Letter: Is Socialist Propaganda futile?
The Editor, “SOCIALIST STANDARD,” Dear Sir,
The SOCIALIST STANDARD for September, 1944, declares, “If the workers in the different countries clearly understood their own class interests, they would act unitedly to rid the world of the capitalist system and introduce Socialism” (p. 65).
The SOCIALIST STANDARD for September, 1921, criticising Sir William Joynson Hicks states : “If is a very useful word and many an argument has been balanced on it by word conjurors … it would be better for the knightly champion to erect his defence of the capitalist system on a more substantial basis” (p. 3).
To suggest you relate these two statements is not, I feel, an unfitting start to a reply to your article, “Old Fallacies Refurbished” (S.S., February, 1945), in which you refer extensively to my pamphlet, “Science, Politics and the Masses.”
My pamphlet entertains the possibility that the majority will never think scientifically about politics. Your review affirmis at some length that this idea is not new. You claim to be scientific. Since when has scientific method involved evading the issue? Nowhere did the pamphlet assert the idea was new. In fact, it explicitly stated otherwise (v. reference to Le Bon, p. 13). What it did suggest was they might be valid.
You disagree. You think the majority can “learn.” Your article repeatedly so asserts. Since when, though has unsupported assertion been part of scientific method? Science is concerned not with mere reiteration, but with evidence Only once does your article offer this:
“If evidence is needed to show that the workers do possess capacity to understand and act—even if at present it is in a limited sphere—their achievement in building up the trade union movement provides that evidence.”
But does it follow that because workers form unions they can achieve “socialist understanding”? Let us see. In 1904 the S.P.G.B. appealed to the workers (including. one assumes, trade unionists) to bring a “speedy” end to capitalism. Since then, by thousands of public speeches and debates; by hundreds of thousands of leallets, periodicals and pamphlets, and by countless private arguments and discussions, the S.P.G.B. case has been put to trade unionists—either implicitly (by appeals to the workers generally) or explicitly (e.g. the SOCIALIST STANDARD, for September, 1921, states on page 2 : “To any trade unionist who reads this article we Socialists say : Understand your class position as a wage slave. . . . ”
With what result? In. 1927 the SOCIALIST STANDARD September, p. l3), said oi trade unions, “even when their intention is good, they frequently dissipate their strength or allow themselves to be side tracked.” In May, 1932, it declared : “We regard Trade Unions as insufficient in any case and, in so far as they are composed of non-Socialists, their actions are frequently found to be reactionary, both upon the industrial and political fields” (p. 137). In September, 1944 (p. 65), it observed: “International trade union and Labour conferences rarely exhibit a genuine international working class outlook . . . the irreconcilable nationalistic and capitalistic views of the delegates. . . .”
Relevant, too, is this statement attributed to the American Federation, of Labour delegate at the General Council of the International Federation of Trade Unions :
“Mr. Watt went further and declared boldly that the A.F. of L. believed in private enterprise and would have nothing to do with Socialism.” (News Chronicle, February, 3, 1945).
Moreover, those of the British trade unionists who do claim to be Socialist seem imbued with that conception of Socialism which the S.P.G.B. so consistently brands as capitalism, i.e., “state,” or “national” ownership. No wonder then the party has admitted :
“Also, in recent years, the Trade Unions and the Trades Union Congress have been to an increasing cxtent drawn into the administration of capitalism (“Questions of the Day,” 1942 edition, p. 24.—my italics).
Nearly half a century the S.P.G.B. has striven : close on 500 issues of the SOCIALIST STANDARD, 10,000 copies of “Questions of the Day” (first edition) and 20,000 of “Socialism” sold by 1933—to instance but two pamphlets; 3,000 hand bills and 1,000 SOCIALIST STANDARD distributed at a single meeting (S.S. Feb., 1930, p. 89); “On May-Day, hi Hyde Park, thousands of workers thronged our meetings ” (S.S., Feb., 1941, p. 21); 170,000 leaflets distributed for the 1931 election (S.S., November, 1931, p. 47).
Now, according to the SOCIALIST STANDARD (January, 1929, p. 67), “the notion that general industrial development and economic pressure does not make the workers receptive to Socialism, is belied by the facts of daily experience” (my italics). Yet, in actual fact, “daily experience” shows the very opposite. If the S.P.G.B. doubts this, it may care to refer to the SOCIALIST STANDARD.
Here one may read such admissions as: “That we are satisfied with our rate of progress we do not, for one moment, pretend,” (September, 1926, p. 13); “the mass of the people want capitalism” (May, 1927, p. 133); “membership of the party is only a tenth of the SOCIALIST STANDARD circulation” (November, 1930, p. 45); “the road to Socialism is a long-one” (January, 1942, p. 3); “there is no sign at present of the workers deciding to achieve Socialism for themselves . . . the Socialist is faced with years of plodding propagauda and educational work for which no mensurable result ciiu yet be seen” (January, 1943, pp. 4-5—my italics).
Science seeks facts. I am prepared to accept as a fact that the S.P.G.B. has one of the most;, if not the most logical nf all party cases. Therefore, I suggest, the figures of its membership are important data for scientific study. Will you, then, kindly make known the year by year statistics of the party membership since 1901 (including percentage of trade union members), so they may be included with other evidence regarding the limits and possibilities of human understanding ?
Yours faithfully,
RICHARD TATHAM.
The gist of the argument in our correspondent’s letter is that as the S.P.G.B. is a very small organisation by comparison with the capitalist parties, notwithstanding its 40 years of propaganda, therefore it is reasonable to assume that the workers cannot understand Socialism. This fallacious reasoning was dealt with in the article referred to (Feburary SOCIALIST STANDARD) and our correspondent’s letter gives further material to re-inforce our case. In the February, S.S. we said : —
“What we are up against is not an innate incapacity to understand, but the massive and tireless machinery of capitalist propaganda, including the red herrings of the Tatham kind, but our efforts—small at present—are aided by the constant pressure of capitalism on the working class.”
Our correspondent seeks to answer this by giving figures showing the extent of S.P.G.B. propaganda—but the figures prove just the opposite of what he intended to show. Just to take one example out of the several given in his letter, there is the reference to 170,000 S.P.G.B. leaflets distributed at the 1931 General Election. At that time there were 30,000,000 electors and on a very conservative estimate the three large parties (Tory, Liberal, Labour), must have distributed between them upwards of 100 million leaflets. At least nine out of ten workers have never heard the S.P.G.B. case presented to them. Those that have heard it have done so against the background of an intensive barrage of anti-Socialist propaganda on the platform, in the newspapers, on the wireless, etc. This, says our correspondent with strange logic, indicates that the workers cannot understand the socialist case! Of course it indicates nothing of the kind.
The further important point that our correspondent overlooks is that the working class have progressed towards class consciousness and political maturity. Any Socialist propagandist who compares the reception given to the S.P.G.B. case now with the apathetic and very hostile reception of 40 or 30 years ago knows that this progress has taken place. That it does not result in a large and rapid increase in our membership is neither surprising nor disturbing; we never underestimated the power of the rich and resourceful capitalist class to delay the flood that will some day overwhelm them.
On our correspondent’s assertion that, “nowhere did the pamphlet assert the idea was new. In fact, it explicitly stated otherwise,” we offer the following extract from page 11, of his pamphlet:—
“We shall be referring here and now to Walsby’s discovery of the Demos and to his analysis of its structure and development. The limited scope of this pamphlet precludes any detailed account of the process by which he arrives at his results, though all this must sooner or later be examined if one is to have full evidence for the conclusions about to be described.” (Italics ours).
Again on the same page is a reference to Walsby’s “theories and discoveries.”
Why the claim that they ars Walsby’s discoveries and results if they are Le Bon’s or someone else’s?
Incidentally, as our correspondent accepts Le Bon’s assertion that civilization has been the work of a small minority of superior intelligences and not of the mass of “inferior elements” one wonders how it was that our correspondent and his associates not long ago organised what they described as “Mass Meetings.” If it is only worth while to address “superior intelligences” what was the real purpose behind those abortive attempts to “tickle the ears of the groundlings”?
More important still is the admission in the pamphlet that we have yet to see how Walsby reached his (or Le Bon’s) conclusions, and the full evidence for them. In face of this presentation of unsupported conclusions it is strangely inconsistent for our correspondent to chide us with making unsupported assertions, even if it were true that we had done so. But our claim that where we can reach the workers with our limited resources, we can count on their capacity to understand our case is not unsupported. It is something within the experience of every S.P.G.B. propagandist and we do not need to go to Le Bon or some one else who lacks our direct experience.
ED. COMM.