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Class Warrior: On Gold. 1919

Class Warrior
On Gold. 1919

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table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Foreword
  3. Introduction
  4. Part I: Selected Writings of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1900   On Washington State’s Primary Law
    2. 1903   On Political Action
      1. On Reformism and Electoral “Fusion”
      2. On Trade Unions
    3. 1905   On the Single Tax
      1. On a Journey to Seattle
    4. 1906   On the Arrest of US Labour Leaders and State Power
    5. 1908   On the Socialist Movement and Travels across Canada
    6. 1909   On War
      1. On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    7. 1911   On Property
      1. On the Workers’ Awakening
      2. On Economic Organization
      3. On the Capitalist State
    8. 1914   On the Causes of the First World War
    9. 1916   On Carnage
    10. 1917   On Slavery and War
      1. On War Finance
      2. On the War Effort
    11. 1918   On the Bolshevik Revolution
      1. On Capitalism Getting Rich Quick
    12. 1919   On Control of the State by the Working Class
      1. On Reconstruction
      2. On Collaboration between Labour and Capital
      3. On Wealth
      4. On Gold
      5. On Class War
      6. On the Paris Peace Conference
      7. On Capitalist Civilization
    13. 1921   On the 1921 Canadian Parliamentary Election
  5. Part II: Selected Speeches of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1895   On the Aims of Socialism
    2. 1896   On Socialism and the Economy
    3. 1899   On American Imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines
    4. 1903   On the Labour Problem
      1. On the Political Organization of Miners in Cumberland
      2. On Stirring the Emotions of His Audience
      3. On Wages, Profit, and Capital
      4. On the 1903 British Columbia Election
    5. 1905   On the 1905 Russian Revolution
      1. On Workers and Rockefeller
      2. On the Mission of the Working Class
    6. 1906   On the Paris Commune
    7. 1908   On Labour and Its Economies
      1. On the Working Class Using Clubs If Necessary
      2. On Working-Class Political Power
    8. 1912   On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    9. 1913   On the Vancouver Island Miners’ Strike
    10. 1914   On the Komagata Maru Incident
    11. 1917   On Conscription
      1. On Working-Class Opposition to Conscription
      2. On Conscription and Wiping Out Ruling-Class Laws
      3. On the 1917 Conscription Election
    12. 1918   On the Formation of the Federated Labor Party
      1. On Laws
      2. On Reconstruction
      3. On the Armistice and Postwar Moment
      4. On Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
    13. 1919   On Lenin and Trotsky
      1. On the Belfast General Strike, Unemployment, and the Postwar Challenge to Capitalism
      2. On the Bolshevik Revolution
      3. On the One Big Union
      4. On the Class Struggle
      5. On the Machine
      6. On Capitalism
      7. On the Defeat of the Winnipeg General Strike
      8. On the Machinery of Slavery
      9. On Civilization
    14. 1920   On Mechanization of Production
      1. On the Paris Commune
      2. On the Collapse of Civilization
      3. On the Bankruptcy of the Capitalist System
  6. Part III: The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery
    1. 1916   The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery: Showing How the Chattel Slaves of Pagan Times Have Been Transformed into the Capitalist Property of To-day
  7. Part IV: On the World Situation
    1. 1919   On the World Situation
  8. Appendix
  9. Kingsley’s Speeches
  10. Index

On Gold 1919

This article by Kingsley was published in the Australian labour press in February 1919.

In this article, which is of commanding interest just now, Comrade E. T. Kingsley, author of “The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery,” explodes an old, yet fallacious idea, in rare style.

Gold—The Sacred Ikon of Payment

Even most of these scientific persons who are so thoroughly imbued with the compelling virtue of their own scientific attainments along economic lines, that they are thrown into violent fits of petulance at the mere proximity of the ignorant and illiterate freaks that constitute the common mob, seem to be largely if not hopelessly obsessed with the notion that things in this world can be bought, sold and paid for, and that marvellous consummation is somehow or other arrived at through the mysterious properties of a certain metal known as gold. This particular metal, just like iron, copper, lead, tin and all other metals and things that are met with in the markets of the world, has been brought forth from Nature’s crucible and made presentable for association with other commodities, by exactly the same force and process that has been responsible for the appearance there of all the rest of them. It has been brought forth and fashioned for participation in the commodity parade solely by the hand of labor, and having been so brought in and introduced to the motley throngs of wares for sale, it becomes subject to all the fluctuations, exigencies and idiosyncrasies of the market, just like the rest of the bunch.

Its value in exchange for other commodities can only be determined or arrived at by the same process or method of calculation that applies to them all. All commodities have a common parentage; they are brought for by labor alone. Their relative exchange value, that is the value of one compared to the value of another, in exchange, can only be arrived at by a comparison of the respective quantities of labor necessarily embodied in their production. There is but one way yet known to man to solve the problem, and that is to reduce the production of the commodity to the terms of an individual adult, and measure his time by the clock. The necessary labor time thus arrived at becomes the measure of exchange value for the commodity in question. As a similar process has been worked out in regard to all other commodities, their exchange one for another becomes a simpler matter, and, approximately, of course, a reasonably correct one.

Gold Does Not Measure Value

As there are very many different commodities monitored over a wide market, and the owner of any given commodity may not be personally able to meet one who has the particular commodity he desires to obtain in exchange, and vice versa, the expedient of buying and selling has been devised and become a universal practice. To effect this it becomes necessary to translate the exchange value of all commodities into terms of some one commodity that has been selected for the purpose and which is generally recognised and accepted as authoritative and official. The commodity at present in use for this purpose is gold. All other commodities are compared to gold in order to determine their relative value thereto. Gold does not measure their value, any more than they in each case measure that of gold.

To arrive at the conclusion, through comparison, that a certain quantity of gold of a certain fineness is equivalent in value to a given quantity of flour, for instance, by no means establishes any given quantity of exchange value. It merely indicates that the value contained in the one is equal to that contained in the other. It really means that the amount of adult human labor measured by time, necessarily embodied in the one is equal to that necessarily embodied in the other. Hence the value of, say, a barrel of flour, would be expressed in terms of gold as being £3, and the value of that quantity of gold, expressed in terms of flour, would be one barrel of that commodity.

“The Clever Hocus-Pocus of Financial Deceit”

Once the comparison has been made and the value of these commodities translated into money (gold) terms, that particular commodity performs no further function in exchange, except in perhaps the settlement of trade balances between countries, and even in such case it functions merely as a commodity that is of general acceptance. Such balances might just as readily be settled by the transfer of any other commodity in common and general use, such as iron or copper, for instance. There is nothing about gold that is in any way more mysterious and potent in matters of trade and commerce than there is about anything else that is as commonly used. Whatever mysterious power or property it appears to possess is due entirely to the clever hocus-pocus and “abracadabra” flimflam of financial deceit and swindle that has been practised for so long upon the slaves and gudgeons by the rulers and rogues who must cloak and cover their rascalities by hypocrisy and camouflage. As gold is merely one commodity in the long list of similar things that are produced by labor, it does not require any very powerful remaining faculties to realise that it could no more effect payment for the production of these things than could any other part of the things produced. Not only is gold but a part of the many things produced, but in value it constitutes but an infinitesimal part of the total value brought forth. And it could not pay for anything, because it, like all other commodities, can only be brought into the channels of exchange, trade and commerce by being first taken from the producers thereof without any payment whatsoever. Like all other commodities it is the product of slave labor, for by no other token can trade and commerce exist.

There is no other way to get the wherewith to carry on trade, commerce, business, finance, except through the enslavement of labor and the consequent seizure and control of the wealth brought forth by such enslaved labor, and the sacred gold, the professed means of payment, is but a part of the plunder and a very small part at that. It is neither a means of payment nor a measure of value. It is purely the one particular commodity selected from the lot, for the purpose of acting as a sort of common denominator in the processes of exchange, that are entailed in the disposition and distribution of the loot accruing to the rulers and masters of the earth through the plundering, skinning and trimming of slaves.

Why No Payment Can Be Made

As for payment, it is impossible, either in gold or anything else. The sum of the world’s capitalisation, including all bonds stocks, deeds, debentures, mortgages, loans (either national or otherwise), bank accounts, warehouse receipts, bills payable and bills receivable, bills of lading, currency and all the rest of the paper flimflam and financial phantasmagoria of this crazy age, is pure and adulterated debt; a charge against the future; an obligation that has arisen out of the impossibility of any and all payment in the past, and equally impossible of any and all payment in the future for the very same reason that it has all been contracted, accumulated and mobilised. And that reason is that there never was anything wherewith payment could be made; there is nothing now; and there can be nothing in the future.

Everything that is supposed to be bought, and exchanged, traded in, paid for, eaten up, worn out, blown up by war or otherwise, either profitably or unprofitably disposed of is produced from day to day and year to year, and in the same manner and by the same process disposed of. No payment for such production can be made, for the simple reason that there is nothing outside of that production itself, and it is all consumed as fast as brought forth. Nothing remains but the figures expressing that which has been produced and either consumed or destroyed, without any payment whatsoever.

A Preposterous Swindle

These gallant figures in most noble array constitute what is grandiloquently termed by statesmen, philosophers, sages, pundits, economists, financiers, and rogues and muddle-heads generally, as “the great wealth of the world,” a wealth that is increasing “by leaps and bounds” as the years go by. And they tell us that these figures represent real wealth and all these promises are “based on gold.” The plain fact is that they represent debt and the whole preposterous swindle is based upon the countless millions of slaves and gudgeons whose ignorance and blind loyalty to their masters alone make the present world nightmare of civilization, misery and slaughter possible. And the only actual payment that is ever made, or that is possible, is the payment made daily by the slaves who sweat, bleed and die for the empire of their masters, rulers and torturers. Ruling-class payment is a greater joke than a Russian ikon.

E. T. Kingsley

—“Gold—The Sacred Ikon Payment,” Australian Worker, 13 Feb. 1919, 15.

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