Left, Right and Centre (2006)

From the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the Party Conference season begins we look at politicians’ politics

Today politics is about achieving political power, with the main political parties contesting to maximise their share of votes in a political market in the same way as competing companies do in their areas of commercial interest. Power and influence has become an end in itself for political parties because those interests that traditionally separated them have been absorbed into the tapestry of modern capitalism. In Britain, for example, the Conservative and Unionist Party evolved out of the Tory interest which was committed to the landed aristocracy, the upper class, and those institutions like the church that promoted the concept of the ‘divine right of kings’ and the social stratification of society.

As the middle class – the bourgeoisie or capitalist class – evolved and gained strength economically, it challenged the aristocracy for political control in order to throw off the impeding legal structures of feudalism which confined and restricted its continued economic expansion. The political interest representing the burgeoning class interests of the bourgeoisie was known as the Whigs and subsequently evolved into the Liberal Party.

In a property-orientated society such as feudalism or capitalism all real wealth is produced and can only be produced by the labour power of a subject class. The patents granting ownership of land to the feudal lords and barons may have derived from a parasitic monarchy but the wealth and privilege enjoyed by the lords and ladies of the manor was founded on the labour of their feudal serfs.

Similarly, the new revolutionary class of capitalists needed the labourer to work their engines of production; the serf would be converted from a feudal slave into a wage slave under the illusion that they were being given their freedom. Obviously, since the labourer was the key element in the wealth-producing function of both the feudal establishment and the new capitalist system of social organisation, the terms governing the future control of labour were a primary element of contention between the old order and that of the nascent capitalist class. This conflict of interest between the landed interest and the interests of the bourgeoisie was reflected in the post-revolutionary world of capitalist politics.

Left and right

The terms ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ as political designations emerged innocuously out of the seating arrangements in the Legislative Assembly of Revolutionary France in 1791, when the royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber and the radical Montagnards occupied the seats on the left. This almost incidental occurrence was to bring the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ into the lexicon of politics, where inevitably their wide generality would make them universally both an instrument of confusion and often a means of deliberate obfuscation.

By the middle of the 19th century the expression of political conservatism was regarded as ‘right wing’ while their liberal opponents were designated ‘left wing’. It was not solely, however as labels for political parties that the terms were to bedevil political consciousness but increasingly the most irrelevant matters that could be construed as having political moment found description within the spectrum of Left and Right.

So when the German and French socialist movements tactically retained programmes of ‘immediate demands’ – reformist strategies intended to bring about what they hoped would be the piecemeal evolution of capitalism into socialism – they inevitably became the political Left. The British Labour Party when it was formed in 1906, unlike its continental cousins, did not choose reformism as a tactic but was founded on a strategy that held that inevitably and gradually capitalism could be reformed into socialism. It became the principal focus of the Left in Britain, lingering long after the Labour Party’s pathetic failure to exercise any real influence in government when it first got the opportunity to do so in 1923.

Inter-Left enmity

For decades Labour and Social Democratic parties throughout the world have contended for political office and the power of government on the claim that they were acting as bona-fide socialists. The multiplicity of left-wing groups, ‘tendencies’ and parties, like the various Trotskyist organisations and the fragmented periphery of ‘the left’, have traditionally supported the main Labour or social-democratic parties in general elections only to become implacably opposed to their policies when they formed governments.

The basis of this inter-left enmity is always related not to socialism but to aspects of capitalism and is based on the chastening reality of political power. In fact politics within the left is similar to politics outside the left: it is all about capitalism and its endemic problems. Not only that but right across the entire spectrum of politics from so-called Left to Right and through Centre the basic ideas that are perceived as representing Left and Right have been adopted and abandoned by parties of differing political complexions.

British politics currently illustrates this point: the Blair government is pursuing viciously authoritarian policies and backing the aggressive expansionism of a particularly vicious United States establishment. Judged by the absurd yardstick for determining positions on the swingometer of Left and Right such policies would be seen as extremely right-wing. Conversely, the new Tory leader, David Cameron, is trying to lead his party back to favour with the electorate with gestures of sympathy for the poor, the oppressed and the intellectually deprived which he believes might fool people into the belief that the Tories really do care. In fact policies wrongly seen by the pundits to be essential parts of Labour’s political stock-in-trade.

Historically, all three of the big political parties in Britain have advocated or used nationalisation — once the sacred cow of the British Left – when economic circumstances have shown a need for such a policy. Again, all three parties accepted the economic thinking underwriting the welfare state and all three have accepted the Keynesian economic philosophy when it was wrongly believed to be the panacea for the intractable ills of the system and especially the problem of managing economic demand.

Winning elections

The reality of politics today is that political parties represent the corporate face of organised groups  of career-orientated politicians whose cushy, well-paid jobs are dependent on selling old and failed political formulae dressed in worthless verbiage to a gullible electorate. It is not a question of honesty, sincerity or sagacity; wise and sincere people elected to government may indeed be able to soften some of the nasty features that capitalism throws up, but a government endowed with a surfeit of wisdom and sincerity could not make a system of economic anarchy and competition — a system predicated on the exploitation of the many by the few — run in the common interest.

Mere poverty and absolute destitution, the gigantic organisation of mass murder, which is war, homelessness, crime, social alienation and all the other features of the capitalist way of life are not caused by stupid, brutal or insincere politicians; they are endemic to capitalism. That is the demonstrable assumption on which the case for socialism – our case – is based; that is why we say it is social and economic system that has got to be changed and not its political functionaries.

Richard Montague

Caught in the Act: Cutting Up (1989)

The Caught in the Act Column from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cutting Up
A left-winger's medical nightmare might be to look up, drowsing into anaesthesia on the operating table, to recognise that the gowned and masked figure wielding the scalpel above them was none other than Dr David Owen.

Nightmares of the political kind have been induced in many of those treated by Owen since the days when, surprisingly elevated to the job of Foreign Secretary, he was spoken of by adoring hacks as the Anthony Eden of the 1970s. After that, who knew? With his good looks he could have been Labour's next Prime Minister. But it all went wrong when the voters decided they didn't want another Labour Prime Minister. Owen decided that this mortal blow to his ambition was the fault of all those left-wingers and their delusion that a Labour government is supposed to be something other than an imitation of a Tory one. Since then Owen has been in and out of the operating theatre, amputating one political member after another until now only three lonely MPs represent his drive to change the face of British politics forever.

How you regard this must depend on your overall attitude to politics. If you are aware that all the parties which want to reform some aspects of the present social system, rather than do away with it, must put winning votes before sticking to principles you will have the basis of an understanding of what motivates David Owen and the other reformists. You will also be aware that what they offer as new and radical policies are really a re-arrangement and a dressing-up of old ones which have been tried and have failed.

For example, Owen's latest ruse is to tout around the prospect of an alliance. It does not especially matter which party or parties join the alliance—Labour and the SLD would be most welcome—as long as the end result is seen as a presentable opposition to the Thatcher government. According to Owen, when he made his outdoor speech to the SDP delegates after the bomb scare at their Conference (which was widely praised as a brilliant example of extempore oratory but which—if we may say so—was not a patch on the style and delivery always practised by Socialist Party speakers) the worst possible fate confronting us is another spell of Thatcher at Number Ten. So we must all unite to kick her out.

Stitching Up
The first thing to be said about this is that it is by no means a new policy. Formal political alliances are not common in Britain as in some other countries but the informal kind often operate. For example, Denis Healey when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer always worked closely and amicably with his Tory shadow Geoffrey Howe, even if he did once say that being attacked by Howe was like being savaged by a dead sheep. The Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929 were kept in office through Liberal support and although these experiences caused what was left of the Labour Party in 1931 to swear that never again would they form an alliance with the Liberals that was just what the Callaghan government did. Between 1931 and 1935 Britain was governed by a ‘National” government of Labour. Tory and Liberal politicians and in 1940 there was the wartime coalition under Churchill, who had swapped sides often enough to be an alliance all by himself. All these alliances were justified on the grounds that the priority was to defeat or frustrate a common enemy; the Lib/Lab pacts were aimed against the Tories, the “National" government was supposed to organise the chaos of British capitalism during the slump of the 1930s. and the 1940-45 Coalition was formed when the enormity of the effort needed to defeat Germany became not just apparent but inescapable.

The second thing to be said about Owen's desperate fishing for friends is that it is out of step with what he once offered as a political principle. One of the more emphatic reasons given for the founding of the SDP was the urgency of getting away from “Two Party" politics, in which power bounced to and fro between Labour and the Tories. A third political force, it was argued, was essential to counteract the extremism (for that was how some of the Labour and Tory policies for running British capitalism were described by the SDP) of the two big parties. Of course, with the SLD and the SDP we now have four political forces but let that pass. The point is that if the SDP succeed in forming an anti-Thatcher alliance we shall be back with the “Two Party" politics which the Gang of Four once said was so damaging and frustrating.

Waking Up
But could the other parties' reluctance to rush into Owen's embrace have anything to do with his infamous personality? When he was Foreign Secretary he was not at all bashful in letting everyone know how lucky we were to have so brilliant a man in charge of British capitalism's diplomacy. Not only enemies are uneasy about his vanity over that handsome face. His former ally David Steel has given an insider's story in his book Against Goliath (geddit?) that Owen was not only arrogant, overbearing and difficult but also inconsistent: “What Owenites think on Monday may be different from what they think on Thursday".

This would be more convincing were it not that when Steel and Owen were in partnership during the last General Election Steel was doing his best to persuade us to vote for this arrogant and inconsistent man and was always being photographed or televised in a state of exultant celebration with him. As things have turned out, Steel has retired from the SLD leadership in good standing, an inconvenient shadow behind Ashdown, while Owen and his party are in tatters. So which of these two Davids wields the scalpel more artfully? Which can cover his inconsistency more cleverly—which the smoother operator? And when will the patient come out of the anaesthetic and wake up to what is being done to them?

Ivan

Laugh With Mr. Morrison (1947)

From the February 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Morrison is fast giving Politics a definite entertainment value. Time and favourable circumstances may yet link him with A. P. Herbert in the dual role of fellow M.P. and fellow humourist

To show we do Mr. Morrison no more than bare justice, consider a statement from his speech at Birmingham, Oct. 26th, “That the Labour Party does not propose to abolish the profit motive” (Observer, 28/10/46). Compound this with his repeated assertion that the Labour vote was a Socialist vote and there is concocted the rich, ripe, fruity humour that a Socialist is one who believes in the common ownership of the productive sources operating through production for use and based on the profit motive. One can almost visualise the pages of Marx’s “Capital” curling up at their edges with laughter.

Mr. Morrison’s whimsical humour is illustrated in his droll statement: “That the profit motive has been used as an excuse for exploiting Labour and treating workers as a commoditv and not as people.” But Capitalism is a system which produces commodities for sale with a view to profit. The worker’s labour power being the only thing he possesses for getting a living, it is this he must seek to sell on the so-called labour market. It is thus a commodity. The capitalist buys this commodity in the form of wages, these wages being on average its value or the sufficiency of things necessary to sustain and restore the worker’s productive energies. In the consumption of this commodity, labour-power by capital, however, a value greater than its own is produced. This unpaid labour or surplus value is the sole source of capitalist profit. This social economic process is included by Mr. Morrison under a single heading—“excuse.” Seeing, however, the employing class treat labour power as a commodity, because it is a commodity, and exploit workers because exploitation is the only method by which profit can be made, the excuse must be allowed. The question which seems to be most pertinent here is what excuse can be made for Mr. Morrison? We are inclined to the view that this is a more subtle form of Morrisonesque humour, and, if so, it leads inescapably to the conclusion that the technique of Marx (Harpo) has been closely studied by him. 

Although Mr. Morrison is not desirous of changing the commodity status of labour-power, he at least wants it called by another name, for he said: “In future Management must recognise Labour as a service and not as a commodity.” To a possible objection that this is a distinction without a difference, it may be argued that it is at least a way of looking at things. To steal a man’s clothes while be is bathing may be an act of common theft, but to leave behind a message that a bathing costume covers him just the same as clothes does reveal a certain delicacy of feeling and shows that he is at any rate a somewhat uncommon thief. Whether, of course, the employing class will submit to this fundamental change or seek to impede the march of progress by every means within their power cannot as yet be said, but we feel sure that if they won’t change the name Mr. Morrison will fight to secure this historic act of class justice with every Socialist fibre in his revolutionary being.

It appears, however, from Mr. Morrsion’s following statement, that the something for nothing postulate is as inapplicable to the world of Labour politics as it is to the world of physics, for Mr. Morrison warns the workers “that the new status involves new duties as well as new rights.” “Take unemployment pay,” he said. “ How long is a worker who has been doing some particular job entitled to live on the contributions of his fellow workers rather than take a job of another kind under proper conditions or a job in another place? ”, which, put in another way, seems to pose the question, how soon will an unemployed “new status holder” be compelled to seek or take a job outside his own trade (involving, as it generally does, a lowering of his customary pay-rate) before being cut off Unemployment Insurance benefit? Or again, how soon will penalties operate subsequent to his refusal to take a job elsewhere? Elsewhere being, perhaps, as it has been in the past, a distance involving hundreds of miles. In view of the not remote possibility of large scale unemployment, the answer is of some importance to sellers of “services.” Mr. Morrison, as a member of the Government, may, of course, have some information on the subject, and so we would put the question to him by asking, how long do you think, Mr. Morrison, should be the period of non-compliance with such conditions before the “service seller" is deprived of unemployed pay, under the “not genuinely seeking work clause? ’’

Although Mr. Morrison seems blithely unacquainted with the way profits are made, he has, it would seem, a nonconformist conscience as to where they are made. For instance, he tells us “that at a time when people were living in slums, without enough to eat, the profit motive was fostering a boom in the building of luxury flats and dog-racing tracks." Both he regards as a form of misdirection of national resources into non-essential work. But starvation and slums have existed and persisted in the industries Mr. Morrison calls essential in their most booming periods. In fact they have been associated with Capitalism even in its remote pre-dog racing track period. Mr. Morrison must be aware of the fact that poverty, slumps, unemployment and economic insecurity have been permanent features throughout the whole course of present society and can no more be traced to the dog race tracks at Harringay or Wembley than they can on the pedigrees of the greyhounds who race there. The general poverty of the working class and the vast accumulation in the hands of the Capitalists is not due to misdirection of wealth resources, but to the class appropriation of the products of labour as a result of class ownership.

For that reason the profit motive is, in its profit motive propensities, coarsely promiscuous and makes no virtuous discrimination between non-essential and essential industry. Any encouragement of an anticipated profit yield from any enterprise, whatever its character, will lead to its becoming susceptible to the arduous advances of the profit-seeking passion. Mr. Morrison will, as his intimacy with the profit motive ripens, also discover it in due course.

When Mr. Morrison spoke in the same speech of Socialising the profit motive he was back to his old sparkling form. The profit motive being the personal incentive for investing capital in some enterprise for profit expectation, to speak of Socialising it is tantamount to decreeing that henceforth and hereinafter all vocal soloists must perform their respective efforts only through the medium of community choruses. This is political fun at a very high level, and such is Mr. Morrison’s control over his subject matter that he never relaxes from the gravity he is able to impart to such utterances, and which give, as a result, such zest to the humour of the occasion.

In a remoter period of Labour polities the presentation of the employing class much favoured by their cartoonists was a brutal-looking, treble-chinned plutocrat who was consistently using the prostrate body of the worker as a parking place for his posterior. That conception has apparently outlived its usefulness, for Mr. Morrison tells us that if the profit motive recognises its past abuses, such as investing money in dog-racing track building, price fixing by cartel formations and the non-oppression of Labour, then it will have an honourable part to play in Society. Evidently Mr. Morrison is about to authorise a new version of the Capitalist for Labour cartoonists, that of a conscience- stricken, white-haired old gentleman who, goaded by the reproachful ghost of Mr. Morrison, is only too anxious to assume the role of the capitalist reformed Scrooge to u working-class Bob Cratchit. One observes here an element of pathos in Mr. Morrison’s humour.

In view of all this it is perhaps not wholly surprising that Mr. Macmillan demanded to know, of Mr. Morrison whether he was a Socialist? (Manchester Guardian, 19/10/46) and in the same speech asked Mr. Morrison to take hie courage in both hands and come over to what he described as the progressive Conservative and Liberal tradition as Chamberlain and Snowden had done in times past. Mr. Morrison, in the House of Commons (20/11/46), courteously returned the invitation by asking Mr. Macmillan, in view of the strong Socialist flavour of the speech he (Mr. Macmillan) had just made, and in view of the dissent it seemed to cause on the benches behind him, “how long the right hon. gentleman would be sitting there " (Ministerial laughter) (Times, 21/11/46). As Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Churchill have, as Mr. Morrison said, both advocated the Labour Party’s programme in the past, the question of who is converting whom is a little misty. As for the precise nature of the conversion, it is securely hidden in an impenetrable fog.

As for the present system, it assumes for Mr. Morrison the aspect of “an unsubstantial pageant faded,’’ for he referred to Capitalism and Imperialism as obsolete labels (Observer, 29/10/46). Such obsolete labels have their use, however, when they are stuck on the political wares of Mr. Morrison’s party and sold successfully at Election time. The “Socialist" Morrison here exhibits gifts, it would seem, of a born leg-puller as well.

To sum up, Mr. Morrison’s desire to perpetuate the profit motive is merely the tardy semblance of their compulsion to perpetuate Capitalism. Elected by working-class voters who merely desired to see the Labour way of running the present scheme of things, given a chance, it could not be otherwise. Only a Socialist working-class electorate will demand Socialism. Thus the long-promised indictment of Capitalism, couched in the vague pseudo-Socialist phrases of Labour ideologies, collapses. Before a mass jury consisting of a Labour majority the charge is reduced to Capitalism, being let off with a mild caution and a weak exhortation to try and behave better in future. Those of the Labour Party who have sought to pose as prosecuting counsel against the present order have now, when administering it, to go over to its defence. Thus the case for the prosecution breaks down, the spectacle of His Majesty’s Labour Ministers entering the political witness box in order to turn King’s Evidence has become almost a matter of routine procedure.

Ted Wilmott

"The State Sweatshop" (1947)

Editorial from the July 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conservative Party issued during May a statement of policy called “The Industrial Charter,” and a keen discussion at once arose as to whether all or only some of it was lifted from the Labour Party's programme. The Daily Herald called it “an unappetising rehash of Labour’s progressive policies” (May 12th, 1947). The Times, in an approving comment on the same day, said that a striking feature of the Charter “is the area of common ground with the Government.” The Express disliked it because it is “simply another version of the old planned economy of the Socialists,” and the Chronicle liked it for the same reason—“Many of the Conservative proposals are common ground with the Liberals or even Labour.” 

Much of the interest centred round Nationalisation. As Socialists (but not Labourites) expected, the Conservatives are not going to undo the main work of the Labour Government of extending nationalisation or State capitalism. They do not intend, if returned to office, to denationalise the coal industry, the railways or the Bank of England. All they propose is to “examine and modify the methods” by which the coal industry is now being managed, and restore “a wide measure of freedom” to sections of the road transport industry. (Daily Telegraph, May 12th, 1947.) On the Bank of England the Report says

  “We would not repeal the whole of the Bank of England Act, but we should re-examine the powers of the Bank to give directions to the commercial banks.”

On the other hand, the Report does oppose the nationalisation of iron and steel, a question about which Labour Party opinion is also to some extent divided.

In short, as nationalisation does not touch the foundations of capitalism, and as the capitalists themselves accept the need in their own interests to control big monopolies, the Tory Party is letting it be known that they will continue the Labour Government’s main schemes of nationalisation. The vague talk about re-examining the methods is partly a serious intention to modify the machinery of control but is put in chiefly as a sop to the more stupid die-hards, who cannot see that changes in the direction of increased State control are necessary to capitalism itself.

These questions are capitalist questions, and it is fitting to conclude by referring to the interest of the working-class. While Tories and Labourites squabble about which of them has been responsible for introducing the largest amount of nationalisation, a bit of working-class realism comes on the scene, from Post Office workers who have had enough experience to know what it means to its wage-slaves. The Daily Worker (May 13th, 1947) reproduced extracts from a telegram sent to the Post Office Workers’ Conference by the East Central District Office No. 1 Branch. It appealed to Conference to “reform the State sweatshop and ease our present plight.” With an eye on the Government’s work harder posters the telegram said, ‘‘We work and want.”

Tactical Voting (1983)

Editorial from the May 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who remembers the days of “consensus” politics, when Butskellism was rife in this country (which means when the Conservative and Labour parties made no secret of the fact that they were in basic agreement over the running of British capitalism) will be familiar with the slippery image of the floating voter. All manner of electoral bait was cast on the muddied waters to entice the floating voters into the net, as they moved shoal-like between the bed-rock support for the two big parties. Many dirty tricks disfigured the great angling contest between Labour and Tory, for the floater was in many cases considered to be crucial to the outcome of an election.

But all that was in the days of Macmillan, Gaitskell, Butler and the like; interest in the floating voter has declined and attention is given instead to the tactical voter, who is now said to be the deciding factor. There are contrasts between the two types. The floating voter could be an apathetic creature, liable to stay in its shell if the bait was not enticing enough to get it out to the polling station, while the tactical voter is essentially someone who votes. When the floating voter did vote, whether under inducement or threat, in the end it was for the party of its choice; the whole point about tactical voting is that it is for the party you don't really support.

In the famous Bermondsey by-election, for example. Labour supporters who were persuaded that Peter Tatchell stood little chance of winning might have voted for the SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate as the one most likely to keep the Tories out. This tactical vote would have been cast, even if the voter had been aware that the Alliance is a bunch of unprincipled opportunists.

Tactical voters try to be on the winning side, which means that they will be affected by preconceptions about the result. Electoral forecasts, then, are important; if Tatchell had looked likely to win in Bermondsey he should have attracted tactical votes rather than, as was the case, repulsed them. In that event many supporters of the Alliance, although they regarded Tatchell as a dangerous revolutionary (which he isn't) and the Labour Party as discredited and impotent (which it is) should have voted for him. In the past this process was known as a bandwagon which, as it gathers speed, picks up more and more people eager to be taken for a ride.

Although it seems to have been only recently discovered, tactical voting has been practised for a long time. Ever since the twenties the Labour and Conservative parties have argued that, as the Liberals could not hope to win an election, to vote for them was a waste; for tactical reasons. Liberals should vote Labour or Tory, even if they were opposed to those parties. This is not an argument about principle but about a squalid expediency. As the Liberals once suffered through the use of the tactical vote, it might be expected that they would be still opposed to its use now and would still be protesting that people should vote in accordance with their ideas; but now that they think the tactical vote is favouring them, the Liberals have no difficulty in accepting it.

Of course this is causing the Labour and Conservative parties a great deal of anguish and they are turning their ire on to the opinion polls on the assumption that, by forecasting the winner, they help to attract the tactical vote to that party and so to energise its bandwagon. A bruised Labour Party asserted that this happened in Bermondsey and one Labour MP — the ridiculous Doug Hoyle — wants to ban the polls from operating during the crucial period of an election. Hoyle sits on a thin majority having won a by-election almost as disastrous for his party as Bermondsey so it is natural that he should be anxious to find a picturesque excuse for Labour’s failures, to add to those which litter their history. A pollsters' conspiracy may now take its place alongside the bankers’ ramp, the economic blizzard and the winter of discontent.

Hoyle’s spluttering symbolised how seriously these matters are taken by the big parties whose business is to amass enough voters, whether sinking or floating, tactical or suicidal, to get them into power. None of them need be concerned about what the votes are based on — about what informs the voter who can be persuaded, during the brief couple of weeks of an election, to switch their support from one candidate to another. It is clear that no part in this is played by elements of political maturity or class consciousness or an awareness of the power of the vote to transform society.

Those votes are determined by inconsistency and opportunism and an ability to ignore the historical fact that it is useless to change from one of the capitalist parties to another. Workers in Britain have been swinging from Labour to Tory and back again since the twenties without producing any effect for the better; to add the SDP to the game will make no difference to its futility. All these parties represent the interests of the minority who own the means of life and they have no plans or intentions — or any conception — other than to run the social system in which that minority dominate through their ownership. They stand for the society which produces war, nuclear weapons, famine, poverty and disease alongside class privilege. They all stand for the decadence of capitalism and it matters not one whit if the vote swings from one to the other of them. The real issue is to get rid of capitalism.

This cannot be brought about through the crazy oscillations of the floating voter nor by the expedient manoeuvres of the tactical vote. It needs a stable political awareness that capitalism cannot be reformed out of its nature. A voter who has that knowledge does not drift or wriggle; they cannot be tempted to vote for any of the capitalist parties under the delusion that this is a useful thing to do because it keeps one of the others out or lets another in.

In contrast to the floaters and the tacticians there is the socialist, whose vote cannot be bought or manipulated or netted. Socialists vote on their knowledge, which means they use their vote to the limits of its awesome power to establish the society of freedom.