I. INTRODUCTION
The Party is discussing questions which
bear closely on its object and principles, questions it has not
always deemed it necessary to discuss. We are busy criticising our
own position. This healthy situation has developed, not, I think, as
a perversion resulting from the world's indifference, nor as a mere
clerkly desire for a half-century stock-taking; it registers, rather,
the impact of actual history. It reflects (as does the whole field of
science) the uncertainties of a revolution in process—from
liberalism to communism—in contrast with the certainties of the
nineteenth-century consolidation of revolution achieved (from
Mercantilism to Industrialism).
We used to say that conditions were
ripe for Socialism. We still take this view, with a pinch of salt.
From this questioning of ripeness stems our controversies: why aren't
the workers socialist; is there a transition stage; do men make
history; can we hasten the ripening with mirrors to reflect light
from the sun of Socialist society? In other words, ripe? how ripe?
how to ripen? And this questioning is a social product. It is perhaps
our acknowledgment (as yet unconscious, as always in the first place)
that the Industrial Revolution which established " social
production " is not immediately followed by the revolution for
social ownership, but by the State Capitalist revolution which
establishes the institutional technique (and thereby the ideological
demand) for the classless administration of the common weal.
The proposition put forward have to be
compressed within a page so that much more than is said must be left
unsaid, and most of what is said must be left unexplained.
PHASES OF A SINGLE REVOLUTION
The Socialist Revolution, which
is the aim of our movement, is the final phase of a single
revolution from production for use at one level to production
for use at another, in which the succession of
intermediate revolutions and social systems (Patriarchal
Communism, Chattel Slavery, Feudalism, Mercantilism,
Capitalism 1, 2, 3) are pre-requisite phases. Whatever
the political incidents m which the Socialist Revolution
culminates (what we call the " political act "), it is
an historical and social process going on now and daily,
and in which the dynamic element is capital. Whatever the form
which the " political act " takes in the event (on
which the Party wisely does not offer the precise
prescription, which would be prophesy), it remains that it is
the discussion of Socialism by Socialists which is the
immediate Socialism-precipitating process. (" What
Socialism will be like " has its relevance here.) It remains
also that this discussion of Socialism is conditioned, determined,
by the social effects of the accumulation of capital. What,
therefore, has just been called the " immediate precipitant "
is still itself the end result of its social, capital-determined,
antecendents. It registers the accumulation of event which is
history, it records the noisy breath of capital like everything
else which (under Capitalism) is capital breathing. To insist
on the history-creating character of ideological elements which are
themselves 30Cial end-results has no point unless it is to urge
creation out of nothing, and all the " Ah, buts " to this
are only the pull" of the animistic conception of history which
the world (including the Party) has not yet outgrown. To insist
that men make history is only to insist afresh, as of old, that man
is God—an intractable habit not easily thought out of because it
springs from the fact of thinking (the Won I). To say that men's
activities are always purposive, pre-conceived, makes sense; to
say that man's being precedes his consciousness makes sense.
Tell me that a necklace of alternate black and white
beads-begins with a black, or a white, and I'll accept it without
hesitation as the starting point of your point. Insist, as a
principle, on the precedence or subsequence of either thought or
action, and T ran only await the further development of history which
will compel you to conceive of their concurrence.
UNITY OF SOCIETY AND THOUGHT
History, which had hitherto been
regarded as episodic, is accepted after Hegel as continuous. History,
which had been regarded as created by the ideas of great men, is
accepted after Marx as the product of human production. The current
insistence that it is created by the: ideas, not of a.few great men,
but of a lot of little ones, is only a bourgeois vulgarisation of the
Feudal error. It is the proletarian revolutionary's version of God.
History,. which appears as a succession of revolutions (because the
human senses cannot perceive the daily accumulation of event until
the bell rings up each hundred) is a continuing series of social
integrations in which the new includes the old, not by arithmetic but
by digestion— social integrations which compel (with which concur)
new conceptual integrations. The Newtonian physics, which wrote the
laws of the universe on a postcard, accommpanied the integration of
the Nation State out of the separate Feudal baronies and dukedoms.
Linneus and Darwin integrated living species, and Marx integrated
social phenomena, in the Industrial Capitalism which integrated the
former separate capitalist classes and working classes. _ To-day, in
the integrative Total State, with its concept of one world, Einstein
integrates space with time, energy with matter, electro-magnetic
waves with light, etc.
BEGINNINGS OF SOCIALIST EXPROPRIATION
The present revolution is dissolving
industrial capitalist liberalism and digesting it into the new muscle
and blood and thinking of Communism (Bad Thing). What is called the
Welfare State is the combined effect of two revolutions which
followed the Industrial Revolution: the revolution from the technique
of absolute surplus value to the technique of relative S.V. (of which
the nineteenth century legislation and social movements were the
administrative apparatus), and the present State Capitalist
revolution which is the permanent war economy. The State has become
Welfare because it is a Warfare State. Whereas the nineteenth century
abolished destitution poverty as a necessity of relative S.V., the
twentieth century organises and equalises poverty as a necessity of
war. Behind both is the accumulation of capital: because it both
raises the " organic composition " of the worker, and
intensifies international competition. Fiercer competition urges
on the concentration
of capital in the State; State control
furthers the depersonalising of property: this depersonalisation
begins the expropriation which is the Socialist ,-aim.. It begins"
to change power based on naked ownership to power based on
functionjHt begins to change domination of class by class imo
anonymous administration ol things. It nobbles the captains of
industry and moguls of commerce, as Mercantilism nobbled the pirate
Drakes and Raleighs who opened up the world market. In the
industrially developed west, the new bosses are at first the old
bosses: in the east, the industrial revolution starts already at the
political boss stage. But in the west, too, the Commissioners hold
power by appointment, not by inheritance, a revolution the reverse of
that by which elective tribal leaders became hereditary lords. The
Commissions are integrated and subordinated at Cabinet level, and the
Commissioners do not themselves receive or determine • the amount
of disposal of the surplus value produced by the .workers. Within an-
industry, profit begins to become less the aim and more a condition.
The aim is to provide the service required by State policy, while to
cover . costs, replacements and extensions, remains the condition
which limits the service. Within the State there begins the form of
production for use, while between States there remain the classical
commodity relationships, the hungry search for market's and the
Bomb.
WARFARE-WELFARE STATE AND THE SOCIALIST ETHIC
Welfare " is the counterpart, in
the fields of distribution and administration,
of what takes place in the field of
production. Rationing, national health service,
and direction of labour, are the hall
marks of military capitalism. (Communism):
it is the common issue of rum and
medicine and duty. It is not fantastic to conceive
the extension of State control to all
Insurance; nor of the addition of transport to the " free "
services by compulsory weekly stamp; nor of the- unification of
weekly stamp, quarterly rates and annual assessment into one PAYE,
with Family Allowances, Pensions, Licences; nor of the increase in
the centralised taxation to cover gas, electricity, refrigeration,
laundry; nor of its extension to basic foods up to the standard
ration fixed by the War Office—and the deduction at source of 90%
of incomes instead of the 40% at present taken by the State. Is this
more fantastic that a Socialist Revolution by workers conditioned to
classical capitalism? . Does the removal of the stigma of.public
assistance by its univ.ersalisation, or the replacement of furtive
out-relief by. respectable ration book, or the equalisation of speech
and dress and education and military service, play no part in
fostering Hie feelings favourable to " distribution according to
needs"? Do ..Legitimacy Acts,' equal pay, psychiatry instead of
flogging, make no contribution towards the Socialist ethic of
"equality of consideration"? Do we accept the materialist
determination of " ideologies "—or are we idealists
converting by logic independent of history? Do we proclaim that money
must go, and raise our hands in revolutionary horror at the
suggestion that we are already seeing it off? ; Do we accept the "
transformation of quantity into quality-" and the "
historical.necessity ' for Socialism " as empty articles of
religious faith? Do we hold that each society carries the next in its
womb, and prudishly disown the misshapen foetus?
DO MEN MAKE HISTORY ?
Whatever wo wish, we cannot
escape the influence of the Warfare-Welfare' revolution whose
vast social integrative processes are reflected in every field
of. thought—we least of all whose aim is to restore the integrity
of men (split by the short historical explosion which divided use
from value) in an integrated society based on use. We may well,
within this journal, reconcile the pro- arid anti-election schools
by recognising our function neither as education nor as
politics but as politico-criticism. We may even resolve
the dilemma of Marx, which Engels fumbled, and from
which the Party1 still suffers,, of historical determinism and'
political free will. " All too long have the philosophers
been content to interpret history, the time has.come to change it."
Here is an insoluble problem, because it is a problem wrongly
stated. The only way to make history is to interpret it.-Marx
made, history because, he interpreted it, in the most
brilliant' historical document ever written. The only sense in
which men consciously make'history is in becoming conscious of what
is happening, which is (in our time) to make State Capitalist society
conscious of its preparatory function. The. genius of Marx lay in
his talent for seeing so clearly what was going on under his nose.
And it still' remains to some extent our evil genius that we see so
clearly what went on under Marx's nose.
THE POSITIVE CASE
That time is done. We in turn are
shaken into thought by revolution. Willy nilly we are all both mother
and midwife of the more positive case which will replace the
propagandist's impossible task of telling people what they don't know
by the historically creative one of the articulating for them what
they do. We move from the negative attack on capitalist reform to the
positive presentation of Socialism, in proportion as our propaganda
stems from an integrated concept of history, which sees the
succession of class societies as phases of a revolution from
production for use at one level to production for use at another; in
proportion as it is informed by a social philosophy which is shrewd
enough to integrate the closing stages of one society with the
emergent stages of the next, and by a political philosophy which is
not afraid to proclaim the permanent needs of human nature instead of
the historical relativity of human conduct.
This is the core of the positive case
for Socialism, which emphasises less' the poverty of the means of
life (which Welfare makes more meaningless)_ and moire the poverty of
the mode of living (which Warfare makes more meaningful)". It is
the core of the positive Socialist case which integrates the need for
good material things to enjoy with the equally paramount need for
self-respect; the need, therefore, to integrate work with art, art
with craft, craft with play, play with education, education with
living. It is a positive case, not dragged out of the Utopian blue,
but construed sensibly from the sum of human need—the need by
upright, thinking, social man for work, for creative work, and for
the enjoyment of other people's enjoyment of his work—and the sum
of human history, whieh in creating the apparatus and attitudes for
organising common poverty prepares for its transmutation into the
organisation of common weal.
F. EVANS.
