Jottings
Harry Bradford, writing in the August issue of the Pioneer (Burnley) informs his readers that “The S.D.P. is a poor parent and cannot yet give its children the toys and allurements that the capitalists use to entice them to their fold.” And further “The old age toffy-stick is too long withheld and too melting to satisfy.”
Then if the capitalist class use reforms as toys, i.e., in order to keep the workers quiet and prevent them becoming unruly, what are we to think of an organisation, claiming to be a working-class, revolutionary body, that advocates capitalist “toffy sticks” and toys ? The S.D.P. had the following capitalist allurements on their programme for a number of years : “Free and adequate State pensions or provision for aged and disabled workers. Public assistance not to entail any forfeiture of political rights.” One can only conclude, first, that the S.D.P.—as an organisation—has been playing the capitalist game, and secondly that Mr. Bradford is either not aware of the methods which the S.D.P. propose taking in order to “carry on the class war,” or that he wilfully misrepresents its objects.
Knowing that the S.P.G.B. have sent speakers to Nottingham lately, I wondered at first whether the “new, vigorous policy of complete independence” of the Notts I.L.P. was a consequence of these visits, but upon reading the article in the Labour Leader a little further I found they were “marching steadily ahcad along the traditional lines of the I.L.P.,” and then I knew why “many social attractions to keep ihe members together” were necessary. The lack of unanimity as to the objective of the Party for the time being makes necessary the social functions which figure so largely in the I.L.P.
The debate on the Eight Hours Bill in the House of Commons last year (March 18) brought forth admissions from “Labour” members that with a decreased working day the existing output could be maintained without increased expenditure to the employer.
In his address to the Economic Science and Statistics section of the British Association, Professor Chapman said :
“These changes” (i.e., in the character of the world’s work) “all tended to specialisation, to concentration, both in working and in leisure, and to constant demands for the curtailment of the working hours of the day.
“In the course of long investigations he had found no instance in which an abbreviation of hours had resulted in a proportionate curtailment of output. There was, indeed, every reason to suppose that the production in the shorter hours seldom fell short of the production in the longer hours, and in some cases the product or its value had actually been augmented after a short interval. He (Prof. Chapman) sought also to show that the value of leisure would inevitably rise with progress and that the working day would become less in the future.” Daily News, 27.8.09.
Thus the “Labour” members, unconsciously, and Professor Chapman, consciously, arrive at the same conclusion, viz., that shortening the working day under capitalist rule means a similar or greater output than results from the longer working day. This is exactly the position laid down by Karl Marx in “Capital,” Chap. XV. p. 417.
Coincident with the statement of Professor Chapman just alluded to, we have the Board of Education issuing a revised syllabus of physical education. The reason is that the high pressure rate of existence calls for a physically better equipped worker. Education (!) being under capitalist control, it becomes necessary to prepare the future worker for the stress he has to undergo by the introduction of games, etc. We have already partial measures of feeding school children in order that the physical exercises shall not be wasted. In fact, the two schemes hang together, one being the complement of the other.
“This country, and other countries, have become dominated by a system of commercialism by which wealth and power are so unevenly distributed that for thousands of persons permission to live, even on the borders of starvation, is only granted upon conditions of labour compared to which the lot of the old Negro slave was princely. The greatness of a nation now it judged by the amount of its exports and imports, rather than the happiness of its people. And so we have little children working in the factories, and women, to get back to their work, neglecting their duties of motherhood, for which alone they were created. The inevitable result is the production of a large proportion of the candidates for the asylums.”— Manchester Guardian, 8.31.09.
No, the above is not the “ravings of a harebrained Socialist,” but a fragment of truth as told by Dr. Frank Perceval, Medical Superintendent Lancashire Asylums Board, in his Annual Report to that body.
Shackleton, as president of the Trades Unions Congress, desired Richard Bell to express regret to the Railway Clerks Association for having sided with the masters in a dispute between the N.E. Ry. Co. and the R.C.A. But when Ben Tillett got up and stated that “Mr. Asquith is a liar,” who was the first to rise in defense of the master class, and to fret and fume over this smirching of their representative’s “good name”? Shackleton promptly demanded the withdrawal of the remark. Bell sided with the masters in their efforts to prevent the Railway Clerks combining against them, but the whole Labour Party stand solid behind that arsenal of shot and shell for working-class butchery—the Budget.
JAYBEE