The Scented Spray of Capitalist Propaganda

At the present time slogans and cartoons abound in an effort to attract the attention of the working class and obtain their collaboration for ruling class objectives. Two of these propaganda posters frequently seen in public transport vehicles supply both question and capitalist answer. They read, “What does the common cold cost?'”—”In one year the common cold and ‘flu cost the country 40,000,000 work days.”

The cost of a cold to a worker, since the majority lose pay for absence, is the loss of so many days’ pay plus any addition which may be spent on medical treatment, etc. But this is not the capitalists’ grief; they have not the slightest concern regarding the workers’ illness for the workers’ sake. The capitalists’ concern is shown in the answer they have provided, and which more accurately reads: “In one year the common cold cost US 40,000,000 days’ profit.”

To his regret, the capitalist cannot run the worker unceasingly, as he can his machines, but is obliged to permit him time for rest and the recuperation of his labour-power, and whilst the worker is resting the capitalist is obliged to allow his machines to remain idle, or to employ more labour-power to keep them running. But in addition to these problems which burden capital, the worker at intervals dares to be ill and leave the capitalist high and dry. At times when the labour market is well stocked, the capitalist would speedily replace the absent labour unit with another, and the sick worker would then have the added aid to health in the knowledge that he was sacked. Under the present conditions, when labour power is scarce and under various Government restrictions, the capitalist is unable to obtain substitutes for workers absent through sickness, so that he loses the profit which would have been gained from the exploitation of each absent worker.

The capitalists are particularly alarmed when the country, as recently, is swept by an epidemic, for they know only too well that the food the workers obtain under war-time conditions provides them with little resistance to illness, and the capitalistic mind formulates the mental picture of a further 40,000,000 days (or more) of profit losses.

Whilst the recent influenza epidemic was sweeping the country, at least one Government Department provided a worker, complete with a disinfectant spray to go among the workers at intervals and eject into the air a chemical with a pine odour. The Medical Officer’s comment on this process was that, whilst the disinfectant had not the slightest effect on any germs, it undoubtedly had a great psychological value.

The workers, in explainable ignorance, believe that a squirt into the air of a pungent smelling fluid will safeguard their health, and a psychological effect frequently produces a material result.

This incident brought to the writer a realisation of the frequency with which the workers are duped by psychological effects owing to their lack of political and economic understanding. When the present war concludes (in its military phase) there are going to be a number of germs (very old ones) that will attack the workers’ standard of life—unemployment, insecurity, low wages, competition, etc —and the Government being totally unable within the existing system to destroy these germs, has prepared a spray of palliatives to be ejected into the air of workers’ economic problems. Beveridge will most probably be handed the political spray for the first few squirts in his plan to reorganise poverty. If this should not produce the desired psychological effect, Lord Woolton will have a few squirts with his “New World” mixture, and so the spray will be handed on. Unfortunately, in their lack of political and economic knowledge, many members of the working class will smell the odour of empty promises and futile reforms with which the economic atmosphere has been sprayed, and, bracing their shoulders like a sergeant-major in mufti, will endeavour to console themselves that the world is becoming more healthy for wage slaves.

With the passing of time and the fact that workers are still falling by the wayside of social security will come the realisation that these social germs are as virile as ever, despite all the political squirting.

The necessary research for the total destruction of these social germs and their absolute abolition, has already been successfully achieved by a small section of the working class of the world in their study of the lifetime’s work of the two social scientists, Karl Marx and Fredk. Engels. This organisation of workers is the SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN and their companion Parties in America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. These organisations appeal for the assistance of their fellow-workers throughout the world to abolish the germ-ridden system of capitalism, which has a total disregard of human life, by the establishment of Socialism, which means the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Onlv within a Socialist system of society will workers’ problems be solved and the dangers to social and physical health be prevented. With the acquiring of Socialist knowledge world society will be enabled to enjoy to the full the products of its labour, and the psychological squirting capitalist politicians will be unable to side-track the workers from their objective and ultimate achievement. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is showing the workers the route to Socialism from its public platforms and in its literature. It has no leaders, for upon the workers themselves lies this historic task of establishing UNIVERSAL SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM.

C. G. C.