Page:The Commonweal (IA 0544678.0001.001.umich.edu).pdf/7

Feb., 1885. parties. But where the interested party is the wealthiest and most powerful class, able to pay for “patriotic” articles by the yard, and “patriotic” speeches by the hour, “patriotism” is apt to assume the form of a chronic endemic. Such it is to-day, and as such, mocks the futile efforts of the well-meaning but singularly ingenious clique of middle-class philanthropists, who are naïve enough to take the governmental ring at its word when it pretends its only object in undertaking “expeditions” to be the rescue of “Christian heroes” or the relief of garrisons, which have no right to be in a position to want relieving. War, jingoism—otherwise patriotism—are indeed past cure while the economic basis of society remains unchanged, but only so far; and hence we call on all sincere friends of peace to leave their tinkering “peace societies” and join our Socialist League, remembering that all commercial wars—and what modern wars are not directly or indirectly commercial?—are the necessary outcome of the dominant civilisation. We conjure them to reflect that such wars must necessarily increase in proportion to the concentration of capital in private hands—i.e., in proportion as the commercial activity of the world is intensified, and the need for markets becomes more pressing. Markets, markets, markets! Who shall deny that this is the drone-bass ever welling up from beneath the shrill bawling of “pioneers of civilisation,” “avengers of national honour,” “purveyors of gospel light,” “restorers of order;” in short, beneath the hundred and one cuckoo cries with which the “market classes” seek to smother it or to vary its monotony? It seems well-nigh impossible there can be men so blind as not to see through these sickening hypocrises of the governing classes, so thin as they are.

But we would, above all, earnestly urge the workers in future to consider “patriotism” from this point of view. The end of all foreign policy, as of colonial extension, is to provide fields for the relief of native surplus capital and merchandise, and to keep out the foreigner. But how, we ask, does this benefit the workers at the best? They are allowed, maybe, the privilege of being shipped across seas, there to help to make the capitalist and land-grabber rich. Some few here and there may, indeed, succeed, in a colony which is quite new, in becoming wealthy exploiters in their turn. But the immense majority remain wage-slaves as before. In proportion to the advancing prosperity of the colony—as prosperity is conceived in the world of to-day—is its poverty. Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, Chicago, and the leading Australian and new American cities generally, exhibit pre the same conditions as the cities of the Old World. And how it be otherwise, since the same causes are at work? To crown dependencies like India, which are held unblushingly as magazines for aristocratic and middle classes to plunder at their will, it is only  to barely allude in a socialist journal.

This, then, is the empire which the blood and sinew of the workers are squandered to maintain and extend. With room enough and to in the Irish Islands for all their inhabitants to live a comfortable life, ever fresh lands are sought for exploitation, ever now populations for pillage. It matters not even that colonies established could accommodate more than a hundred times their present inhabitants; still the vampire Imperialism sucks in fresh territory year by year. Populations to rob and enslave; markets to shoot bad wares into; lands to invest capital upon: to obtain these is the be-all and end-all of modern statesmanship. For this has the stock-jobbers' republic of France waged war successfully on Tunis, Madagascar, Tonquin, and China; for this does the congress sit at Berlin, partitioning the plunder of Central Africa in advance; for this does Bismarck seize Angra Pequena, New Ireland, and Samoa; for this the fanatic and heroic restorer of corrupt Chinese despotism reluctantly (?) consents to go to Khartoum on a pacific mission, collects a body of adventurers on his arrival, proceeds to attack the surrounding tribes, and then howls for British troops to protect him; for this, lastly, is Lord Wolseley sent with an expedition in response up the Nile.

And now a word as to the attitude of socialists toward the imperial question. For the socialist the word frontier does not exist; for his love of country, as such, is no nobler sentiment than love of class. The blustering “patriot,” big with England's glory, is precisely on a level with the bloated plutocrat, proud to belong to that great “middle class,” which he assures you is “the backbone of the nation.” Race-pride and class-pride are, from the standpoint of socialism, involved in the same condemnation. The establishment of socialism, therefore, on any national or race basis is out of the question. Tall talk about the “Anglo-Saxon race,” or “the great democracies of English-speaking peoples, in union with the more ancient democracy of England,” by combination and determined effort securing for themselves “the leadership in the social changes and reforms (sic) which are close at hand,” can but disgust the socialist who is at once logical and honest.

No, the foreign policy of the great internationalist socialist party must be to break up these hideous race monopolies called, beginning in each case at home. Hence everything which for the disruption and disintegration of the empire to which he belongs must be welcomed by the socialist as an ally. It is his duty to urge on any movement tending in any way to dislocate commercial relations of the world, knowing that every shock the mplex commercial system suffers weakens it and brings its  nearer. This is the negative side of the foreign policy of. The positive is embraced in a single sentence: to con the union of the several national sections on the basis of firm friendship, steadfast adherence to definite principle, and  to present a solid front to the enemy. E. BELFORT BAX

When a cause or a man is caricatured, there is hope for the cause or the man. Our cause has made enough stir in the stagnant and noisome pool of modern society to have reached even Punch. Nearly half a column of that decourously-dull periodical (Jan. 17th) containing one lonely joke, is devoted to the unconscious propaganda of our principles.

The same number contains a picture of the “middle-man sucking the life out of the hare”—what think you? The hare Proletariat? Nay, truly. The hare Free Trade. Think of the imagery, workers!

If Mr. Punch could read the signs of any other Times than that of Printing House Square, he would make his worn-out hare, the Worker, run to death by the greyhound Capital; for his middle-man whose foot rests on Profit, he would have Society itself; and the rising sun, labelled Trade, would be the sun of International Organisation of the working classes.

Two prices of 5 each have been offered for competition (loathsome word!) among the students under the University Settlement Scheme at Toynbee Hall, Cambridge Street, E. One is for an Essay on Sir Thomas More. The other is on “The Possibilities Productive Co-operation as a Solution of the Labour Question.” Among the books recommended to the competitors for the latter  Sedley Taylor's “Profit Sharing,” Henry George's “Progress and Poverty,” Ferdinand Lassalle's “Working Men's Programme;” Rob Owen's Report.

“An anthropologist,” writing in the Pall Mall, puts forward the vi arrived at, he states, after a wide study of the habits and constitution of aboriginal races, that the cause of the decadence and extinction of such races lines not so much in zymotic diseases or alcohol as in the unnatural clothing forced upon them by the missionary and trade. An earnest appeal is made in the connexion on behalf of the rude Papuan, an appeal which we fear has little chance against the laws commercial greed and swindling which form “civilisation.” The cruelty which forces tropical and sub-tropical races to sheathe themselves in European “shoddy,” as the “anthropologist” himself admits, is the necessary outcome of the “opening up” of their lands to that commercial enterprise of which the missionary is but the “religious” exponent.

Among this month's “protectorate” is one over the coast- Pondoland. The course;  like it. They are, ever, assured by the leading Lateral organ that the English Government is acting quite within its rights; that a “protectorate”  necessarily means annexation, &c., &c. The project was one the hearts of so many “civilisers and Christianisers” of savag of all times and of all countries. It is now adopted by the Government which has hitherto professed a lofty superiority to such ideas.

“Self-supporting Penny Diners” is one of the latest contradictions in which our middle-class philanthropists are indulging. The report of the meetings of a few of these “friends” of the poor on January 19th is sorry reading. “No unusual distress,” cry some of them, without a word of comment on the frightful condition of things that makes the distress existing “usual.” “Distress decidedly greater than usual,” whisper others.

There is a desire to keep out the pauperising element, of course, and, equally of course, and far more logically, a tendency to “convert the penny dinners into meals provided gratis.” The “desire” apparently is that of the philanthropists. The “tendency” is that of social evolution.

After all this report on the lines of that essentially bourgeois institution, the Charity Organisation Society, it is refreshing to hear that a Conference on “How to Improve the Condition of the Poor” was held Clerkwell on January 20th. Resolutions strongly condemning the actions of the Society, whose name is its condemnation, were passed.

“Fluctuations of Trade” is a fluid sort of phrase that covers a multitude of ignorances. This is, according to the capitalist press, the phrase in examination of the distress that is now stalking through the land.

Yet for one word of warning from the user of the phrase we should be grateful. To say that the perennial distress, with its occasional exacerbations, is even temporarily remediable by the Government finding work for the people, is to mislead.

“If the Socialistic dream is ever to be realised, it must be establishing such a complete re-organisation of society as can only be achieved by a long and laborious process.”—Weekly Dispatch, Jan. 18.