war and poverty - the peoplewar and poverty this manifesto was issued on the eve of the passage of...

War and PovertyThe Brood of Capitalism

2005

NEW YORK LABOR NEWS

P.O. Box 218, Mountain View, CA 94042–0218

http://www.slp.org/nyln.htm

http://www.slp.org/

WAR AND POVERTY

This manifesto was issued on the eve ofthe passage of peacetime conscription.Its purpose is twofold: It is an incisiveindictment of the capitalist system asthe breeder of war and militarism. It isa clarion to the American working classto unite and wipe this iniquitous systemoff the face of the globe.

But “War and Poverty” serves still athird purpose. It is a fresh testimonialto the internationalism and unflinchingdetermination of the Socialist LaborParty. Securely anchored to the bed-rock of Marxian science, the SocialistLabor Party staunchly upholds itsprinciples, conscious that on its integ-rity will ultimately depend the fate ofthe working class.

Navies and armies are insurance forcapital owned abroad by the leisureclass of a nation. It is for them that em-pires and spheres of influence exist. Thegreat war now waging is a culminationof efforts to maintain and extend thesespheres.—Rear Admiral French E.Chadwick, U.S.N.

(N.Y. Evening Post, Dec. 17, 1915.)

PRINTING HISTORY

First printing September 1940Second printing October 1940Third printing December 1941

Online Edition December 2005

Transcribed and edited by Robert BillsUploaded by Donna Bills

Socialist Labor Party 5 www.slp.org

The strongest bond of humansympathy, outside of the familyrelation, should be one unitingall working people, of all na-tions, and tongues and kindreds.

—Abraham Lincoln.

Fellow-Workers:The world, the civilized world it is called, is locked in

a death struggle. On a scale greater than ever in hu-man history men are exterminating each other, de-stroying wealth and the precious heirlooms that havecome down to us through the ages, with forces andmeans of destruction such as have never been wit-nessed before. During the year that has passed sincethe Second World War broke out, republics, ancientkingdoms and mighty empires have collapsed oryielded to conquest, while hundreds of thousands ofinnocent people—men, women and little children—havebeen, and are being, slaughtered with a brutality anda ruthlessness heretofore thought impossible. For, it isinsisted, are we not, after all, human beings?

Yes, we are human beings, which is to say that, un-der the whip and spur of the overriding law of acquisi-tive societies—of societies based on private property,socially needed to sustain life—under such conditions,human beings become more ruthless, more destructive,more pitiless than the most savage beasts of the jun-gle. For of all animals, it has been well said, man is theonly one who preys systematically on his own kind—ofall animals he is the only one who is capable of ration-alizing villainy, cruelty, murder and destruction into

W AR AN D POVE R TY


deeds claiming recognition as noble, kind and uplifting,and as being performed in the service of truth and ide-alism, and for the benefit of all mankind!

While the great powers on earth were locked in thisdeath-struggle during the last twelve-month, theUnited States of America—greatest of all industrialpowers—stood by, attempting, or pretending, to beneutral, disavowing intentions to enter the war, yet,through its ruling class spokesmen, all the time feedingthe flames of war, and supplying the material thingswhich made it possible to keep the war going, and toextend it over ever wider areas of the globe.

When the war commenced in September, 1939, theSocialist Labor Party said in an official declaration:“The role which the United States will be called upon toplay in the war will be a most important one. In thecapitalist premises it is almost inevitable that thiscountry will be drawn into the war.” And we added:“This may result from deliberate plottings and propa-ganda, but even without these it is difficult to see howin the capitalist premises the pressure of economicforces and events could be overcome.”

The President of the United States at that time de-clared that so long as it remained within his power toprevent it, there would “be no black-out of peace in theUnited States.” The Socialist Labor Party, beingguided by Marxian Science, and knowing that goodintentions do not control events or rulers, but thatthese are inexorably controlled by economic forces,remained sceptical. And now the United States is onthe verge of war, and before this declaration appearsin print, peace-time conscription may be clamped upona people unwilling to accept it, dreading its implica-

TH E BR OOD OF CA PI TALI SM


tions, resenting its violation of time-honored traditionsof the Republic, and recognizing in it the mortal foe ofthe liberty which, however diluted or restricted, stillsurvives in the spirit and sense of our revolutionaryfounding fathers.1 And this is coming to pass underthe driving executive whip of the President who saidthat if he could help it there would “be no black-out ofpeace in the United States”!

II.What is it that has happened, and why? The Social-

ist Labor Party has told the story in detail on previousoccasions, when world events during the last five or sixyears threatened to plunge the entire civilized worldinto war. In the Party’s “Manifesto on War and Decayand Corruption of International Capitalism,” published1937, we laid bare the basic cause of war, showingthat war results from the clashing of economic inter-ests in the world market, each capitalist nation seek-ing to dispose profitably of the surplus commoditiesproduced by the respective working classes, who,though producing all social wealth, yet receive as theirreward but mere fractions of that wealth, the remain-der going to the capitalist owners of industry, theirinstitutions and spokesmen and servitors generally,the unconsumed part, as stated, being placed in theworld market for profitable disposal. In the desperatestruggle to get there first, and to force competitors out,the interests, we repeat, of the capitalists of different

1President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the “Selective Train-

ing and Service Act of 1940” into law on September 16 of thatyear, just two days after publication of this manifesto.—R.B.

W AR AN D POVE R TY


countries clash, and the result eventually is war.Woodrow Wilson, the President who led the United

States into the First World War, clearer than anyother modern chief executive, has shown how inter-locked, and interdependent, modern capitalist nationsare, and why, accordingly, it is visionary to expect agreat industrial and commercial nation to remain atpeace when the rest of the powerful industrial nationsare at war. In a speech delivered on September 5,1919, in St. Louis, Mo., he said:

“Is there any merchant present here or anymanufacturer or any banker who can say that our[i.e., capitalist] interests are separate from the in-terests of the rest of the world, commercially, indus-trially, financially? There is not a man in any ofthose professions who does not admit that our indus-trial fortunes are tied up with the industrial fortunesof the rest of the world.”

And in the evening of the same day, also in St.Louis, he declared:

“The real reason that the war . . . took place wasthat Germany was afraid her commercial rivalswere going to get the better of her, and the reasonwhy some nations went into war against Germanywas that they thought Germany would get the com-mercial advantage of them. The seed of the jealousy,the seed of the deep-seated hatred was hot, success-ful commercial and industrial rivalry. . . . This war,in its inception, was a commercial and industrialwar.”

President Wilson spoke the truth, though he spokethis particular truth after the war; and none had a



better opportunity to observe the forces at work whichfinally also forced him, in a capitalist world, to leadthis country into war in 1917. And the identical forcesare at work today, working inexorably toward thesame ends, and through the same instrumentalities.“Hot. . . . commercial and industrial rivalry” led to thewar in Europe; the same considerations have broughtthe United States to the brink of war, all pious andhypocritical pleas to the contrary notwithstanding.Only a few years ago this now obvious cause of warwas also recognized by another government official,Mr. Marriner Eccles, Chairman of the Federal ReserveBoard, who frankly declared: “War is merely theopenly armed continuation of our peace-time business.”“Peace-time business” means capitalism, and if war ishell, then, truly, capitalism is scarcely less an infernoat peace than when at war!

Let it be emphasized, then, that if, or when, theUnited States enters the Second World War, it will befor none of the idealistic reasons or lofty purposes to beannounced through Presidential proclamations, edito-rial gushings, or priestly incantations; it will be for onereason only, the desire and need of American capital-ism to maintain itself, or to rule supremely, in theworld market. In the words of Woodrow Wilson, thecause of war in the case of the United States, as in thecase of every other capitalist nation, will be: HOTCOMMERCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL RIVALRY.

III.Since the collapse of French imperialism early this

summer, with the consequent danger of British col-lapse, the capitalist class and its editorial and political

W AR AN D POVE R TY


spokesmen, the President leading among the latter,have carried on a feverish agitation in favor of peace-time conscription, which in fact would resolve itself intomilitary and industrial conscription. For the first timein the history of the country conscription is adopted intime of peace, and without even submitting the ques-tion to the referendum vote of the people. Despite evi-dence of overwhelming opposition to conscriptionthroughout the country, politicians and editors bra-zenly claim that the vast majority of the people of theUnited States clamor for conscription—that they begto have the chains of military (and industrial) servi-tude placed upon them. The swindle is so palpable, sooutrageous, that with all their propaganda machineryworking overtime, the conscription advocates wereforced to retreat, and to modify their brazen demands.If they really believed that the mass of the peoplewanted conscription, why did they not submit thequestion for a decision at the polls in the Novemberelection? The answer is, of course, that they know theyare lying, they know they are perpetrating a hugefraud. And if editors were up for election, as politiciansare, they, too, would “hear from home,” and heed thedemand of their constituents! But editors, at least, arefairly safe—as yet. At any rate, they do not rush to thebarracks. The swivel-chair and the cocktail hour offertoo many temptations, apart from the fact that theyare not going to risk their hides in defense of the“status quo”! Our great American poet, James RussellLowell, had this gentry well catalogued. In his Bigelowpapers he placed them on exhibition as, for instance,when he made Hosea Bigelow say:



“Take them editors thet’s crowin’Like a cockerel three months old,—

Don’t ketch any on ’em goin’,Though they be so blasted bold.”

But the biggest fraud perpetrated is the contentionmade by the conscriptioneers, politicians and editorialscribblers alike, that conscription is the very essenceof democracy! The argument is that since the con-scripted men are to be “selected” by the draft, it willhit poor and rich alike, and presto! there is your de-mocracy! It is difficult to conceive of a more dishonest,and at the same time a more ridiculous, contention. Itcarries as much sense with it as if one were to say thatcapitalism is democratic because both rich and poormay starve, if they like, or that rich and poor enjoy thesame opportunity to be idle, to steal a loaf of bread,sleep on park benches or underneath bridges! Moreo-ver, it is not true that rich and poor alike are subjectto the draft; already now it is pointed out that “ex-perts” in industry will be exempted—or, as they put it,executives, specialists and experts will be “drafted” forhome service. And even if the sons of the rich and in-fluential are drafted, does anyone suppose that aJames Roosevelt, for instance, would be exposed to thesame dangers as John Smith?

There was a time when old-fashioned reactionariesargued against what is, in fact, a phony conception ofSocialism, namely, the lie that everybody under Social-ism would be reduced to the same gray level. Theyused to call that supposed state of affairs “The ComingSlavery,” and, as said, they falsely identified that sortof thing as Socialism. But if ever anything reduced

W AR AN D POVE R TY


everybody to the common gray level, it is the armyand conscription. Yet, as applied to a supposed state ofsociety, the reduction to a common level was calledslavery. As applied to militarism it is called the verycream of democracy! Lottery is generally denounced as“sinful,” and is prohibited as a crime in most states.The drafting of conscripts is, of course, a lottery. Now,whereas in the case of money lottery is very bad, de-moralizing and a crime, in the case of human beings itbecomes a promoter of the nobler, the democratic, thebetter life! As a matter of fact, the different moral orethical values placed upon the two forms of lotterybeautifully illustrates the capitalist, the shopkeeperconception of morals. Certainly, gambling for money isbad! Certainly, gambling in human lives isgood—human life being the cheap thing it is, especiallythe life of a wage worker, and above all if he happensto be unemployed! In designating a conscripted armyas a sample of democracy, the capitalist apologists andthe militarists unwittingly reveal their real conceptionof the thing they call democracy—capitalist democ-racy, or the “democracy” of the industrial treadmills asexemplified in the Ford plants and the steel mill infer-nos. The humbuggery of these contentions is so trans-parent that one wonders at the brazenness of thosewho offer them as serious, adult argumentation.

IV.We have stated that peace-time conscription is in

violation of the finest American democratic traditions,and carelessly the capitalist advocates of conscriptionhave admitted the truth of that, though, of course, theydid not mean to do so. Some of the most outspoken ad-



vocates of conscription among the newspaper editorshave admitted that peace-time conscription is a revolu-tionary step of a most thoroughgoing character, whichis simply an acknowledgment that it is subversive ofAmerican democratic principles and traditions. Evenat the height of the Civil War, the draft was con-demned in the severest terms. The founder of the NewYork Tribune, Horace Greeley, in 1863, denounced thedraft as “unconstitutional, needless, and an outrage onindividual liberty and State rights.” And Greeleyquoted the following from the New York World of thesame year:

“The idea of a military conscription being itselfprofoundly repugnant to the American mind, itmight have been supposed that unusual steps wouldhave been taken by the friends of that resort [i.e.,the friends of conscription] to present it with utterfrankness, and in the light best adapted to dissipatethe popular hostility. Nothing of the sort wasdone. . . . It was not only a conscription, but an actpassed by conscription.”

This description fits the present proposed conscrip-tion act—this anti-democratic, Hitleristic measure thatis being crammed down the throat of the Americanpeople. And they refer to this involuntary servitude asthe very jewel of democracy!

But we need not go back eighty or one hundredyears in search of condemnations of peace-time con-scription by outstanding Americans. None has de-nounced conscription as the very enemy of Americandemocratic, principles and liberty in harsher termsthan the War President of twenty-five years ago,

W AR AN D POVE R TY


Woodrow Wilson. In his second annual message deliv-ered before Congress in joint session, December 8,1914, President Wilson, discussing the subject of na-tional defense, said:

“It [national defense] cannot be discussed withoutfirst answering some very searching questions. It issaid in some quarters that we are not prepared forwar. What is meant by being prepared? Is it meantthat we are not ready upon brief notice to put a na-tion in the field, a nation of men trained to arms? Ofcourse we are not ready to do that; AND WESHALL NEVER BE IN TIME OF PEACE SO LONGAS WE RETAIN OUR PRESENT POLITICALPRINCIPLES AND INSTITUTIONS. And what is itthat it is suggested we should be prepared for? Todefend ourselves against attack? We have alwaysfound means to do that, and shall find them when-ever it is necessary without calling our people awayfrom their necessary tasks to render compulsorymilitary service in time of peace.”

And identifying his opposition to conscription inpeace-time with the “finer passions” of the Americanpeople, he went on:

“We never have had, and while we retain our pre-sent principles and ideals we never shall have, alarge standing army. . . . we shall not turn Americainto a military camp. We will not ask our young mento spend the best years of their lives making soldiersof themselves. . . . And especially when half theworld is on fire we shall be careful to make ourmoral insurance against the spread of the conflagra-tion very definite and certain and adequate indeed.”

Surely, nothing could be stronger than this so far as



condemning peace-time conscription goes. With con-scription in force, according to the Wilsonian dictum,“our present principles and ideals” will have been de-stroyed—ceased to exist—and America will have beenturned “into a military camp.” It is a safe bet that thisis one passage from the utterances of his illustriouspredecessor which Mr. Roosevelt will not cite in sup-port of his strenuous efforts to dragoon the Americanpeople into conscription!

But perhaps the conscriptioneers will speedily at-tempt to reconcile their advocacy of conscription withWilson’s condemnation of peace-time conscription. Theycan do so by plunging the country into war as soon asconscription becomes law! For even Wilson believed inconscription in war-time. And perhaps that is preciselywhat they will do, though once conscription is a fact,they will care little about seeking justification, and stillless about reconciling Prussianism with democraticAmericanism. They will not need to. American laborwill have become completely enslaved—completelygagged and bound.

And what is it we are asked to defend? Some call it“our democracy”; others “our way of life”; others our“economic system of free enterprise,” etc. Present-daydemocracy is not the democracy of our revolutionaryfathers. In 1776 the people generally had a stake inthe economic system—most of them owned propertywhich they naturally were eager to defend. Today themajority owns no property. According to the Report ofthe Federal Trade Commission (1926), 59 per cent ofthe country’s wealth is owned by one per cent of thepopulation, while 87 per cent now own only 8 per cent.Accordingly, the mass of the people in the United

W AR AN D POVE R TY


States are propertiless, and, therefore, they have nostake in the present economic system. And what is“our way of life”? There are two ways of life in Amer-ica—the way of life of the capitalists, the Fords, the duPonts, the Roosevelts, and the way of life of the wageslave in the Ford plant, in the steel mills, in the coal-mines. The former is a way of life in comfort, well-beingand security. The latter is a way of life in distress andpoverty and insecurity, or in total misery if the workeris unemployed. Which way of life is it they want us todefend?

What the workers really are expected to defend isthe system of capitalism, the very system that en-slaves them, the very cause of wars! To maintain thestatus quo, to uphold the system of wage slavery, tohelp the capitalists to hold or to conquer foreign mar-kets, is to defend the chains that are fetteringthem—for these the workers are asked to lay downtheir lives!

V.The Socialist Labor Party has watched closely the

progressive steps taken which have led us to the brinkof war. In 1937, at Chicago, Mr. Roosevelt took whatmay be regarded as the first step toward war. A sub-sequent step was taken by Mr. Roosevelt at Kingston,Ont., Canada, on August 2, 1938, where in a speech hepersonally pledged the United States to the defense ofan outpost of the British Empire. And other steps havefollowed in logical order. Whether the President wasconscious of taking these steps is of no importancehere. They serve to illustrate, however, the manner inwhich a country gradually, and, to the uninitiated, im-



perceptibly, is being pushed or maneuvered into war.That sinister influences have also been at work weknow—munitions-dealers, manufacturers of war sup-plies generally, being among the outstanding. At pre-sent we witness, on another front, the result of propa-ganda by capitalist interests, namely, in the case ofMexico where aggrieved American oil interests arepulling wires to embroil the United States in war withMexico in the interest of the said American oil inter-ests. A classic example of clear recognition of such sin-ister influences at work we find in a statement issuedby Woodrow Wilson on March 25, 1916, in which hedenounced certain American “unscrupulous influences”for their efforts to bring about an invasion of Mexico byUnited States military forces. Said Mr. Wilson:

“The object of this traffic in falsehood is obvious. Itis to create intolerable friction between the Govern-ment of the United States and the de facto Govern-ment in Mexico for the purpose of bringing about in-tervention in the interest of certain American ownersof Mexican properties. . . . The people of the UnitedStates should know the sinister and unscrupulousinfluences that are afoot. . . . ”

As in 1916, so now, there are “certain Americanowners” of properties abroad, investors and financialinterests, that is, all those who have a financial, aneconomic, stake in the British Empire, who are work-ing ceaselessly to bring the United States into the waron the side of British capitalism. American work-ers—beware of “these sinister and unscrupulous influ-ences that are afoot,” and which may prove determin-ing in pushing the country over the war-brink!

W AR AN D POVE R TY


*As in the past, on numerous occasions, so now the

Socialist Labor Party warns the American workersagainst permitting themselves to be regimented anddragooned into war in defense of one set of capitalistinterests against assaults by other capitalist interests.We repeat what we have stated again and again:

We declare that we detest Hitlerism and all otherforms of dictatorship, and all that they stand for,which most of the conscriptioneers do not, and that wewill fight the evil thing to the end, but we declare alsothat the place to start that fight is here, in the UnitedStates of America. There are hundreds of thousands ofHitlers right in our midst, and it will occupy all ourtime and efforts to finish that fight. When once we havefinished it, we shall have in this beautiful, beloved landa true democracy, and an economic system wherein asfreemen we have a stake, a democracy and a societywhich we shall defend passionately against any domes-tic or alien Hitler, should such arise or knock upon ourgates. To defend, as wage slaves, our economic despot-ism in any manner whatsoever would be to defend thevery thing that is enslaving us, the very thing which isplunging the world’s workers into bloody, fratricidalwarfare. It would be to defend, and to fasten upon usstill more firmly, the very chains that bind us. As theplatform of the Liberty Party in 1843 declared: “Whenfreemen unsheath the sword, it should be to strike forLiberty, not for despotism!” And it matters notwhether it be political or economic (industrial) despot-ism.

Workers of America, unite! Unite under the bannerof the Socialist Labor Party! Organize, now, in Social-



ist Industrial Unions, to give effect to your SocialistLabor Party ballot cast for the abolition of capitalism,and to serve as the government of the future—as theAdministration of Industry, the Industrial Union Gov-ernment! Then, and not until then, will freedom andpeace return to a disrupted and enslaved world; thenand not until then, will abundance of the good things inlife be assured to all; then, and not until then, will thepromise of our glorious Declaration of Independence befulfilled: Self-government for the useful people in theireveryday but vital concern, that is to say, in industry,with reenforcement of their guaranteed right to life,liberty and the untrammeled pursuit of happiness.Demand, and organize to enforce your demand:

PEACE, LIBERTY, ABUNDANCE.

And never forget that—

There can be no peace without Socialism.

SOCIALIST LABOR PARTYOF AMERICA.

Issued September 12, 1940—in theGolden Jubilee year of the Socialist Labor Party,and the Second Year of the Second World War.

war and poverty - the peoplewar and poverty this manifesto was issued on the eve of the passage of...

Documents