Letters: Technology & Socialism (1974)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Technology & Socialism

I found your reply to S. Gamzu (Socialist Standard March 1974) quite perplexing. How many “bases” has Socialism? Two I suggest: an advanced industrial technology and resources, and international proletarian consciousness. Common ownership of the means of production is the means of nullifying capitalist competition and of introducing planned production and the “freeing” of commodities. Common ownership and control is not the basis of Socialism if by basis you mean a necessary and sufficient condition. Socialism is not about providing “a framework within which the means of production could have been developed much more rapidly than under capitalism to the stage where . . .” That is a curiously Bolshevist and Third World “Socialism”. But even so Gamzu was in perfectly good company when he asserted that the Nineteenth Century level of technologico-economic development could not have sustained a socialist mode of production and distribution. As the following quote makes clear Marx recognised this sixteen years before his death: “In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of Continental Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development.” (Capital Vol. 1—Preface to the First German Edition, Kerr. Edn. p. 13).

Indeed without a certain technologico-economic maturity which can be economically ascertained with reference to the necessaries of life, common ownership and democratic control would disintegrate or must degenerate into internecine squabbles among various councils, Regions, Committees or Workers’ Parliaments. Engels’ much neglected article on the principles of communism emphasizes all this.

F. Clunie 

University of Warwick, Coventry.

Reply:

The foundation or basis on which Socialism will be established will be the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution with production for use. But before it becomes possible two pre-conditions must exist. They are, as F. Clunie points out: 1) the material conditions of potential abundance, and 2) a world working class who understand and want Socialism and know how to establish it. Since Marx’s day capitalism has itself developed the first of these necessary pre-conditions. It is the task of Socialists, now as formerly, to speed the development of the second.

We still claim that it was not wrong for Marx in his time to advocate Socialism as we understand it. In the Nineteenth Century this would have meant the rapid development of the means of production under common ownership and democratic control to the point where the full implementation of the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’’ would have been possible. What provisions would have been made in the interim period between a Socialist revolution and the advent of abundance and free access would always depend on the wishes of the majority. At the moment it remains in the realm of speculation.

Our correspondent chides us for claiming that Socialism would have provided a framework for such a development. The passage he quotes from Capital does not bear out the point we think he is trying to make. What Marx was claiming was not that it was not worth advocating Socialism but that at that time (i.e. 1867) the bourgeoisie in Germany had not yet swept away the vestiges of pre-capitalist societies. However, the laws of capitalist production worked “. . . with iron necessity toward inevitable results [i.e. the triumph of the capitalist means of production . . .] The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” After the passage quoted by Clunie the Preface continues:

Alongside of modern evils, a whole series of inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production, with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the living but also from the dead.

The Bolsheviks (as their emulators in the “Third World” will discover) had no option but to develop capitalist relations of production because Socialism is not a possibility in one country alone. In addition the majority of the population in Russia, as elsewhere, did not want Socialism then as they demonstrably and unfortunately do not want it now.

Finally there is no evidence to support the contention that with a majority understanding the need for Socialism it would “degenerate” because free access was not an immediate possibility. A mass of evidence from the field of anthropology for example shows that men and women can co-operate voluntarily to produce wealth and then share the proceeds of that co-operation.

Editors.

The Class Struggle

Is the political struggle a political struggle? (apologies for the tautology) or is the political mainly an economic struggle?

If it is mainly an economic struggle, what should be our responsibility? What should we all be doing to indicate to others and to satisfy ourselves that it is mainly an economic struggle, so contributing towards making capitalism its own grave-digger.

Or should we all concern ourselves more to be taking steps to end capitalism, to introduce common ownership (socialism)?

B. Baxter

London W.2.

Reply:

Read our Declaration of Principles! Capitalist society has two classes, the owners and the non- owners (the working class); the conflict of interests between them is the class struggle, which goes on all the time.

It has two aspects, the political and the economic. The latter is the daily struggle over wages and working conditions that all workers are in — usually in trade unions. But this is a restricted, mainly defensive struggle and most of those who wage it take capitalism for granted. When the consciousness of the true nature of things arises, the political struggle has to be engaged in: this is to gain control of the means of production and distribution, through the State, to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism.

Therefore if you want to end capitalism and introduce common ownership, you should be taking part in the political struggle, in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Why not make a start by visiting one of our Branches?

Editors.

Northern Ireland

Will you explain why the English Capitalist Class see fit and profitable to remain in Northern Ireland in the teeth of so much bombing, commercial ruination and social disruption over which the dead loss to British Insurance Companies and British businesses must run into hundreds or thousands of millions of £’s through bombing alone? Why do not the English or British Capitalist class secede the North just as they seceded the South over 50 years ago, and leave the job of running their industries to the Irish Government who would replace them?

It seems clear and logical that millions in both the north and the south hate English rule and surely it must seem from this that for the English to stay in Northern Ireland can only accentuate the bombing there as well as to expedite the dangers of bombing major urban regions in England, or even of Scotland or Wales in addition. Therefore, for the English Capitalists to clear out of Ireland completely would not only save them millions in otherwise bombed rubble and a perilously shrunken labour force, but the effect of this would be to prevent skilled and wanted labour from perishing, therefore by so doing would cause profit for themselves to accrue, accordingly. So, secession from the North seems irrefutably the answer; otherwise this bombing and killing must lead directly to the utter suicide of English interests in Northern Ireland, since it is obvious that the domiciled British Army and the North Ireland police cannot and never will stop the rot that is taking place in the north.

T.L.K.

(Name & Address supplied)

Reply:

Our correspondent suggests that English capitalists must be losing rather than gaining by remaining in Northern Ireland, and wonders why they do not abandon it. The question might equally be asked about any armed conflict. The capitalists of a nation are not going to give up their means of production to other hands unless compelled; they look to their government to settle things, either by political agreement or by armed force.

In any case he is wrong. A letter by Professor N. J. Gibson of the University of Ulster, in The Guardian on 4th June 1974, estimated the current gross profits of British and other companies in Northern Ireland at £150 millions a year. But we are without concern for “English interests” and companies’ profits in Northern Ireland or anywhere else. What does concern us is the futile misery and working-class loss of life caused by the continual conflicts which capitalism produces and only Socialism can put an end to.

Editors.

Workers and the Left 

As far as I know you were publicising your principles in 1925, 50 years ago. If every working man voted Labour then they would get in as there is a majority per cent of workers in most districts up and down. How is it then the working class won’t vote for the left? There must be a reason, as they are in the majority.

In any case if a left party got in and put over a left policy, well you see what happened in Spain.

It is said the workers have no savings or money and don’t understand money and that they never innovate business or do things for themselves. And its then a question of what you believe. Will everybody be equal. Anyway I agree there are patches up here of poverty.

Just tell me why the workers do not unite and vote left. Bernard Shaw said in his book Socialism for Women it was because the workers were fobbed off with processions and lotteries. What do you say?

W. Popplewell

Knutsford.

Reply:

You obviously think of “left” as meaning all parties and groups which criticize capitalism and talk about Socialism. The fact however is that what “the left” — i.e. the Communist Party, International Socialists, the I.L.P, etc. — stands for is state capitalism. They are therefore, however they talk, non- or anti-Socialist.

The working class does vote Left, and Right, and Middle-of-the-Road. What it does not vote for, so far, is Socialism. Bernard Shaw’s comment, like many others by him, is a misleading half-truth. The majority of workers are persuaded that capitalism is the natural order. The Socialist Party’s time is spent largely pointing out the obvious, that it isn’t, but workers come to this conclusion themselves too. When they do so in sufficient numbers — that is, when they understand and want Socialism — it can be brought into being.

Editors.

Letters from A. R. Richardson, S. Gamzu, C.S. are held over, through lack of space, to the next issue.

The Socialist Standard welcomes letters for publication, putting question about the Socialist case or commenting on articles.