Obituary: Bob Norrie (1977)

Obituary from the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow members were stunned by the news of the sudden death of Bob Norrie. He was 72 years old.

Bob joined the party in 1940 and acquired an excellent knowledge of the Marxist case economically, politically and philosophically. His spare time was devoted mainly to the propagation of the SPGB case for Socialism and he did the job effectively and efficiently. Over the years he was a consistent attender of Branch and propaganda meetings and to the end he could often be found discussing with members of the audience long after the outdoor meetings had finished and everyone else gone. This activity increases the severity of his loss. He will be missed both as a man and as a Socialist. Our sympathy is extended to his widow and family.

50 Years Ago: Bugs are Capitalists (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are fairly well acquainted with that type of anti-Socialist to whom all tools are capital and consequently all tool-owners are capitalists, no matter whether it be plain Bill Smith who has “set up on his own” as a plumber, or romantic Robinson Crusoe, when he discovered the utility of a hammer.

Sir Arthur Keith, however, presents us with a rather interesting variation of this fantasy.

According to him, any means of subsistence not immediately consumed is capital. Thus the bees which store up honey, fowls which lay eggs, our mothers when in a certain condition (with milk available) are all really capitalists, little though they may dream it. One can imagine the bosom of the speculative investor swelling with pride at finding himself classified with such time-honoured institutions.

We fear, however, that Sir Arthur has been too well brought up to be sufficiently comprehensive. For instance, he omits entirely to mention those interesting examples of industrious capitalists, the bug and the common flea. It is a matter of observation that they cannot pursue their activities indefinitely but make periodic retirements in order to consume the sanguinary fluid which they have so assiduously acquired and stored up within the appropriate portion of their anatomy.

[From an article “The Anatomy of Capital—Sir Arthur Keith’s Economics”, by Eric Boden. Socialist Standard, November 1927.]

Russia: Socialism or State Capitalism? (1977)

From the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the permanent discussions within the “left” has been about Russia. Is it socialist? or is it the same sort of society as exists elsewhere? Since the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Socialist Party of Great Britain has always argued that what had to happen in Russia was the development of capitalism. It has been capitalism with the difference that, unlike in Western Europe and the USA where capital is largely owned and controlled by a minority of private capitalists, in Russia it is owned by the State. There is state capitalism.

What is the State? It is the machinery for imposing the rule of one class over another, i.e. government, law, armed forces, police, prisons etc. Where there are no classes dividing society, where there is freedom, there will be no State. The existence of a Slate in Russia means that it is a class-divided society.

Socialist society will be very different. There will be no State, because social relationships will be based on mutual cooperation and not on coercion. It will be a world society free of the problems and limitations of the profit economy. This is the Marxist conception of Socialism. The common, mistaken idea of Socialism is a sort of utopian capitalism where the working class control their own exploitation. Such an idea is absurd, as the essence of capitalism is the subordination of wage-labour to capital. It is because of this misconception that the “left” have experienced such difficulties in understanding what has taken place in Russia.

The Communist Party of Great Britain, though it is now falling apart, still holds on to the claim that Russia is an example of Socialism in practice. On another side, the Socialist Workers’ Party asserts that there was Socialism in Russia until Stalin came to power, but then it suddenly took a turn for the worse and went back to being capitalism. Others, such as the International Marxist Group, argue that Russia did have Socialism, but it degenerated under Stalin and is now neither Socialism nor capitalism but a “degenerate workers’ state”—which can only be defined by saying what it isn’t. If the CP line that Russia is socialist is hard to understand in the light of the last sixty years, it is even harder to grasp the Trotskyist line that suddenly in 1926 Stalin came along and changed Russia overnight from a socialist democracy to a capitalist dictatorship. In fact, the history of Russia does not bear out such a theory.

Capitalism in the Soviet Union was not a “Stalin phenomenon", as it has been called, but an inevitable result of the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. Marx, by whose theories some of the leading revolutionaries are supposed to have been influenced, wrote in the Preface to The Critique of Political Economy:

No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.

This is why the Mensheviks argued before 1917 that Socialism could not be established in Russia but that capitalism had to be developed first.

It can be argued that such a formulation was too simple. Marx’s statement applied to the world system of international capitalism and not to a single backward country in isolation. Until the death of Lenin it was assumed in Russia that

in one country it is impossible to accomplish such a work as a socialist revolution. (Lenin, November 1920.)

Even Stalin, in 1925, laid down that

for the definitive triumph of socialism the organisation of socialist production, the efforts of one country alone are not enough, particularly of an essentially rural country like Russia; the efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries are needed . . . (The Theory and Practice of Leninism.)

Because the revolution had taken place in a backward country with a small working class there was only one course: to develop capitalism. But here was a problem. The Bolsheviks had won their support from the proletariat of Moscow and Petrograd and claimed to stand for its interest. Marxism argues that capitalism cannot be made to operate in the interests of the workers. And so the Bolsheviks began to tread the path already taken by the Labour Party in Britain, which led to trying to be the friend of the workers and their exploiter at the same time. How true was Engels’s statement:

The worst that can befall the leader of an extremist party is to be compelled to take over the government at a time when the moment is not yet ripe for the rule of the class he represents . . .  He finds himself necessarily in an insoluble political dilemma: what he can do is in conflict with his entire previous attitudes, his principles, and the immediate interests of the party; what he is supposed to do cannot be done . . .  he is compelled to represent not his party, his class, but the class for the rule of which the movement happens to be ripe. For the sake of that movement he must act for the interests of an alien class, and must feed his own class with phrases and promises along with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are really their own. He who gets himself into that false position is irredeemably lost.

(The Peasant War in Germany)

When the Bolsheviks first gained power they attempted to establish what is today known as “workers’ participation” by means of the Troika. Socialists see schemes to "give workers a say in management” as efforts to mask the class struggle. The builders of capitalism in Russia in the 1920s found trade-union interference inconvenient, and by 1935 the Troika had given way to industrial management similar to that which existed in the rest of Europe. Indeed, one text-book on Soviet industrial law stated:

One-man management is the most important principle of the organisation of socialist economy.

(Gintsburg & Pashukanis)

Soon after the suppression of the Troika came the legal prohibition of effective trade-unionism in Russia. Trade-union organization for the defence of wages and working conditions has existed in Britain since the last century, and socialists have always acknowledged its importance in the industrial class struggle. In state-capitalist Russia trade unions exist, but as extensions of State power over the workers. Immediately after the Revolution strikes were permissible: in 1922 there were 192,000 workers on strike in state-owned enterprises, in 1923 165,000, in 1924 43,000, in 1925 34,000, in 1926 32,900, in 1927 20,000 and in 1928 8,900. Since 1929 no official strike has ever taken place in the Soviet Union. Between 1932 and 1949 the Russian Trade Union Congress did not even convene.

When these facts are presented to members of the Russia-idolizing Communist Party of Great Britain they are likely to admit that it is all quite true, but deceptive. The fact of the matter, they will say, is that Russian workers have no need to go on strike against the State because they control it through the Soviets. Do they?

One of the Bolshevik revolutionary slogans was “All power to Soviets”. The Soviets were local councils through which delegates of the village or workplace were to be democratically accountable to the local people. The Soviets were headed nationally, until 1937, by the Congress of Soviets, which met five times in 1918, yearly from 1919 to 1932, and then not until 1935. After 1937 it was replaced by the Supreme Soviet. From 1937 to 1953 every decision of the Supreme Soviet was carried unanimously, nor was there ever a single abstention or a speech in opposition. In fact the Supreme Soviet is merely a rubber-stamp for the dictatorial leadership of the Russian Communist Party. For example, the first Five Year Plan began in October 1928 but was not given permission to go ahead by “the highest authority in the land” until April 1929.

Since there is no democracy in organization at the top in Russia, what about the bottom? Not much democracy there either. The local Soviets are totally dominated by Communist Party officials (usually full-time party bureaucrats) who are there to ensure that the Soviets approve all decisions which are made at a higher level. Elections to the Soviets are undemocratic: there is never more than one candidate standing for each place. The vote for that one candidate is invariably in the region of 98 per cent. Indeed, one book describes how in 1947 a candidate polled 104 per cent, in the election to his local Soviet by gaining 2,122 votes in a constituency which had only 1,617 voters. That candidate was Joseph Stalin!

Democratic Soviets never have and never will run capitalist Russia. “The dictatorship of the proletariat” is a myth. There is the dictatorship of the Communist Party. That is what the CP stands for in Britain. The Russian rulers use political power in the interests of capitalism.

In supporting and excusing a capitalist dictatorship, the Communist Party shows quite clearly which side of the class struggle it is on. The Trotskyists, while sensibly refusing to accept Russia as an example of Socialism, try to find ways of showing that it is not capitalism either. The reason for this is that they are taking the same road as the Bolsheviks took: calling for armed struggle, believing that workers are unable to understand Socialism, committing themselves to conspiratorial leadership rather than the democratic struggle. And the same road inevitably leads to the same destination. That is the dilemma of the left. For the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which rejects Leninist Bolshevism, the road to Socialism is not littered with nasty examples of past mistakes.

Steve Coleman

Free speech: official cuts (1977)

From the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

A ban on all public meetings and processions was imposed by the Greater Manchester Council in August. Other local authorities have considered such a measure and announced that their halls shall not be let to the National Front and “extreme left-wing” organizations. This reaction to the violent disturbances at Lewisham and Birmingham in August was not unexpected. The councils say they have a responsibility for public order and the protection of property, which take precedence over legal rights of speech and assembly. The ordinary apolitical citizen agrees, on the reasonable grounds that he doesn’t want to have his windows broken or be exposed to danger through rioting.

All right: grant the validity of that. What about “free speech”? The Manchester ban is on everyone, and the Salvation Army and the Scouts have complained that it is unfair to them. (Should the ban last several months, it will be interesting to see if it is applied to the annual Catholic procession in Manchester.) In London, local restrictions and authorities’ reactions have already obstructed the holding of socialist meetings. The position now is that the elbow-room to argue a case in public has seriously diminished.

This is precisely what socialists forecast as an outcome of efforts at “confrontation” by the Socialist Workers’ Party and other groups. In pursuing a policy of violent attack on the National Front meetings and demonstrations, and thereby opposing the law, they put existing facilities at risk. It is a lesson which advocates of violence for political purposes refuse to learn. Eugene Debs was once quoted as saying that when a policeman’s club struck a demonstrating worker’s head, if the worker listened carefully he would hear the echo of the vote he cast at the last election. More correctly stated, what should be heard is that the state has superior force to support legislation: confrontation cannot win.

The SWP’s contention is that something must be done to prevent the National Front from flourishing. The course they have chosen is probably just what the NF want, and is irrational in every way. If attacking the NF because it is a repressive movement produces repression, what is achieved? Less than nothing. A sensible line of action would be to urge everyone to ignore the NF’s marches and not provide them with audiences—to treat them as mature people treat other cases of indecent exposure, by taking no notice. But underlying the SWP’s policy is the idea of taking charge of a situation and acting above the heads of all and sundry: in short, assuming leadership.

However, the SWP and the local councils are not the only people to whom, like the National Front, democracy is of little consequence. The majority of the working class, because they support capitalism, do not comprehend and therefore do not value democracy. The present restrictions on meetings have been accepted with little demur in the frame of mind that the need for a quiet life justifies them. In the western world legal rights are eroded or vitiated in this “soft” way. Thus, in the last twenty-five years public meetings out of doors have been made all-but-impossible in most areas not by dictatorial edicts but by traffic, parking, town planning, and regulations arising from them. The Civic Amenities Act of 1967 ended free bill-posting and chalking as means of advertisement for organizations without money. All these things represent public preferences for facilities for the motor-car, clean cities, etc.; and each of them takes for granted that free speech is not to be bothered about.

The matter is thrown into sharper relief by a proposal to raise the candidate’s deposit in parliamentary elections from £150 to £1,000. The argument for such a change is a frankly anti-minority one. The head of Parliamentary Research Services, F. W. S. Craig, said in a book published on 22nd September:

At least three thousand candidates are likely at the next general election unless the £150 deposit is increased . . . unless the deposit is increased the next election will undoubtedly provide a very large number of ‘crank’ candidatures.
   'I would have thought that a deposit of £1,000 would not be unreasonable considering that every candidate is entitled to send one free communication through the post to each elector’, Mr. Craig says.

(The Times, 22nd September)

The deposit is forfeited by any candidate who gets fewer than one-eighth of the total votes cast, and most minority candidates accept the likelihood that they will lose their deposits. The cost of a candidate including printing, hall hire etc. for the Socialist Party of Great Britain is currently about £650; if the deposit rose as suggested, it would be £1,500.

An alternative put forward in The Times of 6th October was to restrict candidates to those from parties with certain numbers of members and supporters The writer, Michael Steed of Manchester University, agreed on the need to keep minorities away from the media and the free post, but did not think high deposits would be a sufficient deterrent. In fact an election is a rare opportunity for a minority to make its existence and its case known. The SPGB does not receive big donations from wealthy organizations as the Labour and Tory Parties do; the money for election campaigns is squeezed out of our limited funds, and a thousand-pound deposit would have the intended effect.

There has been no sign of an outcry against these proposals to prevent us and other minorities from addressing voters on a level with the major parties. The response has been similar to what happened in 1960, after the SPGB had established that party political broadcasts arranged by the Labour, Liberal and Tory Parties with the BBC were a breach of the Representation of the People Act. Under the Act, every candidate in an election was entitled to the same facilities. So the system was amended to give broadcasting time in proportion to the number of candidates fielded—that is, to appear to comply with the law while still keeping minorities out.

The smug patrician’s speech view is that we live in a democratic and “liberal” society. The reality is that socialists have to struggle to make the most of limited means of “free speech”, against pressure from opponents who plead necessity but are glad to find excuses for further restrictions. If election deposits are raised or some other procedural obstacle created, and as a result we find it impossible at times to put up candidates, we will do what we have done in the past: urge workers to write “Socialism” across their ballot-papers. But the real answer is to build a strong socialist movement. With growing numbers we shall be better able to resist the pressure to box us in, and to push outwards all the time. Socialist consciousness is democracy-consciousness, and its spread is the only positive answer to all repressions.

Robert Barltrop

Plymouth gets socialist sound (1977)

Party News from the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Tuesday 20th July a watery sun shone over Plymouth Hoe. Flags fluttered in the breeze; stands were being erected for the forthcoming visit of the Queen; there was a holiday atmosphere. Into this was thrown the SPGB. We had been invited to take part in a two-hour phone- in-debate programme on Plymouth Sound Radio: an opportunity we grabbed with both hands.

I had the pleasure of representing the Party; my opponent was Mike Robertson, local businessman. A flamboyant character. I cannot give replies we both made to all the questions. Best perhaps to give some of the points Mike Robertson made in his answers and in opposition to our case. "Things have improved and I hope that over the next 100 years things will get better" . . .  "I vote Liberal in the hope that they might balance the scales between the extremes of Left and Right" . . . “Human nature is doing the very best for yourself and your family; wanting to do better than the chap next door” . . . "I’m sorry for the starving people, but charity begins at home" . . . "Socialism is wrong, it is anti-christ and unrealistic” . . .  “Castrate all rapists" . . .  “I would applaud the husband who kills the lodger he finds in bed with his wife” . . . “Capitalism is not perfect—it needs change" . . . "If we all made 10 per cent more effort without 10 per cent more wages, our problems would largely be solved" . . . And so on.

But what about the various questions? I made a short opening statement, laying down the broad policy of the Party; its opposition to other parties and the essence of Socialism—production to satisfy human needs. Questions ranged over a wide field, certain aspects cropping up time and time again. Leadership; the erosion of freedom and choice; unemployment and work; socialism and Russia. We have a tape of the whole programme and I quote a few questions, more or less in full.

Ruth: "I’ve been waiting a long time to put this point to your Socialist speaker. How, in what way, with what carrot will we encourage the lazy won’t-work to work in this utopia?” This provided a good opportunity to deal with unemployment and its cause (figures published that day were 1½ million). The incentive in a socialist society for people to give of their best.

John (obviously a young lad): “That socialist whatever his name, Cyril I think: can he make his position a bit clearer? I keep on getting him confused with Labour. His state-ownership things get me confused with Nationalization as well." Our opposition to the Labour Party was stressed in my reply. I dealt with nationalization in detail and its failure to solve any of the real problems.

John: "According to the press we have socialism in Russia, China and some African countries. Hitler said he was a socialist. Tory and Liberal parties say if we vote Labour we shall get socialism. What is the difference between what exists in these countries and what is advocated by the SPGB?” A question all speakers welcome. I made the point that our attitude to Russia was in print within months of the 1917 revolution. That the economic conditions did not exist for Socialism and neither did the Russians want it. Beware of bogus labels on bottles. When you understand what socialism is you can answer the Tory accusations. Socialism does not exist anywhere in the world—what we have is global capitalism.

David made some good points. "Nobody’s been listening to you. What Cyril is trying to talk about is world-wide socialism. No factory lines. A happier world. No nationalism. No wars.”

Perhaps the most difficult point to make was our attitude to leadership. Questioners thought leaders were essential to any society and failed to grasp the delegation of function. Bureaucrats were dismissed by another John "if we involve society as a whole”—a helpful contribution.

Some questioners visualised Socialism as a world of "giving orders”; where freedom of choice would be eliminated and we would be told what to do and when to do it. I hope I left them with sufficient ideas to have another look in the mirror of capitalism, and see if what they attribute to Socialism is but a reflex of the present system.

Crime came up. Pamela wanted to know what we would do to those who commit crimes against persons. The absence (rightly so) of the Party having a blueprint to deal with this and other problems did not satisfy the questioner. That society at the time will have to solve such problems seemed rather a lot to swallow at the first taste.

This propaganda is so different in many ways. You are on first-name terms with your questioners and yet you cannot see them. From their remarks you try and conjure up a picture of them. I’m sure Elizabeth, who said I made her sick in the stomach and she would willingly shoot the lot of us socialists is not really a violent person. New ideas that must seem outrageous in the first instance bring wild reactions.

David Bassett, the programme presenter, helped try and widen the issues. He wanted to know what part gold would play, if any, in a socialist society; the rôle of marriage; the greedy people, and our attitude to religion.

A member of Central Branch, living in the district, phoned HO that evening. He could not believe his ears. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought he would hear the Party on his radio. It gave him a new lease of life.

It was a most enjoyable experience and the constant reminder (in between commercials and news items) that we were the Socialist Party of Great Britain means that our name is known in that area by many people. I hope I did the Party justice.

In the afternoon I took a boat trip around the dockyard. There stood much of the might of British capitalism. Warships. Many were lined up for the scrap heap—one kind of waste followed by another.

Cyril May

Marx on Money (1977)

Book Review from the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx on Money, by Suzanne de Bronhoff, Urizen Books (New York). 139 pages. Paperback £2.70, hardback £4.70.

This book attempts to bring together and comment on Marx's writings on money and credit, and to relate them to other monetary theories.

It can serve a purpose to students of Marx who are already familiar with his main economic theories but it suffers from two defects, one of presentation and the other an astonishing omission.

All of the numerous references and quotations are related to particular editions of Marx's works, for example to the International Publishers' 1970 edition of Capital. Consequently the page numbers are different, often widely different, from those in several other editions. This difficulty would have been lessened if, instead of merely giving the page numbers, it had also included Chapter and Section headings of the works referred to.

The Preface by Duncan K. Foley, claims for the book that it will help the working class because "Inflation and unemployment are . . . major issues over which class struggle is fought out". But there is almost nothing in the book to justify the claim, and occasional brief references are misleading. On page 37 there is reference to "the inadequacy of Marx's explanation" of "paper money", and on page 84 [there] is a somewhat obscure passage which appears to say that Marx did not deal with monetary theory in relation to "the general price level".

In fact the author appears not to know that Marx did deal with this. Most of her references are to money, banking and credit in Capital Vol. III, but she had not noticed that Marx was there writing only about conditions in Britain under the gold standard, with its full convertibility of Bank of England notes into gold. As Engels pointed out (Capital Vol. III, "Currency Under the Credit System", p. 615 in Kerr edition), inconvertible notes were not dealt with in Vol. III but in Vol. 1, Chapter III.

For the past forty years there has been an inconvertible paper currency, and what Marx wrote about the general price level in Vol. III has little bearing. What he put forward in Vol. I was both adequate and definite, namely, that if an inconvertible paper currency is issued in excess (the meaning of "excess" being precisely defined) prices will rise correspondingly, as has in fact happened.

If the author holds that Marx's explanation was "inadequate" or unsound there is a simple challenge she has to meet. Let her tell us of any occasion when an inconvertible currency was issued in excess and prices did not rise.

There is nothing in the book to indicate that the author appreciates that the workers' struggle should go beyond reacting to "inflation and unemployment", with the purpose of achieving a system of society as envisaged by Marx, in which there will be no production for the market, no price system or wages system, and therefore no monetary problems or unemployment problem.

Edgar Hardcastle

Beware of Bernards (1977)

From the November 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today nothing is heard of George Bernard Shaw as a political "thinker", though his plays are still performed. When he was alive, people of the New Statesman type sought copies of the plays to read the long prefaces in which he expounded his ideas. These were supposed to be "socialist"; Shaw was a publicist for the Fabian Society and an admirer of Russia.

One of the things he advocated was that people should take an examination before they were allowed to vote. In Everybody's Political What's What (1944) he wrote:

And until popular choice is constitutionally guided and limited, political ignorance and idolatry will produce not only Hitleresque dictatorships but stampedes led by liars or lunatics like Titus Oates and Lord George Gordon. The choice should therefore be limited to panels of persons who have passed such tests as we can devise of their wisdom, comprehension, knowledge and energy. For legislative purposes adult suffrage is out of the question, as only a small percentage of any population has either the requisite faculty or knowledge.

The journalist Bernard Levin has just revived Shaw's argument. In The Times of 18th October, under the heading "It's the fools, not the Don't Knows who scare the daylights out of me", he drew attention to an opinion poll which found "that 8 per cent o the presumably representative sample believe that the Conservative Party's present policy includes the introduction of a wealth tax, two per cent believe that the Tories propose to abolish the House of Lords, and four per cent believe that Mrs. Thatcher, if elected, intends to nationalize the banks". Estimating that the percentages cover about three million of the electorate, Levin concluded:

That, if I may say so, is too many fools for comfort. And it is the incidence of folly, thus revealed, which worries me. If there are three million people as stupid as that in the country, only think of the havoc they could cause . . . 

The flaw in this plausible-sounding harangue is the phrase "present policy". Levin says the notion that the Tory Party proposes the reforms named is "ridiculous" and indicates "a wall of ignorance so thick and high that trying to surmount or demolish it would be a waste of time". Oh, really? The Tories have been responsible for more nationalization than the Labour Party; there is no reason at all for supposing they would not nationalize the banks — or introduce some form of wealth tax — if it was in the interests of important sections of the capitalist class. The possibility Levin has evidently not considered is that many voters know this in broad terms, and don't think it worth while to pick carefully over exchangeable party policies whose implementation is going to make no difference to them. 

But what of Levin's own "present policy"? It is what Shaw talked about as an example of his "socialism" i.e. the utopia of a planned and rational capitalism. Shaw's Fabian argument was that an accumulation of reforms would build it; instead of having to establish this "socialism" we should be overtaken by it. Many of the proposals made in Everybody's Political What's What and Shaw's 1928 work The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism are now accepted by Conservatives as what they always were, modern capitalist practice. And Levin is in the curious position of putting forward an argument he would have denounced in 1944 because it came from the (so-called) socialist Bernard Shaw. Would he call worker's "fools" and "stupid" for being unable to distinguish between the two?

What both these pundits assert is that is is "dangerous" to have a part of the electorate who have not learned capitalist doctrines by heart. One answer is that state education under Tories and Labour alike has produced a large section of workers—recently estimated as 15 per cent of school leavers—who are not well enough equipped with literacy to study the party conference reports in The Times; and this belongs to the social system which Levin defends. But to whom or what is it dangerous? The value of the voting system to the capitalist class is that it gives them the explicit support of the working class. Workers are asked at intervals to choose a programme for running capitalism and stand by their choice for a period. If they are apathetic or erratic in doing that, it means that the nature of the support is not readily ascertainable. A compliant electorate is one which thinks it really does matter if Thatcher nationalizes the banks.

Socialists certainly do not recommend workers to be negligent towards political matters. First, they should reject the suggestion of Shaw and Levin, which in effect urges some workers to treat others as inferior. Second, they should cease to concern themselves with who runs capitalism, and see that the measures Levin is so anxious to have correctly identified—and all other programmes of reform—will not alter their own position. Third, they must understand the vote as the weapon for their emancipation. Shaw specified "wisdom, comprehension, knowledge and energy" as the conditions for its use. "Wisdom" is a value-judgement, the attribute of whoever agrees with the speaker. The other three are possessed in abundance by the working class. They need only to be allied with class-consciousness, and the "foolish", "stupid" electorate will demonstrate that it knows what it wants—Socialism.

Pat Deutz