On Civilization 1919

It Is Beyond Redemption: Kingsley Says Present System Cannot Possibly Be Saved

At Sunday night’s F. L. P. meeting, Comrade E. T. Kingsley again gave utterance to his profound conviction that the present civilization is beyond redemption; he saw no possible means by which it could be saved from complete and final collapse. Moreover, its industrial machinery must go to the scrapheap, too, as being incapable of serving any other purpose than that of human exploitation, for which it was brought into existence.

As a title to his address he suggested “The Great Joke;” the state of things existing today would appear in the future as the greatest joke ever perpetrated. They were living in a civilization based on human slavery; yet the slave believed himself free—believed all the parson and the press told him. “We fall for practically everything they give us, and we impress it on our fellows for truth.”

The speaker disputed the contention that necessary commodities are now produced with far less expenditure of human energy than in former times. “All the mechanical devices to aid man in the process of production have not increased his productive capacity one iota.” The speaker cited the laws of mechanics in support of his assertion, and insisted that, when the labor of producing and maintaining the industrial machinery was taken into account, there was no saving of human energy whatever. Otherwise, the saying about “lifting themselves by their own boot straps” would not be the joke it had been.

The speaker referred to the great financial difficulties in which the various nations were now involved, and the suggestion that all was to be set right by the slogan of “Produce more and eat less.” (Laughter.) By that process they could never square off one iota of their indebtedness, even if they kept it up “till time shall be no more.”

Comrade Kingsley next demonstrated the impossibility of the workers ever being “paid” for their work by their employers, putting himself for the time being in the position of “Man Friday” to Chairman Ernest Burns as “Robinson Crusoe.” He also ridiculed the idea of “surplus value” as being anything better than piled-up promises to pay, the fact being that commodities were consumed as fast as produced. Those promises to pay were never wiped out except by the so-called “Bolshevik” method of repudiation. “That accumulation of capital has become so great that the countries are all well over the precipice into a bankruptcy which they cannot escape, though they may call on high heaven till they are black in the face.”

The speaker compared the time when production was by primitive methods, and the bulk of the workers were employed in agricultural pursuits, with the age of machinery, in which an ever-increasing preponderance were diverted to the cities and engaged in carrying on industries essential only to the trade and commerce system of the ruling class—“things which the producing class has no use for under any circumstances whatever.” Such a system was only brought into being because slaves were being exploited, and their products could only be disposed of in that way.

History was not the history of development of the human race, but development of human slavery. There was increased efficiency only in the ability of the masters to exploit their slaves. No matter who owned the machinery, whether the proletariat or anybody else, “it can be made to do no other than it does today.” All the machinery had never lifted the burden from the back of anybody but the master class—“and they didn’t have any burden to bear before the machinery was devised.” (Hear, hear.)

The speaker enlarged on the enormous waste involved in the present system, and declared that such waste “can’t be wiped out except by the destruction of this industrialism.” There was, however, no need to knock it down with a club; “it will go down and out, just as all civilizations have gone that were based on human slavery.”

The railway system, in particular, had become the most vital part of the system, next to the financial; the transportation figures of the U.S. last year showed an amount of 25,000 tons per family moved one mile. Its real function, however, was only to take the product away from those who produced it.

Taking wheat as an example of the high cost of living, the speaker pointed out that “all along the trail that wheat travels, there’s a bunch of individuals jumping on the wheat and eating out of it.” Legitimately, too! Since that was the only way this civilization could dispose of it. If “that gang of parasitic workers” couldn’t eat at all, this system of trade and commerce would go “on the bum.”

The city workers, compared with the producers in the country districts, were as house-sparrows compared with the sparrows that got their own living by performing a useful function in the fields. The various kinds of city workers were parasites, just as much as the butler, etc., serving the scallywags at Shaughnessy Heights. (Applause.) Even the trade union organizations were part and parcel of this system of slavery; when the system went down, they would go down too. By their very constitution, “they can’t draw a revolutionary breath; I don’t care whether they call themselves trades unionists simple or O. B. U.”

There was no organism on earth that did not feed itself, except the slave. Not a living thing worked, except the slave. “Work exterminates them, as it ought to exterminate everything that submits to it.” The only hope of the race was for the farmers and city dwellers to come to some arrangement whereby the latter would withdraw to the land and sustain themselves.