We are a Marxist party, that is, we accept the materialist conception of history, the labour theory of value and theory of the class struggle. Our object is socialism: a worldwide society where production will be solely for use, not sale or profit; where the means of life will be commonly owned and democratically controlled; where classes will have been abolished and all human beings are social equals. Production and distribution will be organised on the principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. There will be no buying and selling, no money, wages, profits or banks. All will have free access to what they need to live and enjoy life. As all will have the same common social interests there will be no need for a public power of coercion. The state, armed forces, and weapons of destruction will disappear. This is Socialism.
Present-day society, capitalism, is a class society. The means of production belong not to society as a whole, but only to a section of it, the capitalists. The rest of us have to work for them to live. There are thus two classes in society —capitalists and workers. The working class is not confined to factory workers but includes all who have to sell their mental and physical energies to live; clerks, civil servants, technicians, and managers as well. Built into capitalism is a conflict between these two classes—the class struggle. This struggle over the division of wealth (which is produced by the working class alone) goes on all the time. You are familiar with its forms: strikes, trade unions, employers associations, wage freezes. This means that the working class is an exploited class. By this, we do not mean that workers are treated brutally by bullying employers or that foremen walk about with whips. We just mean that although the workers produce all wealth, the best go to the capitalists who live off rent, interest, and profit. How workers live is rationed by the size of their wage packet. Generally, this is not more than enough to keep a man and his family in efficient working order. Despite a world capable of providing plenty for all, workers have to put up with the cheap and second-rate in food, clothes, houses, entertainment, health and so on. We say this is how it must be under capitalism. These social problems are built into capitalism and will not go till the means of production cease to be the monopoly of a privileged class and become the common property of the whole community. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of all. It can work only one way, as a profit-making system in the interest of those who live off profits.
Class division cuts across all the others. If the entire working class had precisely the same skin colour in a capitalist system, they would still suffer from the same problems: poverty, unemployment, wage slavery, discrimination, poor housing, inferior education, and conscription. These problems are generated by the system of wage labour and the sale of commodities for profit. Though in some countries they may fall more heavily on a particular ethnic group, they cannot be solved for any part of the working class until they are solved for the working class as a whole.
The working class must capture political power and, by using the state machinery, strip the capitalist class of their property. The means are already to hand in the vote and the ballot box. Elections are about who shall control the state. At present because people do not want socialism or think it will not work they send to parliament and the local council members pledged to keep capitalism going. When they want Socialism, then they will elect socialists. This is an important principle: there can be no socialism without a socialist majority. The only people who can change society from capitalism to socialism are you, the working class. Nobody, no leaders no MP’s, can do it for you. If you want Socialism, it is something you must get for yourselves. When we contest elections we do so on a socialist programme and nothing else. This is not because we are opposed to social reforms, but because we are opposed to a policy of reformism. Trying to reform capitalism is pointless. Capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the whole community. It is a class system that runs on profits and so any government that tries to improve social conditions at the expense of profits, within the framework of capitalism, is bound to fail. The economic forces of capitalism will, in the end, dictate priorities to the government,
Class consciousness takes a long time to develop. One of the signs of its development is a wholesale rejection on the part of workers that a treadmill is their only possible alternative in life. We advise workers to recognise that capitalism cannot work for them, whether run by Labour, Tories or Nationalists and to withdraw their support from capitalist parties and join and support a genuinely socialist party dedicated to replacing capitalism with socialism.
No comments:
Post a Comment