Quotes

Early issues of the Socialist Standard would be peppered with brief quotes which would serve as inspirational, informative and, most importantly, as space fillers. Here are the quotes from the July 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard:

“The work of the individual and that of the family, the work of the factory and that of the whole society, is an organism, each part of which contributes to the whole. The contribution of each organ cannot be mechanically weighed or measured. The Socialist is quite aware that the workers are organs of the work process. He has completely given up the idea of individualising and dividing up a Communistic product, and paying to each according to his deserts. Present society; with its misunderstood principle of suum cuique (each unto his own) and its grotesque justice, acts as unreasonably as the man who gives his eye an overweening care while utterly neglecting his leg. As the engineer is more careful about his smallest screws than about his big wheel, so do we desire that the product of social labour shall be divided according to the social needs, so that the strong and the weak, the swift and the clumsy, the mental and the physical labourer, in so far as they are human, shall work and enjoy in human community.”

“Historical Materialism”
The term “historical materialism” describes that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of Society; in the changes in the modes of production and exchange; in the consequent division of Society into distinct classes and in the struggle of these classes against one another.

“Systematization is the essence and the general expression of the aggregate of science. The practical result of all theory is to acquaint us with the system and method of its practice and thus to enable us to act in the world with a reasonable certainty of success.