ALB
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Here’s what he found (but remember that in these polls the answers are often shaped by the questions):
“Voters are almost as fed up with business as with politicians – presenting a huge challenge for supporters of capitalism and enterprise.
When asked to choose the biggest divide was in society, by far the most popular answer was rich vs poor (39%), twice as many as those who chose Brexit or North vs South.
When asked what words or phrases they thought of first when thinking about British companies, the top answers were ‘Profit over people’ (chosen by 47%), ‘They put shareholders first, not ordinary people’ (44%), ‘Excessive CEO/executive compensation’ (41%) and ‘Avoids paying taxes’ (34%). ‘Creates jobs’ was chosen as one of their top four options by 32% of voters – but was beaten by the first three even among Tory voters.”
He didn’t come up with an alternative name for capitalism. But how about ‘the profit system” as a lot of people seem to recognise?
The SWP was part of Respect (until Galloway kicked them out). It was part of their “turn” to try to attract unreformed Muslims. This involved no longer meeting in pubs.
I remember two of us distributing a leaflet at an SWP front meeting held at the TUC headquarters. The leaflet was on some other subject (racism I think) but happened to mention our attitude to religion. An officious SWPer came out and told us to stop as it was islamophobic. We didn’t of course.
Galloway’s votes are obtained on the same basis and so are quite useless for getting some reforms let alone socialism.
We were on to how the Trots had nothing to offer from the start, as this article from the Socialist Standard from 1944 shows:
Here is a video of him campaigning. I see from their site that his party does claim to be socialist. It looks like the Respect Party resuscitated.
Yes, Galloway’s “Workers Party” got 8,264 votes, or 22% of the votes cast. No doubt nearly all of them will have been from former Labour-voting Muslims dissatisfied with Starmer’s strident pro-Zionist stance.
The Workers Party, so- called, has strong link with the “Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)” which is a party that supports Stalin, Mao, Enver Hodja, Kim Il Sung, etc. But I don’t suppose they are under any illusion that the votes cast for Galloway were votes for their programme for national(ist) state capitalism in Britain. Here’s what they stand for from their own site.
I don’t suppose either that Galloway even mentioned the word socialism (or even capitalism) in his campaign. I hope not. But does anyone know?
From today’s Times confirmation as to why we should discourage the use of the term “white privilege”. Didn’t those who bandy it about realise that it was inevitably going to put to this use?
“Elsewhere falsified leaflets proclaiming that Labour ‘believes it is high time white people acknowledged their privilege and gave something to people of colour’ have been posted in mainly white areas.”
The paper went on to blame supporters of Galloway. I doubt that. There are other ant-Labour candidates standing. It could even be the Tories. Remember Smethwuck and the “if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour” leaflets? Politics is a dirty business.
Not bad. Makes the same point that worker cooperatives can only operate on the margins of the capitalist economy and, as businesses producing for the market, are subject to same pressures to keep costs down and accumulate capital to innovate so as to stay competitive as any other business. And that workers already cooperate to run industry and services from top to bottom, only not in their own interest and so have no need to learn how to do this.
But the article offers no alternative to capitalist production for the market by wage workers, just that unions are needed to resist downward pressures exerted by capital on wages and conditions. No doubt unions are better than coops, but they have their limitations too and are fighting a permanent defensive battle.
I thought that the IWW was committed to the abolition of the wages system. In that case they missed an opportunity to spell out that this is only possible on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
I doubt if many people will ! Personally I’m not prepared to spend one hour reading through such pretentious piffle. At one time Camatte had some interest and relevance for publicising Bordiga’s idea about future communist society. That was nearly two decades ago. He went completely nutty when he became a fruitarian and began propagating the weird ideas discussed in this article. I would cross him off your list of people to search mentions of, Alan.
I don’t see why you are struggling, Paula. We do not say that socialism has to be established through the ballot box and that therefore if there is no ballot box socialism cannot be established. That is a caricature of our position concocted by our opponents.
We say that socialism can only be established when a majority want and understand it. The vote is a means of measuring this and also a way to win political control.
If a majority wanted socialism but didn’t have the vote, then they would have to find some other way to win political control. It is difficult to see how this could avoid violence occurring — one reason why we say workers in this situation should struggle to get the vote.
The situation when the party was formed was that some workers had the vote and some didn’t (the majority in fact). But this would not have stopped a majority coming to want socialism or socialism being established.
Why did we say in 1904 that the way to win political control to establish socialism was through the ballot box? Because the majority of electors were workers (they had been since 1867), so if a majority of workers wanted socialism then those workers with the vote could use it to win political control.
(The hypothetical situation of a majority of workers with the vote wanting socialism but a majority of those without the vote not wanting it has already been discussed and dismissed as highly unlikely).
If the party had been formed 40 years earlier, before most electors were workers, they would no doubt have joined the campaign to extend the franchise, as Marx did in participating in the campaign that eventually led to the passing of the 1867 Reform Act (which enfranchised male urban voters who were heads of household, extended in 1884 to such workers in the countryside).
This thread is providing an opportunity to try to nail once and for all the lies and fabrications in circulation about the Party’s attitude to the pre-WW1 campaign for votes for women.
Before 1918 the franchise system in force for parliamentary elections in Britain was Male Household Suffrage, or One Household, One Vote (plus a vote for those who owned property of a certain minimum value even if they weren’t a head of household).
This excluded all women but also many men.This article from 1912 quotes the Home Secretary as saying that of the 12,032,000 men over 21 in Britain only 7,409,034 had the vote, which is 62%. In other words 4,622,034, or 38% did not.
The Suffragettes were not campaigning for universal suffrage but for women to be eligible to vote on the same conditions as men. In other words, Household Suffrage for both women and men. This would have given the vote only to women who were heads of household, i.e., either single women or widows. Since this would have excluded all married women (except those who owned property in their own right, who could already vote in local elections).
This other article calculated how many existing electors were property-owners and how many were workers. It is clear from these figures that extending the franchise to women on the same terms as men would have given the vote to more property-owners than to workers, so increasing the overall percentage of property-owners in the electorate. Not an outcome that would be in the interest of working class.
Note that both articles state that the Party had no objection in principle to universal suffrage. One says it would be a “useful measure for the working class” and the other that “we are necessarily and without any qualification democrats”. The reason the Party, while not opposing its introduction, didn’t advocate it was we did not regard is as an absolute necessity nor the immediate priority (socialism was).
I am not sure about that. Or if it is was, it was at a huge price — taking part in the first world slaughter. At least that was the reasoning of the Pankhursts who clanged the name of the Suffragette paper to “Britannia”, expecting the vote in return for supporting the war (except Sylvia who opposed the war but by then had come to the conclusion that the vote was useless even for men). Also, the ruling class couldn’t defend denying the vote to all men when, in supposed defence if “democracy”, British troops many without the vote faced German troops all of whom did have it.
It would be up to the membership to decide but I can’t see us advocating that workers shouldn’t vote for it or objecting to workers, including party members, voting for it. I suppose our attitude as a party would be: vote for it if you want to.
“What if the majority of voters wanted socialism, but the majority of the women and the third of men didn’t?”
The short answer would be that, in that situation, socialism would not be possible as not enough workers would be in favour. But extending the franchise wouldn’t solve the problem. Only convincing workers without the vote of the need for socialism would.
However, I don’t think the early Party members would have regarded the situation you posit as being likely as, if a majority of workers who had the vote wanted socialism, this was likely to mean that a majority of those without the vote would too.
They were concerned with a majority of the working class coming to want and understand socialism whether or not they had the vote. In fact, not even all Party members would have had the vote.
The vote was (and still is) seen as a tool that could be used to gain political control. If most workers, electors and non-electors, wanted socialism then those with the vote could use it to win control of political power on behalf of the whole class. Universal suffrage could be quickly brought in after that.
Anyway, that was their assessment of the position at the time. But by 1918 this had ceased be an issue as the franchise was extended then to a majority of the working class.
Also of course they regarded making socialists as more important than extending the franchise.
It wasn’t universal suffrage that would have increased the percentage of the propertied class in the electorate but the demand to extend the suffrage to women on the same basis as men which is what the Suffragettes we’re campaigning for (before 1918 about one third of men didn’t have the vote as they didn’t own or rent property above a minimum level). As women were even less likely to meet this condition, the proportion of women left without the vote would have been even higher. Most of the women that would have got the vote on these conditions would have come from the 10% who owned 90% of the wealth.
The reason the SPGB didn’t advocate universal suffrage (while not opposing it) was because they considered socialism as the immediate aim and enough voters had the vote to win political control once there was a socialist majority.
In places where this wasn’t the case, the SPGB was in favour of workers there demanding the vote. For the reasons you give. See for instance the conclusion of this article on India from the June 1932 Socialist Standard (quoted here):
“Workers in India should unite on a basis of Socialist principles and organise for the establishment of Socialism. They should take what steps are necessary to secure a franchise for this purpose, but they should not unite with any other parties or give adherence to any other bodies, even those masquerading as pure, and simple franchise organisations, as by so doing they would lose independence.”
Imposs1904 has just published this article from the June 1945 Socialist Standard about the cynical use the ruling class make of atrocities. It’s what the Western government are doing now with regard to China.
