British Socialism Part 17

"'The Labour party is a federation of Socialist societies and trade union organisations. Trade unions are directly affiliated, their membership forming, together with the membership of the Socialist organisations, the membership of the Labour party. In some cases Socialist propaganda is conducted by the trade unions, several of them embracing the Socialist basis in their rules.--J.S. MIDDLETON, for J.

RAMSAY MACDONALD.'

"'The Independent Labour Party is affiliated to the Labour party, which is a federation of trade unions, co-operative societies, and Socialist societies, for political action. The Independent Labour Party consists of individual members, and not of federated organisations. Our membership is only open to Socialists individually.

Our a.s.sociation with the trade unions comes through the Labour party, with which both we and they are affiliated. The trade unions of Great Britain do not carry on any specific Socialist propaganda among their members, although several of the unions state in their const.i.tution that they believe in Socialism. Many Socialist speeches are made from trade union platforms and demonstrations held under the auspices of trade unions.--FRANCIS JOHNSON, Secretary.'"[409]

The foregoing three letters are most interesting and most important, and they should be carefully read because they prove that the forces of trade unionism and Socialism are commingling, and that the trade unionists may reckon upon the support of the Socialists whenever they come into conflict with capitalists. Although in constructive policy Socialism and trade unionism are as yet things apart, they possess a common working basis as soon as trouble occurs between capital and labour.

To increase the intimacy between them and the representatives of labour pure and simple, and to accustom them to co-operation, the Socialist cannot do anything better than to cause conflicts to arise between capital and labour. Therefore it is only natural that the Socialists will urge the trade unionists to make great, and ever greater, demands upon capital; that every concession will only be considered as a stepping-stone to a further concession. Every conflict between capital and labour, everything that will increase the dissatisfaction of the workers, will serve the Socialists, because it will cause the workers to believe in the doctrine of the Iron Law of Wages, in the Law of Increasing Misery, and in the promised Socialist paradise. Therefore the Socialists will do all they can to embitter the relations between capital and labour, and to bring about strikes.

For instance, at the time when, in the autumn of 1907, the differences between the British railway companies and the men were acute, practically the whole Socialist press urged the railway servants to declare a strike, and the settlement of the difficulty by Mr. Lloyd George was greeted with derision and regret. Mr. Bell, who had accepted the settlement, was treated with contempt, and the result of the Railway Conference was declared to be the Sedan of the British trade union movement.[410]

Owing to the persistent agitation of the Socialists, the trade unions are becoming permeated with Socialism. Of late years there have been few great strikes in Great Britain, but, unless the relations between Socialists and trade unionists alter, it seems likely that great and violent industrial disputes will occur in the near future.

FOOTNOTES:

[386] _S.L.P. Bulletin No. 2, 1907._

[387] Quelch, _Trade Unionism_, p. 10.

[388] _English Progress towards Social Democracy_, p. 8.

[389] _S.L.P. Bulletin No. 1, May 1907._

[390] Quelch, _Trade Unionism_, p. 16.

[391] John Penny, _The Political Labour Movement_, p. 10.

[392] Hyndman, _Darkness and Dawn of May Day, 1907_, p. 2.

[393] J. O'Connor Kessack, _The Capitalist Wilderness and the Way Out_, p. 15.

[394] _S.L.P. Bulletin No. 2._

[395] Ben Tillett, _Trades Unionism and Socialism_, p. 1.

[396] Quelch in _The Socialist_, November 1907.

[397] Ben Tillett, _Trades Unionism and Socialism_, p. 14.

[398] Quelch, _Trade Unionism_, p. 13.

[399] _Clarion_, November 29, 1907.

[400] _The Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906, What it Means and How to Make Use of it_; _How Trade Unions Benefit Workmen_; _Eight Hours by Law: A Practical Solution_; _Cottage Plans and Common Sense_; _Houses for the People_; _The Case for a Legal Minimum Wage_.

[401] _Clarion_, November 15, 1907.

[402] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 40.

[403] Dennis Hird, _From Brute to Brother_, p. 14.

[404] _Socialism and Trade Unionism: Wherein do they Differ?_ pp. 2-8.

[405] Quelch, _Trade Unionism_, p. 16.

[406] Opening Address, Chairman Hartley at Annual Conference, _Social-Democratic Federation Annual Report, 1906_, pp. 3, 4.

[407] John Penny, _The Political Labour Movement_, p. 15.

[408] _New Age_, November 30, 1907.

[409] _Social Democrat_, September 1907, pp. 548, 549.

[410] See the _Labour Leader_, _Clarion_, _Justice_, _Socialist Standard_, _Socialist_, &c., for November 1907.

CHAPTER VIII

SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING LAND AND THE LANDLORDS

British Socialists, as we have learned in Chapter IV.,[411] adopting the celebrated formula of Proudhon, have proclaimed "Property is theft," and they are of opinion that property in land is a particularly heinous form of theft. Therefore they demand the rest.i.tution of the land to the people, not as a matter of expediency but as a matter of right. "Man has a right only to what his labour makes. No man 'makes' the land."[412] "Land is the gift of Nature. It is not made by man. Now, if a man has a right to nothing but that which he has himself made, no man can have a right to the land, for no man made it."[413] "The land belongs by inalienable right not to any body of individuals but to all."[414]

O high cliffs looking heavenward, O valleys green and fair.

Sea cliffs that seem to gird and guard Our island once so dear, In vain your beauty now ye spread, For we are numbered with the dead; A robber band has seized the land, And we are exiles here.

The ploughman ploughs, the sower sows.

The reaper reaps the ear; The woodman to the forest goes Before the day grows clear, But of our toil no fruit we see; The harvest's not for you and me: A robber band has seized the land, And we are exiles here.[415]

Appealing to the pa.s.sions, hatred, and greed of their followers, and relying on their credulity, Socialist leaders proclaim not only that the landlords are useless, but also that the people will have the land rent free as soon as the present owners have been expropriated. "The landlord, _qua_ landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent-receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would pa.s.s almost unnoticed."[416] "Rent is brigandage reduced to a system. So long as the English people are content to be tenants-at-will on their own soil, and to pay for the privilege, they will remain virtually slaves."[417] "The tenant earns the rent. The landlord spends it. If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could spend it himself, and so it would get spent, and get spent by the man who earns it and has the best right to spend it."[418]

Whilst some Socialist agitators are unscrupulous enough to make their followers believe that in the Socialist State they may have land for the asking, others are so unkind as to destroy that pleasing illusion.

For instance, we learn from a Fabian pamphlet, "A Socialist State or munic.i.p.ality will charge the full economic rent for the use of its land and dwellings, and apply that rent to the common purposes of the community."[419] Another Socialist authority very pertinently remarks: "It is of not the least consequence to the person who rents the land whether he pays the rent for it to an individual or whether he Pays it to the State,"[420] and therefore it is clear that statements such as "If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could spend it himself," are merely meant to deceive the simple. Tenants, instead of paying their rent to a human landlord, would have to pay it to an impersonal State or munic.i.p.ality, and the latter might prove as grasping and as heartless as rating committees are now.

Others base their demand for the spoliation of landlords upon the Bible and upon the ideal of a "Divine brotherhood," forgetting that the Bible contains a commandment "Thou shalt not steal," as well as many warnings against lying, deceit, cant, and covetousness. One of the champion Bible-Socialists, for instance, writes: "If all men are brothers, as Christ undoubtedly taught, then the land, the source of wealth, the means by which men can earn their livelihood, should not be the property of any set of individuals, but should belong to the whole community. The fact of a man being born into the world gives him the divine right to the opportunity of earning his living, and that right cannot be enjoyed so long as there is a single man on earth deprived of access to the land from which to earn his bread. When the spirit of brotherhood prevails, it will be a simple and a natural thing to arrange that these things shall be used not in the interests of the few, but for the common good. There are innumerable signs that the hearts and minds of men are now turning in this direction, and that they are coming to see that the only just and permanent arrangement is the divine solution of working on the basis of universal brotherhood."[421] There is a fraternity among Sicilian bandits. The "Divine brotherhood" of the writer would be based on robbery, and have robbery as its object.

Others demand the confiscation of all land by relying upon misrepresentation: "If the injustice of the land monopoly is great in the country, by robbing the grower of his improvements or scaring him from making any, by robbing the nation of its own legitimate independent food supply, and by laying waste vast tracts of the surface, the injustice is even greater in the towns, if only by reason of the greater numbers whose interests are now involved: (1) by flooding the town labour markets with surplus labourers, and so--by their compet.i.tion between each other for jobs of any sort at any terms, rather than starve--keeping wages down at the privation point; (2) by robbing the town workers of that proper and legitimate home market which a flourishing and proportionately numerous agricultural population would afford; (3) by the bloated rentals in cities, only made possible by driving and crowding the people into our unnaturally swollen centres; and (4) by the continuous re-investment of those enormous rent extortions in all those secondary monopolies of transit, finance, and business generally, which can only arise from the primary monopoly of the soil, and which complete this devil's chain of the subjection of labour and the dependence of the community."[422]

The complaints that land is going out of cultivation, that the British home market has been spoiled, and that towns are overgrown and overcrowded are unfortunately only too well justified, but these phenomena are not due to private property in land. Private property in land is universal, but the desertion of the country and overcrowding in towns are not universal. These evils are to be found chiefly in Great Britain, because British economic policy, whilst fostering trade and the manufacturing industries, has deliberately sacrificed to them the rural industries. That fact is acknowledged by many Socialists, as will be seen in Chapter XXL., "Some Socialist's Views on Free Trade and Protection."

The question now arises: How do the Socialists propose to deal with the land and the owners of land? Mr. Blatchford informs us: "The t.i.tled robbers of England have always done their robberies in a legal manner. We propose to enforce their cessation in a legal manner. We respect the law, and mean to use it. We are not mere brigands. We are the new police; our duty is to 'arrest the rogues and dastards'; our motto is, 'The law giveth and the law taketh away, blessed be the name of the law.'"[423] A leading Christian-Socialist clergyman tells us "As for compensation, from the point of view of the highest Christian morality, it is the landlords who should compensate the people, not the people the landlords. But practically if you carry out this reform by taxation, no compensation would be necessary or even possible."[424] Mines and mine-owners are to be treated in the same way as land and land-owners. "The minerals should be at once taken over without compensation; the present owners should think themselves well off if they escape paying compensation for previous robbery of the people."[425] Views such as those expressed in the foregoing are held not only by some unscrupulous agitators. At the last Annual Conference of the Independent Labour Party the following resolution was carried: "This Conference, being of opinion that the high price of coal is a serious menace to the nation, and bears extremely hard upon householders and especially upon the working cla.s.ses of the country, declares in favour of the nationalisation of the mines and munic.i.p.alisation of the coal-supply."[426] At the last Annual Conference of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, various resolutions urging the nationalisation of all mines were proposed and carried. Mr. W.E. Harvey, M.P., for instance, moved "That the members of Parliament supported by this federation be instructed to direct the attention of the Government to bring in a Bill for the nationalisation of land, mines, and mining royalties, as we believe that it is only by such reforms that the workers can obtain full value for their labours."[427] It will be observed that nothing is said about compensation in this resolution, which was pa.s.sed unanimously.

How is the nationalisation of the land to be effected? "The land of every country belongs of natural and inalienable right to the whole body of the people in each generation. We say therefore, 'You need not kick the landlords out; you must not buy them out; you had better tax them out.'"[428] "If the people rose in revolt, took up arms, confiscated the lands of the n.o.bles, and handed them over to the control of a Parliament, that would not be brigandage; it would be revolution. But if the people by the exercise of const.i.tutional means, pa.s.sed an Act through Parliament making the estates of the n.o.bles the property of the nation, with or without compensation, that would be neither brigandage nor revolution; it would be a legal, righteous, and const.i.tutional reform. We propose to be neither revolutionaries nor brigands, but legal, righteous, and const.i.tutional reformers."[429]

Legality implies and presupposes justice, but Socialist law and justice are different from that conception of law and justice which has been held hitherto. Chapter XXIV. will make that point clear.

The foregoing should suffice to show that the Socialists intend to abolish private property in land by "taxing landowners out of existence."

They apparently forget that not all the owners of land are rich; that many small farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, &c., own freehold land and freehold houses; and that the insurance companies have a very large proportion of their funds invested in land and on the security of land. A confiscation of land would therefore ruin a vast number of hard-working people. It would cripple some insurance companies and ruin others. Hence the savings of thrifty workers would be confiscated or destroyed by the State together with those of the larger capitalists.