Letter: “Not gradualist” (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Not gradualist”

Dear Editors

Congratulations on an excellent centenary edition. I feel I should point out, however, that there were some errors in the article, “Getting Splinters”, in which reference was made to the 1987 discussion document, “The Road to Socialism”, circulated by Guildford branch and which I co-authored.

This circular did not claim “socialists would use their influence politically (through parliament and local councils) to adjust patterns of state income and expenditure in ‘socialistic’ directions, including the provision of free services”. Something like this appeared in the Spanner magazine long after Guildford Branch ceased to exist, but not in the Road to Socialism document itself – even though this statement seems little different from the Party’s own stated position that socialist MPS while still a minority, would consider reforms on their own merits.

Nor is it true that “Guildford’s vision was a gradualist one in which the materialist conception of history as applied to the coming of socialism was turned on its head: the economic structure of society would be essentially transformed before the socialist capture of political power, rather than afterwards”.  To say capitalism would be “essentially transformed” before the socialist capture of state power implies we are no longer talking about a capitalist society. But this is precisely what was not claimed! Guildford acknowleged the commanding heights of industry will still be in capitalist hands despite the predicted erosion of capitalist economic relationships within society, thus still necessitating  the capture of state power.

Also, far from Guildford’s vision “turning the materialist conception of history on its head”, it affirmed the link between material conditions and the spread of socialist consciousness. The latter is unlikely to happen to any significant extent without being driven to some extent by changes in the material circumstances themselves, viz. the development of non-capitalist economic relationships, prefiguring socialism (e.g. LETS, intentional communities, voluntaristic associations  etc). These will not in themselves automatically lead to socialism; they need to be infused by a socialist consciousness which, in turn, will then be able to harness them synergistically to its advantage.

The problem with the traditional SPGB approach is that it concentrates almost exclusively on the role of “abstract propagandism” (political education) as the means of bringing about socialism. While this is necessary it is unlikely to suffice on its own. This is ironic considering the importance the SPGB attaches to the Materialist Conception of History; its own “exit strategy” from capitalism appears to be an idealist one, relying on the spread of ideas only! In contrast, Guildford argued we need also to develop new material practices to help break the ideological hegemony of capitalism and enable workers to develop the necessary confidence that an alternative to capitalism is materially possible.

Finally your writer claims: “While most members readily acknowledged that the growth of the socialist movement would have profound and perhaps unpredictable impacts, and while it was the already established Party position that socialists would be organised on the economic front as well as the political front to ensure the smooth changeover of production and distribution from capitalism to socialism, this did not equate with seeking to mould capitalism into socialism from within, in a gradual way.”

This is misleading. Firstly, as the Guildford circular pointed out, what the Party meant by organising on the economic front (viz. planning for socialism) prior to the political enactment was not at all the same as envisaging the growth of non-capitalist socialistic relationship within capitalism prior to that enactmnent

Secondly, it is not true that what Guildford was proposing was to “to mould capitalism into socialism from within, in a gradual way”. We were not talking about “moulding” capitalism at all (which smacks of reformism) but, rather, the contraction in the extent and scope of capitalist economic relationships in inverse proportion to the growth of non-capitalist economic relationships within society as a whole.

Thirdly, the Guildford circular went to great lengths to point out that the kind of “socialistic” or non-capitalist relations it envisaged as developing within the interstices of a capitalist society did not constitute “socialism” but only prefigured socialism and then only to the extent that they were infused with socialist consciousness. “Socialistic” in our terms did not equate with “socialism” proper.

Finally and perhaps most disappointingly, no attempt was made to address the key arguments Guildford adduced to demonstrate the implausability of the traditional “Big Bang” theory of revolution held by the Party – dubbed  thus because it assumed capitalism would remain completely unaffected in its scope and extent by the growth of the socialist movement. But if you agree that the “big bang” theory is unsound you are logically bound to accept something rather like the vision that Guildford Branch articulated in its original discussion document.

Robin Cox, 

World in Common

Reply:

The ‘Getting Splinters’ article dealt with six political tendencies which broke away from the Socialist Party during the course of the last 100 years, with a section devoted to each. The particular section entitled the ‘Guildford Road to Socialism’ was – like the others – a brief description of the key events involved and an articulation of the main points of disagreement that lay behind them. It was not intended to refer solely to the initial discussion document called the ‘Road to Socialism’ but to the line of thinking as a whole and its differing conception of the socialist revolution to the Party’s traditional one. The initial Guildford circular was followed by others and its meaning was clarified further in the journal Spanner produced in Guildford by the same elements.

One essential point is that Guildford/Spanner believed – among many other things – that socialists in parliament and in councils should use the state to redistribute wealth and provide services for free. This was most certainly the group’s stated view. Here’s Spanner’s own explanation of (and justification for) the initial Guildford ‘Road to Socialism’ document, published in its very first edition:

“The document went on to argue that the growth of the socialist movement would nevertheless facilitate the development of non-capitalist or ‘socialistic’ relations which prefigured socialism itself. A variety of forms in which these socialistic relations might invade the capitalist economy have been tentatively proposed. These include: “A massive expansion of free (subsidised) services provided by the state in response to the growing number of socialist parliamentary delegates who would be able to wield increasing influence over the patterns of state income and expenditure.” (‘The Road to Socialism’, in Spanner (1), p.39).

While the Socialist Party has always accepted that, faced with a growing revolutionary socialist movement, capitalist governments may well offer all sorts of reforms such as free services in a bid to ward off their complete expropriation, we have never argued – as Spanner did here – that any Socialist MPs should use any influence they might have to actively seek and promote such reforms, still less hail them as “socialistic”.

When we cut through the semantics, the other points you make about the materialist conception of history, etc merely reinforce what we said in the article. Guildford (and then Spanner) believed that socialism was impossible unless capitalism was ‘invaded’ by what they termed ‘socialistic’ relations of production, i.e. co-operatives, LETS schemes and ‘free’ state services. This is based on completely muddled thinking about these types of productive activities within capitalism – as well as about the general relation between productive relations and social structures – and why they should be labelled ‘socialist’ or ‘socialistic’ when they are nothing of the sort.

As for the supposed ‘Big Bang’ theory, this simply does not represent our views accurately. We certainly do not believe that the growth of the socialist movement will leave capitalism completely unchanged until a cataclysmic revolution occurs. But we cannot now predict in any meaningful way the various ways in which capitalism will change as socialist ideas spread, so we do not think it is possible or advisable to incorporate some version of these changes into our political position. And it is certainly not true that rejecting the caricatured ‘Big Bang’ scenario means accepting the gradualist views put forward in ‘The Road to Socialism’.

Editors.

Letter: “Balanced” (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Balanced”

Dear Editors

I appreciated your balanced, if inevitably over-simplified, account of the ‘Libertarian Communism’ activists in the article ‘Getting splinters’ in the June special issue.

There was one actual inaccuracy with reference to the ‘Social Revolution’ Group and ‘Solidarity’. For the record, the ‘Social Revolution’ Group, as a whole, negotiated a merger with the ‘Solidarity’ Group on the basis of some significant changes to the Solidarity texts As we see it and As we don’t see it.

‘Wildcat’ was later formed as a local bulletin by Manchester Solidarity, members of the ICC (World Revolution) and others. Wildcat subsequently set up as a separate political group and involved comrades from Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent and London. ‘Subversion’ succeeded ‘Wildcat’ after a short break, but was dissolved a few years back.

Never the less, a consistent political and organisational line can be drawn from ‘Libertarian Communism’ right through to ‘Subversion’ covering a period of some twenty-five years.

M.B. 

Manchester

Letter: Is Socialist Propaganda futile? (1945)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editor, “Socialist Standard,” 

Dear Sir,

The Socialist Standard for September, 1944, declares, “If the workers in the different countries clearly understood their own class interests, they would act unitedly to rid the world of the capitalist system and introduce Socialism” (p. 65).

The Socialist Standard for September, 1921, criticising Sir William Joynson Hicks states : “If is a very useful word and many an argument has been balanced on it by word conjurors … it would be better for the knightly champion to erect his defence of the capitalist system on a more substantial basis” (p. 3).

To suggest you relate these two statements is not, I feel, an unfitting start to a reply to your article, “Old Fallacies Refurbished” (S.S., February, 1945), in which you refer extensively to my pamphlet, “Science, Politics and the Masses.”

My pamphlet entertains the possibility that the majority will never think scientifically about politics. Your review affirms at some length that this idea is not new. You claim to be scientific. Since when has scientific method involved evading the issue? Nowhere did the pamphlet assert the idea was new. In fact, it explicitly stated otherwise (v. reference to Le Bon, p. 13). What it did suggest was they might be valid.

You disagree. You think the majority can “learn.” Your article repeatedly so asserts. Since when, though has unsupported assertion been part of scientific method? Science is concerned not with mere reiteration, but with evidence Only once does your article offer this:

“If evidence is needed to show that the workers do possess capacity to understand and act—even if at present it is in a limited sphere—their achievement in building up the trade union movement provides that evidence.”

But does it follow that because workers form unions they can achieve “socialist understanding”? Let us see. In 1904 the S.P.G.B. appealed to the workers (including. one assumes, trade unionists) to bring a “speedy” end to capitalism. Since then, by thousands of public speeches and debates; by hundreds of thousands of leaflets, periodicals and pamphlets, and by countless private arguments and discussions, the S.P.G.B. case has been put to trade unionists—either implicitly (by appeals to the workers generally) or explicitly (e.g. the Socialist Standard, for September, 1921, states on page 2 : “To any trade unionist who reads this article we Socialists say : Understand your class position as a wage slave. . . . ”

With what result? In 1927 the Socialist Standard September, p. 13), said of trade unions, “even when their intention is good, they frequently dissipate their strength or allow themselves to be side tracked.” In May, 1932, it declared : “We regard Trade Unions as insufficient in any case and, in so far as they are composed of non-Socialists, their actions are frequently found to be reactionary, both upon the industrial and political fields” (p. 137). In September, 1944 (p. 65), it observed: “International trade union and Labour conferences rarely exhibit a genuine international working class outlook . . . the irreconcilable nationalistic and capitalistic views of the delegates. . . .”

Relevant, too, is this statement attributed to the American Federation, of Labour delegate at the General Council of the International Federation of Trade Unions :

“Mr. Watt went further and declared boldly that the A.F. of L. believed in private enterprise and would have nothing to do with Socialism.” (News Chronicle, February, 3, 1945).

Moreover, those of the British trade unionists who do claim to be Socialist seem imbued with that conception of Socialism which the S.P.G.B. so consistently brands as capitalism, i.e., “state,” or “national” ownership. No wonder then the party has admitted :

“Also, in recent years, the Trade Unions and the Trades Union Congress have been to an increasing extent drawn into the administration of capitalism (“Questions of the Day,” 1942 edition, p. 24.—my italics).

Nearly half a century the S.P.G.B. has striven : close on 500 issues of the Socialist Standard, 10,000 copies of “Questions of the Day” (first edition) and 20,000 of “Socialism” sold by 1933—to instance but two pamphlets; 3,000 hand bills and 1,000 Socialist Standard distributed at a single meeting (S.S. Feb., 1930, p. 89); “On May-Day, in Hyde Park, thousands of workers thronged our meetings ” (S.S., Feb., 1941, p. 21); 170,000 leaflets distributed for the 1931 election (S.S., November, 1931, p. 47).

Now, according to the Socialist Standard (January, 1929, p. 67), “the notion that general industrial development and economic pressure does not make the workers receptive to Socialism, is belied by the facts of daily experience” (my italics). Yet, in actual fact, “daily experience” shows the very opposite. If the S.P.G.B. doubts this, it may care to refer to the Socialist Standard.

Here one may read such admissions as: “That we are satisfied with our rate of progress we do not, for one moment, pretend,” (September, 1926, p. 13); “the mass of the people want capitalism” (May, 1927, p. 133); “membership of the party is only a tenth of the Socialist Standard circulation” (November, 1930, p. 45); “the road to Socialism is a long-one” (January, 1942, p. 3); “there is no sign at present of the workers deciding to achieve Socialism for themselves . . . the Socialist is faced with years of plodding propaganda and educational work for which no mensurable result can yet be seen” (January, 1943, pp. 4-5—my italics).

Science seeks facts. I am prepared to accept as a fact that the S.P.G.B. has one of the most;, if not the most logical of all party cases. Therefore, I suggest, the figures of its membership are important data for scientific study. Will you, then, kindly make known the year by year statistics of the party membership since 1904 (including percentage of trade union members), so they may be included with other evidence regarding the limits and possibilities of human understanding ?

Yours faithfully,

Richard Tatham.

Reply.

The gist of the argument in our correspondent’s letter is that as the S.P.G.B. is a very small organisation by comparison with the capitalist parties, notwithstanding its 40 years of propaganda, therefore it is reasonable to assume that the workers cannot understand Socialism. This fallacious reasoning was dealt with in the article referred to (February Socialist Standard) and our correspondent’s letter gives further material to re-inforce our case. In the February, S.S. we said : —

“What we are up against is not an innate incapacity to understand, but the massive and tireless machinery of capitalist propaganda, including the red herrings of the Tatham kind, but our efforts—small at present—are aided by the constant pressure of capitalism on the working class.”

Our correspondent seeks to answer this by giving figures showing the extent of S.P.G.B. propaganda—but the figures prove just the opposite of what he intended to show. Just to take one example out of the several given in his letter, there is the reference to 170,000 S.P.G.B. leaflets distributed at the 1931 General Election. At that time there were 30,000,000 electors and on a very conservative estimate the three large parties (Tory, Liberal, Labour), must have distributed between them upwards of 100 million leaflets. At least nine out of ten workers have never heard the S.P.G.B. case presented to them. Those that have heard it have done so against the background of an intensive barrage of anti-Socialist propaganda on the platform, in the newspapers, on the wireless, etc. This, says our correspondent with strange logic, indicates that the workers cannot understand the socialist case! Of course it indicates nothing of the kind.

The further important point that our correspondent overlooks is that the working class have progressed towards class consciousness and political maturity. Any Socialist propagandist who compares the reception given to the S.P.G.B. case now with the apathetic and very hostile reception of 40 or 30 years ago knows that this progress has taken place. That it does not result in a large and rapid increase in our membership is neither surprising nor disturbing; we never underestimated the power of the rich and resourceful capitalist class to delay the flood that will some day overwhelm them.

On our correspondent’s assertion that, “nowhere did the pamphlet assert the idea was new. In fact, it explicitly stated otherwise,” we offer the following extract from page 11, of his pamphlet:—

“We shall be referring here and now to Walsby’s discovery of the Demos and to his analysis of its structure and development. The limited scope of this pamphlet precludes any detailed account of the process by which he arrives at his results, though all this must sooner or later be examined if one is to have full evidence for the conclusions about to be described.” (Italics ours).

Again on the same page is a reference to Walsby’s “theories and discoveries.”

Why the claim that they are Walsby’s discoveries and results if they are Le Bon’s or someone else’s?

Incidentally, as our correspondent accepts Le Bon’s assertion that civilization has been the work of a small minority of superior intelligences and not of the mass of “inferior elements” one wonders how it was that our correspondent and his associates not long ago organised what they described as “Mass Meetings.” If it is only worth while to address “superior intelligences” what was the real purpose behind those abortive attempts to “tickle the ears of the groundlings”?

More important still is the admission in the pamphlet that we have yet to see how Walsby reached his (or Le Bon’s) conclusions, and the full evidence for them. In face of this presentation of unsupported conclusions it is strangely inconsistent for our correspondent to chide us with making unsupported assertions, even if it were true that we had done so. But our claim that where we can reach the workers with our limited resources, we can count on their capacity to understand our case is not unsupported. It is something within the experience of every S.P.G.B. propagandist and we do not need to go to Le Bon or some one else who lacks our direct experience.

Ed. Comm.

Correspondence: Request for a debate (1955)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

I trust you will afford this letter space in the columns of the Socialist Standard.

Whilst 1 was a member of the S.P.G.B. I developed views which were critical of the declaration of principles of the Party. Early this year the members carried a resolution which made it impossible to express those views within the party and retain membership.

I resigned my membership.

A few weeks ago 1 wrote to the Executive Committee, asking them to appoint a representative of the Party to debate with me publicly. I was fobbed off with the lame and untrue statement that the S.P.G.B. does not debate with individuals (during my 25 years membership I was officially appointed to debate several “individuals”) It was also stated that if and when I join another organisation they would be pleased to debate with me as a representative of that organization.

Now I have very sincere and serious criticisms of the S.P.G.B. principles and policy, I suggest that such a debate would have greater value than the debates with Sir Waldron Smithers. I do hope that the S.P.G.B. will back up the statements of those members who said that they would be pleased to debate with me when I left the Party. I have pleasure in accepting their challenge.

As I stated in my letter to the Executive Committee, I am quite prepared to leave the choice of title to them, providing it will permit the following issues supported by the S.P.G.B., to be debated.

1. That a Socialist Party must be a working-class party.
2. That the working-class must capture control of the machinery of Government.
3. Violence.
4. Materialist Conception of History.

Also that I can defend my positive position as laid out in the article appearing in the April, 1955, issue of “ Forum,” and any other article appearing over my name in the “ Forum ”

A. W. L. Turner

Reply:

The letter of May 1st, in which A. W. L. Turner asked for a debate, was replied to as follows:

“If and when you can get the support of another political organisation, we would be happy to debate with you as their representative, and, that until such times as these conditions arise, you can use the same method of attacking the Party as is open to any other member of the public in opposition."

To his further letter, reproduced above, the following reply was sent:

“Replying to your letter of July 11th, we wish to inform you that the Party is prepared to debate with you through the columns of the ‘Socialist Standard’ on the question of the validity of our object and Declaration of Principles.”

The first statement in Turner’s letter is inaccurate. In fact, he “developed ideas” opposed to the Declaration of Principles of the Party. The resolution he refers to was a question put to a poll of the membership. The question was as follows: —

“Shall members of the Party who do not accept its Object and Declaration of Principles be asked to resign, and if they refuse to do so their membership be terminated?”

The majority of the members answered “yes” to the question.

As a late member of the Party Turner is well aware of the fact that be can put his opposition to the Party in writing for publication and reply in the columns of the Socialist Standard. In this way the statements of both parties to the discussion or debate are set down in writing and the reader can check arguments and statements if in any doubt. This is the most satisfactory way of making the position of each side clear, and gives Turner all the opportunity he should need to state his case.

As Turner is constantly on our platform stating his case in opposition, which is more than equivalent to a formal debate, we are puzzled at his unnecessary request for an oral debate.

Executive Committee.

A Pamphlet which Misses its Mark (1932)

Pamphlet Review from the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of the very large number of pamphlets claiming to be Socialist propaganda that are published month by month, only a small number are of even passing value. In the main they deal with capitalism’s problems from the standpoint of the reformer without any real grasp of Socialist principles. Occasionally something better is attempted. Among the latter is “From Slavery to Freedom,” published by the Socialist Propaganda League. It purports to be a Socialist survey of history from the earliest times, the object being to relate the Socialist future to the past development of mankind. It fails in its essential purpose for several reasons. The first is that the treatment of social development in the pamphlet is too sketchy and disjointed, due probably to the writer or writers having tackled the job without first deciding exactly what lessons were to be drawn. The value of a knowledge of history to the workers (even a much simplified and elementary knowledge) is a severely practical one. It is necessary that the workers should realise that the social system has changed in the past, that it has changed because of material forces which are still operating, that these forces work in a manner which can be expressed in laws of social development. Learning these lessons of history the worker can discover from the past how to organise for the capture of political power as a prelude to the establishment of Socialism. But to make this clear in the space of a small pamphlet is a very difficult task. The chief difficulty is to select just enough of the main features to illustrate the course of social development without making the description read like a bewildering catalogue of unrelated facts. The worker who approaches this pamphlet without previous acquaintance with the subject is likely to find it very hard to bring away the few outstanding ideas which it should have been the aim to provide.

The writer of the pamphlet has not the same excuse for certain careless and ambiguous passages in the historical section. For example, the treatment of the State is unsatisfactory and likely to mislead. Having said (p. 9) that the early Gens, Phratry, Tribe and Confederation each had its own “political organisation,” the pamphlet fails to explain the fundamental difference between that form of organisation and the later coercive political organisation—the State. On page 13 the capitalists are described as capturing “the political institutions” from the nobility, while on page 16 reference is made to the same capitalists depending upon “the centralised official and military State.” This would make it look as if the administrative organisation of the Tribes and Gens, etc., was like the political institutions controlled by the nobility, i.e., a “centralised official and military State.”

It is also very misleading to suggest, as is done on page 9, that cannibalism was an “occasional alternative” to slavery.

On page 10 is the grossly misleading assertion that under chattel slavery “wealth was overwhelmingly produced for use and not for profit.”

The inference to be drawn from the first three paragraphs on page 11 is that Feudalism originated through drought and famine in Asia and was not the offspring of conditions within the Roman Empire.

There is a slip on page 21, where it is said to be paradoxical that an employer should introduce a machine costing less than the wages of the displaced workers. “Less” should obviously be “more.”

On page 24, line 29, “creditors” should read “debtors.”

On page 16 we are told “The lands of the Monasteries and the Gilds had already been filched by the absolute monarchy,” and on the next page, “on their accession to power the merchants and manufacturing class proceeded to dispossess the Church of its lands and territories.” The suppression of the Monasteries occurred in the 16th century, before the “merchant and manufacturing class” came into possession of political power, although the movement was born of their needs.

Leaving the historical treatment and turning to the attempted exposition of Socialist principles, we find many serious defects, a few of which are briefly noted.

On page 2 we are told that the “threat of tariffs” will “still further depreciate their [workers] exiguous standard of comfort.” No further explanation is given of this statement, and the reader is left with the impression that tariffs are a cause of a lowered standard of living, and presumably, therefore, are something the worker should resist, although on page 26 free trade is called a “capitalist nostrum.”

On page 2 also we have the familiar I.L.P.-Communist nonsense, about the catastrophic collapse of capitalism in the assertion that the development of capitalism will lead “ultimately” to a condition where “production has been brought to a standstill.” A knowledge of the working of capitalism during crises would have prevented the writer from supporting this fallacy.

Again, on page 2, there is reference to the workers responding to the call for war with “a flat refusal.” This is just sentimental claptrap. A capitalist class placed in power by a non-Socialist electorate is not going to be greatly disturbed by attempts to organise a flat refusal. The curious part is that the next page contains the assertion “we cannot give support to any movements which have for their object the removal of some particular evil arising from the system itself.” Surely war is an evil arising from the system itself ?

The treatment of trade unions is muddled, apparently being the work of two persons with opposing views. One of them, on page 26, describes the evils of bureaucratic control of trade unions and asks rhetorically if the workers are not as competent as their officials “to control and manage their own organisation, not to please capital, but themselves?” This implies that trade unions can be made useful to the workers, and it is evidently the same writer who says on page 27 that the workers should “set about the task of building up more effective industrial organisations having for their motto the abolition, not the amelioration, of the wages system.” But the other writer will not have this. He says (p. 26) that “even the most perfect control over officials, and the most willing and efficient service from them could not make of trade unions an effective instrument for improving the conditions of the workers, or even retaining their hard-won present standards.” It is pertinent to ask how these “hard-won” standards were “won,” if not by trade union organisation and action. And if the workers ought to leave the present unions (as they are told on page 27) and build up “more effective industrial organisations,” having as their aim “the abolition, not the amelioration, of the wages system,” what would be the use of this if, as we are told on the next line, “industrial action can only be applied against effects of capitalism, and cannot dislodge the cause of the workers’ slavery and poverty” ?

la short, the pamphlet rejects the case made out by Marx for trade union action (see Value, Price and Profit for example), without making any serious attempt to answer his arguments.

On page 19 an explanation of the class-struggle tells the reader that the class-struggle ensues from the conflict between employers and workers over the conditions of employment, instead of out of the private ownership of the means of life. This is unsound in theory and in practise has led to many unsound actions by those who have fallen into this error.

Lastly, the pamphlet makes some malicious assertions about the S.P.G.B., for example, that it is controlled by a “caucus” although “in form, the control … is, democratic.” Anyone who cares to look at our rules and to see our E.C. and other organs at work (all of them are open to the public) will see the silliness of this assertion, for which no kind of evidence is given, except the vague implication that “all forward movements initiated outside of their own circle” are blocked. By “forward movements” the writer doubtless means such policies as the anti-Marxian and anti-working-class attitude on trade unions expressed in the pamphlet. It does not seem to have dawned on the writer of the pamphlet that such retrograde ideas make no headway in the S.P.G.B., because the members have joined it on a basis which excludes them and, therefore, do not want any such innovation.

Without saying so explicitly the pamphlet manages to imply that members of the S.P.G.B. are allowed to belong to the Angliccan or Catholic Churches. This is utterly devoid of truth.

Reference is made to the S.P.G.B.’s attitude that a Socialist, elected to Parliament by a Socialist electorate on the Socialist platform, might be instructed by the Party to vote for certain measures that might come before Parliament, on their merits. The only argument given in the pamphlet against this sound Marxian attitude is that such votes might in certain circumstances save a capitalist Government from defeat. The attitude put in the pamphlet is that “a Socialist electorate would understand the need for opposition on each and every occasion to each and every capitalist Party.” This overlooks the point that a vote against a measure introduced by a capitalist opposition party in the House might have precisely the same effect as a vote for a measure introduced by the Government, i.e., it “might save a capitalist Government from defeat.”

Incidentally, we wonder if the writer holds that a Socialist in the House of Commons ought to vote against, say, a proposal by a capitalist party to stop a war, on the ground that the proposal emanated from a capitalist party.

Our policy of fighting elections for propaganda purposes is attacked by the pamphlet, by means of the dishonest device of implying (without saying so definitely) that our candidates run on a non-Socialist programme. The writer of the pamphlet knows this to be completely untrue.

The Socialist Propaganda League should stop and consider whether its claim to be an organisation for educating the workers and clearing away confusion does not place it under the obligation of making only those statements in support of its case for which evidence can be given. Malevolent, improvable and lying insinuations, levelled on the principle that some part of a wad of mud is sure to stick, do not help the working class movement, and it is doubtful whether in. the long run they even help those who fling them.

G. H. D.

Obituary: Stephen Shenfield (2023)

Obituary from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

We were shocked to learn of the sudden death at the end of April of our American comrade Stephen Shenfield. He was born in England in 1950 and joined the old Haringey branch as a teenager and became an active member, writing for the Socialist Standard and serving for a while on the executive committee. However in 1974 he was one of a group of members who were expelled for breaking the then rule about publishing unauthorised material. He didn’t rejoin the movement till 2006 when he became a member of the World Socialist Party of the US to where he had emigrated in 1989. In the meantime, as a Russian speaker (he had relatives in Kiev), he had become an academic and expert in ‘Soviet studies’, publishing many articles and books on the subject. After rejoining he kept in touch with individuals and groups in Russia that were critical of capitalism. He resumed contributing to this journal (as ‘Stefan’). At the time of his death he was the general secretary of the American party (an administrative not a leadership post in our parties). The movement has lost an active member. Our condolences go to his wife and family.

Blogger's Note:

A longer obituary by his family can be viewed here.

Solidarity for Twenty-Five Years (2005)

Book Review from the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Workers' Power. The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton, edited by David Goodway. (AK Press. £12)

One of the features of the radical political scene in the 1960s and 70s was a magazine called Solidarity which used to publish long and rather boring accounts of factory life and of particular and now long forgotten industrial disputes. There were also translations of equally long articles by someone identified as "Paul Cardan" (later revealed to be the French intellectual Cornelius Castoriadis) offering a replacement critique of capitalism to that of Marx judged outdated and wrong. Those behind it had been in the Communist Party and, though for a short while only, in the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League. One of them was Maurice Brinton (also known as Martin Grainger and Chris Pallis), a selection of whose articles over the period 1960 to 1985 has just been published (For Workers' Power. The Selected Writings of Maurice Brinton, edited by David Goodway. AK Press. £12), and who appears to have been its leading theoretician. Born in 1923 he died earlier this year.

What characterised Solidarity was its complete rejection of Leninism and the concept of the Vanguard Party and its advocacy of Workers Councils (as opposed to parliament as well as the vanguard party) as the way to socialism. In their view, a revolutionary organisation should not seek to lead the working class but simply to be an instrument that workers could use to transform society; at the same time it should try to prefigure in its organisation and decision-making what future society should be like, practising "self-management" and encouraging workers to rely on their own efforts rather than trust in leaders. So, some of what Solidarity was saying was more or less the same as we were. For example: "If the working class cannot come to understand socialism - and want it - there can be no socialist perspective. There can only be the replacement of one ruling elite by another" (March 1969).

"For us, revolutionaries are not an isolated elite, destined to any vanguard role. They are a product (albeit the most lucid one) of the disintegration of existing society and of the growing awareness of what it will have to be replaced by" (February 1972). "We consider irrational (and/or dishonest) that those who talk most of the masses (and of the capacity of the working class to create a new society) should have the least confidence in people's ability to dispense with leaders" ("As We Don't See It", 1972).

Like us, they mercilessly denounced Leninism, Trotskyism and Vanguardism as not only mistaken but as positively dangerous, as the ideology of a new would be ruling class based on state capitalism.

There were differences of course, particularly over Workers Councils as opposed to Parliament as well as over the continuing relevance of Marx's analyses and over the content of a socialist society. Because we saw the basic division in capitalist society as being between owners and non-owners we saw common ownership, and the consequent disappearance of buying and selling, money and the market, as a necessary feature of socialism. Solidarity was not so clear on this. Following Castoriadis it saw the basic division in capitalist society as being between order-givers and order-takers and so the basic feature of future society as being "self-management" (which would of course be one such feature, what we call "democratic control"). From this angle, the disappearance of money and the market was regarded as secondary: whether or not to use them being a mere policy option open to those around at the time.

This became clear in the translation published in 1972 under the title Workers' Councils and the Economics of a Self-Managed Society of a long article by Castoriadis, written in 1957, which was basically a blueprint for the workers self-management of a market economy. Brinton was aware that this was controversial and in the introduction (reproduced in this book) he wrote (in a thinly disguised reference to us) that "some will see the text as a major contribution to the perpetuation of wage slavery - because it still talks of 'wages' and doesn't call for the immediate abolition of 'money'".

He was right. Some did, and not only us. Such "councilism" (management of a market economic by workers' councils, which we denounced as "workers' self-exploitation") led to the breakaway of groups which later became the "left communist" CWO and ICC of today, which despite their partial return to Leninism, at least adhered to the view that socialism/communism had to be a moneyless, wageless society.

This, in fact, is not the only place where Brinton looked over his shoulder at us. As early as 1961 he was explaining that "whilst rejecting the substitutionism of both reformism and Bolshevism, we also reject the essentially propagandist approach of the Socialist Party of Great Britain", a theme he returned to in 1974 in a review of a book on the sexual revolution which advocated achieving this through education: "to confine oneself to such an attitude would be to restrict oneself to the role of a sort of SPGBer of the sexual revolution".

In fact, in his two main writings, both published in 1970, The Irrational in Politics and The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control he felt the need to have a go at us. In the former he suggested that the Socialist Standard only discussed economic and political topics and ignored the problems of everyday life (not true as a look through the issues of the time will show). In the latter he wrote that we, like some anarchists, took the view that nothing particularly significant had happened in 1917: "The SPGB (Socialist Party of Great Britain) draw much the same conclusion, although they attribute it to the fact that the wages system was not abolished", adding in a wild caricature of our position "the majority of the Russian population not having had the benefit of the SPGB viewpoint (as put by spokesmen duly sanctioned by their Executive Committee) and not having then sought to win a Parliamentary majority in the existing Russian institutions". Of course, our analysis was much deeper than that.

To be quite honest such criticisms did find some echo amongst some of our members in the 1970s who eventually got themselves expelled for publishing material advocating workers' councils rather than parliament as the way to socialism. But this was later to cause a problem for Brinton and Solidarity since the ex-SPGBers in question became the "Social Revolution" group which, as Goodway records in his introduction, merged with Solidarity to become "Solidarity for Social Revolution".

For all their other disagreements with us, these ex-members still retained the conception of socialism as a moneyless and wageless as well as a classless and stateless society, and insisted on the new merged group adopting this position. Brinton eventually went along with this, though reluctantly, and afterwards revealed (see his 1982 article "Making A Fresh Start") that he regarded this merger - which didn't last - as bringing to an end Solidarity's golden age of 1959 to 1977. Ironically, something seems to have rubbed off on him, as the last-dated article in this collection (from 1985) ends: "A socialist society would therefore abolish not only social classes, hierarchies and other structures of domination, but also wage labour and production for the purpose of sale or exchange on the market".

Brinton is a good writer, so this book reads well and stands as a record of one strand of radical thinking in the 1960s and 70s. It goes well with the part of our own centenary publication Socialism Or Your Money Back that also reproduces articles from this period.

Adam Buick