Socialism Made Easy
The Workshop Talks
by James
Connolly
First
Published in 1909
Text html mark up from
www.socialistalternative.org, the USA section of the CWI
Socialism is a foreign importation!
* * *
I know it because I read it in the papers. I also know it to be the case
because in every country I have graced with my presence up to the
present time, or have heard from, the possessing classes through their
organs in the press, and their spokesmen upon the platform have been
vociferous and insistent in declaring the foreign origin of Socialism.
* * *
In Ireland Socialism is an English importation, in England they are
convinced it was made in Germany, in Germany it is a scheme of traitors
in alliance with the French to disrupt the Empire, in France it is an
accursed conspiracy to discredit the army which is destined to reconquer
Alsace and Lorraine, in Russia it is an English plot to prevent Russian
extension towards Asia, in Asia it is known to have been set on foot by
American enemies of Chinese and Japanese industrial progress, and in
America it is one of the baneful fruits of unrestricted pauper and
criminal immigration.
* * *
All nations today repudiate Socialism, yet Socialist ideas are
conquering all nations. When anything has to be done in a practical
direction toward ameliorating the lot of the helpless ones, or towards
using the collective force of society in strengthening the hands of the
individual it is sure to be in the intellectual armory of Socialists the
right weapon is found for the work.
A case in point
There are tens of thousands of hungry children
in New York today as in every other large American city, and many
well-meant efforts have been made to succour them. Free lunches have
been opened in the poorest districts, bread lines have been established
and charitable organisations are busy visiting homes and schools to find
out the worst cases. But all this has only touched the fringe of the
destitution, with the additional aggravation that anything passing
through the hands of these charitable committees usually cost ten times
as much for administration as it bestows on the object of its charity.
* * *
Also that the investigation is usually more effectual in destroying the
last vestiges of self-respect in its victims than in succouring their
needs.
* * *
In the midst of this difficulty Superintendent Maxwell of the New York
Schools sends a letter to a committee of thirteen charitable
organizations which had met together to consider the problem, and in
this letter he advocates the method of relieving distress long since
initiated by the Socialist representatives in the Municipality of Paris.
I quote from the New York World:
"A committee of seven was appointed to inquire more fully into the
question of feeding school children and to report at a subsequent
meeting. School Superintendent Maxwell sent a letter advocating the
establishment in New York schools with city money of lunch kitchens,
these to sell food at actual cost and to give to needy children tickets
just like those paid for, to the end that no child might know that his
fellow was eating at the expense of the city by the color of his ticket.
This is done in Paris."
Contrast this solicitude for the self-respect of the poor children,
recognized by Superintendent Maxwell in the plan of these "foreign
Socialists" with the insulting methods of the capitalist "bread lines"
and charitable organizations in general.
* * *
But all the same it is too horible to take practical examples in
relieving the distress caused by capitalist society from pestilent
agitators who wish to destroy the society whose victims they are
succouring, and mere foreigners, too. The capitalist method of parading
mothers and children for an hour in the street befofe feeding them is
more calculated to build up the proper degree of pride in the embryo
American citizens; and make them appreciate the benefits their fathers
and brothers are asked to vote for.
* * *
Read this telling how hungry children and mothers stood patiently
waiting for a meal on the sidewalk, and whoop it up for pure ecstacy of
joy that you are permitted to live in a system of society wherein a
great metropolitan daily thought that the fact of five hundred children
getting a "hearty luncheon" was remarkable enough to deserve a
paragraph:
"Five hundred ill-fed children who attend the schools on the lower east
side got a hearty luncheon yesterday when the first of the children's
lunchrooms was opened at Canal and Forsyth streets. Long before noon
there was a large gathering of children, some of them accompanied by
their mothers, awaiting the opening of the doors."
Well, I am not interested in internationalism. This country is good
enough for me.
Is that so? Say: Are you taking a share in the Moscow Windau-Rydinsk
Railway?
* * *
"No, where is that?"
My dear friend, where that railway runs has nothing to do with you. What
you have to do is simply to take a share, and then go and have a good
time whilst the Russian railway workers, whom you do not know, working
in a country you never saw, speaking a language you don't understand,
earn your dividend by the sweat of their brows.
* * *
Curious, ain't it?
We Socialists are always talking about the international solidarity of
labour, about the oneness of our interests all over the world, and ever
and anon working off our heaving chests a peroration on the bonds of
fraternal sympathy which should unite the wage slaves of the capitalist
system.
But there is another kind of bond - Russian railway bonds - which join,
not the workers, but the idlers of the world in fraternal sympathy, and
which creates among the members of the capitalist class a feeling of
identity of interest, of international solidarity, which they don't
perorate about but which is most potent and effective notwithstanding.
* * *
You do not fully recognise the fact that the internationality of
Socialism is at most but a lame and halting attempt to create a
counterpoise to the internationality of capitalism. Yet so it is.
Here is a case in point. The Moscow-Windau-Rydinsk railway is, as its
name indicates, a railway running, or proposed to be run, from one part
of Russia to another. You would think that that concerned the Russian
people only, and that our patriotic capitalist class, always so ready to
declare against working class Socialists with international sympathies,
would never look at it or touch it.
* * *
You would not think that Ireland, for example - whose professional
patriots are forever telling the gullible working men that Ireland will
be ruined for the lack of capital and enterprise - would be a good
country to find money in to finance a Russian railway.
* * *
Yet, observe the fact. All the Dublin papers of Monday, June 12, 1899,
contained the prospectus of this far away Russian railway, offered for
the investment of Irish capitalists, and offered by a firm of London
stockbrokers who are astute enough not to waste money in endeavouring to
catch fish in waters where they were not in the habit of biting freely.
And in the midst of the Russian revolution (of 1905) the agents of the
Czar succeeded in obtaining almost unlimited treasures in the United
States to pay the expenses of throttling the infant Liberty.
As the shares in Russian railways were sold in Ireland, as Russian bonds
were sold in America, so the shares in American mines, railroads and
factories are bought and sold on all the stock exchanges in Europe and
Asia by men who never saw America in their lifetime.
Now, let us examine the situation, keeping in mind the fact that this is
but a type of what prevails all round; you can satisfy yourself on that
head by a daily glance at our capitalist papers.
Capital is
International
The shares of Russian railways, African mines,
Nicaraguan canals, Chilian gas works, Norwegian timber, Mexican water
works, Canadian fur trappings, Australian kanaka slave trade, Indian tea
plantations, Japanese linen factories, Chinese cotton mills, European
national and municipal debts, United States bonanza farms are bought and
sold every day by investors, many of whom never saw any one of the
countries in which their money is invested, but who have, by virtue of
so investing, a legal right to a share of the plunder extracted under
the capitalist system from the wage workers whose bone and sinew earn
the dividends upon the bonds they have purchased.
When our investing classes purchase a share in any capitalist concern,
in any country whatsoever, they do so, not in order to build up a useful
industry, but because the act of purchase endows them with a prospective
share of the spoils it is proposed to wring from labour.
Therefore, every member of the investing classes is interested to the
extent of his investments, present or prospective, in the subjection of
Labour all over the world.
That is the internationality of Capital and Capitalism.
The wage worker is oppressed under this system in the interest of a
class of capitalist investors who may be living thousands of miles away
and whose very names are unknown to him.
He is, therefore, interested in every revolt of Labour all over the
world, for the very individuals against whom that revolt may be directed
may - by the wondrous mechanism of the capitalist system - through
shares, bonds, national and municipal debts - be the parasites who are
sucking his blood also.
That is one of the underlying facts inspiring the internationalism of
Labour and Socialism.
But the Socialist proposals, they say, would destroy the individual
character of the worker. He would lean on the community, instead of upon
his own efforts.
Yes: Giving evidence before the Old Age Pensions' Committee in England,
Sir John Dorrington, M.P., expressed the belief that the "provision of
Old Age Pensions by the State, for instance, would do more harm than
good. It was an objectionable principle, and would lead to
improvidence."
There now! You will always observe that it is some member of what an
Irish revolutionist called "the canting, fed classes," who is anxious
that nothing should be done by the State to give the working class
habits of "improvidence," or to do us any "harm." Dear, kind souls!
To do them justice they are most consistent. For both in public and
private their efforts are most whole-heartedly bent in the same
direction, viz., to prevent improvidence - on our part.
They lower our wages - to prevent improvidence; they increase our rent -
to prevent improvidence, they periodically suspend us from our
employment - to prevent improvidence, and as soon as we are worn out in
their service they send us to a semi-convict establishment, known as the
Workhouse, where we are scientifically starved to death - to prevent
improvidence.
Old Age Pensions might do us harm. Ah, yes! And yet, come to think of
it, I know quite a number of people who draw Old Age Pensions and it
doesn't do them a bit of harm. Strange, isn't it?
Then all the Royal Families have pensions, and they don't seem to do
them any harm; royal babies, in fact, begin to draw pensions and milk
from a bottle at the same time.
Afterwards they drop the milk, but they never drop the pension - nor the
bottle.
Then all our judges get pensions, and are not corrupted thereby - at
least not more than usual. In fact, all well-paid officials in
governmental or municipal service get pensions, and there are no fears
expressed that the receipt of the same may do them harm.
But the underpaid, overworked wage-slave. To give him a pension would
ruin his moral fibre, weaken his stamina, debase his manhood, sap his
integrity, corrupt his morals, check his prudence, emasculate his
character, lower his aspirations, vitiate his resolves, destroy his
self-reliance, annihilate his rectitude, corrode his virility - and -
and - other things.
* * *
Let us be practical. We want something pr-r-ractical.
Always the cry of hum-drum mediocrity, afraid to face the stern
necessity for uncompromising action. That saying has done more yeoman
service in the cause of oppression than all its avowed supporters.
The average man dislikes to be thought unpractical, and so, while
frequently loathing the principles or distrusting the leaders of the
particular political party he is associated with, declines to leave
them, in the hope that their very lack of earnestness may be more
fruitful of practical results than the honest outspokenness of the party
in whose principles he does believe.
In the phraseology of politics, a party too indifferent to the sorrow
and sufferings of humanity to raise its voice in protest, is a moderate,
practical party; whilst a party totally indifferent to the personality
of leaders, or questions of leadership, but hot to enthusiasm on every
question affecting the well-being of the toiling masses, is an extreme,
a dangerous party.
Yet, although it may seem a paradox to say so, there is no party so
incapable of achieving practical results as an orthodox political party;
and there is no party so certain of placing moderate reforms to its
credit as an extreme - a revolutionary party.
The possessing classes will and do laugh to scorn every scheme for the
amelioration of the workers so long as those responsible for the
initiation of the scheme admit as justifiable the "rights of property";
but when the public attention is directed towards questioning the
justifiable nature of those "rights" in themselves, then the master
class, alarmed for the safety of their booty, yield reform after reform
- in order to prevent revolution.
Moral - Don't be "practical" in politics. To be practical in that sense
means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines, and in
the grooves those who rob you would desire you to think.
In any case it is time we got rid of all the cant about "politics" and
"constitutional agitation" in general. For there is really no meaning
whatever in those phrases.
Every public question is a political question. The men who tell us that
Labour questions, for instance, have nothing to do with politics,
understand neither the one nor the other. The Labour Question cannot be
settled except by measures which necessitate a revision of the whole
system of society, which, of course, implies political warfare to secure
the power to effect such revision:
If by politics we understand the fight between the outs and ins, or the
contest for party leadership, then Labour is rightly supremely
indifferent to such politics, but to the politics which centre round the
question of property and the administration thereof Labour is not,
cannot be, indifferent.
To effect its emancipation Labour must reorganise society on the basis
of labour; this cannot be done while the forces of government are in the
hands of the rich, therefore the governing power must be wrested from
the hands of the rich peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary.
In the phraseology of the master class and its pressmen the trade
unionist who is not a Socialist is more practical than he who is, and
the worker who is neither one nor the other but can resign himself to
the state of slavery in which he was born, is the most practical of all
men.
The heroes and martyrs who in the past gave up their lives for the
liberty of the race were not practical, but they were heroes all the
same.
The slavish multitude who refused to second their efforts from a craven
fear lest their skins might suffer were practical, but they were
soulless serfs, nevertheless.
Revolution is never practical - until the hour of
the Revolution strikes. Then it alone is practical, and all the efforts
of the conservatives and compromisers become the most futile and
visionary of human imaginings.
For that hour, let us work, think and hope; for that hour let us pawn
our present ease in hopes of a glorious redemption; for that hour let us
prepare the hosts of Labour with intelligence sufficient to laugh at the
nostrums dubbed practical by our slave-lords, practical for the
perpetuation of our slavery; for that supreme crisis of human history
let us watch, like sentinels, with weapons ever ready, remembering
always that there can be no dignity in Labour until Labour knows no
master.
* * *
Would you confiscate the property of the capitalist class and rob men
of that which they have, perhaps, worked a whole life time to
accumulate?
Yes sir, and certainly not.
We would certainly confiscate the property of the capitalist class, but
we do not propose to rob anyone. On the contrary, we propose to
establish honesty once and forever as the basis of our social relations.
This Socialist movement is indeed worthy to be entitled The Great
Anti-Theft Movement of the Twentieth Century.
You see, confiscation is one great certainty of the future for every
businessman outside the trust. It lies with him to say if it will be
confiscation by the Trust in the interest of the Trust, or confiscation
by Socialism in the interest of All.
If he resolves to continue to support the capitalist order of society he
will surely have his property confiscated. After having, as you say,
"worked for a whole lifetime to accumulate" a fortune, to establish a
business on what he imagined would be a sound foundation, on some fine
day the Trust will enter into competition with him, will invade his
market, use their enormous capital to undersell him at ruinous prices,
take his customers from him, ruin his business, and finally drive him
into bankruptcy, and perhaps to end his days as a pauper.
That is capitalist confiscation! It is going on all around us, and every
time the business man who is not a Trust Magnate votes for capitalism,
he is working to prepare that fate for himself.
On the other hand, if he works for Socialism it also will confiscate his
property. But it will only do so in order to acquire the industrial
equipment necessary to establish a system of society in which the whole
human race will be secured against the fear of want for all time, a
system in which all men and women will be joint heirs and owners of all
the intellectual and material conquests made possible by associated
effort.
Socialism will confiscate the property of the capitalist and in return
will secure the individual against poverty and oppression; it, in return
for so confiscating, will assure to all men and women a free, happy and
unanxious human life. And that is more than capitalism can assure anyone
to-day.
So you see the average capitalist has to choose between two kinds of
confiscation. One or the other he must certainly endure. Confiscation by
the Trust and consequently bankruptcy, poverty and perhaps pauperism in
his old age, or --
Confiscation by Socialism and consequently security, plenty and a
Care-Free Life to him and his to the remotest generation.
Which will it be?
But it is their property. Why should Socialists confiscate it?
Their property, eh? Let us see: Here is a cutting from the New York
World giving a synopsis of the Annual Report of the Coats Thread Company
of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for 1907. Now, let us examine it, and bear
in mind that this company is the basis of the Thread Trust, with
branches in Paisley, Scotland, and on the continent of Europe.
Also bear in mind that it is not a "horrible example," but simply a
normal type of a normally conducted industry, and therefore what applies
to it will apply in a greater or less degree to all others.
This report gives the dividend for the year at 20 per cent per annum.
Twenty per cent dividend means 20 cents on the dollar profit. Now, what
is a profit?
According to Socialists, profit only exists when all other items of
production are paid for. The workers by their labour must create enough
wealth to pay for certain items before profit appears. They must pay for
the cost of raw material, the wear and tear of machine-ry, buildings,
etc. (the depreciation of capital), the wages of superintendence, their
own wages, and a certain amount to be left aside as a reserve fund to
meet all possible contingencies. After, and only after, all these items
have been paid for by their labour, all that is left is profit.
With this company the profit amounted to 20 cents on every dollar
invested.
What does this mean? It means that in the course of five years - five
times 20 cents equals one dollar - the workers in the industry had
created enough profit to buy the whole industry from its present owners.
It means that after paying all the expenses of the factory, including
their own wages, they created enough profit to buy the whole building,
from the roof to the basement, all the offices and agencies, and
everything in the shape of capital. All this in five years.
And after they had so bought it from the capitalists it still belonged
to the capitalists.
It means that if a capitalist had invested $1,000 in that industry, in
the course of five years he would draw out a thousand dollars, and still
have a thousand dollars lying there untouched; in the course of ten
years he would draw two thousand dollars, in fifteen years he would draw
three thousand dollars. And still his first thousand dollars would be as
virgin as ever.
You understand that this has been going on ever since the capitalist
system came into being; all the capital in the world has been paid for
by the working class over and over again, and we are still creating it,
and recreating it. And the oftener we buy it the less it belongs to us.
The capital of the master class is not their property; it is the unpaid
labour of the working class - "the hire of the labourer kept back by
fraud."
Oh, the capitalist has his anxieties too. And the worker has often a
good time.
Sure: Say, where were you for the holidays?
* * *
Were you tempted to go abroad? Did you visit Europe? Did you riot, in
all the abandonment of a wage slave let loose, among the pleasure haunts
of the world?
Perhaps you went to the Riviera; perhaps you luxuriated in ecstatic
worship of that glorious bit of nature's handiwork where the blue waters
of the Mediterranean roll in all their entrancing splendor against the
shores of classic Italy.
* * *
Perhaps you rambled among the vine-clad hills of sunny France, and
visited the spots hallowed by the hand of that country's glorious
history.
* * *
Perhaps you sailed up the castellated Rhine, toasted the eyes of
bewitching German frauleins in frothy German beer, explored the recesses
of the legend haunted Hartz mountains, and established a nodding
acquaintance with the Spirit of the Brocken.
Perhaps you traversed the lakes and fjords of Norway, sat down in awe
before the neglected magnificence of the Alhambra, had a cup of coffee
with Menelik of Abyssinia, smelt afar off the odors of the streets of
Morocco, climbed the Pyramids of Egypt, shared the hospitable tent of
the Bedouin, visited Cyprus, looked in at Constantinople, ogled the
dark-eyed beauties of Circassia, rubbed up against the Cossack in his
Ural mountains, or...
Perhaps you lay in bed all day in order to save a meal, and listened to
your wife wondering how she could make ends meet with a day's pay short
in the weekly wages.
And whilst you thus squandered your substance in riotous living, did you
ever stop to think of your master - your poor, dear, overworked, tired
master?
* * *
Did you ever stop to reflect upon the pitiable condition of that
individual who so kindly provides you with employment, and does no
useful work himself in order that you may get plenty of it?
* * *
When you consider how hard a task it was for you to decide in what
manner you should spend your Holiday; where you should go for that ONE
DAY, then you must perceive how hard it is for your masters to find a
way in which to spend the practically perpetual holiday which you force
upon them by your love for work.
* * *
Ah, yes, that large section of our masters who have realised that ideal
of complete idleness after which all our masters strive, those men who
do not work, never did work, and with the help of God and the ignorance
of the people - never intend to work, how terrible must be their lot in
life!
* * *
We, who toil from early morn till late at night, from January till
December, from childhood to old age, have no care or trouble or mental
anxiety to cross our mind - except the landlord, the fear of loss of
employment, the danger of sickness, the lack of common necessities, to
say nothing of luxuries, for our children, the insolence of our
superiors, the unhealthy condition of our homes, the exhausting nature
of our toil, the lack of all opportunities of mental cultivation, and
the ever-present question whether we shall shuffle off this mortal coil
in a miserable garret, be killed by hard work, or die in the Poorhouse.
With these trifling exceptions we have nothing to bother us; but the
boss, ah, the poor, poor boss!
He has everything to bother him. Whilst we are amusing ourselves in the
hold of a ship shoveling coal, swinging a hammer in front of a forge,
toiling up a ladder with bricks, stitching until our eyes grow dim at
the board, gaily riding up and down for twelve hours per day, seven days
per week, on a trolley car, riding around the city in all weather with
teams or swinging by the skin of our teeth on the iron framework of a
skyscraper, standing at our ease OUTSIDE the printing office door
listening to the musical click of the linotype as it performs the work
we used to do INSIDE, telling each other comforting stories about the
new machinery which takes our places as carpenters, harness-makers,
tinplate-workers, labourers, etc., in short whilst we are enjoying
ourselves, free from all mental worry.
Our unselfish tired-out bosses are sitting at home, with their feet on
the table, softly patting the bottom button of their vests.
Working with their brains.
Poor bosses! Mighty brains!
Without our toil they would never get the education necessary to develop
their brains; if we were not defrauded by their class of the fruits of
our toil we could provide for education enough to develop the mental
powers of all, and so deprive the ruling class of the last vestige of an
excuse for clinging to mastership, viz., their assumed intellectual
superiority.
I say "assumed," because the greater part of the brainwork of industry
today is performed by men taken from the ranks of the workers, and paid
high salaries in proportion as they develop expertness as slave-drivers.
As education spreads among the people the workers will want to enjoy
life more; they will assert their right to the full fruits of their
labour, and by that act of self-assertion lay the foundation of that
Socialist Republic in which labour will be so easy, and the reward so
great, that life will seem a perpetual holiday.
* * *
But Socialism is against religion. I can't be a Socialist and be a
Christian.
O, quit your fooling! That talk is all right for those who know nothing
of the relations between capital and labour, or are innocent of any
knowledge of the processes of modern industry, or imagine that men, in
their daily struggles for bread or fortunes, are governed by the Sermon
on the Mount.
But between workingmen that talk is absurd. We know that Socialism bears
upon daily life in the workshop, and that religion does not; we know
that the man who never set foot in a church in his lifetime will, if he
is rich, be more honored by Christian society than the poor man who goes
to church every Sunday, and says his prayers morning and evening; we
know that the capitalists of all religions pay more for the service of a
good lawyer to keep them out of the clutches of the law than for the
services of a good priest to keep them out of the clutches of the devil;
and we never heard a capitalist, who, in his business, respected the
Sermon on the Mount as much as he did the decisions of the Supreme
Court.
These things we know. We also know that neither capitalist nor worker
can practice the moral precepts of religion, and without its moral
precepts a religion is simply a sham. If a religion cannot enforce its
moral teachings upon its votaries it has as little relation to actual
life as the pre-election promises of a politician have to legislation.
We know that Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourselves,
but we also know that if a capitalist attempted to run his business upon
that plan his relatives would have no difficulty in getting lawyers,
judges and physicians to declare him incompetent to conduct his affairs
in the business world.
He would not be half as certain of reaching Heaven in the next world as
he would be of getting into the "bughouse" in this.
And, as for the worker. Well, in the fall of 1908, the New York World
printed an advertisement for a teamster in Brooklyn, wages to be $12 per
week. Over 700 applicants responded. Now, could each of these men love
their neighbours in that line of hungry competitors for that pitiful
wage?
As each man stood in line in that awful parade of misery could he pray
for his neighbour to get the job, and could he be expected to follow up
his prayer by giving up his chance, and so making certain the
prolongation of the misery of his wife and little ones?
No, my friend, Socialism is a bread and butter question. It is a
question of the stomach; it is going to be settled in the factories,
mines and ballot boxes of this country and is not going to be settled at
the altar or in the church.
This is what our well-fed friends call a "base, material standpoint,"
but remember that beauty and genius and art and poetry and all the finer
efflorescences of the higher nature of man can only be realised in all
their completeness upon the material basis of a healthy body, that not
only an army but the whole human race marches upon its stomach, and then
you will grasp the full wisdom of our position.
That the question to be settled by Socialism is the effect of private
ownership of the means of production upon the well-being of the race;
that we are determined to have a straight fight upon the question
between those who believe that such private ownership is destructive of
human well-being and those who believe it to be beneficial, that as men
of all religions and of none are in the ranks of the capitalists, and
men of all religions and of none are on the side of the workers the
attempt to make religion an issue in the question is an intrusion, an
impertinence and an absurdity.
Personally I am opposed to any system wherein the capitalist is more
powerful than God Almighty. You need not serve God unless you like, and
may refuse to serve Him and grow fat, prosperous and universally
respected. But if you refuse to serve the capitalist your doom is
sealed; misery and poverty and public odium await you.
No worker is compelled to enter a church and to serve God; every worker
is compelled to enter the employment of a capitalist and serve him.
As Socialists we are concerned to free mankind from the servitude forced
upon them as a necessity of their life; we propose to allow the question
of all kinds of service voluntarily rendered to be settled by the
emancipated human race of the future.
I do not deny that Socialists often leave the church. But why do they do
so? Is their defection from the church a result of our attitude towards
religion; or is it the result of the attitude of the church and its
ministers towards Socialism?
Let us take a case in point, one of those cases that are being
paralleled every day in our midst. An Irish Catholic joins the Socialist
movement. He finds that as a rule the Socialist men and women are better
educated than their fellows; he finds that they are immensely cleaner in
speech and thought than are the adherents of capitalism in the same
class; that they are devoted husbands and loyal wives, loving and
cheerful fathers and mothers, skilful and industrious workers in the
shops and office, and that although poor and needy as a rule, yet that
they continually bleed themselves to support their cause, and give up
for Socialism what many others spend in the saloon.
He finds that a drunken Socialist is as rare as a white blackbird, and
that a Socialist of criminal tendencies is such a rare avis that when
one is found the public press heralds it forth as a great discovery.
Democratic and republican jailbirds are so common that the public press
do not regard their existence as "news" to anybody, nor yet does the
public press think it necessary to say that certain criminals belong to
the Protestant or Catholic religions. That is nothing unusual, and
therefore not worth printing. But a criminal Socialist - that would be
news indeed!
Our Irish Catholic Socialist gradually begins to notice these things. He
looks around and he finds the press full of reports of crimes, murders,
robberies, bank swindlers, forgeries, debauches, gambling transactions,
and midnight orgies in which the most revolting indecencies are
perpetrated. He investigates and he discovers that the perpetrators of
these crimes were respectable capitalists, pillars of society, and
red-hot enemies of Socialism, and that the dives in which the highest
and the lowest meet together in a saturnalia of vice contribute a large
proportion of the campaign funds of the capitalist political parties.
Some Sunday he goes to Mass as usual, and he finds that at Gospel the
priest launches out into a political speech and tells the congregation
that the honest, self-sacrificing, industrious, clean men and women,
whom he calls "comrades" are a wicked, impious, dissolute sect, desiring
to destroy the home, to distribute the earnings of the provident among
the idle and lazy of the world, and reveling in all sorts of impure
thoughts about women.
And as this Irish Catholic Socialist listens to this foul libel, what
wonder if the hot blood of anger rushes to his face, and he begins to
believe that the temple of God has itself been sold to the
all-desecrating grasp of the capitalist?
While he is yet wondering what to think of the matter, he hears that his
immortal soul will be lost if he fails to vote for capitalism, and he
reflects that if he lined up with the brothel keepers, gambling house
proprietors, race track swindlers, and white slave traders to vote the
capitalist ticket, this same priest would tell him he was a good
Catholic and loyal son of the church.
At such a juncture the Irish Catholic Socialist often rises up, goes out
of the church and wipes its dust off his feet forever. Then we are told
that Socialism took him away from the church. But did it? Was it not
rather the horrible spectacle of a priest of God standing up in the Holy
Presence lying about and slandering honest men and women, and helping to
support polidcal parties whose campaign fund in every large city
represents more bestiality than ever Sodom and Gomorrah knew?
These are the things that drive Socialists from the church, and the
responsibility for every soul so lost lies upon those slanderers and not
upon the Socialist movement.
* * *
Well, you won't get the Irish to help you. Our Irish-American leaders
tell us that all we Irish in this country ought to stand together and
use our votes to free Ireland.
Sure, let us free Ireland!
Never mind such base, carnal thoughts as concern work and wages, healthy
homes, or lives unclouded by poverty.
Let us free Ireland!
The rackrenting landlord; is he not also an Irishman, and wherefore
should we hate him? Nay, let us not speak harshly of our brother - yea,
even when he raises our rent.
Let us free Ireland !
The profit-grinding capitalist, who robs us of three-fourths of the
fruits of our labour, who sucks the very marrow of our bones when we
were young, and then throws us out in the street, like a worn-out tool,
when we are grown prematurely old in his service, is he not an Irishman,
and mayhap a patriot, and wherefore should we think harshly of him?
Let us free Ireland!
"The land that bred and bore us." And the landlord who makes us pay for
permission to live upon it.
Whoop it up for liberty!
"Let us free Ireland," says the patriot, who won't touch Socialism.
Let us all join together and cr-r-rush the br-r-rutal Saxon. Let us all
join together, says he, all classes and creeds.
And, says the town worker, after we have crushed the Saxon and freed
Ireland, what will we do?
Oh, then you can go back to your slums, same as before.
Whoop it up for liberty!
And, says the agricultural workers, after we have freed Ireland, what
then?
Oh, then you can go scraping around for the landlord's rent or the
money-lenders' interest same as before.
Whoop it up for liberty!
After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch Socialism, we
will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be
evicted same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the
sheriff, will wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and
the warrant turning you out on the roadside will be stamped with the
arms of the Irish Republic.
Now, isn't that worth fighting for?
And when you cannot find employment, and, giving up the struggle of life
in despair, enter the Poorhouse, the band of the nearest regiment of the
Irish army will escort you to the Poorhouse door to the tune of "St.
Patrick's Day."
Oh, it will be nice to live in those days!
"With the Green Flag floating o'er us" and an ever-increasing army of
unemployed workers walking about under the Green Flag, wishing they had
something to eat. Same as now!
Whoop it up for liberty!
Now, my friend, I also am Irish, but I'm a bit more logical. The
capitalist, I say, is a parasite on industry; as useless in the present
stage of our industrial development as any other parasite in the animal
or vegetable world is to the life of the animal or vegetable upon which
it feeds.
The working class is the victim of this parasite - this human leech, and
it is the duty and interest of the working class to use every means in
its power to oust this parasite class from the position which enables it
to thus prey upon the vitals of Labour.
Therefore, I say, let us organise as a class to meet our masters and
destroy their mastership; organise to drive them from their hold upon
public life through their political power; organise to wrench from their
robber clutch the land and workshops on and in which they enslave us;
organise to cleanse our social life from the stain of social
cannibalism, from the preying of man upon his fellow man.
Organise for a full, free and happy life FOR ALL OR FOR NONE. SPEED
THE DAY
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