Letters: When and how?
When—and how? For more than half a century you have preached socialism. For nearly that long I have read your literature and listened to your speakers. Constantly I ask; when and how. Your speakers repeat, parrot-fashion; “When the workers want socialism they will have it”. Fine, but this is dependent on the question, “How?”, to which you have no answer. Propaganda by itself is useless. There must be a plan of action. Do you envisage a time when it will be impossible to recruit a single soldier, sailor or airman; when at a General. Election not a single vote will be cast; and when workers will all simultaneously and spontaneously, without leadership or organisation of any sort, suddenly refuse to work for their capitalist masters? Supposing such a fantastic state of affairs could come about what then? How do you set up and how administer the socialist society?
It is true that the Labour Party, by attempting to bring about a socialist society through a process of gradual reform has foundered because it was forced to compromise with capitalism but it is also true that the Soviet by bloody revolution overthrew the capitalist society yet the workers are certainly no more free than they were under private capitalists. Private capitalism has simply been succeeded by State Capitalism. I certainly do not expect to get the answers to my two simple questions but I suggest that the SPGB thinks about this problem. By all means continue your good work in converting the workers to socialism but please, for the sake of convinced socialists co-sider, when—and how?
B.W. London, W.10.
REPLY
Here is a pleasant surprise for B.W.—answers to his questions. The first one—”When”—he answers himself: “When the workers want Socialism they will have it.” To the second question— “How?”—the answer is much the same. When the great majority of workers in this country and all over the world are convinced Socialists then they will handle the business of bringing about a Socialist society without any difficulty. They (the workers, including the administrative and supervisory workers) already handle the much greater problem of running a capitalist society— much greater because the necessary production and distribution of goods is complicated by problems of exchange, of payment, of credit, of competition, of national frontiers, of strategic considerations, and so on—all of which will cease to exist when capitalism is abolished. Besides that, many workers, are at present employed on useless jobs (bank clerks, insurance men, bus conductors) or directly harmful ones (soldiers, munitions makers) thus greatly reducing the number of workers available for the useful work of production and distribution. And at present the workers do this much more difficult job—of running capitalism—when it is not even in their own interests. Under Socialism they will have a much easier task which will be in their own interests. It is hard to see why our correspondent thinks that the same people who are now doing a very difficult Job will not in the future be able to do a much easier one.
Our “plan of action” is straight-forward: to make Socialists. Why does B.W. think there will be “no organisation . . . of any sort”? The Socialist Party is the very organisation he is looking for. As we state in the Declaration of Principles we publish every month “The Socialist Party of Great Britain . . . calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner”. The organisation is already here—the too! of the working class in the Socialist revolution. All that is lacking is a majority of class-conscious workers, and we are doing our best to bring that about.
B.W. says “Do you envisage a time when it will be impossible to recruit a single soldier, sailor or airman; when at a General Election not a single vote will be cast”—presumably B.W. means for capitalist parties, since our appeal to Socialist workers is to vote for Socialist candidates or write “Socialism” etc. on the ballot paper. B.W. is correct to describe such a state of affairs as fantastic. When “nobody” is prepared to join the armed forces or vote for capitalist parties these institutions, because of that fact, will have ceased to exist.
If B.W. has been reading our literature and listening to our speakers for as long as he says, he should know that the Labour Party has never attempted to bring about a Socialist society, whether by gradual reform or otherwise. It aims at nothing more than state capitalism, and a “welfare state”. A state capitalist party will never bring about Socialism. As for Russia, the Soviet revolution overthrew the landed aristocracy, and brought in capitalism —at first partly private and partly state, now wholly state. It is perfectly true that the workers are no better of under state than under private capitalism, but this is only what the Socialist Party has been saying since its inception.
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE