Doubts and Difficulties
Some time has elapsed since last I made my bow before the audience–or should I say voyance—of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD. Before the pressure of more urgent matters it has been necessary for me to leave many doubts and difficulties unsolved. One difficulty indeed I must frankly confess my powerlessness to solve. It came in simple guise. “What is the difference between the Liberal and the Tory Party ?” Thus ran the question ! Of course, I at once sat down to answer it. But, alas, for human vanity !
For weeks the question haunted me. Meal—the scanty meals of a worker—went neglected ; my face got haggard and wan ; I shrunk visibly—no, no, Mr. Editor, this is not an advt.—and yet no solution would come. The difference was one which I could not discover. A happy thought struck me. Yes, I should read their literature. I should explore the mysterious depths of comparative politics.
I have read their literature. For weeks past I have been wading through the mire of their party press. Pamphlets, election addresses, speeches of Parliamentary candidates have been perused and still the difference between these two parlies is to seek. The same trickery is common to both. The same avowed desire of working-class welfare, joined with the same desire to wring as much profit as possible from the labour of that working class. But enough of the unsavoury subject. Let us proceed.
A General Election has come and gone. The result has been a remarkable victory for the capitalist class. They have rallied round them with the help of the Labour Party (sic) an unexampled enthusiasm. Peer and peasant, and the wives of peer and peasant have made a triumphant, rally under the capitalist banner, and henceforth all will be well.
Unprecedented is the only word which can describe that election. Mrs. Smith, the docker’s wife, pawning her jewellery to help the candidature of the big commercial magnate (she tells me she got ninepeuce for her bangle, and sixpence for a nickel chain which was a family heirloom) was a sight for gods and men.
The pity of it ! The working class, with their minimum of education, misled as to their true interest by the press and by pretended working-class leaders, have again been betrayed, for the present Government have already shown clearly that so far as the workers are concerned, no material improvement will result. Pious resolutions are passed in favour of reforms, but “the public exchequer is empty” and nothing can be done.
I cannot say that I am sorry for this failure of reform. The capitalist class interests are not seriously threatened. Why then should the capitalist class throw sops to the worker. Only when the worker says plainly that reforms will not do, will reforms be seriously offered to him. Then the legislators of the present riding class will try to wean the worker from a determination to stop at nothing short of revolutionising the entire basis of Society.
The time for this has not yet come. The worker does not realise that he is a slave. He is not a free man. Any man who is compelled to obey another who holds possession of his means of livelihood is to all intents and purposes a slave to that other. This is the position of the working man. There is no freedom for him during the period of the day for which he has sold himself and beyond that period the needs of the body for rest restrict the individual freedom.
To us the whole business seems so simple. The means of sustaining man in life are material. The food the worker desires to eat belongs to the owner of the soil; the clothing he desires to wear belongs to the owner of the factory ; the house he wants to live in belongs to a landlord. The worker has been trained to a standard of comfort which demands these things. Without them he could not live. He would cease to exist.
The owners of these various goods have no use for them. They wish to get rid of them, but not for nothing. They want to sell the goods they possess to those who can use them. The bulk of those who can use them cannot buy them until they possess something to buy them with. The only goods the working class possess with which they can buy things is their power of working. They are, however, in the unfortunate position of having only particular methods of exercising their power of working, and these methods are not wanted by the owners of the goods.
The worker must find some one who wishes to buy his particular kind of labour power, and sell it to him for the universal equivalent of unspecialised labour power—money. But his desire for food, clothing, and shelter are always with him and the number of men possessing his kind of labour power is always in excess of the demand. Therefore, the tendency is, through the operation of the laws governing competition, for the amount obtainable for labour power to sink to a minimum. That minimum—the minimum to which the average wage of the worker ever tends to fall, is that amount which will just provide the barest subsistence for the working man and his family.
The man is considered as a machine. So much money is required to keep this mechanism going, but, like every machine, man gets worn out and has to be replaced. The method of replacement for man is exactly the same as for any other piece of machinery. A certain amount is set aside for the purpose of replacement. For the ordinary machinery it appears, in the accounts as “wear and tear,” but for the human machinery it is manifested in a slightly higher wage than would be necessary if the working class could live at their normal working strength for ever.
The working man is but a slavish mechanism—a mechanical slave. He is docile and he is ignorant. He has, however, a latent power which will one day become active and he will recognise that it is possible to organise the industries of a country in the interests of the people of the country. He will see that it is necessary for man to work because it is necessary for man to eat. But he will also see that because it is necessary for every man to eat, it is no less necessary for every man to work. He will see also that the end of all work is the satisfaction of men’s material requirements, and he will work directly towards that end.
To-day, however, all this is far from clear. The end which is secured is less the satisfaction of man’s needs than the establishment of a class apart which is enabled to monopolise the wealth and power of the country and only parts with a portion of its monopoly in order to increase and maintain them.
This leads me to the difficulty which I set out to deal with. I was discussing recently the important question of population, when the remark was made that it was conceivable that a small family was good for an individual, but that it might not be good for the community as a whole. But no, it was objected. A thing cannot be good for an individual without being good for the community. A community is the sum of all its individuals.
I am not here concerned with “limitation of family” ideas. What I wish to combat is the pernicious doctrine that in our modern society whatever is good for the individual is good for the community. The doctrine is untrue and it is harmful. The very essence of the structure of capitalist society is that the good of one individual, the comfortable living of one person prevents or militates against the happiness and welfare of others.
Riches have their necessary counterpart in poverty. Men get rich because men are kept poor. It is the very first principle of modem society. This society is indeed divided along economic lines and into economic classes. The working class which produces the whole of the wealth over against the capitalist class which owns the whole of the wealth. The class which gets its income from profit, rent, and interest—that is. from the unpaid labour of the working class, is called the capitalist class. The class over against the capitalist class which labours under the most unhealthy conditions and which creates all profit, rent, and interest is the working clans.
The individual good of the capitalist involves the living in slums, the wearing of shoddy clothing, the eating of adulterated food for the worker. The good of the worker when he gets a higher average wage modifies the good of the capitalist.
So, too, with the sectional differences within tlie two classes which divide the community. The individual worker who finds an employer and the consequent means of living keeps some other worker out of a job. The individual capitalist who monopolises some new labour saving machinery and thereby “scoops” the market, proves anything but a good to his competitor of the same class.
In only one society which the human mind has been able to conceive could the good of the individual prove the good of the community. In that society the selfishness and the altruism of the individul would be one and the same. The desires, the actions, and the happiness of all men would be harmonised, for a society would have been evolved in which an identification of the interests of all men would have arisen. Such a state of Society is one in which the economic foundation would be that of common property, and the political life would consist in the administration of the Commonweal. Such a society would be a Socialist society and the coining of such a society, which is as certain as the coming of tomorrow’s sun or of the next issue of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, would be the harbinger of joy to all living men and may one of those who lives to see that day be–
ECONOMICUS