Answers to Correspondents. (1933)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

J. W. Rimmington (West Ham).—If you had read the whole of the article instead of only part of it (as you state is the case), you would not have supposed that it was an attack on the character of Sir John Ellerman.

Your suggestion that the railwaymen should pay £40-millions a year into the funds of their union, and use this money for houses, pensions, unemployment insurance, etc., for themselves, is fantastic. You propose that the railwaymen shall obtain the necessary money by demanding higher wages, but you do not explain how the railwaymen or any other body of workers are going to compel the employers to pay these higher wages. Trade unions have been trying to do this for generations.

The fact that a few workers climb into the ranks of the capitalists and that some capitalists are forced down into the ranks of the workers, does not alter the subject position of the working class as a whole. The only way out is for the workers to conquer political power and make the means of production and distribution the property of society as a whole.

Ed. Comm.