Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard
New definitions
F. Sliwinski’s argument for the evolving of a new language to educate the working class is commendable but hardly possible of realization. To be of use it needs mass dissemination, and by what means? The schools, the media, all controlled by the “cheap bamboozling propagandists”? Hardly. The Standard’s progress in seventy years should disillusion the best-intentioned. Swift questioned the ability of words to convey definitions of what we actually mean and suggested we carry around with us the things to make our meaning clear. To take a television from our pocket and shout triumphantly “This is what I mean”, then drop it over a cliff.
The East End schoolteacher sacked for teaching children poetry is a good example of what we are up against. Sliwinski makes his point though perhaps admitting inadvertently that Marx did not, as far as the ordinary man is concerned. Capital written in the vernacular with wit, caustic humour and belly laughs might achieve something. Marx stripped of some verbiage could reveal the tree for the hanging of. Paine was dangerous to the ruling classes for his clear unadulterated English whereas Godwin constituted no threat though he pleaded on the same lines as Paine.
Unfortunately obscurity denotes profundity, vagueness great intellect, and if you don’t understand don’t ask him who professes to — for the condescending smirk may hide the fact that he has also lost his bearings.
Nevertheless, like Seddon who wrote to his wife the night before his execution, “I am still cheerful”.
Ruth Bolster
London S.E.15
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