#propertyless

[sansculottides]

Maximilien Robespierre was executed on July 28, 1794, or the 10th of Thermidor in the Republican Calendar. A conventional textbook may mark the end of the French Revolution with Napoleon’s coup in 1799. But Ralph Korngold, Marxist historian, wrote:

“No one man creates a revolution or carries it on, but the currents of revolution may sometimes range themselves in such a manner that the fate of one man becomes the fate of the revolution itself. ‘We did not realize,’ said Cambon, ‘that in killing Robespierre we would kill the Republic.” (From Robespierre and the Fourth Estate–the “fourth estate” here referring to the budding proletarian class of the time. Korngold gave particular attention to Robespierre’s role in the attempt to enact the Ventôse Decrees, the most revolutionary laws proposed during the Republic which would have expropriated the wealth of counter-revolutionaries to be redistributed to the propertyless.)

Napoleon’s ascent ten years after the start of the Revolution only marked the final stab in a Republic that was already good as dead. The death of Robespierre and his allies was the death of the Revolution’s radical aspirations, and allowed the propertied men to fully take charge. Though I also appreciate the sentiment that we can also mark the Revolution’s end a bit after Robespierre, with the death of Babeuf, the “proto-communist."

Anyway, what I really wanted to do was talk about a phenomenal short film that came out this year (on Robespierre’s birthday), “La mort de Robespierre” by smileyfaceorg/Janelle Feng (who has done so much amazing art about Robespierre and the French Revolution).

The film focuses on the night before 10 Thermidor, before Robespierre’s forceful arrest. This historical episode has been depicted before, in various ways. In the 1989 movie La Revolution Francaise, Robespierre had gone insane at this point, an interpretation that fed off of years of black propaganda. In Feng’s film, Robespierre is depressed, remorseful and self-loathing, an interpretation that does have its footing in historical record. In the months leading up to his arrest, Robespierre was frequently sick from the mental exhaustion of running and defending the Republic.

Mental health isn’t a new thing, though we have admittedly only recently begun to be articulate on the subject. Mental health amongst revolutionaries isn’t new either. Even Lenin died of sickness likely compounded by the stress of protecting the Revolution’s gains. In the 1871 Paris Commune, the commune council was “a working, not a parliamentary body [but] executive and legislative at the same time,” which allowed members to fully dedicate themselves to the cause of building a socialist future, but also burdened them with a punishing workload with little room for rest, and the mental exhaustion that naturally follows. I’m sure every person in any radical movement knows the weight of the struggle, but that’s one reason why it must be a collective effort.

At one point in the film Saint-Just looks at the 1793 Declaration of Rights on the wall and comments “To think we made that.” It’s another historically-rooted moment, as there was at least one eyewitness account claiming he did something like that on that night. I think the presence of the 1793 Declaration also ties the film in with the radical tradition of interpreting the Revolution. The ‘93 Declaration was more egalitarian than the initial 1789 Declaration, signed off by a pressured Louis XVI and also the one more textbooks would remember.

I love the use of comic elements too. Comic devices in film would make me think of stuff like Spiderverse or Scott Pilgrim where it’s fun and wacky, but in this film Feng uses comic devices to contract and expand space and time to an introspective yet claustrophobic effect. Especially the scenes where panels surrounded by negative space hint at Robespierre’s inner turmoil. It works really well; comic elements can work like poetry, after all.

I love stuff like this, art that is rooted in history (with quite scholarly rigor) while also aiming to go beyond academic scholarship. You can’t quite explore things like emotions and human experience the same way you can through art. Art like this film looks at historical facts and tries to fill in the gaps. How did they feel about this, what kind of effect did it have? And it explores how these historical people and episodes were human. More importantly, it does so with empathy and purpose, keeping in the “spirit” of the historical figures depicted. If you truly read Robespierre, you wouldn’t give in to lazy portrayals of a mad dictator. In contrast, Feng’s short film shows so much care and attention for this person in the past.

I’m so happy that someone like Feng is making art about the French Revolution. Most of the films, novels, games, etc that come out about the French Rev usually just follow the boring, very liberal and mainstream narratives, and calumnies about Robespierre being a dictator or various other kinds of monsters (not true). Korngold wrote about this too: “The Red Terror appears unpardonable to the Whites, and the White Terror to the Reds. Carlyle penetrates closely to the truth when he says that the reason the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution has received so much scathing comment, is mainly because it was directed against the privileged classes and their followers and not against ‘the voiceless millions.’”

Like the rest of history, our interpretation of the French Revolution exposes the undercurrents of ideology, conscious or not. Our ideas of who should be in power, who should be listened to. Ultimately, it did end as a revolution of the budding bourgeoisie, but before that defeat, there were revolutionaries who imagined and fought for a new future for all. Not just a political revolution, but a social and economic one. We should remember their revolutionary example. There is a reason, after all, why the Soviets held the likes of Robespierre, Saint-Just and Marat in high regard.

[stillnaomi]

Some views on the state:

According to the Christian tradition, the state was evil but necessary because man's nature was evil; according to the rational faith in nature preached by the Enlightenment, the state was unnatural and therefore evil. Marked traces of this view are found, among others, in Morelly and Rousseau; but it was William Godwin who, in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, produced what rightly ranks as the bible of anarchism. According to Godwin property, marriage and the state are all offences against nature and reason:

"Above all [he writes], we should not forget that government is an evil, an usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of mankind; and that, however we may be obliged to admit it as a necessary evil for the present, it behoves us, as the friends of reason and the human species, to admit as little of it as possible, and carefully to observe whether, in consequence of the gradual illumination of the human mind, that little may not hereafter be diminished."

And later in the same work he becomes bolder and roundly proposes "to annihilate the quackery of government". From this time forward the leading radical and socialist writers - Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Fourier, Leroux, Proudhon - are all preoccupied with the supersession of the state and its transformation into a society of producers and consumers. It was left to Moses Hess, an early radical associate of Marx, to translate these ideas into the Hegelian terminology which was common form among young German intellectuals of the 1840s. He believed that, so long as the state existed, whatever the form of government, there would always be rulers and serfs, and that this opposition would continue "until the state, which is the condition of polarity, abolishes itself dialectically and gives place to unified social life, which is the condition of community".

Marx quickly reached the conception of the state as the instrument through which the ruling class pursued and protected its interests. In one of his earliest writings against the estate owners of the Rhineland he described "the organs of the State", in the hyperbolic style of his juvenile period, as "the ears, eyes, hands and legs by which the interest of the forest owner listens, watches, judges, defends, seizes, runs". The modern state "exists only for the sake of private property"; it is "nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests". But private property in its capitalist phase produces its own antithesis, the propertyless proletariat which is destined to destroy it. As Hess had said, the state is the expression of this contradiction, of this conflict between classes. When this contradiction is resolved by the overthrow of private property and the victory of the proletariat (which wiII, through the consummation of its own victory, cease to be a proletariat), society will no longer be divided into classes, and the state wiII have no further raison d'etre. The state is thus a "substitute" for collectivism.

The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Volume 1, by E H Carr, pg 233-234

[gett-merkedd]

A person born into capitalism, a system in which virtually all resources are privately owned, must receive permission from property owners in order to access those resources to survive.

Each person must therefore pay a property owner or labor directly for the property owner to survive. Each person is *coerced* into wage labor and market transactions by virtue of *systemic privatization.*

Any property owner could voluntarily allow the propertyless access to resources free of charge. But each owner is *also* obligated into market exchanges to acquire resources not found on their property to survive, coercing *them* into exploiting the propertyless to survive.

I have said it before: capitalism incentivizes psychopathic behavior. If people must engage in competitive profit seeking to survive, they are disciplined by the threat of market failure, immiseration, and starvation into horrific behavior *whether they want to or not.*

Capitalist ideologues will insist the absence of coercion in any given exchange exonerates the entire system. But I have never once been threatened by a cop over taxes, and yet I am still aware that I face imprisonment and violence if I fail to pay on time. The propertyless are well aware of the violence that will face them if they try to use property without permission—without payment, without laboring—even if they’ve never personally been evicted by a sheriff’s deputy.

Capitalist ideologues will insist on treating the system as nothing more than a sequence of discrete interactions with no connection to each other, because no one wants to think *they* would willingly participate in, and perpetuate, a system of exploitation and coercion.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

February 23: Soviet Red Army Day, marking the establishment of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in 1918. A red salute to all of our fighters for liberation worldwide!

------------------------

“The old army was a class instrument in the hands of the bourgeoisie for the oppression of the workers. The seizure of power by the workers and propertyless persons renders necessary the formation of a new army. The tasks of this new army will be the defence of the Soviet authority, the creation of a basis for the transformation of the standing army into a force deriving its strength from a nation in arms, and, furthermore, the creation of a basis for the support of the coming Socialist Revolution in Europe.”

- Decree on the establishment of the Red Army (1918)

Graphic: Poster from first celebration of Red Army Day in 1919

[etudiantfantome]

"The mistake of the theorists of the labour movement was as follows. They often described capitalist social relations in terms of a foundational fracturing: the separation of peasants from the land generated a propertyless proletariat. However, the class relation is not only established through a foundational fracturing; it also confirms that fracturing in every moment. Capitalism realises the fracturing of social existence as the “unity-in-separation” of market society, an interdependence of everyone on everyone else, which nevertheless reduces individuals to isolated atoms, facing off against one another in market competition. This is especially true for proletarians, whose very survival depends on competing with other proletarians, and who therefore face the most barriers to collective organisation (as we have argued elsewhere, it is not the eventual decline of working class identity, but rather its emergence despite these barriers, which needs to be explained)."

A history of separation

[sage-green-kitchen]

Socioeconomics in The Great Gatsby

Socioeconomics is how economics, or wealth, impacts a person's place in socially. The message to the reader is on the first page when Nick is recalling something his father had told him and the novel states, “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you’ve had.” This tells the reader to be mindful of what they have and grateful for their advantages. The essay “Social Class and Status in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby” shows this in the statement, "The “haves” are those with the control over these things, the natural, economic and human resources, while the “have-nots” are everybody else." The divide between the people who have and the people who don’t is still seen today where we have billionaires with more money than they could ever spend in a lifetime, and people who live paycheck to paycheck. This theme encourages readers to be aware of these differences and these inequalities. Socioeconomics is also the American Dream. The American Dream at it’s core is money and power, that in America everyone has equal opportunity to make money and gain power. This is not the case because, as shown in the book, if you are born rich you have all kinds of opportunities in education and never have to work a day in your life, like Daisy. However, for someone like Wilson it is much harder to make as much money as Daisy because he actually has to work for it and build up from the bottom instead of starting at the top. The characters are divided up into social classes as shown in a quote from the essay “Social Class and Status in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby”, "The Buchanans and Jay Gatsby belong to the class privileged through property and education, Nick Carraway could be considered to be a member of the propertyless intelligentsia and the Wilsons are members of the working class." The class distinctions in The Great Gatsby shows how the American Dream as the illusion that it is giving the message to the reader that not everyone is fortunate and that just because someone works hard, does not mean they will be able to become as wealthy as someone like Daisy or Gatsby. An example of these class distinctions is how Myrtle was treated after her death. They just laid her there for everyone to look at and no one even called a doctor. They didn’t even seem that interested in catching whoever killed her. If this had been Daisy or Jordan in this situation people would have acted much differently and treated them with more respect because of their money and popularity.

Socioeconomics is also shown in the book through cars, boats, and other electronics are used as a sign of socioeconomic succuss. Gatsby has a beautiful car that is new and expensive. It is described in the novel with the quote, “It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shelds that mirrored a dozen suns.” Even the connotations of the words used to describe the car, like “rich”, “triumphant”, bright”, and “mirrored a dozen suns”, shows the car is beautiful and fancy.  This shows he has a significant amount of money. Wilson on the other hand, doesn't have a nice car and is not wealthy. This is shown by the quote describing his garage, “The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner.” These two quote show a stark contrast between Gatsby’s car and Wilsons and also a contrast of their lifestyles. Gatsby lives lavishly while Wilson lives without excessive luxury. The cars are also metaphors, Wilson is in the working class, he is building, fixing, and supporting the luxuries the upper class has. However, Gatsby has the nice car, and it kills someone in the working class showing the power he has even if he does no work. In an article from the National Association of Independent Schools, the author sums this up with the statement, “Fitzgerald’s automobile trope, which was connected to/intertwined with socioeconomic status.” The price of Wilsons car reflects his wealth and that connects to his social standings because unlike Gatsby, he can’t afford to have big elaborate paries filled with celebrities and influential people. Gatsby’s parties cost a lot of money and that is shown in the quote, “Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York—every monday theses same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves.”  He spends the money every week to provide hundreds of people with food and drinks and entertainment and he has the ability to hold such social gatherings because of his economic success. The car also shows The American Dream. The American Dream is then revealed in the novel when Daisy and Gatsby hit Myrtle with the car. Since Daisy is meant to be this symbol of money that is The American Dream, and Myrtle was shown throughout the novel reaching for The American ream and wanting wealth, like when she got that dog in the beginning and wanting to be with Tom because he had money, it showed The American Dream’s reality crashing into Myrtle and killing her hope for reaching it. 

[minnowtank]

there's no way mormonism would exist in on exodus circa 2412 i mean cults in general wouldnt really exist as they do today. a moneyless, private propertyless world means you cannot control people financially and i feel like thats a really important part of cults lol?

[howieabel]

“In bourgeois political economy – and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds this complete elaboration – what lies within man, appears as the total alienation, and the destruction of all lived, one-sided purposes as the sacrifice of the end in itself to a wholly external compulsion (...) For the fact that the worker finds the objective conditions of his labour as something separate from him, as capital, and the fact that the capitalist finds the workers propertyless, as abstract laborers (…) this historic process, as we have seen, is the evolutionary history of both capital and wage-labour.” ― Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy

[vacuouslyfalse]

But as the story of communities as territorial powers told by Inden ends here, one might be left to infer that this political integration ended with the Khalji conquests after 1300 CE. By default, one would join colonial officials in believing that Islamic rule irrevocably destroyed the traditional institutions of the inhabitants, who thereafter lived as powerless and propertyless subjects until rescued by colonial rule. The resonance of this argument with modern Hindutva ideas needs no emphasis. The rest of this chapter will attempt to present a different picture.

Okay, starting to get a better handle on things

[sir-admiral-chair]

Hello Tumblr!

I am procrastinating so like I am just here to say hi atm. Someone told me to make a Tumblr... And I unquestionably followed their order because thats what my whole idea is about. In fact let me tell you the Principles of Communism are. By Freddie Eyeballs.

The Principles of Communism:

1. Eat babies. Why? Because eating babies is evil. And we are evil.

2. Communism is when no food. This true. Communism is a foodless, moneyless, and personal propertyless society. Because that is evil.

3. Theory is the holy bible. You might think this is a troupe of the idea that Marxists treat theory as if it was the bible. But I don't mean that. Marx is a revisionist. There is only one piece of theory that matters, and that is the Holy Bible. The 12 Apostles were the only Anti-Revisionist communists. And the Old Testament is canon, and how we should aspire to be... Because that is... Morally disputable.

4. MAGA Communism is revisionist. It is revisionist not because they are silly Yankee Doodle Nazbols... No they are revisionist because they are in favour of Orange rights. And that is not Evil. EVERYONE KNOWS ORANGES ARE FRUIT! NOT PEOPLE! FRUIT IS YOUR REWARD FOR LABOUR! AND PEOPLE CAN ONLY BE A REWARD FROM WINNING BATTLES! Like the Siege of Carthage in the Third Punic war. And Rome was red, so they were communists. And Carthage was white, so they are French, and the French are capitalists. Too many French in North Africa is a big big problem. Luckily that was solved by Algeria, so thats a plus, but not Swiss plus.

5. Lenin was not a communist. Lenin was not a communist. Why? Because Lenin was not a communist. Next!

6. Karl Barx and Chairman Meow are Cute. It is evil to have one cute pet on your lap in the evil room of evil.

7. Soviet Tanks are better than Modern NATO tanks. Refusal to agree results in an instant ban.

8. Under communism, communism will be abolished. Because thats evil! Muhahahhahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

9. The number zero is not real. It's not!!! Don't look it up! I promise you, it isn't real. Why? Because zero is just a word to represent a mathematical concept. And words while real on paper... Are not real in real life... Because why would you make a sign that says zero when the sign could just say 0? Checkmate.

1zero. The following 9 points were revisionist, wrong, cringe, and just a joke. What did you actually think communism is about eating babies? Communism is actually about the Communal Ownership of the Means of Toilet Production.

And obviously the purpose of the toilet is to give swirlies to the kids in Business class! Take that you Bourgeois aspiring sell out traitor to the Proletariat!

Now anyway, flush the traitors, and wipe the exploiters!

Wait... That came off wrong...

Anyway, hello Tumblr! :D

I hope I at least made one person smile, or cringe. Idk, I come from Reddit, the bar for expections are probably quite low.

I must now desperately in a rush do what I was actually meant to do today. 😁

[beguines]

Mainstream economics treats the market as an institution providing individuals with opportunities; a view corresponding to what Wood and Brenner refer to as the commercialisation model of the historical origins of capitalism. According to this narrative, the emergence of capitalism appears as "a maturation of age-old commercial practices (together with technical advances) and their liberation from political and cultural constraints", as Wood puts it. Supposedly, if only people are allowed to exchange freely, a market economy will automatically arise. This is the view Marx resolutely breaks with in the sections on the "so-called primitive accumulation" in Capital. Here Marx demonstrates—against "the tender annals of political economy, [where] the idyllic reigns from time immemorial"—that "in actual history, it is a notorious fact that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly, violence [Gewalt], play the greatest part". This violence was necessary in order to deprive peasants of the possibility to reproduce themselves outside of the market. In other words, market dependence had to be created, since peasants generally did what they could to avoid relying too much on the market. Rather than producing exclusively for the market, they preferred to produce for subsistence.

Producing for the market required specialisation in order to remain competitive, and because of the unpredictable nature of agricultural production, amongst other factors, specialisation meant vulnerability. As Brenner explains: "[g]iven the uncertainty of the harvest and the unacceptable cost of 'business failure'— namely the possibility of starvation—peasants could not afford to adopt maximising exchange value via specialization as their rule of reproduction and adopted instead the rule of 'safety first' or 'produce for subsistence'". Producing exclusively for the market also conflicted with the dominant family structures in the early modern period, where large families were necessary in order to "secure insurance against illness and old age in a society in which there was no institution upon which they could rely outside the family". Peasants thus had good reasons to resist becoming market dependent, and this was exactly what they did. Even the dispossession of peasants was not enough, however, to secure a steady flow of exploitable labour-power into the market. Instead of selling their ability to work, the propertyless were, in Marx's words, "more inclined to become vagabonds and robbers and beggars'. "In the 16th and 17th centuries, the hatred of wage-labor was", as Silvia Federici explains, "so intense that many proletarians preferred to risk the gallows". The state therefore had to step in and introduce draconian punishment of beggars, vagabonds and others who refused to work. Here is Marx's summary: "Thus were the agricultural folk first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded and tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage-labour". It was not only those needed for wage labour who were violently forced to adapt to capitalist production, however. A "true war against women" also had to be undertaken in order to force them to accept the capitalist separation of the production of commodities and reproduction of labour-power, a separation in which women were assigned to the domestic sphere and the "double dependence" upon capital through the male wage.

The historical analysis of the origin of capitalism demonstrates that the latter was not a result of the voluntary acts of individuals. Capitalism did not emerge because human nature was finally allowed to unfold its "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another", as Adam Smith put it, but rather because some people violently forced other people to become dependent on markets. The analysis of the reproduction of capitalism demonstrates, as we will see, that once capitalism has been established, it systematically prevents individuals from opting out of it.

Søren Mau, Mute Compulsion: A Theory of the Economic Power of Capital

[collapsedsquid]

The question is as to the part played by propertyless office employees and by the business men whom the modern consolidations of business reduce to the position of salaried managers and superintendents. With a faith prompted by their own hopes rather than by observed facts or by the logic of events, the spokesmen for socialism are strongly inclined to claim this "business proletariat" as a contingent which the course of economic development is bound to throw into the socialist camp. The facts do not in any appreciable degree countenance such an expectation. The unpropertied classes employed in business do not take to socialistic vagaries with such alacrity as should inspire a confident hope in the advocates of socialism or a serious apprehension in those who stand for law and order. This pecuniarily disfranchised business population, in its revulsion against unassimilated facts, turns rather to some excursion into pragmatic romance, such as Social Settlements, Prohibition, Clean Politics, Single Tax, Arts and Crafts, Neighborhood Guilds, Institutional Church, Christian Science, New Thought, or some such cultural thimblerig.

Clear that we were doomed from 1904

[heneve]

Exodus 2: The Birth Of Moses / Moses Escapes To Midian

Overview:

Moses was born during the time when Pharaoh ordered to kill all firstborn boys. His mother put him in the basket and floated him to the river where the princess of Egypt saw him. She let the maid get Moses and asked a Hebrew nurse to take care of him. The Hebrew nurse which was Moses' mother took care of him until he was old enough and gave him back to the princess who took him as her own son. When Moses was older, he went to visit his own people and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Looking in all directions to make sure no one was watching, he killed the Egyptian. He went out again and saw two Hebrews beating each other and he questioned one why he was beating his own brother. The guy asked him if he would kill him as well like the Egyptian. Pharaoh heard this news and was angry to Moses and ordered to kill him. So Moses ran away to Midian.

Points To Remember:

When Moses was in Midian, he saw daughters of the priest trying to draw water from the well when shepherds came and chased them away. Moses rescued the girls and went to tell their father.

The Father invited Moses to their home and later on gave one of his daughters as his wife, Zipporah.

Years passed, Pharaoh died. The Israelites was still under brutal slavery, and God remember His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He looked down to His people of Israel and knew it was time to act.

Lessons Learned:

God always remembers His promises and acts it when it is the right time.

Moses loved his people so much and even wondered why they are able to even hate each other. He does not like the sight of seeing his own people fight against each other. Likewise, we are also called to love God's own people just like how God loves them.

Israelites are called "Hebrews". This started because foreigners used to call the immigrants as Hebrews (from the word Habiru = a propertyless immigrant social class mentioned in many ancients texts.)

[unwilting]

Social-Democracy leads the struggle of the working class, not only for better terms for the sale of labour-power, but for the abolition of the social system that compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich. Social-Democracy represents the working class, not in its relation to a given group of employers alone, but in its relation to all classes of modern society and to the state as an organised political force.

What Is To Be Done, Lenin

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"MILITARY IMPERIALISM DANGER TO LABOR WORLD, SAYS KEIR HARDIE," Toronto Star. September 9, 1912. Page 1 & 13. --- Veteran Leader Declares Contribution From Dominions Not Needed. --- PLAY INTO HANDS OF THE NOW RICH ---- Says Workers in Both Germany and England are Voting on War Question. --- A MUTUAL MOVEMENT ---- British M.P. a Delegate to the Trades and Labor Congress at Guelph. ---- Special to The Star By a Staff Reporter. Guelph. Ont., Sept. 3. - James Keir Hardie, M.P., of the British House of Commons, and fraternal delegate from the British Labor party to the 25th convention of the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada, arrived in Guelph Monday morning at 1 a.m., from Rochester, N.Y.

A large gathering of delegates met him at the station. The sturdy frame of the former miner shows no fatigue. The only change noticeable since his last visit is his now white hair and beard. No, it was not too late for him to talk of the social problems that have engaged his whole life's work.

Situation in Britain. Interviewed by The Star, and asked about the industrial situation in Great Britain, he said:

"It is more hopeful than ever, the trade unions have strengthened their position, both numerically and in solidarity. Rec Recent strikes have shown more solidarity than ever before A like remark applies to Socialism, people who have been away for a few years and return to the Home-land are astonished at the change, and the politicians are at their wits end trying to check its growth.

The old insular spirit which has been a characteristic of the British race, mainly due to the fast that they live in an island, is breaking down through the growth of the International socialist and trade union movement,

Imperialism Versus Socialism. "The ruling class are attempting to substitute for it a spirit of Imperialism, and talk as though they would like to turn the British Empire into a huge compound from which all the rest of the world is to be excluded.

"They use big sounding phrases as one Empire, one flag, one navy, one throne, whilst meaning only enlarged area within which they they may exploit the working class. The labor movement is now too much wide awake to be taken in by such hypocritical cant.

"I am here as a fraternal delegate from the British Labor party which has 1.400.000 affiliated trade unionists and socialists

"I do not come here, however, because Canada is within the British Empire, but because the Trades and Labor Congress represents the working class movement of the Dominion of Canada. I have carried the fraternal greeting of our party to similar congresses in Germany and France, and elsewhere. The international working class movement is not limited by the boundaries of nations or empires. It encircles the whole earth and is binding the disinherited propertyless working class of f the world into one mighty army, not to make war upon other, but upon the entire capitalist system which oppresses and enslaves the workers of all lands alike.

Danger To Canadians. "I hope by my visit to the Trades and Labor Congress to do some thing to arouse the workers of Canada to a sense of the danger and menace to their well-being which military imperialism would bring in its train.

"An Imperial navy and army to which all the Dominions will continue to contribute their quota would play into the hands of the filibusters and money-grabbing contractors who never expose their own skins on a field of battle, but who'll slaughter millions of working men, whilst they stay at home and grow rich out of their fat contracts.

"The recent Boer war disclosed such an amount of swindling ling on the part of contractors who supplied the army with food, clothing, shoes, and war material as made honest men of all parties, blush for shame.

Fighting War Scare. "The greatest interest of the worker is peace. If the Canadian workmen lends himself to the beginnings of a navy or compulsory military training he will only be creating a fresh power to his enemies to keep himself in subjection..

"Are workers in Great Britain taking a definite course with regard to the present scare?"

"Yes, a ballot is being taken of the workers as to whether they are prepared to come to an agreement for stopping of work simultaneously in both countries to prevent the nations being launched into a war. Of course, the movement must be mutual."

"Are the Germans doing the same?"

"Yes, and the French workers are to take the matter up in April of next year.

"The different countries are to report next September at the International Socialist and Trade Union Congress at Vienna."

Prospect of Hostilities. "Do you think a war likely between Germany and Great Britain?"

"With all this building of navies and speculation of interested parties there is always a certain risk; responsible statesmen in both countries dread such a contingency as war, but their hands may be forced by the conspirators just as it was by the millionaires of South Africa in the case of the Boer war."

"How strong are the German workers?"

"Over four millions and a quarter voters are behind the working class party in the Reichstag in Germany, while in Great Britain, with candidates in every constituency, the labor party will poll 30 to 35 per cent. of the total vote, which will represent some three million workers."

Insurance Scheme. The Insurance scheme of Lloyd George was referred to by Mr. Hardie as a helpful scheme. The source of the revenue for it he thought should come from income tax, and a tax on unearned increment of land rather than a tax upon industry as at present

Mr. Hardie is on a lecture tour of the United States under the auspices of the Socialist party of the United States, in connection with the present political campaign.

He leaves Guelph on Wednesday, or not later than Thursday morning.

[0firstlast1]

In the image above a quick photograph of everyday life edited to publish on tumbLR.com, a social network on which I'm just a user who posts weekly.

If I were without a property to live in, it wouldn't be the place shown in the photograph that I would choose to live in, perhaps to spend a night or a short period of time, perhaps a weekend, but sporadically in the place there is, or was, a propertyless person living there, not here, it was even possible to find a mattress there with a blanket ready to sleep at night, or a mattress placed against the wall so as not to hinder the movement of users of that place, I don't know if the government public service directed to assist the homeless population was alerted and went to the place shown in the photograph to offer some shelter, I haven't seen anyone sleeping there for some time.

What's good about that? There is no TV to watch WAR _$ CRIME.