The Socialist Forum: Should Socialists compromise?

In the September issue we dealt with the question, put by a prospective Labour Party candidate for a seat on the Grimsby Town Council, as to what a Socialist should do in that position. In brief, the question was, Should a Socialist member of a minority group be uncompromising or should he compromise with the majority? In our reply we pointed out that the vital point is the character of the electorate. This determines the manner in which the successful candidate gets on to the Council, and it determines the part he can play when elected. If the electorate is composed of non-Socialists, then the successful candidate has to satisfy their desires by undertaking to carry out a non-Socialist policy. We do not believe that persons so elected can do anything to further Socialism. We added that we have no doubt that the great majority of the electors in Grimsby are non-Socialists.

A reader (J. R. Foskett, Muswell Hill) objects to our reply on the ground that it avoids answering the question by assuming that the candidate in Grimsby must be elected by non-Socialist votes. Mr. Foskett points out the possibility that one Ward may have a Socialist majority even although Grimsby as a whole is non-Socialist.

What Mr. Foskett completely ignores is the further statement contained in our reply to Mr. Matt Quinn, of Grimsby. We asked Mr. Quinn for a copy of the election address with which he proposed to seek the votes of the electors. The contents of that address would demonstrate without any possibility of doubt whether Mr. Quinn thinks that the electors are Socialist or not. Mr. Quinn declined to provide that information. This, in conjunction with the fact that Mr. Quinn, while professing to be a Socialist, is nevertheless a member of the Labour Party, gives us reasonable ground for assuming that the electors there are not Socialist, that Mr. Quinn knows they are not Socialist, and that Mr. Quinn is prepared to seek election on a non-Socialist programme. It is interesting to notice that while Mr. Foskett and other readers have intervened to suggest that perhaps the electors there are Socialist, Mr. Quinn himself did not say so in his original letter and has not come forward to correct us. If they were Socialist, it is obvious that they would never elect a member of the Labour Party to represent them.

Mr. Foskett and another reader (“No Compromise,” Leicester) then go on to put a further question as to what a Socialist would do if elected as one of a minority group, put there by Socialist votes on a Socialist programme.

This raises an entirely different issue. The non-Socialist elected by non-Socialists is offering to work for certain reforms of capitalism, on behalf of electors who do not want capitalism abolished. As capitalism rests upon the exploitation of the workers, no reforms of capitalism can ever solve the workers’ problems. They will constantly press their representatives to work and vote for old and new reforms, but not for Socialism until they become Socialists.

The electorate of Socialists, on the contrary, will not be under the illusion that their problems can be solved within the framework of capitalism. They will be aware moreover that Socialism pre-supposes a Socialist majority here and in other countries and also pre-supposes the conquest of the central machinery of Government, including the armed forces. They will appreciate the importance of controlling the machinery of local government, in addition to controlling the Central Government from which local powers are derived, but they will not imagine that problems whose scope is international can be solved locally. They will not permit their Socialist Councillors to compromise, i.e., make concessions to non-Socialist groups or parties. The object of the Socialist Party is to get Socialism. How, then, could it make concessions to those whose primary object is to oppose Socialism and ‘maintain Capitalism?

To Socialists, the need of controlling the local councils in order to supplement the control of the central machinery of government would be a predominating issue, locally as well as nationally. The using of minority representation or the control of some local councils, to the limited extent possible, as a means of defending the workers’ position under Capitalism, is the main question to non-Socialists; to Socialists it would be a minor one.

Socialist councillors would be required by their electors to determine their policy in accordance with the chief issue, thus ruling out compromise on grounds of expediency as well as on grounds of principle.

EDITORIAL COMMITTEE