THE ATTITUDE OF SOCIALISTS TOWARDS PROVIDENCE, THRIFT, AND TEMPERANCE
Socialism thrives upon the poverty, unhappiness, and misery of the
workers. Starving and desperate men may easily be aroused to
rebellion. Contented men will not become Socialists. Therefore it lies
in the interest of the professional Socialist agitators to maintain
poverty and misery among the masses, and if possible to increase it.
With this object in view, many Socialist agitators oppose all measures
which are likely to turn the propertyless wage-earner--the "wage
slave" as the Socialists like to call him, in order to exasperate
him--into an owner of property, a small capitalist. That might make
him a contented man. Therefore, as we have seen in Chapter XVIII., the
Socialist leaders strenuously oppose "for scientific reasons" the
creation of peasant proprietors. They distinctly encourage
improvidence and oppose, also "for scientific reasons," providence,
thrift, and abstinence among the workers. The philosopher of British
Socialism informs us: "Thrift, the hoarding up of the products of
labour, it is obvious, must be without rhyme or reason, except on a
capitalist basis,"[840] and the Socialists do not wish the workers to
become capitalists.
Some Socialists were indiscreet enough to confess that they opposed
providence, thrift, and temperance among the workers, as practised
especially by the members of trade unions, co-operative societies, and
friendly societies, because these are likely to elevate the masses
and rob the Socialist leaders of supporters. We read, for instance:
"The so-called thrift and temperance movements are essentially
antagonistic to Socialism."[841] "The trade co-operator canonises the
bourgeois virtues, but Socialist vices, of 'over-work' and
'thrift.'"[842] "Co-operation, though regarded by the individual
trader as an enemy, does not necessarily enter into conflict with the
capitalist at all. Indeed, so far as it transforms workmen into
shareholders, it forms a bulwark for capitalism, the same as the
creation of small landholders or any other class of small proprietors
would do."[843] "Co-operation, as carried on in England, is an
obstacle and a danger to the Socialist cause. Being capitalist
concerns pure and simple, co-operative societies are subjected to the
same influences as all other capitalistic ventures."[844] "The
friendly societies are the least promising of any of the democratic
movements from the political point of view. The doctrine of 'thrift'
also has been preached very vigorously to them. There is at present
little prospect of the friendly societies identifying themselves with
the general political labour movement of the country."[845] The
Anarchist Congress of 1869 at Marseilles stated very truly: "La
cooperation demoralise les ouvriers en faisant des bourgeois."[846]
Now let us take note of the "scientific" arguments with which British
Socialists oppose providence, thrift, and sobriety among the workers.
"Under present circumstances, the more frugal, thrifty, and abstemious
working people as a class become, the more cheaply they have to live,
the more cheaply they have to sell their labour power to the
capitalist class, wages being determined by the cost of
subsistence."[847] "Temperance, thrift, industry only serve to make
labour an easier or more valuable prey to capital. If they reduce the
cost of living in any particular, they but reduce the cost of labour
to the capitalist."[848] "If _all_ the workers were very thrifty,
sober, industrious, and abstemious they would be worse off in the
matter of wages than they are now."[849] "The mere cheapening of the
cost of living only tends to reduce wages, and thus cannot advantage
the worker."[850] "If _all_ workers were to become teetotalers and
vegetarians, wages would inevitably fall to the wretched level,
perchance, of Oriental countries like India and China, where thrift in
every form is carried to incredible lengths."[851] "Is it not proved
that the Hindoos and the Chinese, who are the most temperate and the
most thrifty people in the world, are always the worst paid? And don't
you see that if the Lancashire workers would live upon rice and water,
the masters would soon have their wages down to rice and water
point?"[852]
The foregoing arguments, which are based on the "Iron Law of Wages,"
of which a refutation has been given in Chapter IV.,[853] may sound
plausible to the unthinking workman. They may infuriate him and
therefore serve the ends of the Socialist agitator, but they are
utterly false and dishonest, as all Socialist leaders know. Wages
depend partly on the supply and demand for labour, partly on the
productiveness of labour. In machineless countries, such as China and
India, the average worker produces very little, and the supply of
workers is unlimited. Hence their wages are low. If the Socialistic
arguments were right, Chinese and Hindoos could double or treble
their wages by becoming drunkards, and English navvies could earn
_5l._ a week by agreeing among themselves to drink champagne instead
of beer. If the cost of subsistence determined the rate of wages, the
wages for all workers in London ought to be approximately the same. In
reality, however, we find that wages range in London from _3l. 10s._
to _18s._ per week. The most skilled workers receive the highest, the
least skilled the lowest, wages. It is therefore evident that wages
are determined by the cost of subsistence only in the case of the
least skilled workers, provided an unlimited supply of such workers
and unrestricted competition among them for work drive down their
wages to the bare existence level.
Providence, thrift, and temperance are habitually attacked by
Socialists not only on "scientific" but also on moral and philosophical
grounds. For instance, Mr. Keir Hardie tells us: "As for thrift, much
which passes for such at present is little different from
soul-destroying parsimony. Men and women starve their years of healthy
activity that they may have enough to keep alive an attenuated old age
scarcely worth preserving."[854] In other words, he advises the workers
to spend all they earn and to become paupers in their old age. A very
influential Socialist writer says: "A man by starving his mind and his
body is able to save money. He borrows books instead of buying them. He
starves his emotional nature by neglecting to go to the theatre,
because to go to the theatre costs money. He doesn't go to concerts
because concerts cost money. He is a teetotaler, not so much because he
wishes to keep his stomach clean and his head clear, but because his
ideal men are teetotalers, grad-grinds, who mortify the flesh in order
to save. And the money is saved with a bad intention. The aim is either
to start independently in business, or else to secure shares in the
undertaking paying the highest dividends compatible with security. The
object of this man is to leave his class behind him, and to live _upon_
labour rather than _by_ it"[855]--According to this authority it would
be immoral for the rural labourer to save in order to be able to till
his own field and to live in his own cottage; it would be immoral for
the artisan to endeavour to have a workshop and a house of his own; it
would be immoral for the worker to put his savings into a savings-bank
or a friendly society, or some limited company, and to live upon his
savings during his old age. It would almost seem as if from the
Socialist point of view the only moral way of obtaining property was by
plundering the rich. "Waste all you earn and die in the workhouse" is
at present their advice to the worker, and the worker who follows that
advice and who lives from hand to mouth easily becomes a pauper. For
him a short spell of unemployment means starvation and despair. This is
evidently a state of affairs which Socialist agitators favour because
it will increase their following.--Another prominent Socialist writer
says: "Among the many quack remedies for poverty, the most venerable
and the most illusive is thrift or saving. The habit of saving is
always represented by the rich as the highest of social virtues; but it
is one they are careful rarely to practise themselves"[856]--If the
rich are so wasteful, how is it then that the national capital, held by
the rich, as the Socialists tell us, has increased from
_4,000,000,000l._ to _12,000,000,000l._ during the last sixty years,
notwithstanding huge capital losses caused by suffering industries? The
decay of agriculture alone has caused a capital loss which approximates
_2,000,000,000l._
The great co-operative movement in England was created by the
celebrated Rochdale Pioneers, the name given to the weavers of
Rochdale who started it. On a rainy night in November 1843, twelve men
met in the back room of a mean inn and commenced the co-operative
movement by organising themselves as "The Rochdale Society of
Equitable Pioneers." They agreed to pay twenty pence a week into a
common fund, but only a few of these twelve men were able to pay their
pence that evening. They began by buying a little tea and sugar at
wholesale prices, which they sold to their members at little more than
cost. In a year their number had grown to twenty-eight, and they had
collected _28l._, with which they rented a little store and stocked it
with _15l._ worth of flour. During the first year they made no profit.
In its second year the society had seventy-four members, _181l._ in
funds, _710l._ of business, and made _22l._ profit, 2-1/2 per cent. of
which was used as a fund for education.[857]
Gradually but constantly growing, this movement has branched out in
every direction, and the result is that there are now in Great Britain
1,685 co-operative societies with 2,263,562 members. These
co-operative societies are manufacturers, ship owners, bankers,
brokers, factors, merchants, millers, printers, bookbinders, and
shopkeepers of every kind on the largest scale. The rapidly growing
assets of the various undertakings represent a value of about
_50,000,000l._, the combined nominal capital comes to _42,813,348l._,
and the yearly net profits amount to about _11,000,000l._, or to more
than 35 per cent. per annum on the subscribed capital. In 1905 the net
profits amounted to 37.4 per cent., in 1906 to 36.4 per cent. on the
share capital.
Capitalised at 4 per cent, the co-operative societies represent an
investment value of about _300,000,000l._, or about _100l._ per
co-operator. The societies maintain an army of 107,727 employees.
Their progress during the last decade may be seen at a glance from
the following figures:
_Total Trade of British Co-operative Societies._
1896 L58,729,643
1901 88,394,304
1906 110,085,826[858]
Already the income of the co-operative societies is twice as large as
the interest paid on the whole of the deposits in the British
savings-banks. There is no reason why the co-operative movement should
not further grow and increase, and it is to be hoped that it will
further extend in every direction to the benefit of the industrious
and thrifty workers. There ought to be no propertyless workers in
Great Britain.
The British co-operative societies have proved to the dismay of the
Socialists that working men may improve their position unaided and may
become capitalists. They have proved that thrift and ability create
prosperity, and they have therefore incurred the hatred of the
Socialist agitators. The philosopher of British Socialism complains:
"Co-operation so far from being Socialism is the very antithesis of
Socialism. Trade co-operation is simply a form of industrial
partnership, in which the society of co-operators is in the relation
of capitalist to the outer world. The units of the society may be
equal amongst themselves, but their very existence in this form
presupposes exploitation going on above, below, and around them."[859]
The editor of "Justice" seems to regret that co-operation encourages
and rewards ability and thrift, for he says: "Co-operation is most
valuable to those among the workers who are best off. The artisan
earning a regular weekly wage has not only a better opportunity of
becoming a member of the co-operative society than the more
precariously employed and more poorly paid labourer, but the advantage
to him is greater by reason of his having more money to spend at the
store. In many cases the poorer members have to sell out, and then the
affair becomes simply a joint-stock company of the more fortunate, the
race being once more to the swift, the battle to the strong."[860]
"The ordinary workman can if he likes become a shareholder in the
"co-op." So he may become a shareholder in a railway if he likes; but
this does not make the capitalist domination of our railways less a
fact. In a co-operative store, as elsewhere, the man with _2l._ a week
is worth just twice as much as the man with _1l._ Co-operation as a
factor in social progress has effected nothing, and is absolutely
valueless except to a certain extent as an educational influence."[861]
Some Socialist writers show their hatred of the co-operative societies
and the co-operators by bitter and almost vicious attacks upon them.
One of them complains: "Instances of successful co-operation _in
production_ have, as yet, been very few, and their moral results
disappointing. Their general tendency has been, not to raise the
workers as a class, but to raise a certain number of prudent--I had
almost said selfish--workmen _out_ of their class, and so to
constitute a _Labour Caste_. Such co-operators employ and exploit
other workmen even more mercilessly than the capitalist employers, and
in struggles between Labour and Capital their sympathies have nearly
always been on the side of the capitalists."[862] Another says: "The
Rochdale Pioneers hire and fleece labourers in the usual manner.
Experience teaches, indeed, that such associations are the hardest
taskmasters. Their interest becomes identified with Capital; and if
ever circumstances should make it easier for the smarter labourers to
start companies of the kind successfully, the creation of a _Labour
Caste_ would be the result. In a general dispute between Labour and
Capital these associations, instead of being a vanguard of Labour,
will go over to the side of Capital. The sons of Rochdale Pioneers,
living in luxury, and imitating the airs and fashions of the wealthy
of all times, point the moral. Where, then, is the gain to the
labouring class? No, instead of advising workmen to save and to invest
their savings in such risky enterprises, it would be much better to
advise them to put their savings into their own flesh and bone."[863]
The foregoing extracts, and many similar ones which might be given,
display a regrettable hatred of ability, providence, and
thrift--qualities which, it is true, are not easily reconcilable with
the tenets of Socialism.
The British nation spends on intoxicating drink about _160,000,000l._
per annum. Out of this enormous sum--a sum much larger than the
national Budget--between _100,000,000l._ and _120,000,000l._ is spent
by the working class alone. Drink is a fearful evil in Great Britain.
The average working man spends every year two months' earnings in
drink, and as there are many moderate drinkers and abstainers, there
must be many who spend three months' earnings and more--that is,
one-quarter of their wages, sometimes one-half, and sometimes more
than one-half, on intoxicants. According to some of the foremost
authorities on social science, and according to some of the most
prominent medical men, drink is chiefly responsible for poverty,
underfeeding, ill-health, and racial degeneration. Nevertheless, the
British Socialists, instead of condemning drunkenness, rather
encourage, or at least excuse, this terrible vice; and again, the
universally discredited Iron Law of Wages is solemnly brought forth to
prove "scientifically" that sobriety and abstinence on the part of
the workers would not benefit the workers but the capitalists. "We are
not prepared to admit that, if all workers were to become teetotalers,
as I am, the _140,000,000l._ now spent on intoxicants would benefit
the workers to any appreciable extent. On the contrary, all economists
tell us that wages always tend towards the minimum subsistence
point--the level at which the wage-slave is willing to subsist and to
reproduce his kind."[864]
The Iron Law of Wages has been abandoned by all scientists because of
its manifest absurdity. However, supposing the Iron Law of Wages were
true, it would not by any means follow that general abstinence would
lead to a lower rate of wages. Non-abstemious wage-earners live
frequently in the most wretched homes, and are dressed in rags because
they spend all they can spend in drink. If they should become sober,
they would find better houses, better clothing, better furniture as
indispensable as drink is now to them. In reality abstinence, instead
of lowering wages, would probably increase them very considerably in
accordance with the increased productive power of the worker. It is a
general experience that the steady and abstemious worker commands a
higher wage than his more or less drunken, unreliable, and untidy
colleague.
Socialists are fond of excusing drunkenness by arguing that the worker
gets drunk "because he is physically and mentally exhausted, used up
with the day's work";[865] "because the wretched social condition of
the mass of workers of this country--the long hours, the uncertainty
of work, the insufficient food and clothing, and degrading home-life,
which are their daily portion--makes drunkards."[866] Another
well-known writer states: "If thousands of the workers drink to drown
the cares and sorrows of their dreary, degraded, wretched existence,
they do so at the expense of going without some of the merest
necessaries."[867] This is, unfortunately, only too true. But it is
not true that "Our damnable, infernal, profit-mongering system
manufactures and produces drunkards because huge profits can be made
out of the business for the brewer and the publican."[868]
The above statements, which excuse drunkenness as something natural
and unavoidable in Great Britain, are untrue. All civilised countries
are based upon the private possession of capital, and in all large
profits can be made by brewers and publicans. Now, if it were true, as
has been stated in the foregoing, that hard work and long hours cause
drunkenness, drunkenness should be greater in the United States,
Germany, and France than in Great Britain, for in these countries and
most others workers work much harder and work much longer hours than
in Great Britain. The British nation should therefore be the most
sober nation, but it is in reality the most drunken nation, a fact
which is known to all who have studied this question.
The majority of British Socialist leaders apparently desire to keep
the workers drunken, for every suggestion that the worker might
improve his position by greater moderation in drinking is passionately
denounced by them. In a speech Andrew Carnegie mentioned that "he had
employed forty-five thousand men at one time, and his experience was
that the man who drank was good for drinking and for nothing else. He
had nothing to do with the man who drank. He did not believe in the
Submerged Tenth, but what he wanted to do, remembering he was a
working man himself, was to take an honest, sober, well-doing,
hard-working man by the hand and help him if he could. He only wanted
to help those who could help themselves." Commenting on this speech,
one of the Socialist weeklies said: "According to the foregoing, no
drunkard, no matter how chronic, could display a greater specimen of
human demoralisation than does that reported speech of Dr. Andrew
Carnegie depict himself; soulless beyond imagination almost, in spite
of his self-advertised respect and sympathy for the honest, sober
working man." In the same article we read: "Total abstainers are
capable of viler actions than those of certain drunkards, while the
profoundest depth of ignorance and incapacity to think are attributes
of millions of total abstainers."[869] When Mr. John Burns advised the
workmen to help themselves by abstaining from drink and gambling, the
whole Socialist press raged, and he was called a traitor to the cause
and an agent of capitalism.
Only rarely does a Socialist rebuke drunkenness. In "Socialism for
Christians" we find a passage: "As long as you have a democracy sodden
in drink you will have a democracy under the hoofs of capitalists.
There is no hope for the democracy as long as it is content to grovel
before the great pewter pot which it has made into a god."[870]
However, that passage was not penned by a professional Socialist, but
by a clergyman, an outsider, and an amateur in Socialism.
While British Socialist leaders try to degrade the masses and to
increase their misery by encouraging them to waste a very large part
of their wages in drink, instead of spending the money on necessary
food and clothing, on sufficient living room and furniture, foreign
Socialists try to elevate their followers and to combat the drinking
evil among them. The foremost Belgian Socialist, who constantly
agitates against drunkenness, wrote:
"How often have we not found in Socialist pamphlets, or in our
newspapers, statements such as the following: 'Misery produces
alcoholism,' or 'Drink is a consequence of capitalism, and will only
disappear with the capitalistic system itself.' These are comfortable
theories indeed, but they unfortunately come in conflict with the
facts. The labourer must not only regard alcohol as one of the causes
of poverty, demoralisation, and degeneration, but as a canker which
destroys his strength and powers of resistance. We therefore address
to all our comrades this warning: The more earnest you are and the
stricter towards yourself, the greater will be the authority you bring
to bear upon the branding of this evil. Everything which decreases the
consumption of alcohol increases the helping powers of labour
movements, raises the moral tone of the working class, and gives it
fresh strength in its struggle for emancipation. Therefore all
Socialistic societies should break away from out-of-date ideas with
regard to alcoholism, and leave off expecting results from a social
revolution which they themselves can attain to-day. It is our bounden
duty to declare war against alcohol. War to the knife, for it is all
the more dangerous as it dwells in our midst in the guise of
friendship. When addicted to drink, the working class cannot do what
must be done. Alcohol, by its paralysing qualities, naturally leads to
fatigue, negligence, weakness, and impotence. Only those who can rule
themselves are able and worthy to rule the world."[871]
The German Socialist leaders also endeavour to elevate their followers
by fighting drunkenness. At the Congress at Essen in 1907, a
resolution was unanimously passed by the German Social-Democratic
party in which various recommendations were made to the Government
regarding the diminution of drunkenness, and which concluded with the
words: "The working-class organisations are invited to suppress in
their meeting all compulsion to consume alcoholic liquors, to put a
stop to its sale in schools, in registry offices, and in places where
collections are made for strikers, and to inform children and young
men by word of mouth and by the Press of the danger of alcohol, and to
watch over drinking habits which lead to the abuse of alcohol."[872] A
German Socialist periodical recently wrote: "Workers who drink neglect
their duties towards their family, drink away their wages, bring
disorder into their unions, lose the sympathy of the quiet and
industrious citizens, become the slaves of the public-house, and
damage Socialism. Therefore Socialists should abstain absolutely from
drinking intoxicating drinks. Ordinary capitalism exploits the
proletariat, but does not poison them too in their own persons and in
their posterity. But alcohol does both; it lames the power of a whole
nation and leads to the degeneration of the race, as does opium in
China. The drinker loses his self-respect, his higher aims as a human
being. It must be made a fundamental principle of the German
Social-Democratic party that the proletariat can vanquish capital only
after it has first vanquished drink. The sooner that victory is won,
the sooner the fate of society will be decided."[873]
Continental Socialist leaders recommend to their followers thrift,
sobriety, and co-operation. British Socialist leaders, who have taken
the whole of their doctrines from the Continent, condemn "on
scientific and moral grounds," thrift, sobriety, and co-operation.
FOOTNOTES:
[840] Bax, _Religion of Socialism_, p. 95.
[841] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism_, p. 40.
[842] Bax, _Religion of Socialism_, p. 94.
[843] Quelch, _Trade Unionism_, p. 16.
[844] _Social-Democrat_, April 1907, p. 212.
[845] Penny, _Political Labour Movement_, p. 11.
[846] Roscher, _Politik_, p. 575.
[847] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism_, p. 41.
[848] Quelch, _Economics of Socialism_, p. 16.
[849] Blatchford, _Britain for the British_, p. 127.
[850] Quelch, _Economics of Socialism_, p. 16.
[851] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 107.
[852] Blatchford, _Britain for the British_, p. 129.
[853] See p. 53 ff, _ante._
[854] Keir Hardie, _Can a Man be a Christian on a Pound a Week?_ p.
13.
[855] Leatham, _The Class War_, p. 8.
[856] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 105.
[857] Bliss, _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, pp. 358 and 1195.
[858] _Labour Gazette_, December 1907.
[859] Bax, _Religion of Socialism_, p. 94.
[860] Quelch, _Trade Unionism_, p. 10.
[861] _Ibid._ p. 13
[862] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 109.
[863] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 51.
[864] Muse, _Poverty and Drunkenness_, p. 3.
[865] Leatham, _Was Jesus a Socialist?_ p. 11.
[866] Muse, _Poverty and Drunkenness_, p. 12.
[867] Glyde, _Britain's Disgrace_, p. 20.
[868] _Ibid._ p. 20.
[869] _Forward_, November 16, 1907.
[870] Kirtlan, _Socialism for Christians_, p. 15.
[871] Vandervelde, _Drink and Socialism_, pp. 3, 8.
[872] _Social-Democrat_, October 1907, p. 620.
[873] _Die Neue Gesellschaft_, November 1907, pp. 332, 337.