Colsterworth Road, N.15.
Dear Sir,
It must be now clear to you that whilst the ballot-box is the way to bring about Socialism it will not be necessary for the workers to understand it. This is made clear in the North Paddington election. You assumed that those who voted for you in the first election were Socialists and yet a short time afterwards in the same constituency only a little more than half the former number supported you. Had your candidate been elected he would have been elected by people who would have supported him in any action he took even though a large number of them didn’t understand Socialism but wanted a change from Capitalism. To say that only those who understand what Socialism is will vote for you is clearly disproved by the two Paddington elections.
I hope that you will answer this in the next issue of the Socialist Standard, as it is a question that millions of workers are now asking.
Yours sincerely,
(signed) John Palmer.
Reply:
Our correspondent’s letter is chiefly remarkable for the way in which it takes a small amount of fact and a large amount of conjecture and draws therefrom unwarranted conclusions. What are the facts? In 1904 the S.P.G.B. took its stand on the propositions that the achievement of Socialism requires the understanding of a majority, and that the working-class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government. These propositions not only hold good to-day but have been conflrmed by the continued failure of the Labourites and Communists, who denied them, to make good their boasts that they knew of other ways of achieving Socialism. The other facts known to our correspondent and ourselves are that in North Paddington the overwhelming majority of the workers are not Socialists; that they gave their votes to the Labour candidate or the Tory candidate; that a small number gave their vote to the Socialist candidate in 1945; and that this number was reduced at the by-election in 1946. Neither our correspondent nor ourselves have means of finding out exactly why that number was reduced; but this does not deter our correspondent from claiming that he does know. He claims to know that those who voted for the Socialist candidate in 1945 and not in 1946 “didn't understand Socialism but wanted a change from Capitalism.” It may be so, we do not know, but even if it were the explanation, it does not support the curious conclusions our correspondent arrives at. Let us assume as our correspondent wishes us to, that some individuals mistakenly voted for the Socialist candidate in 1945 and corrected their error in 1946. This can be explained on the assumption that in between they got to know more about the S.P.G.B. As the Socialist movement grows, there will be more and more workers who learn what the S.P.G.B. stands for, and therefore less and less possibility of individuals voting for the Socialist candidate under a misapprehension. Yet our correspondent, faced with a decline in this “uninformed” vote between 1945 and 1946 assumes quite contradictorily that as the Socialist movement grows the “uninformed” vote will increase, until, so he tells us. Socialist candidates will be elected by-the votes of “a large number” of such individuals.
All we can say is that there is nothing whatever to support this curious view and everything to discount its possibility.
In conclusion our correspondent tells us that “millions of workers” are asking the question he puts to us. Don’t we wish there were! By the time the Socialist case is a matter of breath-taking interest to millions of workers we shall be much further on the road to Socialism. Incidentally our correspondent’s bogey will then have been reduced to its proper perspective by the growth of Socialist knowledge on the one hand and on the other by the frantic endeavours of the parties of “no Socialism but only a change from Capitalism” to save themselves from extinction.
Editorial Committee.
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