What’s “Gas & Water Socialism” Anyway?

Apparently the Red Network are “gas and water socialists” according to the Socialist Workers’ Network, who run People Before Profit. That’s news to us. But as usual they use terminology without explaining the history and meaning of the term.

The term “gas and water socialism” was used to describe the reformist politics of William Walker. Walker was a Belfast trade union bureaucrat, who led the Independent Labour Party in the city and who opposed home rule for Ireland. He said he would:

“Make an effort to obtain a redistribution of Parliamentary seats for the purpose of diminishing the extravagant representation of Ireland by means of which the Roman Catholics and disloyal party has hindered the business of the House of Commons.”

Walker boasted to Connolly that his work for reforms was worth more than the fight to liberate Ireland, he wrote:

“Some of us in Belfast have been doing something to improve conditions – in the Poor Law Board, in the City Council, and the Trade Union branch. Amongst the textile workers, the sweated and oppressed, the dockers and the carters, we have gone to help to lift them to a better condition of life. Of course this is Parochialism. Well, Friend Connolly, I am proud of my ‘parochial’ reputation.”

Connolly wrote a series of articles condemning Walker and calling for Ireland to set up it’s own Labour Party:

“In all the world there is not to be found such an extraordinarily perverted conception of Socialism as that fathered by Comrade William Walker. It is, I repeat, a brand of mere parochialism, which seeks to hide its true essence by flaunting the International banner, but when examined in the light of its acts, we find that the banner under which it seeks to rally us is not the sacred banner of true Internationalism, but is instead the shamefaced flag of a bastard Imperialism!”

Walker’s failure was his advocacy of reformist “municipal socialism” - a brand of reformism that disconnected the everyday battles of the working class from the need for a revolution, from the need to break up the state and take political power.

It was in the name of this municipal socialism that he opposed the fight against imperialism in Ireland. In the USA “sewer socialism” was used to describe the politics of reformists like Mayor of Milwaukee in 1910 Emil Seidel.

In Britain “municipal socialism” was used to describe moderate reforms enacted by local councils. The Russian revolutionary Lenin denounced municipal socialism, he wrote:

“The bourgeois intelligentsia of the West, like the English Fabians, elevate municipal socialism to a special “trend” precisely because it dreams of social peace, of class conciliation, and seeks to divert public attention away from the fundamental questions of the economic system as a whole, and of the state structure as a whole, to minor questions of local self-government. In the sphere of questions in the first category, the class antagonisms stand out most sharply; that is the sphere which, as we have shown, affects the very foundations of the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Hence it is in that sphere that the philistine, reactionary utopia of bringing about socialism piecemeal is particularly hopeless. Attention is diverted to the sphere of minor local questions, being directed not to the question of the class rule of the bourgeoisie, nor to the question of the chief instruments of that rule, but to the question of distributing the crumbs thrown by the rich bourgeoisie for the “needs of the population””.

Lenin’s criticism was based on their disconnecting of the day to day questions that concern the working class from the need to take on the state, the need for a revolution. He continued:

“The philistine opportunism of that “trend” lies in the fact that people forget the narrow limits of so-called “municipal socialism” (in reality, municipal capitalism, as the English Social-Democrats properly point out in their controversies with the Fabians). They forget that so long as the bourgeoisie rules as a class it cannot allow any encroachment, even from the “municipal” point of view, upon the real foundations of its rule; that if the bourgeoisie allows, tolerates, “municipal socialism”, it is because the latter does not touch the foundations of its rule, does not interfere with the Important sources of its wealth, but extends only to the narrow sphere of local expenditure, which the bourgeoisie itself allows the “population” to manage.”

It’s precisely the Socialist Workers Network who disconnect the day to day struggle from the need for revolution by using People Before Profit as a mask behind which they secretly talk about the need for revolution while in public their talk is wholeheartedly reformist.

They spent the last general election promising voters they’d go into government with Sinn Féin and that their elected councillors could run local councils with an alliance of the reformist left and that that would deliver for their constituents.

Behind the scenes they promised members they didn’t mean any of the things they were saying in public.

That’s a failure to connect the day to day issues concerning working class people to the need for a revolution. In Dublin City Council they complained about the Labour Party not sticking around to run the council with them. As the People Before Profit website explained:

“Before the Local Elections People Before Profit framed their approach to the Council as an opportunity to challenge Central government and the establishment parties, tying this to their argument for a Left Government without Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael after the next General Election.”

Cllr Conor Reddy explained that they were interested in “demonstrating in principle, how the left could work together to deliver real change. By walking away from discussions on a left alliance, Labour have shown that they have no interest in being part of an alternative to Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.”

The idea that a council could be transformed by socialists running it in coalition with Sinn Féin, Soc Dems, Labour and the Greens? What is that except “municipal socialism”?

Just like with the Dáil People Before Profit would have entered negotiations and then used an excuse to pull out. Instead of telling the truth to workers, they’d rather suggest that the country could be transformed from the Dáil or a local council.

We Reds prefer to pull the likes of Sinn Féin and the rest into united front movements like the water charges - which actually deliver for the working class by scaring the establishment. But while working in practical movements for particular demands is important so is the political independence of the socialist left.

The Socialist Workers Network intentionally disconnect the fight for reforms today from the need for a revolution tomorrow by using the People Before Profit vehicle as an excuse. This has deep roots in their rejection of the idea of a party programme.

Their programmatic nihilism means there is no line of march indicated to members or supporters outlining where socialists mean to start fighting and where we mean to end. The Red Network wants a clear minimum maximum programme that indicates where we mean to start and where we need to get to - to a revolution.

The real debate is about anti-racist strategy but even in this field they demonstrate their lack of Marxism. For us the class struggle includes the totality of economic and political relations in society. The class struggle culminates in a political act - the breaking of the establishment state and it’s replacement by the working class.

So when we say we want to focus on organic anti-racism, tied to the class struggle, they cry “gas and water socialists!” because they only see class struggle as being on economic issues. They don’t understand Lenin’s criticism of those who limit class struggle to purely economic actions, those who refuse to develop worker’s class consciousness.

So they offer class struggle (without organic political development introduced by socialists who are part of that struggle) or on the other hand the battle against “autonomous” racist ideas, in reality just external moralism.

Lenin tied these two seemingly opposed positions together by connecting them to a class. The Economists were those who argued that everyday struggles would automatically generate socialist consciousness, they rejected explicitly arguing for revolution (as People Before Profit do), on the other hand the moralists (in Lenin’s example Russian terrorists) also tail - but they tail the indignation of the middle class individual:

“The Economists and the terrorists merely bow to different poles of spontaneity; the Economists bow to the spontaneity of “the labour movement pure and simple”, while the terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of intellectuals, who lack the ability or opportunity to connect the revolutionary struggle and the working-class movement into an integral whole.”

When you tail the union leaders or the soft left you engage in class struggle but disconnect it from the revolution. When you tail the moral indignation of middle class individuals you finger wag and claim no one is a radical as you because you shout the loudest on social issues.

We Reds want to connect the working class movement into an “integral whole” where our anti-racist work is tied to class struggle and that class struggle culminates in a working class uprising. We’ll let you decide who the real “gas and water socialists” are!