Comments on "The Origins & Development of Socialist Theory"
1). Correspondence with the Education Committee:
As the document circulated by the Education Committee was described as an "Education & Discussion Bulletin", Camden Branch considered that it would be appropriate that comments on it should be circulated by the Education Committee.
Our letter to the Committee and their reply are as follows:
Resolution from Camden Branch to the Committee, 21 June 1980:
"That we write to the Education Committee and ask if it is their intention to circulate comments they receive on the Education and discussion Bullet of April 1980".
Education Committee's reply, 3 August 1980:
"In reply to your letter on 21 June, the position of the Education Committee regarding comments received on their work is the same as that of any other sub-committee of the E.C.".
2). INTRODUCTION
In the view of Camden Branch the main part of the Bulletin provides a good and balanced survey of the historical development of Marx and Engels' thought.
But we consider some of the conclusions purely speculative, without real evidence. This applies particularly to the supposed influence of Herbert Spencer on the S.P.G.B.
We also strongly dissent from the statement about the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Party's attitude to it.
3). The Supposed Influence of Herbert Spencer
The general argument about the supposed influence of Herbert Spencer on the Party is on Page 18 of the Bulletin:-
"The S.P.G.B. was the product of its time and had to utilise the social and intellectual resources then available. These include popular ideas on social evolution championed by Spencer in the late and early 20t centuries. Their influence can be seen in our Principle 4, on the "order of social evolution", and has continued up to our pamphlet in 1975, quoted above"
.
What this overlooks is that the founder members of the S.P.G.B. gained their experience in the Social democratic Federation (formed out of the democratic Federation in 1883) where the predominant influence was not Spencer but Marx.
G.B. Shaw, writing in 1889 (FABIAN ESSAYS p.186) noted the swing away from Spencer as a result of Hyndman's popularisation of Marx in this country.
"The Democratic Federation and Mr. H. M. Hyndman appeared in the field. Numbers of young men, pupils of Mill, Spencer, Comte and Darwin, roused by Mr. Henry George's Progress and Poverty , left aside evolution and free thought; took to insurrectionary economics; studies Karl Marx..."
Davis Thomson (ENGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY) - took a similar view of the declining influence of Spencer:
"Spencer's main publication MAN VERSUS THE STATE (1884) and THE PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS (1891-3), belong to the last decades of the century and he remained an almost lone figure championing the most extreme doctrines of laissez-faire long after more serious thinkers had abandoned them".
(Pelican edition p. 106).
It is true that some of the founder members were familiar with Spencer's works but many of them were very widely read in history, economics, philosophy and politics and were familiar with the writings of Marx, Engels, Morris, Kautsky, Morgan etc. The Bulletin singles out Spencer and assumes, without evidence, that founder members were influenced by him rather than the others.
It is only necessary to look at the articles in the early years to see that this is without foundation; the articles show clearly what is in their minds - reforms, Marxian economics, the M.C.H, political experience in the S.D.F, gradualism, leadership, revisionism, trade unions and syndicalism. There were articles about Darwin (with no mention of Spencer), on Bernstein and Bebel but no article on Spencer.
The Party published or sold pamphlets by Marx, Kautsky and Morris but nothing by Spencer. Nor was any work by Spencer included in lists of recommended books.
When an article in the S.S. made use of Spencer's concept of society as an organism (S.S Dec. 1906), the writer, F.C. watts, explained that this did not mean that "society must develop in the same way as the human body". Society has its own "laws of development peculiar to it", and the revolutionary socialist case is based on our analysis of society, its history and economics, in accordance with those laws.
There were quotations from Spencer along with quotations from Marx and Engels (and many others) in the pamphlet SOCIALISM AND RELIGION but these quotations were about his theories on ancestor worship, ethics etc.
4). The Idea of social Evolution
On page 18 the Bulletin sees the influence of Spencer in our Principle 4, on the "order of social evolution".
The idea of social evolution was held by Spencer but he was only one among others, including Marx and Engel.
Sidney Webb in his SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND (1890) had a section on the "The influence of the evolution hypothesis", He made the point that the "statical" view of society held by the Utopians had been replaced by the idea of the evolution of society". While acknowledging the influence of Comte, Darwin and Spencer he also acknowledged the influence of Marx.
The term "new social order" was used in the MANIFESTO OF ENGLISH SOCIALISTS (1890) and the term "order of society" in S.D.F. publications.
The term "social evolution" was used in FABIAN ESSAYS (1889)
Founder members of the party will have been familiar with these works but the source from which they obtained their view of the evolution of society was Marx and Engels (and Morgan’s ANCIENT SOCIETY).
An article in the S.S. May 1905 quotes from Marx's CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY:-
"we may in wide outlines characterise the Asiatic, the antique, the feudal and the modern capitalistic methods of production as a series of progressive episodes in the evolution of society".
Another source with which the founder members were familiar was Engels 1888 Preface to the COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, which anticipated the idea of "order of social evolution" in our Clause 4:-
"the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploited and exploiters, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles for a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class - the proletariat - cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class - the bourgeoisie - without, at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-distinctions and class struggles".
The concept of social evolution was described in the SOCIALIST LEAGUE MANIFESTO (1888):-
"As chattel-slavery passed into serfdom, and serfdom into the so-called free labour system, so most surely will this latter pass into social order".
In the notes which Morris and Belfort Bax added to the Manifesto they used the term "social evolution".
"the economical change which we advocate...would not be stable unless accompanied by a corresponding revolution in ethics, which, however, is certain to accompany it, since the two things are inseparable elements of one whole, to wit, social evolution".
The second part of our Clause 4, that socialism would involve the emancipation of all mankind, was inherent in Marx's view of social evolution. It owed nothing to Spencer. In 1864 before Spencer had published anything and before Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES Marx had written:-
"It follows from the relation between alienated labour and private property, that the emancipation of society from private property, from servitude, takes the political form of the emancipation of the working class, not in the sense that only the latter's emancipation is involved, but because this emancipation includes the emancipation of humanity as a whole. For all human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all the types of servitude are only modifications or consequences of this elation".
(Economic and Philosophical Documents).
5). Spencer on Reforms and Taxes
The Bulletin (p.19) states that "the S.P.G.B. took up several of Spencer's arguments".
It gives no evidence for this except the coincidences of real or apparent similarity.
The first example is a quotation from Spencer about the Speenhamland system, under which low rural wages were supplemented out of Poor Relief.
According to the Bulletin the S.P.G.B. learned from this:
"that governing parties and employers use social reforms and welfare measures in order to depress wages"
The Speenhamland system was described in every economic history, including de Gibbins INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND (1890) which was widely circulated among Party members. It was also dealt with by Marx in CAPITAL VOL. 1 (Chapter XXIV in the Kerr Edition).
In fact members reached their conclusions on this from Marx's labour theory of value and from seeing it actually happen before their eyes.
The Bulletin's second example of Spencer's arguments supposed to have been taken up by the Party is Spencer's view that: "Among the costs of production have to be reckoned taxes, general and local". It is stated that this is the basis of our view that "rates and taxes fall upon the capitalist class"
.
The view that the burden of taxes on wages or on workers’ necessaries falls on one or other section of the propertied class was put forward by Adam Smith and Ricardo long before Spencer, but they had their own theoretical explanation of how it came about.
The issue of Rates and Taxes was dealt with fully in the S.S. for October 1904.
It did not quote or refer to Spencer, or use his argument (or the arguments of Adam Smith and Ricardo).
On the contrary, it argued that "the capitalist always sells at the highest price the market will bear". It gave examples of taxes which did not affect prices at all; of rates being raised without affecting rents; of rents rising while rates were falling. Its conclusion was that taxes "are paid out of the surplus wealth extracted from the works".
The article was based wholly on Marx's labour theory of value and is evidence that the party was not influenced by Spencer.
6. The quotation from the Pamphlet HISTORICAL MATERIALISM.
On Page 18 the Bulletin sees the influence of Spencer in a paragraph in the pamphlet HISTORICAL MATERIALISM and examines this of Pages 19 & 20, including Spencer's view "that society is an analogue of a biological organism".
The quotation from Page 45 of the pamphlet fails to make clear what was being said, because it leaves out the clarifying middle sentences, which read:-
"An example might make this clearer. A modern piece of highly developed mechanism such as an aeroplane engine is a mystifying sight to the uninitiated, and yet it is made up of simple movements that, taken by themselves, would mystify nobody"
It should also be noted that the quoted paragraph is immediately followed by a Section, Evolution of Society, which opens with the words:-
"let us now complete the picture by an illustration of the laws that Marx borrowed from Hegel and applied in his own investigations".
With regard to the comparison of society to an organism, Spencer made this comparison in his PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY which appeared in print from 1877 to 1896. Marx had already made the comparison ten years earlier in his Afterword to the first German edition of CAPITAL (1876) where he wrote:
"Within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing"
.
There are, in CAPITAL at least two passages where Marx compares human social conditions with ideological conditions and to some extent establishes the limitations of such comparisons:-
"the division of labour within the society brings into contact independent commodity-producers, who acknowledge no other authority but that of competition, of the coercion exerted by the pressure of their mutual interests; just as in the animal kingdom, the bellum omnium contra omnes more or less preserves the conditions of existence of every species",
(CAPITALVOL 1, chapter XIV, page 391 in Kerr Edition).
In the second, also in CAPITALVOL. 1, Marx clearly recognised the limitations of the comparison:-
"We presuppose labour in the form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in his imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour process we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at the commencement"
(CAPITAL VOL. 1, ch VII, page 198 in the Kerr edition.
On page 20 the Bulletin has this to say about the supposed influence of Spencer:-
"On balance we may conclude that the influence of Spencer upon the S.P.G.B. has not been to the good. An abstract, all embracing evolutionary theory should not be used as a substitute for detailed knowledge of society; nor should it be invoked as the cause which will spur the workers on to socialism.
The case of the Party is grounded in class interest and the possibility of mass understanding and action directed at one type of social transformation".
But the Bulletin gives no evidence of an abstract evolutionary theory being "used as a substitute for detailed knowledge of society".
In the pamphlet HISTORICAL MATERIALISM it is only necessary to read the whole of the Section headed Evolution of Society (Beginning on page 45) or, for example, the Chapter on the Class Struggle to see that no such case has been made out.
4. Clause 4 of the D. Of P.
The Bulletin, mistakenly, sees the influence of Spencer in Clause 4, and hols that the influence "has not been to the good".
Clause 4 reads: "That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the lat class to achieve its freedom the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex".
From the Bulletin's comment it appears that the clause is regarded as defective.
What altered wording is regarded as preferable?
5. Marx and Independent Organisation
The Bulletin states on Page 14 that Marx and Engels were not opposed to the working class struggling for reforms "so long as this as done independently of capitalist political parties". This is not correct. In his "Address to the Communist League" (1852) Marx wrote in relation to the "democratic party of the petit-bourgeoisie"
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"the revolutionary working class acts in agreement with that party as long as it is a question of fighting and overwhelming the democratic-liberal coalition; in all other things the revolutionary working class must act independently"
And as late as 1875 in his CRITICISM OF THE GOTHA PROGRAMME Marx attacking Lassalle, wrote:-
"did we at the last elections shout at the artisans, the small manufacturers etc. And the peasants: 'Over as against us you, together with the bourgeoisie and the feudal lords form only one reactionary mass?"
While Lassalle was wrong in his analysis the implication here is (as in 1852) that Marx did approve alignment with the small manufactures etc.
6. The Principles of the Socialist League
The Bulletin (p.17) gives an abbreviated version of the Principles of the Socialist league.
The full text is printed in E.P. Thompsons's book on William Morris.
7). The S.L.P.
The Bulletin states (p.15) that the S.L.P. of America "dropped its reform programme, largely at the instigation of Daniel de Leon.
11. Marx and Engels and Armed Struggle
The Bulletin sets out some of the ways in which the founder members of the S.P.G.B. departed from the views of Marx and Engels but it omits to deal with their continued reliance on armed struggle.
In the version of Engels 1895 INTRODUCTION TO CLASS STRUGGLES IN FRANCE that was published at the time, Engels made his well known statement that "The rebellion of the old style, the street fight behind barricades, which up to 1848 gave the final decision, has become obsolete.
But according to the Lawrence & wish art edition (p.260 he also made the following statement.
"Does this mean that in future the street fight will play no further role? Certainly not. It only means that the conditions since 1848 have become far more unfavourable for civil fighters, far more favourable to the military. A future street fight can therefore only be victorious when this unfavourable situation is compensated by other factors. Accordingly it will occur more seldom in the beginning of a great revolution than in its further progress and will have to be undertaken with greater forces. These, however, may then well prefer, as in the whole great French Revolution or as on September 4th 1870 in Paris, the open attack to the passive barricade tactics".
8. Dictatorship of the Proletariat
The Bulletin states (p.9):-
"The phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not one that we would use today. But it denotes a key element in socialist theory: that the class struggle will lead to the capture of political power by the workers and then the use of this power to abolish class society. The period during which the working class is actually making use of this power is the dictatorship of the proletariat which we can be said to support only in the precise form that it appears in Clause 6 of our declaration of principles, the dictatorship of the ballot box, which will provide the mandate for the dismantlement of capitalist society by the workers"
.
The Bulletin explains (P.3) that the term dictatorship of the proletariat was at first used to include "peasants and independent artisans", and that Marx and Engels used it to mean "wage workers" only.
It has to be borne in mind that in continental Europe and Russia the wage workers were a minority class outnumbered by the peasants, so that it necessarily meant a minority dictatorship.
Engels, also in a letter to Bebel (24 October 1891) made clear how they were prepared to use it.
He thought they might come to power by 1898 but saw the possibility that war might bring them to power prematurely, i.e. before they had the time to "recruit enough young technicians, doctors, lawyers and schoolmasters to enable us to have the factories and big estates administered on behalf of the nation by Party comrades".
Engels added:- "If...a war brings us to power prematurely, the technicians will be our chief enemies; they will deceive and destroy us wherever they can and we shall have to use terror against them but shall get cheated all the same".
This readiness to use "terror" against a section of the working class, along with support for street fighting and Engels completely unjustified belief that the German Social Democratic Party could be regarded as socialist shows the magnitude of the advance made by the founders of the S.P.G.B. from even the mature views of Marx and Engels.
With this commitment to democratic methods, as emphasised in the D, of P. any attempt to square our position with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" of Marx and Engels could only damper our propaganda, without any gain whatever.