Capitalism and the Shopkeeper. (1911)

From the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist teaching of the truth that capital is becoming concentrated in the hands of a diminishing number of capitalists has been recently attacked, from two points of view, by the “illuminati” of the I.L.P. and by the Anarchists.

In both cases is the wish father to the thought. Both parties have a case to bolster up, and both have diligently sought for “facts” to support their tenets.

The Joint-Stock Company and the small shopkeeper are stock illustrations supposed to prove the theory of the division of capital among an increasing number of happy and deserving recipients. The “theory of increasing misery” has its converge in the theory of a slow but sure evolution into terrestrial paradise. No one will be able to say of any particular period: here ends capitalism and Socialism has its birth ; but the change will be gradual, peaceful, ethical—through the Joint Stock company and the small shopkeeper, and small reforms, vide Bernstein & Co. Let us look into the position of this small shopkeeper.

The English race have been reputed a nation of shopkeepers; the growth of multiple retail stores has suggested the remark that we are now a nation of managers. It is beyond dispute that the existence of thousands of company stores has limited the scope for individual success in the retail trade, and has driven the small retailer to accept the most casual and unremunerative portion of that trade. A huge business is carried on in multiple and chain shops, by mail-order businesses, departmental stores, and other massive concerns. They cause tradesmen great anxiety ; all along the line the small shopkeeper is exploited ; manufacturers are making attempts to deal direct with the consumer ; department stores are trying to filch suburban trade ; they are spoiling the retailer by well-organised mail-trading systems.

If the man with little capital can exist to day at all it is as a retailer; but even this small sphere of activity seems narrowing. Half a century ago little capital was required to become a retailer. In no branch of commerce is the personal factor, the knowledge of a customer’s wants and whims, of such value. The old tradesman was in personal contact with hundreds of his customers, and it was once thought that. here was a barrier to Joint Stock Company success in the retail trade. However, slower than in manufacture, but as surely, the big capitalist is gaining ground.

In the North of England the shopkeeper has two competitors—the multiple stores and the co-operative societies. These obtain the cream of the cash trade, and leave to the shopkeeper a hazardous credit trade, plus what he can catch when the stores are closed—for he works fifteen hours a day. Certainly, as one walks along and sees hundreds of small shops, it would seem as if the small trader throve in spite of powerful competitors. But even if we grant an increase in the number of small shops, it does not imply greater prosperity for their owners, nor that a certain number of proletarians have risen out of their class and become independent shopkeepers. In large towns hundreds of these “emporiums” are run by workingmen with the aim of adding a trifle to their petty wages, just as, as Kautsky has shown, in Belgium many of the belauded peasant proprietors work in contiguous mines and milk to help eke out a livelihood.

It is certainly the ideal of thousands of workingmen to “get out of the factory,” as the phrase goes, and live a life free from the factory buzzers, managers, and foremen ; alas, many are called but few chosen ! The majority of them have not even a sporting chance of obtaining a livelihood from their shop alone. Years ago such, small speculators had better opportunities of becoming successful retail merchants, but to-day they are snowed under by powerful enemies. The big fish, are swallowing the little fish even in a branch of commerce where so much is in favour of the small fry. The Marxian law surely stands unassailable everywhere if it is applicable to retail trading. The following figures relative to the number of shops in Prussia are taken from Bernstein’s “Evolutionary Socialism.”

Bernstein remarks : “It is not the large businesses that offer the most deadly opposition to the small ones; the latter provide it among themselves.” If he can obtain comfort from such statistics his position is surely in dire straits.

The better placed shopkeepers who manage to obtain a “living” are, too, getting more in the clutches of the big capitalists. Most retail tobacconists are merely agents for the Imperial Tobacco Company ; in the grocery line such firms as Lever Bros, are obtaining great power ; and in every department of retail trade we meet with combination and association. Competition is as dead as piety. Arrangements are made amongst manufacturers to keep up prices, and amongst retailers to do likewise. Small dealers attempt, through their associations, to buy collectively. A few weeks ago a Manchester ironmongers’ association actually discussed a proposal that they, as an association, commence a large store in the centre of the city, to enable them to fight the great firms with better prospect of success. These stores, it was stated, were stealing the most profitable portion of the trade ; and individually they could not compete with the splendid displays and powerful organisation of the stores.

The transition from a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of managers is the transition from “small to big industry,” analogous to the transition from handicraftsman to factory hand in the sphere of production. The journals which circulate amongst the various retailers are not blind to this change, however much the I.L.P. official gang may deny it. The “Boot and Shoe Trade Journal” is a better judge of the havoc wrought by company shops amongst small retailers than is Ramsay MacDonald or the editor of the “Labour Leader.” And when the present chairman of the I.L.P., Mr. W. C. Anderson, was peripatetic organiser for the Shop Assistants Union, his stock speech was a lament at the small opportunities possessed by modern shop assistants, of budding into independent shopkeepers.

The Socialist must wish for a quick awakening, both in the ranks of the shop assistants and those of the shopkeeper. The former in permanently proletarian, the latter liable to drop into the proletarian ranks at any moment. The assistant, working in a shop, amongst thirty more of his class, that shop being but one of six hundred owned by his employers, is better able to appreciate the vast changes in the retail trade than are I.L.P. critics and Anarchist theorisers with creeds to defend at any cost.

John A. Dawson

Jottings. (1911)

The Jottings Column from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Will Thorne has introduced a Bill in the House for the Nationalisation of the Railways and Canals. What have the tripe shops done amiss ?

* * *

In a leading article describing the history of the Socialist Movement in France, which appeared in the “Labour Leader” (24.2.11), the writer, Mr. J. F. Mills, states:

“To Blanc must be accorded the credit for theoretically bringing Socialism down from the empyrean to the solid earth. The conquest of political power by the masses and the democratic State as the great instrument of social transformation, and the right to work, … all these principles reveal Blanc’s originality, and proclaim his right to be entitled ‘The Father of Modern Social-Democracy,’ or if Marxists dispute his right to the word ‘father,’ then let us say ‘grandfather.’ ”

* * *

As a Socialist, I am not in the least concerned about the principles of Louis Blanc, nor yet his right to the titles claimed for him by the writer quoted—except to suggest that “grandmother” would, perhaps, have been more appropriate. If by “originality” is meant Blanc’s experiment of the national workshops, then it is about on a par with the “originality” of the Labour Party in their schemes of social reform, and so on.

But to attribute to Blanc that which Marx really accomplished, is a piece of unblushing effrontery indeed. To Marx, and Marx alone, is to be attributed the placing of Socialism on a scientific basis. He it was who discovered and established the great law of economic determinism, which may be briefly stated thus : Morals, laws, and political conditions grow out of, and are determined by, economic conditions.

The application of this law spells revolution and the end of wage-slavery. But as the “Labour Leader’s” policy is anti-revolutionary, it must expect the opposition of Socialists.

* * *

The same writer in a further article (10.3.11), in the midst of a tirade against Marxists (whom he refers to as Ishmaelites, Irnpossibilists, etc.), says: “Revolutionary Socialism (Marxism) is becoming merely a catchword . . .” And he remarks further on upon the scanty following of Marx, which following, he alleges, is chiefly confined to the Continent. Yet on the front page of the same issue we find an advertisement of a biography of Marx (published by the people who issue the “Labour Leader”) eulogising him, and in which occurs this passage: “Karl Marx, founder of modern scientific Socialism, under whose banner ten million voters are enrolled.” No wonder the workers are misled !

It might interest our modern Rip Van Winkle to know that not only is Marxism not dead or dying, but that it is, on the contrary, very much alive indeed—though, perhaps, it is not apparent to those suffering from that aggravated form of mental myopia prevalent in the I.L.P.

* * *

Speaking of the forced labour in the Congo, and the necessity for its abolition, Sir Edward Grey said (27.7.07): “If it is to come to an end it is essential that without delay the natives should be put in possession of large tracts of territory, which will enable them to keep themselves. Otherwise they will have no means of livelihood.”

This must have preyed on the mind of Mr. W. H. Lever, for we learn from the Brussels correspondent of the “Standard” that “the Minister for the Colonies has just come to an agreement with Messrs. Lever Bros., Port Sunlight, for the formation of a limited company, with a capital of £1,000,000, for the planting of palm-oil trees, and the establishment of a factory for the manufacture of oil products in the Congo.”

Is Mr. Lever going to do for the poor natives what he has done for the Sunligliters—socialise and Christianise business relations ? Will he extend to them his noble scheme of co-partnership, with its five per cent. certificates and the “feeling of brotherhood and partnership” ? Or (as I strongly suspect) is he going out there in order to still further augment his already bloated income ? If the latter, then he will have an easy thing on, for the cruel treatment of the natives under the Belgian administration will have rendered them easy victims for the exploiting process upon which the success of the scheme will largely depend.

* * *

That Mr. Lever (like William the Little) fondly believes that he is endowed with a divine mission is evident from the following statement made by him in the first number of the “Anti-Socialist” (Feb., 1909) :

“We cannot wisely disregard the very basis on which human nature was founded by a Divine Creator, viz., self-interest. We can only direct self-interest, as its Creator in tended, into beneficent and utilitarian channels, and check and control it from becoming a curse and a clanger to society.”

No one, I am sure, will accuse Mr. Lever of disregarding the “Divine” authority. It has been left to Mr. Lever and his kind to “check and control” it from permeating the brains of the workers. When it does do so, and the workers begin to “check and control” for themselves, it will be a bad look out for the class to which Mr. Lever belongs.

* * *

Mr. J. C. Wedgwood, M.P., has resigned his membership of the Fabian Society because his opinions are no longer in accord with the aims of the society. He has not joined the S.P.G.B.

Tom Sala

Editorial: Why we oppose this “Peace Movement.” (1911)

Editorial from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The hypocrisy of the English race is proverbial. At intervals they rise to such a height in this direction, as to draw upon themselves the ridicule of the whole world—as when, drooling a sickening stream of sanctimony, they circumscribed the exploitation of the West Indian slaves, forbidding their masters to employ them more than eight hours a day, while children of tender years, of our own race, in our own country, toiled for sixteen hours a day in the mill-hells of the Midlands.

The recurring frenzy of nauseating pretence again sweeps over the land, and this time its infection spreads beyond our shores. They have caught it America ; they suspire the bacilus in Germany ; in Australia the complaint becomes epidemic. “Peace, sitting under her olive” is the subject of this amorous outbreak, and you might shout “mad dog !” in the streets and nobody would take any notice, because every eye is fixed on the beautiful form “sitting under her olive,” and every lip is outraging her name.

Peace, forsooth ! What has peace to do with you, workingmen of the world ? What horror has war that “peace” has not accustomed you to? “The red rain of death !” Ah ! go into the mine and you will see it. “The awful rending of strong men’s bodies !” The shunter sees it every day. “The fearful cost of human life !” The “Thunderer” was built in “peace” at the cost of a thousand accidents, from keel-laying to launch. Every plate in her great hull would sweat blood of those who mined it and smelted it and forged it, were the day when “the sea shall give up its dead” to come upon us tomorrow. Every great girder that gives strength to her stupendous form, and every rivet that holds them together, have been drenched with the blood of workingmen, at every stage of their winning and fashioning, before ever they come to crush and mangle workers’ bodies in the shipbuilder’s yard. And every gun which is to be put aboard her, and the engines and fittings and coal—all these are to be paid for with workers’ life and limb ; so that when she leaves port a complete thing, she may do so as an emblem of capitalist peace : for it is very unlikely that she will ever receive such libations of blood in battle has she has had poured over her on the stocks.

Peace ! The snuffling humbug of the word on capitalist lips ! At the very moment they are mouthing it most unctuously they are drafting police and military against the miners in South Wales, massing troops on the borders of Mexico, and raising an immense fund to fight the implement workers in Australia. And while the British Liberal Government are making the remote corners of the earth echo and re-echo with the empty nothing, “Peace !” they are voting the enormous sum of £75,000,000 for war—on the principle that they’ll have peace if they have to fight for it.

Strange, is it not, that in all this cry of “peace” but one incentive shows itself ? The burden of armaments. It is the treasure, not the blood, that causes the capitalist head to ache. No wonder—for treasure is the master’s while the blood is the workers. £75,000,000 in a year is a mighty drain, and the Government that is forced to exact it is in a precarious position. So they scream “peace” by way of a soft answer to turn away wrath—and also in the certain knowledge that the result will demonstrate that peace, even as the capitalist understands it, is possible only at the cost of crushing armaments—or national extinction. It is significant that no hope is held out of a “peace treaty” except with America—a country with whom all serious differences have already been composed, against whom, in addition, Britain would hurl her might in vain, and who could inflict damage, where they can inflict it all, with impunity. They could starve us out by stopping their own and Canadian wheat at the granaries. It is admitted that on the day when the States and Canada want join hands the “mother country” has got to submit. On that day the treaty becomes in all eyes what from the first it must be in reality—waste paper. It is easy for two nations who cannot fight, to make a treaty that they won’t.

But the case is different with, say Germany. No responsible person suggests a treaty with that country—yet it is Germany that has made a British Liberal Government increase its annual Naval Estimates £14,000,000 in five years. No, derision waits the Minister who dares suggest such a treaty, for the farce would be too apparent. Just as a treaty with America brings peace no nearer because the two could not fight, treaty or no treaty, so a treaty with Germany would bring peace no nearer because, in the face of conflicting interests (without which they would not fight in any event), the treaty would not be worth the cost of its inscripton. The humbug, therefore, of the cry of “Peace” and “Disarmament,” is apparent.

There comes a time, of course, when it becomes cheaper to submit to a foreign rival than to arm against him. What course our ruling class will take when the cost of “keeping up the two-power standard” is dearer than exploiting native workers under foreign rule is foreshadowed by the course of the French master class at the time of the commune. Their patriotism will quickly enough then take the form of reduced annamants—the tacit confession that they would sooner “wear the yoke” in humilty than seriously suffer in pocket.

Meanwhile the Liberals, in their desire to cover themselves, have been loyally supported by the Labour Party. These have shouted “peace” with the best of them, and they lose no opportunity of implying that it is only the “burden of armaments” which prevents the Liberals “sweeping poverty from every hearth.” They thus kill a number of birds with one stone. First the Liberals are absolved directly it is discovered that their efforts for general disarmament are without avail ; secondly the Labour Members put themselves right with all those of their constituents who are, or who think they are, groaning under the burden of armaments, and thirdly they throw dust in the eyes of the rank and file of the Labour Party and Trade Unionists on whose backs they have climbed to place—and pelf.

Of course, a show of consistency had to be made in the House. The I.L.P. had organised 250 meetings on the question of armaments, so something was expected. And something happened.

Exactly one half of the Labour Members in Parliament came up to scratch to save the face of their party by voting against the Liberals’ immense Naval Estimates. The other half (save two who voted FOR them !) stood out of it oblige the Liberals !

Keir Hardie says the party were bribed, the Osborne Bill being the price of their defection, and he should know. But we wonder how many would have opposed the Estimates had they been really in danger. How many would dare have gone back to their Liberal constituencies with the confession on their lips that they had helped to defeat a Liberal Government? Not many, we venture to guess.

Did Jesus ever live? (1911)

Book Review from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Christ Myth, by Arthur Drews, Ph. D., Professor of Philosophy at Karlsruhe. Translated from the third revised German edition by C. Desmond Burns, M.A. 304 pp. 7s. 6d., net. T. Fisher Unwin, London and Leipzic.

To the Socialist the question whether there existed an historical Jesus of the Gospels is hardly a burning question. Whether the Christ legends had an historical nucleus or not does not affect the antagonism between religion, as such, and scientific knowledge. There is nothing inherently improbable in the collection of ancient myths round an historical personage and the attribution to him of the magic commonly believed in at the time. The Socialist, however, unlike the average professor, does not consider the work concluded when a belief has been traced to a myth! The myth clamours just as loudly for explanation.

Considerable work has been done, particularly on the Continent, in the direction of tracing ancient legends to their material basis, and showing their connection with definite phases of social life; but immensely more remains. The present book does not greatly increase our knowledge in this respect, and is to that extent unsatisfactory. A reference is, however, made to a rite which exists in the Vedic Agni cult, and which, according to the author, reaches back into the very origins of all human civilisation, and preserves the memory of the discovery of fire in the midst of the “horrors of the Stone Age”. And the author gets near to a recognition of the social basis of early Christianity in the following passage:

“Christianity is a syncretic religion. It belongs to those movements which at the commencement of our era were struggling with one another for the mastery. Setting out from the Apocalyptic idea and the expectation of the Messiah among the Jewish sects, it was borne on the tide of a mighty social agitation, which found its centre and its point of departure in the religious sects and Mystery communities. Its adherents conceived the Messiah not merely as the Saviour of souls, but as deliverer from slavery, from the lot of the poor and the oppressed, and as the bearer of a new justice.”

But it is, perhaps, hardly fair to condemn Professor Drews’ book on the score that it does not explain the beliefs and myths with which it deals, for, in view of the frantic attempts of professor of Protestant theology to base their religion on an “historic” Jesus, it is certainly useful to show how unsupported such a base is.

In spite of occasional emphasis, however, the negative, as might be expected, is far from being proved. The non-historicity of Christ remains in the realms of the “may have been”, the “probable” and the “perhaps”, the professor’s scholarship notwithstanding. The innumerable comparisons with pre-Christian religions of all sorts nevertheless demonstrate, at least, the great antiquity of practically the whole of the rites popularly connected with the name of Jesus.

In essence, the author’s work in comparative religion (or, rather, in comparative mythology) simply carries the so-called Higher Criticism to its full conclusion, without seeking any sounder basis. He will have nothing to say to materialistic monism, and therefore never reaches bed rock; but his investigations within their idealistic limits have their value, and it may be useful to give Professor Drews’ chief conclusions.

At the birth of Christianity men not only longed for a new structure of society, for peace, justice, and happiness on earth, but they trembled at the expectation of the early occurrence of world-wide catastrophe which would put a terrible end to all existence. And, says the professor:

“Seldom in the history of mankind has the need for religion been so strongly felt as in the last century before and the first century after Christ. But it was not from the old hereditary national religions that deliverance was expected. It was from the unrestrained commingling and unification of all existing religions, a religious syncretism, which was specially further by acquaintance with the strange, but on that account more attractive, religions of the East. Already Rome had become a Pantheon of almost all religions in which one could believe”.

Christ is derived from a cult god of the Jewish sects, and etymological variations of the name Jesus are shown to be but older words for the Messiah, the mediator, the god of healing, and the redeemer; each with distinct characteristics. The supposed place-name, Nazareth, is a geographical fiction: the word really meant a guardian or protector. Further, the infliction of death upon a gibbet or cross as a human sacrifice was, as is, indeed, generally known, an extremely ancient religion practice. The crucifixion story had a direct connection with weather gods and the Roman Saturnalia.

Professor Drews, in common with most modern critics, attributes systematic Christianity to Paul, who possibly existed. “It is evident”, he says, “that in reality it was merely a new setting to the old conception of the representative self-sacrifice of God”. Moreover: “No historical personality who should, so to say, have lived as an example of the God-man, was in any way necessary to produce that Pauline development of the religion of Jesus . . . Christ is, for Paul, only a comprehensive expression for the totality of men, which is therein represented as an individual personal being”. In other words, according to our author, Paul did not actually conceive of an historical Jesus. “The Pauline religion was only one form of the many syncretising efforts to satisfy humanity’s need of redemption by a fusion of religious conceptions derived from different sources”. But the connection with ancient religion is even closer.

“The place of the bloody expiatory sacrifices of the believers in Attis, wherein they underwent ‘baptism by blood’ in their yearly March festival, and wherein they obtained the forgiveness of their sins and were ‘born again’ to a new life, was in Rome the Hill of the Vatican. In fact the very spot on which in Christian times the Church of St. Peter grew above the so-called grave of the Apostle. It was at bottom merely an alteration of the name, not of the matter, when the High Priest of Attis blended his rôle with that of the High Priest of Christ, and the Christ-cult spread itself from this new point far over the other parts of the Roman Empire”.

Apart from Professor Drews’ statements, however, we know that the Christian search for an historical Jesus is quite a modern thing, and is really a sign of the dissolution of Christianity, of the weakening of faith, and of the growing scientific habit.

It is the accompaniment, also, of personal individualist religion rather than of the communal faith of the original Church. As a god, Christ appeared to his worshippers to no more need historic support than did the Godhead. But to-day faith has gone, and the attempt to find an historical nucleus for the Christ of the Gospels is the last despairing effort of what once was faith to justify itself by the light of reason.

Moreover, as Kalthoff says: “In default of any historical certainty the name of Jesus has become for Protestant theology an empty vessel into which that theology pours the contents of its own meditations."

It is truly all things to all men. But behind all its many forms it retains one constant care. It is true that Christians are being compelled to abandon the supernatural and to attempt to take refuge in an unfindable Christ-man, but they only throw overboard their grosser superstitions in order to save the essential superstition of Idealism as a bulwark against Materialism.

Professor Drews sees farther than the Protestants. He wishes to save religion by abandoning Christ altogether. “There must be”, he says, “an idealistic monism in opposition to the naturalistic monism of Haeckel, which is prevalent even to-day. This monism must not exclude but include God’s existence; and its present unfruitful negation of all religion must deepen into a positive and religiously valuable view of the world”.

In practice an “idealistic monism” is not monism, but dualism; but that need not concern us here. At bottom the professor’s attitude is typically bourgeois in its unctuous sophistry. Rather jettison all the gods there be than risk being overwhelmed by materialistic monism. At all costs keep the gaze of the masses fixed upon the sky, the ideal world where they cannot see how they are robbed and oppressed; do not let them investigate the material world, where they would soon find the way to material salvation! Such is the useful rôle of all religion to every ruling class. And Professor Drews would help it make its last desperate stand, sans Christ, sans Bible, but not sans its essential pernicious superstition. Truly, one must say of religion in all its multifarious forms, what our French friends say of government: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose!”

F. C. Watts

Socialism & slavery. (1911)

From the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

G. K. Chesterton affords a signal example of a man who, for lack of knowledge of basic principles, is ever hovering around the truth without hitting its centre ; playing bob-apples with the Fruit of Knowledge, to the amusement of the unthinking and the grief of the wise. The warping of intellect, whether as a result of bad education, of crusted prejudice, or of servile surrender for a living, is one of the saddest of the many sad phenomena which attend capitalist society. Chatterton, in his last garret-sleep, symbol of society-strangled genius, is hardly a more pathetic figure than the literary monkey skipping to the tune of the Press barrel-organ.

In an article entitled “Slavery,” in the Daily News (Feb. 25), G. K. says : “Nobody sees the largest danger of our age. It is simply that the rich are slowly enslaving the poor, partly by industrial despotism, partly by scientific benevolence, partly by State officialism.” The curious jumble of truth and error contained in these few lines is typical of the whole article.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN

persistently proclaims, not merely that the rich are slowly enslaving the poor, but that the very fact of society being founded upon private ownership of the means of life involves wage-slavery for the dispossessed class, and that, therefore, that class is already enslaved. “Blood-drinkers,” “Devil-worshippers,” S.P.C.C. reformers, railway directors, country magistrates bent on preserving game and their class privileges—all these figures distasteful to Mr. Chesterton, together with other vermin which feed fat on the-body politic, are bred by capitalist society. They are as characteristic of the present regime as are cunning of priest, snuffle of philanthropoid, and job-lust of Labour member.

The tilt at “scientific benevolence” and “State officialism” by one who carries the lance of laissez-faire, is doomed to futility. Beelzebub will not cast out Beelzebub. “Scientific benevolence” and “State officialism,” are but additional heads to the foul monster guarding the capitalist hell. Possibly a desire not to hurt

THE FEELINGS OF HIS EMPLOYEES

induced G.K. not to mention also “industrial benevolence,” as typified by the enterprising family who exist to manufacture profits by the (benevolent) exploitation of their employes, and who turn out cocoa as a bye-product.

The article in question refers to the “almost supernatural fact of the parent sometimes hating the child,” of “such hatred of one’s own flesh” being “mysterious and unfathomably shameful.” The Socialist sees nothing “mysterious,” still less “supernatural,” in the fact that parents have sacrificed, and are sacrificing, their children to “Moloch, horrid king,”—whether Moloch be the reflex of religious mental perversion or of economic necessity. Does G.K. remember the fate of Don Juan’s tutor? The shipwrecked crew that washed the portly pedant down with salt water were neither better nor worse than an average boatful of Fleet-street scribblers. In similar circumstances, with G.K.C. on board, there is little doubt the Daily News would be the first to be one contributor the less. Hunger is a primal passion, and for one Fantine who sacrifices her teeth, her hair, her all for her child,, there are scores of Jewish mothers who, under stress of famine-born delirium at the siege of Jerusalem,

EAT THE CHILD

who, in normal circumstances fill the horizon of their whole being.

Capitalist society has consecrated child-selling. None may escape. The Divorce Court tells its own tale for the bestialised exploiting class. “Religious” scruples vanish when pursy Rothschild meets haughty Rosebery ; aristocratic exclusiveness melts away before the bright beams of the Yankee dollar.

One would imagine that G.K.C. knew nothing of child-selling, literal or otherwise, that has been, and is, one of the corner-stones of capitalist society. Let him consult Engels’ “Working Class in England in 1844” ; let him consult anyone with a working knowledge of the “half-time question” in the manufacturing North today. Does G.K. know who were, and are, the chief opponents of the abolition of half-time ? Lacking information upon this point he may be enlightened by the Senior Labour Adviser, D. J. Shackleton, sturdy defender of child-labour and of the rights of parents. Engels wrote: “Even children from the workhouses were employed in multitudes, being rented out for a number of years. They were completely the slaves of their masters, by whom they were treated with the utmost recklessness and barbarity.” O.K. agrees “with the Socialists about things like the nationalisation of railways.” Let. us state, here and now, for the benefit of new readers, that “nationalisation of railways,” dear to the hearts of reformers, self-styled Socialists or otherwise, is

NOT ON THE PROGRAMME

of the Socialist Party. That programme is simple but all-embracing. Carried out, it obviates the necessity for “reform” to the capitalist class by abolishing that class, and so abolishing “classes ” altogether. “Reform” implies continuance of the present system of society ; Revolution (the policy of the Socialist Party) implies the destruction of that society, based as it is upon the selling of working man, woman, and child—as so many units of labour-power—and the substitution of a system of society based upon the ownership of the means of life, and the effective control of those means of life by all.

That is the programme of the S.P.G.B. In a word—

SOCIALISM.

Nationalisation of Railways is simply one of the many devices which economic development will render necessary to the bolstering-up of the State, and will enable the “economic superiors” of the porter (for whom G.K. affects concern) to “control him” still more effectively.

“I quarrel with Socialism because it quarrels with the passion of the peasant for his field.” The most charitable thing to do with this extraordinary statement is to assume that G.K. has a certain reputation to sustain for “brilliance,” for “paradox,” and other qualities which are demanded of the unfortunate writer whose bread and butter depend upon his grinning through the literary horse-collar.

“The passion of the peasant for his field” !—The platonic affection of Giles for “his” insanitary cabin ! The yearning love of the quill-driver for “his” top-soiled, clay-soddened back yard ! The burning attachment of the one-roomed dweller for “his” (hire-purchased) little ‘ome ! The touching bond of sympathy between the muck-raker and his rake ! !—The only quarrel the Socialist has with his fellow-worker, carter or coalheaver, farm-slave or factory-slave, wielder of pen or of hoe, is on account of that fellow-worker’s

AFFECTION FOR HIS CHAINS.

From those chains Socialism alone is able to deliver. And that that deliverance may not come too late to save G.K. from sealing for ever his undoubted ability to the interests of the class to whom he is now selling, peradventure even that the blinding light of reason may send the dazzled Saul to seek guidance from the Socialist Simon, to emerge a better, wiser Paul, is the wish of

Augustus Snellgrove

Asked & Answered. (1911)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

D. A. Conroy writes :

I have read your article entitled “Might is Right.” To me it was a regular “stunner.” I fail to see what good can come of such views. They seem to vitiate all the aims of Socialism. If what you say is correct, why trouble at all about your fellow-wage-slaves? They are hopeless and helpless, and provoke only cynicism or pity. “Might is Right.” Those on top are only there because they are mighty—on your own showing they have every right to rule. “Down with the meekling,” so be it. It is only just and natural that the weakling and the meekling should go down and be kept down, You can’t make a giant out of a jellyfish. Take the lowest types of physical and mental degenerates one meets in the streets by the million—is the new democracy to be evolved from such human wreckage? Is this dull-brained human herd fit to assimilate revolutionary ideas, much less act upon them? Or is the task of emancipation to be achieved by those amongst us who are of a fairly high order of intelligence ? If so, it will be a very incomplete democracy. You would still have the rule of a class, the intellectual class.

Can you help me out of this dilemma ? What has become of skill and cunning as factors in the struggle for survival and supremacy ? You seem to have left them out of account.

Reply:

My critic’s letter has been handed to me to reply to. There is a suggestion of poetic justice about the editorial command. Having thrown friend Conroy into the frying-pan, it serves me right that I am ordered to get him out again. Haply I may not drop him into the fire.

The first question is : “What good can come of such views?” “Such views,” as set forth in the article criticised, are that man has no other right to live than that based upon his ability to do so ; that the only right he has to exist, therefore, is the “right of might.” Is this correct or incorrect ?

In the first place, the possibility of the view that man has a God-given right to live was admitted, and it was pointed out that such a view commits one, logically, to the conquest of the means of life by the whole of the people. The Socialist, however, who has no place for God in his philosophy, cannot admit any God-given right to live. If there is no intelligent force outside the human (or animal) race, then there can be no other source of man’s right to live than man himself—and man can give himself no more than the right to live if he can. This is nothing but the right of might.

Does Mr. Conroy go so far with me ? If he does not, he must be clinging to the hem of some metaphysical garment, for the external and the internal are the whole, and the external intelligence (if such exists) is God, and the internal, man.

Now if man gives himself the right to live if he can, he must also give himself the right to live as well as he can. Between such miserable, attenuated existence as is not worth living, and the full flush of riotous luxury which can only be possible to a very small number, there is no place where the logical man can put a mark and say : “Here ends the right of might.” Even the plea that the right of might ends where exploitation begins—that men are justified in using their might to secure all that they produce, but not to obtain more, is shattered by the facts of history, for exploitation was in the direct path of human development. From the communism of primitive man, with its intimate dependence upon the capricious hand of Nature, to the fuller communism which it is yet our task to achieve, there was but one way to travel— through the robbery or exploitation of the wealth producers. How, then, can it be maintained that the right of might ceases on the border of robbery ?

“Those few on top,” then, have all the justification they need. They are there, as my critic puts it, “because they are mighty.” And, by the same token, they are there because the many underneath are weak.

So it becomes apparent “what good can come of such views.” The weakness of the underlings lies primarily in their ignorance, hence it is quite in accordance with Socialist aims to teach them that there is no special Providence watching over them; that there is no Justice, even ever so blind, and with ever so rusty a sword, holding a balance between the weak and the strong ; but that the only hope is strength, the only right—might.

If I showed that the strong few “have every right to rule,” at least I pointed out that the right ceases with the power. “It is just and natural,” says Mr. Conroy, “that the weakling and the meekling should go down, and be kept down.” Why, then, should we not say so ? It might lend the weakling strength, and the meekling combativeness ; it might put vertebra into the jellyfish, and make a giant of it.

And it is quite as “just and natural,” when the weakling has lost his weakness, and the meekling his meekness, for them to rise and overthrow those who have kept them down—a fact my critic seems to overlook.

As to who are to achieve the emancipation of the working class, the answer is : the working class itself. Not “the lowest types of physical and mental degenerates,” nor “those amongst us who are of a fairly high order of intelligence,” but the working class. And Mr. Conroy’s fear of being ruled by an intellectual class may be set at rest by this comforting assurance—there is no intellectual class.

Finally, it is difficult to understand why my critic distinguishes between the mighty and the wise. Might may proceed from wisdom, or from “skill and cunning”—which I am supposed to have forgotten.

And now, after the “finally,” a “lastly.” I desire to express my appreciation of the compliment so delicately conveyed in the words “those amongst us who are of a fairly high order of intelligence.” I am quite sure Mr. Conroy was thinking of me first and (to return the compliment with that delicacy my friend’s modesty demands) of himself second.

A. E. Jacomb

Asked & Answered: Reply to M.H.Geeson (Toronto). (1911)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reply to M.H.Geeson (Toronto).

(1) The S.P.G.B., as its name implies, is the Socialist Party of this country, and does not claim to be ” the Socialist Party of the world.”

(2) We do not seek recruits among residents in Canada, but accept those temporarily abroad.

(3) The S.P.G.B. is not identical with the S.P. of Canada. We are not sufficiently informed to be in a position to discuss in detail the action of their members on local Governing bodies, but remembering that the interests of the workers are the same the world over, we do not hesitate to condemn such actions as the advocacy, by members of the S.P. of C., of the exclusion of our Asiatic fellow-workers from British Columbia.

(4) The function of Socialists elected to Parliament is to fight for Socialism. In doing so they will expose the fraudulence of measures introduced and use the Parliamentary platform in order to make a wider appeal to the working class.

Upon any measure brought forward the Socialist Member would express the democratically ascertained views of the Socialists he represents, always keeping to the fore the interests of the toilers. It must be understood, however, that we cannot bind the future representatives to a policy that, by its very purpose, must always deal with conditions arising at the time.—Editorial Committee.

To be or not to be. (1911)

From the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Objections to Socialism may be roughly grouped into two divisions—those which arise through ignorance, and those which are prompted by self-interest. The objections of the working man usually belong to the first category, either from lack of information or weakness in reasoning power. If he were prompted by self-interest in his efforts, he would reach for Socialism with both hands. It is the Socialists’ task to show him that his true self-interest lies in bringing Socialism into being, at once. There is no excuse for delay. You, the working men and working women of the country, are living in poverty surrounded by wealth—the wealth you have made. You have to obtain permission to live. You are slaves. Why don’t you revolt ?

You will revolt, some day. Ah ! some day. We want you to revolt, not some day, but now, at once. But stay. How are you going to do it ? Are you going to quit work one summer afternoon and march through the West End smashing windows ? or “demonstrate” in Trafalgar Square and throw bottles at the police? or erect barricades across Oxford Street and Piccadilly and await the arrival of the Maxim guns ? Are you going to do any of these or similarly silly things ? I hope not. Let me tell you the Socialist way.

First you must convince yourself that Socialism is supremely desirable. Then you must reason thusly : the great majority of my fellow men are workers like myself, similarly poor, equally slaves. Socialism must be equally desirable to them. I will convey the good tidings to them. If they hearken not the first time, I will tell them a second time, and yet a third. And when there is a greater number of us all convinced that Socialism is the only thing worth while, we will ignore the shrieking of Tariff fools and Free Trade fatheads, the blandishments of Labour salary-hunters and “some-day Slowcialists,” and we will select from our midst good men and true, and send them into Parliament to take hold of the political machinery in our name. The elected members of the working class shall then say unto the capitalists in the Riviera or the South Pacific, on the pleasure yachts or visiting Venice : “Stay where you are, we have no use for you.” And to the capitalists who tarry within the city gate : “Go and join the others or stay and work.” The latter part of the sentence will do the trick. Exit the undesirables. And those who have worked for the enrichment of their masters up till that time, will work for the good of themselves. And those for whom the masters had no use in their day, they also shall contribute to the great store of wealth. And those who toiled in the old days foolishly, in the digging of holes to fill up again, in advertising, canvassing, and unprofitable toil generally, they also shall add their quota to the nation’s store.

There is nothing so very unreasonable in all this. Perhaps its very simplicity tells against it. Briefly we may put it thus : The masters own your means of livelihood, they therefore own you. This ownership is safeguarded by the control of the political machinery of the country, which, in the last analysis, means that they possess a variety of big sticks to whack you into submission when you get obstreperous. But from historical causes they have to let you elect them into possession of the big sticks. Well, you should decline to do it. Take possession of them yourselves. Now comes an important point. With no one to keep in subjection, the need for big sticks vanishes, so that the State is no longer necessary, a central administrative body taking its place for the administration of affairs. Other details you can work out for yourselves.

As a working man, objections you can have none. Your opinions as a capitalist (if that be your social standing) are of no interest to Socialists. The latter are working men, looking at things from a working-class standpoint, and nothing else matters. The capitalists have always provided a splendid object lesson in raising objections on the one hand and ignoring them on the other. The history of the railway provides some striking examples of the types of people who oppose anything like progress, and also of the manner in which those who found it to their interest to introduce the new factor obtained their way in spite of opposition.

In “Francis’ History of Railways” it is recorded that on presentation to Parliament of the Bill authorising the first Liverpool and Manchester railway, antagonistic petitions poured in from all classes. To quote the authority named : “Country gentlemen objected that the smoke would kill the birds as they passed over the locomotives ; manufacturers cried out that the sparks from the funnel would sat fire to their stock; ladies were certain that their horses would take fright and overturn them into ditches ; horse-breeders lamented the extinction of the noble quadruped ; while farmers were convinced that oats and hay would no longer be marketable commodities.”

And again our old friend the “Quarterly Review” said in 1825 : “The gross exaggeration of the powers of the locomotive steam engine may delude for a time, but must end in the mortification of those concerned. It is certainly some consolation to those who are to be whirled at the rate of eighteen or twenty miles an hour by means of the high-pressure engine, to be told that they are in no danger of being sea-sick, that they are not to be scalded to death or drowned by the bursting of the boiler, and that they need not mind being shot by the scattered fragments, or dashed to pieces by the flying off or breaking of a wheel. But with all these assurances we should as soon expect the people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired off by one of Congreves’ Ricochet Rockets, as to trust themselves to the mercy of such a machine going at such a rate. We will back old Father Thames against the Woolwich Railway for any sum.”

Sir Astley Cooper, the eminent surgeon, said : “Your scheme is preposterous in the extreme ; it is of so extravagant a character as to be positively absurd.”

And that is what people say of Socialism now. But observe, where they are not people totally uninformed, they are of those who are making a fat living out of capitalism. As such their opinion doesn’t matter. But if you are not of their number, if you are sick of the bestial horror of capitalism and all its ways, if you are one of those who realise that a dog’s life is not good enough for human beings, join with us in ending it. Behind you there stretches a long history of oppression and servitude ; you are slaves in the midst of stupendous plenty at this present moment. The future, at least, is yours, if you take it. With nothing to lose but your chains, you have a world to win.

“ETRE”

Do you see what Cecil, K.C., sees? (1911)

From the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many “topics of the moment” may well be included the question of co-partnership, or profit-sharing. The matter has been dealt with in these columns on several occasions, but the appearance of the following paragraph in the Evening News of 12.11.10 makes it opportune to again direct attention to the tricky purpose behind the specious wording of the phrase co-partnership.

“The West London Parliament will meet to-night in the Council Chamber of Marylebone Hall, when Lord Robert Cecil, K.C., will move : 

‘That in the opinion of this House, the fair division of the profits of industry, as between capital and labour, is of supreme importance, and can only be secured by the adoption of co-partnership ; that being the only effective alternative form of industrial organisation to Socialism.'”

I do not know the result of the debate, but anyway, that is unimportant. The discerning reader will draw quite a number of conclusions from the paragraph as it stands, but I would ask him more particularly to consider the last few words. The only alternative to Socialism is co-partnership, according to Lord Robert Cecil. Good ! I hope the toilers can see it equally clearly.

Observe there is no hypocritical reference to Socialism destroying family life, religion, initiative, etc.; to it being the “end of all,” the creed of the chronic grumbler, or piffle of that description. With refreshing candour the fact is specifically admitted that Socialism is a form of industrial organisation. Grant that and you have the unique spectacle of one of the Cecils, with a pedigree as long as a poker, inferentially preaching Socialism.

Prove it ? Set your thinking apparatus in motion. Look here, if co-partnership be the only alternative to Socialism, logically the bankruptcy of the former leaves you but one course. In that the noble lord concurs. Co-partnership has been proved in these columns to be a fraud. It has proved to be a failure wherever it has been inflicted upon the workers—notably quite recently in the shipbuilding industry, where it was installed with a nourish of drums and sounding of brasses, but only to demonstrate that the wealth producers would still obtain but a mere fraction of their product.

Out of capitalism nothing but its effect can be expected. The method of wealth making that we call capitalism depends and rests upon the fact that the class that makes all wealth gets only a small portion returned to it in the shape of wages. Any juggling with the proportions of the total product of labour, and calling the process the profit-sharing or bonus system, does not alter the central and fundamental fact that the people who make it do not get it. They only receive a portion of it. And yet there are people who talk of a fair division of wealth between those who make it and those who don’t. K.C.s may be able to see it, but workers cannot —there is a difference.

Wilfred.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For April. (1911)

Party News from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Editorial: The Labour Party and Secret Diplomacy. (1930)

Editorial from the June 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people will remember how fervently the Labour Party protested against Secret Diplomacy immediately after the War. With the cunning of the opportunist politician, its leading spokesmen traced the cause of the war to secret diplomacy, and all the white papers, pink papers and yellow papers were triumphantly flourished as a proof of this contention. Of course, all this was many years ago. Now that the Labour Party has become “The Government,” their attitude to this, as to many other questions, has undergone a change.

The Daily News for the 16th May reports a “scene” in the House of Commons that occurred the previous day, with Mr. Churchill as the centre.

It appears that Mr. Churchill read a telegram despatched by the Coalition Cabinet to Lord Balfour in 1921, during the Washington Naval Conference. It further appears that no Cabinet document can be read in Parliament without the consent of the King, which implies the consent of the existing Government, which “advises” the King.

When Churchill picked up the paper, “the Prime Minister looked up in surprise, and said in a low voice : ‘Are you going to read it?'” Churchill then read it. Ramsay MacDonald then asked Churchill if the paper had been published, to which a reply in the negative was given. After one or two further questions, Ramsay MacDonald then said : “I happen to know the document. Is this a Cabinet paper, and, if it is, has the right hon. gentleman got the usual leave for the disclosure of Cabinet documents.” Fenner Brockway followed by asking the Speaker if it was in order “for one who has been a member of a previous Cabinet to quote from Cabinet documents.” Lloyd George followed in a similar strain, and finally he and Ramsay MacDonald had a consultation behind the Speaker’s chair.

From this it will be seen that “secret diplomacy” still pursues its old course, and information of it only leaks out when politicians like Churchill don’t “play the game” or, in vulgar language, “play the dirty” ! Mr. MacDonald communicates Cabinet secrets to Liberal and Tory leaders, but not to the general public.

Editorial: The Power to Produce. (1930)

Editorial from the June 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recuperative powers of modern industry have been fully vindicated by the remarkable position of France eleven years after the war.

In spite of the enormous waste of wealth and loss of man-power during the four years of war, France, according to recent reports, is now being strangled by prosperity ! There are no unemployed worth talking of, and there is a tendency for workers to flock to the easier and better paid occupations, so that, for instance, coal production has seriously slumped in consequence.

A part of France’s opulence is due to the amount they have received from Germany ; under the Dawes Plan they have had over £200,000,000 during the last five years.

Germany has paid heavily in money, labour, and kind since the war to the “victorious” nations, besides harbouring an army of occupation.

How is it with Germany, then? Is Germany sinking under the burden? Not at all. Germany has shouldered the burden and more. She is again attacking the world’s trade routes, both by sea and air, and looks very much like being successful again.

In each case, then, we have an example of the marvellous fecundity of modern industry. When it is also realized how much of the labouring power of to-day is wasted on useless objects, or going over the same greengrocers, and the like, the fruitfulness of industry is seen to be more remarkable still.

Imagine the numberless workers who waste their time in advertising trades, in menial duties for the rich, in military service, and similar occupations; in useless clerical work and salesmanship. If all these workers, including the unemployed and the rich, were devoted to useful occupations wealth would be more abundant still, and would call for a comparatively small amount of effort from each if the work was spread equally over all.

Here, then, is convincing evidence that the sufferings of the workers are not due to any weakness in the capacity to produce wealth, and also exposes the hollowness of the plea of the nationaliser, except that nationalization produces larger profits.

The workers’ attention should, therefore, be directed to securing an alteration in the distribution of wealth. The distribution, of course, depends upon the method of production. The method of production to-day is by means and instruments of production that are privately owned. By converting these privately-owned means into social property the workers will then reap the benefit of the energy they put into the production of wealth, and will also reap a good deal of much-needed leisure and freedom from worry.

When the workers decide to secure this fundamental change there will be no need for Labour sponsored cotton weeks, silk weeks, leather weeks, wool weeks, or any of the other Canute-like or cute dodges with which the employing class try to throw dust in the workers’ eyes.

Pull up the blinds. (1930)

From the June 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present system of producing wealth we define as the Capitalist system, and we do so because the button that sets all the machinery in motion is the investment of capital. Whenever a fresh company is about to commence operations a prospectus is issued asking for capital, and describing in glowing colours how profitable such an investment will be. It is true, as the recent columns of the papers show, many companies come to grief, but this is due to many things outside of the scope of the present article.

A society lives by the production of wealth of one kind or another, and as we look back through history we find that there have been certain definite and different forms of wealth production and that each form has brought into existence certain relationships between the people who have made up each Society.

At one time the bulk of the goods were produced by what were called chattel slaves, for example, in Ancient Rome. There was a privileged class who owned the land and tools and this class bought labourers to work for them in return for food, clothing and shelter. The chattel slave then was like a horse or other domestic animal.

In later times the bulk of the goods of society were produced by serfs or bond slaves. That is, people bound by custom, and paying tribute to a privileged class in the form of a certain number of days’ free labour each week—work for nothing.

But the growth of trading altered both these forms. In each of the above instances the goods produced were consumed mainly at home or in the local area. Only a tiny fraction of what was produced was sold and trade was looked upon with disfavour. But trading grew until it ultimately became, as it is to-day, practically the sole object of production. This has made a tremendous difference in the relationships of the groups within Society. The slave owner of old occupied a paternal position towards his slaves. The relationship was a personal one. The Feudal Lord likewise had a personal connection with his serfs and discharged certain duties in the local courts. In each of these cases privilege was based upon the ownership of land. It was territorial.

The coming of universal trading with capital as its main-spring destroyed the earlier systems based upon land with personal relations between employer and employed, and substituted a new system based upon the ownership of capital. The ownership of capital carries with it the ownership of the means of production, although the capitalist finally becomes merely the holder of titles to profits. The relation of the capitalists to their employees ceased to be personal long ago. In consequence the capitalist can go to Africa or the North Pole, but his capital still brings in dividends and he still remains the controller of his employees. This fact produces, at times, some curious situations. An instance of one was given in the columns of this periodical last month, where it was shown that money left to a woman who was insane still piled up dividends for her.

Wealth, in the economic sense, is food, clothes, houses, ships, and so on. This wealth is produced by the application of human energy, in one form or another, to material supplied by nature. For instance, for the building of a wooden hut trees are felled by workmen, transported by workmen, sawn up by workmen, and erected into a hut by workmen. In order that these workmen may fell, saw, transport and erect, other workmen must produce food, clothing, and so forth, so that the hut workers may live while doing their work. That is because to-day there is a division of labour and workers specialize in different industries. Under Feudalism this degree of specialization did not exist, for huts were made from the trees grown on the manor and the serfs on the manor produced enough food and other things to keep them selves while doing the hut-building. Now industries have grown up calling for specialization, and something else has occurred as well.

Under feudalism the worker used small tools, hand tools, which he owned himself, and in the case of the handicraftsman carried with him when he changed his place of living. When trading and the use of capital became general the small tool disappeared with the handworker, and the great factory and machine tool, served by machine minders, took his place. With the coming of the machine, goods were produced rapidly and in large quantities. The natural resources near at hand were not sufficient to feed the mouth of the huge machine, and the market close at hand was not sufficient to consume what was turned out. So there began to occur periods of time between the beginning and the end of the productive process and during this period the workers who had become specialists had to live. So it became necessary to provide ever larger and larger quantities of wealth to keep the workers while they worked and it was here that capital came in and, as it were, caught the worker by the throat, for the worker is without capital and depends upon wages to keep him from week to week.

Now let us see what was the source from which this capital flowed.

If we examine the present and the past we are struck by the fact that a number of people, the privileged or ruling class in each system, have been able to live without working. The conclusion is, therefore, forced upon us that at each period those who were engaged in production must have produced far more than would keep themselves, otherwise there would not have been enough to keep the idlers.

Now feudalism with its system of customary payments makes this as clear as daylight for the serf worked 3 or 4 days for himself—that is on his own plot of land raising enough for his keep—and gave three days’ work to the lord’s land to keep the lord and his retainers. The feudal worker was, therefore, exploited and robbed of nearly half of the product of his energies and he realized this fact so well that he used to dawdle and take tilings easy when working on the lord’s land. In fact this became such a crying evil, from the lords’ point of view, that it had a great influence upon the movement for substituting money payments for payments by service.

Now the worker is also exploited to-day, but his exploitation is cioaked by the complexity of the present system. Whereas in the past the payment of service to the employer was made directly and openly, now it is hidden by the system of paying wages.

Trading is the buying and selling of goods and originally was accomplished by means of barter—that is by exchanging one kind of goods directly for another. As the business of exchanging grew, it became necessary to have a certain fixed medium of exchange, whose value would be recognised by everyone and at the most distant trading points. Custom and its handincss finally made gold the universally recognised medium or money. Later still titles to quantities of gold, if sound enough, became as good as gold in normal times, and so the habit grew of accumulating a store of money to buy goods. These goods were then sold for a greater amount of money than they cost. The trader pocketed the difference and used his original store of money over and over again.

This money that was used is capital. From the purely trading side, capital gradually intruded into the productive side until we have to-day capital as the starting-point for every productive and trading enterprise—in fact, the whole process of production and distribution, in a multitude of cases, is accomplished by the one business organisation. Big trusts, like the Oil Trust, control the product from its origin as a natural product to its delivery as a finished article to the consumer.

In all the processes connected with production money enters as a paying medium, and except in the profit accounts of the companies there is nothing to show where the exploitation of the worker comes in. For while it is said that money talks, it gives no secrets away.

Consequently, when the capitalist pays wages for work done the matter is supposed to have ended and the worker is supposed to have received full value for his work. But what in fact has the worker received? What does his wage represent? A glance at tlie condition of workers in general will give the answer. The worker receives in wages, on the average, only what is necessary to keep him fit to continue his occupation and bring up a family to replace him. Sometimes he does not even receive that, and has to resort to charitable and other sources.

But what has the worker produced during the time he has been working? The capitalist will say that the worker is but a cog in the machinery and has only taken part in the work of a fractional portion of production. Very well then ! What does the working class as a whole produce? The total wealth of society. And what docs the working class receive back? Only a fraction of what they have produced. The rest goes to provide means for the riotous living of the privileged class. It goes to help tine ladies to ride in Rotten Row—to play tennis on the Riviera, to go yachting in the Tropics. It goes to provide fine ladies and gentlemen with the army of servants to answer their beck and call.

The workers produce wealth in such quantities to-day that it chokes society, and means have to be devised to limit production ; and this because the worker’s wage limits what he can buy back, and this wage is so far below the value of what has been produced that ihe capitalists, in spite of their wasteful methods of living, cannot consume the whole of the surplus. The capitalists, therefore, live out of the surplus value extracted from the exploited worker. The sooner the workers pull up the blinds and see this fact in the clear daylight the sooner will they make away with wage slavery, and the oppression to which it gives rise.

Gilmac

A Knight out. (1930)

From the June 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

I must admit I find the wireless lectures very stimulating. The lecturer has prepared his subject, there are no interruptions, no interjections, no bronchial whoopings, no scuffling feet, no late-comers or early-goers; in short, there is perfection—nearly. I say nearly, because one feels sometimes that the speaker has prepared his paper in some far-distant country, a good many years ago, and has just walked off the steamer into the studio. Unsuspectingly, he says his little piece, and favoured by the absence of a visible audience, delivers himself of some “truth” that had better remained in its coffin. Now perfection would provide for the lecturer being reminded that his data were slightly mildewed ; that possibly in picking up his notes for the lecture on “The Sex Life of Slugs,” be had inadvertently added a leaf from the lecture on “Stamp Collecting in the Stone Age.”

Something of this sort must have happened to Sir James Jeans, for in his “Point of View, ” broadcast on February 24th, be made an astonishing mix-up. It is only charitable to assume some such accident, for no scientist since 1880 would have included such matter in a serious lecture. At a birthday party perhaps, or a Fleet Street “smoker,” but not in any place where the bracing-wind of science can reach.

“Quite frankly,” he commenced, “my point of view is that of a scientist—an astronomer.” He will not need me to remind him that a scientist frames and tests theories based on verifiable data.

We may take it that when Sir James Jeans says, “We believe that the earth is merely a tiny fragment of the sun, which got splashed off, almost by accident, something like 2,000 million years ago,” he could produce some sort of evidence. When he tells the listening world that the earth is millions of years old; that it remained uninhabited for millions of years; that life arrived and passed through the forms of protozoa, fishes, reptiles, and mammals culminating; in man, we may assume he is dealing in facts; that volumes of ordered knowledge bolster up his statements, and that scores of eminent colleagues agree with him. And yet, would you believe a scientist would commit himself, before an audience of millions, to the following fragment of ordered knowledge.

“Our socialist orators tell us much in glowing terms about the hypothetical socialist future. Why do they tell us so little about the socialist and communist experiments of the past, in which their theories were really tested? It is, I think, because those experiments all ended in failure. The truth seems to be that no socialist state ever endures for long—as such. ”

That, of course, is where his manuscript must have got mixed up with the lining of his lunch bag, and he found himself reading a pre-war page from the Swamp Herald or Daily Express. Unfortunately his attention has not been drawn to the happening, and the statement has received the publicity of print in the Listener of March 5th. However, as there may be some few people who think he really meant what he said, I am prepared to make a public confession. I also have wondered in the past why our Socialist orators have told us so little about the Socialist and Communist experiments in which their theories have been tested. I candidly admit my heart gave a great bound, when I heard him raise this question. I thought I was going to satisfy the hope of a lifetime, and hear the names of the Socialist states referred to. Sir James was strangely reluctant to mention them. He himself deplores the reluctance of our Socialist orators to do likewise. I am keenly disappointed, and it looks as though the truth is where I have long suspected. Failing some scientific evidence from Sir James Jeans, I shall be compelled to affirm that he does not know of such a state ; that there never was such a state and that Socialist theories have never been tested “really” or in any way. Both his reluctance, and that of our Socialist orators are founded in the same fog-bank. There never was such a Socialist state. The noble knight must have mixed his notes.

The fact of the statement having also been printed rather complicates matters, and perhaps some little explanation may put things right. The ground has been covered many, many times in this journal, and there is not room in this article to cover it again. But this may be said. As a scientist Sir James Jeans will have heard of evolution. It is the name we apply to the process of development by which life, the earth, and the universe, have changed from simple beginnings to their present state. Nothing is stationary; nothing stagnant—all is ceaseless change. The very Alps were once liquid mud; the mighty oceans were thin gases; the whole earth a boiling globe, incapable of any form of life as we know it. Scientists have described for us the whole wonderful pageant of change, which through millions of centuries, slowly paved the way for the coming of man ; and man is fond of regarding himself as the crown of evolution. Anyway, crown or not, he appeared very late upon the scene and has still a lot of development before him. Like everything in the universe, he has evolved. Although h likes to regard himself as something distinct from what he calls Nature, his links with animal ancestors are beyond dispute. Every baby, born into the world, recapitulates in embryo stages of his journey.

Apparently man has always been a gregarious animal, that is, he liked living in company. Other forms of life do, too, baboons, elephants, whales, birds, etc. This custom has clung to man, ever since he was man. And no matter how his mode of life has changed — hunter, pastoralist, or civilised—he has ever been found in communities. These communities have in turn been the subject of change—in a word, have evolved, and scientists can tell us why one form of human society gave place to another, and how our own form stands at the end of a chain. This will suggest, of course, to the intelligent reader, that there is no reason why this should be the end of the chain. But before we consider that, there is one important point to make. Evolution is only a name we apply for convenience sake to a process. It is not like the word God, which we spell with a capital letter, and use as a convenient cover for all we do not know. Evolution is simply a word for the process of development. It does not imply purpose, or intention. For instance, the Mauretania has evolved from the dug-out canoe, but the prehistoric contrivers of the dug-out had not the remotest conception of the liner. The words you are reading are connected with the marks on the clay bricks of Babylon, but neither Nebuchadnezzar nor his dusky subjects could have seen the printing press in futurity. The Rolls-Royce has evolved from the ox-cart, the tractor-plough from the digging stick, the sky-scraper from the mud-hut, but none of those at the dawn of things had the fragment of an idea of latter-day developments. It was not until comparatively recently that evolution became a mental concept and that mankind realised its possibilities.

The working of evolution has been blind. In mankind Nature becomes conscious and aware of the forces of development. Man applies the methods of science to his own development and the development of his Institution. No longer is he at the mercy of blind forces. He is learning to tame them and use them for his own definite advancement. Wild beasts, famine and pestilence do not play the part they did in human affairs. Every year sees them more under control. The greatest problems man has to face are those arising from his living in huge communities. These communities have arisen in traceable progression, from the collection of mud-huts on the banks of a river to the intricate community of a hundred thousand towns and a hundred million people. But the allied questions of feeding, clothing and sheltering humanity have been treated in a haphazard fashion under civilisations dependent upon trading. Being fortuitous and haphazard, it has had the unscientific results one would expect. In one section of the community too many clothes, in another too few; one section glutted with food to satiety, another on the brink of starvation or living on inferior food and substitutes ; one section with huge houses, well built, well lighted and well furnished ; the other with inadequate shelters, poorly built, meagrely lighted and furnished with rubbish. At one place you will find thousands of hungry people, whilst food is being wilfully destroyed at another. You will find thousands of people contracting rheumatism through lack of proper foot covering, whilst makers of boots are unable to make them; because—crowning absurdity—because they have made too many for the market.

The needs of the community are neither ascertained nor met in any really scientific way. One ruling principle dominates society—the making of profit. When everybody wants something, that is called demand. Numbers of individuals in the hope of making a profit, rush forward with their goods; that is called supply. The rival suppliers try to overreach and ruin each other; they try to monopolise as much of the demand as they can; they waste huge sums in what is called advertising; they drive their workers to produce the greatest possible wealth, in the shortest possible time. Then suddenly it is found that they have produced too much, and those who have made the wealth are rewarded with unemployment and semi-starvation.

There are people who say this method of feeding, clothing and sheltering ourselves, this hapless, planless, mad scramble to make need and supply balance, is the best humanity has discovered. You will usually find such people occupy a fortunate position in society. It would be odd to find them decrying a system which yielded them a very happy life. But there are others who say that now mankind has achieved an understanding of evolution, he can organise his community upon a scientific basis, and one wherein poverty can be unknown. He has no need to leave his present community and proceed to some desolate, primitive country and start building huge machines in the wilderness. Nothing would result from that, but a heap of rust and a few skeletons. No ! he is to take the civilization he has built, and reorganize it upon a basis of communal ownership. He is to abolish the out-of-date cumbrous and unscientific custom of individuals or groups owning communal necessities. Without food we starve; without clothing we shiver; without shelter we become diseased and die; and yet there are people who say these human essentials are best provided by those whose sole motive is their own enrichment. Sounds a bit mad, doesn’t it! How future schoolchildren will smile, and wonder if it was really true. It will seem so obvious to them that the communal necessities should be communally owned. And to think that we can do it, whenever we like; whenever, that is, the working class organises itself to consciously .remould human society on the lines described in our Object.

W. T. Hopley