‘ Evan was a cripple who looked after holes, or perhaps it would be truer to say he protected the public from holes. Before the war be had been a “digger of holes,” but having lost a leg in a hole on the Normandy beach, the local council had taken him back as a “hole minder.” During 25 years employment he had become thoroughly conversant with holes of various dimensions and purposes.
There had been occasions during a particularly lean period (due to Government economy) when there were no holes to hand out and Evan, divorced from a job, would complain bitterly. On such occasions be would say—when the Government was in a hole they pinched his. Of course, if he had given the matter more thought he would have realised that in work or out of it, holes and himself were inseparably bound together.
Like most specialists, Evan was an authority on the particular rather than the general. Taking any given hole, he could analyse it from a number of standpoints; its shape, cost, suitability, etc., etc., and more important than all, how long it was likely to remain (the “ life ” of a hole was especially important as his job depended on it). What he failed to see was the unending vista of “ holes ” with which society was riddled, each filled with countless millions of his class striving to clamber out of them. Evan was a strictly “practical” man not given to theorising and only concerned with the “ immediate hole.”
Having told you something of Evan’s difficulties, perhaps it would be advantageous to consider the question of “ holes ” more closely. The term “ hole ” is, of course, widely used in popular parlance to describe “ a condition of things,” so that when people talk of being “ in a hole ” we know what they mean.
The trouble is, that usually, they don’t know that the particular “hole” they have in mind is circumscribed by a much wider and deeper “ hole “—Capitalist Society, and that however much they strive, the workers never succeed in getting out of a “hole ” permanently.
Holes, big and small, that exist everywhere in Capitalist Society, are called by Economists, Government officials, and such like “experts,” “Crises” and no sooner is one filled in than another is created. Sometimes, despite the waste and time involved, crises do afford a short lived measure of sustenance for some but invariably it is at the expense of others. Eventually a “hole” comes along into which thousands tumble with wide spread ruin and loss of life such as when Capitalism goes to war.
And so we say, study the “hole” you are in together with the rest of society of which you are a part, get to understand the nature of “holes,” “crises.” and other impedimenta of Capitalism that frustrate, keeps you poor, and occasionally demands your life and limb. Having understood, take steps to fill them in. The tool for the job is waiting, it is labelled “Socialism.”’
W. Brain
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2023/09/holesparticular-and-general-1956.html
