A. E.

JACOMBS CASE
AGAINST
THE SOCIALIST PARTY
1940
While the S.P.G.B. is in favour of democratic methods, this is nevertheless a secondary
consideration. It is fundamental to the progress of the Socialist movement, that the S.P.G.B, should
maintain its absolute independence, . , . " ( The S.P.G.B. and the Spanish Civil War," 1936.)
No interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood. (The
S.P.G.B. War Manifesto, just prior to the outbreak of the present war.)
The Party position is that democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it." (Mr. Hardy at the
General Meeting of the Party, April, 1942. The statement was not contradicted.)
The first of these statements recognised some value in democracy, but declared it to be secondary to
independence, and on this ground the Party refused to endorse the Spanish democrats struggle to
maintain their democratic regime. The second predicated either that democracy was not threatened,
or that it was not a working-class interest. The third was advanced as a repudiation of the others,
which had proved indefensible.
At bottom, however, this repudiation was mere feigning : an expedient to escape from the
embarrassment, of the two previous positions. The underlying influence in' shaping the Party's
attitude to the international situation is the hostility clause of the Declaration of Principles, from
which independence is inferred. Let us see what are the relative positions of independence and
democracy in the Class Struggle.
Democracy is that social system where sovereign power is in the hands of the peoplea society
where the people rule. This ruling power is political power, and is conferred by preponderance at
the ballot-box.
It is not the right to combine, or the right of expression, which makes democracy, but the popular
franchise. Democracy never appears until the people have political power, until the workers, as the
major portion of the community, become the ruling class.
That the workers elect their masters to run the country does not falsify the above assertions. The
workers elect their capitalist bosses to run capitalism because they believe in capitalism and want it.
So doing, they prove, not their political impotence, but their political ignorance. Power derives from
the workers in every democracy, and the moment it ceases to do so democracy is dead."
The day of the barricade passed away upwards of fifty years ago. The S.P.G.B. and the Spanish
Civil War,) But it was not the development of the means of oppression which out-dated it, but the
emergence of democracy. So long as there is no alternative in view, mens minds will turn to
insurrection, however hopeless it may be.
Democracy offers an alternative means to forcethe ballot; alternative, that is, up to a point. Force
ultimately must be the arbiter.
Democracy opens up a new vista to the working class. Socialist parties can precede democracy, but
they cannot have the character demanded by working-class interests when the workers have attained
political power. The new situation requires the organisation of the working class in a political army
as segregated from and hostile to the political parties of the capitalist class as are the armies of two
capitalist states at war with each other. The workers must be organised politically on class lines.
The setting up of such a line of demarcation, however, is contingent upon certain conditions. The
issue must be clear, and the issue can only be clear when there is no longer, in the whole political
field, any matter which involves the interests of both classes.
Democracy produces these conditions. It gives the workers every requisite for the achievement of
their freedom, hence they have no need to seek reforms and have no need to compromise in order to
get reforms. They can organise by grace of the right of combination, and proselytize because of the
light of expression, and can rally the workers to the ballot box inasmuch as they have the franchise.
If any of these rights was missing the political party of the workers would have to struggle to obtain
it: they would then be reformist, and could not be independent of or hostile to other forces working

for the same reforms.

It is only because all necessary reforms have been won by reformers, and democracy has in
consequence become a perfect, political instrument for working-class political ends, that it is
possible to organise the workers in a political party on non-reform, independent, hostile, class lines.
The S.P.G.B. is what it is because of its characteristics. Those characteristics, which make it
different from all other parties, are possible only under a democratic Constitution. Only two ways of
gaining working-class emancipation present themselves to the minds of reasonable men the
method of insurrection and the road of political action.
The founders of the S.P.G.B. rejected the former, and built upon the foundation of the democratic
Constitution, that is, they set up an organisation which proposed to carry on its operations within the
legal framework of the Constitutiona Constitutional political party.
They could do this because the Constitution afforded them all they required for prosecuting their
object. It provided not only the means for carrying on the Class Struggle on class lines, but the
means for ending it in working-class victory.
The S.P.G.B. could be non-reform, because no further reform was necessary for the struggle ; it
could be independent because it was non-reform ; it could be hostile to all other parties because it
was independent.
It is clear from all this that the whole set-up of the Socialist Party is based upon democracy, and
therefore that it is independence which is secondary, and not democracy.
The Party must maintain its absolute independence, says the document- quoted before. This
attempt to lift independence into the realm of the absolute is ridiculous. There is no such thing as an
absolute political principle they are all conditional, all expedients.
Political principles are simply guides to action, and since action must always be determined by
conditions, and conditions are not stable, political principles cannot be static. They must conform to
changing conditions, or become false guides.
But the term independence itself calls for circumscription. It does not appear in your Declaration of
Principles. Hostility is enjoined, and independence is only inferred from that. But since it is inferred
from hostility it follows that only that quality of independence which expresses itself in hostility can
be inferred. There is no warrant for a sterile, passive, stand-off sort of independence akin to a fit of
sulks. The criterion to which independence must always be submitted is, can it express itself in
active hostility? If it cannot, then it lies outside the implication of the D. of P., and can claim no
support from its authority.
The D. of P. of the S.P.G.B. defines the limits of validity of the principle of hostility, and therefore
of independence. Hostility is not imposed on the grounds of class, but of conflicting interests. To
put it on the basis of class is to assume that the political interests of the two classes can under no
conceivable circumstance, and in no degree, concurwhich is absurd!
Where the interests of two parties run concurrently, one party cannot pursue its interest without
equally forwarding that of the other nor can one oppose the efforts of the other to prosecute its
interest without in exactly equal measure damaging its own.
Therefore, where it is proven that there exists unity of interest between the classes the attempt to
maintain hostility or the independence it infers becomes unsound, and hence detrimental to the
interest of the party concerned.
It is common among S.P. members to try to obscure the simple logic of this with talk of strange
bedfellows and suspending the Class Struggle, which sound all right, but are mere sophisms.
The choice is between bedfellows of like interests and bedfellows of antagonistic interests; and as
for suspending the Class Struggle, support of working-class interests can never be that.
Marx and Engels knew as much about the Class Struggle as quite a sprinkling of the members of the
S.P.G.B. but when they advocated certain reforms in the Communist Manifesto they did not
regard that as its suspension. The stock answer to this is that the position has changed because those
reforms have been attained. Of course it has, and for that reason; and by the same token when any
of those reforms are in jeopardy the pre-Communist Manifesto situation is restored.
Marx and Engels gave in advance the answer to those who speak of strange bedfellows and

suspending the Class Struggle when they told the workers that there was no need to hide their
general antagonism to the capitalists because they pressed them for reforms.
Since in embracing the position that democracy cannot be defended by force my opponents abandon
the claim that democracy is not a working-class interest, there is no need to labour the point. But
how about the direct statement in the position that democracy cannot he defended by fighting for it?
Democracy, being not only the means for working-class emancipation, but a means for workingclass exploitation, has a dual interest. It is of concern to those who exploit under it no less than
those to whom it is the instrument for ending exploitation. The continuity of the democratic system
is therefore the present interest of both the working class and the capitalist class. The threat to
democracy unifies their interests on this point.
Not only does the S.P.G.B. position that democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it deny by
implication that it is being so defended, but many members directly deny that the democratic Allied
States are fighting for democracy. They cannot assimilate the idea that the capitalists are fighting for
democracy because it happens to be the system of exploitation which suits them at present.
Perhaps they have taken to heart the piece of Solomonic wisdom which enriched a past Conference
Agenda Paper to the effect that in considering any proposition the first thing to be determined is, Is
it intended to forward the Socialist Movement? The second is, Will it do so?
It may be due to this precious piece of nonsense that the S.P.G.B. have got stuck into the bog of
motive and cannot get beyond it on to the question of practical results.
It does not matter a tinkers curse what are the motives of the capitalists in fighting to preserve
democracy. The cogent fact is that their war effort is all that stands between democracy and its
destruction.
If my opponents claim is that democracy cannot be successfully defended by fighting for it, they
are assuming the mantle of Old Moore, with the disadvantage that they are mortgaging their future
against their success in the idle of prophet.
If democracy cannot he defended by force and yet is to be the means of overthrowing capitalism,
presumably it is in the S.P.G.B. noddle that the vote divorced from force is to be the lever. This is to
invest the vote with powers not its own. The Party pamphlet Socialism says: "At one time men
supported their interests by force of arms. Gradually it was recognised that, other things being
equal, power rests with numbers. From this to the idea that those who possess militant power can
express it just as effectively and much more conveniently by a vote as by a blow is but a step. A
vote, it is thus seen, is . . . very similar to a bank-note. A bank-note of itself is practically valueless.
It derives its bank-note, value entirely from the public confidence that it has gold at the back of it.
Where any doubt exists as to this the fact is indicated in the depreciation of the paper money.
Exactly so with the vote."
The vote, then, derives its value from the militant power behind it. It is valueless unless it can be
defended by force. Ergo, those who continue to publish the above and urge the workers to rely upon
the ballot, and at the same time declare that this thing which is so dependent upon force cannot be
defended by force, must have a tile loose.
Anyway, even if the vote had the miraculous power some attribute to it, it would still be contingent
for its use to the working class upon the continuity of democracy.
The Party endeavour to meet this point by claiming that the capitalists cannot knock a cog out of
the system without the system collapsing, and urging that even if they temporarily abrogated
democracy they would, in their own interests, be compelled to re-institute it.
That the democratic Allies might, if they win the war, find it necessary to suspend democracy is a
profound discovery resulting from my opponents study of the results of modern wara study
they have repeatedly said : Jacomb shows no evidence of having engaged in.
But what reason can be assigned for the victorious capitalists wishing to suppress democracy except
that they are afraid of it? And what signs do my friends discern that they are afraid of it? And what
sort of an argument is it that democracy must be abandoned now because the capitalists might
attempt to destroy it at some future date!
As to the indispensability of democracy to the capitalists, your D. of P. involves the refutation of

this. It propounds the destruction of the capitalists as such through the medium of democracy. The
necessary consequence is that before the S.P.G.B. objective can be achieved, the master class will
he faced with the alternative of either destroying democracy or being destroyed by it.
If it be granted that democracy is essential to capitalism, it certainly is not necessary to exploitation;
and all Class Struggle history teaches us that the exploiters would prefer to exploit under any
system, democratic or otherwise, rather than cease to exploit at all.
The so-called need for the capitalists to have some means of knowing what the working class are
thinking end the rest of it, only exists under democracy. There is never much doubt what the
submerged are thinking under repression, and my opponents themselves have summed up the
situation in their declaration that the day of the barricade passed away upwards of fifty years ago.
But it would be interesting to know what democracy would collapse into if, as the result of
modern war, the capitalists did knock a cog or two out of the system.
If S.P.G.B. principles are well-founded the exploiters problem cannot be solved by temporary
suppression or modification, of the system. That would still leave the Socialist objective an
unaccomplished proposition, and the threat to the capitalists recurrent. In the end the position
indicated must arise.
Democracy is a necessary result of the exploitation or free wage-labour. It arises partly from the
needs of the exploiting class, and partly from the fact that the workers stand in the economic
category of commodity-owners, owning their labour-power. Every community based on wagelabour must, given continuity, emerge as a democratic corporation.
The only way. therefore, for the capitalists to solve their problem is to remove the workers from
their economic status of commodity-ownersthat is, by reducing them to slavery. This is no new
discovery: the Party has always recognised that the Class Struggle must terminate in the triumph of
the workers or their descent into slavery.
That the Fascists and Nazis early realised the incompatibility of wage-labour with a non-democratic
system is shown by the fact that among their earliest acts was to herd the workers into unions
with State-appointed officials, fixed "wages," and under a strike ban. Such pay is not wages in the
economic sense, but the ration of slaves.
In a letter rejecting an article of mine your Ed. Com., with the concurrence of the E.C., said : If
your contention is correct, the workers can never free themselves anywhere because the power
behind the machine gun can always withdraw all democratic rights, and then according to you the
workers would be helpless everywhere.
I retorted that it was not my contention (which was that democracy must be supported because,
once lost, it could not be recovered) which put the workers in a hopeless position, but their
affirmation regarding the power behind the gun which did so.
At the April Party Meeting, Hardy denied that this latter thesis was theirs, and said that it was mine.
The reader has a correct transcript of the passage before him, and can judge who was lying.
Anyway, my opponents cannot deny that the conclusion was theirs. They have affirmed that,
granted that once lost democracy cannot be regained, and granted that the power behind the
machine-gun can smash democracy al will, the workers can never free themselves anywhere.
Immediately after denying the fatherhood of the above thesis Hardy said : Jacomb does not
understand the Party position : it is that democracy cannot he defended by fighting for it. Nobody
contradicted him.
If democracy cannot, be defended by force then the power behind the machine-gun can (unless
there is some other way of defending democracy) withdraw all democratic lights at will. If in these
circumstances democracy, once lost, cannot be recovered, then the S.P. must accept their own
conclusion that the workers can never free themselves.
The only escape for my opponents is to show that either of the premises are unsound. They can
have as many shies as they like.
When it (the S.P.G.B) becomes a large minority of the working class it will be in a position to do
a great deal to prevent the formation of Lib.-Lab. or Popular Front Governments . . . the thing which
helps to make democracy unpopular and to provoke reaction, Fascism and armed revolt, says my

opponents ( the S.P.G.B. and the Spanish Civil War ), utterly oblivious of the fact that a
flourishing Socialist movement could provoke reaction, Fascism and armed revolt.
With the S.P.G.B. a large minority of the working class, shouting from the housetops doom to the
capitalists, it would not be the revolutionaries the masters would be afraid' of, but the Popular
Front!
Since the above quotation was part of the clarification of the Party position to the Spanish Civil
War, it was presumably meant to convey the idea that Franco was the expression of the unpopularity
of democracy in Spain; which would account for the way the people flocked to his standard and
gave him such an easy victorywith the aid of the Germans, the Italians, the British nonintervention, and the S.P.G.B.!
I have shown that the capitalists will be driven to attempt the suppression of democracy when they
are sufficiently afraid of it. When will that be?
One thing is certain: it will be before the working class become the power behind the machine-gun.
Since the workers must make their bid for control of the machinery of government, including the
armed forces, at no distant date after they have achieved a parliamentary majority, the clash must
come before the proletariate is more than a class-conscious majoritythat is, long before it is 100
per cent, class-conscious.
But it is very likely indeed to come quite a while before this. The capitalists know, if the S.P.G.B. do
not, that Lib-Lab and Popular Front movements are not retrograde, but that they are in the natural
line of working-class advance.
The only way in which the S.P.G.B., " when it becomes a large minority of the working class, can
prevent the formation of Lib-Lab and Pop. Front governments is by converting their elements to
Socialism. The fact that they have become a large minority of the working class will show the
capitalists that they are doing this, and they will be afraid, and the blow will fall.
Is the S.P.G.B. then going to stand on Its independence because an unclass-conscious majority of
workers are resisting the threat to their freedom and the Party must be hostile ?
The Spanish Civil War document I have so often quoted says the Party must maintain its absolute
independence because only so can we hope to convince the workers that all kinds of reformism are
useless for the purpose of achieving Socialism. This is balderdash, for one must first convince the
workers of the uselessness of reforms before one can get them to accept Independence.
All that independence can do is to express the S.P.G.B.s belief in the uselessness of reform, for the
purpose of achieving Socialism, and, by the same token, all that independence can do in the case of
a threat to democracy is to express the S.P.G.B.'s belief that democracy is useless for the purpose of
achieving Socialism !
The propugners of absolute independence make use of the Russian bogey to support their attitude.
They ask could Socialists take up arms to suppress a Communist rebellion, as for example the
Communist revolt against the Kerensky Government in 1917, and assuming the answer to be no,
argue that therefore democracy cannot be defended as a principle.
They also lose no opportunity of dragging Russia in by the scruff of the neck, and lumping it down
by the side of Nazism and Fascism under the old adage concerning the making of fish of one and
fowl of the other. And as these tactics impress many, I will deal with the arguments here.
A political principle is a rule of action or conduct accepted as correct in given circumstances. When
my opponents argue (as they did in the Spanish Civil War statement) that the case of helping the
Spanish government, and the Kerensky government, to defend democracy would be the same, they
lose sight of the difference between Fascism and Communism.
The very fact that they said Of course we want the (Spanish) democrats to win, and at the same
time assumed the unthinkability of favouring the Kerensky lot, shows plainly enough that even they
were conscious of a difference ; and it is on this difference that they rely in adducing what they
regard as parallel cases.
If the cases were parallel my opponents would have been able to say Of course we want Kerensky

to win, but did they ? If the cases were parallel one of those most responsible for the statement that
the Spanish democratic government was a government whose very existence we condemn
because ... it was undermining democracy, might have felt called upon to send money to the
Kerensky folk, as another government which we condemnas he did to the Spanish Govt. (And,
incidentally, what would that member's position be if he sent financial assistance to any British
government whom we condemn ?)
The question of supporting democracy does not turn on the need to avoid the suppression of
working-class and Socialist organisations and propaganda, but on whether those things are in line
with working-class interests.
Defence of democracy can no more be elevated into the realms of absolute principles than can
independence. Democracy can be defended, as a principle where conditions are suitable, but, like
every political principle, support for it is also expediency.
The true Marxist is a realist, and does not cling to democracy because it is democracy, but because
it is a means to an end. If that end can be attained more quickly by other means, then democracy
loses its claim.
The fact (if it is a fact) that, the Bolsheviks once in power suppress free speech and other opposition
therefore, cannot of itself be condemned. The salient point is, what is their objective 7
Much nonsense is talked about the Soviet system, among which is the complacent platitude: You
cant force Socialism on an unwilling majority.
This is as true and as untrue as would be the statement: You can't force capitalism on an unwilling
majority, and carries the logical corollary that Socialism or capitalism may depend upon a majority
of one! What warrant is there for the assumption that 49 per cent of the people cannot impose
Socialism and 51 per cent can?
Given adequate militant power, capitalism, Nazism, Socialism, or any other ism can be forced
upon, a people provided material conditions are congruent.
Theoretically, the conditions for Socialist life can be developed under Socialism, but they cannot
under capitalism. All capitalism can do is to prepare society for the revolution. The capitalist
system, as we understand it, can only produce the rations of a wage-slave class plus the luxury of
the masters. This point reached production ceases. Hence, there must be an interregnum in which
problems perhaps not dissimilar to those facing the Soviets will face the Socialists.
Whether the Russian experiment is developing along the lines they claim is, of course, a question of
fact and not of theory, and my opponents have the advantage of easy acceptation of facts" they
want to accept. He is a disillusioned Communist goes further with them than it does with me, for
both Hitler and Mussolini are disillusioned Socialists!
But it is curious that those who say that capitalist democracy is only nominal, not worth fighting for,
and the rest of it, jibe at the Russians because they have no use for it.
EPILOGUE
That is my case. Limitations of space confine me to but few words more, but these shall be to the
point.
The position that democracy cannot be defended by fighting for it is contradictory to the original
position that democracy cannot be defended at the expense of independence. Therefore, if the Party
was right then it is wrong now, and if it is right now it was wrong then?
But if the present position has sincerity behind it, it follows that the abandonment of the first
position is an abandonment of the hostility principle as far as the present war is concerned.
If this is not so, if, in fact, the repugnance to " strange bedfellows is still the operating motive
behind the S.P.G.B. attitude to the war, then the present position is nothing but a facade erected to
camouflage a position incapable of defence.
Will this position, indefensible now, become more defensible after the war? Will you, then, be able
to go to the proletariate and claim their allegiance to a Party which bases its activities on a
democracy which it declares cannot be defended by force, and is therefore only nominal, nonexistent, except in name?

On the other hand, if the Party position genuinely is that the S.P.G.B. does not associate itself with
the war effort because it holds that democracy cannot be defended by force, where will you stand if
events prove that it has been defended by forceand successfully defended at that? How will you
then explain your desertion of democracy on the pusillanimous plea that it could not be defended ?
The fact is that the Party, in trying to carry it's hostility into a situation where it could only react
against working-class interests, because those interests were in line with the interests of the
capitalists, has been guilty of a crime against the revolutionary Cause. Judged by its own basic
principles, which affirm the essential need of democracy for working-class emancipation, it has
stultified itself and dragged the name of Socialism in the mud. Two ways of repairing the damage
only are open : For you to frankly admit your error and to recognise and associate yourself with the
war effort, or for me to expose you to the world in the name of Socialism. The choice, friends, is
yours,
A. E. JACOMB.
Forest Poultry Farm,
Collier Row, Essex,