In the American periodical The Nation (April 23rd) an article appears by G. D. H. Cole. It is a very pessimistic article. Cole considers that the Socialist movement has lost its way and is not what it was when he joined it long ago in the days of Jaures, Kautzky, Keir Hardie, and the Webbs. His principal disappointment concerns the International aspect of the movement and the national concentration upon ends that are not Socialist.
In the early part of his article Cole writes:
“When I joined the Socialist movement in England, it never occurred to me to doubt that I was accepting an international obligation and a loyalty that transcended national frontiers. My task, as I saw it, was to play my small part in a great crusade for human brotherhood that would make an end of the exploitation of man by man and of country by country, destroying capitalism and imperialism together and putting in their place a world society set free from war and hatred to devote its energies and vast resources to banishing poverty and slavery from every country.”
He then goes on to ask “Where are that task and those efforts now?”; and he claims that since 1917 there have been “two sharply antagonistic movements, each claiming to be the torch-bearer of the true Socialism but at bitter conflict about the means of advancing towards their goal and even about the goal itself.” Cole did not go far enough back. The trouble started tong before 1917. It started with the groups he thought so much of in his early days—the German and English Social Democratic Parties, the Fabian Society, the Independent Labour Party, and, finally, the Labour Party. It was their concentration upon “immediate aims,” which included a multitude of reforms, that landed the movement in the morass in which it finds itself to-day. The result is a logical development «of the early policy. But Cole can‘t see this; he wants to go back and start all over again the policies that can only bear its present fruit. His disappointment is the result of his failure to grasp the essential difference between a revolutionary and a reformist policy, and the inevitable result of the latter.
Later on in his article he writes, referring to the cleavage between the Social Democratic and the Communist movement:
"I have never been able to accept as final this sharp cleavage in what I still think of as fundamentally a single world-wide movement against oppression. I am no Communist, for I detest the suppression of all free thinking which Communists not only regard as needful, but seem positively to admire. 1 hate cruelty, rigid discipline, and the vindictive mistrust which the Communist philosophy appears to involve. I cannot, however, for that reason consent to regard the peoples of the Communist countries, or the Communists of my own or other countries, as enemies with whom I have nothing in common. I have much in common with them. I share their wish to help all the subject peoples of the world to emancipate themselves from foreign imperialist rule; I admire their planned economies and their vast achievements in economic construction; and I see them, on one condition, as advancing, however deviously, toward a classless society and an expansion of freedom for the ordinary man and woman in the affairs of everyday living. The one condition is, of course, that they escape from the ever-present peril of utterly destructive world war, fear of which poisons their behaviour and forbids them luxuries of common honesty and decent tolerance."
The above is some measure of Cole’s lack of insight, and how much the fear of war has clouded his vision. To suggest that fear of world war is a determining factor in the behaviour and the dishonesty of the leaders of the Russian Communist Party is just nonsense. Their reformism, their twisting of Marxism, their internal strife and their mutual wiping out of each other, is based on far more than that. And Cole’s admiration of their achievements is in line with his own life-long support of reformism. His description of the present position of the Social Democrats is interesting from two points of view; he recognises the position of futility they have reached but he also accepts that Socialism does include “national endeavours to advance gradually.” Here is his description:
“I am assuredly no Communist. But no more am I a Democratic Socialist if this means renouncing the Socialist revolution and reducing socialism to a set of independent electoral movements designed to gain parliamentary majorities with the support of non-Socialist voters. I do not deny the need for parliamentary action, but I do deny that Socialism means no more than a number of national endeavours to advance gradually and constitutionally toward the welfare state. Even where nominally Socialist parties have gained majority support, they have never attempted to establish Socialism; even their attempts to further welfare have shown signs of petering out after their initial successes, owing to the difficulty of advancing further without disturbing the smooth working of the capitalist structure—to which they are supposed to be hostile—and the fear that by attacking it they will alienate marginal support. This seems to be the position in the Scandinavian countries, as well as in Great Britain."
He adds to the above that in Europe “the Democratic Socialist parties, in their fear of Communist aggression” seem to be prepared to acquiesce in rearmament, including atomic weapons and hydrogen bombs and finishes a paragraph about these measures with the following remarks:—
"They are being forced on the Socialist parties by a reactionary leadership that has come to be more anti-communist than pro-Socialist and sees nothing amiss in turning to capitalist America as its ally against the Communists."
Cole then proceeds to outline his own position, stating at the outset that old Socialists like himself—"Internationalists and non-Communists ”—find themselves in a terribly difficult position, faced with a conflict of loyalties, loyalty to their parties or loyalty to Socialism as an essentially international cause. The Labour Party, he says, has no clear vision of what to do and “its recent programmes have been quite remarkably ineffective and even trivial.” And then he puts the question:—
"What, then, is to be done? The Socialism to which I was converted in my youth was the fruit of long, hard, and passionate thinking, subsequently translated into policies, not for the full establishment of a Socialist way of life, but for the first steps towards it."
Earlier he had claimed something was badly amiss "with the development of Socialist thought in face of the vast change in the problems mankind must face in order to progress, or even to survive.” To meet this and to get out of the mess in which social democracy had landed he makes his proposals. Before doing so he gives voice to the deep-rooted feelings of the intellectual who has cursed the radical movement by his self-appointed function of leading the ignorant. Here is how he puts it:—
“Besides, mass parties cannot think; they can only be influenced by the thinking of individuals or small groups of people who are prepared to think for them."
and here is the thinking of one of those individuals:—
“With these ideas in mind, I have come to the conclusion that an attempt should be made to establish internationally a small society, or order, of Socialists who would pledge themselves to do their best to restate the essentials of their Socialist faith in terms applicable to the present world situation. . . . The immediate task of this group would be not to act but to think together and to plan— to restate Socialist principles in relation to the most pressing contemporary problems, and to base on these principles a broad programme of action in which the various national movements could be called upon to play their part. Each member of the group, or order, would publicize its ideas in his own country and try to induce the national leaders to take them up."
So there we are, back to where the Labour Party came in, with the Fabian Society producing the ideas and policy that helped to lead them into the present mess. No fundamental change in outlook, just a different bottle to contain the same old illusions. And far from the problems having changed, they are just the same, only in one direction aircraft, mechanisation and the bomb, have replaced horse-drawn cannon and the maxim gun.
These are some of the practical suggestions Cole thinks come from this new group:—
"first, a clearly defined attitude toward the making and potential use of atomic weapons; second, a well-thought-out plan of campaign for a 'war upon want' designed to equalize, as nearly as possible, conditions of living in all countries; third, plans for a world economic structure that will avoid the evils both of capitalism and of bureaucratic centralization and will open up for the workers in every country rapidly increasing opportunities for democratic, responsible self-government in their working lives; and fourth, the complete ending of imperialist domination, both political and economic, and the extension of self-governing independence to all peoples.”
Here they are, the same old windy type of high-faluting propositions, the practical application of which would only land the proposers in the present position of the movement they have supported, and this is the result of a life-time of experience! The intellectual never learns, he only prophesies and proposes; then weeps at the result and lays the blame on others.
When Cole started operations there was a party in existence which kept its course steadfastly to the accomplishment of Socialism and opposed all reformist policies. This Party was the Socialist Party of Great Britain, but Cole would have nothing to do with it because it opposed reformism. There is the World Socialist Party of America, and parties in other countries, which take the same line as we do, but Cole still ignores our existence, preferring to follow the path of reformist illusion.
Gilmac.
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