The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-02-07

II you wish to know where we get our
MacDonalds, look where these gen.
tlemen get their philosophy:
"You Russian Bolsheviks were
brought up on Marx and Engels. Marx
and Engels lived in England in the
pre-imperialist days when the British
Empire was not as great as it is today
and when capitalism was only in its
first stride. Poor Marx, too poor to
buy a postage stamp, or newspapers,
was obliged to study in the British
Museum the whole history of CAPT
talism, the whole history of England,
and the whole history of England's
foreign policy. There is not single
English economist whom he did not
know. There is not single English
philosopher whom he did not study,
there is not single secret of British
foreign policy into which he did not
penetrate. His trousers were ragged,
he could not go to five o'clock tea to
freethinking ladies of both sexes IN
English society. But, in the quietude
of his study he learned all the secrets
Of capitalism and of the premier CAPT
talist state. Engels, obliged to engage
in commerce, studied not only biology,
but also the anatomy Of capitalist
England and helped his great friend in
the study of all the details of the
mechanism-of the great apparatus
or exploiting the world-the British
empire. And what did the British
so-called intelligentzia understand of
Marx and Engels? Hyndman tried to
make Of the great doctrines of Marx
something in the nature of a collection
of worthless recipes, cookery book of
revolution, but he failed to link it up
with the vital work of the masses.
And the MacDonalds and the Snow
dens ?-they discovered the the living
stream of the British labor move
ment, but they did nothing but render
it turbid with the bourgeois mud they
brought to it. Although they had at
their disposal the life work of Marx,
they studied economies from Marshal
and John Stuart Mill who, taught that
competition would defeat monopoly:
they learn sociology from Spencer the
last descendant of Robinson Crusoe.
They imbibed their philosophy from
parsons. What results could one
expect? These people regard Mr..
Wells as great thinker because he
hashed up history of man, from
Pithecantropus Erectus to MacDon-
aid. 1t is tremendous work, it has
all about the stone-age and about the
Great Mogul and about Queen Victoria
But what sort of science does this
historian present to man with this
hash of herring, whipped cream and
Scotch whiskey. The little Com
munist Manifesto of 20 pages was
contribution to the history of man
concerning not only what had been in
the past, but what would be in the
future. 1t gave key to humanity:
it lighted up like a searchlight its
future history. And you Bolsheviks
holding in your hands the torch of
Marx were able to see how competition
BOW III ~ W AhOhOPOAyg NV SA0oo
antagonisms were becoming more
acute, how this led to world revolution.
Meanwhile the MacDonalds and the
Snowdens armed with the works of
Wells and their guides to 'construc-
tive socialism with their Fabian text
books under their arms waited for the
class antagonisms to die out, for capt.
talism to grow into socialism, for the
era Of peace and for the time when
liberalism will become permeated with
socialism, when the war broke they
became terrified by the thunder of the
guns: they shed copious tears over
the bloodshed, but they were incapable
Of teaching the workers how to
overthrow the domination Of the class
which flung the British and the world
proletariat into the horrors of the
war, which drove Welsh miners to the
deserts of Kut-el-Amar, to the graves
OF Gallipoli. to the forest of Archangel
and the tundras of Siberia. Some of