Class & Understanding
I must concentrate on defending the reputation of the late Harold Walsby against your mud-slinging. Your article “Question of Intelligence” mentioned the view “that a large proportion of the population were constitutionally incapable of learning much or running their own lives”. Challenged to give even one of these examples which, you said, “appeared in the work of Harold Walsby” you quote F. A. Ridley and the Sunday Chronicle. You do not give one example from Walsby.
You say. “If . . . the statements in SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? do not say the working class is mentally inferior, what the devil are they supposed to mean?” If the statements you mean are those quoted in “Question of Intelligence”, then the only reference they make to the working class is to say the SPGB “mushily vacillates . . . about whether the workers have or have not the intelligence to establish Socialism”. This gives no ground for the charge that Walsby held the workers to be mentally inferior. If you want to understand SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? (and Walsby’s other ideological work) read it again with the idea that although there is a minority accepting Socialism and a majority rejecting it, the division between them does not correspond with the division between workers and capitalists. A small minority of workers accept Socialism, the great majority of workers reject it. A small minority of capitalists accept Socialism, the great majority of capitalists reject it. In acceptance or rejection of Socialism there is no significant difference between workers and capitalists.
My letter said the overwhelming majority of those who have heard the Socialist case have rejected it. You seem to think you have dealt with this by saying “the overwhelming majority of the working class have not heard it”. This is not an answer. And by attempting but failing to answer the point you acknowledge its validity. The overwhelming majority of those who have heard the Socialist case have rejected it. What grounds have you for believing the response will be different in future?
G. W. Walford
London N1
Reply:
The substance of your defence of Walsby appears to be that his remarks quoted in “Question of Intelligence” referred not to the working class but to workers and capitalists alike.
The quotation was taken from Chapter 2 of Walsby’s pamphlet SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? which is headed, specifically, “Why don’t the workers accept the socialist case?” The opening of the chapter is a sufficient rebuttal of the assertion that we “vacillate” about the workers’ intelligence. Walsby says: “If we ask the SPGBer ‘Can the workers understand Socialism?’ his almost invariable answer is a very confident and emphatic ‘Yes!’”
Throughout the chapter Walsby makes clear that he is talking about the working class and no-one else.
What is the real answer, then, to the question, ‘Why don’t the workers accept the Socialist case?’ Could it possibly be that ‘working class intelligence’ is not equal to the task, and cannot ‘rise to the height’ required for understanding Socialism?
Among other examples, he says: "So far, then, working-class intelligence has not risen to that elevated level”. The quotation used in our article—"the actual statistical-psychological investigations by Prof. Burt, Thompson, Cattel and many others”—goes on to state that “the average human intelligence is on the decline”. Since the working class is nine-tenths of the population, it must dominate any “average”.
There is no mention whatever of the capitalist class in Walsby’s pamphlet, or of the argument you attribute to it in this connection. Indeed, your remarks generally are difficult to take seriously. You call SPGB—Utopian or Scientific? an "ideological work”, implying a high level of theoretical debate. In fact it consists to a considerable extent of personal abuse of SPGB members.
The principal task of the SPGB lies in the fact that the great majority of the working class have never heard of it. You do not dispute this, but say it "is not an answer”. On the contrary, while that is so, your assertion that "in acceptance or rejection of Socialism there is no significant difference between workers and capitalists” is absurd; and your insistence that the majority who have never heard the Socialist case will reject it when they do is, presumably, blind hope.
Our previous reply pointed out that when workers do hear the Socialist case it is usually under disadvantageous conditions. If, for example, we are allowed to give one broadcast in several years, it is preposterous to say its outcome is that thousands have heard the Socialist case and rejected it. In everyday experience, persuasion and the resolving of differences may and do require several excursions into the subject. We note you share this view yourself. Following our previous reply, you did not settle for having had your arguments rejected, but had another go. To quote your own ending, what grounds have you for believing the response will be different in future?
Editors.
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