The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-09-10
By ROBERT MITCHELL

Mr.. H. G. Wells of England and the world gen.
orally has written very bad article in particular
for the American capitalist class. 1t is no accident
that such article should appear in the New York
Times the foremost organ of the American bour-
geoisie 1t would not be too much to say that only
in America could such complete comic opera pro-
phesising be passed off genuine oracle.
1t is hardly necessary to elaborate Mr. Wells
intelligence. Nor is it important to call attention
to the superficiality of his analysis and the num-
erous contradictions in the main thesis of his argu-
ment. We find here the mind of the coupon clipper
at its worst!
Because he has written on a subject so impor-
tant, however, and because there is at present a
certain confusion and pessmism as to the way that
labor is going it is of the greatest consequence
that every opportunity be taken to help clear up
the issue.
To begin with the critical side of the discussion
first: Wells begins by denying the existence of the
capitalist system SUCH 1t is all a Pigment of
our imagination, word concocted for the
fearful. The same is true of "labor" 1t just
doesn't exist! Once it did matter of fact lead
hard and toil-driven life but it is progressively
being abolished from the face of the earth. Hence
there is not and in fact there cannot be any con-
fllct between any real forces in the actual world
Like the forces themselves the conflict is also
Pigment of our deranged minds.
II believe this conflict between capital and
labor is struggle about theoretical def
lnltions having only the remotest relationship
to any fundamental realities in life
The whole conflict is but form of our most re-
cent Madness a sort of conflict" complex SO to
speak, and to be cured of the worldwide disease we
need but to dsabuse our minds of the passions and
frenzies which somehow have taken possession of
them.
But lest we mistake him for the latest follower
OF Berkleyian idealism Mrs. Eddy's Christian
Science, Wells makes haste to provide an objective
basis for his charge:
IF we abandon this romantic, this Victor
Hugoesque conception of labor as living in
rags and slums and begin to incorporate semi
skilled and skilled workers with savings insur-
ances and other property and a certain mini
mum of education, and peasants with leases or
owning land, we shall to have any def
mite boundary to stop US; and before we know
where we shall find ourselves in per-
plexity, whether in this in that case we are
dealing with capitalist a worker, 'exploiter
or exploited"
There you have it! The worker is not really a
worker. If you but look at him in the proper wav
he will reveal to you his real capitalist nature But
is it not true that Carver, economist of Harvard
fame, created whole American revolution on the
strength of his having torn from the capitalist
worker his, proletarian disguise? And is it not
equdIy true Ludt even Cne gnOSt OF this dead
revolution" has been dscredited in America ex-
cept perhaps among the leaders in the American
labor movement?
But here is the ghost of Carver come back from
across the Atlantic to haunt in the garments of
Wells!
Yet this is the main and only support of Wells
argument That the facts in the most pros
porous of all countries, the United States, show
that only very small percentage of the people have
shared in the increasing wealth of the country is
apparently beyond the grasp of these coupon clip
pers of a decaying capitalism 1t is not hard to
credit the reported statement of Lenin when in re-
ferrng to Wells after the latters visit to the Krem-
lin, the proetarian leader exclaimed: "That is a
little bourgeois! Aye, aye, what Philistine!"
AS for labor's specific direction, cannot dis
cover any. Labor" which was but which now
more and more is not, naturally enough, can hardly
be discovered to be going any particular place at
all! 1--WE may come to world of capitalists pro-
tn no ali WaIIc