Obituary: W. Griffiths (1977)

Obituary from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

We recently learned with regret of the death of this veteran member. S. Goldstein writes:

It came as a great shock to me. I had for some time thought that if a loyal and consistent comrade is needed in East London to help revitalize that area with Socialist propaganda. Griffiths is that person. Alas, our comrade died only three or four Sundays after I last spoke to him at the Hackney Library. He had borrowed two books on Marx and, on encountering me, showed them to me and displayed rapt attention to conversation about them.

Comrade Griffiths had joined the SPGB in 1929, about two years before I joined. We were both in the East London branch, and he became a member of Hackney branch later. I would run into him in all kinds of places — getting a bus from Hackney Baths, at Whipps Cross (he told me his sister lived nearby) and on Sunday mornings in Club Row market. He would invariably acquaint me with all that was going on, and he was sympathetic whenever I expressed personal difficulties to him. He was never falsch to me.

His genuineness arose not only from his character but from an absolute intellectual conviction that, the sneers of renegades notwithstanding, the party in which we met — the SPGB — was the only party for the working class. As long as I live I shall remember him with respect and affection.

Solomon Goldstein

It can be done! (1977)

Party News from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Westminster Branch social just before Christmas, the voice of the secretary boomed out above the convivial din: “A madman among us, finding we have Socialist Standards unsold this month, is going to put up the platform in Hyde Park on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the day after, and has dragooned his two young sons as sellers”.

George II (not present at the social): “Mad, is he? I wish he would bite mein other generals”. Comrades, two young non-members sold 200 Socialist Standards. Food for thought?

L. E. Weidberg

Dispatch from America (1977)

From the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has become pretty much of a cliché among Socialists in America — as is the case wherever there are members of the World Socialist movement — to declare that there is little, if any, difference among the parties of capitalism. When you get right down to bedrock, how can there be any difference? Capitalism is, essentially, the wages, prices, profits system and whatever designation the candidates in the 1976 Presidential Elections ran under — Republican, Democratic, Independent . . . yes, even Socialist Workers (Trotskyist) and the US Labor Party (“Marcus”-ists) — none advocated the immediate, or even the future, abandonment of the relationships of wage labor and capital. All argued for a better operation of the present social structure.

And yet there are superficial differences that bear examination if only that they indicate the bankruptcy of capitalist and pseudo-socialist ideologists. For example, there was that different approach between President Ford and Jimmy Carter on the question of jobs for the unemployed. Carter took the stand that American working people want work, not welfare checks, and promised a huge Government program — or implied it, at any rate — to create jobs. Ford, on the other hand, argued that such jobs are dead-end affairs without a future, that meaningful jobs must come from the “private sector” and that, if elected, he would concentrate upon stimulating the private sector.

Interestingly: Camejo, SWP, took a stand similar to that of Carter only with even more emphasis on Government-created jobs, a sort of revived Works Project Administration (WPA) while LaRouche (US Labor Party) spent his time (and a lot more than the $90,000 his party raised to purchase a half-hour of prime time on the NBC Network the night before the election) arguing that a vote for Ford would save us from a major depression by Christmas 1976, and an all-out nuclear war by June of 1977. The election of Carter, he contended, would surely bring these twin catastrophes to the world. Such were the positions of America’s two major self-styled Marxist parties.

Now, what was the difference between the Ford and Carter approach in the campaign? Ford, of course, was being more pragmatic than Carter because it has long since become obvious in America that it is cheaper to keep unemployed on welfare than to create unproductive Government jobs. The wages from such work must come from tax money and it costs more to keep workers on jobs than it does to mail them a check. (One needs more food, better clothing, transportation, etc., on a job). A program such as Carter implied would bring a huge increase in taxes (if not sharply increased inflation) and it remains to be seen how much of such a program will be instituted by the new régime.
But the problem with the Ford philosophy is that, basically productive industry does not exist for the purpose of providing jobs. The motive is production for profit not the provision of “dignity” for unemployed workers.

As Socialists, we must look at the question from a different angle. Why, in the face of the stupendous achievements of capitalism (in whatever form) must jobs be considered a be-all and end-all? It is more than just a case of needing a job to exist. Today that is a sad fact. The depressing aspect of the matter is that liberals and radicals, generally, ascribe a therapeutic value to spending 8-hours per day, plus travel time, at a machine or whatever, in return for the money needed to function properly and raise families to carry on! And despite industrial disease, accidents and even deaths that are part of the warp and woof of capitalism!

Come off it, you self-styled progressive-minded humanists, or whatever. Is it so difficult to picture a society in which the work needed to produce enough for all will be minimized and the end result a maximum of freedom to live one’s life according to one’s natural desires? Not that mere picturing is enough! It will take organization and action to bring about such a society. But visualizing it would be a beginning. There has not been a solitary instance, in American politics, of a candidate entering the arena to advocate such a society — world socialism. It is truly time for a change!

Harry Morrison (Boston)

World Socialist Party of the United States

Tussy in her time (1977)

Book Review from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eleanor Marx. Vol. 2: The Crowded Years, 1884-1898 by Yvonne Kapp. Lawrence & Wishart, £12.00.

We are bound to be interested in Eleanor Marx. She helped her father and Engels; she translated some of Marx’s work; she spoke in the streets, took part in agitations, was in William Morris’s Socialist League and the SDF from which the Socialist Party of Great Britain sprang.

The first volume of Yvonne Kapp’s biography, published in 1972, reconstructed the life cf the Marx family and Eleanor’s until she went to live with Edward Aveling, and was stunning. This one is twice as big, even more assiduously detailed, and not quite as good. In particular, there is an overweight middle section. Aiming to give a comprehensive account of Eleanor’s political and trade-union activities, Mrs Kapp explains why she was speaking at Stratford or Beckton or Clapham Common; this produces lengthy accounts of the gas-workers’, dockers’ and match- girls’ wages and conditions, and the unrest of the time; and in turn, the feeling that much of it can be and has been read elsewhere.

The people in the story come alive. As in the first volume, Engels — “the General” — emerges as a superb character. He is not only scholarly, industrious, far-seeing and generous, which we knew, but immensely lovable and put-upon by females. Of Morris, Mrs. Kapp says his stature was so great that a biographer of his associates wants to echo Alice in Wonderland : “All persons mere than a mile high to leave the court." The writer does not conceal her likes and dislikes. She finds H. M. Hyndman and several of the other well-to-do radicals of the time to have been detestable, and has a poor opinion of Eleanor's sister Laura and her husband Paul Lafargue. As the translator of the Engels-Lafargue correspondence twenty years ago she revealed the astonishing extent to which Lafargue sponged on “the General”; here she suggests plainly that he was politically inept too.

Mrs. Kapp argues against the established picture of Aveling as a dishonest adventurer who lived above his means and caused — even arranged, in some versions — Eleanor’s suicide. She successfully shows that Hyndman and some of his colleagues did all they could to promote the picture, and questions the evidence on various incidents. At the same time she acknowledges that hardly anyone liked Aveling; she presents him as weak and lacking sophistication in some ways, though a masterly public speaker. In fact some of the founders of the Socialist Party of Great Britain had attended Aveling’s economic classes while in the SDF. According to our late comrade Gilbert McClatchie they described him as a first-class tutor and a “bad hat” in his private life; whether the latter was first-hand knowledge or SDF reputation is not known.

The book is a mine of sidelights and quotations. It accounts of the wheeling and conniving in the SDF and the short unhappy life of the Socialist League are vivid, and the writer is sharply aware of what happened when the labour leaders Eleanor helped to raise took over: “She could not foretell that the word ‘socialism’, still a beacon to millions of working men and women, would — unlike that ‘spectre haunting Europe’ — be misappropriated to make capitalism more viable, for which service feudal honours, lordships and knighthoods, would be conferred upon the low-born; nor that ‘Marxism’ would become one of the most popular parlour games to be played at universities . . .” Mrs. Kapp conveys to the reader her sympathy with the old watchwords “educate, agitate, organize” — perhaps with too much emphasis on “agitate”, as if despite her own lesson. But her two volumes together are a fine piece of work. It is not the fault of author or publisher that the price of this volume is going to confine ownership of it largely to those university parlours until or unless there is a cheaper reprint; can that be hoped for?

Robert Barltrop

Marx and the abolition of the wages system (1977)

From the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

At any time in the history of capitalism there have been lots of people and organisations occupied in trying to solve wages problems, the difference between now and the past being that the problems multiply and become more complex and the armies of “solvers”, politicians, business men, academics, trade union officials and so on become larger and larger. There is not the slightest prospect that these people will solve the problems.

A century ago Karl Marx urged the trade unions to give up struggling for “fair” wages and go for the abolition of the wages system; not, of course, as a tactic that could be operated in a capitalist social system but as an integral part of the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by Socialism. Marx was being logical. The Socialism he envisaged involved “abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production” (Communist Manifesto) and it would obviously not be possible to abolish buying and selling generally and yet retain it in the form of the employer buying the worker’s labour-power and paying him wages for it.

In the late nineteenth century the idea of abolishing the wages system appeared to have become widely accepted in organizations making some claim to be socialist. In 1890 the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society both signed “The Manifesto of English Socialists” which contained the pledge: ‘We look forward to an end forever to the wages system”.

Among the individuals who signed on behalf of their organizations were Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb, but before long most of the signatories forgot all about it and were busy joining the Labour Party which devoted itself to the attempt to solve social problems, including wages problems, within capitalism. That attempt has of course been fruitless.

Marx foresaw that it would fail and explained why this was bound to happen. In one of his early writings he said: “What errors are committed by the advocates of piecemeal reform, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the conditions of the working class, or (like Proudhon) regard equality of wages as the aim of social revolution”. Quoted in McLellan’s Marx Before Marxism, Pelican, p.214.)

And he pinpointed the basic error of their approach to the problem in their belief that it is possible to retain the capitalist mode of production and superimpose on it a socialist principle of distribution. One place in which he explained his was in his notes on the 1875 constitution of the German Social-Democratic Party, published as Critique of the Gotha Programme.

Vulgar socialism has accepted as gospel from the bourgeois economists (and a part even of the democracy has taken over the doctrine from the unreflecting socialists) that the problem of distribution can be considered and treated independently of the mode of production, from which it is inferred that socialism turns mainly upon the question of distribution.

Written long before the British Labour Party was formed, this might be a description of the muddled thinking that has always governed the actions of Labour governments.

They were to be the “high wage” party, constantly pushing wages up through minimum wage legislation, through encouragement of trade unions in their claims, and by abolishing unemployment. Now, in the eighth British Labour government, the forefront of their policy is “the social contract”, an agreement with the TUC to dissuade the unions from making wage claims they would otherwise be making — with “real” wages, after discounting the rise of prices, falling for several years running and with unemployment at a post-1945 record level.

As social reformers they wanted to raise wages generally, and particularly for the lowest paid; but as a government trying in vain to control and direct capitalism they find themselves doing all the things for which they denounced the openly capitalist parties. One of their dilemmas is that capitalism requires that the workers shall be forced to work on terms that accept exploitation, that is, terms which enable the capitalists to make profit. But the fallacious theory on which the Labour Party wants to operate required that the Government go on raising social security benefits to the unemployed and others in need. The necessities of capitalism prevail over the “good intentions” of the reformers.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Breakthrough (1977)

From the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

I once asked a Labour man,
"Are you a Socialist? Answer me if you can".
"I'm a Labour man", he answered.
"So it's obvious I am". 

"There's nowt obvious it", says I,
And he looked at me strangely before he said,
"Are you quite alright, mate,
Or are you goin' funny in the head?" 

"No", says I simply, saddened by his manner,
Reflecting that all Labour men
Say they wave the Socialist banner.
But you ask 'em what Socialism is
And they haven't got a clue.
They think it's Nationalisation
Or some other pathetic view. 

I say, "Do you think it's a world system
That has no need for money?"
And he looks at me again in that same old way
As though he thinks I really have gone funny. 

"Well that's Socialism", I say.
"No buying, no selling, no spending, no pay.
There'll be no need, you see,
Everything's readily available,
Everything's free". 

"What about work? he says.
"Who's goin' do it for nowt?"
"That's no problem", says I.
"That's not hard to figure out.
You'll work cos you want work
Not cos of what they pay ya.
If you had a choice of doin' summat
           or nowt all day,
I'm sure you'd choose summat, what say ya?" 

"Mm, reckon so," he says. "You might have summat after all."
"There's no reckon about it," says I, "it's a fact
Or my name ain't Paul".
"Well, when's this free world going to come about, then?
Tell me how long we've got?"
"As soon as folk like you come and join us
Instead of listening to that Labour rot". 

He nodded reflectively,
As though he'd just seen the light,
And I knew in my heart
He was going to say what was right.
"Are you a Labour man?" I asked again.
"Or cab you now see clearly through the mist?"
"Nay, lad," he replied smilingly,
            I'm no Labour man.
I'm a Socialist."

Paul Breeze

A Problematic Friend (1977)

Book Review from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack London: The Man, the Writer, the Rebel by Robert Barltrop. Pluto Press, £4.50 hardback (illustrated).

Anyone undertaking a biography of Jack London is assuming a task that appears larger than life. More like a legend than a man and the image of the adventure stories that in part made him famous, London has an appeal that few stories can match.

Inevitably such a man is full of contradictions and to some extent these are left unexplained: London's desire to be accepted by the society members he despised; his racial hatred of the Japanese yet his ability to call Japanese revolutionaries his "brothers"; his extreme generosity and yet his overwhelming desire for money, and other inconsistencies. But Robert Barltrop does manage a reasonably rounded whole. Dealing with London's life in chronological order, he starts with a poor and rough beginning, wild adventures, his yearnings to write and his urge to consume literature, his early disappointments, and the almost fairy-tale rise to popular prominence. His political development until this stage is also carefully documented, and we see the conversion of the protester into an allegedly Socialist propagandist.

Alongside this are developed the personal characteristics which were to destroy him: above all the feelings that whatever he did had to be done better than anyone else, including drinking. The success years are catalogued with much sympathetic detail; in particular the visit to London and the writing of The People of the Abyss. This extraordinary description of the people living in slums at the turn of the century ("I am made sick by this human hellhole called the East End") is described as the only truly sincere book he wrote. His divorce and instant remarriage caused a scandal which affected his book sales as the press turned on him. With a truly remarkable strength of will London battled on, writing, indulging in extravagant schemes, madly building boats and houses and travelling with his second wife. The rather pathetic decline is then explained: the burning down of an engine that had been ready to take on the world, and the ultimate futile death, probably by suicide.

Writing poured out of London as drink poured into him, excessively. A great merit of this book is making the criticism of London's literary output readable in itself and illustrative of the intellectual progress of the man. Against such a vivid background there is little danger that the more "academic" parts of the book are going to turn boring. The writer gives telling criticisms of London's writings and politics. He gives a very full analysis of The Iron Heel, London's most successful (in terms of continuing sales) political story. Rejecting the usual viewpoint—including Trotsky's—that the book predicts the rise of fascism, he claims that by the time London wrote it he had virtually rejected Socialist ideas. Depressed at finding that the revolution was not coming as quickly as expected, he confirmed his ultimate fallacy, the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race and the crude representation of the theories of Darwin.

Barltrop suggests that London never really got to grips with the essentials of Marxian economics, and describes The Iron Heel as London's argument why Socialism could not come about in the foreseeable future. Despite his lectures on Socialism, donations for the cause, etc., London was "without understanding of how society works; the virile combative imagery was the guise of smatterings". The writer concludes that The Iron Heel was not far from being an anti-Socialist work. One might make the same condemnation of London himself.

Despite praise for a most unusual literary figure, London's lack of understanding condemns him to the category of those who have chased the rainbow of illusion and helped others to indulge in the same fruitless escapade. London was a man with a passion against much of what was (and is) wrong in society. Yet his failures illustrate that it is not sufficient merely to be a very angry young man; knowledge of both cause and solution is required. Despite London's ability to study nineteen hours a day, he chose easy paths and skimped understanding. He always found studying "easy", but the techniques he had used for passing exams and beating the bourgeois whom he despised (hasty cramming and superficial answers) are totally inappropriate for comprehension of Capital and its conclusions.

The writer's summary of London life is: "Its various aspects are of a personality whose strengths and weaknesses alike were invited to over-expression by the hurly-burly of the time. It is possible to regard them all and still feel affection as for a problematic friend." When the Workers' Socialist Party (forerunner of our companion party the WSP of America) was formed and wrote to London just before his death with a copy of their manifesto, his reply (according to Barltrop his last political statement) was that he wished them well but could not involve himself. Therein lies the consummating summary of all those who spend their lives in the bitterness of opposition to capitalism but have failed to take the necessary steps to understand the cause of their fury. The political actions of such people, like those of Jack London, are doomed to impotence.

The biography — which makes several mentions of SPGB members — is an excellent illustration of that fundamental lesson. As Marx wrote of Proudhon (in a letter to P. V. Annenkov in 1846): "a man who has not understood the present state of society may be expected to understand still less the movement which is tending to overthrow it, and the literary expression of this revolutionary movement."

Ronnie Warrington

Carrying the platform ten thousand miles (1977)

From the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

When two members made known that they were visiting the USA as speakers as well as fraternal delegates to the conference of our Companion party of the WSP, the Socialist Party of Canada wanted them too. The result was that by the time our pair arrived in Boston on 9th October an itinerary right from Canada, down the West Coast to California and back to Montreal, had taken shape.

Things started moving in Boston, Pennsylvania, New York City, New Jersey, and New York State. A flood of striking publicity material went out to radio stations and universities; lectures, seminars and interviews were lined up.

The tour started with a one-hour talk on the history of the SPGB at the Boston Conference. Monday being Labour Day made an ideal occasion for an outdoor meeting—out we went, quickly gathering a crowd before whom we had a running debate with a divinity student on Socialism versus religion, Next morning we were up and away for our first college date a Stroudsberg University, Pennsylvania. 50 students of the political science faculty were the audience; "Marx or Lenin" was the subject. Then to New York for the Barrie Faber radio show (biggest commercial station in New York) with seven speakers, who started arguing about Carter and Ford but ended discussing Socialism.

And so it went on day after day. College lectures, radio programmes, newspaper interviews across the continent, finishing with a great meeting of students at Bishops College, Lennoxville, Quebec, on 15th November. In 44 days we gave talks at some of the biggest colleges in North America including Winnipeg, Vancouver, Los Angeles and San Francisco. We had to refuse others because of the itinerary. We had invitations to Columbia, New York, and New York Polytechnic (whose dean of political science interviewed our man on WBAI radio). Berkeley, California, and Edmonton, Alberta, wanted notice which we could not give to organize lectures for the whole faculty.

There were twelve radio interviews, in most cases phone-ins—sometimes two hours answering questions about the SPGB and Socialism, the Labour Party, Marxism, the Communist Party, etc. In Winnipeg an irate lady shouted "Get the old goat off the air and out of Canada at once"; whereupon another rang in to apologise profusely. The response to the interviews was terrific, and the interviewers were delighted. Jack Webster, whose programme is heard by millions on the West Coast, said: "You are listening to a real Socialist now—not a British Labour Party phoney." He added: "I'm going to announce your meeting at the Langara College"—which he did, with the result that the hall was packed.

On television in Vancouver City we had five minutes to answer questions like "What is your opinion of Russia today?" The studio audience applauded the answers spontaneously, and the producer said "We could have done with half an hour of you!" At Bucknell University they gave out a leaflet describing our speaker as "a modern Robin Hood who stands up for the poor against the rich, every Sunday in Hyde Park, London".

Then three days' trek in the Greyhound bus across Ontario. Anyone who thinks the world overpopulated should make the trip: in two days we saw one man and two moose. Arrived in Winnipeg, radio all the morning, university in the afternoon, having broken our journey to speak at Sullivan County College, Monticello, NY State. A debate with a City Councillor on aspects of Marx. In Edmonton listeners rang in and offered to drive us to the university. Whole afternoon discussing with political science tutors. Another 1500 miles through the Rockies, arriving in Vancouver at 12.45 a.m. They greeted us with bad news: we had to be up again at 5 to catch the ferry to the Island, to be on TV at 10. More colleges, more radio shows. In Vancouver we met Chris Luff (94) and Harry Brownrigg (91) and photographed Lestor's Corner (could not speak there—it's a car park now).

5th November, the long drive to 'Frisco. In Los Angeles we gate-crashed a meeting of the "Marxist Group" at the university; after speaking, we were pressed to stay for more—sorry, we have to go! All aboard the New York bus! Change at St. Louis and Chicago! (How we groaned that, of all the cities of the USA, in this one—home of the IWW and the Kerr Publishing Co., famous for its Socialist lectures in the 'twenties, we had no meetings.)   

3,500 miles later we were greeted in Montreal and spent the day discussing plans and books, arranging articles for Socialisme Mondiale. From there a hundred-mile for another smashing meeting! and next day, straight through to Boston to report to the NAC of the WSP on Sunday morning. After that, we boarded the London place to arrive back at Heathrow on 22nd November.

The hospitality of the American and Canadian comrades is fabulous. Our grateful thanks to Larry, George, Jim and Doré in Victoria, Carrie in Boston, Jean in New York, Jack in Stroudsberg, John and Anne in Winnipeg, Phil and Ben in Monticello, Bill in Vancouver, Brian and Bill in LA, Harry and Renée in San Francisco, Serge and Michelle in Montreal—their hospitality made it all possible. Sam Leight gave tremendous help, and George Gloss generously underwrote the trip.

Some college lecturers, like Dr. Bill Coope, gave great help and went out of their way to arrange things for us. Why colleges in Britain are so slow in taking opportunities is perplexing. When Jack Webster asked "Why do you do it?" we replied: "There is no greater satisfaction in this life than spreading knowledge to the benefit of humanity."

We don't even know if we made one member. We do know we revelled in every second of it!

Horatio and Steve

An Open Letter to Professor Miliband (1977)

From the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Your article in the Socialist Register 1976 entitled "Moving On" asks the question, why none of the organizations which since 1956 have occupied the area you describe as the "left wing stage" "constitute an effective socialist formation"? You claim that "such an organization remains to be created". You go on to give an "explanation" of why "existing organizations cannot fill the gap". But the "gap" your article reveals is in your own knowledge — yawning chasm would be a better description. Your contribution is merely ignorance confounded by confusion; first your analysis of the present "left wing" misunderstanding of the nature of revolutionary activity and second, your exclusion of the SPGB reveals either ignorance or political dishonesty.

Let me begin with your discussion of the current "left wing". (I won't use the inverted commas any more for that term, but when you reply, please explain what that term means.) "Inevitably one must start with the Labour Party" you say. You claim that the Labour Party is the "party of the working class and there is no alternative to it." The only reason for "starting" with the Labour Party is to finish with it. There was never any doubt from its formation that the Labour Party was simply a reformist party. The activities of the Labour Party have confirmed this ever since. However, you still appear to think that the Labour Party has something to do with Socialism. You write: "There cannot now be many socialists in the Labour Party (and even fewer outside) who believe that most of its leaders are concerned with the task of effecting the fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people . . . But there are many socialists in the Labour Party who do believe very firmly that they can eventually . . . compel their leaders to adopt left-wing policies."

You say: "There are socialists who work in the Labour Party." The Labour Party represents a certain section of the capitalist class and runs capitalism in the interests of capital. Like all other parties of capitalism, the Labour Party will dress up what they are doing in borrowed phrases in an attempt (successful to date) at misleading the working. But there never have been Socialists in the Labour Party.

Socialism is a world society which will take the place of capitalism; it will abolish all property and existing production relationships and establish in its place a free society where each person voluntarily contributes to the wealth of society and takes from it what the individual requires. There are no governments (with their attendant armies and coercive powers), no wages system, and no production for profit. (For a fuller account, see our Object and Declaration of Principles, and also our pamphlet Object and Declaration of Principles — Socialist Principles Explained.) Could you explain what someone who wants that society would be doing in the Labour Party? You say that "a socialist party is needed in Britain and the Labour Party is not it." In that case, how can there be Socialists in it? There may be some within the Labour Party who call themselves Socialists, but are they who you mean?

Turning your professorial attention to the Communist Party, you claim that "It is a Marxist Party" and add "of a sort"! But a party is either a Marxist party, standing for the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with Socialism, or it isn't. The Communist Party has always and inevitably stood for capitalism. Its history has been taken up with defending the contradictory activities and statements of the Russian ruling class which it supports. You rightly point out that since 1956 and more particularly since the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. the fawning adoration of the Russian monstrosity has lessened, and you say that the Communist Party has "a blandly complacent view of the Soviet system." In other words, the Communist Party is not Marxist but anti-democratic and reformist. As you put it, it has been in "pursuit of the politics of illusion . . . for more than forty years." The main illusion (other than the Soviet delusion) is its adherence to the coat-tails of the Labour quackery. Charitably you say that the Communist Party is not "to be reproached for seeking to put pressure on the Labour Party or on a Labour Government or for trying to influence the Labour Left or any other part of the labour movement." The politics of illusion indeed.

The Labour Party has not failed as such — it set out to run capitalism. The more important part of your article is the criticisms of the left-wing parties other than the Labour Party and the Communist: Party. You think that these other parties are not suitable for "Moving on". It is necessary, you argue, to create a new party because those that exist are inadequate. You ask "why these groupings of the 'ultra left' have not fared better" than they have done and give one answer which you say these groups themselves frequently give — the ruling class's control of ideas. This you say is inadequate since it: fails to explain why "left" groups have made progress (though this is merely asserted, it is not explained). You then examine a collection of other reasons such as "narrow doctrinaire sectarianism ... a marked tendency to believe that the final crisis of capitalism is imminent, to which is naturally added . . . adventurist sloganeering; and an internal rigidity of organization." What you fail to point out is that none of these reasons can apply to the SPGB. The SPGB is dedicated to the establishment of Socialism. In no sense is our case "narrow doctrinaire sectarianism." If you were to attend any of our propaganda meetings or any one of our branches you would find a range of views being expressed on a variety of topics, "the SPGB university" as it has been called. We have never said that capitalism's final crisis is at hand. We have always agreed with Marx, that crisis is a part of the normal workings of capitalism. Capitalism will not have a "final" crisis in the sense that this will cause its downfall. We have consistently pointed out that capitalism will continue until it is brought to an end by the working class. (See in particular our pamphlet Why capitalism will not collapse published in 1932.) So far as internal rigidity of organization is concerned, examine the workings of the SPGB; its flexible democratic method is a model for organization in a Socialist society. As for "sloganeering" — read some of our literature and attend our meetings; you would find nothing that resembles sloganeering.

Your conclusion is that the main cause for the failure of left-wing organizations is "their basic perceptions as to the ways of socialist advance in Britain." The explanation you give for this is twofold; the first is that "All these organizations have a common perception of socialist change in terms of a revolutionary seizure of power on the Bolshevik model of October 1917". In other words, you point out that all these parties have no intention of being "mass" parties at all — they are all in favour of minority coups. But, Professor, where or when did the SPGB put forward such a view? Right from the start of the Bolsheviks' takeover of power, we pointed out that it was not possible for Russia to establish Socialism. The material conditions in Russia — highly developed productive forces and working-class understanding — were not present. The second condition is not there today.

Your second criticism of left-wing groups is that they have succumbed to what you call "anti-parliamentary cretinism." In other words the left-wing parties have nearly always been anti-parliament and very often, anti-democratic. But the SPGB has insistently pointed out that the working class can and must use Parliament as part of the process of establishing Socialism. Historically, every ruling class has had to capture political power. The capitalist class, for example, had to obtain control of parliament and did so after a long struggle. The working class, when it takes over society in its own interests must also take political power in order to abolish both power and classes. That is why we have always said that Parliament and the electoral system must be used by the working class in the establishment of Socialism.

Your critique of left-wing organizations does not apply to the SPGB. In one sense it is a tribute to us that we are not included in your tattered list. We are not a part of the left wing at all. We are opposed to those parties that you refer to as the left wing (including IS, WRP etc.) All these parties stand for capitalism — the SPGB does not. Yet you do not mention in your article that the SPGB exists or that there is a party which does not suffer from the defects you highlight. How can a Professor of Politics ("a leading intellectual of the New Left" as one of your books describes you) have failed to notice a party formed two years prior to the Labour Party as an uncompromisingly Socialist party, which has worked for Socialist understanding since its formation, which has continually published literature, held meetings, contested elections and so on? On reflection the omission cannot be due to sheer ignorance — it must be deliberate. No doubt like the other political ostriches you folded your left and right wing and just hoped that by putting your head in the academic sandpit we could just be ignored.

Your reply is awaited.

Ronnie Warrington