Seamen and Socialism
It is long since I troubled you with any screed of mine, but 1 feel impelled to break a restraint of several years by making some comment upon your bewildering illogicality, as it seems to me, in certain directions.
Under the heading “Seamen on Strike” you write “One simple method of safeguarding the community’s welfare, keeping the ships sailing and making everybody happy, is to grant the seamen’s wage demands.” Indeed! But is this recipe for everybody’s happiness not a little naive, encouraging “demands” on the parlour-game principle “Think of a number (or demand) and then double it." Since when has it been good Socialism to accept the view that any good, let alone universal happiness, can come out of a wages system?
On the very same page you say that “ not so long ago " a farthing would buy a pocket-full of sweets. So it would, if not a pocket-full, a fist-full. Sweets— and food—was incredibly cheap before the first great war, and so was labour. You make the point that a worker’s wage today in command of real wealth remains much about the same. This, in spite of the precarious outcome of “full employment” in so-called key industries, overtime, and married women’s labour. Plainly, “demand” for anything less than Socialism is “not enough.” Then why confuse the issue merely to satisfy that class-war feeling? It’s phoney! As for the £40 a month and all found, I can only speak of the stewards you mention, but I have just come off a liner (an exploiting passenger, of course) considerably lighter in pocket. Why should you expect me to fall for that fudge? The workers, like everyone else (and who are they?) want all they can get and I don't blame them—or us—but don't ask me to idealise the ”gi-me" game. I gave all to a cause once, with no personal expectations. So did many pioneers of the SPGB. We didn't moan.
Now, isn't it about time the SPGB told the world what it means by Socialism? Yes, I know all about the statement of Principles, I had it in draft in my own hands some 50 years ago. But what does it mean? I ask modern artist friends of mine what their apparently crude abstract designs mean and they fob me off with jargon and more jargon. I ask you for details of how each takes from the common store without money and without price. Must the answer be the same? Just how, is all I want to know, but don’t misunderstand me. I, too, believe it possible to really socialise the main things of life gradually and I do not rely on any “ dawn ’’ appearing or the “ setting up'' of specialised and centralised bureaucracies for the purpose. I could develop the theme with plenty of early Socialist literature to my aid. Believe me, I do not propose to present every worker with a Jaguar on “ demand ’’—the problem disturbs me, for why not a helicopter apiece? 1 can “ visualise ” some “ store." Treat this as a little pleasantry if you like, but what do you really mean? No jargon, mind!
Belsize Park, N.W.3.
Reply:
In the first chapter of our pamphlet “ Questions of the Day " we have told in some detail what Socialism is. Lord Amwell asks “for details of how each takes from the common store without money and without price.” We are puzzled at his difficulty. In a family, for example, each takes what he needs of what is there without either money or price. Likewise, from what is produced today each could take what he needs of what is available for each without having to pay for anything, providing it was all commonly owned.
As the question comes from Lord Amweli there are certain things we can take for granted. For instance, that we are concerned with a society in which everything that is in and on the earth is the common possession of all mankind. and each stands on an equal footing with regard to what is produced and distributed.
Before such a society can come into being the vast mass of the people must understand what Socialism signifies the kind of society that they are bringing into being. Hence they will know that the greater the quantity and variety they can produce the more in quantity and variety will be available to each.
The same kind of hands and brains that are concerned with production and distribution today will be available in the new society—but with greater freedom and opportunities. Consequently the provision of the necessary productive and storage facilities to meet society's needs in the requisite places will present less difficulties than they do today, where the profit consideration enters into the problem. Thus people will go to the appropriate stores and take what they need of what is there, in accordance with assessments of needs and the means to fulfil them—problems which are within the capacity of human brains that have been able to devise gigantic buildings, faster than sound planes, radar and space rockets. For instance, people go to super stores today, take what they need and pay for what they have taken. Tomorrow they will go similar places, take what they need and walk out.
Those who bring the new society into being will be reasonable enough not to expect more than society is capable of producing. Likewise, they will only want what they need, not what will be the envy of their neighbours. A person can only eat one meal at a time, sleep in one bed, sit in one car. The multiplicity of these things would only be a nuisance and a sign that the accumulator needed the attention of a doctor. Helicopters have been mentioned. It is surely obvious that everyone would not want a helicopter, a motor car, a racing stud, a yacht, a TV set, a private radar, a trip to the moon, a private salmon river, or a house papered with gold leaf and diamonds. People yearn for these things today because they signify security and importance, in the eyes of their fellows. In the new society such an outlook would be meaningless. The members of it would want comfort, happiness, the pursuit of occupations that gave them pleasure, and the harmonious co-operation of their fellows. A helicopter would not be needed as a possession, but as a means to get from place to place in a hurry. Today a man calls a taxi if he wants to get to a friend or the station in comfort and quickly. Would it not be possible to arrange to call a helicopter tomorrow? Members of the new society would not be unreasonable in their demands, harmonious co-operation would assure this, and unlimited human ingenuity would be used to solve any problems that arise.
In the beginning, before society has settled down in the new form, there may be those who, unable to throw off the heritage of the past, may want to satiate themselves with possessions. But what of it? They will gain nothing by it except satiation and will soon get tired of useless accumulation, like the child gets tired of a surfeit of toys.
With reference to the remarks about the seamen's dispute, the sentences quoted have been taken too literally—in a sense that the context shows was not intended. They were just flippant digs at the arguments put forward by the employers and their supporters.
Editorial Committee.
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