The Editorial “I”

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 42, 22 December 1911, Page 6

The Editorial “I”

Christmas and the Working-

Glass.*

The light of. the dawning begins to awaken*

The city of thraldom is biding its doom;

ffhe gates of the stronghold of Hate been ehaken,, Th» voice of the people ifl epeaking, is speaking,

The heart of the people is beating, is beating!

Qh, aobbing of joy, oh, weeping of laughter—

The city is taken, the city is taken!

For the reason probably that the carnival spirit is- inhexentj ie- instinctive, in mankind, Christmasi with, its holidays, its difference, its change, ie> everwelcome. Glory be I that all the saving graces of outraged' humanity are Bot quite crushed to extinction.

Yet upon what. a> tragical foundation Christmas- celebrated.X Dared we be serious—Bin«erely and solemnly; serious—at this time of the fear we should laugh not with gladness but in madness. Only ift refusing to think and in riotc&usly crying- "Begone dnll care" can we avoidi and escape Life's terrible realities, and pass on. irar wild way rejoicing.

After all, it is a pathetically-sad joy-. For what has the wer.Mng-class to do with Christmas?

Stripped; bare of, pretence and' make* believe and hallucination, this- Christmas festival is but a hypocritical , evanon of actualities —» hollow mockery, ; & shanr of damnable ignorance or rascality.

I accuse it;. I impeacfr itl

Christmas! pshaw! a gigantic humJfrug and lotus drug- in, diabolical' association —THAT is Christmas. Christianity plus, chloroform, carols plus* charity, self-righteousness- plus robbery, comradeship; plus cant—that, too,, is Christmas. It gives- the Kβ in the facts to all the astounding claims' made for it: is brazen, contemptible, Gargantuan denial of its own fundamental*.

Peace and goodwill, brotherhood and' God's Kingdom on Earth, golden rule end justice—for these Jesus' was born. At Ghristmas-tide amid angelic hallelujahs ; for these he sweated and fought; for these he went to the Cross- » branded revolutionist.

Then developed and strengthened that mighty and magnificent Church which won a world to its conquering feet a<nd —awful indictment! —forgot its founder in its grandeur.

Yet, never Peace, never Goodwill', never Justice. Nor now. Nor now 1

All this is trite and possibly because it is so- very trite its terrible meaning is so insanely obscured.

Nevertheless, this naked- fact is at once the supremest reflection upon Christmas and the blazing sign of the stupidity and sterility of its apologists.

Consider! Two thousand years, say,. of the alleged propagation, of peace, goodwill and justice—and never so little of any in this fruitful world of ours. Never so little! Seize the mountainous , import of the statement.

Give mc pause to remind the reader that I have no interest in posing asalarmist, nor in dealing in extravagance and sensation. I am past, screaming for an audience. Nor do 1 desire to appear as irreverent or blasphemous. I am through that stage also. Quite calmly and quite deliberately I state a fact: only the brutal, the foolish and the cowardly will turn aside from the truth.

This IS the Truth: Never so little of Goodwill and Justice as in this wonderful twentieth century- —heir. of the ages, inheritor of almost- miraculous science, invention discovery, in some respects God among the 200,----000 years of man's reign.

And from the first Christmas to the present one those claiming to be chosen, custodians of highest ethics, very mouthpieces of the Most High, have cried "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men," and "Thy Kingdom come on. earth as it is in heaven,. r. Indeed a baffling and outrageous commentary f

Do not let us fall into the erroy of blaming Jesus. Nor need we blame His so-called followers. What* we must blame I shall not here stay to say —£ cock your attention to the evwience.

Hut, firstly } as to Jesus: I submit that only in recent times are- we> seeing Lhe Roal Jesus, the man Behindt the\ Church mask, and? that the *eat Jeeos

•Written for "Barrier Daily Truth.," Christmas number, 1910 x &Ecf re* printed by D«rniiesion.

i<? i»fij»ifiely tnwr,, greater an# grah-der than taVoiifoer.

Bern, in BetMteheia, they say, Gtali-tea-B' teacher and; gentle Nazarene, He has- been hidden from His people for centuuies* Now he is coming to His owns, and is increasingly revealed for the' worfeing-clasa leader He> was. Jesus was agitator,, foe of law and order, visionary, irreconcilable, extremist, iconoclast. He wished to destroy m order to rebuild. He denied creed, stamped upon ceremonial, scourged the hy/poerites , , the rich and the mammonworshippers, inveighed against injustice, tyranny and bigotry, and loved the common people. He lived His simple rebel' life trying -to dethrone injustice andi to install love, liberty and life.

In; the light of proletarian research there- Gan be no questioning the revolutionary connection', interests, and teachings of Jesus?, landless , plebeian and social! outcast. He was identified closely with the industrial discontent and , ; with the agitatory and educative movement of His time, and sought beyond'- question, and: primarily, the betterment of. economic conditions- .

S And* to-day it is- the class of. which ■ Jesus was a member that is rescuing 'Him. from the myth,, superstition and ' depravity into wbicli He and His misj sion have been submerged; "Truth" ; readers* ought to obtain from the Public Library "The Silver Cross," by Eugene I Sue; "The Ancient Lowly," by Ward; ;"The World's* Involutions," by Unterihann, so as to accurately glimpse the i. environment' and' nature of Him, they ■called "Messiah.' , These books give i '-living pictures, ,, so to speak, of the [atmosphere and surroundings in which iHfe moved' andt worked. Coupled witli Ithe? ineaddng, o£ Kenan's "Life of ; [ and Ctoddf s "Jesus of Nazarietli," the works, indicated will beget a [ lasting: and majestic impression of a I mysterious , and , eternal figure. j•• • » I As* for th-& evidence to which refer"l enee Jjtas< been made, it is in the first i place undeniable that the statistics reflating to war and-armaments, to indusi tidal; conflict j to disease and depravity, ■to i.nsmorality r to adulteration, to —but j why continue:?—to every ill and evil ifrom. Genesis to Revelations, were never jso big and terrifying. ■j Peace? Why, we haven't even got I rid : of war between races, to say northing of internecine war. The "great'vest? ,, nations are the nations with the j most devastating machines for murder. ;! Goodwill? Why the essence of our • commercial system is, "Do others or tPey will dv you' , Tj get on to the I shoulders* of one r s fellows and crush into :;the gutters all who block the climb i& ! the imperative condition of success. "; Justice? Why, workers are robbed 'of four-fifths of the product of their ■ labor, and hence incalculable destitution, want, and? wretchedness. Wealth ;in greater abundance than in any period lof history—twenfty times more than we can consume, ten times more than, fifty years ago—and fouler and blacker pov- ] erty more widespread than under Phar- ; aoh, Nero, Caesar, Alexander the ; Great, and Napoleon counted together. ;• It is alone the lack of space that I prevents mc parading capitalistic staI tisties of extraordinary importance. iThen, again, I know that though we »pile up statistics as high as heaven it 'will not make an alteration in the iniquitous, unequal distribution of wealth. : The inevitable alteration will not come becau&e of the evidence for it, but because of its necessity. !(. What IS is there for all to see? Unemployment, prostitution, want and the ! fear of want, economic insecurity and [worry; fifteen millions on the poverty \ line in Great Britain and more in the I same- po&ition. in America, and our proportionate percentage in Australia ; submerged tenth in every city; in New ; York, 100 3 000 girls and women compelled to live by selling their virtue, and everywhere ; a white slave traf- ' fie so large and demoralising as last I year to have upheaved England and the iUnited States; thousands of miners i every years maimed or blown to atoms, j and! more killed by diseases contracted in earning a livelihood; the blood toll jin all industries only excelled by the I callousness of society after the slaugh[■■fcej— Q,rid bo on for volumes. EveryilwheTe* — f r Freedom weeps, S; Wrong rules , the land, ; And waiting justice sleeps. I * • * • WL&t has the working-class to do ?with- a Christmas that condones and ;'buttresses- sucfe conditions of devilry infamy? Let the workers say a : word of protest, and they will be told fjtfoat Jesus said: "The poor ye have [always with you"; as if that could ['possibly excuse the wantonness a»tl •cruelty which follow from the simple but swindling process called Production H&f: Profi*. Jesus, anyway, used the ''words as- words-, of rep-roach-. One ? t notice th« same hurry to quote •■tfte comma"nd ; : "Sell-all tftat.tbcro bast". give to the po©F."

Though I have said that the worker need not blanre ike Church for what, to-day obtains, I wish hliey oouls shamf that Church. ;

What they have to blame and to understand is- that capitalism is the enemy. It isn't even consciously the enemy, but because it IS there, Mardupness, depression and pain, are alone possible.

It comes about in this way: Each man earns more than he gets (for he would not be given work unless he was profitable), and what he doesn't get forms a heap, which, for want of consumption, in time grows so big that until it is reduced the worker is- thrown out of work; and hence all our miseries. If the worker got what he earned (the full product of his labor) there could be. no surplus and consequently no overproduction ; and therefore no ©A'ercrowded warehouses, glutted markets, commercial crises, national panics.

So long as a a man has to make, say, five knives in order to possess one, so long will he be robbed'/ and to that robbery will be traceable poverty, starvation, sexual rottenness, and all the horrors under capitalism.

Is this not clear?

Is it not transparently clear that the cause of poverty is production for profit, and that production for use would solve all our difficulties?

Is it not clear that you — VOI T , working-class reader —are in. want because- you have either no opportunity to produce- wealth or because what you produce is taken or thi«ved/froi», y-ovt? When the working-class has this little lesson in economics it will have learnt; why there isn't under capitalism enough work to go founds and why this state oi affairs- is necessary to the continuance of capitalism.

At tins Christmas, 19tO- 3 surely it is dreadful to know that if we had "A merry Cliristmas ,, for aH —that is to say, if we lifted every girl from the streets and every man from crinae-—it would result in the competition amongst ourselves for a livelihood being harder and fiercer and poorer ? ,

Indeed, the workers have nothing to do with Christmas- other than U> curse it, and the sin and shame and corruption it cloaks and shields.

Our Christmas is capitalistic, and the supreme lesson of this Christmastide is that while we permit capitalistic Christmases, we shall permit capitalism to be the* devourer of working-class children, raper of work-ing-class womanhood, defiler of work-ing-class manhood.

For a Christmas that would give them Justice, Avhat would not the working-class do ?

It shall have that Christmas if it first- crush the capitalist earnivori at their gorgon-feast of youthful virtue and strength.

It shall have picnic instead of panic

It shall (in Broken Hill) have itsfull of healthy, glorious life, fearless of ; that dreaded strip of Crimson which athwart the Trades Hall dirges the doom of another of the despoiled andi hunted working-class.

But it must emancipate itself. ' It, must strike at the root of evil, get at the cause of woes, keep its eye glued to the base.

It must demand production for use

For only under production for use shall Walt Whitman's " Great City " be born:—

Where, the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and bards; Where the city stands that is beloved, by theses and loves them in return and understands; them; Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words and deeds;

Where thrift is in its place, and prudence is in its place; Where the men and women think lightly of the laws,* Where the slave ceases and the master of slaves ceases; Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons; Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the. whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves. THE EYE.