Letter: Working together (1967)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir: 

I think two or three points in your reply to my letter (Socialist Standard, February 1967) are unworthy of you.

The minor point about East Germany is only of consequence as it is the feeling of one member of the Socialist Medical Association. Our Editorial Committee gives space to articles on Socialism and Health. It does not censor within that context. Your reply suggests that every SPGB member has exactly the same thoughts and ideas as the next. Do you never vote on anything? Does every member agree with every phrase in the Socialist Standard?

The fact is that the SPGB and the SMA would achieve more if they worked together. If you discuss health matters today the SMA has discussed them since 1936. So why not accept the fact that a specialist health organisation is likely to know its own subject better than yourselves.

If you wish to have ideas on Health Centres, Occupational Health, Bronchitis, Health Education and other ideas linking Socialist thought and Health you could not better the wealth of experience the SMA has.

Your statement about the state giving out “charity” to the workers to keep them fit enough is much too cynical. We know this is a “truth” of the State. But the Socialist state that did not have some sort of law and order and therefore some sort of control of its population is pure Anarchist and although I accept it as the final solution can you really see this as a possibility with the level of political, emotional, educational and individualistic greed that pervades our planet today.

It is the “exclusiveness” of the SPGB as much as its “aloofness” that worries me. There is no fault to find in the Declaration of Principles. But you who have had more experience than I of the slowness of change and the compromise that have to be made in politics must know that the choice is either slow Parliamentary type method or bloody revolution.

Revolution is useless unless there is a high chance of winning. Only the religious fanatic would wish to commit suicide—it may take him to his “maker” more quickly.

We Socialists and humanists know better.

M.S. 

(London)

Reply: 

M.S. is worried about “the level of political, emotional, educational and individualistic greed that pervades our planet today”. But greed is not a characteristic of working men and women. In fact, the working class is the most charitable body of men ever known to history. Inadequately housed, shabbily dressed, underpaid and overworked, the workers make do with only a tiny portion of the wealth they produce so that the capitalist class can live in idle luxury.

When the working class throughout the world has grasped that there is a socialist alternative to. the capitalist system it will use its immense numbers to capture political power. It will make use of the parliamentary machinery to achieve the revolutionary transformation of society. There is, however, unlikely to be very much blood about at the time. The workers, who make up the overwhelming majority of the world's population, will be able to smother any attempt at resistance by a dissident minority.

The alternatives facing the working class are socialism or capitalism. There is no middle path nor, as M.S. suggests, is any compromise with capital possible.

Finally, a few more words on the 'Socialist' Medical Association. M.S. is now recommending that the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain should work with the SMA because it is “a specialist health organisation”, full of “ideas on Health Centres, Occupational Health, Bronchitis, Health Education” etc. We do not deny that many members of the SMA have a thorough medical knowledge and no doubt some of them are brilliant in their own fields. But, politically, the SMA is crippled from the start, because it sets out to operate within the framework of capitalism.

We gave the example of the supporter of East Germany because he typifies the confusion within the ranks of the SMA. We could have chosen numerous others, including M.S. himself. Of course, there is plenty of discussion in the Socialist Party but none of our members would think of referring it to the State as though it were some sort of benevolent society looking after working class interests. Socialists realise that the State is the executive committee of the ruling class and that it only has a basis in a class-divided social system. As M.S. would put it, we socialists know better.

Editorial Committee

Letters: A Long Way to Go (1967)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Long Way to Go

Sir: 

There is a great deal to be done both in continuing the pressure and education required to build a real Socialist Britain but also in alleviating the worst results of this free for all society in which it is usually the least fit that are most unable to look after themselves.

Enoch Powell's dictum of survival of the fittest is OK if you are healthy and in a high income group. It is because almost everyone is outside these two categories that an educated working class is so important. And it is here that the different working class organisations are so important.

I realise that there are differences in approach but with so few active, militant, politically aware Socialists I would have thought that finding and cultivating avenues of common cause and agreement were far more important than emphasising the differences.

It is because of this that the Socialist Medical Association was founded in 1936 and as it forms a focus for Socialist medical and lay workers, it allows for the production of plans for a real Socialist health system. We have no bans and prescriptions and this allows a wide variation of ideas and larger numbers of specialists to meet and discuss.

We are able lo advise a wide variety of working class organisations and as our own members come from many different groups we are able to spread our ideas widely.

Agreed that we have a long way to go: but if we all stood aloof (as unfortunately the SPGB does) from ‘main stream” politics then our society would have remained in the Middle Ages, with all the poverty, ill health and dominations by the Barons and Church.

M.S. 

London

Reply: 

The Socialist Party of Britain is prepared to cooperate with any other group which stands for socialism. This is why we have allied ourselves with our companion parties. M.S.. however, wants us to join in along with the “wide variety of working class organisations” operating in Britain. But where are all these political organisations which are supposed to have the interests of the working class at heart?

The only name our correspondent gives us is that of the ‘Socialist' Medical Association and he himself seems lo be in the unfortunate situation of both accepting our criticisms of the National Health Service and, at the same time, attempting lo support the SMA. This is, of course, an impossible feat because any analysis of the NHS necessarily involves an exposure of the SMA’s position. After all. they wrote themselves in their official journal only a couple of months ago that "everything now embodied in the National Health Service found its clearest expression and soundest advocacy in these pages". As for the complete lack of socialist understanding in the SMA, we need give only one example. One of their members recently wrote a flattering article on the health service in East Germany, praising it because its fundamental principle was that "the capacity to work will be protected by the Stale”’. Can't M.S. see that the State looks after the interests of the ruling class and is only concerned with the health of workers to the extent that it affects their working capacity and impairs their ability lo produce surplus value?

Finally. M.S. makes the point that “if all stood aloof (as unfortunately the SPGB does) from main stream’ politics and buried our heads in the sand then our Society would have remained in the Middle ages . . .” Clearly, as an argument, this is a non-starter. The Socialist Party far from standing aloof, is actively working for socialism. If we all did just that then it would not be a case of our still enduring feudalism, or even capitalism: instead we would have socialism here and now.

Editorial Committee

From a Kibbutznik

Sir: 

I have now been able to go carefully through the Socialist Standard. I have no important counter-criticism. I accept it as just about right. It is such complete Socialism that I would call it more than that really; it stands for my world-federal ideal I learned from H. G. Wells’ Shape of Things to Come long ago and which inspires me throughout life; it seems to be absolute humanism, and to be, in fact, what Marx called the last stage of full communism. I think it is all these things. I never knew you had such a full policy, and I think it utterly worthy in the extreme.

Even so, a great difficulty remains for me. All that is written in your journals is negative criticism, fully justified, with only rare, vague references to the constructive alternative. It is true there is no difference between Labour and Tory in Britain (in fact the position is utterly comical under Wilson today: he is a first rate capitalist!), that Russia and China are simply going in for state capitalism (this may be a bit more responsible than the private version, but it still has nothing lo do with the final stage of communism which Marx wanted, as you rightly suggest), and so on. But what is the programme for achieving full Socialism? The workers taking over everything, as stated in the Declaration of Principles, is far too vague as it stands.

I contend all the time, as a kibbutznik, that parliamentary government is a flop: as you say. parliaments should be abolished. Only direct democracy counts, not the indirect, voted-for representatives stuff, which just plays into the hands of the Establishment. But what is the immediate alternative? Do the workers one day refuse to go to work, march into the rich men's houses, take out the furniture, divide it up in their slum homes, set up workers' councils and run the factories as in Yugoslavia (alas. 1 fear the managerial talent is not at once available: the capitalists are skilled technicians, unfortunately, and few workers are), and hope lo have enough to make everyone fairly well off and happy? Alas, even in quite rich England, let alone poorer Spain and Peru. etc., production and transport would be in a wild muddle at once, and everyone would be in a ghastly, disorganised mess. Besides, the capitalists would start shooting. Are you for civil war? So. accepting the destructive side of your case. I now inquire for the constructive side of it. Where are the plans?

In this connection, I wonder what your attitude is to Anarchism? It seems to me that in their local self-government, without buying and selling internally, the kibbutzim have strong anarchist as well as localised-socialist elements in them. Their federations are like syndicates, nationally arranged, as suggested once in Spain, I believe, and begun to be carried out there till Franco killed them. Would you be inclined to take this as a pattern — local direct democracy leading to national workers’ organisation? If so, the kibbutzim would be giving you an excellent lead indeed.

It seems to me you have to build up somehow. A ready made over-night global Wellsian total socialism is just not practicable.

A. C. Ben-Yosef 

Door No Meron, Hagalil, Israel

Reply: 

Our correspondent rightly understands (though we wouldn’t put it the way he has) that the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain holds that Socialism can only be world-wide; that there is no essential difference between Labour and Tory in Britain; and that Russia and China are state capitalism. He goes on to ask the quite legitimate question; How will Socialism he established?

First of all we don’t of course suggest anything so ridiculous as dividing up the wealth of the rich. Nor do we think that Socialism will appear ready-made overnight.

Socialism will be the outcome of a process of social evolution that is going on now. The culmination of this process will be the capture of political power for Socialism by the working class and the consequent social revolution from capitalism to Socialism. It is capitalism that paves the way for Socialism. Capitalism has already brought into being a world-wide productive system that could provide a plenty for all and the people to run this system. What it has yet to bring into being is the desire for Socialism on the part of those who work for wages throughout the world. This is the only real barrier to Socialism today. If what our correspondent implies at one point is correct — if workers can’t run society without the capitalist class — then the time is not ripe for Socialism. Our answer to this is clear and the evidence for it can be easily seen by looking at the world in which we live: the working class do now, as industrial, agricultural, clerical and, yes, managerial workers, run society from top to bottom even if not in their own interest. The capitalist class play no role in production; they are superfluous. On the personal-level few are even '‘skilled technicians”. Let’s get this straight: it is the working class who run the world today without the help-of the capitalist class.

We are merely arguing that means of wealth production that are at present socially operated should also be socially owned and controlled, and that the people who run society today can and should — run it in their own interests.

But where are our plans? We have no detailed plans for Socialism. This is because Socialism can only be established by the working class once they have become socialist. It is up to those people around at the time to work out the exact forms of running social affairs in a Socialist society. It would be presumptuous and foolish of us today to predict the future. All we can do now is say where we think the general trends we see operating today are leading.

When a majority of workers have become Socialists they will organise for political power; then use this power to end private property in the means of wealth production, thus ending also their position as wage-slaves. This done, society can set about reorganising itself on a socialist basis, with production for use and free access for all to what has been produced. In such a society the government of people (and all that goes with it like armed forces, police, judges and jailers) will be unnecessary. Parliament as the means for controlling the machinery of government too will be unnecessary. But this does not mean that there will be no means for exercising democratic control over social affairs. The exact form of such democratic social control once again we can’t predict and don’t try to.

We must say, however, that in rejecting any form of election and delegation you are obviously going too far. Such a complex productive apparatus as exists today can only be controlled democratically by society through such means. If you find difficulty in envisaging world wide organisation and control of production consider that many organisations today are already world wide: General Motors, Royal Dutch Shell, World Health Organisation, International Postal Union, to mention a few. Socialist society will allow a great variety of forms of social control from the local to the world-wide. Beyond this we can’t go today.

We are opposed to Anarchism in all its many forms. At best its schemes are irrelevant for advanced industrial countries; at worst they are dangerous nonsense. Hie idea of a federation of co-operative communities, which has a long history, just isn’t practicable as a means of running the productive system of today. Everything points not to this but to social ownership and democratic social control.

Finally, and briefly, we are not for civil war. We don’t think that violence will be a part of the social revolution from capitalism to Socialism.

Editorial Committee

The Back-To-Work Service (1971)

Aneurin Bevan by Vicky.

Book Review from the July 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private Practice within the National Health Service, by Joan Sohn-Rethel and John Carrier. Socialist Medical Association. 20p.

Your Health Service in Danger. Socialist Medical Association. 5p.

The Mental Health Services. Socialist Medical Association. 5p.

Nobody could object to the original idea behind the National Health Service: that medical advice and treatment in and out of hospital as well as drugs and appliances should be provided free to those in need. This is essentially what will happen in Socialism.

The point the Socialist Party of Great Britain made was that, introduced under capitalism as a reform, a free health service would never work as intended. These pamphlets by the “Socialist” Medical Association (a Labour Party affiliate) unwittingly confirm this.

Hospitals were nationalised in 1948 in the sense that a nation-wide hospital system was created out of the private and municipal hospitals which had grown up in the previous two hundred years. Whilst recognising the benefit to workers of not having to worry so much about finding the money to pay for medical treatment, we pointed out that the NHS was, and could only be under capitalism, essentially a back-to-work service for employers whose primary function was to patch up sick workers as cheaply as possible so that they could resume producing profits. Those who no employer will take on—the chronic sick, the mentally ill, the old and the disabled—are under capitalism just a charge on profits to be dealt with as cheaply as possible.

This of course is not meant as a criticism of the dedicated work under difficult conditions of workers employed in the NHS. They are making the best of a bad job. But the NHS has always been starved of funds, quite apart from the fact that in many cases the treatment can only be a palliative since a basic cause of some conditions is the poverty and insecurity of capitalism.

Another development was predictable too. Since the NHS was basically a service to patch up workers and since financial stringency led to growing waiting lists, the rich would try to buy themselves better treatment. Hence the growth of “private practice”.

Doctors must obviously play a key role in any health service and, as reformist governments in many countries have found, are a conservative group. The SMA wanted (and still wants) all doctors to be salaried employees of the State and all private practice to be banned. The doctors, and especially the consultants, however, wished to remain independent professional people or “private contractors” and were strong enough to force this on Bevan, the first postwar Minister of Health and to get him to allow some special pay-beds in NHS hospitals (which Bevan, the hypocrite, was later to use when he was ill). According to the SMA this was the thin end of the wedge which has undermined the Health Service.

Private consultations and treatment are, in their view, merely queue-jumping. They even go so far as to hint that in some cases (where a consultant is paid for a private examination and then gets a patient into an NHS, rather than a private bed) it is a hidden form of bribery. Maybe, but this sort of thing is inevitable in the conditions of shortage which will survive as long as capitalism lasts.

Judged by its original aims the NHS has been a failure. It is in a state of perpetual crisis. Once again the economic forces of capitalism have overcome the intentions of well-meaning reformers.

Adam Buick