It’s Bolton Central Library on an evening in late November 1984. The large meeting room is full for a debate between myself representing the Socialist Party and the local Tory MP, Tom Sackville. The subject is ‘Is socialism compatible with freedom?’ and a well-known local cleric is in the chair. We both have 20 minutes to put our respective cases and another 10 minutes to respond. We do that, and then it’s thrown open to the floor. The hands go up for questions and observations and we both respond. I’m gratified that a lot of the discussion focuses on the definition and description of socialism I’ve tried to communicate – a democratically run society of voluntary cooperation, a moneyless, wageless, stateless world of free access to all goods and services based on the principle of from each according to ability to each according to need.
I was worried that we might get bogged down in discussing the old 57 varieties of ‘socialism’ (Russia, China, Cuba, Scandinavia, social reform, etc.), so I did my best to dismiss all that quickly at the beginning. And it seems to have worked, since hardly anyone – not even my Tory opponent – is trying to tar socialism with any of those brushes. I’m pleased too that it’s all calm, civil and good-natured, since those are always the best conditions for rational argument and useful exchange of ideas. At the end it probably can’t be said that anyone is the winner, but importantly, from my point of view, the socialist case has been aired clearly and unambiguously in front of a large audience. As an enthusiastic member of the Party’s local branch says to me afterwards: ‘I’ve never been to a meeting of this kind where the constant focus was on our view of socialism.’
That was a long time ago. Yet we’ve not stopped debating, since debating is our life blood as socialists. We’ve been doing it for the whole 120 years of our existence. But, apart from hustings at election times, face-to-face debate has become more and more difficult to organise in recent years, as discussion of all kinds increasingly takes place online. But though this lacks the immediacy (and often the politeness) of face-to-face exchange, it does not prevent discussion from continuing and, in fact, can reach far wider and more faraway audiences than is possible in a debating hall. The Socialist Party has adapted to this by having its own website and Facebook page and its members often participate in discussion and debate taking place on other sites organised by groups in various parts of the world with similar or closely allied ideas.
One of these is Moneyless Society, whose aim is ‘obsoleting money’, so sharing a key element of the society we are looking to see established. To give an example, a recent discussion on the Moneyless Society site involved a range of people, including SPGB members, debating with a distinctly non-socialist contributor. Casey began by quoting approvingly words from early 20th century free-market theorist, Ludwig von Mises, and then argued that we should be pleased with the market economy because it ‘puts the common man in the driving seat’ and ‘we average Joes get to enjoy luxuries not even conceived of 100 years ago thanks to the innovation capitalism breeds’. He added that he’d ‘like to hear from socialists in this bunch what’s wrong with this statement’. So not just an echo chamber, and a provocative start which sparked quick responses. The first one in fact was from me, stating: ‘The main thing to be said about the “average Joe” is that, far from being “in the driving seat”, he spends most of his life hanging on to the job he’s got (if he’s got one) and hoping and praying that the market system he lives in doesn’t determine he’ll lose it.’ Casey’s not ill-considered response was: ‘So society should allow Joe to continue working an obsolete job that no longer serves a purpose?’ At this point someone called David intervened to comment on how technology, both before and during the capitalist era, has made it possible to produce more with less work. And then it got a little tetchy when Casey mentioned, as evidence of the success of the market system, that he has a ’four-wheel drive Toyota Tundra with tons of features’ and so ‘capitalism for the win’. David’s sarcastic reply was: ‘I humbly suggest that we disband this list. After all, Casey says he drives a Toyota Tundra. What possible argument in favor of socialism could ever top that?’
But then it became more serious with Casey putting the argument that modern-day vehicles have many features that previous ones didn’t have and that make them more appealing. This has been achieved by competition, and so, ‘because of that we all benefit’. A further contributor, Michael, then intervened to dispute Casey’s earlier assertion that ‘capitalism breeds innovation’, arguing that ‘collective ownership’ can innovate just as well as ‘private ownership’. At this point it wasn’t clear whether for Michael ‘collective ownership’ meant state ownership (ie nationalisation) or socialism in our terms (ie, a common ownership and free access society). But Casey seized on this anyway to bring up the Soviet bogeyman and suggested a comparison between ‘the US and the USSR and the advancement of everyday life for everyday citizens’, together with a story about Boris Yeltsin being amazed as he toured a grocery store in Houston.
At this stage I felt obliged to jump in again myself and say: ‘What on earth has Yeltsin got to do with socialism? Absolutely nothing.’ The closing ‘speeches’ had Casey stating that ‘we are all better off for Bill Gates becoming a billionaire, not the other way round’, and two late contributors weighing in, the first one, Paul, saying that, in capitalism, ‘people are forced to buy not what they want but what they can afford, even if it’s cheap and nasty, out of what it’s profitable for companies to produce’, The second, Steven, on a slightly different tack: ’Less than 100 […] people in the world today own the equivalent of that owned by the poorest 50% – that’s 4 billion people. If that doesn’t tell you something is wrong, what will it take?’
All this is a far cry from Bolton Central Library in 1984. But what it shows is that debate still goes on, argument still goes back and forth and, if anything, now that most of it is online, it has a potentially bigger, more receptive and geographically wide audience than in the pre-internet days of outdoor platforms in town centres or parks or draughty meeting rooms in libraries or halls.
Howard Moss
A bit later than expected but that's the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard done and dusted.
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