The Forum: Must we wait for the “Nigger”?
[To the editor.]
Dear Sir.—Those of us who are interested in the wider application of the Principles of Socialism would be glad, if it were possible, to have discussed that clause in the Declaration of Principles that says the “emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.”
In its application to sex it is sufficiently obvious that the emancipation of the male working class, as the result of the economic change from Capitalism to Socialism, will bring with it the emancipation of the female portion of the working class at one and the same time. But in its connection with what is known as the “Yellow Peril,” and the position of a subject race as it obtains in many of the Colonies not only of Great Britain but of most of the colonising European countries, the position of the Socialist movement and the working class emancipation following upon its success, is by no means so clear. The native races of these colonies, as they are brought within the scope of capitalist production, introduce a new element into the working class. The standard of living, upon which competition in the labour market operates, is in their case usually lower than that of the European, and they very soon become, as experience shows, competitors with the white worker to the detriment of the latter, and the general lowering of the standard of living. The same thing applies when the European colonist is up against the competition of the Asiatic races. In some parts of Western America as well as in Australia, the competition of the Japanese and Chinese workers has practically crowded the white worker out of the locality.
The germ of the Socialist idea arises from the pressure of economic conditions upon the workers. The increasing pressure arising from the growth of Capitalism, and the ever widening division between the classes, makes the development of that idea, and the perfection of its expression in the Socialist movement, the natural result of the development of Capitalism. As the consciousness of the source of pressure expands with the development of Capitalism, so the resistance to economic pressure leaves the incoherent, blind stage of labourism and its kindred forms and becomes definitely Socialist. The introduction of a lower class of labour in the form of coloured workers, means putting back the hands of the clock considerably if the Socialist movement must wait upon the class-consciousness of Coolie labour. If not, how will the emancipation, which must be the work of the working class itself, emancipate all mankind without distinction of race.
—Yours faithfully,
“ENGINEER”