The Maoriland Worker WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1919 LABOR'S WRESTLE WITH MAMMONISM

Maoriland Worker, Volume 10, Issue 448, 8 October 1919, Page 4

The Maoriland Worker WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1919 LABOR'S WRESTLE WITH MAMMONISM

Labor is not a devil, even while encased in Mammonism; Labor is ever an imprisoned god, writhing' unconsciously or consciously to escape out of Mammonism. —Carlyle. | I " ! ' It appears that the strike of the Railwaymen in Britain has! not had the political significance that has been attached to it. This should be a matter for rejoicing to those upholders of L C)idei i who saw in it an attempt to hold up the community.. This tactic o Capitalism, the attempt to prove that Direct Action is an thhio- is a new one, and shows that the enemies of Labor, constantly pushed from argumentative pillar to post, find it necessary to invent, new lies and half-lies to justify the rotten state oi society based on profit-making, and the debasement and degradation oi lhc°weallli- n-uducera. Thus Mr. Lloyd-George, one oi the most dis-i oLst triclSers who ever lied himself into office in a country where hioh office can be secured only by trickery and hypocrisy, has enlisted the aid of the meture shows, establishments run tor gam to blacken he men who dure to strike for a Living Wage That such a mectium should be used for the half-lies of a discredited political Cheap Jack is significant of much. Here is the message to the people, -flashed on the screens in all the kinemas," giving as distorted a of he truth of the strike as the picture show gives of human life. It is the act of'a political showman who should be acting as a spruiker outside a kinema show, rather than guiding the destinies of Here is the half-lie uttered in all the blazo of artificial light to the people of Britain: — The Government is not fighting* trade unionism, which is recognised a* a factor in the industrial life of the country. The Goverame»t is fighting to prevent extremists of every industrial body attempting to gain their ends by attacking the life of the community, and so bringing untold misery to thousands of innocent people. Thus does the Welsh Faust publish shamelessly to the world the shameful fact that ho has aold himself, body and soul, to tho Capitalist Mcphistopheles. A parody of it will help to its better understanding. The Government is not fighting legitimate Capitalism, which is recognised as a factor in the industrial life of the country. The Government is fighting to prevent idle landlords and greedy monopolists from spoiling the life of the community, and so bringing untold misery to thousands of innocent people. This declaration would have been a lie—a naked lie, although the fact that Capitalism has brought untold misery to thousands oi innocent people is a mere commonplace. To attack the Mc oi the community by means of Direct, Action is a privilege of tbo profiteer, and it became so flagrant during the war that the Government was forced for tho sake of common decency, to make some cftort to curtail it As one means of doing so the railways were taken over by' the State for a term of years, and run by the Government—at a loss it is said. How easy it is for Governments and private concerns to show a loss, when a loss is profitable—to them—is well known, although there are people both at Home and in Urn enlightened country who are simple enough to believe that the official loss is a real one, and that the British railways, like England's commercial supremacy, can be assured only by the starvation of the worker. An article on this page of The Worker will show how these official losses, so convenient to Vested Interests, are manufactured. Concerning Direct Action itself, there is only one sane way of looking at it, and that is as a social phenomenon. Sane folk, even leader-writers of the Press of privilege, do not rail at typhoid fever; they recognise it as the natural (or unnatural) effect of a natural (or unnatural) cause. "What is the cause of Direct Action? Is it sheer wickedness on the part of the worker? Would the workers of Britain traditionally friendly to Law and Order, long-suffering and slow to" wrath, resort to Direct Action without a cause? To ask the question is to'answer it. This same community, which has become all of a. sudden the tender regard of Mr. Lloyd George and the vast army of hired liars, sycophants, and soul prostitutes in the pay of Capitalism, is the community so shamefully and shamelessly exploited by the capitalist and his paid Press and political pimps; it is the community which Capitalism held to ransom during the war; tie community that is poisoned and cheated and robbed and bled white every day of the year for the profit of soulless and bowelless profiti mongers who know no God but Mammon, and no law but "free trade." Parliament, the Press, the Law, the Pulpit, the so-called "intellectuals" for the most part, are all in the pay of King Capital. Capitalism is so powerfully entrenched that all the efforts of Labor to shift it off its back have been futile so far; but Capitalism has got a fright, and instead of relying on its vown power, seeks to dupe tho community into the belief that it is fighting the cause of the people! Never was so flagrant a lie expressed or implied. The Direct Action of the workers of Britain has been justified, if for no other reason thou that- it has forced the Government, for a time at least, to do the X'.\y« v-ovi. nf Xta X .---L-mr-Y -;p'i r;iin tb~ ptiHiV i.-rvic.. t.];f.. in normal times are aiiowect to b. monopoiised.i.y pronXaiaking concerns. Every strike against conditions that make the workers helots is justified, is a highly moral proceeding. It is Nature's method of punishing a community for allowing its real business to be bungled and mis-managed by men whose devotion to Law and Order that exists solely to make it safe for capitalism to suck the blood of the community, is a lying pretext. And yet this strike, far from being what it might have been, and justly—an attempt to upset a dishonest Government, which secured power by lies, and trickery, and bribery, has been a strike merely to prevent the workers from being bludgeoned back to pre-war conditions, or conditions so little better as to be an insult to a people supposed to be free and self-governing. When we think of the moderation of the workers of England we marvel at the endurance of human nature. But there aro limits to this, as Direct Action plainly indicates, Without it an honest (Government is impossible to-day in Britain. The Lloyd George Government can do things and does do them, for which it has no sanction from the people whatever; witness its forcible-feeble efforts to stem the tide, o.f Revolution in Eu~~ia and other couuirio . of Europe-: witness its abject 6U_a:endei* tQ the gwrneyeCi %WW§ 3»4 &9 Ja#4<*4 jnjew»ts.i» the case

»t the Sankey report on the mining industry. The Governingb only a sham; to call it representative of the people, to claim it • standing between a band of working-class robbers and an innoceX 'i el pleas community is enoucrh not only to make the angels weep, bi 1"• *1* -» HI "I / ' » I] "I I' iX s . U' It' ' ' X< ."" ' 1 1 "* ' _ 1' ' 1 ■ ' ' Jm t i ' X'< .j >i v.. _« -tiy U_ t t _ n _i xc>< I j| l .x' J*■ o'. ' X ~> j i . rif ( i v '' « l, " . " v. <• i - ii . t I' i - H-. „, .- * .ii mi_(. a _ -S-'d t, "o. .j . cio. ""n i jsi i it ' *J - >> ?*> , *•■ -i -j yo <. <j-t c. I ' f, _xi a- .> V » a--- ,(\ t _ » . * ? S-_ if -o i»* "-.I all th. p." " " ■> " ' •''"> ~ v '" I r /«isi_tn_s*cis md the puia i ' D l * .Ydon n. Britain is for the iruix* of a ionj> and bh» war, not merely the war which Labor won on the fields of Euro p.-. but the war of the classes, the war of justice, the war to end all wars and strife, by organising industry, and freeing the workeis from the galling tyranny of wage-slavery, and dethroning the brute-god Mammon which holds civilisation in its grip. When the causes oi Direct. Action are done away with, Direct Action will disappear, but not till then. This is the lesson that Lloyd George and a duped community must learn before they can get peace. Capitalism is the one and only enemy of peace, international and industrial, and while the world tolerates it, the world must tolerate its effects. This is a law of Nature no Parliament, nor Act of earthly Parliament, can set aside.