Labor Value Theory – WE NEVER FORGET

Quote Mother Jones, Coming of the Lord, Cnc Pst p6, July 23, 1902 —————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 18, 1903
“Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by Editor Algie M. Simons

From the International Socialist Review of January 1903:

Bishop Spalding and Socialism.*
[by A. M. Simons]
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[Part II of II]

Again, in [Bishop Spalding’s] recognition of the class character of our present law, he comes very close to Socialism. Speaking of punishment for crime, he says:

The delinquents who are incarcerated are chiefly the poor, who had they money to pay the fines would escape punishment. The heaviest punishment is inflicted on the most helpless, and frequently on the least guilty; and thus the morally weak, the victims of unfortunate environments, are degraded, hardened, and made habitual offenders.

I do not wish to push the matter too far and to ascribe too great a comprehension of or favorable attitude towards Socialism on the part of Bishop Spalding. But on page 58 we see some thing that reads very like a description of the rise of proletarian class consciousness. He says:

The laborers, who in proportion as their minds have been awakened, have become conscious of the hardships and limitations to which they are subject, feel this more keenly than any other class, and hence they have formed in numerable organizations to protect their rights and promote their interests.

Finally, we would seldom find a harsher indictment against the capitalist system than is to be found on pages 173 and 174:

The political and social conditions which involve the physical deterioration and the mental and moral degradation of multitudes are barbarous, and unless they are improved must lead to the ruin of the State. From this point of view, which is the only true point of view, our present economic and commercial systems are subversive of civilization. They sacrifice men to money; wisdom and virtue to cheap production and the amassing of capital. They foster greed in the stronger and hate in the weaker. They drive the nations to competitive struggles which are as cruel as war, and in the final results more disastrous; for their tendency is to make the rich vulgar and heartless, and the poor reckless and vicious. As stratagems and lies are considered lawful in war, so in the warfare of commercial competition opinion leans to the view that whatever may be done with impunity is right. The adulteration of food and drink, the watering of stocks, the bribing of legislators, the crushing of weaker concerns, the enforced idleness of thousands, who are thereby driven to despair and starvation, are not looked upon as lying within the domain of morals, any more than the shooting of a man in battle is considered a question of morality. The degradation and ruin of innumerable individuals are implications of the law of competition, just as in the struggle for existence there is a world-crushing and destruction of the weak by the strong.

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Women of the World, Unite.
You have double chains to lose
and you have the world to gain.
-May Wood Simons
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Hellraisers Journal – Sunday November 9, 1902
“How I Became a Socialist” by May Wood Simons

From The Comrade of November 1902:

How I Became a Socialist.

VIII.
By MAY WOOD SIMONS

“Day’s Wages for Day’s Work.” Over and over again I had read the rugged lines of Carlyle’s “Past and Present” in my university days. It all came back to me one summer vacation when I returned to our Wisconsin town to find it excited over the trial of a favorite professor at the State University.

“Socialism” was then a new word to me and had little or no meaning, but my curiosity led me to at once procure and read the book that was arousing the commotion-R. T. Ely’s “Socialism and Social Reform.” I read it several times and then fell to studying his “French and German Socialism” I was far more impressed by his statement of Socialism than by his objection to it. The latter seemed to me very weak.

In the fall when I returned to Northwestern University I began the reading of Ruskin on the one hand and the study of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill’s “Principles of Political Economy” on the other. Fortunately I was not so fascinated by Mill’s wonderful logic and beautiful style that I lost my spirit of criticism. Hence I did not acquiesce blindly in his conclusions as did the majority of my fellow students. The “Wage Fund” theory, so universally accepted in the economics department, was to me a stumbling block. Long before reading Marx I came upon the Labor Value theory in Mills and Ricardo, and as I turn over my old note-books, I find them filled with quotations from Mill, that set forth the Class Struggle as plainly as any Socialist ever stated it. These contradictions I could not explain. There was no one to tell me of Mill’s change of mind, and not until I became interested in his personality, and took up his autobiography, did I find that before he died he called himself a Socialist.

My economic studies continued through the other classical writers to the Austrian, German and later American economists, and at each step I felt that I must get out of this mass of dead hair-splitting and mental calisthenics, and find something alive in the way of economics. Their a priori statements and apparent disregard of actual conditions and tendencies was evident to me.

At a bookstore I one day came upon Arnold Toynbee’s “Industrial Revolution.” As I read it I felt that here was something that gave me more of economics than the theoreticians possibly could. My next book was Marx’s “Capital.” I had heard of it before as “The Bible of the Working Classes.” I studied it carefully. The first thing that impressed me was his great scholarship and his masterly chapters on industrial history. The labor value theory was again brought to my attention, and for the first time, surplus value. Here, said I, is the secret of capitalism. When I had obtained the “Manifesto” and Engels’ little book on “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” and read them, I was a convert to Socialism.

Quite accidentally I had come into contact with settlement work, at Hull House and the Northwestern University Settlement. I frequently went on “slumming” trips, and having been brought up in a country town, where poverty shows few of its horrible features, I was suddenly made aware that a worse than the Inferno of Dante existed on earth. In the strike of 1894 I took the greatest interest, and my only regret was that I could not be a man on the field of action.

I had originally planned that on finishing my university work I would take a theological course preparatory to entering the ministry, in which work I had already engaged to some extent. I found, however, that my university studies had unfitted me for this, and I turned to the profession of teaching for the next few years. Here I continued my economic and sociological studies and began to fully grasp the idea of Socialism as a philosophy of society. For the first time I felt the inadequacy of our school methods and the existence of class education, and I saw that education too must pass through a revolution.

The years from 1897-99 were spent in or near the Chicago University Settlement. At this time I became a member of a branch of the Socialist Labor party. I knew little or nothing of politics, less of Socialist party matters, or of the international movement. During these two years I spent four hours a day in the office of the Bureau of Charities. Night after night that stream of haggard faces kept me company in dreams. There were three distinct stages in my attitude of mind toward this problem of poverty. The sentiment of sympathy dominated during the first stage. Then the whole thing became mechanical. This in turn gave way to a fierce rebellion against the conditions that made people come begging for a pittance. Two years spent in this settlement and charity work forced both my husband and myself to leave it and give our whole time to the Socialist cause.

[Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From The Comrade: “How I Became a Socialist” by May Wood Simons, Eighth of Ongoing Series” →