Big is Beautiful
In reply to my letter ("More Impact, Please”, May SS) you say it would be a wonderful thing if the material and economic conditions of capitalism did turn the workers into Socialists, and I am sure it would be an equally wonderful thing for your party and Socialism if the conditions produced the stimulus for the British working class to develop Socialist ideas. How then does the SPGB explain the fact that after nearly two hundred years of capitalist development the working class have no desire for Socialism at all?
You say that history shows us that before there can be a fundamental change in society there is a long period during which the ideas and attitudes necessary for the change are fully developed. But the stimulus you write about has not enabled the British workers to turn into Socialists, even after two hundred years. And even today when you expect the development of Socialist ideas to be much shorter you can produce no real evidence for saying this of the British workers or the workers of any other country.
Your reply to my letter only produces some evidence of the perversion of the word Socialism by Labour Social-Democratic parties, but absolutely no evidence at all why the long period of capitalist development in Britain has produced not even the slightest movement towards Socialism by British workers. So neither the economic conditions of capitalism, or the Socialist propaganda from your Socialist Standard has had any real effect on the British working class. How then does the SPGB account for that?
Ian Campbell
Dundee
Reply:
It is quite untrue that the working class "have no desire for Socialism at all” and that there is “not even the slightest movement towards Socialism by British workers”.
The purpose of the references to Labour and social-democratic parties in our previous reply was not to reiterate their perversion of the word Socialism but to point out the reason why they use it: that many workers associate it with changing the present unsatisfactory order of society. The Labour Party started its manifesto in the election campaign of 1945 by announcing itself “a socialist party, and proud of it”, in the belief that this would appeal strongly to workers. Obviously the supporters then and at other times have been disillusioned, but Labour and the other parties think it important to go on trading on "socialism”.
The Socialist movement is alive and well: here you are, writing to its journal which has been going strong since 1904. You are, in effect, demanding to know why we are not bigger. We note that you avoid saying whether the Socialist Party is correct in your opinion—your previous letter said “the working class of Britain have never taken the SPGB’s case against capitalism as being the best way”, without indicating your view. Is it that you identify correctness with a large body of support?
Our reference to history aimed (it seems unsuccessfully) to draw your attention to the fact that a developed Socialist movement arose not automatically at the outset of the Industrial Revolution two hundred years ago. but after a hundred years in which capitalism was itself developing. Present-day methods of communication mean that information and ideas can be disseminated swiftly all over the world, once fuller access to their use is obtained. We have never under-estimated the obstacles to be overcome, whereas you speak as if they did not exist in judging our ‘'impact” on the working class. The fact remains that workers continually react against the conditions of capitalism and look for an alternative; to the extent that the Socialist case can then be presented to them, the Socialist movement progresses all the time. “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable”—a quotation from a Smith of two hundred years ago.
Editors.
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