Dear Comrade Richards: Thank you very much for your email of November 28 and what you had to say about the interest one SLP member has expressed in exploring a possible connection with the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) and its “World Socialist Movement.” I am very familiar with the SPGB’s statement on Socialist Industrial Unionism—and with most other SPGB statements on unionism in general—but I cannot be sure how familiar other Party members might be with those statements. I entirely agree with you that the SLP and SPGB have virtually nothing in common. The SPGB’s view of socialism and how to achieve it are completely at odds with those of the SLP. The SPGB is similar to the “Socialist” Party here in the United States, in that both are “pure-and-simple” political parties. While the SPGB differs from the SP, in that the former professes to deplore reformism while the latter embraces it, neither have any clear concept of what socialism is or how to organize to establish it, and, once established, how it will operate. It is not enough to say that their idea of socialism is a “democratic society” that differs entirely from the Soviet model; it is also necessary to have some concept of how that democracy will be organized and conduct itself. Although the SPGB also professes a rejection of the political state, and occasionally dings Daniel De Leon for sometimes having used the phrase “industrial state,” it should be obvious that its call for workers to assume control of the state without having a substitute such as the SIU in place, i.e., for leaving the question of how the working class must organize to defend itself from counterrevolutionary efforts or a misuse of state power once in “socialist” hands, is an insurmountable flaw. While it may be true that the IWW has more similarities to the SLP than the SPGB, National Office efforts to stimulate an in-depth discussion of that organization several years ago came to nothing. That’s too bad, not because I held out any hope of developing an argument that might swing the IWW over to the SLP point of view, but because it would have helped to clarify our own position in this high-tech age of massive worker displacement, the “globalization” of modern industry and the consequential creation of a global wage-laboring working class. As for the Technocrats, theirs has always been an elitist outlook that, as Wikipedia quite accurately describes it, would place “engineers, scientists, and other technical experts...in control of decision making in their respective fields.” That is a far cry from the industrial democracy that the SLP is striving after. Nonetheless, all these movements, organizations and groups are made up of people, and where there are thoughtful and concerned people striving for a better future for humankind there is, or should be, room for dialogue. And while the SLP staked out its position in relation to the other groups and causes long, long ago, keeping our knowledge of them up-to-date so as to recognize the points where we continue to diverge or where and how our developing views may uncover points where we start to converge is a worthy effort. With best wishes for the holiday season and the coming New Year, I remain Fraternally yours, ROBERT BILLS National Secretary
