The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-02-04

What Not to Worry About
By JORGE

W huC ANOI W w Vi J.eHAOVNI
A reader concerned enough about it to scribble
us note while riding in the subwey, interro-
gates lis on something important to his soul:
what, in your opinion, do YOU think of a
comrade, allied with the working class move
ment, employing a servant in his home? Is
Communist "a Party member who may have
enough money to afford servant, justified
morally for such despcable bourgeois action?"
All of which, much to our regret, is an ex-
ample of something not necessary to fret about.
Does the comrade fear that all the members
of the Communist Party are in danger OF be-
coming bourgeois? 1t Motif he does not think
that the working class, from which the Party
draws its members, is about to be miraculously
changed into the bourgeoisie, why all the alaYm2
Perhaps the Party should require every applicant
to pledge not to buy Rolls-Royce car, or, If
they do. not to hire chauffeur?
Clearly, the comrade is not concerned with
practical political possibilities. but with per-
sonal morals. For domestic servants are not pro-
ducers of surplus value and their employers do
not exploit them as commodity producers.
In fact the employer customarily uses the sur
plus value taken from other workers workers
IN the productive process, to pay servants. They
are many times worked like galley slaves at low f
wages. their conditions being governed largely
by the general social condition obtaining for
labor power which is exploited in the productive
process
So, If we grant the possibility that any person,
though becoming a Communist by conviction
sui has an income sufficient to permit the
hiring of house servant our excited con,rada
aeems to be more interested in concenninG such
person for "un-Marxian morals" whatever
that might be- on that score than to susnect
his Communist line from the possibility that he
might be getting the income from surplus value
OF exploited wage slaves
Obviously, so long as the Communist Party
maintains its proletarian revolutionary line in
acton, we need not expect any great influx of
multi mlonaires into the Party If one comes
along. we will try to tax him SO much for the
work OF the Party, that he won't have any left
TO hire any servants So from this angle also.
the comrade is troubling his humanitarian soul
over nothing II Y w.
AND Communists, remember have nothing in
common with bourgeois humanitarianism For
we can point out any number of canitalists who
Will slobber over the woes of faithful BODY
servant. and go forth to organize fascist terror
against the working class
Again, the comrades tender heart is troubled
at the hiring OF domestic servant as an action
morally" unjustified. But dear comrade. while
yet the capitalist family exists because we have
capitalism still existing, would YOU REQUIRE that
every member OF the family fry their own flap
JACKS ana wash their own cup and saucer, or.
what?
Perhaps you say that instead of hiringea SER
want the hypothetical person in question shuold
nave his wife do the cooking and busting. Very
we'll. but is that any more moral, according TO
Marx" than hiring servant or is il onIy that
it is capitalist immortality to which vol, have
been accustomed yourself by absorption of bour-
geois ideas?
Also, it might be that the wife is hot stuff
let's say in organizing the Council of Working
class Housewives, while the servants capacitv
may be limited to pealing potatoes and counting
the beads on rosary. Who knows? If anything
can be done about it under capitalism at all. it is
to organize all servants possible, improve their
immediate conditions and lead them to revoiu-
ton.
AS we said at the start this whole business
is an example of something not worth Worrying
about But if you do worry, please shed the
bourgeois theology that sticks through the holes
OF your terribly revolutionary indignation