Letter: Socialists and “Doing Nothing” (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blackburn. 

Sept. 10th, 1932.

Dear Sir,

I have been a reader of the Socialist Standard for the past year or so, and I find that the “letter to a young Socialist” in the current issue expresses very well indeed the point of view consistently put forward by you. As a worker who is in a regular job and not at present suffering the pangs of hunger, I can sit back in my chair (after reading this article) and say “very good, indeed.”

I quite agree that we must go on educating the workers until we have an intelligent class conscious democracy, but I wonder if I, and you, too, my dear sir, would be quite so satisfied to wait, if we happened to be out of job and well below the starvation line. Suffering is increasing rapidly among the workers, as we all know, and it is very easy for us to tell them to be patient, but quite a different matter when in their position. Do you think it is possible to make all the workers understand Marxism any more than it is possible to make them all understand the technicalities of wireless. Many of them have not the desire to do so, even if they had the intelligence.

J. G.

Reply.

Our correspondent has only partly grasped the point of the article to which he refers (“The Time for Action” September Socialist Standard). We say that certain forms of activity which deal with effects are only of limited use and that certain other forms are useless and dangerous, but we certainly do not add, as our correspondent seems to imagine we do, that therefore the workers should do nothing. We do not say that they should be patient and passive, but that they should act intelligently. The only activities which will lead to emancipation, studying and teaching Socialist principles and organising to take the necessary action to get Socialism, are not jobs for those who are satisfied to sit back in their chairs and wait. Nor are they jobs beyond the capacity of the average worker. Our correspondent asserts that it is not possible to get all the workers to understand the technicalities of wireless. True, but then the majority of the workers do not need or desire to do so. But J.G., we notice, does not commit himself to the further assertion that the workers are incapable of doing so. Actually, the workers have to understand the technicalities of the productive and other processes at which they earn their living. Are they capable of running industry but incapable of understanding the running of society? When it is driven home to the workers that understanding the latter is at least as important to them as the former, they will grasp it without much difficulty.

Incidentally, we do not agree with the view of J.G., that the workers in work have no troubles and have reason to be satisfied. Neither do they, for millions of them show signs of active if misdirected dissatisfaction with the conditions of their lives.

It would have been helpful if J.G. had told us what he thinks the unemployed can usefully do, since he agrees with us that blind revolt is useless, but at the same time rejects intelligent revolutionary action.

Ed. Comm.