Letter: Wanted — A Prescription For Socialism (1973)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wanted — A Prescription For Socialism


Dear Sir,

This letter is meant as a complaint — a pretty strong complaint.

I subscribe to the Socialist Standard. I read in the inside front cover the declaration of principles — all very tidy and compact. There is one thing missing, a vital statement of practical policy.

By this, I mean the change that will have to take place from our present day capitalist to the socialist society of the future.

If real socialist power was won in Parliament eventually, what events would we see follow? How would the means of production be converted into the common property of society and how would democratic control by the whole people be enacted? These, I think are vital questions — if Socialism is a viable proposition, then we need to have concrete answers to these fundamental questions. Perhaps one day you will have a little space in the Socialist Standard for them.

R. Ackerman, 

London, E.1.

Reply:

The precise events that would follow the winning of political power by a Socialist working class would be up to them to work out in the light of then existing circumstances. A small number cannot prescribe the future will of the majority; the arrogance of doing so can lead to the all-too-common dictum “This is how it will be — whether you like it or not”. The matter is entirely in the hands of the future Socialist majority. Our practical policy at the moment is to do all we can to hasten the growth of the necessary Socialist majority without whom there can be no Socialism. We can say, however, that the use of political power to convert the means of production into common property and to bring them under the democratic control of the whole people will be done quickly and democratically.

Editorial Committee.

Letter: Money: Will it be needed under socialism? (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money: Will it be needed under socialism?

To the Editor.

Sir,—Having participated, as a humble listener, in many discussions on Socialism, I have noticed, as no doubt have many others, what a stumbling block the money question presents to many earnest seekers after truth. Seeing on sale a pamphlet bearing the title quoted at the head of this letter, I purchased a copy in the hope that it would help in surmounting the obstacle in question.

Mr. A. P. Hazell, the author, is not, I understand, a member of your Party, but I feel sure you will grant him space to clear up my doubts and remove my difficulties.

“The ordinary individual is quite confused in his ideas concerning the medium of exchange,” says Mr. Hazell, with which I quite agree, as I also do with two other statements, viz., “Capitalism presupposes production of wealth which has to be distributed by means of exchange,” and “Socialism does not presuppose distribution of wealth by means of exchange. It assumes that society has evolved a stage beyond exchange, and that, consequently, there will be no need for money.” But I understand that Mr. Hazell is a prominent member of, and an accepted economic authority in, the Social Democratic Party, which has for its object “The Socialisation of the Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange.” Its members refer to this object as Socialism. Why then seek to socialise something which is necessary to capitalism but not to Socialism, which will supersede it? I have heard members of the S.D.P. criticise the I.L.P. because the latter would socialise capital, whereas Socialism means its abolition. Is this not a case of pot and kettle ?

Mr. Hazell deals with “The Guernsey Experiment” which “Shows that money even now under given conditions can be dispensed with.” But the paragraph records that the Governor of Guernsey issued paper money against the cash which was to come in as rent for stalls. As it came in the paper money was withdrawn from circulation. This, in my opinion, proves the opposite to what the author claims.

“If Municipalities” says Mr. Hazell, “could overcome the opposition of the Bankers, and obtain the consent of Parliament, they could easily raise funds and do without the capitalist financiers whose function it is to exact interest on loans.” It seems to me that municipalities will not be able to do this until the conscious effort of the Socialist working class has deprived the capitalist financiers of their political power and appointed its delegates to organise the administration of things. If I am right then it is little use and very confusing to argue upon this “if.”

But it is on pages 4 and 5 that I encounter my greatest difficulties ! Mr. Hazell says : “A socialistically-inclined Cabinet would have to go cautiously to work to realise their aim. Its best method would be to enter the field of production, and bodily attack the present system of exchange,” and again, “But let us be clear. No Socialist Government would enter into production ostensibly for the purpose of either abolishing money or the system of exchange. They would be laughed at by the ignorant, who for a long time yet will remain in the majority,” and further, “Socialists are in favour of direct employment, and will, without question, force the hands of the Government to move in this direction against its will.” We would thus appear to have arrived at a condition of affairs in which we have an ignorant majority but yet a Socialist Government. This Socialist Government would not enter into production on Socialist lines, because they would be laughed at. The hands of the Socialist Government would be forced (against their will) by the Socialists ! Now mark this is not a position arising from a division in the House suddenly placing the Socialist Party in office, because “The capitalists, defeated at the poll, etc.” The unwilling Socialist Government has beaten the capitalists at the ballot box, although “the ignorant are still in the majority.” “Let us be clear,” says Mr. Hazell. Well, let us, by all manner of means, let us

No wonder that Mr. Hazell assumes that his Government is full of trouble ! It wants to borrow money, but has trouble with the financiers ; an agitation in the country has succeeded in getting passed through the House the Right to Work Bill, which increases its difficulties; it is afraid to raise the income tax beyond a certain point because that might cause civil war; but at last the sun appears upon the horizon. The Government receives an order from the Colonies for a warship, to cost two millions. To enable it to construct this monument to the establishment of the brotherhood of man, it issues paper to the value of two millions, which it redeems when the Colonies pay over the cash for the Socialist “Dreadnought.” It extends its undertakings and its profits enable it to defy all opposition. I did not think that warships and profits would play a part when a Socialist Administration had been elected, but I suppose I was wrong.

There are other points in the pamphlet I should like to deal with did space permit, but only one will I touch upon now. If Mr. Hazell endeavours to assist me will he please state whether there will be a “reserve army of labour” under Socialism—an army of unemployed seeking work ? I ask this because on page 15, after the “Reformers” have won, when “the organisation of labour is now so perfect that there is a superabundance of wealth,” he refers to the drafting of “surplus” labour into particular departments, and I do so wish to be “clear.”

—Yours etc., 

Kendrick Johns.

September 9th, 1908.

Getting Socialism. (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is much misunderstanding as to the meaning of the phrase “The coming Social Revolution” as used by Socialists. Many inquiring workers, befogged by the teaching of the I.L.P. and of other reforming bodies, complain that they cannot conceive of a comparatively sudden or “catastrophic” change carrying society from Capitalism into Socialism. Hence, it seems, some of the attempted justification of a “palliative” program—a means of sliding into Socialism while the masters are not looking, you know. (Socialism to come upon us “as a thief in the night,” was Mr. Keir Hardie’s felicitous phrase, I believe.)

This misunderstanding would appear to arise largely from an over-consumption of Blatchfordian “rational Socialism,” and of “Looking Backward”-”News from Nowhere” Utopianism —though these, perhaps, are the least noxious of I.L.P. teachings. Certainly, to wake up one morning in Capitalism, do a barricade “turn” and go to sleep that night in Morris’s blissful “Nowhere” is not what the Socialist means by “the coming Social Revolution.”

Say Marx and Engels in the “Communist Manifesto,”

“The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of a ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as a ruling class (italics mine); and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

“Of course in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production ; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.”

Also in recent years Kautsky has said in his work “The Social Revolution” :

“It is therefore, the conquest of the powers of State by a hitherto oppressed class—in other words, the political revolution, which is an essential characteristic of the social revolution in its narrower sense, as opposed to social reform.”

Now to “raise the proletariat to the position of a ruling class”—”the conquest of the powers of State,” is conceivable.

That by dint of economic pressure and of Socialist propaganda and organisation the workers can vote themselves into “the position of a ruling class,” is conceivable.

That, given an organised, prepared, Socialist proletariat become the ruling class, its delegates can proceed to the enactment of transition measures (necessarily temporary) which in the aggregate will knock from under class-divided society its basis—private ownership and control of the means and instruments of production and distribution, thus causing the disappearance of classes, is, we hold, conceivable.

Given the common ownership and control of the means of production, the consequent disappearance of classes, dominant and subject, and the time necessary to get things working smoothly, and Socialism (Industrial Democracy; the Co-operative Commonwealth) is here: the Revolution is accomplished.

Now how about the other alleged practical and “common-sense” method described by Keir Hardie and Co.? Is it conceivable that the workers’ emancipation can be gained by an accumulation of reforms? Let us see.

Noisily trumpeted, apparently palliative reforms are at present dispensed—old age pensions on the cheap and devil-take-the-weak-and-old workmen’s compensation—and are pointed to as proof of the triumphant policy of our I.L.P., S.D.P., etc., etc. reformers. But we point out that a million such reforms, with a little municipalisation and nationalisation of capital thrown in, will still leave the workers poor, subject to competition and unemployment—still a subject class. The bridge that can alone span the chasm between Capitalism and Socialism remains as ever—the acquisition of the control of industry by the working class.

Now the present controllers of industry are certainly not less aware of this fact than are the Socialists ; and since they find domination sweet, and since history records not an instance of a dominant class voluntarily and of sweet reasonableness abdicating its controlling position, it follows that our capitalist masters will defend their control of the means and instruments of production by every device at their command, from reform dispensing to massacre. Long established privilege is not to be so easily abolished. Certainly, that our masters will kindly vote us, and hand over, one after another, the different industries, thus committing suicide as a class, is not conceivable.

The advocacy of reforms is mischievous because it does not prepare the workers for the tremendous task of beating the master class out of power, but rather teaches them to look to the masters for crumbs and, on Keir Hardie lines, for the piecemeal concession of Socialism.

No ! we cannot reform into Socialism because the capitalist class will not abolish itself, while if we gain the power to take reforms we should indeed be foolish to halt on the road and try patching up capitalism. Our clear duty would be to expropriate the capitalist class and re-organise production and distribution as the common interest dictates. That is to say, establish Socialism.

J. H. Halls

The "Transition Period" (1946)

From the January 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many people who cannot shake themselves clear of the Labour Party because they believe that Socialism cannot be established as a complete and revolutionary revolution change. They believe that between Capitalism and Socialism lies a period of State ownership which, they contend, will be neither Capitalism nor Socialism. Consequently they pin their faith to the Labour Party as the party which will inaugurate this “transition period”.

The idea of a transition period, during which some fundamental features of capitalism would still remain, is old, and was taken for granted by the reform parties that sprang up during the second half of the last century and the idea has persisted until to-day.

The Utopian Socialists of the early part of last century proposed a complete break with capitalism by building a new society upon an entirely different basis. But this society, instead of growing out of the old, was to be built within present society but without having any connection with it at all. They were to be communistic oases in the desert of capitalism that would serve as an example and an inspiration to the world at large. This was Robert Owen’s early idea. When, later, it was found impossible to build these groups inside highly developed Western civilisation, attempts were made to set them up upon the relatively virgin soil of America and Australia. But even there they were failures; capitalism was too strong for them. Co-operative societies still remain a pale and stunted reflections of those grand old fantasies.

When the Utopian approach to the abolition of capitalism gave place to the scientific, and it became generally accepted that Socialism was a system that must grow out of capitalism and not be imposed upon it, the new attitude took three different forms, for which the low standard of education of the workers was partly responsible. One form was that capitalism must be subjected to repeated reforms until finally it was reformed out of existence and Socialism introduced without the mass of the people being aware of what was happening. The second form consisted of building up small, vigorous groups which would lead the workers into Socialism by a frontal attack upon capitalism. This was later the basis of the Russian Bolshevik movement and its early popularity as the Blanquist movement in France. The third and final form was one propagated by Marx and Engels in which the Socialist revolution was to be accomplished by a working class that realised the source and nature of the antagonisms within capitalism, and also the nature of the new social order they intended to build out of the ruins of the old.

From the beginning the two earlier methods were afflicted with the same old disease; an acceptance of the idea that the mass of the people are incapable of properly understanding the meaning of Socialism and therefore, in its early days, Socialism would be fraught with difficulties to solve which some forms of organisation similar to what we have to-day would persist for some time after the accomplishment of the revolution. The principal, and almost overwhelming, difficulty anticipated was how to get people to produce and distribute the needful things when private ownership of the means of production, and therefore wages, no longer existed. How would an equal share of work be performed and a fair share of needful things be provided without some principle analogous to what exists under capitalism? It was agreed that when Socialism had been firmly established and a new generation had grown up under free social conditions then no such arbitrary principle would be necessary, but until that time this hangover from capitalism must  remain.

This period between the overthrow of capitalism and the final establishment of a fully developed Socialist society has been called “the transition period”. Limited space will only permit us to discuss one aspect of the question here.

The troubles of the early Bolsheviks, who were endeavouring to build Socialism out of an undeveloped capitalist base, led them to exaggerate the nature and the importance of this transition period and their followers have given to State capitalism the unwarranted distinction of being the transition period. In defending their claims the early Bolsheviks—Lenin, Trotzky and their associates—appealed to the writings of Marx and Engels, and particularly to Marx’s criticism of the Gotha Programme of 1875.

In his criticism Marx argues that during the transition period between capitalism and Communism a worker will withdraw from the common pool a value in hours of labour equal to the hours of labour he has worked minus the contribution to the reserve for the aged, the sick, future production and repair. Whether this period will be long or short Marx does not say; in fact, it is not even clear that he accepted more than there will be a period of difficulty to be met by temporary expedients, as his statements are arguments against erroneous assumptions in the Gotha Programme, and he is showing that where there is unequal distribution their phrase “just distribution of the proceeds of labour” in that programme is meaningless wind. We may add that taking the most extreme view of what Marx says it certainly could not produce conditions that would give rise to anything approximating to Soviet millionaires!

Let us now consider what are likely to be the conditions existing, as far as the distribution of products is concerned, at the time when the new society is being born out of the present, as far as we can envisage it to-day. We must bear in mind that the change will not come “like a thief in the night”, but in full daylight with the understanding and agreement of nearly the whole of society.

First of all, people will be accustomed to receiving wages with which to buy what they produce.

Secondly, the means of production and distribution will have been converted into Social ownership by an immediate act. This must be so as there cannot be any gradual or partial transformation.

The problem, then, is how will production be arranged when people will not receive any wages for working, and how will distribution be arranged when people will have no money to buy?

Finally, what will be the position of those who work in unnecessary occupations that will be abolished, and also of those who have never worked at all?

Before answering these questions let us first clear some of the ground.

We have absorbed what Marx and his co-workers gave to the world from their painstaking studies and we have added a good deal ourselves from our own studies since Marx, seventy years ago, criticised the Gotha Programme. We have profited from the development that has gone on since his day. One of the most important things we have learned is that the mass of people are essentially reasonable, once they understand a problem. For instance, workers will put up with considerable hardship and privation during strikes if they are convinced that the strike is necessary.

Our appeal is to all types of workers and our ranks include people from all occupations. In our propaganda we make it clear that the abolition of capitalism means the common ownership of the means of production which in turns involves from each according to his capacities, to each according to his needs. We point out that the workers must capture political power for the immediate purpose of introducing Socialism; and we further insist that there must be a majority of people understanding and desiring Socialism before it can be established.

Our propaganda, therefore, solves the problems of the transition period. From the outset the majority of workers will be satisfied with the meeting of their elementary needs; they will not expect everything at once. Furthermore workers inspired with the desire for Socialism will not be worried whether they are doing more work than somebody else. The enthusiasm for the change will spur many to work harder than they have ever done for capitalism. If for a time the tradition of capitalism weighs so heavily upon some that they shirk doing their best, what will it matter? Time itself will soon iron out this problem. At the worst there are very few people thick-skinned enough to be content to remain permanently objects of scorn.

When the movement reaches the point when Socialism is imminent it will contain within itself the organisation and the people capable of assessing the various needs of the population and how and where to organise production to meet those needs. At first the road may be rough, but it will be rapidly smoothed with the powers of production society will have at its disposal.

It is the nature of production, or the productive form, that determines the nature of the distribution. A freely associated productive form will involve a free distribution.

At first some occupations that are unpleasant may have to continue until there is time to remould the whole of production from top to bottom and eliminate what is burdensome and unpleasant. Thus some people may have unpleasant jobs for a while and others pleasant. But our propaganda will have made the necessity of this clear before the change takes place.

Thus the transition period will not be another social form but only the difficult time of reorganising production and distribution on a Socialist basis; settling down to Socialism. There will be no need for labour tickets or anything of that kind, as the workers as a whole are intelligent people.

The progress of Socialist understanding in the advanced countries proceeds at about the same pace. A revolutionary change in one of them will inspire a similar change in the others. Consequently there need be no lack of essential products or break in international supplies.

The Socialist movement is a working class movement, a movement in the interests of the great majority. Workers support each other internationally on the industrial field during strikes. There will be no lack of mutual assistance when the greatest working class movement of all, the movement to free the toilers for ever from the domination of a master class, reaches the point that it can call upon them for international solidarity in striking the final blow.

Gilmac.

Letter: Never understood (2024)

From the 30th May 2024 issue of the Weekly Worker

Mike Macnair makes the point: “What full communism will look like will depend on choices made over decades by the working class ruling on a global scale. The minimum programme is a programme for working class rule right now. It is for this reason that it combines a platform for political democracy with some economic measures - ones that are immediately posed.”

I have never really understood how anyone seriously interested in promoting the idea of a communist (aka socialist) alternative to capitalism can make this sort of argument. Never mind what Marx may or may not have said. Marx was fallible, as are we all, and there is enough of an unhealthy tendency to invoke the ‘argument from authority’ as it is when it comes to quoting Marx in leftwing circles. All that is needed is a bit of basic common sense and logic.

Look, we can all surely accept the premise that capitalism as a socioeconomic system can only really be run and managed in one way - in the interests of capital. As ‘Marxists’ we can all surely agree that capitalism´s driving force - the competitive accumulation of capital out of surplus value - is absolutely dependent on the systemic exploitation of a majority working class by a tiny class that owns and controls the means of production in de facto terms.

But here’s the point - the very existence of these (capitalist) class categories - implies the existence of this exploitative system of capitalism. Consequently, arguing for a “minimum programme” based on “working class rule” (moreover, “over decades” and “on a global scale”) is in effect arguing for the retention of an economic system that requires the existence of this class as the object of a process of exploitation. In effect, it is proposing that the slaves should continue to be slaves, while being in charge of a system that can only be administered in the interests of the slave-owners.

This is simply not credible. One can sort of understand why Marx and Engels felt the need to resort to such logically dubious concepts as the “dictatorship of the proletariat” back in the mid-19th century. Objectively speaking, communism was not on the cards. Hence their advocacy of the 10 state-capitalist reforms in the 1848 Manifesto to help grow the productive forces (though they later distanced themselves from these reforms, as can be seen if you read the 1872 preface to the Communist Manifesto).

But we don’t live in the year 1848. Today, we live in 2024. We don’t need the forces of production to be “further developed” to establish a communist society, What accounts for the persistence of poverty is not the fact that we don’t have the technological capacity to make communism completely feasible. On the contrary, material deprivation continues only because we allow capitalism to continue.

Capitalism has become the most grotesquely wasteful socioeconomic formation in human history, with the majority of its human and material resources being devoted solely to keeping the money system ticking over on its own terms. This in itself represents a truly massive diversion of resources away from meeting human needs and it will continue for as long as we allow the capitalist buying-and-selling system to continue,

This is why I find all this talk of transitional societies and minimum programmes so archaic and off-putting. It’s not at all relevant to the world we live in today. The transition period is what we are living through now. It is not something we need to initiate, once a communist majority has politically captured the capitalist state - and set about immediately abolishing that state, along with the system that necessitates it. Surely, at that point - if it ever happens - all this would be pretty much universally understood by everyone.

The only remaining precondition we need to fulfil in order to establish a communist society is the realisation of communist consciousness on a mass scale. At the end of the day, the SPGB is completely correct in emphasising this. It is a thankless and difficult approach that it has adopted and one that routinely prompts the scorn of others, but, at the end of the day, it is the only approach that makes any sense. If you want a communist society you have to advocate it and spread the idea. What else is possibly required?

Advocating a minimum programme in this day and age is a sure-fire way of setting yourself up for failure and mass working class disenchantment, with a so-called working class government having been put in power to implement this programme. Any government that tries to take on the administration of a system that is intrinsically predicated on the exploitation of the working class will inevitably transmogrify into a capitalist government.

Surely as materialists, we can all accept this all-too-obvious point?

Robin Cox 

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The Socialist Forum: Communism and Socialism. (1933)

From the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Communism and Socialism.

Reply to C. L., Vancouver Island B.C.

Engels in his 1888 Preface to the “Communist Manifesto" explained why in 1847 Marx and he called their Manifesto "Communist" and not "Socialist." It was to distinguish the revolutionary working class movement from the middle-class utopian movement, which at that time called itself Socialist. Later on this method of distinguishing the two movements ceased to be necessary, and Marx and Engels habitually used the terms Socialist and Socialism to indicate what they had formerly indicated by the terms Communist and Communism.

The Third (Communist) International called itself by that name to distinguish itself from the Labour parties and their International. They now use the term "Socialism" to mean the stage of development which in their view is intermediate between the future Communism and the present mixture of State and private capitalism as it exists in Russia. Thus Leontyev in his "Towards a Classless Society" (Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R , Moscow, 1932) writes:—

The classless socialist society which we must build during the second five year period, represents only the first, the lower phase of Communism.—(Page 25.)

When the Russian Communists want to indicate something approximating to what the S.P.G.B. defines as Socialism, they use the term Communism.

With regard to the withering away of the State, see January Socialist Standard. 

Ed. Comm.

Letter: Co-operatives and capitalism (1989)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Co-operatives and capitalism

Dear Editors

R. Lloyd in the November 1988 issue asserts as an absolute dogma that "Cooperatives do not give workers security of employment; do not free them from exploitation; and do not allow the luxury of producing goods outside the parameters of commodity production. Co-operatives under capitalism cannot be organised in any other way".

Accepting with certain reservations, that "cooperatives under capitalism cannot be organised in any other way", I should like to know how the Socialist Party envisages cooperatives could function in the circumstances where there is a considerable degree of socialist consciousness. It seems to me quite ludicrous to suggest that a significant growth of socialist consciousness will not bring about a concomitant reduction in the scale and extent of capitalist economic relations. Surely, both the desire and the opportunities, to transcend the market place and produce things directly for need, starting with small scale and localised activities, are bound the grow with the growth of the socialist movement itself? It seems to me wholly reasonable to suggest that cooperatives represent one particular form, amongst many, through which these expanding non-market productive relationships will be able to take hold at the expense of capitalist relations. This is not at all the same as saying that co-ops can produce for need within the framework of capitalism. Rather, it means they can only do so outside that framework, which would be possible because the framework itself would have contracted. Nor does this mean that socialist should not still aim for the political abolition of capitalism but only that these two approaches are not mutually exclusive. They are complementary, production, which only operates through the prospect of profit, can possibly operate prior to the political capture of power when the socialist aim to abolish the profit system becomes itself a serious prospect?

Louise Cox

Haslemere

Reply:

We are not in the habit of asserting absolute dogmas. The passage our correspondent quotes was based on hard evidence of the experience of co-operatives under capitalism. She in fact more or less accepts this conclusion, but questions whether it must always be so, suggesting that “where there is a considerable degree of socialist consciousness” co-operatives will be able to "transcend the marketplace and produce things directly for need”.

When there is a "considerable degree of socialist consciousness" (when, that is, millions of people are against the money-prices-wages system and want to replace it with a world of free access and production for need), we can indeed “envisage" a lot of things. That, for instance, capitalist politicians and governments will lean over backwards to offer reforms; that trade union will become more democratic and more militant; that the capitalist state will have an increasing problem to recruit workers to serve in its armed forces, to mention some things have long been a subject of speculation among socialists. We can also envisage the co-operative movement too being affected by this ferment of ideas, by becoming more democratic and even by expanding to a limited extent. Why not? After all, who knows?

Our correspondent, however, is asking us to envisage much more than this. She sees the co-operatives as representing "one particular form, amongst many, through which expanding non-market productive relationships will be able to take hold at the expense of capitalist relations".

We can't agree that this is at all a reasonable assumption. Remember, we are talking about a time when there is to be a considerable number of socialists but not yet a majority. This means that the capitalist class, basing themselves on the non-socialist majority, will still control political power and so still monopolise the means of production. How, in these circumstances. could any co-operative detach itself from the rest of the economy, which would remain geared to producing goods for sale on a market with a view to profit, and begin producing goods to consumers could have free access according to need? Where, to get down to the bottom line, would the money come from to acquire the raw materials and power needed to produce the goods that are to be given away free? Surely our correspondent doesn't imagine that capitalist firms would generously agree to supply these free of charge! The fact is that, as long as the capitalist class control political power, which they will be able to continue to do for as long as there is a majority of non-socialists. capitalist economic relationships (commodity production, wage- labour, production for profit will be bound to prevail, however large the minority of socialist might be.

Of course some might regard all this as speculation and they would be right to a certain extent, but such theoretical questions are important since to have a correct practice now it is necessary to have a correct theory. Our correspondent's theoretically unsound views lead her to advocate an unsound practice now. namely, encouraging present-day co-operatives, despite their capitalist character, as a potentially "socialistic" form in the future. She thereby places herself in the same camp as those we criticised in our original article, who she must regard as being right if for the wrong reasons.

Finally, our correspondent has misunderstood our position. We have never said that "the only approach available is the capture of political power". Certainly this is the main goal which the socialist movement must set itself, since until political power has been taken out of capitalist hands the socialist transformation of society cannot be carried out. We note, in passing, that our correspondant too regards winning control of political power as necessary.

There are indeed other things which a considerable number of socialists can do within capitalism apart from the propaganda and electoral activity that any movement seeking to win political control by democratic means must engage in. We have always recognised "the need for the growing socialist movement to formulate its general plans in advance of the capture of political control, so that society might be transformed in a smooth and speedy manner" (as we put it in the Introduction to our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative). This would no doubt involve the socialist movement, and workers generally, preparing programmes of action for immediate implementation at workplaces and in such fields as education and health once political control has been taken out of capitalist hands. Needless to say. today we cannot do much more than say this will be necessary, since the exact details of such plans will have to be left to the time when the socialist movement will be very much stronger than it now is.

Editors.

How do we get there? (2023)

From the November 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a growing realisation among many critics of capitalism that the way to enact radical change in how society is organised is not to recommend or campaign for improvements in or reforms to the way the market system is organised. This is for two reasons. Firstly, the extent to which the capitalist system can be modified to the benefit of the majority, whatever the political setup, is strictly limited by the dictates of the market and its profit imperative. Secondly, policies or action based on the ‘lesser evil’ of reforms inevitably mean putting off the demand for post-capitalism, properly understood as a money-free, non-market society, and effectively pushing it into the background.

Having recognised these ways of acting as pitfalls which, though they may have minor beneficial effects in the way people’s lives are led under capitalism, should be put aside as solutions to most people’s condition of dispossession, disempowerment and alienation, the question is how do we transcend all the false hopes and endless plans for improvements that the ‘in the meantime’ reformists – often with the best of intentions – throw at us?

‘Socialism’ is a difficult word to use in talking about post-monetary society, since it means so many different things to different people. But, defined as a ‘system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community’, as we have done consistently since our establishment in 1904, emphasising that this will mean the end of production for sale with money becoming redundant, gives it not only a clear meaning but also a clear political focus missing from many of the attempts to see post-capitalism as somehow developing outside politics and political action.

These attempts may involve participation in or support for decentralised small-scale communities seeking to put into practice cooperative non-market activity to the extent that the surrounding capitalist reality allows it. They may involve pushing for reforms which they see as steps in the direction of post-monetarism, ‘non-reformist reforms’ as they are sometimes called. They may involve seeing the moneyless society as arising from some form of gradual phased transition over several generations as plans for its operation are laid out incrementally.

The difference does not lie in the aim of establishing a moneyless, non-market, democratically run society of common ownership and collective production for direct use but, more specifically, in how to get there. While not condemning small-scale attempts at cooperative social organisation, even if these are not the solution, we stress the urgent need to promote democratic majority political action at society-wide level, ideally via the ballot box, to win political control as a prerequisite for the majority to be in a position to put into practice, in cooperative and democratic fashion, the precise details of the organisation of a non-market moneyless system of society. Only then will humanity be in control of its destiny.

Howard Moss

Letter: How to get Socialism (1957)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

How to get Socialism

To the Editors of the Socialist Standard.

Sirs,—I like much your invitation of letters from readers. I desire to accept it because I am profoundly dissatisfied with your reply to Sidney Warr, whose address I should like to have seen given by you. Anonymous letters ought to be discouraged.

Mr. Warr will probably have to be content with your “ reply,” will, in fact, be expected to be. He laid himself wide open to a knock-out by his use of that beloved-of- politicians' word, "Reformism.” What Sidney Warr really meant was Evolution. If he had said Evolution, how would you have answered? I hope to find out by using the term myself. How do you get what you term " Socialism ” otherwise than by Evolution?

Incidentally, I object most strongly to your continuous abuse of the word principles. Principles have nothing to do with machinery. Principles are human and concern and govern human conduct. Look at the inhumanness of your reiterated “ownership.” Ownership and morals cannot co-exist. To change society human values must annihilate material valuations. Where is your evidence that you recognise that what is wrong with society is its morals? Where is your recognition of the one and only commandment, Thou shalt not be selfish?

Yours sincerely,

David MacConnell. 

Beech House, Castle Street, 

Bakewell, Derbyshire.

Reply:

Our correspondent objects to anonymous letters: Mr. Warr’s letter on Reformism and Strikes (see September issue) was not anonymous, but we do not publish addresses unless we know that correspondents wish it

We are interested to learn from Mr. MacConnell that Mr. Warr’s letter about reformism was not the letter Mr. Warr really meant to write. According to Mr. MacConnell “what Sidney Warr really meant was Evolution.” (Perhaps we shall now hear from Mr. Warr telling us what Mr. MacConnell‘s letter means.)

We are now asked: “How do you get what you term ’Socialism' otherwise than by Evolution?” As the establishment of Socialism (as distinct from retaining capitalism with “reforms”) involves changing the property basis of society, it can be achieved only through a Socialist majority gaining control of the machinery of government for that purpose. Our correspondent is referred to our Declaration of Principles on another page.

We are not told how “evolution” is supposed to do the job, and incidentally this shows that Mr. MacConnell’s belief that he is Mr. Warr’s interpreter is quite wrong, for Mr. Warr did not put the case that Socialism could be achieved by reforms (or evolution).

Mr. MacConnell is angry about our alleged abuse of the word principles, but gives no example, so we do not know what he has in mind.

He says that “ownership and morals cannot co-exist," which is, of course, absurd. Capitalist morality co-exists with capitalist ownership. And apparently Mr. MacConnell does not really believe what he says, for he wants the morals of present-day society to be changed. Capitalist society cannot have its morality changed if it has none.

We give no evidence that we recognise that what is wrong with society is its morals, because the statement is meaningless. It is like saying that what is wrong with war is the violent way it is conducted.

Our correspondent lays down his one and only commandment: "Thou shaft not be selfish," but does not notice that in a class society it is two-edged. Does it mean that the exploiting class should show their unselfishness by giving up the exploitation of the working class? Or does it mean (as in the view of the exploiting class) that the workers should give up struggling against being exploited?

Editorial Committee

Letters: Civil servants (1983)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civil servants

Dear Editors

Now a regular reader, I find myself in broad agreement with your views. Particularly. I see people’s faith in the money system as being capitalism’s jugular vein. Your position on Right to Work campaigns is also sound. If this were not so, armaments production could be justified as it provides jobs.

However. I found your April article on the power of the Civil Service's permanent officials to be unconvincing. You say that "the ease with which different governments adopt different policies, and the same government goes in for U-turns, shows that government policies are not determined by the permanent officials." Well, as you have pointed out, how “different” are the policies of Labour and Conservative governments? Secondly: surely, U-turns are more likely to be precipitated by the permanent officials, who remain anonymous while government officials face the music.

A. Beckett 

Great Boughton, Chester

Reply

Mr. Beckett holds that it is the Permanent Officials who determine government policies and reversals of policies; which, he thinks, explains why there is no real difference between the policies of Tory and Labour governments.

However it is a basic error to suppose that the capitalist class is a monolithic body having only one interest, that of defending capitalism and opposing socialism, for within that general framework different groups have sectional interests, absolutely vital to themselves. These lead to conflicts fought out with all the resources at their disposal, including stirring up the workers to support one side or the other.

This aspect of capitalism was already noted by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, 1848:

The bourgeoisie finds itself in a constant battle. At first against the aristocracy; later on with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.

The struggle for the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 was not a sham fight. The factory owners wanted cheap food imports as the way to reduce wages, but the agricultural interests saw in it their own near-ruin.

Other struggles between sections with conflicting interests have been between those favouring the gold standard and those opposing it; (in America the anti-gold campaign by Eugene Debs, with his slogan “Shall mankind be crucified upon a cross of gold?” was backed by the silver mining companies); over a low pound exchange rate good for exporters and a high rate good for importers; over entry to the EEC; over Keynesian doctrines and “monetarism”; and between capitalists supporting the nationalisation of particular industries and those opposing it.

According to Mr. Beckett’s theory it was the permanent officials who made the 1945 Labour government nationalise steel; then made the Tories denationalise it; renationalised it under the 1964 Labour Government and made the Thatcher government get a mandate to denationalise all or part of it. (The Labour Party pledged itself to maintain nationalisation in its 1983 programme.)

But this is quite wrong. Labour Party demands for nationalisation all originated in resolutions passed by their conferences and embodied in election programmes. Likewise, all the Tory demands for denationalisation were, first, items in their election programmes. There can be no explanation why permanent officials should behave in this very peculiar way, giving contradictory advice to successive governments.

Of course the permanent officials have not advised governments to introduce socialism but no government has ever wanted, or would have accepted, such advice. If by chance one of them gave that advice a Tory government or a Labour government, both being firmly committed to capitalism, would get rid of that official or, as has happened in some instances when the advice ran completely counter to government policy, transfer the person concerned to a department in which they would no longer be involved in such policy questions.

Editors.

Crackpot Colonels

Dear Editors,

How is the neutralisation of state power to be made effective? In your publications, you say that with the advent of socialism, socialists will predominate throughout society, including the armed forces, which is fair enough as far as it goes. If the armed forces are for the most part socialists, then they will hardly oppose the new order.

But how will the armed forces first become socialists, in the main? Often the workers mistakenly joining the armed forces will be those who wish to preserve the existing social set up. But that’s not the point, after all, most workers, if not actually desiring the status quo. grudgingly accept it as a fact of nature, and I don’t consider that a barrier! The workers in the army etc. will be subject to more intensive indoctrination and greater isolation than the rest of us. This can only impede the spreading of socialist knowledge, so how do they become socialists? Through their families or acquaintances on the outside? Or perhaps socialists (when in sufficient numbers) will overcome their revulsion at being the boot-boys of capital, and enlist to propagate socialist ideas? Though as I understand it. being a member of the SPGB precludes membership of the armed forces (at least it will with a large socialist movement, hence aware capitalist politicians) and certainly vice versa.

Whatever the outcome, the non-socialists will be in a small minority. Fair enough, we will have abolished the state, and as military geezers are taught to obey orders, they should accept the change with no more trouble than a bit of flag-waving which most people wouldn’t particularly care for. But if there is a comparatively large anti-socialist faction remaining in the armed forces, mightn't some crackpot colonel take it into his head to attempt a disruption of the new society?

H T Muirhead

Dymock, Glos. 

(This letter has been slightly shortened — Editors.)

Reply

Let us be quite clear, that a socialist society will not submit to any efforts on the part of a minority to frustrate the will of the majority. Crackpot colonels will be suppressed with whatever persuasion, or force, is necessary.

But how will a minority be able to resist the revolutionary majority? How will they persuade people who have opted for socialism to turn back the clock to the society of war, famine, poverty, the Bomb? What point of social reference will they have, in a society without classes and class privilege? In whose interests will they advocate the abandonment of socialism?

The argument, of course, is that they will try to win their point not through persuasion but through violence. What instruments will be at hand for them to use in this? If violence is to have any hope against the wishes of the majority it must be a social effort, with popular support in its conception, organisation and carrying out. But the act of setting up socialism, by a conscious majority, will deprive it of these very essentials. The armed forces, for example, do not exist in isolation but rely in all senses on the sanction of the rest of society; deprived of that they cannot exist in any effective sense.

Workers join the armed forces for a variety of reasons; nowadays, probably because they are unable to find a job anywhere else. The armed and police forces are not peculiar in their requirement that their members act against working class interests; this happens in many other jobs as well. Although it is impossible to say why workers take up one job or another, we do know that the growth and the spread of socialist ideas affects them all; none of them are immune. The developing strength of the movement to socialism, then, will enfeeble the coercive state forces and finally the revolutionary act of establishing socialism will entail the working class taking over the state machine as the only public power of coercion. No minority will endure against that.

Editors.

Letter: Getting from here (2009)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

  There are good reasons to welcome Rod Shaw’s thoughts on the changeover to socialism (‘The penny drops’, August). One is that attempts so far by socialists to foresee “how the change came” have been far from brilliant. William Morris’s scenario of a Trafalgar Square massacre leading to a popular uprising, etc in News From Nowhere may have been believable when he wrote it in 1890 but is today utterly incredible. The Party’s pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative predicts millions of socialists preparing “programmes of action for immediate implementation once the movement has gained control of the powers and machinery of governments.”

  A second reason for seriously considering Rod’s piece—even if we don’t agree with all of it—is that it is imaginative and inspiring. It combats the negativity of those who claim that socialism is idealistic and against human nature, those who say “It’s a nice idea but…”

  Rod doesn’t underestimate the importance of “taking control of the state machinery from those in power”. But he recognises that socialism, like capitalism, is a whole and complete system: “Well before any official declaration was made, people had started to do what was needed to begin creating the new world.”

  When today we join the Socialist Party we join the world socialist movement; we withdraw support for capitalism even though we have to live in it for the time being; we take the first few faltering steps towards building the socialist future. A few hundred of us make no impression on the dominance of capitalism; a few thousand of us will begin to make an impression. As our numbers grow we will infiltrate and revolutionise the media, the educational bodies, the workplaces, the arts, cultural, scientific, leisure and other worlds.

The hard part is to get from here to the beginning of there…

  In “As Things Are Now” (September) Rod foresees what socialism will be like in just a few ways. We can all find some of what he says likely and acceptable and some unlikely and doubtful. The main thing is that as more of us give up supporting capitalism and start building a socialist world we shall put some flesh on the bones of common ownership, democratic control, production for use and free access.

Stan Parker, 

London SW9

Letter: The Transition Period. (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Fred Montague, M.P., replies to our Criticism.

48, Lucerne Road, Highbury Park, N.5.

August 10, 1928.

To the Editorial Board, the Socialist Standard.

Dear Sirs,

As the next issue of The Social Democrat will be almost entirely a Conference number and it will be impossible for me to comment until later, perhaps you will be able to give me space for a few words upon your interesting statement.

(1) It is true that I hold a fundamentally different view, whether false or not. I do believe that Capitalism in its later stages represents a transition period. Slavery and Feudalism did in similar stages. I fail to see in what way this view conflicts with Marx.

The conception of society as an organism in process of modification does not seem to me to be unphilosophical or contrary to fact. To be Socialists, least of all to belong to the working-class, whether Socialist or not, is not to be outside existing society because Capitalism has not yet come to its natural demise. Workers are this society, and will not be able to make another until economic conditions are ready.

(2) How can it be said that the Capitalist class are in control of political machinery and the armed forces except by consent of the working-class? The workers have political power, and who but the workers compose the armed forces. Why use language reminiscent of “Bastille” psychology and characteristic of the slave complex ? It is unreal rubbish.

(3) I agree that when there is a Socialist majority of an effective kind (remembering that bare majorities can have only bare power) the transition will assume a different character. Of course. But I reject the notion that (apart from possible revolutionary upheaval which, in itself, would be merely political, could not create Socialism by magic, and would probably come, if at all, prematurely) there is some inevitable break of continuity, because the workers vote one way instead of another.

(4) Your reply to Mr. Phillips (par. 3) seems to me to give the S.P.G.B. case away. If Capitalists, for the sake of avoiding “industrial and administrative chaos,” will refrain from blocking the way to Socialism whilst the transition period is taking place after the workers elect a Socialist majority to Parliament, why assume that everything done now to avoid industrial and administrative chaos must necessarily block the way?

(5) A period of transformation means a period, short or long, where one form of society exists in diminishing area side by side with another form in ascending area. A Socialist Government would have to admit the dual fact and legislate for economic stability. The fault of your analogy about Krupps and about war administration is that in those cases there was no change of Capitalist economic machinery or control. You will agree.

The only (though important) difference that crosses on ballot papers will make to economic evolution is that, for the first time the workers will take charge of the evolutionary process and direct existing collectivist tendencies into definitely Socialist channels. Well, we all want that. The difference between us is that you regard the advent of a Socialist Government as an entirely new economic departure, whilst I consider that the conscious awakening of the workers will be, like birth, a stage of existence, not origin in vacuo. I do not believe in special creation.

(6) In answer to Mr. Phillips you say the Capitalists are not prepared to pay any price. That is as true now as it will be when Parliament has a majority of Socialists. They are beginning not to pay the price of competition. They will not pay the price of social services that are not “profitable.” They will let the nation “buy” industries that have ceased to “pay.” All very accurate.

But if a national railroad service is necessary and Capitalists cannot and will not deliver the goods, what is there unsocialistic about nationalising the railways? Is it that national taxation will be burdened with interest on the bonds? Since when has it been “Socialistic” to hold that taxation matters to the workers? I am not interested in Nationalisation on the ground that it will “pay,” but on the ground that, since “Rationalisation” is the only alternative I prefer to have economic machinery in the hands of the Parliament you and I want the workers to control.

Why should not Nationalisation benefit the workers under Capitalism? Unless you hold that the “Iron Law” is a cast-iron law, and wages don’t matter, whose is the fault if public servants of the working-class are not better paid and more secure? I know many cases in the municipal form of the principle where the workers are better off. On the other hand, if no workers can be better off they cannot be worse off, for a real iron law must be pretty rigid at both ends. In which case Nationalisation cannot injure the workers.

(7) Nationalisation, you say, will cause unemployment. More efficiency, less work. Three cheers for inefficiency ! Is that Socialist policy? Good God, does the absence of Nationalisation in the coal industry “find work”? If keeping the workers employed in non-efficient Capitalist concerns instead of setting unemployed men to work to produce new wealth for their own consumption and new demand-power in the nation is Socialist, I have been at sea all my life. Can you say that workers could not insist upon the latter being done and might it not be done before your financial secretary or ours gets buried in the subscriptions of the working class? If not, why not?

One point more. I was not a recruiting agent. I did not ask other people to do even what I thought it proper to do myself.

Yours sincerely,

F. Montague.

Our Reply

(1) Mr. Montague says that “Capitalism” in its later stages represents a transition period,” and he writes of Capitalism’s “natural demise.” This view conflicts both with fact and with the Marxian view of social development. Capitalism, administratively and socially, has always been adjusting itself to developments of new productive methods, and the rise of new sections of the Capitalist class, but this is not transition to Socialism. Capitalism, with ever new adjustments, will go on indefinitely unless and until the working-class decide to terminate it. Waiting for Capitalism to “come to its natural demise” and in the meantime assisting the Capitalists to reform Capitalism is not work for Socialists.

(2) Mr. Montague dismisses as “unreal rubbish” the notion “that the Capitalist class are in control …. except by consent of the working-class.”

This is interesting, but has nothing to do with our case.

Mr. Montague knows perfectly well that we have never denied that the workers consent to Capitalist control and vote for Capitalism at each election.

The point of importance (and this Mr. Montague conveniently ignores) is that the Capitalists are in control, and therefore the reforms they introduce are Capitalist remedies for Capitalist problems.

(3) The very definite break of continuity after the workers gain control for Socialism will be that, for the first time, an attack will be made on the private property basis of Capitalism.

Was there not a definite break of continuity in the Southern States of the U.S.A. when slavery was made illegal and replaced by wage-labour?

(4) We have not said that everything done by the Capitalist class “must necessarily block the way” to Socialism. What we have said is that while the Capitalist class are in control they will decide what shall and shall not be done. The pressure of their system, not the pleadings of “Labour” representatives, compels them to actions which sometimes work out to our benefit as well as theirs.

(5) It has already been pointed out that Socialism is international, and the conception of Socialism and Capitalism existing in “areas” “side by side,” is quite foreign to Socialism.

If the change over from the production of munitions to the production of machinery can be carried out by the workers under Capitalism, we still fail to see why similar transformations should present special difficulty after the workers are in control. Mr. Montague fails to enlighten us.

We quite agree that the awakening of the workers is a gradual process, but their conquest of power is equally obviously a definite new departure.

(6) We asked Mr. Montague to defend his support of Nationalisation, which he agreed is “only another form of Capitalism.” Our opposition was stated to be on the ground that “it will not benefit the workers under Capitalism.” Instead of showing that the workers would be better off under Nationalisation, Mr. Montague first says that he prefers to have “economic machinery in the hands of the Parliament you and I want the workers to control”—but the point is that the workers at present do not control Parliament, and the proposition Mr. Montague has to defend is the advocacy of State-ownership by a Parliament in control of Capitalist parties.

He then uses the flimsy argument that he knows some municipal employees who are “better off.” As he gives no particulars, nor any explanation of his basis of comparison, no answer is possible. I would, however, refer him to the explicit statement of the Civil Service Industrial Court which last year arbitrated on Post Office wages, that it accepted the principle of basing wage rates on those paid in outside industry.

Lastly, does Mr. Montague really think that we ought to support any reform the Capitalists choose to advocate, provided it is not positively harmful to the workers? If Nationalisation leaves the workers no better and no worse off than now, that is a sufficient reason not to waste efforts on it; efforts which might be devoted to the achievement of Socialism.

(7) Mr. Montague asks if “inefficiency” is Socialist policy. It is not. Have we ever said it was?

What he persistently fails to recognise is that the economic evils of the working-class are due to their wage-slave position in Capitalist society. Mr. Montague misleads the workers by persuading them to believe that Nationalisation will solve their problems. Our alternative to advocating either private or State Capitalism is to advocate Socialism. Mr. Montague’s alternative to advocating private Capitalism is advocating State Capitalism, coupled with such nonsense as “setting unemployed men to work to produce new wealth for their own consumption,” as if such a thing were possible with the Capitalist class still in control of the means of production.

Edgar Hardcastle

The penny drops (2009)

From the August 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

The second part of “Then and Now – how we live and how we used to live” look backs from a future time at the changeover to socialism.

Who would have thought that humanity could organise so quickly to do away with the tangled mess that their money-based world had created? The campaign for a world community of equals became a mass movement in seemingly no time at all. Once the idea of abolishing money and sweeping away the fetters associated with it had caught the collective imagination, all notions that human beings were too selfish or stupid to establish a communal world without political leaders very quickly came to be seen as absurd.

 The growing dissatisfaction with leaders who had no answer to the environmental and political problems besetting the planet at last gave rise to a general desire to produce solutions rather than simply protest. Campaigners against the individual problems created by capitalism began to realise that its worst excesses could not be got rid of without sweeping it away in its entirety; corruption in political and economic life came to be seen not as a problem in itself but as an inevitable result of a world dominated by the need to make money for the rich and powerful minority. Even many sceptics admitted that the new world being proposed could not possibly be worse than what they had – so why not give it a try?

 It became evident that the capitalist class was fast losing its control of the media. Newspaper articles, television programmes, radio and internet discussion forums became increasingly dominated by campaigns for concerted action to sweep away the world of money and governments.  Famous people, and even some of the more enlightened world leaders, began to give their support to the movement, willing to use their skills as delegates and spokesmen although realising that their own positions as revered celebrities or political leaders would soon be redundant.

 As the global movement grew, so the need was addressed for global co-ordination, and mechanisms were put into place for bringing in the new world society and taking control of the state machinery from those in power. Given that most state employees, including members of the police and the military, had by this time more or less come over to the socialist cause anyway, resistance and violence in this process were fortunately minimal.

 Institutions such as the United Nations, the International Red Cross and national parliaments were adapted for the broader, more democratic requirements of a free world community. There was of course no power-based agenda, nobody with greater voting force than anyone else, no rival economic interests.

 Well before any official declaration was made, people had started to do what was needed to begin creating the new world. It’s amazing how easily most things fell into place; local life soon became largely self-administering and wider co-ordination soon ensured that the world’s land, factories and natural resources came under full democratic control and started to be utilised as effectively as possible to satisfy needs directly. Local plans were devised to make the best alternative uses of buildings that no longer served their original purpose, such as banks, munitions factories and stately homes.

 The first major task was an immediate massive movement of food and other essentials to the areas that needed them, making use of what was left of the old army and police as a core with a not inconsiderable complement of additional helpers. The same was done to ensure that the world’s homeless were provided with secure, comfortable housing – a largely logistical exercise, give the abundance of homes that had been kept empty under capitalism. Communities able to grow their own food very quickly became self sufficient: food surpluses were distributed elsewhere to areas of need without any requirement to pass through that asphyxiating intermediary known as the market.

 Some people were convinced that the massive changes taking place all around were God’s will and continued harmlessly to attend their church services. Not everybody understood or welcomed the move to a new world, however, and some thought it wouldn’t last. I would hear people say, “it’s free, get it while you can, they’ll start charging again soon”. In the short term, others took the absence of political leaders or a coercive police force as an excuse to run riot; many of those who had lived a life of violence and crime continued for a time to exhibit disruptive and antisocial behaviour and had to be restrained, in as humane a way as possible, by their local communities.

 Campaigns to keep money sprang up, led mainly by diehard capitalists and their supporters suddenly left with no-one to boss and bully; some people even still used money in their own local groups believing it to be a measure of how hard you’ve worked and hence how much you deserve – something which had never been true in capitalism.

 For a time the old “capitalist” lifestyles and habits continued, but without money in the equation. People still talked of going to work, going on their holidays, getting married . . . and this is what they did. In some quarters, old habits died hard.

 Some people chose not to do anything much at all, as far as I could see . . . perhaps deeply traumatised by the lives they used to lead, and relieved not to have to “earn a living” any more, they were content to live out their days in a state of near vegetation.  Fair enough, I said, leave them alone, it’s a more than adequate price for the new society to pay, and surely it won’t last.

 And what of the capitalists themselves, those individuals who had dominated the world of money for so long? Where there was no need to interfere, they were left alone. For the most part, they had been as much trapped by circumstances as the old working class, and most of them, accepting that their time was over, willingly surrendered their factories and estates to the common good and helped to form the new world. Not that they had much choice.

 In many ways, these first years were a transitional phase but not in the way Marx visualised it. Within a generation, attitudes and behaviour would be very different.

Rod Shaw

The Transition to Socialism: A Reply to Mr. Fred Montague, M.P. (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Montague, Labour M.P. and editor of the “Social-Democrat,” asks us a number of questions in the June issue of that journal. By an oversight our reply was omitted from the July Socialist Standard. We give below in full the paragraphs which explain Mr. Montague’s point of view.

(1) Questions for "the Socialist Standard." 

Discussing the subject of Communist doctrine, “The Socialist Standard” describes the statement that “The workers must destroy the capitalist state and set up their own workers’ state” as dangerous romanticism, leading not to Socialism but to the shambles. We agree. And we agree also with “The Socialist Standard” that it is nonsense to say that Marx and Engels gave support to the advocacy of violence beyond what appears in a purple passage or two to “round off an occasional peroration.” But if the idea of the destroying of the capitalist state and setting up a workers’ state is dangerous romanticism, what is the idea of leaving transitional politics alone ? Of two things one, surely ! Either revolutionary overthrow, which seems to agree with the Communist position, or transformation of such a character that at no point is the stability of society threatened. As a matter of interest and not of mere debate we invite “The Socialist Standard” to examine this point.

(2) The Logic of It. 

Does any Socialist worthy of the appellation “scientific” imagine that capitalism will end one Saturday night and Socialism begin one Monday morning? Members of the S.P.G.B. are strong on logic. Will any responsible member answer the following points? Suppose it is agreed, as we agree, that nationalisation is only another form of capitalism, and that social reform, as we do not altogether agree, is not worth troubling about. Imagine that a satisfactory majority of class-conscious Socialists are one day returned to Parliament. Socialism is declared by the representatives of the working class. What then? Do the workers carry on and, if so, where and how? For instance, will goods be made for export and trade carried on in automatic continuation of the old machinery until Parliament creates an entirely new organisation? Is it seriously contended that no period of transition will be required, and if it is not so contended is it unreasonable to ask what is to guarantee the efficiency of that diminishing area of production still in the hands of none too sympathetic capitalists during that period?

(3) What the change means.

Nationalisation is only another form of capitalism, but transition means the same thing whoever may be in charge of Parliament. It is not a question of whether the change from one system to another is to be slow or rapid. If the machinery of production, distribution, and foreign exchange is to be taken over as a going concern with a view to socialisation an enormous amount of complicated administrative work will have to be done afterwards, involving, for one thing, tremendous displacement of labour in the closing down of parasitical trades. It may seem a small point, but are shopkeepers, small as well as large, to carry on as private capitalists until a Socialist system of co-operative distribution has been created? Or is it proposed to have the plans for socialisation ready beforehand ? Who will have these plans, and how can they be prepared beforehand without participation in and knowledge of pre-Socialist administration? It is not to the point that workers run the capitalist system now. That might be an argument for syndicalists, but it is not one for Socialists. Scientific Socialism means, besides economic and historical theory, Socialism scientifically applied, otherwise we might as well leave the workers to run the capitalist system. And as this tremendous piece of work is being done, are capitalists going to oblige by running things for our convenience whilst awaiting execution?

(4) Wealth of a kind.

One point that came out of the Maxton-Fitzgerald debate is also worth a little extra consideration. “Under Socialism” wealth will be so plentiful that monetary system will be unnecessary and would be absurd, therefore Socialism cannot mean equal remuneration or socialisation of the means of exchange. We have no quarrel with that, but go easy about the plentiful supply. Plentiful supply of what? Iron girders, aluminium pots, baby’s basinettes, or Brummagem idols for Ballabaloo? All these things come into the term “wealth,” and are included in potential production. Have we a likely plentiful supply of food? Do necessary raw materials materialise like the famous Katie King? Are cotton, wool, leather, wood and tobacco available “like water” ? With more countries in the world than ever producing what they want for themselves this repudiation of “exchange“ may acquire a sinister meaning. The fact is, the “plentiful supply” of means of enjoyment is child’s talk unless we are sure of exchanging our goods for the food and raw materials we want. There is plenty in the world, we know, but is non-transitional Socialism possible the world over at the same moment? If not, what allowances and modifications are admissible, and if capitalistic exceptions are to be made in any way, what logical objection is there to nationalisation? “

Our Reply.

What is the Transition Period?

(1) Although Mr. Montague asks a number of questions, most of the points of difference between him and us can be traced back to his use of the term “transition period.” What is the transition period? We live now in a capitalist economic system with the capitalist class in control of the political machinery and the armed forces of society. They make laws and enforce them, laws which are always framed within the limits imposed by the nature of capitalism and (so far as these limits permit) always directly in their interests as capitalists. When, and not before, the working-class, organised for Socialism, have gained control of the political machinery, the transition period will begin. The working-class cannot begin the work of abolishing the present private property basis of society until they have obtained political control from the capitalist class.

Mr. Montague holds a fundamentally different, and as we consider, a fundamentally false view. He asks (paragraph 1) : “What is the idea of leaving transitional politics alone?”

Our answer is plain. We shall not leave “transitional politics” alone, but what Mr. Montague has in mind as “transitional politics” are merely the politics of capitalist reform now carried on by him and his party. We are not in the “transition period,” the workers have not obtained political control, and the advocacy of nationalisation and other reforms is not work towards Socialism or towards the capture of political control for Socialism.

(2) Mr. Montague here agrees that “nationalisation is only another form of capitalism.” It is then for him to justify his support of nationalisation. He must be quite familiar with our opposition based on the contention that it will not benefit the working-class under capitalism.

Mr. Montague’s further questions about foreign trade are presumably based on the assumption that Socialism can be established in Great Britain alone. It certainly cannot. Socialism will be international, and cannot be other than international.

(3) Most of the points in this paragraph depend on Mr. Montague’s view of “transitional politics,“ and are answered above in my reply to his first paragraph. We deny his statement that “transition means the same thing whoever may be in charge of Parliament.” Socialists do not deny or underestimate the difficulties of the economic transformation to Socialism, but the difficulties of the period after the conquest of power have no relation to the policy of supporting capitalist reforms before the conquest of power.

(4) Here Mr. Montague deals further with the economic problems which will face the workers after they have obtained political control. They will, for instance, have to cease the production of articles no longer required, and produce instead larger quantities of certain goods the supply of which is at present too small. Similar problems were solved in 1914. Mr. Montague (who actively participated as private, as First Lieutenant and as recruiting agent) will know how the Government withdrew men from industrial production in order to build up a great machine for slaughtering their fellow-workers in other countries. They also solved the problem of turning out munitions and then, in 1919, they reversed the process when the weapons of destruction were no longer needed in such huge quantities.

Krupp did not personally conduct the similar change-over in Germany from howitzers to harvesters in the factories bearing his name; the change-over, like capitalist production and distribution in general, was carried through by workers. We cannot, therefore, see why Mr. Montague should doubt our ability to do for ourselves what we now do for the capitalists.

Mr. Montague’s other difficulties arise again out of his two misconceptions : first, that the transition to Socialism is already going on while the capitalists are still in power, and secondly, that Socialism can be introduced on a national basis, requiring capitalist trade to continue between the national groups. Under Socialism there will be no trade, home or foreign, individual or collective.

Edgar Hardcastle