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Title: Communism and its Tactics Author: Sylvia Pankhurst Language: en Topics: Soviets, Council Communism, industrial revolution Source: Retrieved on Nov. 17, 2021 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/pankhurst-sylvia/communism-tactics/index.htm Notes: Two versions of Communism and its Tactics were serialised in Workers Dreadnought, the first between November 1921 and March 1922, the second – evidently left unfinished – between January and March 1923. The first parts of each were essentially identical, however the other parts were substantially re-written for the 1923 serialisation. The version copied here is the original 1921/22 version.
Under Communism all shall satisfy their material needs without stint or
measure from the common storehouse, according to their desires. Everyone
will be able to have what he or she desires in food, in clothing, books,
music, education and travel facilities. The abundant production now
possible, and which invention will constantly facilitate, will remove
any need for rationing or limiting of consumption.
Every individual, relying on the great common production, will be secure
from material want and anxiety.
There will be no class distinctions, since these arise from differences
in material possessions, education and social status — all such
distinctions will be swept away.
There will be neither rich nor poor. Money will no longer exist, and
none will desire to hoard commodities not in use, since a fresh supply
may be obtained at will. There will be no selling, because there will be
no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain everything at will,
without payment.
The possession of private property, beyond that which is in actual
personal use, will disappear.
There will be neither masters nor servants, all being in a position of
economic equality — no individual will be able to become the employer of
another.
All children will be educated up to adult age, and all adults will be
able to make free, unstinted use of all educational facilities in their
abundant leisure.
Stealing, forgery, burglary, and all economic crimes will disappear,
with all the objectionable apparatus for preventing, detecting and
punishing them.
Prostitution will become extinct; it is a commercial transaction,
dependent upon the economic need of the prostitute and the customer’s
power to pay.
Sexual union will no longer be based upon material conditions, but will
be freely contracted on the basis of affection and mutual attraction.
The birth of children will cease to be prevented by reason of poverty.
Material anxiety being removed, and the race for wealth eliminated,
other objects and ambitions will take the place of the personal struggle
for individual material existence; since all will benefit from the
labour of all honour will be done, not to the wealthy, as at present,
but to those who are skilful and zealous in the common service.
Emulation in work will take the place of emulation in wealth.
With the disappearance of the anxious struggle for existence, which saps
the energy and cripples initiative, a new vigour, a new independence
will develop. People will have more courage to desire freedom, greater
determination to possess it. They will be more exacting in their demands
upon life, more fastidious as to their choice of a vocation. They will
wish to work at what they enjoy, to order their lives as they desire.
Work will be generally enjoyed as never before in the history of
mankind.
The desire for freedom will be tempered by the sense of responsibility
towards the commonweal, which will provide security for all.
Public opinion provides a stronger, more general compulsion than any
penal code, and public opinion will strongly disapprove idleness and
waste.
To secure the abundant production necessary to Communism, and to cope
with the ever-growing complexity of modern life and requirements,
large-scale production and co-operative effort is necessary. The people
of today would not be willing to go back to producing everything by hand
in domestic workshops; were they to do so, they could not maintain the
population in comfort and with reasonable leisure. The people of today
would be unwilling to abandon all the productive factories, the trains,
the electric generating stations and so on. The retention of such things
necessitates the working-together of large numbers of people. As soon as
numbers of people are working together and supplying with their products
numbers of other people, some sort of organisation of work and of
distribution becomes inevitable. The work itself cannot be carried on
without organisation. In each industry, either the workers concerned in
the work must form and control the organisation, or they will be under
the dominion of the organisers. The various industries are interlocked
in interest and utility; therefore the industrial organisations must be
interlocked.
When wages have disappeared, when all are upon a basis of economic
equality, when the position of manager, director, organiser, etc.,
brings no material advantage, the desire for it will be less widespread
and less keen, and the danger of oppressive action by the management
will be largely nullified. Nevertheless, management imposed on unwilling
subordinates will not be tolerated; where the organiser has chosen the
assistants, the assistants will be free to leave, or change him; where
the assistants choose the organiser, they will be free to change him.
Co-operation for the common good is necessary, but freedom, not
domination, is the goal.
Since co-operative work and mutual reliance on mutual aid renders some
kind of organisation necessary, the best possible form of organisation
must be chosen: the test of its worth is its efficiency and the scope
for freedom and initiative it allows to each of its units.
The Soviet structure of committees and delegates, built up from the base
of the workshop and village assembly, presents the best form of
organisation yet evolved; it arises naturally when the workers are
thrown upon their own resources in the matter of government.
The Soviet structure will undoubtedly be the organisational structure of
Communism, at any rate for some time to come. We live always, however,
in a state of flux, and there is and happily can be, no permanence about
human institutions; there is always the possibility of something higher,
as yet undiscovered.
The overthrow of Capitalism precedent to the establishment of Communism
will be resisted by the possessors of wealth. Thus Capitalism will only
be overthrown by revolution.
The revolution can only come when conditions are ripe for it; but
opportunities may be missed: the rising may fail to take place at the
opportune moment, or it may fail by mismanagement of the proletarian
forces. A partial success may be achieved, and if Capitalism is not
completely destroyed, it may afterwards re-establish itself, as it
speedily did in Hungary, as it is gradually doing in Russia.
Since the overthrow of capitalism would be resisted by the possessors of
wealth, whether this were effected by Act of Parliament or by a sudden
revolt of the people, it is absolutely necessary for the Communists to
prepare the working class for such resistance. Many people still doubt
that capitalist resistance to the overthrow of capitalism will go to the
length of civil war, yet there is abundant contemporary evidence to
prove that such resistance will be made.
Here in Britain we have the Ulster capitalists’ preparations for armed
resistance to the Asquith Home Rule Act. The civil war threats and
preparations by Ulster Capitalism were and are supported by British
Toryism. That is why it succeeds. Since British and Ulster landlords and
capitalists have thought it worthwhile to resort to the extreme of civil
war on the Irish question how absolutely certain it is that they would
do so to prevent the establishment of Communism and proletarian rule!
In Finland, in Central Europe, in Russia, the same thing has been seen;
when capitalism is in danger capitalism resorts to force of arms to
protect itself. In Italy too, the fascisti, with their armed attacks on
Communists, Socialists, Trade Unionists, and Co-operators; attacks
organised by the Capitalists who use these disorderly bands as their
tools, are but another evidence of the same fact: when the established
order is in danger its beneficiaries arm to protect it; its supporters
and opponents come to blows, civil war breaks out and for the time being
peace is no more.
Is that as it should be? It is as it is. The inevitable must be
recognised and prepared for. A determined struggle for supremacy
inevitably accompanies the overthrow of capitalism.
Experience shows that the crisis arises suddenly: the old relationship
has been growing more and more strained, and suddenly the bonds are
snapped and the storm bursts. We do not say that a Parliamentary crisis
could not be the last straw that would precipitate the revolution, but
in none of the contemporary revolutions has this been so. We have now
the experience of Russia, Finland, Germany (where there have been a
revolution and several attempts at further revolution), in Austria and
Hungary to look to.
Great economic pressure, fired by a great rebellion against the actions
and ideology of those who have been in power, is the factor which
produces the proletarian revolution. Parliament must be overthrown with
the capitalist system if the proletarian revolution is to succeed there
must be a clean break with the old institutions of Government; the
revolution must create its own instrument.
Parliament would have to be sacrificed with the overthrow of capitalism,
even were it conceivable that an Act of Parliament will formally abolish
the capitalist system. The capitalists would resist by force the first
attempt to put the Act into practice, and Parliament is not the body
that could carry the proletarian revolution through to success in face
of capitalist revolt, which would be one of both armed and passive
resistance.
The workers would be compelled to meet such a revolt with all the forces
at their disposal; their most characteristic weapon is their industrial
power, for the effective wielding of which they would have to be
co-ordinated industrially. Every industry would be divided against
itself; the owners and part of the management would take the capitalist
side, the mass of the workers the side of the working class. As in all
the countries where the revolutionary crisis has appeared, the naval and
military forces would be divided in the same way, though the old
training and discipline would probably cause a larger proportion of the
working class rank-and-file to support the side of the master class than
would be the case in industry.
A little consideration of such a situation must reveal to anyone who
thinks seriously that Parliament and the local governing bodies; the
county and borough councils, the boards of guardians, and so on, could
not be the guiding and co-ordinating machinery of such a struggle; that
such machinery could take no other form than that of the Soviets.
Even in a war between rival capitalist governments Parliament becomes a
cipher in the struggle; the machinery that carries out the war is the
Cabinet composed of the heads of the various Departments of State, all
very much controlled by the expert managers of those departments. On the
military side the political and military heads of the War Office work in
contact with a machine which is composed of all the officers from the
highest to the lowest in the army, and the men under their command. On
the industrial side the political and technical heads of the departments
work through a machine which is composed of the owners, managers and
workers in all industries, factories, workshops.
So it will be in the proletarian revolution, but this being a struggle
between the workers and their masters, the officers and the managers
will be proletarian leaders chosen by their fellows. And contact with
the rank and file will be by delegates and mass meetings. The services
of the rank [and] file will not be based on compulsion and wagery, but
on consent and enthusiasm and a voice in responsibility for aims and
policies.
War experience will show us that even capitalism found that shop
stewards and councils on which Trade Union officials co-operated with
the management were helpful in securing greater output, which was
necessary to their success in war.
Some people may say that the Soviets could be abandoned and Parliament
reverted to after the clash of civil war had passed; and that, as they
hope there may be no such clash, they will not interest themselves in
the question of Soviets. Further consideration should show them,
however, that even were hope of avoiding a struggle with capitalism
justified, Parliament would have to go and the Soviets would become
necessary at least for some time after the overthrow of capitalism.
Consider the position here in London with capitalism abolished; the
tubes, trams and buses, the main line stations, the docks, the
reservoirs, the gas works, the electric generating stations, the
bakeries, food preserving, clothing and other factories, the
slaughter-houses, butchers, bakers, greengrocers, grocers and other
wholesale and retail shops and the markets. Millions of people are
waiting for their daily supply of milk and bread to be brought round to
them, to find their daily supply of provender in the shops where they
deal, their habitual means of transport. If any of these things stop,
then at least some people will not arrive at their daily work, and
masses of others may thus be deprived of accustomed necessaries. Perhaps
the workers are already engaged in a general strike; perhaps the wheels
of industry and transport are already dislocated, and everyone is
already living a hungry, makeshift existence.
Whichever way it be, everything has to be reorganised and built up on a
new basis; production for use, not for profit, and capitalism is
overthrown. Undoubtedly some of those who used to manage the big
concerns under the old system have refused to function any more;
undoubtedly many others can not be trusted to occupy such important
positions of trust; already they have shown their hostility and have
taken to sabotage. And there are the people, the hungering millions of
all sorts, clamouring to have their wants supplied, each with their
peculiarities, their likes and dislikes, their reasonable and
unreasonable prejudices, and crowds of them ready to start looting if
they are kept waiting or denied what they are accustomed to have and
what they think is their due. Everyone, both as worker and consumer, has
new hopes and desires and new claims upon life, for has not the Workers’
Revolution come? Everyone demands more leisure and more congenial
labour, more food, more clothes, more pleasure; only the patient people
are prepared to wait, and everyone is finding his daily work, assuming
he is prepared to do it as of old, quite dislocated. Everyone, too, is
demanding a new independent status, and a share in deciding how things
shall be done.
Imagine bringing unfortunate Parliament into such a dilemma. Frank
Hodges and T.C. Cramp besieged by a mob of Westminster housewives who
cannot obtain either fish or butter. Will Thorne, who is told the
electricity supply is cut off in all the suburbs. Ramsay Macdonald, some
of whose constituents are tramping to London to tell him that Leicester
can get no coal.
The only chance for that Parliament would be to call the Industrial
Soviets into being!
As to the borough councils: we remember the little matter of the food
rationing, and the groups of housewives here and there who, through the
muddles of the local food committee and the Ministry of Food, found
themselves as “outlanders” prohibited from buying at the shops where
they had hitherto dealt, and unable to procure commodities anywhere
else.
The only people who could deal with the great new situation would be the
people who do the work and the people who use the produce. All
interlocked as they are in this busy hive of overcrowded life the
Soviets would be the only solution. The workers in the factory in a
turmoil of dislocation would come together and talk the matter over;
appoint one of their number to answer the telephone, another to fetch
supplies; others to take stock; others, according to their capacities,
to mind the various machines, others to acquaint the absentees that the
factory is at work again, others as organisers and instructors. They
would send to the workers in other factories for more supplies and
organise exchanges.
The women rushing frantically about in search of supplies, and
threatening to start looting and rioting because their children are
hungry, would be called together by the more level-headed, would
enumerate their wants and place their demands before the workers
responsible for production and transport.
In Russia all this was done, and over vast districts, under the spur of
need without preliminary thought or organisation.
In this country the workers cannot leave things to chance. Capitalism is
highly organised here and will defeat the workers’ revolution again and
again, unless the workers are organised efficiently. Moreover, in London
and in the vast chains of towns which form our industrial districts we
are so closely massed on the ground, so absolutely dependent on food
brought in from outside, and upon the collective service of the whole
industrial community, that unless production and distribution is well
organised we must speedily starve.
It will go hard with us if we have not created the machinery before the
hour of revolution strikes.
The machinery of the Soviets must obviously follow, and does so far as
it is successful, the lines of need. Each workshop has its meetings and
elects its delegates to a factory committee. The factory will also have
its mass meetings of all workers on occasion. Every factory will be
united to the factories of the same industry in the district through its
committee of delegates, and in the same way will be co-ordinated with
every factory in the same industry in the country. These are the bodies
which will meet and discuss what concerns the industry, but for matters
which concern the district in which the workers live and work they will
go to mass meetings or send delegates to committees from all the
industries in the district. The housekeepers will have their own
meetings also, and they, too, will go to mass meetings or send delegates
to the producing industries when arrangements are to be made between
them.
All this will be done purely by way of managing affairs so that all may
be, as far as possible, satisfied that the needs of all may be explained
and understood by those who have to supply them.
But there should be no compulsion; some people may say: “What the
majority decide is good enough for me.” Others will say: “I like to have
a voice in it.” As a rule, when things affecting a group of people who
are working together come up for decision everyone of the group will
join in and give his or her opinion, and generally the thing will be
decided by mutual agreement.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is a much misused phrase; when
Communism is in being there will be no proletariat, as we understand the
term today, and no dictatorship.
The dictatorship, so far as it is genuine and defensible, is the
suppression by Workers’ Soviets of capitalism and the attempt to
re-establish it. This should be a temporary state of war. Such a period
will inevitably occur, we believe, because we do not believe that the
possessors of wealth will submit to the overthrow of capitalism without
resistance. On the contrary, [we] believe the owners will fight to
preserve capitalism by every means in their power.
Whilst the capitalists are openly fighting the workers who have seized
the power, fighting them openly and secretly in armed battalions in
guerilla bands, by ambush assasination bombs, sabotage, spies; then the
proletariat must maintain a vigilant war service and dictatorship. The
situation in Ireland before the truce is a little like what a
proletarian dictatorship may have to cope with.
Once, however, the war is over, once the capitalist and his allies have
given up any serious attempt to re-establish capitalism, then away with
dictatorship; away with compulsion.
Compulsion of any kind is repugnant to the Communist ideal. No-one may
make a wage-slave of another; no-one may hoard up goods for himself that
he does not require and cannot use; but the only way to prevent such
practices is not by making them punishable; it is by creating a society
in which no-one needs to become a wage slave, and no-one cares to be
cumbered with a private hoard of goods when all that he needs is readily
supplied as he needs it from the common storehouse.
Compulsory education for children has been a protection for children in
this capitalist society when parents are poor and grasping enough to
desire the earnings of their children or to suffer from the burden of
their maintenance, but when all things that nature and mankind produce
are free in abundance for the asking what parents would deny education
to their children; what children would submit with the school-door
freely open?
1922
We have seen that the Soviets are destined both to provide the
organisational machinery of Communist society and to act as the
instrument of the proletarian dictatorship during the transitional
period in which, whilst capitalism has been overthrown, the dispossessed
owners have not yet settled down to accept the new order. The Soviets
may also conduct the fight for the actual overthrow of Capitalism,
though in Russia the power was actually seized by the Bolshevik Party;
then handed to the Soviets.
Let us consider the essential structure of the Soviet, its particular
characteristic, wherein lies its special fitness to function as the
administrative machinery of the Communist community.
The Soviet is constructed along the lines of production and
distribution; it replaces not merely Parliament and the present local
governing bodies, but also the capitalists, managerial staffs and
employees of today with all their ramifications. The functional units of
the Soviets are the groups of workers of all grades, including those
engaged in management in the factory, the dockyard, the mine, the farm,
the warehouse, the office, the distributive store, the school, the
hospital, the printing shop, the laundry, the restaurant, and the
domestic workers in the communal household, the street or block of
dwellings.
The generally accepted theoretical structure of the Soviet community is
as follows:
The Workshop Committee: comprising all the workers in the shop.
The Factory Committee: comprising delegates from the Workshop
Committees.
The District Committee: comprising delegates from the factory or
sub-district committees of the workers in the industry, and from
district committees of distributive workers engaged in distributing the
products of the industry.
The National Committee: composed of delegates from district committees.
District and Sub-District Committees: Delegates from district or sub
district committees of industries (including factories, docks, farms,
laundries, restaurants, centres of distribution, schools, domestic
workers, parks, theatres, etc., workers in all branches of social
activity being represented).
National Committee: comprising delegates of district committees of all
industries and works of social activity.
Thus there is a dual machinery: 1. For the organisation and
co-ordination of each industry and social activity; 2. for the linking
together of all industries and social activities.
The network of committees of delegates which makes up the framework of
the Soviets and links the many productive groups, and also individual
producers should not be regarded as a rigid, cast-iron machinery, but as
a convenient means of transacting necessary business, a practical method
of inter-organisation which gives everyone the opportunity of a voice in
social management. The members of a community are dependent upon each
other. The cotton spinning mill is operated by a number of groups of
workers practising various crafts. The workers in the spinning mill are
dependent for the execution of their work on the cotton growers, the
railwaymen, the mariners, and the dockers, who provide them with the raw
material of their trade. They are dependent on machine makers, miners,
electricians and others for the machinery of spinning and the power to
run it, and on the weaver, the bleacher, the dyer, the printer, the
garment worker and upholsterer to complete the work they have begun. In
order that the spinners may do their work they are also dependent on
builders, decorators, furniture makers, food producers, garment makers,
and innumerable others whose labours are necessary to maintain them in
health and efficiency.
At present it is the employer who directs, the merchant who co-ordinates
and distributes social production. When capitalism is destroyed another
medium of direction, co-ordination and distribution must be discovered,
the productive processes must not fall into chaos. The Soviets will
supply the necessary medium of co-ordination and direction; but they
must become a medium of convenience, not of compulsion; otherwise there
can be no genuine Communism.
In Russia the Soviet constitution has only been very partially applied,
and has not been theoretically regular in structure, and is still
constantly subject to large modifications.
The Russian Soviets had not been created in advance in preparation for
the revolution of March, 1917: they sprang into life in the time of
crisis. They had arisen in the revolution of 1905, but had died away at
its fall. The March, 1917, revolution only created Soviets in a few
centres, and though their number grew and was added to by the November
Bolshevik revolution, even yet the network of Soviets is incomplete.
Kameneff, reporting on this question to the seventh all-Russian Congress
of Soviets in 1920, stated that even where Soviets existed their general
assemblies were often rare, and when held frequently only listened to a
few speeches and dispersed without transacting any real business.
Nevertheless, the Soviet government had claimed that the number of
Soviets actually functioning has grown continuously; yet it freely
admits that the Soviets have taken neither so active nor so responsible
a part as they should in the creation and management of the new
community. Russia’s “new economic policy” of reversion to capitalism
strikes at the root of the Soviet idea and destroys the functional
status of the Soviets.
Russia’s special difficulties in applying the Soviet system were
inherent in the backward state of the country which had only partially
progressed from feudalism into capitalism. In industry the small home
producer still accounted for 60 per cent of Russia’s industrial
production. In agriculture the peasants had not yet been divorced from
the land as is the case in England, where we have long had a completely
landless class of rural workers. In Russia the ideal of the land worker
was to produce for himself on his own holding and to sell his products,
not to work in co-operation with others. The Russian peasants, vastly
outnumbering the rest of the population, were all but unanimous in their
demands. Those who had no land were determined to get a piece for
themselves, and those who had a little piece of land wanted more. Though
their individualism was tempered by the old custom of periodically
re-dividing the land and other village traditions, the peasants were an
influence against Communism. Nevertheless, their ancient village
council, the Mir, a survival from the period of primitive Communism, had
somewhat prepared them for the Soviets.
In the scattered village communities the occupational character of the
Soviet is apparently somewhat submerged in the territorial; yet all the
subsidiary crafts of the villages are attendant on the great industry of
agriculture. Ties of common interest and mutual dependence, which are
the life-blood of the Soviet, are clearly apparent between the land
workers and the various craftsmen of the village. The blurring of the
occupational character of the village Soviet does not detract from its
function of an administrative unit in harmony with the actual conditions
of the country. On the other hand, the fact that the town Soviets could
not supply it with the industrial products it needed, by weakening the
link of mutual usefulness, making the usefulness merely one-sided,
removed the natural impetus of the Soviets of the villages to link
themselves for utilitarian reasons with the Soviets of the towns.
Production by individual producers who are competing with each other
creates sources of conflict which are antagonistic to the Soviet. The
strongest and most useful Soviet must always be that which is formed of
those who are working together and who realise at every turn that they
are dependent on each other. The necessity for the Soviet becomes more
pronounced and its work more varied the more that work is carried on in
common and the more closely the lives of the people are related to each
other. Mankind is gregarious; the degree of gregariousness in human
beings is partly dependant on material conditions, partly on inclination
(which is doubtless largely, if not wholly, the slow product of long
environment). As humanity secures a completer mastery over matter,
individual choice as to how life shall be spent, becomes broader and
more free; science will more and more enable desire to determine the
degree of industrial concentration. Our civilisation has perhaps nearly
reached the limit of the tendency to gather together ever greater and
greater numbers of workers, performing some tiny mechanical operation as
attendants to machinery. Perhaps the future has in store for us an
entirely opposite development. That would not effect the fact that the
Soviet must find its most congenial soil in a society based on mutual
aid and mutual dependence.
In the industrial centres where it might have been expected that the
occupational basis of the Soviet would have been adhered to, the
structure of the Russian Soviets was irregular from the theoretical
standpoint. The Soviets, instead of being formed purely of workers in
the various industries and activities of the community, were composed
also of delegates of political parties, political groups formed by
foreigners in Russia, Trades Councils, Trade Unions and co-operative
societies. Pravda of April 18th, 1918, published the following
regulations for the Moscow Soviet elections:—
The intention in giving representation to these various interests was,
of course, to disarm their antagonism to the Soviet power and to secure
their co-operation instead; but the essential administrative character
of the Soviets was thereby sacrificed. Constituted thus they must
inevitably discuss political antagonisms rather than the production and
distribution of social utilities and amenities.
The industrial unions, economic councils and co-operative societies
which have been a feature of Soviet Russia (the two former having
representation in the Soviets) have no place, because they have no
reason for existence, under an efficient Soviet system, in which they
would be absorbed into the occupational Soviets and indistinguishably
fused with them.
Industrial unions can have no reason for existence if the Soviets are
fulfilling efficiently their proper function as the administrative
machinery of the Communist community, for the Soviets should cover the
same constituencies as the industrial unions. The industrial unions will
only exist so long as there is either a conflict between the workers and
the Soviets (which are theoretically the organs of the workers), or in
case the Soviets are failing to administer industry or administer it
efficiently. The very existence of the Industrial Union, unless it be
merely a social club, denotes an antagonism between the members of the
union and those who are administering industry; unless, on the other
hand, the Soviets are failing to administer industry and the unions are
formed for that purpose. In Russia, as a matter of fact, the continued
existence of the industrial unions is due to the fact that there it
antagonism between the workers and those who are administering industry.
In a theoretically correct Soviet community the workers, through their
Soviets, which are indistinguishable from them, should administer. This
has not been achieved in Russia.
Co-operatives have no place in a genuine Soviet community. If they are
distributive organisations purely, they should be the distributive
branches of the industrial Soviets. If they are organs of buying and
selling, they are survivals of capitalism and must disappear under
Communism. If they are associations of producers they can only differ
from industrial Soviets in so far as they exact payment in cash or kind
for their produce instead of distributing it freely. In so far as they
exact payment or practice barter, they have no place in a Soviet
community.
The curious overlapping patchwork which has hitherto made up the Russian
Soviet system should by no means be slavishly copied. The Russians
themselves have emphasised that. Nevertheless, the recent tactics which
they have induced the Third International to adopt do not indicate that
they have a clear perception that a highly organised industrial
community may build the new Communist order on the theoretically correct
foundation of the occupational Soviets.
Zinoviev, at the Second Congress of the Third International in Moscow,
introduced a Thesis declaring that no attempt should be made to form
Soviets prior to the outbreak of the revolutionary crisis. It was argued
that, as such bodies would be powerless, or nearly so, their formation
might bring the conception of the Soviets into proletarian contempt. The
Thesis was adopted by the Congress, without discussion, and thereby
became an axiom of the Third International.
The question as to whether the mere borrowed term, Soviet, shall be
reserved for use in the actual crisis of revolution is of small
importance though, if not used previously, it would probably miss being
adopted as the slogan of the revolution.
The question of postponing the creation of the actual organisation till
the hour of a revolutionary crisis is, on the other hand, a fundamental
one.
The idea expressed and insisted upon in that Thesis of Zinoviev’s was
that the Soviet must be a great mass movement, coming together in the
electrical excitement of the crisis; the correctness of its structure,
its actual Sovietness (to coin an adjective), being considered of
secondary importance. A progressive growth, gradually branching out till
the hour of crisis; a strong and well-tried organisation is not
contemplated by the Thesis. The need for carefully conceived structure
is ignored. Propaganda for the Soviets alone is recommended.
Russia’s dual Revolution was an affair of spontaneous outbursts, with no
adequate organisation behind it. The Trade Unions, always a feeble
growth, were crushed by the Czardom at the outbreak of the great war of
1914. The Revolutionary political parties could call for a revolution;
they could not carry it through: that was accomplished by the action of
the revolutionary elements in the Army and Navy, in the workshops, on
the railways, and on the land. That these revolutionaries at the point
of production were mainly unorganised was a disability, not an
advantage. In Russia the government first of the Czar, then of Kerensky,
crumbled readily under the popular assault. The disability arising from
the disorganised state of the workers was not felt in its full
weightiness until after the Soviet Government had been established. Then
it was realised that, though the Soviets were supposed to have taken
power, the Soviet structure had yet to be created and made to function.
The structure is still incomplete: it has functioned hardly at all.
Administration has been largely by Government departments, working often
without the active, ready co-operation, sometimes even with the
hostility of groups of workers who ought to have been taking a
responsible share in administration. To this cause must largely be
attributed Soviet Russia’s defeat on the economic front.
It would be monstrous folly for workers in other countries, especially
in highly industrialised countries where Capitalism is old, to imitate
Russia’s unpreparedness. We in Britain have an infinitely stronger
Capitalism to overturn: we have greater opportunities of creating the
organisation necessary to fight it.
This organisation must be able both to attack and destroy Capitalism in
the final struggle, and also to replace the administrative machinery of
Capitalism. Moreover it must be animated by the will to these
achievements.
We have at present no such organisation in this country.
Our Trade Unions have neither the will, nor the capacity for the
purpose. We are nearest industrial unionism in mining and transport and
on the land, but even there we have several competing Unions in each
industry. In the textile, metal, food preparing, wood-working, clothing,
and building industries, we have a multiplicity of little-co-ordinated
organisations. Moreover, the great mass of the workers is divided into
two sections: the skilled and the unskilled: organised into quite
separate Unions and divided by impassable barriers which have been
jealously erected and maintained by the skilled workers.
The structure of the Trade Unions is antiquated and fruitful of delays.
It is highly undemocratic, some Unions have first and second class
members, the former, of ten or more years’ standing, alone being
eligible for office; some elect their executive for eight years or some
other long term; some hold no general congress of branch
representatives. The rank and file members of the Unions have little or
no voice in deciding the larger issues of policy. The executive usually
determining the policy to be pursued at national conferences with other
bodies. The rules, which are registered with the capitalist Government’s
Registrar General, cannot be changed without long and hard effort. Under
normal circumstances it must take many years to change them appreciably.
The rules and structure of the Unions would place a handicap upon any
serious attempt that might be made to remould the Unions in order that
they might function with some sort of efficiency in the attack on
Capitalism and in the administration of industry after Capitalism were
overthrown.
The rules and structure are even a serious handicap in the daily
struggle to palliate Capitalism, which is what the Unions exist for.
The Union officials who, almost to a man, desire the retention of the
capitalist system, fear, above all things, any serious attack upon it,
are aided and protected in their conservatism by the Union rules.
The reactionary officials have, however, a stronger buttress and
protection in the backward masses, who vastly outnumber the awakened
workers in the Trade Unions. It is only in the advanced stages of the
Revolution that the great masses will discern the gulf between
themselves and their reactionary leaders. This is one of the reasons why
another organisation is necessary. Such an organisation must reveal to
the masses the true character of their leaders, and offer them an
alternative policy.
The Trade Unions are composed of masses of workers who did not become
members of the Unions with the object of changing the social system, but
merely to palliate it. Latterly men and women have even been forced into
the Unions, because Trade Unions had become strong enough to insure that
those who refused to join would have difficulty in obtaining employment.
With such a membership, the Trade Unions are naturally timid,
conservative bodies, apt to oppose drastic change and unready to take
any bold initiative.
We believe that such Trade Unions can never deliberately precipitate a
revolution. In this matter, theory is supported by experience. In Russia
the revolution was not made by the hardly-existing Trade Unions. After
the first revolution the Central Council of Soviets laboured to form
Trade Unions. Some of the Unions it had formed then opposed retention of
power by the Soviets, worked against all tendencies towards Communism,
and gave their support to the demand for a bourgeois republic, with
Capitalism re-established in power.
In Germany, the Trade Unions, so far from leading the various
proletarian uprisings, took no official part except to oppose them.
To administer in place of Capitalism, as well as to overthrow it, the
workers should be organised with all, and more than all, the efficiency
and coherence of Capitalism. In this country, Capitalism itself, though
tremendously better equipped than in Russia under the Czardom, still
lacks co-ordination. As a medium for supplying the people’s needs, it
suffers on the one hand from the competition and overlapping of private
interests; and, on the other, from shortage and lack in districts where
the small means of the people do not render it profitable to supply them
efficiently. Every day British Capitalism is remedying some of its
organisational defects, at least, some of those due to its own internal
capitalist rivalries.
From banking, where we have nearly arrived at a single trust, to
tea-shops, where Lyons is absorbing competitor after competitor,
co-ordination and the elimination of competition is going on constantly.
Trustification has not yet developed nearly so far in Britain as in
Germany, where the combination of the powerful capitalist, Stinnes,
links up coal and ore mining, smelting, and the manufacture, shipping
and marketing of all sorts of metal goods; forestry, wood-working,
paper-making, printing and publishing; tram, train, and sea travel, and
the provision of hotel accommodation; the production and supply of
electricity in all its branches, and a host of other activities.
British Capitalist organisation will rapidly become more closely knit
under pressure of the competition which is rising up against it all over
the world: in Britain’s own colonies and dominions, in America, in the
growing industrialism of Poland, Italy, and other European countries,
above all in Germany, whose Capitalism, still more since the war that
was meant to crush it, is Britain’s keenest rival.
We should welcome the trustification of industry, in so far as it is a
co-ordination along the lines of convenience and utility in producing
and distributing what is needed by the populace. We should welcome it
also because it provides the means of linking up the workers into a
closely-knit fighting organisation; an organisation which can step in
and displace the capitalist, and, having done so, shall be able to carry
on production and distribution.
Such an organisation may be built up by organising the workers in the
co-ordinated centres of production and distribution along the lines of
the Trust itself. The Trade Unions are not thus organised.
Although Trustification has not yet developed very far in Britain,
British employers of labour are much better organised than British
workers. Employers’ Associations and Trade Journals bind the employers
together in all industries, and a much greater degree of solidarity is
shown by the employing class than by the working class when a trade
dispute arises. In this country Trade Unionism has never achieved the
general strike: it has even shrunk from attempting any large-scale
sympathetic strike. In this respect British Trade Unionism is behind
that of most European countries. Both ideologically and structurally it
is distinctly outdistanced by its continental contemporaries. Indeed, it
is solely on the size of its membership that the British Trade Union
movement has claimed to be the strongest in the world. As a body of
action it would gain in strength if it could be ruthlessly pruned of its
more backward members.
The trustification and co-ordination of industry under Capitalism has
for many years been causing a perpetual discussion upon industrial
unionism to be carried on in the Labour movement; but the result in
actual improvements in the Union structure has been surprisingly small.
That rapid wartime growth, the Shop Stewards’ organisation, in a few
months co-ordinated the workers in the munition factories and shipyards
with an efficient completeness the Trade Unions had never approached,
and made the Stewards’ movement a coherent acting force, such as the
Trade Unions had never been. This development shows that the task of
organising the workers in accordance with Capitalist organisation, in
which the Trade Unions have hitherto failed, may readily be accomplished
by building upon a new basis, unhindered by the trammels of the old
machinery and the prejudices and vested interests of the old officials.
It may, perhaps, be objected that since the Shop Stewards’ organisation
dwindled at the close of the war and has all but passed away, there are
elements of permanency in the Trade Unions which the Shop Stewards did
not possess. That is true. The Trade Unions remained in possession of
their accumulated funds, and were adding to these funds week by week,
for the workers continued paying their Trade Union dues week by week;
although the Trade Unions were functioning only as benefit societies,
whilst the rank and file workers themselves were doing, through their
shop committees and their elected stewards, the work for which the
Unions were created. The Unions retained possession of the funds and the
friendly benefits. When the boom in production passed and unemployment
became rife in the land, the workers unready for the time being to
safeguard their status in the workshop, were glad to fall back on the
friendly benefits of the Union.
As we have seen, the main purpose of the Soviets is to minister to the
needs of the people, in clothing, housing, education, recreation,
transport and so on. The workers who are responsible for these services
are linked together in their Soviets for the purposes of their work. The
Soviet structure is efficient, because it is formed on the lines
necessitated by the work; also because it gives every worker a
responsible share in the common effort, and thereby encourages the
co-operative impulse. Even under Capitalism the merits of the workshop
council, which is the germ of the Soviet, have been discovered, not only
by the workers, but by the capitalist himself. During the war, when the
Shop Stewards’ Movement flourished, employers actually initiated the
formation of shop councils and the election of workers’ stewards.
The employers did so, not merely to forestall the rebel elements, but
rather because, in the great stress of war-time and with a tremendous
influx of new workers, the shop council organisation would minimise the
cost of management, reduce the number of paid supervisors required, and
the difficulty of maintaining discipline, and increase the output by
producing a spirit of willingness amongst the workers who were
responsive to the patriotic appeals to produce more.
Mr. Charles Reynold, of the big engineering firm of that name, recently
gave an address on workshop committees and the control of industry: he
described how the works committee at his firm holds monthly meetings
with the management to discuss wages and conditions of labour, and all
questions of management. He declared that the confidential financial
information presented to the directors is communicated to the works
committee, and the result is the creation of a sense of responsibility,
an understanding of the management point of view, and the acceptance of
changes with comparatively little friction.
From the class-war standpoint this information does not gratify us, and
presumably the scheme is part of some profit-sharing arrangement. It is
nevertheless testimony to the value of the workshop council from the
administrative efficiency standpoint, although under Capitalism the shop
council has, of course, no real power, and only a leading-strings share
of responsibility. Reynold’s is but one of many capitalist firms which
are endeavouring, in the interests of efficiency, to secure the
co-operation of their workers, though capitalist conditions prevent the
co-operation from being genuine on either side. The growth of Whitleyism
shows that the intelligent British capitalists are beginning to
understand that men and women only give their best when they give of
their free will, feeling that they are responsible entities. This truth
is too often forgotten by those who once preached it, when they attain
to official positions, whether in Russia, or in Britain.
The trend of the times supports the view that the Soviet Government made
a serious blunder when it decided (and put into practice its decision)
that “workers’ control of industry” is only a slogan useful for securing
the overthrow of the capitalist, and must be discarded, once the workers
have turned out the capitalist, in favour of management by an individual
or committee appointed by some centralised authority.
A careful and candid survey of the Russian attempt to establish
Communism will some day reveal, more clearly than at present, the
proportional weight of the causes which have led to its failure. That it
has failed for the present, and that only a powerful new impetus can
stop the present retrogression in Russia we are compelled to admit.
Such a candid survey will provide evidence as to how far the Russian
failure has been due to the capitalist resistance to Communism; how far
to the unreadiness of the population; how far to the mistakes of the
Communists, and especially to the mistakes of the Soviet Government.
The question of workers’ control of industry will bulk largely in this
connection.
Viewed from the standpoint of efficiency as a fighting force, it is
notorious that never were strikes so swiftly, solidly and successfully
effected in this country as those of the war-time Shop Stewards’
movement. A rank and file chorus complaining of the inefficiency,
inactivity and lack of class solidarity shown by the reactionary Trade
Union leaders is constantly rising and falling. During the Dublin
Lock-Out of 1912, during the railway strike of 1919 and the coal strike
of 1921, it swelled with indignation, but only the workers organised in
the workshop committees have taken large-scale action, except at the
bidding of the Union officials. This is not unnatural: until both the
individual workers and the workers in each individual firm feel that
others will act with them, they shrink from taking action which, if not
supported, will lead to their victimisation.
To recapitulate: the Soviets, or workers’ occupational councils, will
form the administrative machinery for supplying the needs of the people
in Communist society; they will also make the revolution by seizing
control of all the industries and services of the community.
Though in Russia the revolution was accomplished by Soviets which sprang
up spontaneously in some places and by unorganised mob risings, this was
only possible, because the government of Russia had broken down,
Capitalism was weak and of limited extent, and the entire country in a
state of chaotic disorder.
Here in Britain the machinery of the Soviets must be prepared in
advance. In all the industries and services, revolutionary workers, who
are habitually at work there and know the ropes, must be prepared to
seize and maintain control.
The Trade Unions do not provide this machinery: they are not competent,
either to seize, control, or to administer industry. They are not
structurally fitted to administer industry, because their organisations
do not combine all the workers in any industry, and they are not
efficiently co-ordinated. Their branches are constructed according to
the district in which the worker resides, not according to where he
works.
The Trade Unions are, moreover opposed to revolutionary action: their
object is to secure palliations of the capitalist system, not to abolish
it.
British experience has shown that the workers’ council system is
efficient both as an engine for fighting the employer, and as a means of
administrating the industry. Experience has also shown that under
favourable conditions it can be built up with remarkable rapidity.
Experience in those European countries where the workers and their
organisations have been tested in the revolutionary fight, has shown
that the workers’ council is always the organ of the workers’ struggle.
The Trade Unions, having tried unsuccessfully to avert the contest, in
each case threw the weight of their influence on to the side of
preserving the established order, and opposed every effort of the
workers and their councils to overpower the employing class.
The evidence given by J.H. Thomas in his libel case against the
Communist and its officials reveals the attitude which he will adopt in
the event of any struggles for Proletarian power in this country. J.H.
Thomas must not be regarded as an exception: the British Trade Union
officials will all adopt the same attitude. Some will denounce the
revolutionary workers on platforms, openly proclaiming their allegiance
to the Crown, the Government and the employing class; others will merely
hold aloof from the revolutionaries and in the Trade Union conferences
will vote against the Unions joining the revolutionaries in the
struggle. If they do not advise Trade Union members to give actual
assistance to the Government in coercing the revolutionaries, they will
at least advise their members to assist the cause of re-establishing the
disturbed capitalist order by remaining quietly at work — the obedient
servants of the capitalist employer, or of the capitalist Government.
This is the part which the Trade Unions and their officials have played
in every one of the many recent proletarian uprisings in other
countries: this is the part which J.H. Thomas and his colleagues will
play here. J.H. Thomas differs only in degree from his colleagues who
belong to the Reformist School. The British Trade Union movement and its
officials belong to the same school as the Trade Unions and Trade Union
officials of Europe and America.
The Trade Unions have too loose and uncoordinated a structure to make
the revolution: they are ideologically opposed to it: therefore they
will fight it.
The workers’ councils, co-ordinated industrially and nationally along
the lines of production and distribution, are the organs which are
structurally fitted to give the workers greatest power in the control of
industry. If that power is to be used to overthrow the present system,
the councils, which together will form a “One Big Union” of workers’
committees in all industries, should be built, from the first, with the
object of taking control.
In Germany, where the methods necessary for waging the proletarian
struggle are being forged during the struggle, the Revolutionary
Workers’ Union, the A.A.U., is a fighting force which has had to be
reckoned with. Its growth has been accelerated by the fact that the
reactionary Trade Unions have expelled their revolutionary members.
The great task of the Communist revolution is ideologic. Communism
entails the creation of an altogether new attitude of mind towards all
social relationships, and the development of a host of new habits and
impulses. In discarding our purse and our financial anxieties and
calculations, in removing the dependence of the propertiless upon the
propertied, we shall change the entire configuration of life. Communism
will create for us a great fraternity, a great trustfulness, arising
from a great security, an abundant enthusiasm for productive labour,
because such labour will benefit all, and all will share responsibility
for it.
Communism necessitates the creation of a great initiative, which shall
animate the entire people.
Under Capitalism the masses are as a flock of sheep driven by their
owners. Under Communism, on the contrary, they will be free
co-operators, producing, inventing, studying, not under the compulsion
of law, or poverty, or the incentive of individual gain, but from
deliberate choice and with an eager zest for achievement. Communism will
provide the material and spiritual conditions which will make voluntary
co-operative labour possible. Only by willing service and intelligent
initiative can true Communism develop.
The establishment of the Communist life entails a complete breach, both
in practice and in ideas, with Capitalism and its machinery. The
Parliamentary system is the characteristic machinery of the capitalist
State; it has grown up with great similarity in all the countries which
have built up their own capitalism. In countries where an alien
Capitalism dominates the native populace, the Parliamentary system of
the dominant aliens extends the tentacles of its power to the subject
country. It sends its officials overseas to rule the natives, entirely
discarding its pretended dependence on the consent of the governed and
its boasted representative character.
Parliament has been in large measure the co-operative society of the
landlords and capitalists through which they have policed the
proletariat at home and maintained their power abroad.
The great landlords originally used lawless force and violence for
seizing their estates. In the latter half of the fifteenth century they,
as feudal lords, drove the peasants, who had the same feudal right to
the land as they, from their holdings. The feudal lords usurped the
lands which were held and used in common. These things they did in
defiance of law and custom, and without waiting to obtain the assent or
assistance of Parliament.
Later on, however, the feudal lords found it convenient to give
Parliamentary sanction to their robbery of the peasants, and to enact
legislation to complete their usurpation of the land. Sitting in
Parliament, the lords proceeded thereafter to abolish their own merely
feudal tenure of the land, and by creating the modern right of private
property in land, they made themselves its absolute owners.
Before they had legalised the expropriation of the peasants, the lords
in Parliament enacted legislation to force the peasants they were
driving from the land to become their wage-slaves. From the reign of
Henry VII, legislation began for the coercion of the dispossessed. We
all know that for begging, or wandering without means of subsistence,
the landless people were whipped and branded, their ears were sliced,
and on a third arrest they were executed. An Act of Edward VI condemned
the idler to be the slave of whoever denounced him. He could be sold,
bequeathed, or hired as a slave. Any-one might make slaves of his
children. Vagabonds, as the dispossessed were called, might be made into
parish slaves, condemned to labour for the inhabitants. Only in the
reign of Anne, when an industrial proletariat sufficient for the needs
of farmers and manufacturers had been developed, were such statutes
repealed. So long ago as 1349, Parliament, in the Statute of Labourers,
fixed maximum wages to prevent the proletariat from asserting itself to
the inconvenience of the employing classes. Maximum wage legislation was
maintained thereafter as long as any serious tendency to labour scarcity
could give the workers a powerful lever in forcing up their wages.
Parliament has remained the employers’ co-operative society for
dragooning the workers, in spite of all the extensions of the franchise
which have taken place. When a serious labour scarcity arose in our
time, during the great European war of 1914-19, Parliament enacted the
Munitions Act, to prevent the workers taking advantage of the situation.
Neither in this present period of great unemployment, nor at any other
time in history, has Parliament fixed maximum wages to protect the
workers when the employers have been taking advantage of a Labour
surplus to depress the wages of their employees below the subsistence
level. The rates of wages fixed by the Agricultural Wages Boards during
the war, were, in reality, a method of attaining by subtle means, the
object which the Munitions Act achieved in other industries: namely a
check on the bargaining power of Labour during a period of unexampled
labour scarcity.
From the early laws against the industrial combination of the workers
(maintained by the coercive power of the state as long as the ruling
classes considered them necessary) down to our modern D.O.R.A. and
E.P.A. and the strike-breaking machinery employed by the government in
the last railway and mining strikes, Parliamentary Government has never
failed to protect the possessions of the landlords and capitalists, and
to employ whatever coercive measures have been necessary to provide the
landlords and capitalists with disciplined workers.
Parliament and its accessories have been fashioned by the ruling classes
for their service. The Courts of Law are strongholds of tradition and
privilege, and appointment to the judicial Bench is made obscurely and
arbitrarily by the Government.
In case of dispute, the Government-appointed irremovable judges
interpret the Parliament-made law. The Government-hired prosecutor — who
may even be a member of the Government, is leagued with the
Government-appointed judge against the accused. All the force of the
Government police assists the prosecution. In political trials,
acquittals are remarkably rare. The judges, drawn from the privileged
class, almost invariably decide against the popular cause.
The local governing bodies have no power to legislate or initiate: they
merely administer the Acts of Parliament under the cramping supervision
of Government Departments, which make rules interpreting the Acts of
Parliament. Either with, or without Parliamentary sanction, Government
departments determine what the local authorities shall spend, by
limiting their power to levy Rates and to contract loans, and by
prohibiting them from trading, except by special permission of the
Government.
As to Parliament itself, its powers have been almost all annexed by the
Cabinet.
The King, who is supposed to obey the Government, decides when
Parliament shall assemble. The Government decides what subjects
Parliament shall discuss, and on what it shall legislate. The Government
drafts the legislation. If a measure be amended in a manner displeasing
to the Government, the Government withdraws the measure, and either
drops it altogether, or re-introduces it in another form. Parliament
cannot proceed with any measure unless the Government desire it.
The Speaker and Chairman of Committee appointed by the Government,
control the debate and interpret the rules of procedure. Parliamentary
discipline is exceedingly strict. No one may speak until called upon by
the Speaker, or Chairman of Committee, and the Speaker, or Chairman, may
stop any speech, and even prevent the asking of a question, on the
ground, either that it is out of order or “it is not in the public
interest” that a reply be given. There is no appeal from the ruling of
the Chair, which is enforced by the officials of the House, who at once
eject any Member failing to obey the Chair.
The Government must have a majority in the House of Commons, or it
cannot remain in power. That majority is composed of Party hacks with no
chance of being returned to Parliament, except by the aid of the Party
machinery and funds. They will not vote against the Government, because
to do so would be to incur the ostracism of the Party leaders, and
consequently of the Party; such ostracism would inevitably mean the loss
of their Parliamentary seats at the next election. The Party man who
disobeys his Party must either retire from politics, or become a
candidate of the opposite Party (if it will have him, which may not be
the case). Many years have passed since a Government was turned out by a
hostile Parliamentary vote of its supporters. Even its political
opponents are apt to shrink from defeating a Government on a critical
issue, which would mean its resignation, for that in most cases entails
a General Election. A General Election is of all things that which is
most detested by the average Member of Parliament. It means for him an
election campaign of tremendous exertion, in which he is compelled to
speak at an extraordinary number of meetings, besides canvassing voters
and calling on people of influence. Moreover, he may lose his seat, and
thus suffer the defeat of many of his ambitions, as well as the loss of
an income of four hundred pounds a year. The Member of Parliament
prepared to take a line independent of his Party on any subject of
importance is exceedingly rare. He is soon eliminated from Parliament.
The Prime Minister is chosen by the Sovereign from amongst the most
prominent leaders of the Party which gains the majority of the
Parliamentary seats in the General Election. Persons of powerful
influence, of course, make representations to the Sovereign, and the
Party caucus and its rival big-wigs all put in their word. What private
understandings and guarantees are exacted the people do not know. The
Sovereign appoints the rest of the Cabinet on the advice of the Prime
Minister, who is influenced, of course, by the powerful personages who
provide Party funds, who control Party newspapers, and who are powerful
in banking and other circles able to sabotage the Government activities.
The wire-pulling and intrigue that surround the making of Cabinets have
only been slightly revealed in the memoirs of some of the privileged few
who have been behind the scenes.
The policies of Government Departments are supposed to be controlled in
general outline by the Cabinet as a whole, and in fuller detail by the
Minister at the head of each Department who is appointed by the Prime
Minister. The Departments are vast and deal with vast work; the Cabinet
of party hacks and political adventurers knows little of the
Departments. The responsible Minister, who usually remains in a
particular Department no more than a year or two at most, and often no
more than a few months, rarely learns much about his work; the permanent
officials are the real masters of the administrative detail, and their
policy is broadly that of the prevailing capitalist opinion current at
the time. Lavish extravagance on Departmental expenditure, and ruthless
parsimony towards the people, the great unofficial, unprivileged masses,
who are treated as tiresome mendicants, is the outstanding
characteristic of administration by Government Departments.
Members of Parliament know little of the doings of Government
Departments. The debates, held twice or thrice a year, and the
questions, to which cursory answers are given and on which no discussion
is permitted, are the only opportunities by which Members may acquire
information. Ministers in charge of Departments report once or twice a
year what they choose of what their Departments have done.
Members of Parliament may move to reduce the amount Parliament is to
vote for the Department in question, as a protest against something that
displeases them, or as a matter of political form. Such motions are
usually defeated or withdrawn. If, however such a motion be carried, the
Government may resign, if the question involved be important. Generally,
in such rare cases, the Government brings the vote up again another day,
and, by rallying its supporters, it defeats the motion. Perhaps as a
result of the incident the Minister whose Department has been
criticised, moves on to another Department. His old place is taken by
one whose policy differs but little from his own.
The House of Commons has no effective check on the doings of the
Cabinet: it knows very little of what the Cabinet is actually about; the
Press is given more information on questions of State than are the
ordinary Members of Parliament.
The House of Lords, with its hereditary members, can check and thwart
the doings of the Government more effectively than can the House of
Commons, although its power is specifically limited. Its Members are not
dependent on the machinery of the Party to secure their election. Their
Parliamentary seats are theirs for life: no-one can dislodge them. The
older Lords, at least, are probably no longer seeking the favour of
Party leaders and Members of the Government to assist their personal
fortunes. Though, perhaps, less open to personal corruption than the
ambitious political hacks of the House of Commons, the Members of the
House of Lords are, of course, even more surely lined up as one man
against the emancipation of the proletariat and in defence of the
present system.
In all this the electors are remote outsiders. They have no hold on the
Members of the House of Commons who are supposed to represent them. They
must decide for which candidate to vote on the general programme of the
Party promoting the candidature, for, if returned, the Member will have
no power except through his Party. No item of the Party programme is
binding, no pledge given by the candidate or his Party can be relied on.
The programme is enunciated during the election in vaguely-worded
speeches and manifestos, every point in which will probably be
discarded. Not until the next election will the voter have another
chance to pass judgement on the actions of the candidate who won the
seat in his local constituency, or on those of the Government in power.
The Member, meanwhile, has probably been merely a cipher in Parliament;
the Government has done nothing pleasing to the elector; but the
opposing Party, in the vague compound of catch-cries called its
programme, offers nothing that promises satisfaction. The constituency
is vast: the electors have no personal knowledge of either candidate.
The election is decided by such questions as which Party machine has
most systematically traced the absent voters and made the best
arrangements to bring them to the poll, which Party has the most motor
cars lent to it for taking voters on free rides to the polling booth,
which Party is served by the local paper having the largest circulation
in the district.
Even were it possible to democratise the machinery of Parliament, its
inherently anti-Communist character would still remain. The King might
be replaced by a President, or all trace of the office abolished. The
House of Lords might disappear, or be transformed into a Senate. The
Prime Minister might be chosen by a majority vote of Parliament, or
elected by referendum of the people. The Cabinet might be chosen by
referendum, or become an Executive Committee elected by Parliament. The
doings of Parliament might be checked by referendum.
Nevertheless, Parliament would still be a non-Communist institution.
Under Communism we shall have no such machinery of legislation and
coercion. The business of the Soviets will be to organise the production
and supply of the common services; they can have no other lasting
function.