Letter: Eye of a needle (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eye of a needle

While I believe that the SPGB have a closer understanding of Socialism than most other groups in this country, I completely fail to understand how they can ever visualize a majority of the working class—with such famous members as bankers, debt collectors, hired hooligans of the law enforcement racket etc. all rushing to the polls to vote it in!

When that day comes they must surely be beaten to the post by the "bored with wealth” brigade.

It will be the lower strata of the working class who will finally establish Socialism—not those so-called socialists of the “upper working class", those “middle-class-working-class” intellectuals of Somnambulistic Enterprises Ltd. Socialism will always remain the prerogative of the poor— never of the "managers” of the wealthy!

J. W. Pitt

Worthing

Reply:

If what you say were correct, the most poverty-stricken city areas would be full of Socialists; manifestly, they are not. As an example, at the time of writing there is a by-election in Ladywood, Birmingham, which was described in The Times of 13th August as "one of the worst environments of any big European city”—yet the chief interest in the campaign is the possibility of the Tory candidate being elected. Further, if what you say were correct the Socialist Party would have an interest in obstructing the "lower strata of the working class” from trying to improve their standard of living.

Your point of view is the understandable one that managers, administrative workers and law-enforcers perform anti-working-class functions and therefore cannot act as Socialists. Yet these people are themselves exploited. Marx said of them: “the labour of superintendence, entirely separated from the ownership of capital, walks the streets” (and more about this in Volume 3 of Capital, second half of the chapter headed "Interest and Profit of Enterprise”). Dire poverty is one but certainly not the sole source of Socialist consciousness; many workers become Socialists through other frustrations and perceptions of the hopelessness of capitalism. To whoever does, it means he has acquired class consciousness which over-rides the capitalist-conditioned outlook he previously had (if he is in an anti-working-class job, what he does about it is up to him). Don’t say that certain people are beyond the reach of class consciousness; in a class-divided society, nobody is.

There is another way of looking at this. According to National Income and Expenditure 1965-75, published by the Central Statistical Office, out of 28,123 tax units (i.e. incomes) in Britain in 1973-74, 24,251 were under £2,500 net and 20,496 were under £2,000. So if Socialism were dependent on low incomes the great majority of the working class would qualify anyway. Those who have you worried are a small proportion; the “lower strata" is (most of us.

Editors.