Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin!

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 42, 22 December 1911, Page 15

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin!

''Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for gradated, n<n to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. ;J —Francos Bacon.

A month ago a call was wafted across the wires from Port Pirie to Broken Hill —from "the Liverpool of South Australia" to "the Silver City of N.S.W." ? T\vas the echo of an "ancient cry. A twentieth century ''Come over to Macedonia ajtid help us."

The writer was despatched on a pioneer mission, and for three weeks helped to rattle the dry bones of mental ennui among the watersiders. There we met the spokesmen of the orthodox parties, and -exposed their shams and delusions. We nailed the lie of their Arbitration Act, the infamy of their 'Conscription Act, the impotence of craft unionism and the opportunism of the election cries of their party leaders. And wJien we finished a new wail ascended to heaven from Port Pirie. 'Twas this: "You revolutionists are just destructionists—nought else.. You would tear down and leave* civilisation a chaos."

Now, the mar, whose opposition to any project is mad© manifest in a concentrated bulge of bigotry will always find some ret'd to lean on. We might go on for ever rebutting a string of interminable pseudo argument. Tfio bigot's inscrutable brain will keep generating more abstractions. So fast us one is exploded another "argument" is devised. Anything rather than understand the subject by reading its text-books. How many of these gigantic intellects who come to the Socialist bursting with "arguments" understand anything of the Socialist philosophy? How many have read Marx. En gels. Morris, Hyndman, Kautsky. TJnterrnann, De. Leon or Debs? And how many of them have imbibed the sophistries of the mouthpieces of capitalism? No ■unp,reJTidioe<J mind will refute Jack London's characterisation of the revolutionists: "This is no spontaneous and vague uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people- —a blind and instinctive recoil from hurt. On the contrary, the propaganda is intellectual —the movement is based upon economic necessity and is in line with social evolution., 'while the miserable people have not yet revolted. The revolutionist is no starved and diseased slave in the shambles at the bottom of the social pit. but is, in the main, a hearty, well-fed working-man, who sees the shambles waiting for him and his children, and declines to descend. The very miserable people are too helpless to help themselves- But they are being helped, and the day is not far distant when their nimikvs will go to swell the ranks of the revolutionists.-

So! The typical! reuclwtjonist Is a man who retains his reental ballast so far that fao sees fSie afesc-titte futility of monkeying with capitalist paiittcs He will not be caught up in the vortex of hypnotic election cries that mean nothing esssntia! to him. Being such, he knows the iVTiy of taknng a leap into darkness, where a black abyss stretches at his feet. He comes not to destroy, but to fulfil. "Fulfil what? Fulfil the mission of the working-class. The mission that began in the dark flays of the past, when Spartacus led armies of chattel slaves in revolt against their tyrant owners. The mission that has gained momentum mere and more as it has come ringing down the centuries —the historic mission of working-class deliverance from industrial despotism.

iJoes such ircvolve the destruction of society ? Capitalism involves the destruction of capitalism. Socialism wrecks and breaks the graven images of society. There are millions of people, all of the working-class, in every big capitalist country who are not decently fed, clothed, and .sheltered. Meantime the trusts are developing to the sole advantage of the trust magnates. Society is ever getting a greater command over nature per medium of improved machines. Yet men are being physically, mentally, spiritually debauched. Women are" being physically, mentally, spiritual] v prostituted. Children, through "poverty, are being assassinated A pernicious environment coming out of the capitalist system _of production, is destroying the high purpose of youth and dwarfing the manhood and womanhood of age. Art, music, poetry, culture, literature, science, philosophy, all the joys ofmtellectual and classical living that should be shared by the ' rabble are estranged and only because the common people have got to concentrate their thoughts and energy and time on the * struggle for existence. Isot only is the hnmSii raco being intellectually doomed but also spiritually damned- Even Love the greatest thing m the world, is Wing proetitutfid.by nvercenary motives on the marriage altar. Lhe lamp <-f tho soul has gone out. All tho canting custodians of capi--I*l "o tho rnnt-rary, these evadonce -£ d,w «f our civilisation All our orivi* |>latit.u«3«H. all our bourgeois all our arb.tration and tariff and defence schemes,

5y CHAS. W. CREEN.

ill the paraphernalia of politics are jowerl^-ss'lWorr* t're debacle. Rooted right in the soil of the capitalist system of production for profit are Jig fangs that are inoculating a virus into the at mo sphere of our social life. No power, absolutely no power short of a world revolution can save this civilisation from going the road of former civilisations. The handwriting is on the wall. Capitalism is weighed in the balance* —and found wanting.

Hence, every man who is not either a fool or utterly enmeshed in the canting politics of the capitalist parties allies himself with the Internationalist Socialist Tarty., the party that stands for such a revolution as will materially affect the roots of society to such an extent that Love and Reason and all the bounding impulses that now lie dormant and moribund will not sink into the slough of a capitalist carnivora. Capitalism involves the Restriction of society. Socialism involves the destruction of capitalism and the perpetuation of society. Q.E.D. To-day, in the capitalist world, thirty million registered, revolutionists are banded together to breok the power of the capitalist faction by taking Jiom it all that it has taken from \)>e, toiJing millions. This vast army of revolution constitutes a serious menace to the powers that prey. And the list is being augmented every clay. Every intelligent toiler who understands Socialism registers his name in the books of the. revolutionary army. The worker who is not a social revolutionist is either a. blanky nincompoop or » scheming opportunist. Anyhow, these revolutionists liave got their magazine of mental dynamite under the shambles of capitalist disorder, and somehow, somewhere, somewhen, a gang of industrial despots will feel the tension too titanic 3 will feel thear mighty trust sliding out of their octopuslifce ; grip, as the sands slide into the"sea from the seashore. That will be the signal for the rising, the beginning of the end. Theiij the world over, will the intelligently organised hosts of Labor rise in the might of their class union and lock out the dividend drawers.

"These things shall b<y' but not before the world's workers are intelligent enough to bp class conscious enough to refuse to be side-tracked by votecatching labor apostates. The Socialists won't permit the revolution to be precipitated. They themselves will strike the hour of the general lock-out of the world's capitalists.

And then? On the morrow of the revolution the system of wages and profits will end for ever. Classes must fnd when the substratum of the social division —class ownership —is cut from under society. The industrial mechanism will be collectively owned by the wealth-producers instead of by a class of pront-scoopers. Then, wlheii the material commodities, the products of labor, are sold on the markets, their value will go back to the producers instead of being divided as profits and wages between owners who are nonproducers and globe-trotters, and producers who are non-owners and wageslaves. Every man and woman will be credited with £ s. d. or better, labor notes, equivalent to the value of his or her labor gives out to society.

Every young man and woman- will go into the world of work endowed with tho most efficient education conceivable, every erstwhile capitalist and financier, and the great army of necessary and unnecessary parasites under competitive capitalism, clerks, commercial travellers, agents, canvassers, advertisers, shopkeepers. carters, tramps, prostitutes, politicians, soldiers, marines, police, criminals, eto.. etc., will give their services to necessary productive labor. Every useful invention and patent thht is suppressed by organised capital to-day because human labor power is cheaper from its standpoint will be introduced. Incentive will be given to the inventor. Machinery will be utilised, not to entrench a class deeper in despotism, but to ennoble labor and to throw out the hours of toil. The wealth-prochicerp in mine, mill, farm, factory and workshop will elect their own managers, foremen and necessary bosses, and pay them for their services even as the unionists to-day elect their officials. No trust magnates can live in affluence upon unpaid labor when social ownership supersedes class and individual ownership. No useful class will be in the power of an idle class, fawning at its feet begging the right to be exploited so that it might exist. No vast armies and mighty navies will be maintained by nations to cudgel for the profits _of world labor markets and further imperialist schemes. Production will be carried on for the use and service of all humanity, and not for tiie profit of a privileged section of humanity. Then "In aisles majestic, halls of pride, Groves, gardens, baths and galleries, Manhood and youth and age shall meet

To crow by converse inly wise. Now" arts shall bloom of loftier mould And music thrill the skies, \nd pvory life shall be a song, When all tlui earth is para-dlso."