A. E. JACOMB’S CASE AGAINST THE SOCIALIST PARTY 1940 “ While the S.P.G.B. is in favour of democratic methods, this is nevertheless a secondary consideration. It is fundamental to the progress of the Socialist movement, that the S.P.G.B, should maintain its absolute independence, . , . " (“ The S.P.G.B. and the Spanish Civil War," 1936.) “ No interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood.” (The S.P.G.B. “ War Manifesto,” just prior to the outbreak of the present war.) “ The Party position is that democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it." (Mr. Hardy at the General Meeting of the Party, April, 1942. The statement was not contradicted.) The first of these statements recognised some value in democracy, but declared it to be secondary to independence, and on this ground the Party refused to endorse the Spanish democrats’ struggle to maintain their democratic regime. The second predicated either that democracy was not threatened, or that it was not a working-class interest. The third was advanced as a repudiation of the others, which had proved indefensible. At bottom, however, this repudiation was mere feigning : an expedient to escape from the embarrassment, of the two previous positions. The underlying influence in' shaping the Party's attitude to the international situation is the hostility clause of the Declaration of Principles, from which independence is inferred. Let us see what are the relative positions of independence and democracy in the Class Struggle. Democracy is that social system where sovereign power is in the hands of the people—a society where the people rule. This ruling power is political power, and is conferred by preponderance at the ballot-box. It is not the right to combine, or the right of expression, which makes democracy, but the popular franchise. Democracy never appears until the people have political power, until the workers, as the major portion of the community, become the ruling class. That the workers elect their masters to run the country does not falsify the above assertions. The workers elect their capitalist bosses to run capitalism because they believe in capitalism and want it. So doing, they prove, not their political impotence, but their political ignorance. Power derives from the workers in every democracy, and the moment it ceases to do so democracy is dead." “The day of the barricade passed away upwards of fifty years ago.” The S.P.G.B. and the Spanish Civil War,”) But it was not the development of the means of oppression which out-dated it, but the emergence of democracy. So long as there is no alternative in view, men’s minds will turn to insurrection, however hopeless it may be. Democracy offers an alternative means to force—the ballot; alternative, that is, up to a point. Force ultimately must be the arbiter. Democracy opens up a new vista to the working class. Socialist parties can precede democracy, but they cannot have the character demanded by working-class interests when the workers have attained political power. The new situation requires the organisation of the working class in a political army as segregated from and hostile to the political parties of the capitalist class as are the armies of two capitalist states at war with each other. The workers must be organised politically on class lines. The setting up of such a line of demarcation, however, is contingent upon certain conditions. The issue must be clear, and the issue can only be clear when there is no longer, in the whole political field, any matter which involves the interests of both classes. Democracy produces these conditions. It gives the workers every requisite for the achievement of their freedom, hence they have no need to seek reforms and have no need to compromise in order to get reforms. They can organise by grace of the right of combination, and proselytize because of the light of expression, and can rally the workers to the ballot box inasmuch as they have the franchise. If any of these rights was missing the political party of the workers would have to struggle to obtain it: they would then be reformist, and could not be independent of or hostile to other forces working for the same reforms. It is only because all necessary reforms have been won by reformers, and democracy has in consequence become a perfect, political instrument for working-class political ends, that it is possible to organise the workers in a political party on non-reform, independent, hostile, class lines. The S.P.G.B. is what it is because of its characteristics. Those characteristics, which make it different from all other parties, are possible only under a democratic Constitution. Only two ways of gaining working-class emancipation present themselves to the minds of reasonable men —the method of insurrection and the road of political action. The founders of the S.P.G.B. rejected the former, and built upon the foundation of the democratic Constitution, that is, they set up an organisation which proposed to carry on its operations within the legal framework of the Constitution—a Constitutional political party. They could do this because the Constitution afforded them all they required for prosecuting their object. It provided not only the means for carrying on the Class Struggle on class lines, but the means for ending it in working-class victory. The S.P.G.B. could be non-reform, because no further reform was necessary for the struggle ; it could be independent because it was non-reform ; it could be hostile to all other parties because it was independent. It is clear from all this that the whole set-up of the Socialist Party is based upon democracy, and therefore that it is independence which is secondary, and not democracy. The Party must maintain “its absolute independence,” says the document- quoted before. This attempt to lift independence into the realm of the absolute is ridiculous. There is no such thing as an absolute political principle— they are all conditional, all expedients. Political principles are simply guides to action, and since action must always be determined by conditions, and conditions are not stable, political principles cannot be static. They must conform to changing conditions, or become false guides. But the term independence itself calls for circumscription. It does not appear in your Declaration of Principles. Hostility is enjoined, and independence is only inferred from that. But since it is inferred from hostility it follows that only that quality of independence which expresses itself in hostility can be inferred. There is no warrant for a sterile, passive, stand-off sort of independence akin to a fit of sulks. The criterion to which independence must always be submitted is, can it express itself in active hostility? If it cannot, then it lies outside the implication of the D. of P., and can claim no support from its authority. The D. of P. of the S.P.G.B. defines the limits of validity of the principle of hostility, and therefore of independence. Hostility is not imposed on the grounds of class, but of conflicting interests. To put it on the basis of class is to assume that the political interests of the two classes can under no conceivable circumstance, and in no degree, concur—which is absurd! Where the interests of two parties run concurrently, one party cannot pursue its interest without equally forwarding that of the other nor can one oppose the efforts of the other to prosecute its interest without in exactly equal measure damaging its own. Therefore, where it is proven that there exists unity of interest between the classes the attempt to maintain hostility or the independence it infers becomes unsound, and hence detrimental to the interest of the party concerned. It is common among S.P. members to try to obscure the simple logic of this with talk of “strange bedfellows” and “suspending the Class Struggle,” which sound all right, but are mere sophisms. The choice is between bedfellows of like interests and bedfellows of antagonistic interests; and as for “suspending the Class Struggle,” support of working-class interests can never be that. Marx and Engels knew as much about the Class Struggle as quite a sprinkling of the members of the S.P.G.B. but when they advocated certain reforms in the “Communist Manifesto” they did not regard that as its suspension. The stock answer to this is that the position has changed because those reforms have been attained. Of course it has, and for that reason; and by the same token when any of those reforms are in jeopardy the pre-Communist Manifesto situation is restored. Marx and Engels gave in advance the answer to those who speak of “strange bedfellows” and “suspending the Class Struggle’’ when they told the workers that there was no need to hide their general antagonism to the capitalists because they pressed them for reforms. Since in embracing the position that democracy cannot be defended by force my opponents abandon the claim that democracy is not a working-class interest, there is no need to labour the point. But how about the direct statement in the position that democracy cannot he defended by fighting for it? Democracy, being not only the means for working-class emancipation, but a means for working-class exploitation, has a dual interest. It is of concern to those who exploit under it no less than those to whom it is the instrument for ending exploitation. The continuity of the democratic system is therefore the present interest of both the working class and the capitalist class. The threat to democracy unifies their interests on this point. Not only does the S.P.G.B. position that democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it deny by implication that it is being so defended, but many members directly deny that the democratic Allied States are fighting for democracy. They cannot assimilate the idea that the capitalists are fighting for democracy because it happens to be the system of exploitation which suits them at present. Perhaps they have taken to heart the piece of Solomonic wisdom which enriched a past Conference Agenda Paper to the effect that in considering any proposition the first thing to be determined is, Is it intended to forward the Socialist Movement? The second is, Will it do so? It may be due to this precious piece of nonsense that the S.P.G.B. have got stuck into the bog of motive and cannot get beyond it on to the question of practical results. It does not matter a tinker’s curse what are the motives of the capitalists in fighting to preserve democracy. The cogent fact is that their war effort is all that stands between democracy and its destruction. If my opponents’ claim is that democracy cannot be successfully defended by fighting for it, they are assuming the mantle of Old Moore, with the disadvantage that they are mortgaging their future against their success in the idle of prophet. If democracy cannot he defended by force and yet is to be the means of overthrowing capitalism, presumably it is in the S.P.G.B. noddle that the vote divorced from force is to be the lever. This is to invest the vote with powers not its own. The Party pamphlet “Socialism” says: "At one time men supported their interests by force of arms. Gradually it was recognised that, other things being equal, power rests with numbers. From this to the idea that those who possess militant power can express it just as effectively and much more conveniently by a vote as by a blow is but a step. A vote, it is thus seen, is . . . very similar to a bank-note. A bank-note of itself is practically valueless. It derives its ‘bank-note, value’ entirely from the public confidence that it has gold at the back of it. Where any doubt exists as to this the fact is indicated in the depreciation of the paper money. Exactly so with the vote." The vote, then, derives its value from the militant power behind it. It is valueless unless it can be defended by force. Ergo, those who continue to publish the above and urge the workers to rely upon the ballot, and at the same time declare that this thing which is so dependent upon force cannot be defended by force, must have a tile loose. Anyway, even if the vote had the miraculous power some attribute to it, it would still be contingent for its use to the working class upon the continuity of democracy. The Party endeavour to meet this point by claiming that the capitalists cannot “knock a cog out of the system” without the system collapsing, and urging that even if they temporarily abrogated democracy they would, in their own interests, be compelled to re-institute it. That the democratic Allies might, if they win the war, find it necessary to suspend democracy is a profound discovery resulting from my opponents’ “study of the results of modern war’’—a study they have repeatedly said : “Jacomb shows no evidence of having engaged in.” But what reason can be assigned for the victorious capitalists wishing to suppress democracy except that they are afraid of it? And what signs do my friends discern that they are afraid of it? And what sort of an argument is it that democracy must be abandoned now because the capitalists might attempt to destroy it at some future date! As to the indispensability of democracy to the capitalists, your D. of P. involves the refutation of this. It propounds the destruction of the capitalists as such through the medium of democracy. The necessary consequence is that before the S.P.G.B. objective can be achieved, the master class will he faced with the alternative of either destroying democracy or being destroyed by it. If it be granted that democracy is essential to capitalism, it certainly is not necessary to exploitation; and all Class Struggle history teaches us that the exploiters would prefer to exploit under any system, democratic or otherwise, rather than cease to exploit at all. The so-called need for the capitalists to have some means of knowing what the working class are thinking end the rest of it, only exists under democracy. There is never much doubt what the submerged are thinking under repression, and my opponents themselves have summed up the situation in their declaration that the day of the barricade passed away upwards of fifty years ago. But it would be interesting to know what democracy would “collapse” into if, as “the result of modern war,” the capitalists did “knock a cog or two” out of the system. If S.P.G.B. principles are well-founded the exploiters’ problem cannot be solved by temporary suppression or modification, of the system. That would still leave the Socialist objective an unaccomplished proposition, and the threat to the capitalists recurrent. In the end the position indicated must arise. Democracy is a necessary result of the exploitation or free wage-labour. It arises partly from the needs of the exploiting class, and partly from the fact that the workers stand in the economic category of commodity-owners, owning their labour-power. Every community based on wage-labour must, given continuity, emerge as a democratic corporation. The only way. therefore, for the capitalists to solve their problem is to remove the workers from their economic status of commodity-owners—that is, by reducing them to slavery. This is no new discovery: the Party has always recognised that the Class Struggle must terminate in the triumph of the workers or their descent into slavery. That the Fascists and Nazis early realised the incompatibility of wage-labour with a non-democratic system is shown by the fact that among their earliest acts was to herd the workers into “unions” with State-appointed officials, fixed "wages," and under a strike ban. Such pay is not wages in the economic sense, but the ration of slaves. In a letter rejecting an article of mine your Ed. Com., with the concurrence of the E.C., said : “ If your contention is correct, the workers can never free themselves anywhere because the power behind the machine gun can always withdraw all democratic rights, and then according to you the workers would be helpless everywhere.” I retorted that it was not my contention (which was that democracy must be supported because, once lost, it could not be recovered) which put the workers in a hopeless position, but their affirmation regarding the power behind the gun which did so. At the April Party Meeting, Hardy denied that this latter thesis was theirs, and said that it was mine. The reader has a correct transcript of the passage before him, and can judge who was lying. Anyway, my opponents cannot deny that the conclusion was theirs. They have affirmed that, granted that once lost democracy cannot be regained, and granted that the power behind the machine-gun can smash democracy al will, the workers can never free themselves anywhere. Immediately after denying the fatherhood of the above thesis Hardy said : “Jacomb does not understand the Party position : it is that democracy cannot he defended by fighting for it.” Nobody contradicted him. If democracy cannot, be defended by force then the power behind the machine-gun can (unless there is some other way of defending democracy) withdraw all democratic lights at will. If in these circumstances democracy, once lost, cannot be recovered, then the S.P. must accept their own conclusion that the workers can never free themselves. The only escape for my opponents is to show that either of the premises are unsound. They can have as many shies as they like. “When it” (the S.P.G.B) “becomes a large minority of the working class it will be in a position to do a great deal to prevent the formation of Lib.-Lab. or Popular Front Governments . . . the thing which helps to make democracy unpopular and to provoke reaction, Fascism and armed revolt,” says my opponents (“ the S.P.G.B. and the Spanish Civil War ”), utterly oblivious of the fact that a flourishing Socialist movement could provoke reaction, Fascism and armed revolt. With the S.P.G.B. a large minority of the working class, shouting from the housetops doom to the capitalists, it would not be the revolutionaries the masters would be afraid' of, but the Popular Front! Since the above quotation was part of the “clarification” of the Party position to the Spanish Civil War, it was presumably meant to convey the idea that Franco was the expression of the unpopularity of democracy in Spain; which would account for the way the people flocked to his standard and gave him such an easy victory—with the aid of the Germans, the Italians, the British non-intervention, and the S.P.G.B.! I have shown that the capitalists will be driven to attempt the suppression of democracy when they are sufficiently afraid of it. When will that be? One thing is certain: it will be before the working class become the power behind the machine-gun. Since the workers must make their bid for control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, at no distant date after they have achieved a parliamentary majority, the clash must come before the proletariate is more than a class-conscious majority—that is, long before it is 100 per cent, class-conscious. But it is very likely indeed to come quite a while before this. The capitalists know, if the S.P.G.B. do not, that Lib-Lab and Popular Front movements are not retrograde, but that they are in the natural line of working-class advance. The only way in which the S.P.G.B., " when it becomes a large minority of the working class,” can prevent the formation of Lib-Lab and Pop. Front governments is by converting their elements to Socialism. The fact that they have become “ a large minority of the working class ” will show the capitalists that they are doing this, and they will be afraid, and the blow will fall. Is the S.P.G.B. then going to stand on Its independence because an unclass-conscious majority of workers are resisting the threat to their freedom and the Party must be hostile ? The Spanish Civil War document I have so often quoted says the Party must maintain its absolute independence because “only so can we hope to convince the workers that all kinds of reformism are useless for the purpose of achieving Socialism.” This is balderdash, for one must first convince the workers of the uselessness of reforms before one can get them to accept Independence. All that independence can do is to express the S.P.G.B.’s belief in the uselessness of reform, for the purpose of achieving Socialism, and, by the same token, all that independence can do in the case of a threat to democracy is to express the S.P.G.B.'s belief that democracy is useless for the purpose of achieving Socialism ! The propugners of absolute independence make use of the Russian bogey to support their attitude. They ask could Socialists “ take up arms to suppress a Communist rebellion, as for example the Communist revolt against the Kerensky Government in 1917,” and assuming the answer to be “no,” argue that therefore democracy cannot be defended as a principle. They also lose no opportunity of dragging Russia in by the scruff of the neck, and lumping it down by the side of Nazism and Fascism under the old adage concerning the making of fish of one and fowl of the other. And as these tactics impress many, I will deal with the arguments here. A political principle is a rule of action or conduct accepted as correct in given circumstances. When my opponents argue (as they did in the “Spanish Civil War” statement) that the case of helping the Spanish government, and the Kerensky government, to defend democracy would be the same, they lose sight of the difference between Fascism and Communism. The very fact that they said “Of course we want the (Spanish) democrats to win,” and at the same time assumed the unthinkability of favouring the Kerensky lot, shows plainly enough that even they were conscious of a difference ; and it is on this difference that they rely in adducing what they regard as parallel cases. If the cases were parallel my opponents would have been able to say “Of course we want Kerensky to win,” but did they ? If the cases were parallel one of those most responsible for the statement that the Spanish democratic government was a “government whose very existence we condemn because ... it was undermining democracy,” might have felt called upon to send money to the Kerensky folk, as another government which we condemn—as he did to the Spanish Govt. (And, incidentally, what would that member's position be if he sent financial assistance to any British government whom “we” condemn ?) The question of supporting democracy does not turn on “ the need to avoid the suppression of working-class and Socialist organisations and propaganda,” but on whether those things are in line with working-class interests. Defence of democracy can no more be elevated into the realms of absolute principles than can independence. Democracy can be defended, as a principle where conditions are suitable, but, like every political principle, support for it is also expediency. The true Marxist is a realist, and does not cling to democracy because it is democracy, but because it is a means to an end. If that end can be attained more quickly by other means, then democracy loses its claim. The fact (if it is a fact) that, the Bolsheviks once in power suppress free speech and other opposition therefore, cannot of itself be condemned. The salient point is, what is their objective 7 Much nonsense is talked about the Soviet system, among which is the complacent platitude: “ You can’t force Socialism on an unwilling majority.” This is as true and as untrue as would be the statement: “You can't force capitalism on an unwilling majority,” and carries the logical corollary that Socialism or capitalism may depend upon a majority of one! What warrant is there for the assumption that 49 per cent of the people cannot impose Socialism and 51 per cent can? Given adequate militant power, capitalism, Nazism, Socialism, or any other “ ism ” can be forced upon, a people provided material conditions are congruent. Theoretically, the conditions for Socialist life can be developed under Socialism, but they cannot under capitalism. All capitalism can do is to prepare society for the revolution. The capitalist system, as we understand it, can only produce the rations of a wage-slave class plus the luxury of the masters. This point reached production ceases. Hence, there must be an interregnum in which problems perhaps not dissimilar to those facing the Soviets will face the Socialists. Whether the Russian experiment is developing along the lines they claim is, of course, a question of fact and not of theory, and my opponents have the advantage of easy acceptation of “ facts" they want to accept. “ He is a disillusioned Communist ” goes further with them than it does with me, for both Hitler and Mussolini are disillusioned Socialists! But it is curious that those who say that capitalist democracy is only nominal, not worth fighting for, and the rest of it, jibe at the Russians because they have no use for it. EPILOGUE That is my case. Limitations of space confine me to but few words more, but these shall be to the point. The position that democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it is contradictory to the original position that democracy cannot be defended at the expense of independence. Therefore, if the Party was right then it is wrong now, and if it is right now it was wrong then? But if the present position has sincerity behind it, it follows that the abandonment of the first position is an abandonment of the hostility principle as far as the present war is concerned. If this is not so, if, in fact, the repugnance to " strange bedfellows ” is still the operating motive behind the S.P.G.B. attitude to the war, then the present position is nothing but a facade erected to camouflage a position incapable of defence. Will this position, indefensible now, become more defensible after the war? Will you, then, be able to go to the proletariate and claim their allegiance to a Party which bases its activities on a democracy which it declares cannot be defended by force, and is therefore only nominal, non-existent, except in name? On the other hand, if the Party position genuinely is that the S.P.G.B. does not associate itself with the war effort because it holds that democracy cannot be defended by force, where will you stand if events prove that it has been defended by force—and successfully defended at that? How will you then explain your desertion of democracy on the pusillanimous plea that it could not be defended ? The fact is that the Party, in trying to carry it's hostility into a situation where it could only react against working-class interests, because those interests were in line with the interests of the capitalists, has been guilty of a crime against the revolutionary Cause. Judged by its own basic principles, which affirm the essential need of democracy for working-class emancipation, it has stultified itself and dragged the name of Socialism in the mud. Two ways of repairing the damage only are open : For you to frankly admit your error and to recognise and associate yourself with the war effort, or for me to expose you to the world in the name of Socialism. The choice, friends, is yours, A. E. JACOMB. Forest Poultry Farm, Collier Row, Essex,
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