fact that to keep a slave class it is necessary to replace energy with energy.

The slave, however, is beginning to revolt—which fact, doubtless, is responsible for “a lot of thought.”

“It is a matter of serious consideration for the authorities,” goes on the report, “whether this unrest can best be allayed by the reduction ef the taxes on food or by religious congresses or charitable collections.”

The religious influence is on the wane even in far-off Japan, and a Mr. Izawa is endeavouring to found a new religious body, whose plan is to “gather a religious community around the Emperor, who is the direct descendant of the creator of the world, for the purpose of cultivating loyalty toward the Emperor and of elevating their moral ideas.”

* * *

When the religious bluff fails they will fall back on the “reduction of taxes” and by removing the tax upon rice enable the workers to live more cheaply, and so obviate the necessity of raising wages.

It is merely a repetition of the “bible and the big loaf.” The development of capitalism in Japan is so rapid that the whole list of reforms and “revolutionary” measures over which the workers fought for years in this country will be passed in as many months.

* * *

That the influence of the Church in England is rapidly declining is seen from the following figures anent the “largest individual church in Nonconformity” (vide “Morning Leader”).

“Including the whole of the 35 districts under the control of the English Wesleyan Conference, the total membership is 482,889. As compared with last year the decrease is 2,646. The total decreases for the past six years are as follows : 1907, 2,034 ; 1908, 4,424 ; 1909, 1,144 ; 1910, 2,299 ; 1911, 3,028; 1912, 2,646—total decrease in six years, 15,575.”

Says the editor of the “Methodist Recorder” (again vide “Morning Leader”):—

“We know the explanation that will be forthcoming—that other Churches are in like case, that figures are misleading, that our activities were never greater, that our energies are organised and systematised beyond all precedent, that social unrest is partly responsible, that we are suffering from wearisome discussion of the membership question, that we have more chapels than ever, and more workers, too, and so on.

But all these put together can no more alter the painful facts than any one of them by itself ; and all of them are unsatisfying.”

* * *

The religious communities are fast realising that their flocks are no longer so docile or so faithful as they were, and they are compelled to offer some better inducement than a short shirt and a tin trumpet after decease.

The Rev. Thomas Phillips at the Baptist Union Congress (25.4.1912) said :—

“Eighteen thousand men receive 12s. a week or less ; 50,000 men receive 18s. a week or less. Out of every fourteen workmen in London one is, or has been, a pauper at some period in his career ; one in every five dies in a workhouse, a hospital, or an asylum. One million of our men receive £1 a week or less, and toil at tasks which give them neither security nor comfort. We are here enjoying ourselves, but within 300 yards of this place thirty to forty families are living in two houses. Seven per cent. of our population are in chronic want.

“These things stagger a man’s faith in God and man. I wish that London was not representative of England, but Mr. Rowntree has told the same story of York, and two clergymen have said that, in some respects, Edinburgh is even worse than London.

“The villages are no better off. A writer in a recent number of the ‘Sociological Review’ stated that he had found that, out of 300 people living in the villages, 193 did not get sufficient food to keep body and soul together.”

* * *

“These things” staggered our faith in God long since, and working-class faith in the power of parsons is by no means firmly rooted.

Mr. Phillips wants “Christian business men to devote their energy and power of organisation to settling this tremendous social difficulty.” The Christian business men will support the Christian business when they can see that it pays them, and the churches to-day are not the chloroforming agency that they once were. As Mr. Fleming Williams said at the Congregational Congress (9.5.12):—

“The people are developing a social conscience in the exact ratio in which the Churches are neglecting to cultivate it. The inevitable result will be our Churches will be left high and dry. The world will go on forgetting our existence. They will leave us to discuss our little theological conundrums which hardly affect the great needs and wants of the world.”

* * *

What the “Christian business men” want is a meek and docile wage-slave, and when the Churches cease to assist in supplying their demand they will take their “energy and power of organisation” and their contributions to a more productive agency.

The empty churches (and small contributions) are worrying the clergy to a far greater extent than the “labour unrest,” and as the Bishop of London said when presiding at a meeting at Grosvenor House (6.5.12):—

“Many were breaking down, not from their work, but from the anxiety of keeping their churches going.”

* * *

The following advertisement in the “Daily Chronicle” (4.5.12) is significant of the uses for which the Church is needed :—

“THE LONDON CITY MISSION

is engaged daily in working for the improvement of the moral and spiritual life of

LONDON’S TEEMING POPULATION

By the blessing of God the work is a potent factor for the upbuilding of sterling character, for the lessening of crime, and for the prevention of the outbreak of anarchism. 400 missionaries at work all the year round. Your help in this effort to spread the Gospel among the poor and artisan non-Church-goers of the Metropolis is earnestly solicited.”

* * *

“I am the last person to underrate all these questions of what is called distribution—the distribution of the produce of the world. But speaking for myself, I do most seriously hold there is a yet greater problem to be dealt with, and that is the amount you produce. The progress of mankind must fundamentally turn on the amount it produces, upon its growing control over the forces of Nature, upon all that science, invention, and industrial organisation enable it to do, to add to the daily produce and daily consumed wealth of the world. And important, vital if you please, as is the question of how what we make is to be distributed over the whole community, or among those who make it, behind all that there lies the yet more fundamental problem of how much you can make, and how you can increase the amount you are already making.”

The above statement was made by Mr. A. J. Balfour at a meeting on “Syndicalism and Industrial Problems,” held under the auspices of the Sociological Society (30.4.12).

It is typical of Balfour to spin long sentences meaning nothing on the subject under discussion and then to tail off with some definite (?) statement quite apart from the point.

The problem is not one of production but of ownership, and none knows that better than the ex-leader of the Tory party.

That there is sufficient wealth to-day to provide for all is undeniable, and even were it not so the enormous amount of raw material ready to hand, the vast tracts of uncultivated land, the over-supply of labour-power ready to be applied to that raw material and uncultivated land to produce more wealth, dispose at once of the absurd notion that the population has outgrown the resources of nature.

With the growing command by man over natural forces no fear need be entertained that the civilised, world will ever know famine again. Man’s struggle with nature for the means of life is over—and man has won. The struggle to-day is between man and man, between master and slave, between the plutocratic parasite and the propertyless producer.

* * *

While one section of the community are struggling to exist on from 5s. per head per week, another section can squander and waste an enormous amount of wealth at some silly freak show. The two following cuttings, both from the “Daily Chronicle,” show clearly who waste the “wealth we produce,” and how unevenly such wealth is distributed :—

“A letter has been received by the Russian Famine Committee in London from the members of the Famine Committee of the Free Economic Society, one of the oldest institutions of the kind in Russia, appealing for help.

“‘There has been an almost complete failure of crops (it says) in twenty provinces of Russia, covering the whole region from Nizhny-Novgorod to Astrakhan, as well as South Ural and Western Siberia. At least one half of the 40 million inhabitants of those provinces were doomed to starvation, for few of them could hope to find employment in other parts of Russia in the winter.

‘The population have been brought to ruin and despair. Many become insane and commit suicide. Some among the Mohammedans sell their children to harems, that they may not see them suffer and hear them cry for bread.

‘Typhus and scurvy are rapidly doing their deadly work among them.'”

“Daily Chronicle,” 13.5.12.

“The latest freak entertainment was given here to-day at the Hotel Vanderbilt in the shape of a dog banquet. The idea was originated by Mrs. A. L. Holland, the wife of a multi-millionaire, who gave the banquet in honour of her Pekinese dog, and sent out invitations to eight other Pekinese canines of the ‘smart set.’

“Without exception the dogs turned up, accompanied by their mistresses, and the nine ladies and nine dogs sat together at a table gorgeously decorated in the Chinese fashion, while a Chinese orchestra rendered weird selections of native music.

“Luncheon was served for the ladies, while special attendants catered for the wants of the principal guests, who had silver basins of bread and milk set before them, followed by cut-up biscuit and choice morsels of chicken. Only the breasts of chicken were served to these pampered animals.

“The dinner was voted a great success, and as a souvenir of the affair each dog guest was presented with a silver collar with his name engraved on it. Nothing like to-day’s freak entertainment has been seen since the pony banquet, or the dinner given in honour of Consul, the intelligent baboon.”

“Daily Chronicle,” 18 5.12.

* * *

Were there anything like an equal distribution of the world’s wealth there would be no difficulty in satisfying the needs of those who were for the time being deprived of the means of life by some failure of crops, or disaster of any kind. It is quite possible that the dividend of the multi-millionaire which provided the dog feast was wrung from the labour of the Russian workers who are suffering, quite unnecessarily, the pangs of starvation.

Quite recently the strikers of the Lena gold-fields were mowed down in hundreds for demanding better conditions, because to grant better conditions to those Russian workmen would mean lower dividends for some cosmopolitan financiers and inferior chicken for their Pekinese pups.

* * *

The labour unrest will continue while these conditions are allowed to remain. The demand of labour, the world over, is merely the demand for a living. To quote Jerome K. Jerome, speaking at the Cambridge University Liberal Club .—

“The human labourer in 1912 is, after all, only demanding what has been acceded to without question in the case of the ox and the ass since prehistoric times. I never heard a farmer suggest that the price of corn being what it is, he is quite unable to give his horse more than half its proper rations. The horse has a very effective way of insisting on his minimum wage. The horse does not go out on strike, he just lies down and dies ; and the farmer finds it cheaper—whatever may be the state of the agricultural market—to accede to his demands.

“Practically speaking, the farm labourer does get his minimum wage. He can’t live on 12s. 6d. a week and bring up a wife and six children. It can’t be done. Charity has to step in and make good the difference. Where the minimum wage is not paid—the wage that enables a man and his family to live—the charitable public has to make good the difference. It is a good thing for the charitable public ; it is a good thing for their morals, it is good for their hope of a future reward.

“But it is bad for the labourer ; it turns him into a pauper, it robs him of his self-respect. It is bad for the employer ; it makes him also nothing else than a pauper, going round to the charitable public, cap in hand, whining, ‘Help me to pay my wages. Have pity, kind gentlemen, on a poor employer of labour.’ It makes the employer also a pauper ; and, if it doesn’t, it ought to rob him of his self respect.”

* * *

The employer, as an employer, has no self-respect. He has but one object—to obtain a profit, to get dividends ; and he will struggle to the last to prevent the workers from reducing that profit. Just as the worker, in factory and in field, is but a machine with but one purpose of existence, so the employer, the financier, and the capitalist generally, are sponges absorbing the wealth the worker produces. There is no self-respect in a sponge, just as there should be no desire in a machine. But the worker will not always remain a machine. He will soon want to be a man and to take a man’s part in the enjoyment, as well as in the production, of the world’s wealth. He will, in time, give intelligent purpose to his growing dissatisfaction, and when he does—well, the occupation of the sponge will be gone.

TWEL.

Answers to Correspondents. (1912)

From the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

S. J. Cresswick.—(Kennington). We do not, by using every point of vantage in the class struggle “support any section of the capitalist class”. The organised Socialist forces will be used, not to “perpetuate the present system,” but to change it as speedily as possible. Whether a measure would be supported would depend upon the views of the Socialist electorate and its bearing on our object.

J.J.S. (Kensington.)—Full address must accompany all communications.

E J. H. (Philadelphia), F. Goole (Watford), “Constant Reader” (Moss Side), F. S. (Queensland), L. S. (Nottingham). Replies held over.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For June. (1912)

Party News from the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard