23. British Way or Russian Way?
Americans take it for granted that the Labor Movement in the United States and Canada will follow the lead of the British Labor Movement. They also assume that the British Labor Movement is pursuing an "evolutionary" policy. "By orderly process," so the argument runs, "the present society will be transformed into a Socialist state."
Advocates of this theory would have been rudely shocked had they attended a public meeting of Trades Union Congress delegates held in Scarboro on the Sunday evening before the Congress opened and heard President Swales declare that the workers of Britain intended "to take all of the wealth, since it is they who have produced all of it."
They would have been still more disturbed had they heard A. A. Purcell (Congress President for 1924) assert at the same meeting that: "The land is ours of right. Once we possessed it. Then they took it from us. The industries are ours of right. We created them with our ten little fingers. And we propose to take them back. As to paying for them we shall take them first and argue about payment afterward. We believe that our argument will be stronger if we hold the means of subsistence in our own hands."
This is the "disciplined revolution" advocated by A. J. Cook of the Miners. It is a plea for direct well considered industrial action.
Responsible British Trade Union leaders talk that way every time they get up to make a speech. It is the British workers' reply to the new "scissors"—falling trade and rising unemployment—that are paring down the British workers' standard of living.
Five years ago American publicists like Paul Kellogg and Arthur Gleason were expounding the doctrines enunciated by the British Labor Party in its plan for the social reconstruction of Britain.[1] The plan presented an outline of social reforms attainable through orderly process under a rehabilitated capitalist system—social insurance, housing, health, education, and the gradual socialization of life. That program was formulated by the Webbs and their supporters during the romantic days of 1919 and 1920, when the war was at last over, and men were free to turn their attention to "rebuilding."[2]
Five years have elapsed—years of bitter disillusionment. Deflation began in 1921. Debts piled up. Taxes rose. Production and trade declined. Unemployment came, and stayed—the unbidden guest that has sat at every British feast since 1921.
Then there were the colonial wars—the rape of Egypt; the Riff revolt; rebellion in India and China. Armaments grew. Everywhere were slaughter and the preparation for destruction. Evidently “rebuilding” was out of the question until the whole structure of capitalist imperialism had been cleared away.
Again, there was the Soviet Republic—the world's first experiment in working class government—invaded, blockaded, starved, denounced, lied about. White terror was financed and supported in Finland and Hungary; the depredations of Fascism were condoned in Italy; military dictatorship was recognized in Spain; but the Workers' and Peasants' Government of Russia was mercilessly attacked.
Finally came the assault on wages and working conditions, Coolie labor in China and Dawes Plan labor in Germany financed by British capitalists for the profit of British share-holders and competing directly with British standards of work and life.
Bitter experience has taught British workers several lessons since 1921. They may be summed up in the axiom: Business is business.
To that axiom of imperialism the British workers have an axiom of their own: The world for the workers!
Millions of British workers face cold, hunger, uncertainty. What can they do? They must find a way to guarantee shelter and food to themselves and their children and evidently that way cannot be found under the present economic order.
British imperialists held the world in their grip, controlled its markets, and secured their needed raw materials until the end of the last century. Through this period they kept their workers employed. By the time of the Boer War (1899), however, chronic unemployment had settled upon British industry. The Great War was an interruption. After it was over, British workers dropped back into the unemployment slough.
Capitalist imperialism is an economic failure. The British Empire was the first among the capitalist empires. Britain furnishes a classic example in this field. Capitalist imperialism succeeds as long as it can find new resources, new markets, and new workers to exploit. When the opportunity for exploitation fails, capitalist imperialism fails. This is necessarily true because capitalist imperialism is a system of exploitation.
During the latter part of the nineteenth century outlying countries learned to make their own raw materials into finished goods. At the same time several powerful rivals appeared to challenge the British Empire.
When the World War was over Britain's great European rival—Germany—was temporarily crippled. Two other rivals had emerged, strengthened, from the struggle: Japan in the East and the United States in the West. Besides that, war demand had vastly increased local manufactures in all of Britain's former markets.
The war had also called into being a third rival to challenge the whole imperial system—a Union of Socialist Republics in Europe and Asia.
Leaders of British working class opinion know these facts thoroughly. Day after day they are repeating them throughout the United Kingdom. At the Congress they formed the burden of one speech after another.
From these facts the responsible working class leaders draw the conclusion that the present economic system is no longer workable; that its continuance will entail intolerable hardship and suffering for millions of workers; that it will have to be changed, speedily; that the workers will be called upon to play the leading part in making the change. There remain two questions: What system shall they change to? and, How shall the change be made?
In answer to the first question British Labor says unequivocally: Socialism. There are differences in phrasing but the content of the replies is the same.
How shall Socialism be achieved? There is the rub.
At the moment the British Trade Unions are very shy of political action. That was made clear at every session of the Congress. The political arm of the Labor Movement will undoubtedly be upheld. There will be no split between the political and the industrial leadership. But the industrial arm of the movement will be used, and used vigorously. Parliamentarism as a means of attaining the new social order is under strong labor suspicion in Britain today. There is every indication that the workers are preparing for direct industrial action. The success of the Minority Movement indicates such a course. The temper of British workers and their leaders certainly suggests it. The struggle between the coal miners and operators, if not averted by the findings of the present Coal Commission, may easily crystallize the whole issue in the form of a general strike.
The difficulties are not blinked. The dangers are not over-looked. But necessity over-rides obstacles and the British Labor Movement is being pressed by nearly a million and a half unemployed men and women, and by a determined campaign on the part of the British owning class to keep profits up at the same time that they force wages down.
- ↑ What the Workers Want, Arthur Gleason New York, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920; British Labor and the War, Kellogg and Gleason, New York, Boni, and Liveright, 1919.
- ↑ A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1920.