Within the Left there has arose a number of misconceptions about the Socialist Party of Great Britain, one being that we oppose reforms that can improve the lot of workers. The economic system don’t operate by immutable “laws” like gravity. Economics is not like physics. Human beings work together and make decisions that shape our economic destiny. No worker gives up the struggle for immediate reforms, and for as many reforms as possible.
If the Socialist Party had nothing to offer to the suffering people but the consolatory hope that socialism will bring help at some future time, while the conditions are nearly unbearable now, this consolation would be pretty poor and we would be little better than preachers. Often enough a future state of bliss has been held out to suffering mankind, in which they would be rewarded for all the wants and sufferings and pains of this world, and most people have lost confidence in such empty promises. They demand amelioration: not words, not promises, but action. They do not want to be resigned to “pie in the sky" that may come after death; they demand a change to their unfortunate situation while living on earth. Workers seek a “terrestrial paradise” without having to wait for it in a “something beyond.” In plain terms, workers want jam today. Workers have always had to fight both for improvements in their living standards and for their most basic democratic rights.
But in order to carry on this struggle successfully, the workers must be organised. Singly and isolated they are powerless; if all would unite for the same purpose, they would be a formidable power which nothing could resist. It is for the whole working class to participate in this struggle, since this war is carried on in the interest of all workers. They cannot sit idly back as indifferent spectators surrendering the task to a political party.
The theory of reformism is a very different matter from the actual struggle for reforms. Reformism is a theory that says repeated success in achieving reforms could, over time, completely transform society, peacefully and without the sharp break represented by revolution, into a quite different kind of society. The idea was that capitalist society could grow gradually into a free socialist society. Yet there is nothing intrinsically socialist or even working class about reformism.
But it is not merely that. The granting of concessions acts as a lubricant, making the system run more smoothly. Often reforms, besides creating goodwill, have a hidden bonus for the capitalist class. Improvements to the educational system can be construed as a victory for the workers. On the other hand, they provide employers with a labour force better able to cope with modern scientific and technical problems. Likewise the National Health Service is popularly regarded as a great boon for the ordinary person. But it also helps employers, who have known for a long time that personnel who are healthy are also more productive.
Reformists substitute their hypothetical reforms for the certainty of revolution. Reforms, whatever their number, never lead to a transformation of the system. For as soon as a reform threatens the basis of the system, the ruling class put forward such resistance to it, that a revolution is unavoidable. The reformists advocate collaboration, passivity, etc. They reduce the class struggle to that for immediate demands within the framework of the capitalist system.
Reformists maintain that we can arrive at a certain “socialism” by winning reforms one after the other. What they don’t say is that whatever the bourgeoisie has to give up with one hand after a hard struggle, it will just take back with the other. Capitalism is not a charitable institution. It does not give things away. Every gain workers have secured has been won through strength of organisation and ability to struggle. To suggest anything other is to spread illusions – and this is precisely what some reformers try to do. They help to foster illusions about the state. Instead of seeing its real role, that of preserving capitalist exploitation, it is seen in a more favourable light.
Also, there are reforms and reforms, those which the ruling class bring about in order to save the capitalist system and those which the proletariat extort through struggle, by the power of organisation and the effectiveness of action. Reform on behalf of the ruling class to pressure from below is essentially conservative, an attempt to buttress the existing class structure by making minor concessions. From their standpoint, reform is preferable to revolution. Reform is often the reply of the rich to the threat of revolution. Reformism is bourgeois trickery used to keep the working class under wage slavery. The capitalists, if they are clear-sighted, consent to ameliorate the lot of the workers in order to keep them in subjection, whilst the workers, although demanding amelioration of their prison conditions ought above all to strive to force the doors of the capitalist prison. In any case, one has no right, for the sake of one or two palliatives to make the proletariat forget its captivity .
Socialist critics of reformism are not opposed to the struggle for reforms. But they understood that no gain is permanently guaranteed so long as the means of production remain in the hands of the capitalist minority. Reformism is an ideology which provides no ultimate solution to the problems of capitalism.
To go out amongst the electorate and try to get them to vote for our candidates merely because we promise them some immediate reforms is to enter into competition with the mainstream capitalist parties and the Leftists on their own ground. The reformists concentrate exclusively on the immediate demands as a bait for getting votes. Reformists claim to have for their object the ultimate establishment of a new social order, their immediate aim is the reforming of the present social system.
Rosa Luxemburg wrote of trade union struggle as “the labour of Sisyphus” who was the figure from Greek mythology condemned to perpetually push a large rock up a hill, only to find that each time he neared the summit it roll back downhill again. Applied to reforms, this is not such a bad analogy. We are forever condemned to keep go back to what has been gained in the past to defend it against attack.
In boom conditions capitalists can find opportunities for profitable investment with trade is expanding trade so with a growing cake, compromises can be made on the share of the slices. Reforms may be fought bitterly, but there is a flexibility of implementing certain reforms without shaking the whole system apart. Each piece of legislation has a cost. Consequently, it is likely to squeeze profit margins and damage the competitiveness of the economy therefore in a slump when capitalists are competing with other capitalists, between the capitalist and the worker there is no longer be any scope for concessions. Reforms not only cease but are rolled back. In these “hard times” the capitalist class can no longer afford the luxury of an extensive welfare state.
The position of the Socialist Party is frequently misunderstood. We do not oppose particular reforms which potentially produce benefits for the working class. We do not condemn coping mechanisms and self-help schemes that the poor and the vulnerable provide for themselves. What we steadfastly resist is the claims put forward that they offer a fundamentally different type of society and present permanent improvement in the position of people and that the campaign for such measures should take precedence over the struggle for socialism.
The Socialist Party is not a reform party. Its avowed purpose is the abolition of the present social
system, the ending of the exploitation of labour by an parasitic class. It makes its direct appeal for the support of the workers as propertyless wage-slaves, not as “tax-paying” citizens, nor as deserving poor charity cases. The efforts of the Socialist Party are solely bent toward organising the workers as a revolutionary class for the conquest of political power from the capitalists and reorganising of society upon a classless basis. That is the immediate task and the immediate goal of the Socialist Party. We leave the pursuit for palliatives to those more suited for such activity.
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