SOME ILLOGICAL SOCIALISTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 78, 28 September 1907, Page 6

SOME ILLOGICAL SOCIALISTS.

That chalk is not cheese may appear a proposition sufficiently well established. Even a Wellington Socialist may admifc it. And then his glorious imagination undoes him. For if chalk weie cheese, and a concentrated foodstuff could be quarried from the white cliffs of England and other cliffs, who of all "tho starving myriads" would go unfed. Oh, if only chalk were cheese ! Nay, bud some chalk is very like cheese. It is yellowish, it is greasy, you can cut it with a knife. Who can set bounds to the alchemy of Nature ? Since many savages eat earth, is it not possible, even probable, that chalk has at least some portion of the nutritive value of cheese? If, then, chalk is like cheese in substance, colour, and nutritive value, whit practical difference is there between chalk and cheese? And if there is no practical difference, why. should we differentiate ? Why not call chalk cheese, for the noble purposes of Socialism ? Clearly, chalk is cheese. Hooray for the New Era ! We are accused by correspondents of misrepresenting the Socialist notion of Labour value. A speaker on the Socialist platform in Wellington, the other evening, standing on behalf of the Socialist body, filled his address with assertions that "Labour is the only source of value," "The wholo value of commodities depends upon the Labour which produces them" — and so on, at a dozen reiterations. And The Post pointed out, in reply, that, "unfortunately for Socialists, thore are two things which they do not indeed deliberately forget, but which they usually slur over" — as the Socialist speaker slurred them over on the oc easion referred to. One thing, it was suggested, is Nature. A second thiug, it was suggested, is Brains. A third thing is Character. And there are many other things which are not included in the ordinary definition of Labour, and which certainly have their share m creating the value of commodities. To enforce its moral, The Post gave illustrations showing how some of these other factors might add value independently of Labour. Now, our theoretical correspondents come along and say : "Of course. As if Karl Marx hadn't thought of Nature! As if he hadn't included Brains in his definition of Labour!" But the point is that, on the Wellington Socialist 'platform, *oy a i-epresentative Socialist speaker, the part of Nature (as Tho Post said) is " slurred over." Tho point is that, in the ordinary connotation of Labour, the 'share of Brains is forgotten. "The Labourer, ,in the common notion, is not the man who invents the machine, but tho man^who works it. Ho is not the man who takes risk., invests capital, and pays wages ; lie is the man who receives wages. When the rights of Labour are spoken of* currontly, they mean tho rights of the mechanic, the artisan, the shopman, und the pick-and-shovel man. Consequently, when, a Socialist orator reiterates that " Labour is tho oaly source of value," he is confusing chalk with cheese. lie is misleading his audience. He may be well aware that in Socialist theory there are other sources of value ; but in the face of his clear affirmation that "Labour, is the only source of value," the audience can only take his words one way. For them, it is tho labour of the employee that lie is speaking of. When he invests chalk with the attributes of cheese, and time and again declares that it is cliPese, there is nothing to do but contradict him. And the correspondents who tell us that Socialism is perfectly well aware that chalk is jif-t cheese would do better to confine their indignation to the particular issue, with tlie object of ensuring that the theory of Socialism 'is no longer perverted on the practical Wellington platform. The Post is glad to find it admitted that Labour, in the common acceptation of the term, is not the only sourco of tho value of commodities. For if Nature and Brains havo a considerablo sharo in creating and in adding to that value, then tho claim of Labour to take all tho profits goes by the board'; and even in tho Socialist Stato the exclusion of our familiar foes — Rent, Interest, and Wages — will be purely arbitrary. Wo may leave this part of the subject in expressing a hope that the Wellington Socialists at least, whenever thoy recur to the sad case of tho bootmaker who labours for eight hourß a day and gets only half tho profit of his labour, will bo careful to point out ' that some of the profits aro fairly duo to the man who invented tho bootmaker's machine, and somo to the man who grew the leather, and some to thu man who bought tho machine and undertook to sell its products so that our bootmaker might bo regularly employed without the tioublo of running round to find a customer. For, when these things aro admitted, there will be an admission that the Socialist Stato will differ from our present makeshift only in substituting an arbitrary division of \proiits for tho largely automatic divisipn by the oxisting system. Then we shall morely have to argue the point whether — seeing that tho existing systctn does work, with all its faults — it is not bolter to take that system as a basis toid try and impiovo it than to take a wild jump into the abyss of an unimagined und unimaginable society on tho chanoo that wo may find solid ground at tho bottom. In tho meantime, our correspondent Mr. William Wolstenholme might bo asked what ho maims by sayigg, that ''thej International Socialist

Party — of which the Wellington Socialists aro only a part — aims to bring about by peaceful means, at the ballotbox, tho remodelling of society" — when the wholo policy of Socialistic congiesses, from, Zurich --to Stuttgart, has tended in the direction of armed at-, tack on society ; and the Edinburgh Socialist, the official organ of the Socialist Labour Party in Britain, in January last summed up the matter by saying : "The capitalists must not deceive themselves : there will be no 'buying out.' ' They must, when the clay comes, be thankful to get off with wholo skins."