Letter: Will Socialism Work? (1949)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

(We have received a further letter from Mr. S. Bolsom. The earlier letter and our reply were published in the May issue under the heading “Housing, Crises and the S.P.G.B.”—Ed Com.)

Hampstead, N.W.3.

To the Editor.

Socialist Standard.

Dear Sir,

Readers of the May issue of the Socialist Standard might well be forgiven if they thought your “reply” was an answer to some other correspondent.

I certainly did not come to the defence of Mr. Clynes—1 said at once that he was shown to be wrong, neither did I mention unemployment. I, therefore, do not need to prove Messrs. Lawther, Clynes and Thomas right and I do not accept your invitation to disprove the Ministry of Labour’s figures—I can well imagine that you selected them with the greatest care. In any case, I find to my horror that I have mislaid my copy of the Ministry’s “Abstract of Labour Statistics ” (18th issue, 1926).

The point I made was that in this game of “quotations” it is as unreasonable to suppose that the other man is always wrong as it is to presume that the S.P.G.B. is always right.

I say again that to most readers the paragraph by “R.H.” on houses implied that there were no decent workers’ houses or flats and certainly no gardens. Many of the new working-class houses and flats are satisfactory and many people are happy to live in them.

The main purpose of my letter, quite clear enough, was to enquire whether the S.P.G.B. had a plan on which to base the New Order so ardently desired by those who see the evils of the present system.

Strangely enough Mr. Blenkinsopp, M.P., in his debate with your Mr. Young, asks for precisely that information and I would not be a bit surprised if some of your Party were asking for it too.

If people are to work for the system of Society outlined in the “Object” of the S.P.G.B. they will require to know just how you intend to organise it.

Once again I ask you who is to decide the capacity of each and the needs of each? Yes, Mr. Editor, I do believe that having worked for the establishment of the new system the Socialists would see it wrecked, because Human Nature being what it is, malice, envy and cupidity would dispute the other man’s capacity and would deny his needs. Many, far too many, will be avid to sit “up there” comfortably arranging it all for the other fellow.

Yours faithfully,

Sidney Bolsom.

Reply.

In our May issue we published and replied to Mr. Bolsom’s earlier letter. He now says that readers might be forgiven for thinking that the reply was an answer to some other correspondent. His chief complaint appears to be that we did not devote enough of our reply to what he regarded as the “main part” of his letter. But how are we to know that the half-dozen points he raised in the first half of his letter were not his purpose in writing it, and that what he meant to be the main point was something he first mentioned halfway through?

Even so he returns to those side issues again in his second letter. He denies having come to the defence of Clynes and others who told the workers there would be no more crises, and makes the highly disingenuous statement that he “said at once that he [Clynes] was shown to be wrong.” What he actually wrote was “Could not these poor benighted dissidents possibly be right and the Party be wrong?” and so far from making a straightforward admission that Clynes was proved to be wrong, he called our case against Clynes a “game of pulling pieces out of ancient quotations .. . with the dice loaded heavily in favour of the Editor.”

On this issue it is evident that Mr. Bolsom is playing the game of suggesting that the Labour leaders were right and the S.P.G.B. wrong but doing so in such carefully chosen words that he can affect to disown the obligation of backing it up with proof. As he is in any event clearly out of his depth on the question at issue we may leave it at that.

On the question of working class housing we repeat that our contributor did not write or imply that there were no houses with gardens. As to whether they are “decent workers' houses” the answer should be obvious. Mr. Bolsom’s own words betray his attitude. He does not claim that as human beings the workers should have decent houses but implicitly accepts the attitude of all the reformers, that there are “houses” and “workers' houses," houses for the rich and houses of a lower standard for the poor.

In his first letter Mr. Bolsom raised the question of how everything will work the day after the inauguration of Socialism. He asked who would arrange for people to move to better houses, how would the houses be provided, who would arrange for the onerous and dirty jobs, etc. He wanted a detailed plan beforehand. He wanted us to believe that these problems would present difficulties. As however he had already accepted as basis of his question the assumption that before Socialism was introduced we would-have the situation that “all Peoples feel and think exactly as the Party does and are agreed on carrying out its principles,” we replied by pointing out that what he was in effect asking us to believe was "that Socialists who have worked to establish a new system of society on a basis they understand and desire will then proceed to wreck it over who shall do this or that particular job.” We asked him to give his reasons for thinking that Socialists would behave like this. Instead of giving a straight answer and saying that he thinks Socialists would themselves wreck what they had laboured to achieve be neatly sidesteps the question by telling us that “Socialists would see it wrecked," meaning presumably that it would be wrecked by the non-Socialist minority. That is a fair proposition and we will deal with it, but we must first make it clear that it is a separate proposition and needs to be dealt with separately.

Let us take first the proposition that Socialists will themselves wreck their own system. If this is what Mr. Bolsom means—and he is careful not to commit himself—we want to know from him just why he supposes they will do this It cannot be because they do not understand beforehand what Socialism will involve, because Mr. Bolsom in his first letter accepted that they will understand. Is it “human nature" that will make them behave in this perverse manner? Perhaps that is what Mr. Bolsom believes since in his second letter he writes about “human nature being what it is, malice, envy, cupidity," etc. But here again in his first letter he accepted “that human nature changes . . . and all Peoples feel and think exactly as the Party does." We of course are not responsible for Mr. Bolsom’s choice of words and we do not accept that “human nature” must change to make Socialism possible, though of course human behaviour will change in a new social environment as it has changed with past changes of the social system.

To sum up on this proposition we again ask Mr. Bolsom to tell us plainly whether he holds that Socialists will wreck the system they have worked to build up, and just why they will do this.

If, however, he really means that Socialism will be wrecked by a non-Socialist minority we are entitled to ask Mr. Bolsom how such a minority, if it exists, will succeed in destroying the social arrangements brought about by the majority and actively supported by the majority. Perhaps Mr. Bolsom visualises himself as one of these wreckers, if so perhaps he will also tell us why he will do this.

In his final paragraph Mr. Bolsom writes “once again I ask you who is to decide the capacity of each and the needs of each?" By framing this question he confirms our impression that he has not begun to understand what the Socialist case is that he sets out to criticise. The principle “From each according to ability: to each according to need" means exactly what it says. The able-bodied members of Socialist society, because they understand that co-operation in production will be serving the interest of each individual will willingly work according to their capacity; and social production (following the elimination of the vast waste inseparable from capitalism) having produced in ample supply the things needed by society the individuals will participate according to their need. Mr. Bolsom, not having understood what is the significance of his own admission that the necessary condition for the inauguration of Socialism is that the population understand and agree with Socialist principles, asks us who is to tell each individual what are his capacities and what are his needs. The answer is, of course, that the individual will do these things himself. Even Mr. Bolsom, we imagine, is not so helpless that he refrains from doing anything until somebody tells him whether he is capable of it, and refrains from quenching his thirst until somebody tells him how much he needs a drink.

With regard to the bogey of what will happen the day after the inauguration of Socialism, it should be obvious that the human race will carry on their accustomed activities in the production of food, clothing, etc., needed by them, simultaneously with arranging the change-over from productive activities then rendered unnecessary, to the new and extended production made possible by the new social system. When Mr. Bolsom tells us that human beings are so incapable of intelligent co-operation in their own interests that they will perish rather than co-operate, he should cease to look only at the sordid results of capitalism and observe to what great extent even under capitalism and in spite of it people do voluntarily co-operate for ends that they understand and are interested in promoting.

—Editorial Committee.