If you could start a new business right now, what would it be?
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I am reading Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists at the moment in preparation for seeing a dramatisation of it at the Horden Playhouse next week by Ensemble 84. In it capitalism is called by Owen, the Socialist hero, as ‘the Imbecile system’ and the majority of businesses defined thus: ‘people occupied with what they call “Business”, which means being very busy without producing anything’. But this is the third section before he describes the majority of people – the Productive Workers producing goods and those the ‘Imbecile System’ needs to create surplus value from those it does allow to work, the ‘Unemployed’
The first sections are, first:
‘… those who not only do nothing, but do not even pretend to be of any use; people who would consider themselves disgraced if they by any chance did any useful work. This class includes tramps, beggars, the “Aristocracy”, “Society” people, great landowners, and generally all those possessed of hereditary wealth.’
The second is:
… those who do work of a kind–“mental” work if you like to call it so–work that benefits themselves and harms other people. Employers–or rather Exploiters of Labour; Thieves, Swindlers, Pickpockets; profit seeking share-holders; burglars; Bishops; Financiers; Capitalists, and those persons humorously called “Ministers” of religion.
Here is the full quotation describing the third section of people, business people:
Number three stands for those who work for wages or salaries, doing unnecessary work. That is, producing things or doing things which – though useful and necessary to the Imbecile System – cannot be described as the necessaries of life or the benefits of civilization. This is the largest section of all. It comprises Commercial Travellers, Canvassers, Insurance agents, commission agents, the great number of Shop Assistants, the majority of clerks, workmen employed in the construction and adornment of business premises, people occupied with what they call “Business”, which means being very busy without producing anything.
So here’s my ‘business idea’! will it get me on Dragon’s Den?
In my business, workers wear broad smiles,
Talk big so that an inch of sense extends,
Thus pounded by weighty words, many miles.
Sue wanted bread, but lending them ears, ends
Up with Fondant Fancies, puffed from the breath
Of promised good, but made of sugared sounds
And chemically toxic, so that death
Comes slow but very sure, with no sound grounds
To sue me on. Besides the lawyer backs
Me not Sue, as busy for the Very Few
Who can afford his fees. Sue truly lacks,
Like Many, that heft to make the false true.
I do what all valid businesses can
By making nothing sound like something sound
And solid, it feeds me. Emptier than
She was with nothing fed, my mill will Sue ground
To the same dust that's my only product.
So what! If I gain - leaving all else fucked!
With lopve
Steven xxxxxxxxx
