STRIKES AND SLAVES

New Zealand Tablet, 3 June 1920, Page 13

STRIKES AND SLAVES

, (By , Ivor Brown, in the New Witness.) . The Constitution of the United States was couched in 'terms l of Natural Rights and richly upholstered in Liberty fabrics so well did the makers succeed that the American rich have ever since reposed upon it with perfect comfort and security. The plutocrats of the West have always laughed scornfully at the British monarchy, while espousing the daughters of British Peers, and their laughter has been particularly aimed at the idea of a slowly broadening and evolutionary democracy, which so gratified the late Lord Tennyson and other well-fed British Liberals. Just as Columbia set up an Edison record in all kinds of mechanical hustle, so she claims to have achieved a record in democracy. No “broadening down” for her, but a happy home where “Freedom swiftly rushes down From President to President.” True, that a few American Socialists think fit now and then to assert one of their many natural and inalienable rights (see -said- Constitution passim) and are promptly and properly gaoled for their insolence. True, that chat-tel-slavery , lived .on in the shores of Freedom, when even the conscience of monarchical England had been touched. True that an English radical, Dickens by name, in a book called Martin Chuzzlewit, pricked the bubble of Western Idealism and for this offence was warned to keep clear of the said shores. True, that the same bubble was re-inflated during the war and finally given the knock-out prick by President Wilson at Paris. True, that while Lord Tennyson was ignorantly prattling of “Nature red in tooth and claw,” Chicago was giving nature a lesson in the ethics of the Jungle. All true, yet the American plutocrat still, we are told, keeps high the flag of Liberty. And now, beneath the flag, American “democrats” are leading the movement to make the strike illegal; and be assured there are plenty of eyes eagerly watching for their victory in our land and all over Europe. Let us consider what the prohibition of the strike implies the answer is as brief as it is brutal: it implies slavery. The slavery of the Southern rich was at least blatant; but the new slavery of the Northern Money-lords will bo as silent as disease or death. If an employed person cannot withdraw his labor from his employer (who is a private person and theoretically his political equal) then In? is plainly bound to that employer, and so bound that the master can impose what wages and conditions he thinks fit. In other words the worker becomes the employer’s property. He is a living tool; and that is how the Greeks defined a slave. His wage is worked out in terms of the cost of living; i.e., it is a subsistence wage. The implication of the subsistence wage is that if a man gets more than enough to keep him and his family alive he ought to be docked of the surplus. The wage of the medieval worker was supposed to be a “just price”; his descendant gets the justenough price. The chattel slave was equally given subsistence, which he drew in keep and kind, not in cash. But the chattel slave had this advantage: ho was a piece of capital, and capital is sacred. If he deteriorated it was so much the worse for the owner, whoso interest it was to keep the slave fit for work. But when the wage-slave deteriorates the employer can get another for nothing. He also makes the wage-slave insure against sickness or unemployment, for which he is not responsible. The master of the chattel-slave has an economic interest in the welfare of the chattel, but the master of the wage-slave has no interest in anything but himself. Thus, if the right to ~ withhold labor is destroyed, the economic status of the worker reaches its lowest degradation. ,He has not even the security of a chattel. Very likely he will be told that the impartial State will see fair . play, when it has taken his right -to strike. A referee might as well guarantee to see fair play when he has tied the hand of one boxer behind . his back and filled the gloves of the other with metal. We all know the impartial State with its impartial persons; from the workers’ point of view it is the greatest' diddling machine the world has ever seen. It is quite possible to defend slavery. The modern slave-driver proclaims that all men are free and equal, whereas Aristotle had explained that some men were born for slavery, being no better than living tools. This is a ruthless assumption, but, once grant it, and Aristotle’s defence of slavery is equally ruthless in its logic. The old philosopher made a false statement about the virtues of slavery and then , stuck, to it; the new sophist makes a true statement about the villainy of slavery and then sticks to the slaves. .;.... . :. . '• V