NOTES 



Scientific Politics.— n. Labour and the Labour Party. 



The Labour Party is a new thing in politics, but labour itself 

 is far older than politics, for without labour there can be neither 

 politics nor civilisation. To discuss labour politics, therefore, 

 without some reference to historical perspective would be 

 confusing and misleading 



It is often said, for example, by writers of one school that, 

 without capital, labour could not live ; and by their opponents, 

 that labour is itself the origin of capital. Obviously both 

 doctrines cannot be true ; examination will show that neither 

 is wholly true. 



Capital in its potential form has always existed, and will 

 always exist ; it is only another name for the resources of nature. 

 But those resources can only be utilised by labour, which is 

 common to all life. The difference, at least the fundamental 

 difference, between animal and human labour is that the animal 

 merely obtains what it needs for its sustenance, and no more ; 

 human labour produces much more than the actual needs of the 

 individual. 



The whole of human civilisation is built upon that surplus. 

 If the primitive agriculturist had only secured a living for him- 

 self and his dependents, and no more, there would have been no 

 civilisation, because there would have been no surplus, and 

 therefore no possible division of labour. Kings and popes 

 would have followed the plough, and the Shakespeares and 

 Newtons of the world have spent their lives in tilling the soil ; 

 and most certainly there would have been no Labour Party, 

 because urban labour could not have existed, since there would 

 have been no cities and no urban industries. It is sometimes 

 forgotten that the present industrial and urban age, in which 

 eight men out of ten in England live in the great towns, was 

 only rendered possible by the improved agriculture of the 

 eighteenth century, and the increased agricultural resources of 

 the nineteenth. Civilisation, like Napoleon's army, marches on 

 its stomach. 



There is a sense in which it may be said that only the peasant 

 earns his own living ; for only the peasant grows his own food. 



628 



