Labour policy—false and true

To appreciate the Labour Party’s industrial policy, it is necessary to know, at least in outline, the general policy of which the former is a part. As the basis of all social reform it is contended that “the individualistic system of capitalist production based on the private ownership and competitive administration of land and capital, with its reckless profiteering and wage slavery, its glorification of the unhampered struggle for the means of life, and its hypocritical pretence of the survival of the fittest, must go.” With it must be eradicated the “monstrous inequality of circumstances which it produces, and the degradation and brutalization, both moral and spiritual, resulting from it”—“along with it must disappear the present political system, enshrining the ideas in which the capitalistic system naturally finds expression.” The Labour Party advances a new basis of social reorganization; it proposes to reconstruct society on four pillars resting upon the common foundation of “the democratic control of society in all its activities.” These four pillars are: “(1) Universal enforcement of the national minimum; (2) the democratic control of industry; (3) a revolution in national finance; and (4) the surplus wealth for the common good.”

A National Minimum Standard of Living

The principle of the national minimum, it is claimed, contrasts sharply with the principle of the capitalistic system, expressed either by Liberal or Conservative policy. By the national minimum is meant the assurance for every member of the community of a standard of life conferring a reasonable minimum of health, education, leisure and subsistence. One chief element is a legal minimum wage, to be revised according to the level of current prices. As part of this national minimum, the ambiguous principle of “equal pay for equal work” is postulated in all occupations in which both sexes are engaged. The Party also demands that the Government shall prevent unemployment, and should it fail to secure for every willing worker a suitable situation at the standard rate of wages, it shall provide such a worker with maintenance in the form of out-of-work benefit paid through his Trade Union. The National Unemployment Insurance Scheme should, it is insisted, be extended, on a non-contributory basis, to every occupation. What is affirmed as a fundamental is that “in one way or another remunerative employment or honourable maintenance must be found for every willing worker by hand or by brain in bad times as well as in good.” Complete provision against involuntary destitution in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, must be assured for every member of the community.

Effective Personal Freedom

Democracy, the Labour Party asserts, implies effective personal freedom, and involves the complete removal of all war-time restrictions on liberty of speech, publication, press, travel, choice of residence, kind of employment, and especially of any obligation for military service. These sentiments, strange to say, come from the Party which denies the right of the non-Union operative to work; and which claims for Trade Unions the right to picket and the other privileges afforded by the Trade Disputes Act, 1906. On the same principle, complete political rights are demanded for every adult irrespective of sex, and for every minority, the right to full proportionate representation in Parliament. The abolition of the House of Lords is demanded, with the elimination from any new second Chamber of any qualification based on heredity. Separate statutory legislative assemblies are claimed for Scotland, Wales and England, with autonomous administration in local matters; Parliament at Westminster to be merely a Federal Assembly for Great Britain, controlling the Ministers responsible for departments of central government; these Ministers, with others representing the Dominions and India, to form a Cabinet for federal affairs of the British Commonwealth.

Socialization of Land and Industry

The Labour Party stands for the removal from industry of the private employer and the capitalist, the introduction of a new “scientific re-organization of the national industries,” purged from the degradation of individual profiteering, and regenerated on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production; the equitable sharing of the output among all who assist in any capacity in production; and the adoption of “democratic control of industry.”

Accordingly the Labour Party would immediately establish the common ownership of land, the common ownership and administration of railways and canals, and their consolidation with harbours, roads, posts, telegraphs, and the ocean-going steamer lines into a national service of Communication and Transport, to be worked “unhampered by capitalist, private or purely local interests, and with a steadily increasing participation of the organized workers in the management, both central and local, exclusively for the common good.” So also it would erect a score of national central electrical generating stations, with which all municipal electrical plants would be connected for distribution purposes. For similar reasons, the Party demands the immediate nationalization of coal-mines, with steadily increasing participation in the management, both central and local, of the various grades of persons employed; and insists that the retail distribution of household coal should be undertaken by the municipal authorities or county councils, the purpose to be achieved being the distribution in every local district of household coal of standard quality at a fixed and uniform price “as unalterable as the penny postage stamp.” The State expropriation of profit-making industrial insurance companies is urged, also the assumption by Government of the whole business of life insurance. Much stress is laid upon the alleged necessity that Government should take the manufacture and retailing of intoxicants out of the hands of persons who find profit in promoting the utmost possible consumption of them, and that each local authority should deal with “the trade” within its district on the basis of local veto or limitation of licences or other system of regulation.

Admittedly alive to the evils of centralization and the restrictions of bureaucracy, the Party claims a free hand for local authorities, assisted by grants-in-aid from Government sources, to extend widely the scope of municipal enterprise. Local authorities should, it is asserted, not only retail coal, but supply milk, and engage in other similar spheres of trade. All members of local bodies ought, it is said, to receive their necessary travelling expenses, and also be paid for time spent by them on the public service.

The Labour Party would re-organize the whole educational system from the nursery school to the university “on the basis of social equality”; “each educational institution, irrespective of social class or wealth, to be open to every member of the community on terms within his reach”—everything in the nature of military training to be absolutely prohibited. In regard to public health, the Labour Party holds that Government should build at the national expense the requisite number of dwelling houses, spacious and healthy, each having four or five rooms, larder, scullery, cupboards, and fitted bath, spaced not more than ten or twelve to the acre, and provided with a garden. National provision for the prevention and treatment of disease, and the care of orphans, infirm, incapacitated, and aged persons is also included as an indispensable part of Labour’s policy.

In regard to agriculture and rural life, the Party has formulated a number of proposals based on the Government’s immediately assuming control of the nation’s agricultural land, and—

The means proposed to attain this end are large national farms, small holdings made accessible to practical agriculturists, municipal agricultural enterprises, and farms let to Co-operative Societies and other approved tenants, under a national guarantee against losses due to bad seasons. All distribution of agricultural food-stuffs—from milk and vegetables up to bread and meat—is to be taken out of the hands of dealers and shopkeepers, and is to be effected by Co-operative Societies and local authorities “with equitable compensation for all interests expropriated or displaced.”

The Labour Party also advocates Government importation of raw materials and food-commodities, and Government control of the shipping, woollen, clothing, milling, and other similar industries; the rationing both of raw material and of food commodities, and the fixing of all prices on the basis of accurate costing, so as to eliminate profiteering. It is, the Labour Party says—

A Revolution in Public Finance

A complete revolution in national finance is overdue, in the opinion of the Labour Party. Too long, it says, has our national finance been regulated on a basis opposed to the teaching of political economy, according to the views of the possessing classes and the desire for profits of the financiers. There ought to be such a system of taxation “as will secure all the necessary revenue to the Government without encroaching on the prescribed national minimum standard of life of any family, without hampering production or discouraging any useful personal effort, and with the closest possible approximation to equality of sacrifice.” The Labour Party accordingly would institute direct taxation of all incomes exceeding the necessary cost of family maintenance, and the direct taxation of private fortunes both during life and at death for the redemption of the National Debt. It opposes taxation calculated to increase the price of food or necessaries of life, and holds that indirect taxation of commodities, whether by customs or excise, should be limited to “luxuries.” It would retain and increase the excess-profits tax and, until nationalization of minerals, the mineral-rights duty. The unearned increment of urban land and mineral values it would divert by taxation wholly into the public exchequer. Death duties would be regraduated and heavily increased, so as to turn into the national coffers all the wealth of every person deceased in excess of a quite moderate amount to be left for family provision. In addition, the Labour Party stands for “conscription of wealth,” described as “a capital levy, chargeable, like death duties, on all property, with exemption of the smallest savings up to £1,000, but rising rapidly in percentage with the value of the property, for the purpose of freeing the nation of as large an amount as possible of its present load of interest-bearing debt.” Co-operative Societies would be left entirely free from this levy.

The Surplus Wealth for the Common Good

The fourth principle of the Labour Party’s policy of social reconstruction is “the diversion to the common good of the surplus over the expenditure required for the maintenance of the national minimum of life.” This surplus is said to be embodied in the riches of the mines, the rental value of lands superior to the margin of cultivation, the extra profits of fortunate capitalists, now alleged to be absorbed by individual proprietors, and devoted to the senseless luxury of the idle rich. It is to be secured by nationalization and municipalization, and by steeply graduated taxation of private income and riches. From it is to be drawn the new capital which the community day by day will require for the perpetual improvement and increase of its various enterprises, and for which it is said to be dependent now on the usury-exacting financier.

International Co-operation

From Labour’s home policy we turn to foreign affairs. Its international aims are “peace and co-operation between nations; the avoidance of anything making for international hostility; the development of international co-operation in the League of Nations,” and “an ever-increasing intercourse, a constantly developing exchange of commodities, a steadily growing mutual understanding, a continually expanding friendly co-operation among all the peoples of the world.” “Imperialism,” defined to mean extension of empire over countries without reference to the wishes of the inhabitants of those countries, is repudiated as rooted in capitalism, and springing only from a desire for profits and for selfish exploitation of the natural resources belonging solely to those inhabitants. “Protectionism” in any form, whether by prohibitions on imports, embargoes, tariffs, differential shipping or railway rates, for the purpose of limiting the amount or restricting the free flow of foreign commodities into this country, is unreservedly condemned. Protection for the benefit of a particular trade, or all trades, while it may conduce to the immediate advantage of Labour, is presumed to operate to the greater ultimate advantage of the capitalist, and to strengthen his position. Anything tending to such a result is “contrary to the true interests of Labour.” Protection is said to lead to capitalistic rings, combinations and trusts, higher prices, diminished consumption, reduced employment. This being so, Labour favours the free importation of all foreign goods, and their sale at rates as low as are consistent with their manufacture under unsweated labour conditions in their land of origin.

No Protective Tariffs

All tariffs, especially if differential, must, so Labour contends, inevitably create international friction, retaliation, enmity, and ultimately active hostilities, and are to be more especially discarded, inasmuch as they are the favourite instrument of capitalistic groups eager to make profits out of international ruptures. Labour accordingly objects to the protection of key industries for purposes of national safety. “It is impossible to make either the British Empire or the British Isles self-contained or self-supporting. Even if practicable, the policy of self-sufficiency would indicate a provocative intention to maintain a national condition of perpetual preparation for war.” Therefore, except so far as is necessary to avoid the spread of disease or prevention of accidents, there must be no restriction on the transit or importation of any commodity. Imperial preference is likewise rejected as a selfish attempt to reserve for the inhabitants of the British Empire the raw materials and markets of the Empire, a course incompatible with any kind of lasting peace, having regard to the resentment it would provoke amongst the nations excluded from participating in these raw materials or from supplying our imperial markets. Labour calls for “the open door” in all our Colonies and Dependencies, and in “non-adult countries,” meaning by this term “exploitable countries” like China and Africa. The position of the capitalist has been so undermined by Labour’s attack at home that capital, in Labour’s opinion, is now making its real profits and consolidating its power by expropriating natives, and compelling them to work for low wages.

Freedom of International Trade

In order to free Europe from “the rivalries of Capitalism—Imperialism—Protectionism, which poisoned international relations between 1880-1914,” Labour desires to see an economic side of the League of Nations developed so as to secure the removal of all economic barriers and maintain equality of trade conditions. But surely it was Labour itself that called loudest for self-determination, which has so grievously impaired the economic restoration of Europe. A World Economic Council of the League ought to apportion the supplies of food-commodities and raw materials and maintain credit in the various countries so as to ensure fair allocation of raw materials, the furtherance of production, the development of international lines of communication, and the prevention of exploitation by trusts. As an alternative to “the present profit-making capitalistic economic system,” Labour proposes to use for purposes of international trade, an organization on a world-wide basis of the different national Co-operative movements. So long as foreign trade remains under the control of the competitive and capitalistic system, Labour asserts that its general international aims can never be attained.