Parliament and Local Government.
To the Editor.
Please accept thanks for publication and reply to my letter under above heading, Socialist Standard, June, 1933. It is not my intention to enter into a hair-splitting competition. Yet, if you ask me to define what I mean by Reforms, I should say that they are such “measures” which deal with effects, while leaving untouched the fundamental principles of Capitalism. If I allow myself to be dragged into this game of parsing and analysing every word I use, you can keep me at it for everlasting, just as the working class are, generation after generation, dissipating their political activity chasing the chimera of Reform. Of course it would be absurd for a Socialist to put forward the class position on each and every occasion. Nothing is so boring and tiresome as to hear some so-called Socialists and Communists airing their views by dragging in the class struggle when, say, for instance, that spectrum analysis, bee-keeping, vegetable blight, or something of that nature, is the subject under discussion. From your remarks I gather that the S.P.G.B., per the exalted personages known to the readers of The Socialist Standard as the Ed. Comm, will tell the M.P. delegate what to do. Apparently the people who voted for the man who is supposed to be the personification of a definite set of principles are not in the act. I am beginning to see what is meant by the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. To use your own language, the thing boils down to this: By your own admission there is nothing that divides the S.P.G.B. from the Labour Party, I.L.P. or C.P. There is no reason why they should not present an united front of varying degrees of Reforms. I will quote from your own words : “May we instance measures (of course they are not “Reforms” when you call them “Measures") for stopping or avoiding a war, for reducing hours of work, or for raising unemployment pay?” But why stop short of that? What about milk for starving babies, or Hitler’s marriage dowries ?
(2) Nothing could beat your woolly word spinning under the heading of what the S.P.G.B. would do with their delegate returned by a majority on a Local Body. The electors, we are told, will have voted for a “purpose," expecting nothing else. That “purpose,'’ according to your reply, cannot deceive, disappoint, confuse or disillusion the electors, as we are led to understand that their contentment will arise from the fact that they know that “the conquest of the powers, National and Local” is a necessary step towards Socialism, and so is reading, writing and arithmetic. As far as I can see, you have admitted every point that I raised, and if it pleases the members of the S.P.G.B., it is no one else's affair.
Yours,
"PRECISION.”
Reply.
Our reply will be brief and will be confined almost entirely to corrections of misstatements made by our correspondent.
We did not say that the Editorial Committee would give instructions to Party M.P.s in Parliament or delegates on Local Councils. What we said was: “The Socialist will take his instructions from the S.P.G.B.," i.e., from the Party.
Secondly, our correspondent is simply imagining something which nowhere appears in the reply to his last letter, when he writes: "To use your own language, the thing boils down to this: By your own admission, there is nothing that divides the S.P.G.B. from the Labour Party, I.L.P. or C.P."
Neither in that language nor in any other language did we make such an admission or anything even faintly resembling it. S.P.G.B. candidates at every election stand and will always stand for Socialism, and nothing else. Unless our correspondent thinks that the candidates of the Labour Party, I.L.P. and C.P. fight elections on the issue of Socialism and nothing else, he knows that there is this fundamental difference which divides those parties from the S.P.G.B.
Our correspondent is contemptuous of the notion that Socialist delegates in Parliament would be instructed by the S.P.G.B. to use their votes against war, or for measures reducing hours of work or raising unemployment pay. This same correspondent, two-and-a-half years ago (see Socialist Standard, November, 1930), wrote telling us that we ought to organise public meetings of protest against the L.C.C. bye-law which forbids us selling literature and taking collections in the parks, get the meetings to show by means of a vote that they disapproved, and send the result of the votes to the L.C.C. Thus he would have us canvass support and votes on a minor reform but would not have Socialist delegates in Parliament vote on it.
As our correspondent raises the question of reading and writing, etc., as an intended parallel with the necessity of gaining control of the local machinery of Government, may we point out an obvious difference. The Capitalists do supply the reading and writing, compulsorily, but they do not put Socialists in control of the machinery of Government. For our correspondent's further information, if the capitalists were to introduce a measure into Parliament, having for its object the abolition of education in reading and writing, etc., Socialist delegates would doubtless be instructed to vote against it, as also against measures for the limitation of the franchise, or the prohibition of public meetings and the sale of
literature.
Ed. Comm.
1 comment:
'Precision' and those long paragraphs.
I wonder who they were? Some interesting points raised in both their letters.
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