Letter: The Workers and the Empire
A correspondent (H. W. H., Glasgow) writes asking us if we will deal with a point raised in Forward (Glasgow, October 5th, 1935) by Mr. J. P. M. Millar, General Secretary of the National Council of Labour Colleges. Arising out of an article by Sir Norman Angell, entitled, ” Are Colonies Worth Having?” Mr. Millar wrote a letter containing the following:—
“He (Norman Angell) argues that he answers Italy’s jealousy about Britain’s Colonial Empire by saying—in so many words — “ Yes, but it doesn’t materially help us to deal with our economic problems, for we’ve 2,000,000 unemployed.” He doesn’t realise that it is largely thanks to the profits and opportunities arising from our present and past Colonial Empires that the British unemployed have almost as high a standard of life as many millions of employed in Germany and Italy.”
Our correspondent adds: —
“Now I do not know if Mr. Miller’s reasoning is correct, but if it is does it not show that the British workers’ standard of life is to a great extent dependent upon the maintenance of the British Empire against foreign invaders, and that without it their standard of living would decrease? I am not suggesting, of course, that, even if true, this would provide them with a moral right to oppress Colonial peoples, but the question is of interest from a purely economic point of view.”
There are several separate issues raised in this letter, and it is necessary to take them separately: —
First, we may say that Mr. Millar’s facts do not impress us. Mr. Millar makes the claim that the British unemployed have almost as high a standard of life as many millions of employed in Germany and Italy. He might have added with equal truth that the British unemployed have almost as high a standard of life as many millions of employed in Great Britain, in France, in Portugal, and in Holland—all of them countries with large colonial empires. Apart from a generally low standard of living in Portugal, there are in all countries masses of workers living on or about a bare subsistence level.
He might recall that spokesmen for German Nazism have recently been boasting that widespread destitution, such as exists in our “depressed areas ” is unknown in Germany.
Also Mr. Millar might have added that the countries with a higher standard of life than this country include the Scandinavian countries, the U.S.A., and the British Dominions—all of them countries with little or no overseas Empire.
We reject the implication contained in Mr. Millar’s argument that wages depend on the wealth of the capitalist class. Abundant experience shows workers desperately poor, in spite of the riotous wealth of their employers — some Indian workers and their millionaire employers are a case in point; while, on the other hand, under favourable conditions workers have been able to maintain their standard of living in spite of the falling profits of their employers.
Therefore, it is not safe to assume that greater wealth for Italian capitalists (due to profitable colonial plunder) would lead to a higher standard of living for Italian workers; nor that the loss of parts of the British Empire would reduce the British workers’ standard of living. In both cases many factors, including factors of a world character, would have to be taken into account.
To take an actual example, we deny that the acquisition of Boer lands after the Boer War and the mandated territories after the Great War has improved the position of the British workers, or worsened the position of any of the workers concerned.
What is true, of course, is that the loss of colonies may (although this is not necessarily true of all cases) cause a disturbance of capitalist trading relationship, which results in aggravating unemployment while re-adjustment is going on. For example, if Great Britain lost her colonial empire and the new owners prohibited the import of British goods, the trades affected—having been built up on this market—would suffer loss of sales and increased unemployment. In time the situation would adjust itself so far as capitalism ever does, with the acquisition of new markets elsewhere, or with the development of some new or expanded industry.
One other fact which has bearing on this question is that it has yet to be proved that colonies do add to the wealth of the “country” which controls them. That they are profitable for groups of capitalists who are directly interested is admitted, but the capitalist class as a whole has to meet the cost of capturing and keeping them. There is considerable evidence to show that many colonies cost the whole capitalist class more than they are worth. They are retained because the capitalists immediately concerned are sufficiently influential to see that they are retained.
Mr. Grover Black, in two books, “A Place in the Sun” and “The Balance Sheets of Imperialism” (Columbia University Press; published by Milford, 10s. 6d. and 14s.), argues with a wealth of facts and figures that colonies do not “pay,” except to the minority directly concerned. The cost of capturing and keeping them far outweighs all the profit derived from them.
Finally, even if it were granted that the loss of the Empire would cause a temporary or even a permanent lowered standard of life for the British workers under capitalism, that does not constitute an argument for the limitless sacrifice of workers’ lives, necessitated by wars to defend the Empire. Would Mr. Millar say that it is worth while sacrificing a million British workers’ lives (as in the Great War) in order to defend the Empire, and sacrificing millions of German and Italian workers’ lives in order to wrest it from the British capitalists, and hand it over to Italian and German capitalists?
The case against working class support for wars is not touched by Mr. Millar’s superficial argument.
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE