Dear Editors,
I read Allan Goldsmith’s report of the SWP public meeting in Chelmsford (October Socialist Standard).
In spite of years of becoming hardened to the senseless divisions among professing socialists, I am still capable of descending into a gloom of disappointment bordering on despair whenever yet another manifestation of what is the greatest strength of the capitalists is arraigned for all the world to see.
The capitalists, whose ethos is competition and conflict, display solidarity in defence of their system to the point of recruiting the working class to their cause to fight their battles for them. Professing socialists, whose ethos is co-operation and interdependence, make a virtue out of division by inflating tactical issues in displays of doctrinal infallibility.
In my article which I was privileged to have printed in the July Socialist Standard, I said:
'The achievement of socialism is the responsibility of all who take up the cause irrespective of which organisation, if any, they identify with. Socialism is no longer a luxury which can occupy our intellects in interminable arguments about strategies for achieving it to the exclusion of events unfolding around us. Socialism has become an urgent necessity. To hand over the world’s economy to the business elites to exploit for profit, by collusion or default, is a recipe for social and environmental disaster. If socialism is denied for lack of the will to unite, it will amount to a criminal act of betrayal of the working class.”
I said it to your readers and I would say the same to Tony Cliff and have often done so to SWP members.
Just suppose, for the sake of argument, that the working class came to "want and understand socialism". Can anyone really believe that the ensuing transformation could proceed with total unanimity where no differences would arise to be tested by discussion and debate, without controversy, without strongly held conflicting opinions to be resolved? Of course not. Would that be that, then? Would we say that we could not agree amongst ourselves and hand it all back? Of course not. We would have to display the will to overcome differences or disintegrate.
Human beings are not endowed with flawless strains of reason, logic and wisdom at birth. These qualities have to be learned by every generation by interaction. Doctrines of certainty produce only paralysis of thought and irrational acts by people anchored in their own obstinacy. The matter is not one of being "right” or "wrong” or of keeping faith with whatever flag you have nailed to the mast. No one is discredited by testing their beliefs or ideas and being ready to modify them by persuasion. My own belief in socialism has often been tested by a challenge to others to "talk me out of it”, and I have not yet been on the losing end of an argument with the capitalists nor ever expect to. But in engaging capitalists and professing socialists alike, there is much in the detail which advances my understanding and reinforces me in the view that with a will to achieving socialist unity, it can be done.
Subordinate issues should not overshadow the super-ordinate goal of realising socialist society. Whether Tony Cliff "tells the workers to vote Labour to beat the Tories" is irrelevant to them. They do it or not, anyway. What the "workers" find implausible is this advice being given by a party which uses as much newsprint condemning Labour's capitalism as it does attacking the Tories, yet makes no effort to present an alternative manifesto to the people by which they can register their support for socialism. As I have often been told in discussion with SWP members, it has more to do with the practical problem of installing large numbers of candidates and draining their funds and placing their capacity to publish and campaign at risk than any outright rejection of entering the electoral arena. I agree with Cliff that a socialist society is something that will not be realised until "many years in the future".
The defeat of capitalism can only come about by a commitment to socialism by the people. I am all for "teach, teach, teach” and Cliff shot himself in the foot by his disparaging remarks about the Socialist Party. But unless our message is presented widely and confidently by a united movement of socialists who are prepared to demonstrate the will and the maturity to rise above subordinate matters which can be discussed and debated, and focus their eyes on the super- ordinate goal of defeating capitalism, Tony Cliff will wait forever to have "socialism here and now”.
Professing socialists perpetuating a culture of competition amongst themselves contradict everything they claim to stand for by doing so. If professing socialists cannot achieve unity amongst themselves, why should anybody believe that a socialist society will be anything other than a chaotic shambles doomed to disintegration?
Peter Nielsen,
Worcester
Reply:
Our differences with at least the leaders of the SWP are rather more than tactical. They see themselves as leaders, as the General Staff of the Revolution, and advocate a party organised on non-democratic lines, whereas we regard following leaders as disastrous and insist that the movement for socialism must, as a matter of principle, be thoroughly democratic both in its internal organisation and in the methods it employs. Socialism is a democratic society. Quite a different proposition from rule by a vanguard party.
Editors.
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