Letter: Jargon and things (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jargon and things

I am concerned to know what is the general social activity of Socialists outside party activity. When I see Socialists they seem far removed within, from the world they live in, as though they were immune from it.

Your party states that under Socialism, world common ownership of land, industry and transport, etc., all the necessities of life are produced entirely for use instead of for sale (money) and profit-making. Yet there is no mention in your Object and Declaration of Principles that there will be no money (wages etc.) under common ownership.

Why does the SPGB use complex phraseology and long-winded terminology? In many of your articles in the Socialist Standard the composition of England is what I call a jargonized English.

Why does the SPGB fail to realize that people expend less energy but consume more than 50-100 years ago? Because you say that workers are relatively worse off, does that mean you would welcome a return of conditions of 100 years ago?

Why does the Socialist Party stubbornly persist in saying that the wage-earners support capitalism because they support various reform parties such as the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Parties when they show support for capitalism by its very economic nature? Surely the voting of various reform parties is only an endorsement of support of capitalism.

Do you think of capitalism as a threat or challenge?

R. Martin 

Finsbury Park

Reply:

Round the table of the committee which produces the Socialist Standard the “general social activity” of the members includes going to work, bringing up families, playing and watching sports, going to the pictures and the circus, shopping, house-decorating, talking to friends, etc. We can’t and don’t seek to be “immune” from the everyday world. What do you do in your spare time?

Several features of the Socialist case are not specifically mentioned in our Object and Declaration of Principles. Besides the fact that Socialism will be a moneyless society, the Principles do not say we are opposed to reformism, or state our attitude on war, leadership, nationality and other questions. The Object and Principles nevertheless spell out these things. The absence of money is not something we plan as well as common ownership of the means of production and distribution, but a clear implication of common ownership.

Jargon and long-windedness are avoided in the Socialist Standard, and we have been complimented on our liveliness among political journals. It is true that some subjects cannot be expounded painlessly, and the reader must himself make some effort. That is the case with most study; we try to minimize it, but those who want to learn find the effort worth while.

Comparisons with conditions a hundred years ago are beside the point. In 1876 a house with a water- closet outside the back door represented the height of modernity; today it is considered disgracefully substandard. The proper comparison at any time is between what the working class gets and what it produces and makes possible. Today as a hundred years ago workers’ consumption is restricted to the portion of the wealth they produce that is handed back to them as wages, and this position cannot alter under capitalism.

We assume you mean that the workers consciously support capitalism only at second hand by voting for pro-capitalist parties. Certainly the majority of workers do not understand capitalism and are voting only for more houses, promises of employment, etc.; the major part of the Socialist Party’s work is making clear the nature of the social system. But without understanding, direct and indirect consent come to the same thing. A supporter of a supporter is still a prop to the system.

It is much better to understand that capitalism is a social system based on the class ownership of the means of living than to use words like “threat” and “challenge”. These belong to the realm of foggy language you say you object to.

Editors.