Simply misheard
Dear Editors,
One thing I especially enjoy about the Socialist Party is your rationality. I find it frustrating that your solid arguments are so often simply misheard rather than disagreed with.
You doggedly put forward the proposition that what we need is a world society in which we all take what we each decide we need, from the common store of goods which we all co-operate together to produce. There would be no money, no coercion, and nobody would use anybody else.
Not only that, but you are clear that if this is to come about, it can only be as a result of the majority of the world's population grasping the situation, understanding how things are and what’s needed. You are emphatic that any idea of leadership is totally out of place in this thinking.
There is a whole movement afoot which is wholly with this understanding. I have in mind people like roads protesters, who are amazingly brave, creative and committed. Greens, people into DIY publishing and music, those into the newly-emerging Land Issue a la Winstanley. who was against money, and many others, the DIY underground, travellers and so forth. They share a great deal of your language, and they all more or less reject exploitation and favour a person-centred culture where the individual and the community are not artificially at odds as they are now.
And yet there seems to be no connection.
It seems to me that, for the alternative culture at least, there are two big obstacles to embracing what you call "Socialism":
Firstly, everyone assumes that some form of exchange has to remain in place. The idea of really sharing and trusting people not to take liberties is literally unthinkable.
Secondly, any attempt to say "we’ve thought about this, and this is what we think", any clarity on what's wrong and what’s needed is regarded with fear and hatred. People are very relativistic these days, seeing the only alternative to “nothing can be known" as “This is the truth, agree or else!"
In the meantime, of course, there's nothing relativistic about capitalism. We have to like it or lump it.
So that's why I value the Socialist Party so much. For holding onto the possibility that we can live all as sisters and brothers to one another, no matter how unfashionable and impossible that might look to our tired and fearful age—and for arguing that that's going to involve getting rid of exchange and so on.
It is all right to have an opinion about this. When you’re in a dark place people who genuinely look for a way out are a resource not a threat. Of course you could be wrong, but it looks reasonable to me. and indeed. I came to this understanding before I ever heard of the Socialist Party. To entertain these possibilities has nothing to do with trying to be a leader or a fanatic, it’s to do with trying to escape all that rubbish but still respect your intellect.
I really wish that I came across similar thinking more often amongst people you’d expect to be open to it.
Peter Rigg,
Nelson, Lancs
Blogger's Note:
As many readers of the blog will know, Peter Rigg was a very valuable contributor to the Socialist Standard. His best known work was his Free Lunch cartoon strip, which appeared on the back page of the Standard from 2001 until 2020.
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