Hampstead, N.W.3.
24th March, 1949.
To the Editor,
Socialist Standard.
Dear Sir,
Taking a little time off from my joyous Capitalistic task of enslaving the Working Classes, I read for the first time, and with great interest, The Socialist Standard of March.
Confronted with a Declaration of Principles and with view points so startlingly original I quite naturally failed to absorb the feast in one sitting. I would like, however, to comment on some of your articles and to ask a few questions.
The opening page consists of a skirmish with Sir Will Lawther and it would seem that this gentleman differs in opinion from the S.P.G.B. In fact I notice that he has had the temerity to “challenge the position taken up by the S.P.G.B.”, and strangely enough, also in your own words, he is by no means the first T.U. Official to do so. Could not these poor benighted dissidents possibly be right and the Party be wrong? Of course not, because we immediately find Mr. J. R. Clynes quoted in Reynolds Newspaper of 1919 and in the short space of eighteen months he is shown to have made a bloomer. This game of pulling pieces out of ancient quotations is a jolly one with the dice loaded heavily in favour of the Editor.
I don’t suppose that any member of your Party has ever been wrong on any subject—although I do seem to remember having a most enlightening conversation with one or two of your members during which I was assured that none of the so called War Criminals would ever be executed because the ruling clique of this country would undoubtedly prevent such an unpleasantness occurring in the ranks of the privileged class, "aristocratic and plutocratic.”
On the second page I find the opponents of Socialism neatly divided into two classes and with no great effort I find myself falling snugly into class A. Human nature being what it is I find bitterness and enmity pervading even The Socialist Standard. "R.H.” writes on workers’ houses being stacked and barrack-like blocks of buildings without gardens. Not one house well made and properly erected? Not one fine block of flats? Not one teeny weeny little garden? This distortion of facts ill-becomes a Party so proud of its honesty and sincerity.
"Abolish Capitalism, overthrow privilege, etc., be hostile to every other Party.” In carrying out this happy programme a lot of people are going to be hurt one way or another, and what are you going to do with the "overthrown”? Is the World to exist only for the S.P.G.B.? And when all this is comfortably arranged, who is to decide the measure of the contribution according to the ability of each, and the measure of the needs of each?
Let us imagine that Human Nature changes, suddenly or otherwise, and that all Peoples feel and think exactly as the Party does and are agreed on carrying out its Principles. How do you start next Monday morning? Does the dustman continue his job, the coalminer, the black-coat worker, the shop assistant, the rent collector, etc., etc.? What about Bill Smith in two rooms in Bermondsey and Ivan Ivanovitch in Moscow? When do they move and where? Who is to arrange for the new accommodation, the new demands for the needs of each? Again, what of the “overthrown”? Who re-educates them and in what tasks? To what use will you put the "abilities" of the languid gentry?
These and a few thousand other details will have to be settled pretty quickly because there are quite a number of lads and lasses everywhere ready to change some onerous and/or dirty job for a nice pleasant one, such as arranging all these things for the other fellow.
If there is a book or pamphlet in existence showing the "How to do it" by the S.P.G.B. I would be delighted to read it because as Mr. Waters points out in the S.S. there are many who see the evils of the present system and want to remedy them. He actually says many "workers" but I hope he will permit even a Capitalist to hold such a view.
Your Principles are clear enough, your declaration of war plain enough, but I feel that I ought to withhold my application for membership until I am reasonably sure that you have a plan to put into operation on the glad day when all other Political Parties are overthrown.
Yours faithfully,
Sidney Bolsom.
Reply.
Mr. Bolsom clearly does not approve of what he read in the March issue of the Socialist Standard. If he had contented himself with saying so in general terms there would be nothing more to say. He has, however, chosen to go into details and we shall naturally expect him to justify himself.
His first move is to come to the defence of Sir W. Lawther, J. R. Clynes and other trade union officials who have claimed at different times that there would not again be a capitalist crisis of "overproduction" and consequent mass unemployment. We say that those who did so in the past were wrong and were proved to be wrong by events, and that the same fate will befall those who do so now. Mr. Bolsom says: “Could not these poor benighted dissidents possibly be right. . .?", All that is now needed is for Mr. Bolsom to prove that they were right How he will prove that Mr. Clynes was right when he claimed in 1919 that there was no risk of "overproduction, causing unemployment" for at least a dozen years, we do not know. What Mr. Bolsom has taken on is the task of disproving the Ministry of Labour's declaration that in the early part of 1921 there were over 2,000,000 unemployed. He will find the figures in the Ministry’s "Abstract of Labour Statistics" (18th Issue, 1926, Page 51). We await Mr. Bolsom’s disproof.
Then there was the similar experience of the late J. H. Thomas. In the Labour government which came into office in 1929 he took on the post of Lord Privy Seal with the special function of dealing with unemployment. Unemployment then stood at just over a million and Mr. Thomas explained that he and his colleagues in the government "were going to do what they could to reduce unemployment while accepting the present order of society." (Daily Herald, 6th July. 1929). He was as unlucky as Clynes had been, for by the middle of 1931 when the government fell the figure had risen to over 2,800.000—again these are Ministry of Labour figures. Mr. Thomas’s own story, admittedly related in a jocular way, was that on taking office he had consulted the late Josiah Stamp, believing that as an economist Stamp could give him the real expert view. Stamp is alleged to have told his friend Thomas that trade was on the mend whereas it was actually on the verge of another crisis.
We now await Mr. Bolsom’s proof that Thomas was right and that unemployment did not nearly treble within two years of Mr. Thomas’s undertaking to reduce it.
We should perhaps explain to Mr. Bolsom that this is not a guessing game. What is at issue is the reasoned case put forward by Socialists that capitalism, because it is a system based on private ownership of the means of production and because it functions through the sale of commodities for profit, necessarily follows a cycle of expansion and contraction, boom and slump. Against this innumerable 19th century economists, followed more recently by Labour Party politicians, have argued that governments, by following certain trade and financial policies can extricate capitalism from the trade cycle. They have been proved wrong at every succeeding crisis for 100 years or more. Still, if Mr. Bolsom feels able to prove that this time they really will succeed we shall be interested to know how he thinks they will do it.
We note that one or two of the members of the S.P.G.B. are alleged to have disbelieved that the "war criminals" of the second world war would be executed —at least they had a reason, they remembered that the Kaiser and his fellow war criminals, despite the threats and pledges to bring them to trial, succeeded in living to a ripe and honoured old age.
On the question of the article on housing Mr. Bolsom is guilty of a piece of distortion himself. He implies that our contributor declared that there has not been built a single well made and properly erected house, not a single house with a garden, not one fine block of flats. Of course he did nothing of the kind. He claimed that one can see around London "uniform barrack-like blocks of buildings, without gardens for children to play in." He also expressed his opinion that these blocks of flats are "loathsome" and are not the kind of dwellings the workers would like to live in and that the rich can live in. Our contributor did not say that no houses at all except these blocks of working class flats have been built. We would, however, add that the kind of houses the workers can live in is determined by their wages and though better houses and luxury flats do exist (as our contributor pointed out) the mass of workers cannot afford to pay the rent demanded.
Incidentally if Mr. Bolsom thinks that the standard of new working class houses is quite satisfactory can we take it that he lives in one himself or would like to?
Then Mr. Bolsom asks us to take note that if capitalism is overthrown and Socialism is established in its place a lot of people are going to be hurt one way or another. He does not tell us how or why this will happen nor who the people are. Perhaps because he does not at all understand what Socialism is and how it will be achieved. He imagines, for example, that we claim that this will all be done by the S.P.G.B. As this is the reverse of what the S.P.G.B. has been claiming for 45 years perhaps Mr. Bolsom will tell us where in our literature he thinks he picked up that nonsensical idea so completely at variance with the S.P.G.B.’s case. Is it not ironical too, for a defender of capitalism, with its periodical wars and preparations for another war. to tell us that lots of people will be hurt? We can assure him, if he needs assuring, that quite a lot of people will certainly be hurt if capitalism is allowed to continue and produce its next world war.
The rest of Mr. .Bolsom’s questions about how Socialism will be administered after it has been established arise entirely out of his absurd caricature of the S.P;G.B.'s case. If we had ever suggested that Socialism will be achieved by the S.P.G.B. overthrowing other political parties (Mr. Bolsom’s description, not ours) and that than the S.P.G.B. will proceed to plan and impose Socialism, then his questions would be relevant. Our actual case is, of course, that until the majority have become Socialists and have democratically gained political control to establish Socialism, there will be no Socialism. But when these necessary preliminary conditions have been fulfilled these questions will take on a very different character from the one assumed by Mr. Bolsom, who in effect asks us to believe 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. If on reflection Mr. Bolsom still thinks this is a reasonable proposition and will give reasons we will deal with them.
The broad principle of distribution accepted by Socialists is “From each according to capacity: to each according to need.”
In conclusion we cannot resist pointing to a seeming discrepancy in Mr. Bolsom’s argument. He asks us what Socialist society at its inception will do about the workers who lack proper housing accommodation (poor Mr. Bill Smith “ in two rooms in Bermondsey ”); but did we not gather from the earlier part of Mr. Bolsom’s letter that Bill Smith is already being provided with proper accommodation under Labour Party administration of capitalism? Can it be that on second thoughts Mr. Bolsom does agree that the housing problem is not going .to be solved under capitalism?
Ed. Comm.
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