Letter: Is Disunity Hindering Socialist Proaganda? (1942)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked to comment on the following letter published in the “Locomotive Journal” (August) : —

Sir,—Why is it, despite the most glaring of Capitalism’s evils, i.e., poverty, unemployment, war and its entailing miseries, the emancipation of the worker is no nearer its achievement? Is it due to the fact that whilst members of the Anarchist and Communist, S.P.G.B., Labour (a small minority), etc., parties, recognise that our common enemy is capitalism, they are divided in their method of approach ? If so, capitalistic society has no fear of being overthrown while their opponents carry on a divide and rule policy for them. Incidentally the proprietary rights of the study of “Sociology” are as much the workers as anyone’s, and in my humble opinion would be beneficial in their fight for equality. In case I should be misunderstood I am in no way suggesting this as an alternative measure for achieving same.

—Yours faithfully, 

J. Hodgkin. 

Stratford.

Reply:

The writer of the letter has a point of view that is held by a number of workers. It is not new. To go no further back than 1893 it was put in that year in the “Manifesto of English Socialists,” issued by G. B. Shaw, Sidney Webb, and others, on behalf of the Fabian Society and the Social Democratic Federation. Believing that “whatever differences may have arisen between them in the past, all who can fairly be called Socialists are agreed in their main principles of thought and action,” the signatories appealed “to all Socialists to sink their individual crochets in a business-like endeavour to realise in our own day that complete communisation of industry for which the economic forces are ready and the minds of the people are almost prepared.”

It is instructive to compare Mr. Hodgkin’s letter with the 1893 Manifesto, for they contain the same mistaken assumption. To start with, the group represented by “the Anarchist and Communist, S.P.G.B., Labour (a small minority) etc., parties,” is so small and weak that it could no more revolutionise society than could the tiny Fabian-S.D.F. group in 1893. Success now, as then, would depend upon whether the merging of the separate groups would so increase the effectiveness of propaganda that the Socialist movement would rapidly grow. But the question is, propaganda for what ? It is true that the group named (as also the whole of the Labour Party) would subscribe in words to the proposition that capitalism is the enemy, but that would only be an illusory agreement. They do not mean the same thing by the term “capitalism,” and their objects are not the same but are fundamentally different and irreconcilable. Let us suppose that six groups separately voicing different objects are merged into one group speaking in six different voices, what gain is there? Anarchists, the S.P.G.B. and the bulk of the Labour Party are opposed to Communist dictatorship and to the regime in Russia. The Communists, if they had their way, would suppress all the others. The S.P.G.B. is fundamentally opposed to the State Capitalism that the Communists and the Labour Party aim to introduce under the name “Socialism.” The Anarchists and the Labour Party are not in favour of the object of the S.P.G.B., a system of society based upon common ownership and democratic control, and the Anarchists do not recognise the fact that the working class cannot achieve their emancipation except through democratically gaining control of the machinery of government.

Another question is the advocacy of reforms. The 1893 Manifesto proposed a programme of “immediate” measures within the scope of “practical politics.” This was on the ground that these reforms would give the workers more leisure and less anxiety so that they could turn their attention to Socialism. The Labour Party have the same view now. The S.P.G.B. rejects it, holding that parties which advocate reforms attract reformists, not Socialists; perpetuate the illusion that capitalism can be reformed satisfactorily; and end up by being swamped by reformist elements. Many of the reforms listed in the 1893 Manifesto have been wholly or partly achieved— an eight hours law, prohibition of child labour, payment of M.P.s, universal suffrage, suppression of sub-contracting and sweating, but so far from the propaganda for Socialism having been simplified, the workers’ increased leisure is being taken up with “immediate” demands for more and more reforms. Whereas in 1893 Shaw and others were content to name eight immediate demands, the Labour and Communist Party can now at any moment produce a list of almost as many dozen—though at the moment far from believing that “capitalism is the enemy” they believe that the paramount task is to protect democratic capitalism against Nazism, and have shelved all their reforms to that end.

In 1893 it was believed that the “minds of the people are almost prepared” for Socialism. Shaw and his colleagues were mistaken, and while progress has been made it is still true that the great majority of the population are not prepared for Socialism. One of the principal reasons is that instead of preaching Socialism most of those who (wrongly) regarded themselves as Socialists have been preaching reforms and everything else but Socialism. This is still true, and fictitious unity would not alter it.

Let it be remembered, too, that the 1893 attempt at unity failed and the S.D.F. and Fabian Society are still in separate existence. In the intervening years there have been dozens of attempts at such “unity.” All have either failed and have merely encouraged reformism at the expense of Socialist propaganda.

Incidentally, while we are on the subject of unity, we notice that after years of propaganda for amalgamation there are still three separate railway trade unions.

Editorial Committee.