ALB
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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.
Actually the US ruling class knew very well that what existed in the old USSR wasn’t socialist.
In 1959 one of the members of the Russian ruling elite, Mikoyan, visited the USA. On his departure he gave a farewell message in which he described Russia as socialist. The US Secretary of State, the notorious John Foster Dulles, replied on behalf of President Eisenhower:
“The President is aware that you operate under a system of State capitalism . . .”
See here.
Yes he is. I read that article and was disappointed by it as in other articles he had dismissed the idea that the riot on the Capitol was an attempted fascist coup. The Republican Party certainly is going in for practices that in other countries would be regarded as corrupt but then American politics has always been corrupt.
Rubio is right that identity politics is divisive but wrong in thinking that Marxism supports it. Marxism is opposed to id(iot)pol precisely because it divides the working class against itself, setting one section against another for the crumbs capitalism has to offer. We are for working class unity against the capitalist class.
I don’t know how the myth originated that we opposed votes for women arose. Probably from some malicious opponent. As Alan has pointed out, what we were opposed to was the Suffragette demand for votes for women on the same terms as it then was for men. This, on the grounds that it would have meant more votes for members of the propertied class than for workers.
As to universal suffrage, we weren’t against this but argued that it wasn’t necessary as enough workers already had the vote that could be used to win control of political power to bring in socialism. I think there’s another quote from an early Socialist Standard saying that universal suffrage would be introduced as soon as the socialist-minded workers won political control.
Ok, we didn’t campaign for Universal Suffrage but that’s not the same as being opposed to it. There are lots of things we don’t advocate but are not opposed to. And if the implication is that we should advocate whatever we are not opposed to, then that really would be the thin end of the slippery slope to reformism.
Incidentally, in the referendum I think it was in 2011 on whether to change electoral system to introduce the Alternative Vote the Party didn’t take up a position either for or against, effectively giving the working class including party members a free hand. I don’t know about you, Paula, but I voted for it.
Yes I remember there was a bit of a cult of Dylan in the Party in the late 60s. According to the November 1968 Socialist Standard, on Sunday 3 November there was a talk in Glasgow on “Changing Times of Bob Dylan”. I don’t know if you were there, Matt. I think the same talk was also given in London.
I see this scheme isn’t actually being billed as a UBI experiment like many others are. The U in UBI is supposed to stand for Universal, so the proposal is that everyone is to be paid a Basic Income unconditionally (I suppose the U could mean that too).
Schemes like this are experiments to see if it would be better (and cheaper) to pay certain categories of the poor a regular income, unconditional in the sense that if you meet the condition to be in the category you will be paid the money without any other conditions like family allowances are. If adopted it would just be a tweak to the Poor Law. And will never be more than this.
Left wingers and others who plug UBI as a solution are deluding themselves and misleading others. It won’t happen and would never work. By comparison socialism is a much more realistic proposition. But these left wingers shy away from proposing that as they don’t want to be labelled utopian for envisaging the disappearance of money.
Hardly surprising. He might have been a counter-cultural icon in the 1960s but went off the rails when he became a born again Christian in 1979. I don’t think he produced anything worthwhile after that, certainly nothing counter cultural, did he? But he must have pleased someone as they gave him a Prize named after a Master of War.
This result of this election in May for the position of “Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough” shows what could happen if tactical voting against the Tories caught on. The voting system for mayors (where voters have a second preference vote) allowed Labour and Liberal voters to gang up against the Tories with their second preference votes.
It looks as if electoral reform to extend this voting system to parliamentary elections might be the only way for Labour professional politicians to ever get a crack at trying to run capitalism again. But will they offer the Liberals that?
You mean Liberal and Labour voters get together? Though as Labour and Tory are Tweedledee and Tweedledum their voters could easily get together. Or are they Tweedledum and Tweedledummer?
“Zecharia Sitchin, who studied at the London School of Economics, wrote his best seller, The 12th planet, based on his interpretation of ancient Sumerian text, which clearly reveals that humans were genetically engineered from homo erectus into homo sapiens as slave-workers for the aliens, referred to as ‘the Anunnaki’.”
Classic pseudoscience and pseudohistory. It is not just UAPs that need to be explained but also what motivates some people to believe this sort of stuff. And this one claims to be a socialist. As if we didn’t have a big enough cross to bear.
Of course the Clarion Cycling Club never meant by socialism what we did — and we were rivals before the WW1 as our members also went cycling on propaganda missions — but only the sort of thing the old ILP meant (nationalisation, municipalisation).
Even so it’s rather sad that their organisation should be taken over by trendies who object not only to the word socialism but to the whole concept. And who have pushed through an amendment to commit the club to “fairness, equality, inclusion and diversity” which as they themselves say “can hardly be argued against”. Indeed. Not even a Tory would argue against those.
They deserve a split. I secretly hope they do.
Just found this article on them from the July 2011 Socialist Standard
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/07/pedalling-in-ever-decreasing-circles.html
