| REVOLUTIONARY PARLIAMENTARISM |
|
| We now turn to a more detailed examination of
the precise meanings attached to ‘parliamentarism’ and ‘anti-parliamentarism’
during the period covered by the preceding chronological account. After
1917 the anti-parliamentary communists’ efforts to define their opposition
to parliamentarism were mainly provoked by the Bolsheviks’ advocacy of
Revolutionary Parliamentarism as a tactic to be adopted by the Third International’s
member parties. Therefore an examination of the communist theory of anti-parliamentarism
is best considered in the context of this tactic. |
|
| The Bolsheviks were not suggesting that communists
should enter Parliament in order to agitate for reforms. The Third International
had been founded on the premise that the era in which reformist legislation
benefiting the working class was possible had come to an end, and that
‘The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat’ had begun.
[69] Nor were the Bolsheviks suggesting that
the revolution could be carried out 'within the framework of the old bourgeois
parliamentary democracy'. The 'most profound revolution in mankind's history'
required 'the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions', which
the experience of the revolution in Russia had revealed to be the soviets
or workers' councils. [70] |
69. 'Platform
of the Communist International adopted by the First Comintern Congress'
in J. Degras (ed.), The Communist International 1919-43: Documents,
vol, 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 18 (emphasis in original).
70. 'Theses on Bourgeois Democracy
and Proletarian Dictatorship adopted by the First Comintern Congress' in
J. Degras (ed.), The Communist International 1919-43: Documents,
vol, 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 13. |
| The anti-parliamentary communists in Britain
agreed with the Bolsheviks on these points. Rose Witcop stated that 'it
is impossible for the working class to gain its emancipation by Act of
Parliament', [71] and the WSF argued that
the 'guiding and co-ordinating machinery' of the revolutionary struggle
'could take no other form than that of the Soviets'. [72] |
71. Spur,
July 1917.
72. Workers' Dreadnought,
3 December 1921. |
| The Bolsheviks, however, drew a distinction
between 'the question of parliamentarianism as a desirable form of the
political regime' and 'the question of using parliament for the purpose
of promoting the revolution'. [73] Although
the revolution itself would be carried out by soviets and not by Parliament,
this did not rule out the possibility of using Parliament to 'promote the
revolution' in the meantime. Whether or not communists chose to use Parliament
in this way was entirely a tactical matter: |
73. ECCI
circular letter on Parliament and Soviets in J. Degras (ed.), The Communist
International 1919-43: Documents, vol, 1 (London: Oxford University
Press, 1956), p. 67. |
'Anti-parliamentarianism' on principle, that is, the absolute
and categorical rejection of participation in elections and in revolutionary
parliamentary activity, is therefore a naive and childish doctrine which
is beneath criticism, a doctrine which is . . . blind to the possibility
of revolutionary parliamentarianism. [74]
|
74. 'Theses
on Communist Parties and Parliament adopted by the Second Comintern Congress'
in J. Degras (ed.), The Communist International 1919-43: Documents,
vol, 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 153-4. |
| The Bolsheviks acknowledged that the abstentionist
position was 'occasionally founded on a healthy disgust with paltry parliamentary
politicians' [75] but they criticised abstentionists
for not recognising the possibility of creating 'a new, unusual, non-opportunist,
non-careerist parliamentarism'. [76] According
to the Bolsheviks, Parliament was a 'tribune' of public opinion which revolutionaries
could and should use to influence the masses outside, while election campaigns
should also be used as an opportunity for revolutionary propaganda and
agitation. This was what the Bolsheviks meant by 'Revolutionary Parliamentarism'.
As Lenin put it, 'participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle
on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory for the party of the
revolutionary proletariat precisely for the purpose of educating
the backward strata of its own class'. [77]
However, the anti-parliamentary communists in Britain doubted that this
tactic could be put to any effective use and advanced three main arguments
against it. |
75. 'Theses
on Communist Parties and Parliament adopted by the Second Comintern Congress'
in J. Degras (ed.), The Communist International 1919-43: Documents,
vol, 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 153-4.
76. V. Lenin, 'Left-Wing' Communism,
An Infantile Disorder (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), p. 104.
77. V. Lenin, 'Left-Wing' Communism,
An Infantile Disorder (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1975), p. 52
(emphases in original). |
| First, the aim of winning votes would come into
conflict with the aim of putting across revolutionary propaganda: 'the
way to secure the biggest vote at the polls is to avoid frightening anyone
by presenting to the electors diluted reformist Socialism . . . Whatever
party runs candidates at the election will trim its sails'. [78]
In her letter to Lenin in July 1919 Sylvia Pankhurst explained that |
78. Workers'
Dreadnought, 27 September 1919. |
our movement in Great Britain is ruined by Parliamentarism,
and by the County Councils and Town Councils. People wish to be elected
to these bodies . . . All work for Socialism is subordinated to these ends;
Socialist propaganda is suppressed for fear of losing votes . . . Class
consciousness seems to vanish as the elections draw nigh. A party which
gains electoral successes is a party lost as far as revolutionary action
is concerned. [79]
|
79. Letter
dated 16 July 1919 in Communist International, September 1919. |
| Secondly, the anti-parliamentary communists
disagreed that Parliament could be an effective platform for revolutionary
speeches. The Dreadnought pointed out that 'most people do not read
the verbatim reports of Parliamentary debates'. The capitalist press never
gave revolutionary speeches the prominence enjoyed by the utterances of
capitalist politicians, and only reported 'those least wise, least coherent
sentences which the Press chooses to select just because they are most
provocative and least likely to convert'. [80]
Guy Aldred argued that 'the value of speeches in Parliament turn upon the
power of the press outside and exercise no influence beyond the point allowed
by that press'. As long as newspapers' contents remained dictated by the
interests of their capitalist owners, revolutionary speech-making in Parliament
would be 'impotent as a propaganda activity'. [81]
In his Shettleston election address Aldred maintained that 'street-corner
oratory educates the worker more effectively than speeches in Parliament'.
[82] This being the case there was little
to be gained by entering Parliament: as the Glasgow Anarchist Group argued,
'fighters for Revolution can more effectively spend their time in propaganda
at the work-gates and public meetings'. [83] |
80. Workers'
Dreadnought, 24 March 1923.
81. G. Aldred, Socialism and
Parliament (Glasgow/London: Bakunin Press, 1923), p. 6
82. G. Aldred, General Election,
1922: To The Working Class Electors of the Parliamentary Division of Shettleston
(Glasgow: Alexander Wood, October 1922).
83. Spur, May 1918. |
| Thirdly, the anti-parliamentary communists pointed
out that 'it is the revolutionary parliamentarian who becomes the political
opportunist'. [84] They saw 'nothing but menace
to the proletarian cause from Communists entering Parliament: first, as
revolutionary Communists, only to graduate later, slowly but surely, as
reformist politicians'. [85] No matter what
their initial intentions might be, communist MPs would soon 'lose themselves
in the easy paths of compromise'. [86] As
Pankhurst argued in September 1921, 'the use of Parliamentary action by
Communists is . . . bound to lead to the lapses into rank Reformism that
we see wherever members of the Communist Party secure election to public
bodies'. [87] |
84. Spur,
May 1920.
85. Red Commune, February
1921.
86. Workers' Dreadnought,
30 July 1921.
87. Workers' Dreadnought,
24 September 1921. |
| When they sought to explain why out-and-out
revolutionaries became tame reformists after entering Parliament, the anti-parliamentary
communists referred to the class nature of the capitalist state, of which
Parliament was a part. The entire function and business of Parliament was
concerned with the administration and palliation of the capitalist system
in the interest of the ruling class. Parliament was 'the debating chamber
of the master class'. [88] Anyone who entered
Parliament and participated in its business automatically shouldered responsibility
for running capitalism. 'The result of working class representatives taking
part in the administration of capitalist machinery, is that the working
class representatives become responsible for maintaining capitalist law
and order and for enforcing the regulations of the capitalist system itself.'
[89] The only way to avoid such lapses into
reformism or outright reaction was to shun any participation in capitalism's
administrative apparatus -- and that meant rejecting any notion that communists
should enter Parliament. |
88. Red
Commune, February 1921.
89. Workers' Dreadnought,
6 October 1923. |
| The Bolsheviks' most telling response to the
anti-parliamentarians' case was to argue that while opportunism, careerism
and reformism were characteristics of capitalist politicians, there
was no reason why communists should inevitably end up behaving in
the same manner. Willie Gallacher, whose anti-parliamentary views were
criticised by Lenin in 'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder,
recalled arguing with Lenin that 'any working class representative
who went to Parliament was corrupted in no time'. Lenin then asked Gallacher: |
|
'If the workers sent you to represent them in Parliament, would
you become corrupt?'
I answered: 'No, I'm sure that under no circumstances could the bourgeoisie
corrupt me.'
'Well then, Comrade Gallacher,' he said with a smile, 'you get the
workers to send you to Parliament and show them how a revolutionary can
make use of it.' [90]
|
90. W.
Gallacher, Last Memoirs (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1966),
pp. 152-4. |
| In retrospect, however, this was an argument
from which the anti-parliamentary communists emerged victorious. The CPGB
did use election campaigns to advocate all sorts of reformist demands.
The few MPs who represented the CPGB in Parliament did not use Parliament
as a platform for revolutionary speeches. Soon after the 1922 general election
Sylvia Pankhurst observed that the CPGB's MPs had 'told the House of Commons
nothing about Communism . . . Yet it is to secure Parliament for speeches
on Communism, and for denunciations of Parliament as an institution, that
they claim to have sought election'. [91]
Where they won places on elected bodies CPGB members did participate
in reformist or reactionary administration of parts of the capitalist state.
The anti-parliamentary communists' case was strengthened by every 'incorruptible'
communist who turned reformist. There was no need to develop any systematic
explanation for this phenomenon for, in practice it inevitably occurred,
and the anti-parliamentarians were able to point to a never-ending series
of examples to support their contentions. |
91. Workers'
Dreadnought, 2 December 1922. |
| |
|
| WORKING-CLASS SELF-EMANCIPATION |
|
| |
|
| The anti-parliamentarians' case against Revolutionary
Parliamentarism was based on political principles which found expression
not only in opposition to the use of elections and Parliament as weapons
in the class struggle, but also in every other aspect of their political
ideas and activities. It is to a discussion of these underlying principles
that we now turn. |
|
| The Spur argued that anyone who sought
to abolish capitalism by first gaining control of Parliament was going
the wrong way about it, because 'Parliament is not the master of capitalism
but its most humble servant'. [92] The state,
including the Parliamentary apparatus, arose from the conflict between
social classes and serves the interests of the ruling class. But the fundamental
source of the capitalist class's power lies in its ownership and
control of the means of production. Therefore, the Glasgow Anarchist Group
argued, 'the State cannot be destroyed by sending men to Parliament,
as voting cannot abolish the economic power of the capitalists'. [93]
In order to achieve revolutionary social change the working class had to
organise its power not in Parliament but on the economic field. As Guy
Aldred put it: 'the working class can possess no positive or real
power politically until the workers come together on the industrial
field for the definite purpose of themselves taking over directly the administration
of wealth production and distribution on behalf of the Workers' Republic'.
[94] Parliamentary action was therefore a
futile diversion from the real tasks facing the working class. It was necessary
for workers to 'look, not to Parliament, but to their own Soviets'. [95] |
92. Spur,
June 1918.
93. Spur, May 1918 (emphases
in original).
94. Worker, 22 July 1922
(emphasis in original).
95. Workers' Dreadnought,
24 March 1923. |
| In order to convey this view to the rest of
the working class, it was the duty of revolutionaries to reject parliamentary
activity 'because of the clear, unmistakeable lead to the masses which
this refusal gives. [96] The Dreadnought
group believed that 'the revolution can only be accomplished by those
whose minds are awakened and who are inspired by conscious purpose'. [97]
The working class's attachment to Parliament would have to be broken as
much in the minds of working-class people as in their activities: |
96. Workers'
Dreadnought, 24 September 1921.
97. Workers' Dreadnought. |
For the overthrow of this old capitalist system, it is necessary
that the people should break away in sufficient numbers from support of
the capitalist machinery, and set up another system; that they should create
and maintain the Soviets as the instruments of establishing Communism.
To do this, the workers must be mentally prepared and must also possess
the machinery which will enable them to act. [98]
|
98. Workers'
Dreadnought, 27 August 1921. |
| Revolutionaries could not assist this process
of 'mental preparation' if they denounced Parliament as a capitalist institution
whilst leading workers to the polling booths to elect communist candidates
into that institution. Such behaviour would only create confusion. The
use of elections and the Parliamentary forum was 'not the best method of
preparing the workers to discard their faith in bourgeois democracy and
Parliamentary reformism', [99] since 'participation
in Parliamentary elections turns the attention of the people to Parliament,
which will never emancipate them'. [100] |
99. Workers'
Dreadnought,
100. Workers' Dreadnought,
1 December 1923. |
| The anti-parliamentary communists emphasised
the importance of widespread class consciousness because they believed
that the revolution could not be carried out by any small group of leaders
with ideas in advance of the rest of the working class: 'the revolution
must not be the work of an enlightened minority despotism, but the social
achievement of the mass of the workers, who must decide as to the ways
and means'. [101] Parliamentary action restricted
workers to a subordinate and passive role as voters and left everything
up to the 'leaders' in Parliament: 'Any attempt to use the Parliamentary
system encourages among the workers the delusion that leaders can fight
their battles for them. Not leadership but MASS ACTION IS ESSENTIAL.' [102]
Opposition to parliamentarism was vital, therefore, in order to 'impress
upon the people that the power to create the Communist society is within
themselves, and that it will never be created except by their will and
their effort'. [103] |
101.
Spur, March-April 1918.
102. Workers' Dreadnought,
31 July 1920.
103. Workers' Dreadnought,
24 March 1923. |
| The term 'parliamentarism' was in fact used
by anti-parliamentarians to describe all forms of organisation and
activity which divided the working class into leaders and led, perpetuated
the working class's subservience, and obstructed the development of widespread
revolutionary consciousness. These reasons for opposing parliamentarism
-- in the widest sense of the term -- were expressed in 1920 by the Dutch
revolutionary Anton Pannekoek, who was one of the foremost theoreticians
among the left communists in Germany: |
|
parliamentary activity is the paradigm of struggles in which
only the leaders are actively involved and in which the masses themselves
play a subordinate role. It consists in individual deputies carrying on
the main battle; this is bound to arouse the illusion among the masses
that others can do their fighting for them . . . the tactical problem is
how we are to eradicate the traditional bourgeois mentality which paralyses
the strength of the proletarian masses; everything which lends new power
to the received conceptions is harmful. The most tenacious and intractable
element in this mentality is dependence upon leaders, whom the masses leave
to determine general questions and to manage their class affairs. Parliamentarianism
inevitably tends to inhibit the autonomous activity by the masses that
is necessary for revolution. [104]
|
104.
Pannekoek, 'World Revolution and Communist Tactics' in D. Smart (ed.),
Pannekoek and Gorter's Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 1978), pp.
110-11 (emphasis in original). |
| Parliamentary action -- in the strictest sense
-- was a paradigm, that is, the clearest example of the sort
of activity which anti-parliamentarians opposed; but other forms of action
were also open to criticism on precisely the same grounds. For example,
Sylvia Pankhurst also described trade unionism as a 'parliamentary' form
of organisation, since it 'removes the work of the union from the members
to the officials, [and] inevitably creates an apathetic and unenlightened
membership'. [105] |
105.
Workers' Dreadnought, 21 April 1923. |
| The principle of working-class self-emancipation
implied that the revolution could be carried out only by an active and
class conscious majority of the working class. The anti-parliamentary communists'
opposition to electoral and parliamentary activity was an expression of
this principle, since parliamentary action obscured the vital point that
Parliament was useless as a means of working-class emancipation and diminished
the capacity for action by the working class as a whole. Opposition to
parliamentary forms of organisation and activity was the 'negative' aspect
of the principle of working-class self-emancipation; its positive aspect
was expressed in the anti-parliamentary communists' support for all forms
of working-class activity which encouraged the development of the class's
own consciousness and capacity to act by and for itself. |
|
| |
|
| THE MEANING OF COMMUNISM |
|
| |
|
| The belief that widespread class consciousness
was one of the essential preconditions of revolutionary working-class action
-- a belief which played such an important part in determining the antiparliamentarians'
opposition to parliamentary action -- also meant that descriptions of socialism
or communism (the two terms were used interchangeably) occupied a prominent
place in the anti-parliamentarians' propaganda. The anti-parliamentary
communists believed that 'until the minds and desires of the people have
been prepared for Communism, Communism cannot come', [106]
and that 'since the masses are as yet but vaguely aware of the idea of
Communism, its advocates should be ever vigilant and active in presenting
it in a comprehensible form'. [107] The subject
of the final section of this chapter is the idea of communism which the
anti-parliamentary communists presented to the masses. |
106.
Workers' Dreadnought, 15 April 1922.
107. Workers' Dreadnought,
24 March 1923. |
| According to the anti-parliamentarians, communist
society would be based on common ownership of all wealth and means of wealth-production.
The abolition of private property would be decisive in overthrowing capitalism:
'Social revolution means that the socially useable means of production
shall be declared common-wealth . . . It shall be the private possession
of none.' [108] As soon as private property
had given way to common ownership all men and women would stand in equal
relationship to the means of production. The 'division of society into
classes' would 'disappear' [109] and be replaced
by 'a classless order of free human beings living on terms of economic
and political equality'. [110] Communism would
also mean the destruction of the state, which, as an institution 'erected
for the specific purpose of protecting private property and perpetuating
wage-slavery', [111] would disappear as a
consequence of the abolition of private property and of the division of
society into classes. This classless, stateless human community, based
on common ownership of the means of production would also involve production
for use, democratic control and free access. These three features of communist
society will now be explained and examined. |
108.
Commune, December 1924.
109. Spur, March 1919
110. Workers' Dreadnought,
3 July 1920.
111. Workers' Dreadnought,
1 June 1918. |
| Under capitalism, virtually all wealth is produced
in the form of commodities, that is, goods which are produced to be sold
(or otherwise exchanged) for profit via the market. In other words, there
is no direct link between the production of wealth and the satisfaction
of people's material needs. Such a link is established only tenuously,
if at all, through the mediation of the market and the dictates of production
for profit. Regardless of their real material needs, people's level of
consumption is determined by whether or not they possess the means to purchase
the things they require. What the system of commodity production means
in practice is that the class in society which owns and controls the means
of production accumulates vast extremes of wealth, while the class which
is excluded from ownership and control of the means of production -- the
vast majority of the world's inhabitants -- exists in a state of constant
material insecurity and deprivation. The solution to this problem would
be: 'The overthrow of Capitalism and its system of production for profit
and the substitution of a system of Communism and production for use.'
[112] Communism would abolish the market economy
and undertake production to satisfy people's needs directly. |
112.
Red Commune, February 1921. |
| This takes us to the second feature of communist
society mentioned earlier - democratic control, or 'the administration
of wealth by those who produce wealth for the benefit of the wealth producers'.
[113] Just as the struggle to overthrow capitalism
would involve the conscious and active participation of the mass of the
working class, so too in the post-revolutionary society of communism would
the mass of the people be able to participate actively in deciding how
the means of wealth-production should be used. In institutional terms this
would be realised through the soviets or workers' councils, which would
be 'the administrative machinery for supplying the needs of the people
in communist society'. [114] The soviets would
be 'councils of delegates, appointed and instructed by the workers in every
kind of industry, by the workers on the land, and the workers in the home'.
[115] Council delegates would be 'sent to
voice the needs and desires of others like themselves'. [116] |
113.
G. Aldred, General Election, 1922: To The Working Class Electors of
the Parliamentary Division of Shettleston (Glasgow: Alexander Wood,
October 1922).
114. Workers' Dreadnought,
4 February 1922.
115. Workers' Dreadnought,
2 November 1918.
116. Workers' Dreadnought,
16 February 1918. |
| In this way 'the average need and desire for
any commodity [meaning here, any object] will be ascertained, and the natural
resources and labour power of the community will be organised to meet that
need'. [117] Decisions about what to produce,
in what quantities, by what methods and so on, would no longer be the exclusive
preserve of a minority as they are in capitalist society. Instead, the
soviet decision-making machinery would 'confer at all times a direct individual
franchise on each member of the community'. [118]
All decisions concerning production would be made according to the freely-chosen
needs and desires expressed by all members of society. |
117.
Workers' Dreadnought, 27 April 1918.
118. Spur, June 1918. |
| We come now to the third feature of communist
society mentioned earlier: free access. The abolition of commodity production
and the establishment of common ownership would mean an end to all forms
of exchange: 'Money will no longer exist . . . There will be no selling,
because there will be no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain
everything at will, without payment.' [119]
Selling and buying imply the existence of private property: someone first
has to have exclusive ownership of an object before they can be in a position
to dispose of it by selling it, while someone else first has to be excluded
from using that object if the only way they can gain access to it is through
buying it. If common ownership existed there would be no reason for people
to have to buy objects which they already owned anyway. In short, access
to wealth would be free. |
119.
Workers' Dreadnought, 26 November 1921. |
| As a classless society of free access and production
for use, communism would also mean an end to exchange relations between
buyers and sellers of the particular commodity labour power (that
is, between the capitalist and working classes, or bourgeoisie and proletariat.
No-one's material existence would depend on having to sell their ability
to work in return for a wage or salary. Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that 'wages
under Communism will be abolished' [120] and
that 'when Communism is in being there will be no proletariat, as we understand
the term today'. [121] The direct bond between
production and consumption which exists under capitalism would be severed:
there would be no 'direct reward for services rendered'. [122]
People's needs would be supplied 'unchecked' and 'independent of service'.
[123] On the basis of the principle that 'each
person takes according to need, and each one gives according to ability',
[124] everyone would share in the necessary
productive work of the community and everyone would freely satisfy their
personal needs from the wealth created by the common effort. |
120 Workers'
Dreadnought, 13 August 1921.
121. Workers' Dreadnought,
10 December 1921.
122. Workers' Dreadnought,
23 September 1922.
123. Workers' Dreadnought,
21 February 1920.
124. Workers' Dreadnought,
20 May 1922. |
| The establishment of free access to the use
and enjoyment of common wealth would facilitate the disappearance of the
state's coercive apparatus. The concept of 'theft', for example, would
lose all meaning. Thus, 'Under Communism, Courts of Justice will speedily
become unnecessary, since most of what is called crime has its origins
in economic need, and in the evils and conventions of capitalist society'.
[125] For the same reasons, 'stealing, forgery,
burglary, and all economic crimes will disappear, with all the objectionable
apparatus for preventing, detecting and punishing them'. [126] |
125.
Workers' Dreadnought, 20 May 1922.
126. Workers' Dreadnought,
26 November 1921. |
| Common objections encountered by advocates of
communism are that a society based on free access to wealth be open to
abuse through greed and gluttony and that there would be no incentive to
work. Such assertions are often based on a conception of human nature which
sees people as inherently covetous and lazy. The standard communist response
is to deny that any such thing as human nature exists. What these opponents
of communism are referring to is human behaviour, which is not a
set of immutable traits but varies according to material circumstances.
Such a distinction (between human nature and human behaviour) is useful
in making sense of some of the anti-parliamentarians' arguments. However,
a conception of human nature does appear to lie beneath other arguments
that they used -- albeit a conception radically different from that which
sees people as naturally idle beings. Rose Witcop argued that 'the physical
need for work; and the freedom to choose one's work and one's methods'
were in fact basic human needs and urges. [127]
Indeed, this could be taken as another example of capitalism's inability
to satisfy basic human needs. Within the capitalist system workers are
not free to choose what work they do and how they do it. Such decisions
are not made by the workers, but by their bosses. Only when the workers
manage the industries', Sylvia Pankhurst argued, would they be able to
make decisions about the conditions of production 'according to their desires
and social needs'. [128] |
127.
Spur, August 1917.
128. Workers' Dreadnought,
15 April 1922. |
| At this point it might be helpful to draw a
distinction between 'work', meaning freely-undertaken creative activity,
and 'employment', meaning the economic compulsion to carry out tasks in
order to earn a living. The anti-parliamentarians felt that an aversion
to the latter was perfectly understandable, since employment in this sense
could be seen as 'unnatural': 'a healthy being does not need the whip of
compulsion, because work is a physical necessity. and the desire to be
lazy is a disease of the capitalist system'. [129]
In a communist society employment, or forced labour, would give way to
work in the sense of fulfilment of the basic human need for freely-undertaken
creative activity. As Guy Aldred pointed out, the urge to satisfy this
need was evident in workers' behaviour even under capitalism; communism
would provide the conditions for its most complete fulfilment: 'Men and
women insist on discovering hobbies with which to amuse themselves after
having sweated for a master. Does it not follow that, in a free society,
not only would each work for all, but each would toil with earnest devotion
at that which best suited and expressed his or her temperament?'. [130]
Sylvia Pankhurst shared Aldred's expectations: in her vision of communism
'labour is a joy, and the workers toil to increase their skill and swiftness,
and bend all their efforts to perfect the task'. [131]
Thus the severance of all direct links between 'services rendered' and
'rewards' would not result in any lack of inclination to work, because
in a communist society work would be enjoyable and satisfying in itself,
instead of simply a means to an end. |
129.
Spur, September 1917.
130. G. Aldred, The Case For
Communism (London: Bakunin Press, 1919), pp. 4-5.
131. Woman's Dreadnought,
3 March 1917. |
| The anti-parliamentary communists approached
the problem of abuse of free access in a number of ways. First, on a common
sense level, Rose Witcop pointed out that 'a man can consume two lunches
in one day only at his peril, and wear two suits of clothing, or make a
storehouse of his dwelling, only to his own discomfiture'. In the unlikely
event of anyone wanting to discomfit themselves in such a way, 'we will
be content to humour such pitiful perverseness. It is the least we can
do'. [132] |
132.
Spur, August 1917. |
| Secondly, the anti-parliamentary communists
argued that greed was a behavioural response to the scarcity which characterised
capitalist society. Different material conditions would produce other forms
of behaviour. The establishment of communism would 'provide a soil in which
the social instincts of mankind will rapidly develop. The anti-social propensities
not being stimulated by unbearable economic pressure will tend consequently
to die out.' [133] Sylvia Pankhurst also argued
that as a behavioural response to scarcity greed would disappear when the
circumstances which stimulated it were abolished. While suggesting that
a communist society would not permit anyone to 'hoard up goods for themselves
that they do not require and cannot use', she went on to argue: 'the only
way to prevent such practices is not by making them punishable,' it is
by creating a society in which . . . no-one cares to be encumbered with
a private hoard of goods when all that they need is readily supplied as
to need it from the common storehouse'. [134] |
133.
Spur, May 1918.
134. Workers' Dreadnought,
10 December 1921. |
| These comments suggest a third way of overcoming
the problem of abuse of free access. 'Over-indulgence' presupposed a continuation
of scarcity: if one person consumed more than their 'fair share' there
would be insufficient left over for everyone else. However, if there was
sufficient wealth to satisfy everyone's needs, no matter how much any individual
wanted to consume, then the problem of abuse of free access would disappear,
along with any need to refute such an objection with arguments concerning
altruism, human nature and so on. This was the main way in which the anti-parliamentary
communists addressed the problem of abuse of free access. According to
Sylvia Pankhurst, in a communist society there would be 'Abundance for
all' [135] and people's needs would be satisfied
'without stint or measure'. [136] |
135.
Workers' Dreadnought, 1 April 1922.
136. Workers' Dreadnought,
18 March 1922. |
| The question of how a communist society would
be able to provide abundance was tackled in a number of ways. |
|
| First, the meaning of abundance was related
to the level of needs which people in a communist society might be expected
to express. Rose Witcop observed 'how few things we really need' : food,
clothing and shelter by way of material essentials, and work, comradeship
and freedom from restrictions by way of non-material essentials. [137]
This might sound more like austerity than abundance -- but if a communist
society satisfied only these basic needs and nothing more it would still
be a vast improvement on capitalism for most of the world's population,
since capitalism has never shown itself capable of providing even these
most basic of needs for more than a small minority of the world's inhabitants. |
137.
Spur, August 1917. |
| Even if abundance is defined merely as the adequate
provision of basics such as food, clothing and shelter, this still begs
the question of how communism would be able to provide everyone with such
things when capitalism patently cannot. To answer this question we must
move on to a second argument put forward by the anti-parliamentary communists.
Through its constant development of the means of production and distribution
capitalism itself had laid the technological foundations upon which a society
of abundance could be built. So long as the level of production remained
fettered by the dictates of production for profit via the market, the potential
for abundance which capitalism had created would never be realised. The
communist revolution would smash these fetters and institute direct production
for use. New inventions and technology in the field of production would
be applied to the satisfaction of human needs. They would 'constantly facilitate'
greater and greater increases in society's productive capacity and 'remove
any need for rationing or limiting of consumption'. [138]
In short, there would be 'plenty for all'. [139] |
138.
Workers' Dreadnought, 26 November 1921.
139. Spur, May 1918. |
| Thirdly, the anti-parliamentary communists argued
that levels of production would also be boosted by integrating into socially-useful
productive activity the vast numbers of people whose occupations were specific
to a money-market-wages system: |
|
Just consider the immense untapped reservoirs for the production
of almost unlimited supplies of every imaginable form of useful wealth.
Think of the scores of millions of unemployed, not forgetting the useless
drones at the top of the social ladder. Estimate also the millions of officials,
attendants, flunkeys, whose potentially valuable time is wasted under this
system. Consider the wealth that could be created by the huge army of needless
advertising agents, commercial travellers, club-men, shop-walkers, etc.,
not to mention the colossal army of police, lawyers, judges, clerks, who
are ONLY 'NECESSARY' UNDER CAPITALISM! Add now the scandalous waste of
labour involved in the military machine -- soldiers, airmen, navymen, officers,
generals, admirals, etc. Add, also, the terrific consumption of energy
in the manufacture of armaments of all kinds that is weighing down the
productive machine. Properly used, these boundless supplies of potential
wealth-creating energy, could ensure ample for all -- not excluding 'luxuries'
-- together with a ridiculously short working day. Likewise, there would
be pleasant conditions of labour, and recreation and holidays on a scale
now only enjoyed by the rich! [140]
|
140.
Solidarity, June-July 1939. |
| Finally, the anti-parliamentary communists argued
that communism had to be established on a global scale, so that to assist
its aim of bringing about abundance for all communism would have the productive
capacity and resources of the entire world at its disposal. |
|
| Only when abundance was not assumed did the
anti-parliamentary communists fall back on a view of people as naturally
altruistic beings. Sylvia Pankhurst acknowledged the possibility of 'some
untoward circumstance' producing 'a temporary shortage'. To cope with scarcity
in such circumstances everyone would 'willingly share what there is, the
children and the weaker alone receiving privileges, which are not asked,
but thrust upon them'. [141] |
141.
Woman's Dreadnought, 3 March 1917. |
| When the anti-parliamentarians described themselves
as communist, therefore, they meant that they stood for the establishment
of a classless, stateless society based on common ownership and democratic
control of the world's resources, in which money, exchange and production
for profit would be replaced by production for the direct satisfaction
of people's needs and free access to the use and enjoyment of all wealth. |
|
| The description of communism was a vital element
in the anti-parliamentarians' propaganda, since it held out the prospect
of a solution to the problems confronting working-class people every day
of their lives. However, the description of communist society was more
than just a pole-star guiding the direction of the class struggle. After
the Russian revolution the anti-parliamentary communists were confronted
with a regime under which, it was widely believed, the distant goal of
communism was actually being brought into reality. In Chapter 2 one of
the issues which will be discussed is the extent to which the anti-parliamentarians
were able to evaluate this claim by using the conception of communism outlined
above as their yardstick. |
|