Sylvia Pankhurst

[Socialist Party Head Office]

Hi Comrades,

Geoff Collier, an ardent critic of the SPGB, has posted this question on the
UkLeftNetwork in response to a post about our upcoming meeting. Does anyone know
the answers?

YfS Jim

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Forwarded Message —-
From: Geoff Collier <geoff_collier@…>
To: “uk_left_network@yahoogroups.com” <uk_left_network@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, 13 November, 2011 8:57:05
Subject: RE: [UK Left Network] “Everything is possible” (West London – 15th
November)

Did Sylvia Pankhurst have any views on the SPGB? I know the SPGB opposed any
fight to extend the franchise, on the grounds that existing voters were
sufficient to vote for socialism

[ALB]

I think it would be more accurate to say that the SPGB “did not support” rather than “opposed” extending the franchise, on the grounds given, especially as it also said that the introduction of universal suffrage would be one of the first things a socialist working class would have to do on winning control of political power. What the SPGB was opposed to was the main Suffragette demand of votes for women on the same terms as then obtained for men. This would have had the effect of increasing the proportion of capitalists in the electorate while still leaving the vast majority of women and one-third of men without the vote. Sylvia Pankhurst opposed this too (unlike her mother and sister, she favoured universal suffrage).Were the SPGB and Sylvia Pankhurst know of each other? Yes, it’s impossible they didn’t. Both, in fact, had the same conception of socialism as the following article by her reproduced in the Canadian One Big Union Bulletin on 2 August 1923 clearly shows:

Quote:

The words Socialism and Communism have the same meaning. They indicate a condition of society in which the wealth of the community: the land and the means of production, distribution and transport are held in common, production being for use and not for profit.Socialism being an ideal towards which we are working, it is natural that there should be some differences of opinion in that future society. Since we are living under Capitalism it is natural that many people’s ideas of Socialism should be coloured by their experiences of life under the present system. We must not be surprised that some who recognise the present system is bad should yet lack the imagination to realise the possibility of abolishing all the institutions of Capitalist society. Nevertheless there can be no real advantage in setting up a half-way-house to socialism. A combination of Socialism and Capitalism would produce all sorts of injustice, difficulty and waste. Those who happen to suffer under the anomalies would continually struggle for a return to the old system.Full and complete Socialism entails the total abolition of money, buying and selling, and the wages system.It means the community must set itself the task of providing rather more than the people can use of all the things that the people need and desire, and of supplying these when and as the people require them.Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, making advertisements and all the various developments of commerce which, in fact, employ more than two-thirds of the people today.Given the money system, the wage system is inevitable. If things needed and desired are obtainable only by payment those who do the work must be paid in order that they may obtain the means of life. The wages system entails such institutions as the old-age pension, sick and unemployment insurance and widow’s pensions, or the Poor Law, and probably plus the Poor Law. These involve large numbers of people drawn from productive work to do purely administrative work. Thus useless toil is manufactured, and the burden of non-producers maintained by the productive workers is increased.Moreover social conditions are preserved which are quite out of harmony with Communist fraternity. The wage system makes the worker’s life precarious. The payment of wages entails the power to dismiss the worker by an official or officials.So long as the money system remains, each productive enterprise must be run on a paying basis. Therefore it will tend to aim at employing as few workers as possible, in order to spend less on wages. It will also tend to dismiss the less efficient worker who, becoming unemployed, becomes less efficient. Thus an unemployable class tends to grow up.The existence of a wage system almost inevitably leads to unequal wages; overtime, bonuses, higher pay for work requiring special qualifications. Class distinctions are purely differences of education, material comfort and environment.Buying and selling by the Government opens the door to official corruption. To check that, high salaried positions are created in order that those occupying them have too much to lose to make pilfering and jobbery worth while.

This was the basis of her saying that by this time Russia had adopted state capitalism, another view she shared with the SPGB (although the SPGB said Russia had never ceased to be capitalist while she said it went off the rails when the Bolsheviks adopted the New Economic Policy in 1921.

[imposs1904]

No idea if Pankhurst had any opinions about the SPGB, but fellow Workers’ Socialist Federation member, Harry Pollitt, wrote approvingly of early SPGB member, Moses Baritz, in his autobiography ‘Serving My Time’ which was published sometime in the 50s.

[ALB]

The Socialist Standard did quote frequently from Pankurst’s paper the Workers’ Dreadnaught in 1921 and 1922 to show the confusion and mistakes of the “Communist” Party. She seems to have been mentioned by name only once when the October 1921 issue mentioned in passing that “Miss Sylvia Pankhurst has been expelled for not handing the paper … over to the control of the Communist Party” (actually a valid reason for being expelled — we wouldn’t have allowed a rich individual to publish their own paper either as this was one of the reasons the original members left the SDF).Anyway, here’s an extract from another article, from 1923, in which she gives a good definition of socialism:

Quote:

Under Socialism the land, the means of production and transport are no longer privately owned: they belong to all the people. The title to be one of the joint owners of the earth and its products and the inheritance of collective human labour does not rest on any question of inheritance or purchase; the only title required is that one is alive on this planet. Under Socialism no one can be disinherited; no one can lose the right to a share or the common possession.The share is not so many feet of land, so much food, so many manufactured goods, so much money with which to buy, sell, and carry on trade. The share of a member of the Socialist Commonwealth is the right and the possibility of the abundant satisfaction of the needs from the common store-house, the right to be served by the common service, the right to assist as an equal in the common production.Under Socialism production will be for use, not profit. The community will ascertain what are the requirements of the people in food, clothing, housing, transport, educational facilities, books, pictures, music, theatres, flowers, statuary, wireless telegraphy — anything and everything that the people desire. Food, clothing, housing, transport, sanitation — these come first; all effort will be bent first to supply these; everyone will feel it a duty to take some part in supplying these. Then will follow the adornments and amusements, a comfortable, cultured and leisured people will produce artistic and scientific work for pleasure, and with spontaneity. Large numbers of people will have the ability and the desire to paint, to carve, to embroider, to play, and to compose music.They will adorn their dwellings with their artistic productions, and will give them freely to whoever admires them.When a book is written the fact will be made known, and whoever desires a copy of it, either to read or to keep, will make that known to the printers in order that enough copies may be printed to supply all who desire the book. So with a musical composition, so with a piece of statuary.So, too, with the necessaries of life. Each person, each household, will notify the necessary agency the requirements in milk, in bread, and all the various foods, in footwear, in clothing. Very soon the average consumption in all continuous staples will be ascertained. Consumption will be much higher than at present, but production will be vastly increased: all those who are to-day unemployed or employed in the useless toil involved in the private property and commercial system, will be taking part in actual productive work; all effort will be concentrated on supplying the popular needs.How will production be organised?Each branch of production will be organised by those actually engaged in it. The various branches of production will be co-ordinated for the convenient supply of raw material and the distribution of the finished product.Since production will be for use, not profit, the people will be freely supplied on application. There will be no buying and selling, no money, no barter or exchange of commodities.

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