Three Early Articles
by Maurice Spector (1916)
Maurice Spector was elected to the
executive of the Communist Party of Canada at its founding convention in
1921. He was Chairman of the party and editor of its newspaper through the
1920s until his expulsion for supporting Trotsky, in November 1928.
Spector was 18 years old when he wrote these
articles for the Toronto-based socialist newspaper Canadian Forward,
in 1916.
Professor Ian McKay of Queens
University provided these articles to the Socialist History Project. He
can be reached at
imckay@magma.ca.
The Divorce of Principle and Practice
by Maurice Spector
Canadian Forward, October 28, 1916
Inconsistency has often been declared to be the
striking characteristic of modern capitalist industrial society. The vast
gulf between its idealism and its reality, between its religious ethics
and its actual social conduct has constantly been a subject of ridicule,
scorn and protest to the social dissenter. Yet in spite of all the taunts
of the Zolas and Tolstoys, the Ibsens and Shaws, for its hypocritical
smugness, its callous indifference or deliberate blindness in relation to
social matters, the bourgeoisie apparently go on their placid way with the
same self-satisfied righteous feeling. They are as content as ever to
endorse and applaud one set of morals on holy days, to practice a contrary
set on week days and to defend both with equal zeal. This they consider to
be normal behavior, and are ready to condemn anyone as an extremist and
undesirable who, having a sense of humour or capacity for logic, will
insist on regulating his conduct in accord with just one set of morals. It
affects the bitterness of the radical’s objections but slightly to know
that this anomalous condition is the result of the wedding of inherited
traditions and a church influence older than modern society, to economical
circumstances stronger than t he ethics of the church.
This peculiar psychology of the middle classes
seems grounded in the fear that they would lose their power and comfort
were they to act in spirit with their religious ethics or were they to
resolve their actual economic life into a philosophy to replace those
ethics. For in the latter case they would just as certainly lose comfort
and power as in the former, for the realties would become too evidence to
the proletariat, who would also follow in abandoning religion. Perhaps
also, the bourgeois realize the need of some softening influence such as
religion to take their minds off the merciless rigors of their economic
system.
This accounts for the relative failure of both
Tolstoy and Nietzsche’s appeal. The former pleaded with the world to
become Christians in deed as in creed, preached the Christian virtues of
resignation and humility; the latter urged the necessity of making ethics
agree with the facts of life, that is the abandonment of Christianity, and
boldly proclaimed the expediency of the will to power, the recognition of
the claim of the strong to dominate the weak. But Tolstoy’s gospel was not
in harmony with the facts of industrial life and the middle class regarded
him as a visionary who would replace Sunday ethics. And though in the
business world there is no mercy for the weak, and the will of the strong
is law, and there is no peace but war, yet the business men (a notable
example is the millionaire, Rockefeller) are loyal supporters of the
Church. They shudder at Nietzsche’s brutality.
The worship of the principle divorced from practice
is a disagreeable characteristic of bourgeois society. In the matter of
war and capital punishment, in spite of the fact that the state takes the
lives of thousands, yet the bourgeois would never think of abandoning the
absolute “Thou shalt not kill” and “Love they enemy.” Their point of view
is, I suppose, that if there is so much of crime, war, etc., when we have
such beautiful moral principles to guide us, there would verily be chaos
if we were to lose these formal principles altogether.
Bourgeois society regards the home as a sacred
institution, the cornerstone of our social arrangements. No greater
indictment can be hurled against any movement than that it is inimical to
the home. But the present economic system, besides having turned the home
into a very poor thing indeed, is gradually undermining its existence by
compelling the wife and child, as well as the husband in the proletariat,
to serve in the bleak factory. Very few and far between are the protests
of the bourgeois against this attack on the institution “home.” Millions
of homes are destroyed when fathers and sons conscripted by the state are
sent to destruction by the state in times of war. And war is an inevitable
result of the capitalist industrial system. But the principle of the home
must be upheld.
Another illuminating example of this attitude is
the bourgeois relation to property, which is, if anything, more highly
esteemed than human life, and is the prop of capitalist society. Socialism
is vigorously denounced for its hostility to private property—for
Socialists, they urge, would abolish it, confiscate it, destroy it. When
that symptom of capitalism, international war looms up, private property
is confiscated on the grounds of necessity, and millions of dollars worth
of private property is destroyed. (Witness the German cruiser “Emden.”)
Nevertheless, “all’s right with the world” as long as private property is
maintained in principle.
[ Top ] [
Next
]
Copyright South Branch Publishing. All
Rights Reserved.
www.socialisthistory.ca ▪
|
