Demands which Have Not Effective Backing
During the final stages of the debate on the Means Test Bill in the House of Commons, Mr. Seymour Cocks, M.P. (Labour, Broxtowe), was reported as saying; “Men are unemployed, not through their own fault, but as a result of the economic system under which they live. That being so, the fault lies with society.”
In saying that much, Mr. Cocks stated a fact so well-known that it has become almost a platitude. Prominent men of other parlies have said the same thing years ago. It is not necessary to belong to the Labour Party to become acquainted with a fact that is so obvious.
The capitalist system is undoubtedly responsible for unemployment, which is only a part of the general evil of poverty for which the system is to blame. When the workers are considering Mr. Cocks’s suggested remedy they should keep that fact in mind. His remedy is as follows: —
“We say they have a right to demand from society everything required to keep them in strength, health, and self-respect. This should not be looked on as State relief, but as compensation paid by society in default of providing work.”
There is, of course, no obstacle preventing the unemployed from making any demands they choose. The workers have been demanding this, that and the other thing, ever since they have had leaders, with varying degrees of non-success. Successive governments have permitted them to go on demanding. Most of the demands put forward by labour leaders, in the name of the workers, have been made on the Government in office at the time. But Mr. Cocks makes his demand on society.
In blaming society for unemployment Mr. Cocks is right; in suggesting a remedy that can only be sponsored by the capitalist class, he is wrong. If the social system is to blame, then society, as a whole, is responsible. The capitalist class because they are interested in preserving unemployment; and the working class because they fail to understand its cause and cure. While the working class submit to capitalist exploitation—the cause of poverty and unemployment—and bv their votes give the capitalist class control, the latter, quite naturally, deal with the question along lines that suit their interests as a class.
To put the case in a nut-shell, unemployment is only a part of the greater and more general evil from which the workers suffer. But as a class, the latter outnumber the capitalists many times. Organised in the Socialist Party on the basis of their class they could easily swamp all capitalist parties, and gaining political control, establish Socialism, when all forms of poverty due to exploitation would be ended.
The responsibility is on the working class to bring this about. They are the class that suffers unemployment and the fear of unemployment. Only the class that suffers can bring about its own emancipation. Demands are useless unless backed by an effective force, and unnecessary when this force is on the workers’ side.
Mr. Cocks’s last statement, that, unemployment pay “should not be looked on as State relief, but as compensation paid by society in default of providing work,” shows that he is not opposed to the capitalist system in itself. He is quite prepared to leave the system intact in return for the right of the unemployed to demand the necessaries of life.
Right without might is an illusion of the sentimentalist. Might lies behind the guns of the armed
forces, and it allows what “rights” it deems fit.
F. F.