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Title: Socialism and Parliament Author: Guy A. Aldred Date: 1923 Language: en Topics: democracy, Parliament, socialism Source: Anarchy is Order CD. Proofread online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3192, retrieved on July 6, 2020. Notes: This is the full text of the first version of Aldred’s Socialism & Parliament published by The Bakunin Press (London & Glasgow) in 1923. Aldred published revised and expanded versions of this pamphlet in 1926, 1934 and 1942.
The advent of a Labour opposition in the House of Commons, the near
possibility of that opposition becoming His Majesty’s Government, have
revived interest in the question of parliamentary action. Bitter plaints
at the historic failure of Parliamentary methods are tempered with a
faint hope that something may be achieved by parliamentarism. It is
forgotten that reform activity means constant trotting round the fool’s
parade, continuous movement in a vicious circle. Something must be done
for expectant mothers, for homeless couples wishing to housekeep, for
rent-resisters, something to reform here or there, regardless of the
fact that capitalism is a hydra-headed monster, that the reforms needed
are as innumerable as the abuses begotten of the capitalist system, and
such abuses increase with every modification of capitalist
administration, the better to perpetuate the system. Under these
circumstances it is necessary to restate the arguments against
parliamentary activity, to explain and to prove that parliament was
never intended to emancipate the working class from the evils of
capitalism, that it never can and never will achieve this result.
So much is clear from the very conditions under which electioneering is
conducted. Before even a single vote has been obtained the Labour
candidate has compromised. His very candidature exposes the weakness and
inefficiency of parliamentary action. Seeking votes from an electorate
anxious for some immediate reform, he puts aside the need for social
emancipation to pander to some passing bias for urgent useless
amelioration. He panders to prejudice, and avoids facts. This is because
Parliament is an institution existing for the defence of class society,
the domination of man by man, the representation of opinions, and not
the administration by the wealth producers of the wealth produced.
Consequently the candidate must time the pulse of capitalist society,
subject his first principles to the opinions arising out of capitalist
conditions, to current local superstitions and respectabilities and
immediate needs or fancied interests. He does not aim at assisting the
toilers to secure the direct administration of wealth production by the
wealth producers in the interests of the wealth producers. He aims only
at representing, as toilers, in the capitalist political institution,
the opinion of men who must remain toilers so long as the parliamentary
system continues. Pandering to capitalist needs and interests,
electioneering stifles the revolutionary idea without which the Social
Revolution and the Industrial Commonwealth can never be achieved.
Emma Goldman has stated the point well in the following words:
“Parliamentarians are not Socialists at all, but politicians. Their only
purpose in the world is to get the old politicians out, in order that
they might work themselves into their places. In their mad effort to get
office they deny their birthright for a mess of pottage, and sacrifice
their true principles and real convictions on the polluted altar of
politics.”
Thus Ramsay MacDonald wrote a letter in October, 1910, in connection
with the selection of a Labour candidate, in which he stated: “The whole
matter was very carefully considered, and I was instructed to state that
my committee cannot agree to conferences for the selection of candidates
being held on a Sunday.”
Is not this letter eloquent of the fact that all parliamentary action
necessitates abandonment of principle? Does it not proceed from the
capitalist code, recognise a superstitious cant current in respectable
capitalist society, and assume a desire to maintain the integrity of
capitalist illusions? And is there not at least one Labour M.P. for
London, who has opposed Sunday games on the Commons, because he wants to
preserve the rest-day on the Sabbath? All which means that
parliamentarism is the domination of the working class, its aim and
outlook by the small trader’s party, its cramped vision and mean class
interest. It is the perpetual sacrifice of democracy to social and
economic exploitation.
No one knew this better than Marx. Shortly after the publication of the
Communist Manifesto in 1848, the revolutionary storm that burst over
Europe called forth Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire and Revolution and
Counter-Revolution. Both these works are classics of revolt, and bear on
the vexed question of parliamentarism. As history and philosophy they
have never been surpassed. Definitely, and with monotonous reiteration,
their author proclaims Parliamentary and Constitutional action to be
counter-revolution, because the strength of the middle class, the
small-traders’ class, is in Parliament, whilst the workers’ strength is
on the street. He shows that Parliament is at the mercy of the military,
not the military at the deposition of Parliament,: and ridicules
“constitutional freedom” as a comfortable middle-class way of negating
real freedom. He also impeaches Social-Democracy, in name and in
substance, that very Socialist parliamentarism of which Ramsay MacDonald
is the leader to-day: the “proletarian leaders’ “ political betrayal of
the workers to the small traders’ interests, the sad record of inherent
weaknesses, constitutional limitations, revolutionary trimmings, and
treacherous substance. Parliamentarians, Marx dismisses, in scornful
words that apply forcibly to the acrobats at Westminster of to-day, as
poor, weak-minded men, so little accustomed to anything like success
during their generally very obscure lives, that they actually believe
their parliamentary amendments more important than external events.
Could better description be conceived of Welsh, the miner-poet M.P., who
followed up his much applauded maiden speech by an account in the Sunday
Express of the ghosts of dead legislators, all capitalists, he saw at
Westminster and his veneration for the atmosphere of “the Mother of
Parliaments,” actually employing this cant capitalist description as his
own? Can one imagine the speech of such a man being intended to
emancipate the workers when its author is so desperately anxious for
admiration and a political career. Fancy seeing the ghost of that hoary
old humbug, Gladstone, and wishing to emulate him when one should be
inspired by the spirit of one’s dead and living comrades of mine, the
field and workshops.
Welsh pled in the atmosphere of capitalism to the assembly of capitalism
for the amelioration of capitalist conditions. He awed the
representatives of capitalist finance! Are we to believe that their awe
will militate against their determination to perpetuate capitalism ? Are
we to forget that parliamentarism gave France Aristide Briand and
President Millerand? That men who once sentimentalised as Welsh does,
murdered in Germany Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg? Are we to
suppose that speeches in Parliament effect legislation, that they reach
the workers outside of Parliament, that they appeal to the capitalists
within? Nothing of the kind.
Speaking in the debate on the address, on Tuesday, February 13^(th),
1923, John Wheatley complained of the empty benches to which
anti-parliamentarians always said he would address his protests. The
following night the Pall Mall Gazette reported his protest with a sneer
as follows: “During the dinner hour last night, when the Labour members
seized the opportunity to harangue each other and a handful of
Government supporters on the grievances of the hunger-marchers, Mr.
Wheatley was indiscreet enough to make reference to the smallness of the
attendance.”
But it may be said that Parliament is a sounding board, that although
the members withdraw from the street corners and the workers’ lecture
halls, the speeches they make in Parliament are broadcast through the
columns of the ordinary press to the workers of the country. This is not
true. Here are the number of words given by the London penny morning
papers to Labour M.P.’s who took part in the House of Commons’ debate on
Tuesday, February l3th, 1923:
The papers other than the Daily Herald made no reference to the
intervention in the debates of David Kirkwood, J. Maxton, J. Buchanan,
Neil Maclean, Campbell Stephen, J. Muir and T. Johnson. If Wheatley
makes a good speech we have to turn to Forward for the public report,
which means that the report reaches only the readers of Forward, and is
confined more or less to Socialist readers. Newbold’s efforts are
reported in the Communist press. Scrymgeour relies on his
Prohibitionist. Obviously the value of speeches in Parliament turn upon
the power of the press outside and exercise no influence beyond the
point allowed by that press. So long as the workers are dependent upon
that press for their news and for their outlook, so long as they have no
intention of doing other on the industrial field than to obey for wages
the press magnates and so to poison the wells of knowledge, Labour
parliamentarism is impotent as a propaganda activity. When the workers
decide no longer to be the stool pigeons of their own destruction,
Labour parliamentarism will be unnecessary. The complete failure of
parliament as a sounding board compels us to realise that the political
struggle of the class war is an economic one, a direct struggle between
the financial ownership of the press and of the workers’ thought and the
revolutionary agitation and social-industrial power of the workers
themselves. So long as the workers are devoid of economic power, so long
as they remain represented slaves where they should be active and
communing freemen and freewomen, the workers have no social voice, no
press, no political power.
Aristide Briand, who was to become the miserable capitalist premier of
France after he entered on a parliamentary career, put this point well
when he made his famous speech for the defence before the jury at Tonne
in 1903: “ In general, history proves that the people have never
obtained anything except what they have taken, or could have taken
themselves. This is also true of every particular case. How many
stations are there on the road to the Liberation of Humanity that are
not marked by pools of blood? Even apart from the periods of
revolutions, it is alway under the effect of menace — through a
successful intimidation that improvements in the condition of the people
— step by step — have been granted. The power of persuasion, even when
combined with that of circumstances, cannot suffice to dictate laws to
the bourgeois class. And besides, were these laws created, would there
be any security that they would be applied, if the sanction for their
existence did not exist in the firmly founded and, permanent
revolutionary strength of the proletariat?”
It is only the effect of this menace, only the fear of the power of the
revolutionary agitator outside parliament, that persuades the capitalist
class to tolerate the presence of Labour members inside. This is
well-known to every student of politics. Bonar Law, during the General
Election of 1922, expressed the need for Labour members in Parliament in
order to avert revolutionary activity and collapse of the capitalist
system. Major Birchall, the Conservative member for N. E. Leeds, who
publishes an occasional printed letter from Westminster to his
constituents, backs this up. Describing the effect on the Commons of the
Labour Party’s speech-making in the debate on the address, February,
1923, he says: “Chief interest was attracted, as usual, by those who
made the most noise — the Labour members. There have been several
scenes, but no one was any the worse for the small explosions which
occurred. These extreme men are much safer in the House of Commons than
outside.”
The Labour members respond anxiously to this idea. They also urge on
Parliament the need for Parliament to do something for the down-and-out
in order to avert social revolution. However often they advise the
worker that revolution is impossible, they know and feel that it is not
impossible. So do the Conservative reactionaries. Whatever division of
interest is created by careerhunting, however much difference may exist
between the extent that one is willing to palliate as opposed to the
other, the Labour member and the Tory member are moved by a common
dread. They are admittedly moved by fear of the consequences of
Anti-Parliamentary agitation if nothing is done by Parliament. Thus, Mr.
Scrymgeour, the honorable member for Dundee, in his maiden speech in the
House ,of Commons in November, 1922, warned the Government of the
strength of the Anti-Parliamentary feeling existing amongst the
working-class in the following passage, which embodies the spirit of the
entire speech:
“I speak as one representing a most important industrial constituency in
which there has been a very decisive change in its Parliamentary
representation ...
“I want to say that there is a growing conviction amongst the vast body
of the people in this country, and by that I mean the workers, that this
House has unfortunately, altogether, irrespective of what Government is
in power, been trifling with these gigantic issues.
“I have had considerable experience in different, parts of the country,
more especially among the miners of Scotland, and I know there are
forces growing amongst them which are absolutely convinced in regard to
aggressive ideas and arguments which have been driven home in public
debates by one whose name will be familiar to all in this House, I mean
Mr. Guy Aldred. Mr. Aldred is a very able man and he is desperately in
earnest in every point which he drives home, and he was cheered to the
echo when he denounced any belief in religion and when he was committing
himself to the most drastic line of action, he was cheered by men and
women on every point. I want Hon. Members to realise what that means.
“I wish to emphasise that this House has not been grappling with those
issues in the way that earnest working men and women feel they ought to
be grappled with. With all due respect to those who officially represent
the Labour Party, I have pointed out from my independent platform that
there has been a growing feeling amongst the workers that the Labour
Party has not been so aggressive or determined in carrying out their
professions, and as the outcome of this there has been a growing feeling
in favour of the Communist movement. My anxiety is that we should have
some clear line of action laid down on this question in order to give
proof to the workers that we mean business.”
Is it not clear from this speech that the only live political movement
of the working-class is the Anti-Parliamentary, that movement sets the
pace of all social reform, that Labour members speak from fear of its
criticism, that Conservative members listen because such talk is less
effective than the action it holds up, because parley is better than
revolution for those who live on the backs of those who produce?
It may be said that something real might be achieved, that there would
be less pandering if only the Labour members were in a majority at
Westminster and were sure of the complete backing of the working-class
as a class. It is said that revolutionists have done nothing at all for
the people. This pleading is very old, and reminds one of the very
stupid speech made by Wilhelm Liebknecht long ago at the famous Erfurt
Social Democratic Congress. W e select two gems that sum up the entire
apology of the Parliamentarians — and destroy it with equal conciseness:
“ The fact that up to the present time we have got nothing from Social
Democracy is not a valid objection to Parliamentarism, but is simply due
to our comparative weakness in the country among the people.”
“What have the Anarchists done? Nothing, absolutely nothing.”
It never occurred to W. Liebknecht to think, nor does it occur to modern
Parliamentarians to reflect, that if the Anarchists or Social
Revolutionaries achieve nothing by Anti-Parliamentarism and the
Parliamentarians achieve nothing by Parliamentarism, that honours are
easy between the two sections. Again, if the explanation is the weakness
of Socialist thought amongst the workers, the cure is Socialist
agitation. Such weakness may explain the failure of the
Parliamentarians. If so, it only means that Parliament can do nothing
for the people that they cannot do for themselves, that Parliamentary
activity, therefore, is unnecessary. Certainly, this weakness —
aggravated by men withdrawing to the Parliamentary arena when they
should be working and agitating directly amongst the workers on the
field of production, spreading the gospel at the street-corner, in the
lecture hall, and wherever the workers assemble to consider and discuss
— explains the failure of revolutionary thought to translate itself into
achievement. The difference between Parliamentarism and Revolutionism
consists in the effect of overcoming this weakness that bulks so largely
in the Parliamentarian apology. Let agitation acquaint the workers with
Anti-Parliamentary thought and they think in the terms of the Socialist
Commonwealth, they stand for the direct enfranchisement of industry, for
immediate working-class society, a true golden age. But let the
agitation be Parliamentarian, and the workers have no other notion than
that of state pauperism, the direct enfranchisement of a Labour
bureaucracy to administer Capitalism and preserve its authority by a
system of doles, the real servitude of the workers to an age of gold.
Parliamentarism can never give the workers control of industry, can
never solve the problem of Capitalism, can never secure to the
wealth-producers the ownership by themselves of the means of production
and distribution. Access to the means of life proceed from direct
action. A class-conscious proletariat will emancipate itself by
spontaneous action. A consciousless proletariat will tolerate
Parliamentarism because of its consciouslessness, because it lacks
initiative, and can never be emancipated. Labour Parliamentarism is but
the shadow and not the substance of working-class emancipation. It is
the shadow that masquerades as the body and sets up in opposition to the
body, proclaiming the body to be the shadow. No one knows this better
than the Parliamentarians themselves.
H. M. Hyndman was the father of Parliamentarism in the Socialist
movement in this country. Naturally, he was at one with the
Parliamentarians of Socialism in Germany. Yet during the years of
navalism and militarism, of preparedness for the Great War by the
capitalist interests in Britain and Germany, Hyndman and his colleagues
in the Social Democratic movement here were busy prating of the German
menace. They watched the growth of Social Democratic representation in
the Reichstag and they spoke of the achievements of Parliamentarism. But
they never explained how, if Social Democratic representation in the
Reichstag meant the existence of a Socialist proletariat and a real
working-class conquest of political power, there could be a German
menace. Why should Germany, with its powerful Social Democratic
representation in the Reichstag, with its voting strength greater, much
greater, than its representation in the Reichstag, have been the
military menace of Europe? W. Liebknecht’s apology is invalidated by
reason of the very great disproportion between its rapid increase of
voting strength and the smallness in the increase of its membership of
the Reichstag. It required many more votes to return a Social Democrat
than it took to return any avowed capitalist candidate. Surely, this is
an actual conquest of political power by the workers to the extent of
the votes polled. Surely, these representatives were backed in the
country. Yet they were returned only that they might administer the
Kaiser’s imperial interests. Hyndman and his Parliamentarians took this
view. Similarly, the German Parliamentarians considered the British
Parliamentarians as representatives of Britain’s imperial interests.
Both were right. In both countries Parliamentarism expressed the failure
of the workers to be class-conscious, and but measured their sheepish
subjection to a brutal and impudent Imperialism. The Great War revealed
its impotence and expressed its opposition to Socialist thought and
action and to the emancipation of the workers.
In 1912, Karl Liebknecht captured the Kaiser’s seat, Potsdam, for the
politics of the red republic. Two years later, his electors were
shedding their blood in defence of the black eagle. They were fighting
enthusiastically in the army of the Kaiser who, in 1891, had addressed
publicly these words to the soldiers of the Fatherland: “Recruits!
Before the altar and the servant of God you have given me the oath of
allegiance ... you are my soldiers, you have surrendered yourselves to
me body and soul. Only one enemy can exist for you — my enemy. With the
present Socialist machinations, it may happen that I shall order you to
shoot your own relatives, your brothers, or even your parents — which
God forbid — and then you are bound in duty implicitly to obey my
orders.”
Yes, the good Social Democratic Parliamentarians, the
conquest-of-parliamentary-power-ites, fought against the enemies of this
Imperial assassin and died winning his Iron Crosses. They helped to
imprison the heroic Socialist son of the step-father of German
Parliamentarism, Wilhelm Liebknecht. Once a social revolutionist,
imprisoned and exiled for his loyalty to Socialism, a man who took
unkindly to compromise, but finally consented swearing he would ne’er
consent, Wilhelm Liebknecht at last sacrificed his revolutionary energy
to further and consolidate the futile Parliamemtarism of Lassalle:
“Through universal suffrage to victory.” It was the inevitable logic of
that Parliamentarism, its appeal to immediate economic interests, that
reconciled the German workers to their imprisonment of Karl Liebknecht.
The father would say that Parliamentarism could not save the son because
the Socialists were comparatively weak in the country. Well, after the
political revolution of 1918, the Social Democrats, the Parliamentary
Socialists, were in power in the country. They drove the Kaiser into
exile. They murdered on the streets the real Socialists, the Socialists
of thought and action, they became the tools of British as well as
German Capitalism, and they consummated their criminal connection by
becoming parties to the murder in cold blood of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa
Luxembourg in January, 1919. Not the Kaiser, with the reluctant
acquiescence of the Parliamentary Socialists, but the Parliamentary
Socialists with the acquiescence of the German Capitalists, accomplished
this assassination. We cannot say that Parliamentarism has done nothing.
It slaughtered to preserve the tottering power of Capitalism.
During “red week” of March, 1913, the German Social Democratic Party
gained 148,108 new members, most of whom served the Kaiser in the Great
War: It secured 32,298 new subscribers, few of whom hesitated to rally
to the German Imperialist war-flag. It held 41,969 agitation meetings,
which offered no menace to the ruling patriotism. It made house to house
canvas in 1,288 cities and towns, besides distributing 6,759,320 and
selling 1,580,010 books and pamphlets. Every man canvassed, every
recipient of a free leaflet, every purchaser of a book or pamphlet,
either served, was prepared to serve, or wished to serve the murder
lords of his country.
Parliamentarism claims to represent organised labour. We concede the
claim. Parliamentarism does represent organised labour. It represented
organised labour before the war, whilst the capitalists of all lands
were preparing for the world war. It represented organised labour during
the war, whilst the capitalists of all lands were inspiring the workers
with their hymns of hate. It represents organised labour to-day, whilst
the capitalist clash is tinkering with and mocking the misery of the
unemployed.
When the Social Democratic member for Mannheim died fighting at
Luneville, for the Kaiser’s Cause, it was organised labour that drove
him to his doom, an economic conscript. Interviewed in London, at the
end of 1913, Professor Debrück told the Daily Mail representative:
“Germany for the past fifteen years has been a country of immigration,
not of emigration, and her excellent school and university system is
producing every year a surplus of educated men. If we possessed more
territories inhabited by inferior races, their administration and
development would afford to this educated surplus the same kind of
occupation and employment that Englishmen of a similar class find in
Egypt or India.”
One can complete the picture easily. Patriotic lectures — at so much a
lecture. Journalistic exploitation of commercial rivalries — at so much
a column. A Social Democratic Party anxious to secure political power
and dominated in consequence by the palliative interests of the 774
Trades Councils, to which 9,418 trade unions were affiliated, with a
membership of 2,339,571 members. This meant Social Democratic
subserviency to the national concentration of capitalist interests. The
Mannheim member never would have sat in the Reichstag had he opposed the
sentiment of the economic interests which swept him on to his doom, in
company with so many German workers.
Parliamentarism means being practical. In every country it operates in
the same way to the same disastrous results. An industrial constituency
interested in the creation of armaments may return a Labour member, but
it insists that he shall support war-interests. In 1911, at the Thames
Shipbuilding works, the Super Dreadnought, the battleship “Thunderer,”
was launched by the Archbishop of Canterbury. To the inhabitants of
Canning Town, the construction of this vessel meant the subsistence
level, the bread line. When the warship work was lost to the Thames,
Will Thorne, West Ham’s Parliamentary Socialist member, in company with
Lord Roberts, addressed a huge protest meeting, demanding the work for
London as opposed to Newcastle.
The force of economic compulsion explained this tragedy of misery and
degradation. Inevitably, Labour M.P.’s — representing the workers as
toilers subject to Capitalism, having immediate interests under
Capitalism to serve — were compelled to make dramatic platform
appearances in support of war. With the platforms and the press
controlled by capitalist interests, with the workers conditioned by
wages, there was but one comfortably popular path to take. That was to
recruit. It promised immediate finance at a time of threatened famine.
It guaranteed the immediate future. It voiced the immediate wants of the
war workers. It was practical It meant a safe seat and governing-class
votes at the election and the continuance of £400. All this had to be
considered. Consequently, the Labour Party placed the services of its
National Agent at the disposal of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee
to assist in the necessary secretarial work. Organisation for murder was
the natural task of Parliamentarism. Remember this inevitable toadying
to Moloch when next some Parliamentarian tells you that Parliamentarism
is opposed to violence.
Parliamentarism is practical. Because it is practical it stands for
Capitalism, for war, for misery, for continued class society, for mass
subjection and exploitation. Naturally, and inevitably, it prepares the
way for treachery, evolves from its agitators statesmen for the
administration of Capitalism, open and avowed enemies of working-class
emancipation. The evolution of Aristide Briand is but a study in the
logic of Parliamentarisnn. His career is an Anti-Parliamentary
commentary. It is but one of many.
Speaking at the Nantes Trade Union Congress in 1891, Briand said: “ ‘We
must make use of the ballot-box,’ some of you will say. Quite right! I
am no opponent of the ballot-paper. But on the day when universal
suffrage becomes a nuisance and a menace to the governing-class, they
will do away with it. And in an emergency they will even have the
workers shot down.”
Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies, as Premier of France, on October
29^(th), 1910, the same Briand defended the methods he employed to
suppress the French Railway strike in the following terms: “If the
Government had not found in the law a possibility of defending the
existence of the nation when the country was in danger, if we could not
have protected the frontier line of France by legal methods, then,
gentlemen, we would have assured the running of the railways which are
necessary to France’s defence by methods which are illegal. It would
have been our duty.”
The illegal defence of capitalist interests is the natural product of
Parliamentarism. Marx destroys once and for all the case for
Parliamentarism when he shows in his civil War in France that the issue
in the social conflict is between the Empire and the Commune. Written in
1871 to criticise and to depict the struggle of the Paris Commune, this
work shows how the State Power originated from the days of absolute
monarchy, and how the placing of the Government under Parliamentary
control was placing it “under the direct control of the propertied
classes.” All which trenchant criticism leads Marx to utter his final
challenge to Parliamentary Socialism, of which he was very proud: “But
the working-class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State
machinery and wield it for its own political purposes.”
Marx shows how political changes have occurred “simultaneously with
economic changes in society” and depicts the State power as the national
engine of class despotism, a public force organised for the social
enslavement of labour by capital. He proves, as did Daniel De Leon
later, despite all his talk about the civilised plane, by inexorable
economic logic, that universal suffrage can never lead the workers to
victory, can never emancipate them from the shackles of wage-slavery.
Did not William Morris, the greatest of all English Socialist thinkers,
reiterate in pamphlet after pamphlet a like logic? Was not John Most
through his experiences in the Reichstag, driven to the same conclusion?
History shows how right were these Anti-Parliamentarian conclusions.
Parliamentary power was conceded to the people only to avert revolution,
a toy to keep the noisy children quiet. Parliamentary power was
developed by the slow assassination of the people’s liberty and power of
action.
One needs but to study the wonderful message of Paris, the Paris of the
Great French Revolution, to discover how Parliament outrages and betrays
the struggle of the people. The National Assembly, the Convention, the
Safety Committees, the Directory — a consistent Parliamentary debacle, a
natural evolution, ending in Napoleon and Empire and the tragedy of
French Imperialism. The Commune and the Sections, Proletarian and
Anti-Parliamentary Institutions, serving the people, strangled by order
of the Bourgeois Democracy and Parliamentarism, shopkeeper politics.
For the Assembly and the Conventions were representative institutions.
Here was the Parliament that betrayed and assassinated the rights of the
people. The Commune and the Sections were not representative
institutions. They were the people themselves — the forums of
discussions and decision. From them proceeded the life of the
revolution. From Assembly and Convention the decrees to arrest the
revolution. History places the forum not on a level, with Parliament,
but above it. The living and imperishable record of the people’s
struggle proves that the people had but to resolve, but to realise their
claims in thought, to more than realise them in fact, as Paris did in
those years of heroic striving. True, oratory reached a high level in
both Assembly and Convention. But it was only in response to the demands
of the Commune and the Sections who would stand no halting phrases, and
insisted on the oratory of the Rights of Man, of Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity.
How the Parliamentarians sought to delay the triumph of the Republic !
How they laboured to preserve the Monarchy ! And when the Monarchy fell
of its own worthlessness, when in rage and anger Commune and Sections
urged its abolition, when in fear and trembling the legislators bowed
before the storm, then was invented the grotesque and tremendous sham
that prepared the way for Napoleon and Empire — the Republic One and
Indivisible !
The idea seems magnificent, does it not? The Monarchy is dead — long
live the Republic One and Indivisible!
And then the Republic begins to think for the people, to feel for the
people, and to act for the people. At last it calls itself “the people”
and wars on the people. It proclaims martial law and proceeds to deprive
the Commune and the Sections of arms and the power to resist the Central
Authority. It denies Equality of Fact and proclaims a false and
metaphysical equality before the law. It crushes the life of the people,
the power of spontaneous revolt, of immediate vital action in the
departments, and substitutes representative action, uncontrolled
decrees, oligarchic and bureaucratic committees, all leading to misery,
terror, and Empire. All that was Republican was destroyed by the
Republic One and Indivisible! If only it had not been One and
Indivisible! If only it had been Multiple and Divisible! If only the
Republic had been Federal, drawing its vitality from the Commune, the
Sections and the Primary Assemblies, instead of deriving its authority
from a stagnating life-destroying Central Enacting Authority. Then it
would have been a Republic of Fact, of Life and Reality; a true
Republic, One and Indivisible !
So that Parliamentarism destroyed the Revolution and the Republic. It
neither served nor conceived it. It preserved the Republic much as the
Church preserved the teachings of Jesus. Much as the rats preserve for
their nests the manuscripts of genius.
Parliamentarism has always meant the same. It was. the working-class who
fought against borough-mongering, with the result that the capitalist
Reform Bill of 1832 eras passed into law securing representation to the
capitalist class in opposition to the landed interest. Justin McCarthy,
by no means a revolutionary, states in his History of Our Own Times,
that “this was all the more exasperating because the excitement and
agitation and success of the Reform Bill was brought about by the
working-men. They came round to the belief that they had been made tools
of by the capitalists, and when the Reform Bill became law they were
thrown over by those whom they had helped to pass it.” The same author
tells us: “ It was 30 years, before the people secured Household
Suffrage, and they only secured it in 1867 because the classes feared a
revolution. And out of nine Parliaments elected from 1832 to 1865 the
Liberals had a majority in eight, and the people eventually secured the
franchise by a coalition of Radicals and Tories, headed by the late Lord
Beaconsfield. It was conceded to dish the Liberals and from fear of the
people not from sincere conviction. The Liberals in 1867 had a majority
of 67, and they were unable to pass a Franchise Bill, and the people are
gulled to-day into the belief that the Liberals gave the franchise.”
C. A. Vince, M.A., in his Life of the Late John Bright, says: “The
statesmen of the Liberal Party still were scarcely less disinclined to
reform than their Conservative competitors. Both parties regarded reform
as an inevitable event of the future; both were anxious not to
anticipate the necessity; yet both were eager to intercept the credit of
being the first to yield to the popular will so soon as it should become
obviously irresistible.”
Were it necessary to prove the healthy fear entertained for the results
of possible mass action at all times by the ruling class it would only
be necessary to detail the history of the Franchise struggle, to relate
the facts of Liberal and Tory hypocrisy from 1832 to 1867. One might
refer to the Home Rule agitation and circumstances under which the Free
State was by law established in order to dish the Irish Republic. But
the facts are so well known and the deduction so obvious that citation
and comment become an insult to the readers’ knowledge and intelligence.
Parliamentarism cannot solve, and does not seek to solve, the only
problem that matters, the key problem of all social misery, the problem
of class society, its transformation into true, equal, or free society.
Its aim is to perpetuate Imperialist or exploiting society. It is a
legacy of Roman Imperialism, a remnant of the Roman code. It registers
no progress. One quotation will prove this fact beyond all
contradiction. Tiberius Gracchus flourished B.C. 102–133. He was a
social reformer, seeking to reform the lot of the people, never wishing
to overthrow the Empire. He gave his life for his poor measures of
reformism. He described the lot of the Roman soldiers in these words:
“Without houses, without any settled habitations, the disbanded militia
wander from place to place with their wives and children; and the
generals do but mock them when, at the head of their armies, they exhort
their men to fight for their sepulchres and die for domestic household
divinities ... The private soldiers fight and die to advance the wealth
and luxury of the great; and they are called masters of the world, while
they have not a foot of ground in their possession.” Is it such a far
cry from B.C. 133 to A.D. 1923? Can we say that these words have lost
any of their force, that they no longer apply? Is it not time we proved
them false for all future generations? Will Parliamentarism aid us in
this struggle?
The House of Commons, as the folks-chamber, is composed of a Speaker,
clerks, doorkeepers, waiters, reporters, and a few silent members. That
is to say, these persons are the necessary requisites, in or about the
Commons, to set off the glory of the conspicuous characteristic of the
Chamber — the vapid and unprofitable chatter of the expectant placeman.
This gentleman is an inevitable result of, and necessary adjunct to, the
political machine which reflexes the principles and policy of a system
which produces for private gain. He is quite conspicuous on the Labour
benches, a rigorous attender of the House, always ready to interpose in
a debate, persistent in his efforts to make a mark and prove his fitness
for office, his heart bleeding for labour and his discretion pandering
to the Stock Exchange gilt-edged fraternity, and his imagination
conjuring up the great ghosts of the traditional mighty dead of the
Mother of the Parliaments who were lying, deceiving swashbucklers in
real life, as the records of the Chartists and the biography of Lord
Shaftesbury will show. Is it not obvious that the entire career of a man
of this type, and his name is Legion, for he is the future Labour
Government, the present Labour Opposition, is founded on an ambition
that denotes him to be a hireling of law and order, a traitor to the
working-class, who never can and never will seek to emancipate his
class. Such is Parliamentarism ! Whoso wishes to remain a slave and
considers his role a honorable one, whoso wishes to perpetuate slums and
inequalities, banquets and famine, hovels and palaces, a disordered
whole ironically termed civilised society, will support it. Whoso
believes that the workers can pursue a better and braver path to a real
goal and a truer end will reject it. They will desert Parliamentarism
for what must be when one does not parley: the social struggle, and all
that struggle means. They will stand for Socialism, the social upheaval,
as distinct from Capitalism, the Parliamentary revision. Thus, will they
solve the problem of class struggle and so inaugurate the Social
Revolution, the Workers’ Industrial Republic.
John S. Clarke, who in the course of a varied political career, has
come, via the Third International and much Marxian-Lenin reading, back
to the fold of reformism and Labour-fakerism, wrote in his “Cigarette
Papers” in the Worker for November 5^(th), 1922, as follows: “Yes! if
anything on God’s earth is calculated to prolong the capitalist system,
it is surely a Labour Government.”
The facts establish the unquestionable truth of this assertion, whatever
Clarke’s present interests may inspire him to write. Those facts
emphasise the unanswerable character of the Anti-Parliamentarians’
logic, a logic not of schools, but of everyday experience and grim
sordid reality.
Consider the facts.
At Princess Mary’s wedding on February 280, 1922, at Westminster Abbey,
among 2,000 selected persons admitted to the Abbey were:
Mr. J. H. Thomas, M.P., and Mrs. Thomas. Mr. J. R. Clynes, M.P., and
Mrs. Clynes. Mr. C. W.Bowerman, M.P., and Mrs. Bowerman. Mr. Harry
Gosling, now M.P. for Whitechapel.
When the King and Queen dined with Viscount and Viscountess Astor at
Lord Astor’s residence, No. 4, St. James’s Square, on Thursday, March
8^(th), 1923, the guests included several prominent Labour members and
their wives.
Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Thomas were there, Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Clynes, and Mr.
and Mrs. Philip Snowden.
Members of all political parties were represented, and those received by
Lady Astor besides the Royal entourage included: The United States
Ambassador, the Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George and Dame Margaret Lloyd
George, the Speaker and Mrs. Whitley, the Marquis and Marchioness of
Salisbury, the Earl of Balfour, Lady Frances Balfour, Lord and Lady
Eustace Percy, the Earl and Countess of Kerry, Viscount and Viscountess
Milner, Viscount and Viscountess Grey of Fallodon, Lord and Lady
Islington, Lord Robert Cecil, Sir John and Lady Simon, and the High
Commissioner for Canada.
The Queen wore a dress of eau de nil with diamond ornament, and
Viscountess Astor a dress of old gold with diamond ornaments, including
a very fine tiara.
Next morning the press was able to announce that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald
(Leader of the Labour Opposition) had accepted an invitation to dine
with the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace on the Thursday following.
I have said that a Labour Government is pledged to maintain Capitalism.
Is that true?
J. R. Clynes, the Deputy-Leader of the Labour Party, speaking the last
week in January, 1922, before the Imperial Commercial Association, at
the Cannon Street Hotel, London, found himself in the congenial company
of Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Sir Lynden Macassey, Lord Ashfield, and the
chairmen of several banks and commercial trading associations. He
insisted that the Labour Party tried to compose and not to extend or
aggravate trade disputes. He added, apparently with heat: “A great deal
of nonsense is talked about the designs of Labour upon private
enterprise. It is not Labour that has imposed upon it a tax of 6s. in
the £, rising in some cases to double that amount. Private enterprise
has to carry a heavy load of rates, payments and interests. and none of
these could be worse under any condition of Labour authority. Labour
will be as considerate as any other Government in composing claims as
they arise between public well-being and private gain.”
A week later Clynes spoke at Berkhampstead, the actual date being
Saturday, February 4^(th), in reply to Lord Birkenhead. Repudiating the
then Lord Chancellor’s strictures on the Labour Party, the Deputy-Leader
of the Labour Party said: “Industrial, troubles since the war had often
been composed and prevented by the political Labour Party, and never in
any instance provoked by it. Their service had been a service of
restraint and a sustained appeal for patience which was nearly
exhausted. The political policy of the Labour Party, he claimed, would
have reduced or prevented many of the industrial upheavals which the
country had suffered.”
Fourteen days later John Bull publishes from the pen of Mr. J. R. Clynes
his article on “How Labour Would Govern.” In this he states that “no
rash innovations “ would be introduced by him and his Party.” Some are
alarmed by the cry that the Labour Party would be pushed and terrorised
by extremists, and would be unable to carry out a policy of its own ...
How preposterous such a fear is! ... Precedent has already, been
established in the matter of bringing from outside the service of great
organisers and business men whose value to the State everyone must
recognise ... If in any elected majority men were not included who
possessed the required legal standing the attractions of the positions
would evoke many offers of service.”
The Daily Herald for 22^(nd) October, 1921, gave the following account
of conditions in New South Wales under the Labour premiership of Mr.
Dooley: “Mr. Dooley quotes statistics to show the remarkable progress of
N.S.W. under Labour rule. Comparing the seventeen months under the
Labour administration with the eighteen months under Nationalist regime,
he says 972 new factories have been built as against 577. 988 new
companies, with a capital of £72,000,000 have been formed, as against
498, with a capital of £18,000,000, additional capital has been invested
in existing companies to the amount of , £18,747,330, and the bank
deposits have swoIlen to £155,000,000, an increase of £10,000,000.”
The Rt. Hon. John Hodge, M.P., in January, 1922, addressed the Gorton
Trades’ Council. He said: “What is required at the present time is more
unanimity between capital and labour.”
He was questioned concerning the oath that he, a Labour member, had
taken on becoming a Privy Councillor. That oath is as follows: “I do
swear by Almighty God to be a true and faithful servant unto the King’s
Majesty, as one of his Majesty’s Privy Council. I will not know or
understand of any manner of thing to be attempted against His Majesty’s
Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal, but I will let and withstand
the same to the uttermost of my Power, and either cause it to be
revealed to His Majesty Himself, or to such of His Privy Council, as
shall advertise His Majesty of the same. I will in all things to be
moved, treated, and debated in Council, faithfully and truly declare my
mind and opinion, according to my Heart and Conscience, and will keep
secret all matter committed and revealed unto me, or that shall be
treated of secretly in Council. And if any of the said Treaties or
Councils shall touch any of the Counsellers, I will not reveal it unto
him, but will keep the same until such time as, by the Consent of His
Majesty, or of the, Counsel, Publication shall be made thereof. I will
to my uttermost bear faith and allegiance unto the King’s Majesty, and
will assist and defend all jurisdictions, pre-eminences and Authorities,
granted to His Majesty, and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament,
or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes Persons, Prelates, States, or
Potentates. And generally in all things I will do as a faithful and true
Servant ought to do to His Majesty. So help me God.”
Hodge explained: “The reason for taking the Privy Councillorship was
that it was compulsory on becoming a Crown Minister. “
The following questions were put to him and answered as follows:
Q. Are you, if re-elected to Parliament, prepared to support the
Government in bringing out the White Guards against strikers, as you did
during the boilermaker’s strike in Liverpool?”
A. Yes.
Q. “If the Labour Party is elected in a majority to Parliament, have
they any policy by which they hope to solve the unemployment problem?”
A. “No! we will have to play ca-canny until we find our feet.”
I extract from the Glasgow Herald for 15^(th) February, 1922, an item
from the meeting of the Glasgow Magistrates at which Bailie Dollan was
present: “As the duty of making arrangements in connection with
executions in Glasgow Prison devolves on the Magistrates, they have
remitted to the two junior Magistrates — Bailie Black and Bailie George
Smith — to see to the carrying out of the death sentence pronounced on
William Harkness and his wife. The executions are fixed for Thursday
next.”
Like Bailie Dollan, Bailie George Smith is a Labour man — a member of
the I.L.P. !!
Finally, since their return as Members for the Eastern Divisions of
Glasgow, we have had started by John Wheatley, on behalf of himself and
Maxton, the Glasgow Eastern Standard. I have the second issue (dated
March 10^(th), 1923) before me as I write. A more vulgarly capitalist
effort has never been produced by a man who owes his circulation to the
blind and stupid support of a sincere and trusting, but grossly abused
and much deceived working-class. There is not a word of Socialism, not a
note of culture in the whole vulgar sheet. It is edited on Wheatley’s
behalf by McCrea, the ex-school teacher and member of the I.L.P., who
was returned to the Town Council for Shettleston as a Labour man. Its
banalities include (apparently) a weekly portrait gallery of “Prominent
Business Men.” What a theme for a Labour M.P.’s paper! The celebrity
chosen for March 10^(th) is one Armstrong, who seems to have made his
fortune out of the credit drapery business. Wheatley’s class conscious
journal tells us of this Anti-Socialist, beneath a well-printed
half-tone block
“Ex-Councillor Matthew Armstrong is our prominent man this week. Born in
the East End fifty-six years ago, he early entered the drapery trade,
and has now built up one of the largest businesses of its kind in the
city. His premises, as a wholesale warehouseman, and manufacturer of all
kinds of garments, in Great Hamilton Street, are a monument to his
efficiency and business acumen. He is a pillar of the ‘Auld Kirk,’ and
his recreations are bowling and golf.”
Postscript: As I pass these page proofs (April 10^(th), 1923), I notice
that, when the Anti-Socialists introduced a Bill into the Commons last
week for forcibly closing Communist and Socialist Sunday Schools the
Labour Party acquiesced. The London correspondent of the Glasgow Herald
declares that this Bill was discussed at a meeting of the Labour Party
and it was decided to let it pass without a division. “Mr. Ramsay
Macdonald stated that if the Bill was an attack on the Labour Party, the
Party must vote against it, but if it were aimed against the Communists,
it was not a matter that concerned them.”
If this Capitalist journalist is incorrect perhaps the Labour Party will
explain its attitude towards this Tory Sedition Bill that has only one
object — to menace and hinder working-class emancipation, whilst Boy
Scouts and Girl Guides organisations capture and corrupt the child-mind
in the interests of Imperialism and Class-society.