We are reprinting this article published in Fightback, Ireland – because
the arguments used by Connolly in answering the capitalists are as valid
today as when they were written in 1901. Taken from the Workers’ Republic, May 1901.
James ConnollyThe
current economic meltdown was created as a result of a capitalist
crisis starting in the USA which caused the credit bubble to burst
triggering a banking crisis. Yet if you listen to or watch the bourgeois
politicians on RTÉ (state television) the reason there is a crisis in Ireland is down to
the public sector workers. The Irish working class are to be forced to
pay out billions to prop up Allied Irish Bank, while the speculators bet
on government bonds. Cowen and Lenihan represent a ruling class
government fighting a one side d class war against the working class.
Connolly would have recognised them for precisely what they are.
Socialists are always accused of trying to create ill feeling, to
bring about a class struggle, to “set class against class”. Of course,
the real fact is, we only point out what already exists, analysing the
political and industrial institutions under which we live and critically
noting the forces which produce them in any given phase. The necessary
result of our analysis is to discover that the very basis of Society
today is a struggle between two classes, the Landlord and Capitalist who
own all the means of production, and the propertyless class who are
only allowed to use and operate these means of life when it suits the
convenience or interest of members of the other class to allow them.
The average worker has no clear, reasoned out knowledge of this, but
he has a more or less dim perception of the fact borne in upon his slow
intellect through the channel of his daily experience of the struggle
for life. His masters who are interested in keeping him in that
plentiful lack of knowledge are always careful to raise the cry “Capital
and labour are brothers” and don’t “set class against class”. Armed
thus, mentally, with the illogical rot preached to him by his fleecers
the “man in the street” regards the Socialist as, well – perhaps right
enough, but rather “extreme”. We Socialist workers who know the tricks
by which our fellows are deceived and kept in subjection are filled with
disgust, mingled with pity.
We have always proclaimed that, while the worker is not
class-conscious – that is, knowing and understanding his class
subjection and its cause, and therefore knowing and understanding his
class interest in overthrowing the institutions which keep him so – it
is not so with the landlord and capitalist. They, as a rule, are
thoroughly class-conscious and in all their measures never lose sight of
the cardinal principle of the class struggle. While the average worker
makes a great show of having nothing much to do with politics, the other
class have calculated to a nicety its exact value not merely to their
whole class, but even to each of their sections. All government is
therefore class government; and that the middle-class and aristocratic
swindlers who hold the reins of political power know it is amply proved
by the following extracts from speeches. Thus Lord Rosebery [1], addressing the Wolverhampton Chamber of Commerce:
“He was one of those who held chambers of commerce in the highest
respect. In the first place they focussed the opinion of a great and
governing class – a class which had governed Great Britain in the past,
and which he was not prepared to say did not govern it in the present.”
But the Socialist is so extreme. He sets class against class.
Mr McNeill moved a resolution in the House of Commons condemning the
holding of company directorships by members of the government and Mr C.
Bannerman supported him. Thus spoke Mr Balfour [2] in reply:
“I do not profess to know in what the right honourable gentleman has
his money invested, but, if he has it invested in anything in this
country, there is scarcely a piece of legislation passed through this
house that does not affect his interests either directly or
indirectly.”
But the Socialist is so extreme. He talks of capitalist government.
Notes
1. Former Liberal prime minister of Britain.
2.
A.J. Balfour was Britain’s Tory prime minister at this time; Henry
Campbell-Bannerman led the Liberal opposition before succeeding Balfour.
[Source: Class Government and Class War (from the Workers’ Republic, May 1901)]