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(c) THE WORKING CLASS GET THE VOTE: A DIRECT MAJORITY VOICE IN POLITICAL POWER
In the debates on the 1867 Reform Bill which enfranchised the working class for the first time, no serious politician objected to the principle of working class enfranchisement, the arguments were about how much and where the working class could be given the vote so as to ensure continued stability. The proposers of the Bill in 1864 had been able to chronicle the working class's progress since 1832 with figures about the literacy of the working class (the highest in Europe - and not only literacy but education) and the astronomical increase in newspaper and periodical circulation,. Trade unions, temperance societies, friendly societies were also cited as evidence that the working class was now consciously involved in those institutions and activities that enabled the society to survive and develop. In 1867 the ruling class judged that the society was ready to enfranchise the working class, and indeed that it was necessary to do so in order to ensure continuing developments In Britain, this did not mean giving the working class a chance to vote in an election every seven years. The formal elections to Parliament have never been the substance of democracy. Those who see the formal aspects of the system as defining its politics show themselves to be shallow observers of history. Giving the working class the vote meant that the ruling class were acknowledging the working class's right (a right because they had proved themselves able to assert it) to determine their future within a capitalist society. And the ruling class were well aware that because the working class in 1867 were 75% of the population this development was of very great significance for the future of capitalism and society.
We can see the ruling class's reaction vividly in John Stuart Mill's writings. As a result of the 1867 Reform Act he began to consider socialism more than just a hypothetical possibility. Prior to 1867 his attitude to socialism had been open-minded, rational and objective. He could have no objections in principle, but did not take it seriously as an alternative method of organising society; he instead looked to more rational ways of organising society with property rights to advance society. After l867 he took socialism very seriously indeed because he recognised that it was a very likely future course of social development. In fact Mill became a socialist insofar as he saw that socialism was definitely a progressive form of economic organisation.
It should not be forgotten that when the ruling class acknowledged the working class right to vote, they also accepted that it would be working class MPs who represented them in Parlament. The Liberal Party leadership (from Gladstone to the Whip, Francis Schnadhorst) actively sought arrangements between the local, autonomous Liberal Federations and the Trade Unions in constituencies where the trade unions were strong to make sure that a Liberal candidate did not oppose a trade union candidate. Far from enticing the working class away from its own interests, they expected its representatives to stand for and support those interests in Parliament. That after all was why the working class had been given the vote. In practice Gladstone showed that he, like Marx, understood the need for the working class to have its independent political representatives.
The only obstacles which the ruling class placed in the way of the working class in Britain to the development of socialism were practical ones: how could a society be organised on the basis of 'from each according to is ability, to each according to his needs' instead of on the basis of private property (to each according to his labour/merit shown through economic activity). No conscious member of the ruling class after J.S. Mill has taken the system of private property as given or absolute; they have been clear that society will not necessarily descend into anarchy if that system is abolished. They have simply asked to be shown signs that an alternative means of ordering society is practical. It has been up to the working class to prove this. Keynes's reaction after visiting the USSR in the early 1920s was that this new way of organising society was not only attractive to him as an idea, but also potentially viable. J.S. Mill readily acknowledged that under the system of private property the working class gave up that part of the product that went to the employer (apart from the rate of return he received for the investment of his money). He could see the rationality of the working class giving up that part of their product not to the employer but to the community, so that the community could determine how that sum was to be used. Morley's comment in the l880s that we are all socialists now is significant. He was not one of the most progressive members of the Liberal Party, but he was one of the more perceptive and acute.
As long as the working class developed socialism within the British notions of stability and order, the British ruling class would not oppose it. And those British notions provide for the development of conscious conflict within the society between those forces representing progress and those representing reaction. It is assumed by the ruling class that the weaker and therefore inessential forces will lose in this conflict and that the stronger and therefore essential ones will win and be capable of occupying the place of the reactionary forces in maintaining stability and order in the changed social circumstances. Indeed, this tallies with Marx's, Engels's, and Lenin's assessments that a peaceful transition in Britain was possible.