The Fruits of Anarchy. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Curious effects of divergent interests.

When a period of trade activity has been unusually protracted, the inevitable crisis invariably startles the economists of the ruling class in the midst of ruminations on their good fortune, or genius, in having at last overcome trade epidemics. As with the trade crisis, so with war comes as a bolt from the blue, shattering theories, exposing contradictions, dissipating hopes, and falsifying prophecies.

Anarchy in Interests Produces—

Conflicting interests must always produce conflicting ideas. A survey of prevailing ideas will consequently give some notion of the underlying anarchy of capitalist interests and conditions.

One group of idealists we can afford to leave to their own shallow cogitations. Those who argue that without war to develop and ennoble—and kill off the fittest—the human race is certain to degenerate. They are backed up by the “war traders” for obvious reasons. Opposed to them are the humanitarians, the anti-militarists, and the peace-loving bourgeois traders, whose ships, heavily insured, are on every sea. These traders, always fearing for their markets, express vehemently their belief in arbitration and their suspicions of diplomatists generally. In the interest of trade Andrew Carnegie subscribes two millions to finance a peace tribunal. At the same time armament firms subsidise the Press and frighten the ignorant with scares, bribe high-placed officials through their agents in all parts of the world, cater for every nation or province that happens to lie inflicted with agitators, whose business it is to keep alive feuds and magnify every action of a neighbouring-State into a sinister threat against the cherished freedom of the people.

Anarchy in Ideas.

The following quotation from the “Daily News and Leader” (15.7.14) presents quite typically the attitude taken up (in peace times) by the peace-mongers :

“If there is not soon a world-wide movement against the tyranny of war and of all the infamies associated with it, it will not be for lack of lessons. Wherever we turn, to France or Russia, Germany or Japan, Italy or our own country, the evidence accumulates of the burden which the war-traders put upon the backs of the people. Their business has no relation to patriotism. It is cosmopolitan in its operations and soulless in its motive. It works upon the fears and hates of ignorant people, uses the Press as the instrument of its purposes and makes tools of the diplomatists and the statesmen, many of whom are financially interested in its success. In Russia, in France, and now in Japan we have seen how it can buy up the very services and make lackeys of the generals and admirals of army and navy. Its maleficient influence overshadows the democracy of every land and until we have found a way of uprooting the whole evil system there will be no real progress made towards peace or an enduring civilisation.”

“Our own country” is not excepted in this sweeping statement. The Prime Minister, when confronted with figures relating to the operations of armament firms abroad, said he dared say the figures were correct, but he knew of no sufficient reason for instituting an enquiry. Shortly after two of the largest British firms entered into a contract with the Turkish Government to carry out extensive works at Constantinople that meant the virtual re-modelling of the Turkish navy, while just before the outbreak of the war, according to a prominent war correspondent, “the British Admiralty was lending missions of naval officers to Greece and Turkey, to hasten in co-operation with the contracting syndicates the preparation of their war forces.” The same writer added : “There is not a feud, or the possibility of a feud, but these tradesmen are at hand to egg on the rival adventurers, and to ‘equip’ them with the latest instruments of the science and art of wholesale homicide.”

Circumstances, you know, Alter Cases.

The peace-mongers forget their former denunciations when their country is involved in war. The “business” of the war traders has a close “relation to patriotism” when the “latest instruments of the science and art of wholesale homicide” must be placed in the hands of the workers to defend capitalist interest. The cry is then “Pile up the munitions ; more elbow room to the war traders.” They forget what they have said—but they cannot unsay it.

Before the war it had become almost a platitude that great wars of conquest, religious wars, etc., were things of the past ; that to-day commerce and industry dictated the policies of the different nations. Since the war every capitalist hack has been busy denying the economic cause—even while crying : “Capture the enemy’s trade”—repeating again and again that the struggle is between “militarism and democracy.”

“Prussian militarism” has become an everyday phrase. Exactly what is meant by it has never yet been clearly explained. According to some supporters of the so-called voluntary system, it is synonymous with conscription ; others affect to see difference between the French and German forms. One fact beyond dispute is that the capitalist class of every country maintain armed forces up to the strength they deem necessary to cope with their enemies within and without ; and it is even more certain that the capitalists of no country hesitate to use them when their interests are at stake. The methods may be slightly different, but the object is always the same—to retain possession or ownership of the means of life.

Relatives are Best Apart.

For instance, the Kaiser, according to Benjamin Kidd (in the “Daily News and Leader,” 7.9.15), appeals directly to his conscripts, saying :

“In view of the present Socialist agitation, it may come to pass that I shall command you to shoot down your own relatives, your brothers, your sons, or parents, which God forbid, but even this you must obey without a murmur.”

while Mr. Asquith, in the House of Commons says, in answer to a question (I quote the “Daily Chronicle.” 24.3.14).

“I think it is a very good rule, where the military force is called in to render assistance to the civil power, in exceptional cases, both as regards officers and men, so far as you can do it, to avoid the employment of those who are locally connected by personal, domestic, or social ties.”

In peace time every increase in armaments raises the war discussion anew and furnishes fresh evidence in the shape of contradictions, confessions, and absurdities. Ten days before the declaration of war the United Methodist Conference passed a resolution “protesting against the ominous growth of armaments.” One rev. delegate declared that

“the war spirit was not in the heart of King George, the Kaiser, the House of Commons, the Reichstag, or in the hearts of the British or German people. It was in the brain of a few irresponsible journalists, who were obsessed with a dastardly kind of Imperialism. He hated strikes, but would be glad to see a strike of the great democratic forces of Europe as a protest against this wicked, inhuman, and sinful waste of money.”

Note how these despicable followers of the mythical Christ are concerned for their masters’ money—a fraction of which comes to them in the shape of livings. One would almost imagine it was of greater importance in their estimation than human life did one not remember that personal ambition overshadows everything else in the mind of the up-to-date Gospel hawker.

Notoriety being their goal, it does not always follow that popular ideas must be applauded ; sometimes the reverse will bring a freak Non-conformist within the circle of the lime-light. At present it is almost criminal to denounce war, even in theory yet the president of the Churchmen’s Union at Rugby goes even further and denounces scientists for their share in it—possibly on principle, because he recognises the antagonism between science and religion. He

“deplored the employment of the latest discoveries of science and the newest inventions of civilisation not in the service of mankind, but to kill, burn, and torture. Men of science and learning had been bribed by the rulers of nations to prostitute their powers to the invention of horrible instruments for the wholesale killing, poisoning, and torture of brave men.”

Parson’s Filthy Job.

Obviously this is a case of the pot reflecting on the sooty condition of the kettle. The priest is equally susceptible to capitalist bribery with the scientist, and just as ready to furbish old superstitions or manustitions or manufacture new ones, to the detriment of the working class, as the scientist is to invent or improve instruments for the perpetration of wholesale murder.

So much for the irresponsibles. There are writers and politicians, however, that are considered authoritative ; but we shall be disappointed if we expect to find their utterances free from similar contradictions and absurdities. Mr. Norman Angell in “The Great Illusion,” we are told by a contemporary,

“Lays down the principle, which he enforces by references to recent history, that in the case of a great war the victor suffers more in the long run than the vanquished. . . . Moreover, because also of this interdependence of our credit-built finance, the confiscation by an invader of private property . . . would so react upon the finance of the invader’s country as to make the damage to the invader resulting from the confiscation exceed in value the property confiscated. So that Germany’s success in conquest would be a demonstration of the complete economic futility of conquest. . . . For allied reasons, in our day, the exaction of tribute from a conquered people has become an economic impossibility.”

In November 1910 Mr. Asquith, speaking on the subject of international relations, furnished the occasion for a Press discussion in which prominent leader writers expressed similar views to those of Mr. Angell. The “Aberdeen Evening Gazette” (11.11.10) said :

“If Germany beat us, she could not destroy our trade : she could not seize any of our colonies or annex any of our territories. She could not exact a ‘thousand million’ indemnity, because credit is now an international business, and to impair British credit would be to shake her own. If Germany smashed us she would smash her own best customer, and her own people would pay the penalty.”

The ”Times” (11.11.10) said:

“They move, as he says, in a vicious circle. They arm because they distrust one another, and they dis-trust one another because they are armed. It is a chronic malady, the cure of which Mr. Asquith is optimist enough to hope for through the growth of a more genial spirit among the nations. A more potent agency will perhaps be the increasing complexity of international relations, which makes it difficult for one nation to damage another without almost equally damaging itself.”

The “Westminster Gazette” (11.11.10) said :

“Trade is a great pacificator, and the international credit on which trade rests is a thing to which war is abhorrent. The fear of breaking the peace and the difficulty of breaking it grows with the growth of armaments. And at the same time the subconscious conviction that the whole collective process is a kind of insanity must gradually project itself into the conscious proceedings of civilised nations.”

These quotations are by no means isolated. In recent years similar opinions have been repeated so often that they should be familiar to every newspaper reader. But note the change since the outbreak of war. Every possible evil, from economic, annihilation to wholesale slaughter, has been flung at the heads of the workers to frighten thorn into the recruiting office or the munition factory. When the international capitalist class saw no immediate cause for quarrelling, their scribes told us our trade could not be destroyed by Germany, nor could our colonies or territory be annexed. A war indemnity could not be exacted by Germany because it would shake her own credit. Yet Britain’s credit is to be shaken by this very action, according to every responsible newspaper, while the self-appointed “Adviser-in-Chief to the British Nation”—Mr. Horatio Bottomley—says that “we shall need an army of occupation to mind the German capital whilst the war indemnity is being paid.”

Many writers have uttered grave warnings on the horrors of war, and have suggested remedies that were almost laughable—if the subject were not so tragic. Mr. Egmont Hake, in the “Daily Telegraph” of September 6, 1892, prophesied that

“We shall have battles raging for days over extensive grounds, hurried and disorderly retreats, desperate pursuits, and consequently, miles of country strewn with carcases and corpses. Should we wonder if to this tragedy Nemesis were to add her epilogue —pest.”

and the remedy is, “a liberal support of our hospitals” !

Professor Gardiner says :

“It should not be impossible to build upon the basis of the international comity of savants a society of men pledged to use their powers and discoveries not for destruction, but for saving life, not for promoting, but for moderating friction between nations.”

Benjamin Kidd told us in “Social Evolution” that the Christian religion was responsible for an ever-growing altruism and humanitarianism in the “Western civilisations.” He is, perhaps, surprised at the calmness with which these peoples regard the slaughter going on to-day, though, he admits his theory is falsified and that altruism is useless as a force to avert war, when he suggests that the Allies should “declare the United States of. Europe”—and, one might add, arm in preparation for war with the United States of America, or some other combination of powers in competition with them for the world’s markets.

But about the most outrageous thing that has been said on the war question is the reply given to those workers who asked what is their stake in the country. “Their wages.” Those wages that for “millions of the workers do not suffice to replace the energy used up in their daily toil.” The wages system is the most complete and tyrannical form of slavery evolved during centuries of class domination. Wage slavery squeezes every ounce of energy out of the workers and scraps them, condemns men, women, and children to degrading poverty and continual anxiety and, as “John Bull” says, “the sordid atmosphere of the office and the workshop.”

This is the worker’s stake in every land—if he seeks diligently and has the luck to find a master. But if he has knowledge concerning the position he will detest the wages system, and if he has wisdom in addition to knowledge he will work for its abolition and the establishment of Socialism. The nationality of his master in the meantime will not count with him : all members of the master class alike are to him parasites that live by his labour and drive him into the factory with the whip of unemployment and hunger, to be exploited.

F. Foan

Our case in brief. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The previous article under the above heading showed how several very undesirable features of our social existence arose from the private ownership by a portion of the community of the means of production and distribution—the land, factories, machinery, railways, raw material, and the like. It was concluded that private ownership would therefore have to be abolished, and it was finally promised that in a subsequent article it would be shown what would follow that abolition and the substitution of common ownership in the means of living.

A necessary preliminary to the proper understanding of the consequences of abolishing the private ownership of property is a thorough realisation of what that form of ownership is and what it produces.

Now as the very basis of life is the means of subsistence, the production of the means of subsistence is the most important matter in human affairs. The ownership and control of the instruments and resources by and from which these means of subsistence are produced therefore become of tremendous importance. As a matter of fact the property condition is not a mere skin-deep feature of our social life, which can be changed with no more than local disturbance in that life. It is the very rock and foundation of the social edifice, and therefore a change in this property condition must involve a change in every aspect of our social existence.

Let us try and build up the main lines of our social system from the basis indicated, i.e., the private ownership of the means of living.

The first result of the means of producing and distributing wealth becoming the property of a few is to divide the community into two classes. These classes are the property-owning class and the property-less class.

These two classes occupy entirely different positions in society—positions which must of necessity create antagonism and strife.

Those who do not possess the instruments of labour have no means in their hands of gaining a livelihood, except by selling their strength and skill to those who own the means through which alone that strength and skill can he productively applied. The positions, then, of the two classes are those of buyers and sellers of labour-power respectively.

It now becomes clear how the antagonism between the classes arises. Fundamentally there is antagonism between buyers and sellers in every market. Everywhere the seller strives to sell as dearly as he can, while the buyer tries to buy as cheaply as possible.

If this is true in the ordinary commodity market, how much more inevitably true must it be in the market where human labour-power is the commodity bought and sold !

For, be it remembered, human labour-power, applied to nature-given material, is the source of all that wealth by which men and women live (except, of course, such forms as are freely supplied by nature, such as air and sunlight). The wealth of the rich, the wages of the poor, are alike the product of the application of labour-power to material. Consequently, the struggle between the buyers and sellers of labour-power becomes a struggle for the possession of the product of that labour-power.

Let us be perfectly clear upon that point. To use the illustration of Marx, the product of the wage-worker is like a stick which is to be divided into two parts. The whole of the stick is comprised in the two parts, and one part can only be larger at the expense of the other. The product of the worker is divided into two parts—one part going to the worker and constituting his sole means of livelihood, the other part going to the employer and constituting his means living. The part which the worker receives is his wages, the price which the employer pays for the labour ; and as the larger this portion of the “stick” is the smaller must be the portion left for the employer, the struggle between the buyers and the sellers of labour-power must be of the very bitterest nature.

Nor is this all. The private possession by the few of the means of producing wealth alters the whole character and purpose of production. While the workers had access to the means of production—while they had rights in the land and owned the tools with which they worked—they commonly produced goods for use. The peasant-proprietor of the Middle Ages wanted corn for his own bread, barley for his own ale, and so on. He set to work, therefore, and grew his own corn and barley, and his women folk turned them into bread and ale.

Now mark the different sentiments with which the old-time peasant-proprietor and the modern baker and brewer would view the articles bread and ale. The former would feel a lively interest in the product of his hands ; he would be glad to know that the bread was wholesome, and he would not have to taste of the ale to know that it was good. For he and his would have produced the bread and beer to satisfy their hunger and thirst, and the idea of producing anything but the most wholesome food and drink, or of adulterating such products, would have been ludicrous to them. With what a different eye would the modern baker or brewer look upon the product of his factory ! The baker would take no interest in the bread as such. Possibly he would take care to eat none of it himself. The brewer’s chief concern would be to see that his beer was not a thirst-quencher but a thirst creator. Neither the baker nor the brewer produces his goods for use ; they both produce them for sale.

A simple illustration will show the difference between the two methods. The peasant-proprietor started out with a need—bread. The master baker also starts out with a need, but that need is money. The former, having produced his bread, had finished his round. If he had recorded his activities which he had no need to do—he might have written “Finis” there. But the modern master baker is required by law to record his activities, and that record commences with money and ends with money.

The baker expends money in the purchase of flour and other material, and labour-power, and he must record the fact for the edification of the Official Receiver. These are converted into bread, but that is a detail of secondary importance which may or may not find a place in some minor book. What is important is the conversion of the bread into money. When that is accomplished, the round is completed, the books, as far as that operation is concerned, may be closed. They record the conversion of money into material, etc., and the conversion of these into money. The money that the record started with can be compared with the money with which it finished, and the difference between the two sums shown. And only this will any man of business accept as the conclusion of the operation.

So is shown the difference in the systems of wealth production in a society based on the monopoly of the means of production by a few and a social system in which the means of production are owned by those who use them. In the one case all wealth produced presents itself as articles produced for sale, in the other case wealth, with a few exceptions, is produced for use.

The exigencies of space prevent the completion in this issue of this brief examination of the manner in which the whole of our social structure arises from and rests upon the social base—the ownership by a section of the community of the means and instruments of producing and distributing wealth. The subject will be resumed next month.

A. E. Jacomb

The Scientific Basis of Socialism. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The aim of the Socialist movement is, as the declared Object of our party states, “The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.” We claim to be, not utopians, seeking to found a perfect social order because of its justness and moral advantages, independent of time or conditions, but rather working as a part of a social process which has made that change in society which renders our object necessary if society is to continue to develop. The scientific basis of Socialism must therefore be—an analysis of the laws in accord with which society evolves.

It was the work of the founders of modern Socialism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, to make such an analysis, and the result of their labours, although for long ignored, suppressed, and misrepresented by the “intellectuals” of the bourgeoisie, continues to secure an ever-increasing acceptance. As students of the Hegelian philosophy, Marx and Engels were familiar with that dialectic form of reasoning which considers all things in their interrelations, in their birth, growth and decline, connected together into one universal evolutionary process. Marx and Engels were, however, materialists, and thus stood in contradistinction from the orthodox Hegelians, who were, like their master, idealists of the purest type. This evolutionary view of the Universe from the materialist standpoint is the basis of all real scientific work; and in the hands of Marx and his co-worker it became the basis of the sociological theory which subsequently became known as the Materialist Conception of History.

Historical Materialism.

“The materialist conception of history,” says Engels, “starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which, wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders, is depend­ent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and ex­change. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each epoch.” (“Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.”).

The necessary facts for the formulation of the theory of historical materialism had gradually accumulated, and by the forties of the nineteenth century they only waited to be correlated and unified. So it came about that, as in the case of most great discoveries, this principle of social development was thought out independently by different minds. Engels himself partially developed the theory in this fashion before the work of Marx became known to him, and Lewis Henry Morgan, the American ethnologist, came to the same general conclusions in the course of his studies of primitive society. Morgan states In his work, “Ancient Society” (page 19) that “the great epochs of human progress have been identified, more or less directly, with the enlargement of the sources of subsistence,” and his greatest book, the one here quoted, consists largely of an attempt to trace the rise of the family, government and property upon this basis.

It was, however, Karl Marx who gave to the doctrine under consideration its most complete form; the form in which it, to use his own words, “continued to serve as the leading-thread” in his studies, and the elaboration of which, especially in the elucidation of the phenomena of modern society, constituted the great work of his life. Marx’s work, unfinished as it was, has been carried on and popularised by a host of thinkers amongst the revolutionary workers of all lands; so much so that the bourgeois professors and intellectuals, no longer able to ignore, now seek to revise, modify and un-revolutionise the Marxian philosophy.

Natural environment and economic conditions.

One common misconception of the materialist view of history is that it makes social changes dependent entirely upon the technical improvements in the tools and means of production, without taking into account man’s physical conditions and natural environment. Nothing is, however, further from the truth. In “Capital,” Vol. I., p. 521, Marx points out the influence of physical conditions upon the mode of production; he says: “Apart from the degree of development, greater or less, in the form of social production, the productiveness of labour is fettered by physical conditions. These are all referable to the constitution of man himself (race, etc.), and to surrounding nature.”

A good example of the effect of different geographical situations and natural environments upon communities of originally the same type, is to be seen in the evolution undergone by the various branches of the Semitic race. In origin they were a pastoral people, living in nomadic tribes in the region of Arabia. Migrating to the north-east, one branch settled in the Euphrato-Tigris valley. They assimilated the culture of the original inhabitants the Akkado, a people of Turanian descent and originally pastoral like the Semites. The fertile alluvial soil being adapted to agriculture, this soon became their mode of existence, and chattel-slavery arose as the productivity of labour increased. The periodic inundation of the river in the lower part of the valley necessitated a system of draining, irrigation, dams and other water works, resulting in the rise of a class of expert officials and a priesthood versed in geometry and astronomy. This was the rudiments from which the great slave states of Babylonia and Assyria arose.

Another branch of the Semites settled on the narrow strip of coast land to the east of the Mediterranean. On this restricted area, hemmed in by the Lebanon mountains,

“the agricultural resources of the little country were soon outgrown, and the Phoenicaus were forced to gather a harvest from the water. They invented the fishing line and net. . . . The Lebanon mountains supplied them with timber ; in time they discovered how to make boats with keels, and to sheath them with copper which they also found in their mountains. From those heights of Lebanon the island of Cyprus could plainly be seen, and the current assisted them across. They colonised the island ; it supplied them with pitch, timber, copper, and hemp, everything that was required in the architecture of a ship . . . they discovered villages on other coasts, pillaged them and carried off their inhabitants as slaves. The Phoenicans from fishermen became pirates, and from pirates, traders ; from simple traders they became also manufacturers.”— Winwood Reade’s “Martyrdom of Man.”

Handicraft and commerce continued to rapidly develop and spread, and numerous sea-ports arose. All this resulted in the rise to prominence of a wealthy merchant plutocracy. This Semitic people the Phoenicians, in this manner became the first great sea-faring and commercial nation of the ancient world.

Still different were the methods of develop­ment among the Arabs and the Hebrews. The former living on the fringes of the great deserts, retained their nomadic habits, and plying to and fro, in time became the overland carriers and traders between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies, between which their caravan routes formed means of communication. On the other hand, the Jews, in the region of the Jordan valley, on a rugged tract of territory with mountains on one side and the desert on the other, were continually buffeted by and exposed to the invasions of the predatory tribes and powerful nations which surrounded them. Time and again plundered by their mighty neighbours, their country forming the battle ground in the campaigns waged by the Hittites, Egyptians and Assyrians, the rise of private property, and as a consequence classes, was a slow process, accompanied by irregularities and set-backs. At the time, therefore, when their cousins the Phoenicians had arrived at political government, the Jews still retained their tribal organisation.

We here see the great effect of natural environment and outside influence in modifying social forms, but it must be remembered that, apart from migrations, such as those we have just considered, transformations of these natural factors, is almost inconceivably slow, except in the case of such comparatively rare phenomena as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and the like; and the effect of these is, as a rule, only transitory. The influence exerted by physical conditions is best seen in primitive societies, where the natural predominates over the artificial environment, and where social change is correspondingly slow. The Marxian theory places the natural features such as race, climate, and geographical situation in their proper position as part of the determining factors among the causes of social changes. In this Marx differs from the thinkers of the type of Buckle, who made physical surroundings of primary importance. Marx and Engels saw that these factors often remain stationary in the midst of social transformations, and as it is the changes in society which constitutes history, the motive force in history must be looked for in something other than the comparatively static physical conditions, except in those cases where a definite physical change can be shown to have occurred. Natural differences must, however, always be considered when social structures in different parts of the world are to be examined.

The growth of ideas.

The same conclusions are arrived at when we consider the evolution of ideas. All ideas are but the more or less transformed reflections of real things. Our brain receives through the medium of the sensory organs impressions or sensations from the world exterior to it. Our thoughts are all of necessity based upon these impressions, which however, become combined in the most intricate manner. Nevertheless, our ideas can never go beyond the limits set by the experience thus gained.

From this basis the origin of entirely new ideas can only be explained by the fact that man is continually creating ail artificial environment, which means that fresh material from which impressions may be received are brought into being, and which also may assist in the perception of an hitherto unknown side and fresh attributes of the material in the Universe, which, up till then, he had been conscious of only in an imperfect manner or not at all. In either case it is the result of man’s powers of production, which adds to and supplements the world of nature, which is at the root of the new ideas.

Take for example the invention of the tele­scope. Not only does the newly constructed instrument of itself form the basis of new ideas, but the manner of its use also. The laws of light which may incidentally be discovered by its aid become further objects or rather subjects of contemplation, as also do the details of the Universe unfolded by its use, which previously, although obviously forming a part of man’s environment, had yet been unperceived by him because of the insufficiency for this purpose of his organs of sight. Metius, Lipperhey and Jausen, the three Dutchmen who, according to Professor Simon Newcomb, may each be credited with the invention of the telescope (this by the way, is a splendid example of the fact that, when the materials for the solution of any prob­lem, or the invention of any instrument are at hand, several minds usually make the required discovery independently of each other; a fact which completely knocks the bottom out of the “great man” theory.) gave to society a rich source of farther ideas; and when Galileo turned his “optik tube” upon the starry heavens, and first beheld the spots on the sun, the lunar mountains, and the Jovian satellites, he could little have known of the boundless matter for research and contemplation which his observa­tions, primitive though they must have been, judged by modern astronomical standards, laid the foundations of.

We have seen that the statement that the materialist conception of history ignores natural factors is contrary to fact. Nor is the charge of fatalism against the theory valid, for Marx says in his “Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bona­parte,” “Man makes his own history, but,” and mark this, “he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand.”

Historical materialism does not exclude the influence of tradition, or deny the usefulness of studying the past experience of society and turning it to good effect; for in the same work we have it stated: “The tradition of all past generations weighs like an Alp upon the brain of the living.” In considering the ideas, institutions, and history of a given period, therefore, not only have the natural and artificial conditions of the society in question to be examined, but also those of the previous societies which may have influenced it, together with the traditions, customs, and institutions which have persisted from times earlier.

Ethics and religion.

Many institutions and ideas originated out of man’s contact with external nature in very early times, and although modified by subsequent economic development, they persist throughout history. Among this class, may be mentioned the fundamental ethical principles, and also religion.

Morality, as Darwin has shown, originally consists of certain social instincts necessary for the preservation of society. He traces them back to our pre-human progenitors, and indeed they must assert themselves to some degree in all organised communities whether animal or human. Man being by nature a gregarious animal, the instinct of sociability is part of his physical make-up. Darwin says in his “Descent of Man” (page 149): “any animal endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well or nearly as well developed as in Man.”

The social instincts, however, become modified by the social transformations which occur as a result of economic development. In a hunting community, for instance, the killing of newly-born infants at a time of food scarcity is considered no crime. Infanticide is, indeed, one of the most universal customs among savage peoples, who find the struggle for existence very keen, it being in the interests of the tribe to keep clown the number of consumers as much as possible ; and, where children are to be saved, preference is given to males as forming potential hunters, thus increasing the productive capacity of the tribe. In an agricultural community, however, where food is more plentiful and more regularly obtained, infanticide is no longer practiced, and it comes to be looked upon as horrid and immoral in the extreme.

In class societies the prevailing ethical code is always that best suited to the interests of the ruling class. Old ideas are cast aside or are modified to justify their position. This, of course, is necessary, for no ruling class ever maintains its supremacy for long by physical force alone. Chattel slavery was moral in America until it was discovered in the North that wage-labour was cheaper, and it is interesting to note that both North and South obtained the support of the Bible for their respective positions.

Religion arises out of the relations between savage man and the unknown and, to him, mysterious forces and phenomena around him. The partial or total lack of consciousness caused by sleep and by death, and also dreams, were explained by assuming the living body to be the temporary abode of a soul or spirit (the Egyptian Ka) which leaves the body for longer or shorter periods. The wind, fire, smoke, thunder, etc., were regarded as manifestations of these ghosts which became objects of fear and veneration.

The spirit of a dead chieftain in course of time is elevated to the dignity of a god with power over various natural forces, he is conceived of by the living of his tribe or people, in the shape of a glorified personification of themselves. Thus Thor, the Scandinavian god of thunder, was a mighty warrior, the sparks and noise from the crash of whose battle-axe constituted the lightning and the thunder. The beliefs of the Norsemen, indeed, form an excellent illustration of the intimate connection between material condition and theology. The discovery of the smelting of iron-ore had raised them to the upper stage of barbarism—the “Heroic Age” of history. Now, the iron sword and scale armour supplanted the cruder and less effective weapons of the earlier period. The warrior class became predominant, and when one of the mighty ones passed away, his corpse, together with his paraphernalia of battle, were burned in his Viking vessel, that his spirit, clad in ghostly armour and armed with ethereal weapons might ascend to the “Hall of Valhalla,” there to live with his ancestors.

The rise and further development by modification of religion is excellently dealt with in the pamphlet on the subject issued by the Socialist Party, and need not be longer dwelt upon here. Nevertheless, an interesting illustration given by Marx, of the effect of changed conditions upon religious opinions, and also showing how the ideas of the ruling class are accepted in the main by the mass of the community, may not be out of place. Writing upon the Crimean War, Marx says:

“We see England, professedly Protestant, allied with France, professedly Catholic (damnably heretical as they are in each other’s eyes, according to the orthodox phraseology of both), for the purpose of defending Turkey, a Mohammedan power, whose destruction they ought most religiously to desire, against the aggressions of “holy” Russia, a power Christian like themselves. … To perfectly appreciate this state of things we must call to mind the period of the Crusades, when Western Europe, so late as the thirteenth century, undertook a “holy” war against the “infidel” Turks for the possession of the Holy Sepulchre. Western Europe now not only acquiesces in the Mussulman jurisdiction over the Sepulchre, but goes so far as to laugh at the contests and rivalries of the Greek and Latin monks to obtain undivided possession of a shrine once so much coveted by all Christendom ; and when Christian Russia steps forward to “protect” the Christian subjects of the Porte, Western Europe of to-day arrays itself in arms against the Czar to thwart a design which it would once have deemed highly laudable and righ­teous. To drive the Moslems out of Europe would once have roused the zeal of England and France ; to prevent the Turks from being driven out of Europe is now the most cherished resolve of those nations. So broad a gulf stands between the Europe of the nineteenth and the Europe of the thirteenth century ! So fallen away since the latter epoch is the political influence of religious dogma.

We have carefully watched for any expression of of the purely ecclesiastical view of the European crisis, and have only found one pamphlet by a Cam­bridge D.D., and one North Irish Reviewer for England, and the Paris Univers for France, which have dogmatically represented the defence of a Mohammedan power by Christendom as absolutely sinful ; and these pronunciamentos have remained without an echo in either country.” “Eastern Question,” pp. 482-3.

Classes and the state.

Religion and ethics we characterised as deriving their origin in man’s natural environment. A further set of institutions arise only at a certain stage of economic development. Occupying a prominent place among this division of institutions are, the State with its political and juridical sub-divisions, and social classes. The distinguishing feature between classes is the mode by which the members thereof obtain the wealth which is necessary for their subsistence; except in those cases where the class in question is a remnant of a decaying order of society, in which case it sometimes happens that it will retain its distinction, by reason of its political power, and the force of tradition, after all economic distinction has passed away. This state of things can, however, but be of temporary duration, as instanced by the Roman patricians who in time lost the political privileges which were their only distinction from the upper or wealthy land-owning plebians.

Although there have been classes, such as handicraftsmen, who worked with their own tools and material, and owned the product of their labour and were, therefore, to a large degree economically independent, the most typical form of class division is that between producers and non-producers, exploiting and exploited. The division of society into producers and non-producers only arises when the productive forces have progressed to a certain point ; for, when man’s whole time was occupied in providing the necessities for his own continued existence, there could be no idle class. When it became possible to produce a surplus of wealth over and above that essential for the maintenance of the producer, the war captives previously slaughtered or eaten, were set to work for their captors whose sole property they became. Thus arose chattel slavery, the first form of exploitation. Three historical varieties of exploitation may be distinguished : chattel-slavery, where the slave was bodily owned by somebody and was bought and sold, typical of ancient civilisation; serfdom, where the serf produces part time for himself, and part time for his lord to whom he owes allegiance, and who gives in return protection, prevalent in the Middle Ages, and wherever feudalism exists ; wage-slavery, where the worker is “free” to-work for anyone who will employ him, but being propertyless is compelled on pain of starvation to sell his labouring power to one who owns tools and material for production, thereby losing all claim to the product of his labour, the value of which must be greater than that which is paid to him as wages, this form characterises. the modern capitalist epoch.

It is out of the growth of classes that the State arises. Wherever ruling and oppressed exist, the ruling class must control a coercive force, the function of which is to keep in subjection, the exploited class and maintain the existing order of property conditions. “The antique state was, therefore,” says Engels, “the state of the slave owners for the purpose of holding the slaves in check. The feudal state was the organ of the nobility for the oppression of the serfs and dependent farmers. The modern representative state is the tool of the capitalist exploiters of wage labour.” “Origin of the Family,.-etc.,” page 208). The political State marks the-dawn of the era of civilisation.

The class struggle.

The nature of and the relations between the classes of any epoch, are determined primarily by the mode of production operative, which gives rise to certain forms of property. When new productive methods arrive, new classes are born into society. The struggle for supremacy between the old methods and the new reflects itself in the struggle between the classes whose material interests are bound up with the respective modes of production. The struggle between classes having divergent and clashing interests, has been behind all the political contests, upheavals, and revolutions which have characterised the history of society since the epoch of civilisation was entered upon. The control of the State, the stronghold of every ruling class, has been the objective in every struggle for emancipation.

The class war, more enduring and pitiless in its form than any other war, contains innumerable instances of the savage extremes to which a ruling class will go when its material interests are menaced. Brutal suppression, followed by wholesale crucifixions, was the price paid by the revolting slaves of Roman days; and this finds its counterpart in the crushing of the peasant, risings in mediaeval Europe, and in modern times by the massacres of proletarians, after the Paris Commune in France, on the Rand, in Colorado, and in Dublin, Featherstone, and elsewhere in these British islands. “The civilisation and justice of bourgeois order comes out in its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their masters. Then this civilisation and justice stand forth as undisguised savagery and lawless revenge. Each new crisis in the class struggle between the appropriators and the producers brings out this fact more glaringly.” (Marx’s “Civil War in France.” Page 68.)

However necessary were classes at the period in social evolution at which they arose, it can no longer be claimed that such is the case now. In support of this first proposition, Engels says (“Anti Duehring,” page 209) :

“Slavery first made the division of labour between agriculture and industry completely possible and brought into existence the flower of the old world, Greece. Without slavery there would have been no Grecian State, no Grecian art and science, and no Roman Empire. There would have been no modern Europe without the foundation of Greece and Rome. We must not forget that our entire economic, political and intellectual development has its foundation in a state of society in which slavery was regarded universally as necessary. In this sense we may say that without the ancient slavery there would have been no modern Socialism.”

But he also says in the same work (page 211) ;

“As long as the actual working people claim that they have no time left at the close of their necessary labours to attend to the common business of society—the organisation of labour, the business of the government, the administration of justice, art, science, etc.—just so long will distinct classes exist which are free from actual labour to carry on these functions . . . The development of the great industry with its enormous increase in the forces of production for the first time permitted the subdivision of labour in all the social grades and this allowed the reduction of the time necessary for labour so that enough leisure remains for all to take part in the actual public business—theoretical as well as practical. So that now for the first time the dominant and exploiting classes have become superfluous and even an obstacle to social progress.”

The bourgeois era has fulfilled its “historic mission”—the organisation and development of the machine process of industry—but it has now become a fetter upon the full utilisation of the great powers it has created. Just as the feudal forms and restrictions hindered the expansion of the capitalist method of production, so now, socialised production cries out for the social ownership and control of the productive forces, which the revolutionary proletariat alone can establish. As the bourgeoisie rising to power swept aside the remnants of feudalism which obstructed its progress, and reared a social edifice adapted to its own mode of production, so the proletarians realising the interests of their class, must seize upon the governmental power, and establish that form of society which economic evolution demands.

With the rise to political predominance of the working class and the subsequent institution of Socialism, the period of classes and class struggles with its concomitant social forms, including the State, will be at an end, and a new era will be entered upon.

To this end let all our energies concentrate. With the lamp of science held up to the record of history, let us read its lesson aright. Guided by the class-struggle, with faith in the sound­ness of their position, let us spread this know­ledge of Marxian teaching among the wage-slaves of the world. To them as to us, the work of Marx and Engels stands, a beacon light, shed­ding rays around it; shining down the path of man’s social history it illuminates the gloomy passages of his past. Ahead, its beams piercing the haze, light upon a glorious future, which through the triumph of the workers will become the heritage of all mankind.

R. W. Housley

The Queer side. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have been frequently met with the taunt that they are going to “break up the home” (for firewood?), “destroy the sacredness of the family hearth,” “invade the innermost secrecies of the family life,” etc., etc. How this desperate invasion was going to occur our opponents (in their usual clear-headed way) were not quite sure ; but somehow or other the State (metaphysical muddle heads must have Gods, you know) was going to walk in through the door (without knocking) and tear children from their parents and wives from their husbands to make them economically independent of each other, thus destroying the calm security (!) and harmony (!!) of the family circle. (Sometimes we are told that pa comes home blind drunk and beats his wife—but I forget, that is when another thesis has to be proved.)

This view receives the pious support of wealthy men doubtless from the knowledge that the economic independence of working women will mean the end of their present paradise, in which they enjoy (like their prototypes, the beasts) the almost unlimited satisfaction of their sexual appetites. An examination of the true facts of the case, however, shows the hollow hypocrisy of the plea.

The average working-class family of the past century and a half has been composed of wage-workers— from the child of 8 or 10 who sells papers and delivers milk, to the father and mother who work in the factories, sometimes alternately—the one through the day and the other through the night.

The number of females who have appeared upon the labour market has grown year by year. Every year sees fresh branches of industry open to women, and the ties of the family are insen­sibly loosened, to be eventually torn asunder, not by the growth of Socialism, but, by the iron hand of modern industrial conditions.

Women are more submissive, more long-suffering, and more economical wage-slaves than men, and are therefore introduced wherever possible by our philanthropic and tender-hearted masters. In the early development of machinery the workman saw in the machine his mortal enemy, and the smashing of the machine instead of the smashing of the system was the order of the day, as witness the historic Luddite Riots. Now that the greater number of the workers have become operators of machinery, their antipathy to the “iron man” has died, although quietly and insidiously the machine is rendering unnecessary larger and larger proportions of workers in every department of capitalism. Now that women are replacing men in their various spheres the enmity of the men is directed toward the women instead of against the system that breeds such conflicting tendencies.

Another asset of the present war to the capitalist class has been the opportunity offered to experiment in the introduction of women into departments of work which they were hitherto supposed to be physically incapable of performing. The following extract from the “Daily Mail” (16.9.15) will illustrate the point:

“The great movement among women toward filling up gaps in labour is shown in all classes of work ; but nowhere more strikingly than in the big munitions iron works. That woman’s work in this new sphere is satisfactory is acknowledged by works managers and foremen. Asked if a motor cylinder would offer greater difficulty than a shell to bore one of these men said, ‘Hardly any.’ ‘A woman, then, could go in for ordinary industrial steel working, lathe work, screw-cutting, and the like, just as well as a man ?’ ‘Certainly, for the general run of work.’ ”

A quotation from the same paper of another date (10.9.15), dealing with the interim report of the committee appointed by the British Association is also enlightening :

“In some cases the experience gained during the war had shown that certain jobs could be more efficiently done by women than by men.

The great increase of women’s employment could hardly fail to have permanent results, and it might be anticipated that after the war the proportion of women in industry would be greater than before and the competition of men and women would increase.”

Now what about the sacred family circle ? The wave of female labour is to be converted into a torrent, and the war-worn warriors who return from the battle-fields (poor crippled, broken wrecks) will find a labour-market choked with women competitors, the standard of living lowered, and the general conditions of the workers worse than before the war commenced. A splendid reward for all your hardship and sacrifice, ye poor deluded, fellow-workers.

Of course, the “family hearth” ghost is easily laid by the worker who reflects on his present penurious and work-weary condition ; and the prospect of that mythical sacredness being violated under Socialism has no terrors for him. I may suggest, however, that the love which is born of economic necessity can neither be so deep nor so lasting as that which exists between those who are economically independent of each other and who seek each other’s company and affection purely from mutual esteem.

The Socialist, in promoting the common-ownership and democratic control of all that nature, ingenuity, and human energy can produce—in suggesting the equitable distribution of the burdens as well as the pleasures of life—is also giving the opportunity for human affection to develope to its highest and purest form.

—————-

Whilst turning out an old drawer the writer came upon the following quotation from “Lloyd’s Weekly” (31.3.12). It is worth treasuring.

“Arrangements are being made at Lyons to celebrate next year the centenary of the birth of the inventor of the sewing machine, Barthélemy Thimonnier, who died in 1857 an abject poverty.—Reuter.”

The above fate has been the reward of the majority of the brilliant thinkers who, applying their brains to the various spheres of production, have assisted largely in the rapid evolution of modern industry, in which those wonderful machines and processes operate to enslave the ignorant masses.

For the present the wealthy shareholders of the Singer Sewing Machine Company and their international fellow capitalists reap the fruits of the inventor’s teeming brain. But when the worker awakens and hails the dawn of freedom with open clear eyes, those same mighty brains and marvellous machine will be converted into a means to lighten labour and increase the sum total of human happiness.

In the days that are to come, fellow workers, remember the annals of your class. Remember the bloody massacres of your fellows upon the industrial and political battlefields. Remember the sweating and the destruction of child life, and the violation of womanhood. Remember !—and proceed unswervingly upon your course. Do not be deterred from prosecuting the war of your class by the sentimental humbugs who regard the destruction of vermin as a crime against “God’s creatures,” and are for ever trying to divert the attention of the workers from the main issue—their emancipation from wage-slavery.

The war between the exploiting and exploited classes can only end with the extinction of one or the other. The “war that will end war” is the war waged by the down-trodden, masses against their task-masters ; and victory will signify the abolition for ever of privilege, private property, and its accompanying oppressions. The place for all working men who would play a man’s part in the struggle of their class is under the red banner of Socialism, sounding the tocsin of the Revolution. There they will ally themselves with comrades worthy of their aid.

Gilmac.

Our shifty paymasters. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The debate on the Finance Bill in the House of Commons on October 13th was a typical expression of the shuffling methods of our masters. Those who call the tune were quarrelling over the payment of the piper.

The course of this debate exhibited, as usual, the truth of the Socialist’s contention that economic interests are the prime factors in all historical movements, no matter how much idealistic puff is put into the movements. The attitude of the international money-bags has shown the mercenary motives at the bottom of the present war, in spite of the “sanctity of small nations” twaddle.

Here, in this debate on the distribution of the expenses of the war, we have the clashing interests of all sections of the capitalist class.

The business was opened by a certain Mr. Lough, whose main bone of contention appeared to be the Excess Profits Tax, and he proceeded to set forth the views of our masters on business generally, which views are very enlightening ! “Profits in business,” says he, “seem to me the same thing as victories in war.” The noble gentleman was not far wide of the mark that time, and he evidently adheres to our position that the profits of the masters are made out of the blood of the workers. Further on he says : “It is a serious thing to plunge into the question of measuring too closely with a 12 inch rule the exact profits that have been made during the few months since the commencement of the war.” We should say not ! It might, perhaps, awaken some suspicion in the minds of those who are giving their blood—for what ? “Trading Companies are generally collections of poor people” ! ! Such as the Northcliffs, the Liptons, the Brunner Monds, etc., etc. !

Further on he says, tearfully: “It has been suggested that the bloated people in the trading concerns of the country are not doing their duty in the war. I repudiate the suggestion altogether. As far as I know, every one of the great trading concerns has its Roll of Honour. A large percentage of their men have gone to the front, and many of them have paid the penalty.” How truly blind the trading community really is. They have sent their men (their wage-slaves) out to die.

Here is another gem: “Profits are the wages of our class and wages are the dividends of another class.” There is one difference—wages are on an average the smallest sum that will suffice to keep together the body and soul of a worker and reproduce the necessary working-power, while dividends are anything up to millions of pounds. One is the price of a worker’s labour-power, and often of his life ; the other is the idler’s revenue.

“Do not take a weapon that will damage interests of the greatest importance,” he wailed, but not a word of regret as to the damaging of human flesh and blood.

The sycophantic Philip Snowden then rose and delivered a long address, taking great care not to tread on anybody’s corns; in fact, he comported himself as a “thorough gentleman.” In the course of his remarks this professional toady said: “I am very glad to be able to join in what is the universal testimony and tribute of this country to the sacrifice of life which both the middle and aristocratic classes have made, but in the matter of wealth they are not paying their fair share of the cost of the war.” Fancy thanking our masters for the paltry few who have risked anything in their war in comparison with the myriads of wage slaves ! This is the man deluded workers once called a “Socialist” !

Sir G. Younger also objected to the Excess Profits Tax on the ground that it would put English firms who are now on war work in a disadvantageous position with American firms at the end of the war.

T. M. Healy, in the course of his remarks, made the following enlightening statement with reference to the Income Tax: “You are charging those unfortunate professional men, clerks and others, with incomes of £2 and £3 per week. The Government are going to call upon them for £2, £3, and £5, out of their incomes, and all in connection with a war from which they gain no practical benefit, and these people in Ireland belong to the very classes who have given their sons and brothers to fight.” Tim had better be careful as he is sailing very close to the wind in his excitement. Healy makes use of the above to appeal for a fair share of munition work on behalf of the Irish manufacturers, who, he is afraid, are likely to lose in competition with the English. What he is really out for, of course, is cheap labour, being of opinion that increased taxation will mean higher wages.

Sir Alexander Henderson let out a wail of woe on behalf of the poor devil who, through the proposed tax, would be compelled to exist on the paltry sum of £1,800 per year ! Listen, O ye slaves, to this tale of woe ! “The man that has £4,812 a year would find it, and does find it, very difficult to reduce his expenditure down to the reduced amount of £3,600. If he is only to spend half of that and his expenditure, which was £4,812, is to be reduced to £1,800, take the figure of £5,000 as an example to us how impossible is the suggestion. All a man’s plans in life are more or less made up and fixed according to the income he has had for many years, and to suggest that an expenditure of £4,800 can be reduced to £1,800 is a practical impossibility.” Of course it is ! The idea is simply absurd. Now you starvelings of the workshop and factory who are only called upon to give your life blood in the business, surely you will have pity on the noble lord in his dilemma ! £3,000 a year to be chucked overboard ! Why, it’s preposterous.

After Sir Arthur Markham (shareholder in mines) had suggested that all working men ought to be taxed during the war (their lives are not enough !) in accordance with their ability to pay, urging that “there are many working men earning very high wages who can well afford to make a contribution towards the expenses of the war,” (think of the poor, poverty-stricken £1,800 a year merchant, and weep !) our old friend, Mr. Samuel Samuel, rose on behalf of the trading section. “We are the wealthiest country in the world,” says he, and a little further on, “I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer will appreciate that the wealth of the nation is in the main the wealth of the individuals who make up the nation,” (what marvellous insight and subtlety !) “those people who spend their lives in business (Lipton, Rothschild, Duke of Devonshire, Duke of Sutherland, etc.) and who by their industry give employment to the millions of working people..” Dear, kind, benevolent souls ! Further on he says: “If you take away not only the surplus profits during the period of the war, but impose large taxes besides, then, when the time comes and we have to enter the markets of the world in competition with other countries, the industrial and commercial classes will be unable to meet that competition with any prospect of success.”

It is strange what things leak out when the thieves are squabbling. Lough pointed out that the Cabinet were not taxing themselves under the excess profits tax, and Sir Alfred Mond drew attention to the “fact that a deputation of a certain number of English motor-car manufacturers waited upon the officials at the Treasury in order to press for a Protective Tariff,” and asks if the new motor tax is the result. Lough also said: “We know that motor-cars are being taxed because of a certain motor-car which is imported into this country from America, with which at the present time English motor-car manufacturers are not able to compete, and consequently British manufacturers require protection against that import until the time comes that they will once more be able to compete with it.” (What is the difference between Free Traders and Protectionists ?) He also pointed out that the “Evening News” had vigorously defended the tax on films imported into this country and pointed out that one of the Directors of the Association that owns the “Evening News”—Mr. Tod Anderson has 3,000 shares in Regal Films Ltd. This is letting the cat out of the bag with a vengeance.

(All the above quotations are taken from “Parliamentary Debates.” Vol. 74, No. 101.)

Thus the debate went on. Each interest squabbling sordidly as to who shall bear the least part of the expenses of the war—each trying to shift the burden on to other shoulders. If space would permit and the patience of the readers held out I could quote enough to fill columns showing the cold-blooded, mercenary spirit of the masters throughout this debate. While they are spending hours shifting the burden of payment, the latest returns show, according to Mr. Outhwaite (Parliamentary De­bates. Vol. 74, No. 103, p. 1571) that British casualties up to 10th Oct. in the Dardenelles alone amount to 96,899 !

Such are the men who run “our” Empire; and such are the exalted views that guide them !

Now, fellow slaves, what are you fighting for ? Think !

M. G.

Be a man! (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

To be content with overwork, harsh treatment, and a starvation wage is to be—well, a working man. Be a man!

Acknowledgements. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I don't usually make a point of posting the journals received column from the Standard but it's occasionally worthwhile to do so to correct the mistaken impression that the SPGB was isolated from the wider political left - especially the global left - during these early decades but also to show that even by as late as November 1915 there was an air of 'business as usual' in the columns of the Standard, despite the world being in the midst of war.

Of the journals listed above, a few have their partial archives over at the Marxist Internet Archive. Follow the links:

• "Appeal to Reason." (Kansas)
• "Washington Socialist." (Washington)
• "Weekly People." (New York)

Life & Times: Advertising for a gardener (2024)

The Life and Times column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

I recently posted a message on my local Facebook page asking if anyone could recommend a gardener to tidy up my overgrown but not too large back garden. I got 28 (yes 28) replies from helpful members of the group. My quandary now was deciding which one to contact with a view to getting the work done. I proceeded to draw up a short list – entirely unscientifically – and from it I chose one one – Tom the Gardener –on the basis that his address showed he lived close to me. Tom said he’d come round later that day to look at the work to be done, and he did. The main question during his inspection was whether I wanted the fairly large laurel bush, which was almost a tree and was cutting out light, cut down completely or to just have the top part taken off it. We got back into the house and I was pretty gobsmacked when he told me that the cost of tidying the garden and doing the ‘small job’ (ie, removing the top part of the laurel) would be £1,700 and, if I wanted it, the ‘big job’(ie, cutting it down completely) would be £4,000. He told me he could start the next day. I said I’d think about it, but he seemed to twig that the answer was likely to be no, since he began to talk about how costs had ‘skyrocketed’ in recent times and how just to deposit the green waste at the Council site ‘cost a fortune’. Anyway we said our goodbyes and I knew I’d have to find someone else.

When I had another look at my ‘short list’ to try and decide where to go to next, there was one name on it I rather liked – GreenspaceSOS. I looked at their Facebook page and website and my first impression was reinforced. It said ‘GreenspaceSOS is a non-profit Community Interest Company. All profits made by our garden and estate maintenance service go towards delivering free services for vulnerable people and groups throughout our communities struggling with their overgrown gardens and green spaces. We recognise the physical and mental health benefits that access to good quality green space can provide.’

It then added (and this caught my eye in particular): ‘Due to receiving an overwhelming number of enquiries asking whether we deliver a normal ‘paid-for’ garden maintenance service, GreenspaceSOS have decided to open our books to paying customers who would like a reliable, trustworthy, professional, friendly, clean, and ethical garden service for 2024!’ Bingo! Or so it seemed. And actually it was. I wasn’t looking to have my garden done for free, but the ‘paid for’ option gave me hope. So I duly emailed Greenspace SOS and got a quick reply. Paul offered to come round and look in the next couple of days. And he did. I immediately took to him. He was obviously knowledgeable about the work and his friendly, courteous manner inspired confidence. He quickly told me that, though he could cut back or cut down the big bush, he didn’t want to reduce its height to any great extent, because it was likely that birds were nesting in it and they shouldn’t be disturbed. I hadn’t thought of that and I was obviously sympathetic. He asked me if he could take photos of the garden with a view to sending me a quote and promised to get back to me soon. He did that a couple of days later, quoting a sum of £140. In its own way, this shocked me as much as Tom’s £1,700. A friend suggested that maybe he’d inadvertently left off a nought at the end.

Anyway I got back to him to say fine. But when he came to do the work the following week, the first thing I said was I thought £140 was incredibly little. But he said it was all right and that at least cleared my mind of the missing nought suspicion. It was a good number of hours work for Paul and he did a truly excellent job of pruning, shaping and clearing as well as leaving everything very clean. I asked him how they (their website said that he, Gav and Ian were a team of 3) managed financially if most of their work was done for free and they seemed to charge little even for paid work. He told me they applied for various grants that were available for assisting disadvantaged individuals or groups (eg, elderly and disabled, extra care housing schemes, an animal rescue centre, St John’s Ambulance), and also canvassed donations from local businesses. They were content to live on relatively little themselves and had the satisfaction of knowing they were in some way lighting up the lives of people who had little materially and were contributing positively to the health of communities. When I asked him how they disposed of the waste, he said they had to pay for that at the council site – at which I insisted that £140 really was too little and he had to take a few more tenners, which, thank goodness, he accepted.

Since then I’ve recommended GreenspaceSOS to two friends, both needing work in their respective gardens, and they’ve both agreed terms with him. Paul has emailed to thank me. But I’ve also mused about how to account for all this. As I see it, Tom, who I’ve actually got nothing against, is bowing to capitalism’s everyone-for-themselves ethic, whilst Paul, Gav and Ian are resisting this and preferring instead to embrace a community and mutual aid ethic. Good for them, and it also provides at least a glimpse of evidence that, when we get a socialist world of common ownership and free access to all goods and services, human beings, eminently flexible as ‘human nature’ is, will be perfectly capable of acting in the interests of the community as whole, especially as it will also be in their own interest to do so – and that includes Tom the Gardener’s interest as well.

Howard Moss

Pathfinders: Boeing: out in the cold (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

After nearly three months on the International Space Station, two astronauts are to be marooned there until next February as their proposed transport home, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, remains out of service after a host of thruster failures, software glitches, parachute problems and helium leaks. The astronauts are being philosophical about it, but Boeing will be aggrieved at losing credibility points to its arch-rival NASA co-contractor, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, which will now take on the responsibility for bringing the astronauts home (tinyurl.com/3bj3ua2t).

Boeing is fast becoming a byword for ‘omnishambles’ with a recent history that showcases just how capitalist competition and corporate profit-chasing can result in highly uncreative destruction.

When Boeing swallowed up the last of its US aviation rivals in the 1990s, it saw the chance to adopt a less product-oriented and more shareholder-focused and monopolistic approach which sought to maximise returns by outsourcing not just part production but the cost of part development too, while also extorting price reductions. This put the squeeze on suppliers, who were faced with a Hobson’s Choice of a bad deal or no deal at all. But outsourcing creates complexity, and this compartmentalised approach on the wide-bodied 787 Dreamliner resulted in delays and overruns and never delivered the savings expected (tinyurl.com/fsmbd8mz).

While Boeing wrestled with a problem of its own making, its major European rival, the joint venture Airbus, announced the re-engined narrow-body A320neo, which it claimed could cut fuel use by up to 35 percent. This caused consternation at Boeing, whose 50-year-old 737 had previously dominated the core-segment single-aisle market. To compete, Boeing really needed a brand new plane, but the lead-time to mass production of an all-new design, outsourced or not, would be far too long, and Boeing were already haemorrhaging buyers to Airbus. So bosses resorted to the least-worst option, to re-engine the 737. Morgan Stanley said of this ‘reactionary’ solution, ‘Boeing’s hasty decision to re-engine the B737 is a clear indication of the success and strong competitive positioning of the A320neo’ while another business analyst was ‘astounded at the Airbus smackdown’ (tinyurl.com/36rkdsrr).

Enter the 737 MAX. But when you put new and bigger engines on a 100-ton aircraft they alter its centre of gravity and flight characteristics. Normally this would necessitate costly flight simulator retraining and recertification of pilots. Instead Boeing used a background software fix known as the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which altered the plane’s rear flaps in response to sensor signals. As long as it worked properly, they reasoned, the pilots didn’t need to know about it. So Boeing did not tell them about MCAS or include it in the pilot manual. The Federal Aviation Administration wasn’t too worried, despite whistleblower allegations of its regulatory capture by Boeing, and agreed with the company to give pilots just an hour of training on an iPad, without mentioning MCAS. Boeing weren’t worried either. They had calculated the likelihood of a ‘major failure’ (one not resulting in the loss of a plane, which is termed ‘catastrophic’) as once in every 223 trillion flight hours – around 2 billion years of annual MAX fleet service (tinyurl.com/549z2ahj).

In the event they had two catastrophic failures in less than 6 months. The sensors and control panel light didn’t work properly, and pilots did not know about MCAS or how to override it when it malfunctioned. In October 2018 a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 crashed in the Java Sea, killing all 189 people. Airily dismissing this as ground crew and pilot incompetence, Boeing announced record $100bn earnings the following January. But in March 2019 an Ethiopian Airlines MAX 8 also fell out of the sky, killing all 157 on board. Clearly this was no coincidence, and Boeing immediately saw its orders, stock prices and reputation plummet. Its CEO promptly resigned, though with a cosy retirement package of $80m in stock options (tinyurl.com/498cvau4), and the new CEO issued a mea culpa to the US Senate, accepting the company’s responsibility for the deaths and agreeing to pay compensation and submit to regulators.

And then, despite all the regulation, a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January this year, because bolts were missing. How could this happen? Multiple whistleblowers had faced company reprisals after drawing attention to falsified inspection reports and a string of unsafe practices due to cost-cutting and inadequate staff training. In July Boeing pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy after being found to violate the terms of the regulatory agreement, meaning the company now has a criminal record (tinyurl.com/mv4av7m2).

On top of that, Boeing workers have been on strike against a union-busting and bullying culture, pay rates that have not increased in 16 years as the cash-strapped company grinds down on its own workforce, and ‘panic mode’ as managers hound staff to keep quiet over quality concerns (tinyurl.com/ysjh9mnc).

Now Boeing has $60bn of debt and is ‘one level above being potentially downgraded to non-investment grade status – junk status’. But nobody wants Boeing to collapse, not the airlines, who are faced with a global shortage of aircraft and fear an Airbus monopoly even more than the current Boeing-Airbus duopoly, and not the US government, which relies on Boeing’s aerospace defence arm and fears market capture by a major Chinese competitor like Comac (Economist, 20 June).

Airbus has seen A220-300 engine failures, diversions, groundings and supply chain problems but no crashes, and its stock has gone up, not down. The story of Boeing shows what can happen when market competition tightens the screws, and things like quality control, adequate training, product performance and company honesty begin to crack and splinter. Accidents will still happen in non-market socialism, but not because someone is eyeing the balance sheet instead of the safety inspection reports.

Meanwhile the astronauts continue to float in the ISS, patiently above it all. Compared to what many others have suffered at Boeing’s hands, they might consider themselves lucky only to be left out in the cold.

Paddy Shannon

Cooking the Books: ‘The markets’ before people (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was always a bit of a mystery why Rachel Reeves was so insistent on presenting the Labour Party as the ‘Party of Business’ and emphasising that, if she became Chancellor of the Exchequer, she would enforce stringent government spending rules with a rod of iron.

This can’t have been aimed at catching votes; that would be too much like asking for turkeys to vote for Christmas. Nor even to reassure British business; these would know from past experience that a Labour government would be a safe pair of hands as far as looking after their interests was concerned. It seemed that the only explanation could be to reassure ‘the markets’ so as to avoid the fate of the unfortunate Truss government; to reassure, in other words, the international speculators who buy and sell currencies and who lend money to governments by buying the bonds they issue.

That this may well have been the reason was revealed on Sunday 1 September by the member of the Cabinet sent out that day to tour the radio and TV studios to defend the Labour government’s decision to take away the winter fuel allowance from most pensioners. Newspaper headlines the following day reflected what Lucy Powell, the Leader of the House of Commons, had said:

‘WINTER FUEL PAYMENT CUT HELPED STOP “RUN ON THE POUND” SAYS LUCY POWELL. “We would have seen the markets losing confidence”, Leader of the Commons said’ (iNews).

‘UK FACED ECONOMIC CRASH IF WINTER FUEL PAYMENT WAS NOT AXED, POWELL SAYS. The Commons Leader says Rachel Reeves’s decision to cut the payment was a “difficult decision” with “no alternative”’ (Belfast-based Irish News).

Her exact words, as recorded by these newspapers, were, respectively:

‘ . . . why we had to do that was because if we didn’t, we would have seen the markets losing confidence, potentially a run on the pound, the economy crashing . . . ’ (inews)

and

‘If we hadn’t taken some of these tough decisions we could have seen a run on the pound, interest rates going up and crashing the economy. It’s something we were left with no alternative but to do’ (tinyurl.com/yhs7t6se).

What she meant couldn’t have been clearer: that to retain the confidence of the international speculators and investors who trade in currencies and government bonds, the new Labour government had no alternative but to cut government spending.

Some might question whether the situation was that drastic. But that’s not the point. The government considered that it was and, in their role as guardian of the general interest of the British capitalist class as a whole, took the required action to maintain the confidence of ‘the markets’ by cutting its spending. In theory they could have cut something else — so-called defence spending, for instance — but, presumably to convince the markets how serious they were, deliberately chose to cut some social benefits, in this case those for pensioners.

In any event, the markets were satisfied. Under the headline INVESTORS DEFY ECONOMIC GLOOM WITH SCRAMBLE FOR UK BONDS, the Times (4 September) reported:

‘The record demand for gilts suggests that financial markets are shrugging off worries about the UK’s fiscal sustainability for now, after the government said it needed to carry out immediate spending cuts to prevent a collapse in the pound.’

How we live and how we might live - Part 2 (2024)

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last month)

It is November, 1884. William Morris, designer, author and revolutionary socialist, stands before an audience assembled at his London home delivering a talk: “How we live and How we might live”. Six hundred miles away across the North Sea in Berlin, representatives of the European powers are gathered, negotiating, bargaining, manoeuvring, carving up the African continent into agreed spheres of influence and exploitation. The British are becoming anxious and a bullish jingoism is percolating through society. The United Kingdom has recently lost its world lead in manufacturing to the rapidly growing capitalist powers of continental Europe. Rivalry among them is heating up.

Morris assesses the situation shrewdly. He observes:

‘it is now a desperate competition between the great nations of civilisation for the world-market, and tomorrow it may be a desperate war for that end.’

That ‘desperate war’ among the ‘great nations of civilisation’ would come eventually in the cataclysm of 1914-18. War, of course, was nothing new, and the ‘great nations’ were no strangers to it. Even as their representatives in Berlin haggled over African territories, the French and Dutch were fighting separate colonial wars in China. Industrial capitalism, birthed in the early decades of the nineteenth century, had shown no capacity for limiting mass violence. Quite the contrary. The nineteenth century had exploded across the European landmass with the muskets and cannons of the Napoleonic and Coalition armies. Throughout the century the long destructive arc of capitalist violence ripped through a multitude of colonial and European territories and states. It began the new century on the southern tip of Africa with Brits and Boers fighting it out in a hail of machine gun fire and rifle bullets.

The slaughter continued in a multitude of conflicts. It failed miserably to end with ‘The War to End All Wars’, rose to new heights of violence between 1939 and 1945, and by the millennium, had left behind it vast material devastation, 230 million dead, and an untold number of broken lives. The arrival of the twenty-first century didn’t disappoint. It opened with a flood of civil wars and insurgencies, and with a cynical and drawn out conflict in Iraq.

Today, some twenty years later our TV screens and news media are filled with narratives of the current slaughter in Ukraine and the Middle East. Elsewhere, less newsworthy but no less deadly conflicts rage around the globe: in Cameroon and Haiti; in Yemen and Mexico; in the deserts of northern Africa, and in the mountains and plains of South America. Warfare appears to be a fixture in human affairs. It changes its colours and pretexts with each new conflict, but never disappears – despite the fact that few sane people actually want it. Once again, this raises the question that Morris asked of another seeming fixture of human life, poverty: why? Why poverty? Why war? Why do we see no end to it, no relief?

Why war?

It would be easy to settle on a simple answer to his question, one we see everywhere online, in the media and sometimes even in academic texts – ‘human nature’. We hear those words pronounced sagely at home and in the pub. It’s just the way we humans are, we say. The truth however, is that we humans like simple explanations, something that we can pin down in a weighty phrase or with a shake of the head, and then tuck away in the back of our minds before returning to the immediate problems of daily life. But is war so simple? It takes vast organisation and resources to conduct a modern war. It takes a great deal of thought and preparation. Human nature, geared to quick instinctive responses does not seem to fit the bill.

In his talk, Morris addressed the questions of war and poverty as they affected British society in his own time, yet he might just as well have been speaking for us today. Poverty and the drive to war persist even though a lot has changed in the scope and impact they have on our lives. Under the competitive pressures of a capitalist market, the advance of science and technology has led to the increased mechanisation and destructive power of war. It has led to the growth of a huge and lucrative armament industry, and to growing stockpiles of weaponry. It has vastly increased the possibility of widespread, even global destruction.

Disarmament agreements that offered some reassurance over past decades have now fallen by the wayside. Competition has once again grown fierce and borders have closed. Poverty, too, continues to scar communities in the capitalist West, and in the countries of the ‘developing world’ subject to capitalism’s long reach and market imperatives. With the capitalist advance and the destruction of traditional economies, however, poverty arises less often these days from a result of natural scarcity, and more frequently from lack of ability to pay.

Escalating crises

Time moves on. This is 2024, not 1884, and in addition to the historical blights of poverty and war, we are now facing potential catastrophes of a kind that Morris never had to deal with. After decades of evasion and denial, few now are unaware of the escalating crises of climate change, loss of species diversity and of pollution. Climate change has made itself felt around the world in the large scale destruction of lives and property brought on by extreme weather systems. In David Attenborough’s well publicised words to the United Nations, climate change has now become ‘widespread, rapid, and intensifying’. It poses threats to food security, access to fresh water and to natural resources. It is altering the migration patterns of human beings, creating social division and disruption. And of course, as always, it is the poor that suffer most.

Since 1950, that is, within the lifetime of many people, over half of all the world’s species have become extinct, and much of this is driven by capitalist imperatives and human action. From what we now understand of the interdependency of all life on the planet, this loss is not just a matter for sentimental regret. The excessive rate at which species are being lost or diminished is putting severe pressure on the ability of ecological systems to adapt. Ecologists warn that beyond a certain limit these natural systems are likely to become unstable or collapse. Seventy-five percent of the genetic variation in crops has disappeared in the last 125 years through selective breeding for commercial purposes. It is irretrievable. A lack of genetic diversity leaves crops more vulnerable to disease, pests and invasive species but also to the effects of climate change. Not only does this threaten global food security but it can have disastrous consequences for local populations who are tied into the capitalist system and are dependent upon revenue from the sale of crops.

Pollution too, is reaching new levels, and creating new threats. Here in the UK, the media keeps us aware of local problems like our polluted waterways. But this is only scratching the surface. Air, land and water pollution has a significant global impact on ecosystems and on human health. According to the World Health Organisation, almost 99 percent of the global population is now breathing air that exceeds quality limits, creating cardiovascular problems, strokes and respiratory diseases. Today, eight million deaths annually are attributed to air pollution. The land, too, is rapidly deteriorating from an onslaught of pollutants from landfill sites, from agricultural pesticides and fertilisers. These pollutants, along with untreated sewage, leak into the water supply contaminating seas, lakes and rivers. Oil spillages and accumulations of plastic waste kill animals and destroy habitats.

In the face of all these current crises, it seems we have become paralysed, unable to act effectively. And that requires an explanation. Looking around at our advances in science, in engineering, in medicine, and in so many other fields, it’s clear that we are a practical and problem-solving species. The capitalist system which currently dominates our lives and directs our activity is so often credited with a capacity to innovate, and yet when it comes to collective problem-solving in areas such as these, it seems impotent.

It is not that these problems have lacked attention or proposed solutions. A vast amount of human energy has been expended on them. The outcomes, however, have been inadequate, and the solutions proposed have been superficial and ineffective. Globally, we are still pumping huge quantities of climate-altering carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The long string of international gatherings since the first 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm has achieved little. The internationally agreed Kyoto protocols have been established but their targets have remained largely unmet. The annual COP meetings have been attended by heads of state, politicians, and thousands of business representatives, lobbyists, journalists, negotiators and scientists. Weeks have been spent in intense exchanges and negotiations, yet with very little positive result.

A single origin

So what is going on? Why have we made so little progress? In recent years there has been a growing recognition that these crises: climate change; loss of species diversity; and pollution are not separate problems. They influence and magnify one other. They cannot be separately addressed. Fashionable terms like ‘the polycrisis’ or ‘the metacrisis’ have been popping up to describe this new understanding like bubbles on the surface of a rapidly flowing river. There is an acknowledgment that these crises have a single origin. This is an advance of sorts.

Some, at least, have come to the realisation that it is no longer sufficient to blame superficial features of our society like particular industries, businesses or political ideologies. And there is little to be gained by blaming vague abstractions like ‘human nature’. It is becoming acceptable, even in the conventional media, to acknowledge that the problem lies in something much more fundamental, in the way we organise ourselves as a global society to produce the things we need (or think we need) in order to live. It lies, in other words, in the structure of the capitalist economy.

Despite this advance, we soon hit a problem. There is disagreement on what capitalism fundamentally is. It gets defined in terms of its surface features. But superficial definitions give rise only to superficial and ineffective solutions. Economic textbooks and business sites tell us, for example, that capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production (factories, machines, raw materials, etc). ‘Libertarians’ tell us that capitalism is no more than voluntary exchange. These abstract definitions are both highly ideological and highly reductive. They tell us very little about the complex nature of the world we actually inhabit. Worse still, they are inaccurate.

Capitalism is an impersonal system. It matters very little how the means of production are owned, or who owns them. The central feature of capitalism, the accumulation of capital by means of wage labour, remains the same whether businesses are owned by individuals, partnerships, families, cooperatives, groups of shareholders or by the state. So what is this thing we call capitalism, and how is it responsible for so much that appears wrong with our world?

In next month’s Socialist Standard we will dive down into its workings and start to look at the ways in which all these features are generated in our own time by what lies at the heart of capitalism itself.

Hud.