Letter: "Can you be serious?" (1983)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

In your October issue you have written that reforms of capitalism have “no useful, permanent effect on workers' lives except that by delaying socialism, they worsen workers’ conditions”. Can you be serious? All the rights won by the working class and the foundations of its economic and political strength have been gained by actions which, since we do not yet have socialism, must come under the definition of "reforms of capitalism".

The transcendence of capitalism must be a dialectical transformation of quantity to quality, in other words, for the revolution in social relationships which we aim for to be possible, the conditions for such a revolution must be generated through progressive piecemeal change in all areas of society, economic, ideological, political — that is. they must be generated through reform. Unless the word “revolution” is aligned with such a conception, it is, obviously, a meaningless abstract. Yet your paper comes close to using the word “revolution” in this way in its attitude towards reformist proposals and any avowed socialists who advocate reform, like Tony Benn.

You may say your mistrust of Labour Party “reformists” is justified in the light of experience but your attitude towards figures like Benn topples over into ignorant dismissal of practical socialist reforms.

Your treatment of the Glasgow Media Group’s third report was an illustration of the poverty of this attitude. Their theme is the formation of consciousness — a central concern of your paper and one fundamental to the class struggle. It surely merited more detailed attention. It was declared to have “some value” but presumably because its compilers asked for reforms instead of calling for the Socialist Party to lead us to revolution, it was given short shrift.

This wholesale refusal to sympathise at least in part with other avowed socialists and to deny them serious critical attention can do no good, and to completely alienate your paper from reformist ideas is not socialist but reactionary, sectarian and damaging to your objectives.

James Daly 

Glasgow

Reply:

James Daly has misread the passage in the October Socialist Standard (p. 198 — reply to letter from Chris Cooke), which did not say that reforms have no effect except to worsen workers' conditions but that reformism has this effect — in this case, specifically the Right to Work Campaign.

Of course some reforms (although not by far as many as the reformists say) benefit the working class. Workers must constantly struggle against the inroads which capitalism threatens to make into their standards and to improve those standards, for example by class conscious trade union action. Socialists recognise that the freedom to discuss ideas and to form political parties is vital to the working class and to the existence of a socialist party. This cannot be said about the Right to Work Campaign, which can only divert workers’ energies away from the struggle for that ultimate “reform" — the radical solution to all the problems the reformists claim to deal with — of establishing socialism. If the object of that Campaign were to be achieved, the only result would be that more workers would be exploited in employment than is the case at present. Is that supposed to be a change towards socialism?

Workers should realise that, whatever reforms they may accept, they will not remove the basis of capitalism's problems and that the problems, in one form or another, will therefore continue. Anything which delays the establishment of socialism amounts to a worsening of working class conditions, to more intense exploitation. to ever more fearsome weapons of war.

There is no evidence to support the argument that every reform is a quantitative change and that when there have been enough of these they will amass into a qualitative change in society. The history of reformism shows that it confuses workers; it persuades them that they should use their political power to opt for reforming capitalism. in the belief that this society can be reformed out of its basic character. This amounts to an argument for the delay of socialism, when all facts point to the conclusion that socialism is an immediate need. Socialism cannot happen by capitalism being reformed out of existence; it will happen through the act of a politically aware working class who understand that only socialism can set up a world based on production for human need and free access.

Our review of Really Bad News (October Socialist Standard, p. 197) was in fact an example of socialist critical attention; we recognised the merits of the Glasgow Media Group but also its limitations. How else should we deal with such groups? We apply the same style to that prominent member of the capitalist Labour Party, that man who has willingly served as a member of Labour governments which have run capitalism — Tony Benn. We have published much material in these columns, exposing Benn as another supporter of capitalism and there is no point in repeating any of it here, save to say that we don’t simply make assertions on the matter; we back our arguments up with evidence such as Benn's own words. It is people like James Daly, who persist, despite all the evidence, in their faith that Benn is a socialist who are reactionary, sectarian and damaging to the objective of the establishment of socialism.

Editors.