50 Ago: Happy New Year?

Another year with all its possibilities—gone.

Another year with all its possibilities—opening upon. us. And—“a Happy New Year” comes lightly from the tongue in conventional salutation: “A Happy New Year and doubtless behind the greeting there is still some measure of real concern for the materialisation of the wish in the person addressed “A Happy New Year”.—Why not? Why should not happiness be in the constant experience of all? Why should not happiness be the normal condition of everybody? Why should it not be as natural for everybody to exult in the joys of living as it is for them to breathe—why is it not?

Because—happiness is conditioned by the available supply of the necessities of life. Deny these to a man and he cannot be happy. And the barest of these necessities are unobtainable (upon Capitalist authority—unobtainable) by at least a third of the people of this, the most prosperous of nations, while the rest of its working population—the population that builds up the “national” prosperity—only just manage, with infinite labour and anxiety, to maintain themselves in a condition of working efficiency.

That is the reason why happiness is not the normal condition of the working population. That is why they have not been happy in the dead year. That is why they cannot be happy in the year just commenced. To wish them “A Happy New Year” which we know they will not get is therefore rather dreary humour and about as useful as wishing the moon were green cheese.

(From the “Socialist Standard,” January 1907.)