What do we mean by SOCIALISM?

With the forthcoming Peoples Assembly to campaign against the cuts and calls for a new Left Unity workers’ organisation it is important that we have some sort of understanding of the basics. Political power is wielded by social classes through political parties. The transference of power from one class to another is not an automatic process. It involves a political struggle - a class war.

Non-revolutionary politics is about different sections of the ruling class struggling amongst themselves contesting elections for a share of the spoils in  profits and privilege. Different political parties represent different factions and interest groups seeking the lucrative control of the government. Different politicians with their own theories of how best to maintain the existing order and keep the support of the people, usually by securing this or that reform or concession for this or that section of the population. But all varieties of non-revolutionary politics PRESUPPOSE the continuance of the existing order in its fundamental structure: that is to say, in capitalist society. Non-revolutionary politics presupposes capitalist property relations, the exploitation of the working class by the propertied minority and the maintenance of the capitalist state.

The central political issue of our time, however,  is the issue of the class struggle for socialism. Every other question is of minor importance, since its answer can be found only in the solution of the central issue.  One of the main functions of capitalist  politics is to deceive the working class as to the real and central issue which confronts them. So long as the workers believe that their significant political choices lie WITHIN the capitalist order, capitalism itself, no matter what internal shifts take place, is not threatened. Every device serves this duplicity. Capitalist parties stage fake debate on “the fate of the nation”. They create the sham a populist party to direct discontent and dissatisfaction into safe channels. And when all else fails, the capitalist class can resort to a police state, justified by a mass hysteria whipped up by their media about homeland security or what-not to maintain control.

Socialists must strive to break through the deceptions of bourgeois politics. They must push aside all secondary and reformist distinctions, and pose directly the central issue: the struggle for socialism. The success of the Socialist Party in an election campaign is not to be measured in votes, but in the extent and the depth to which we have succeeded in bringing the central issue before the attention of the electorate. All of our propaganda, all our discussions are a campaign for socialism.

Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. This is the position held by all socialists everywhere. However, one cannot but feel that it is not always entirely clear what is understood by the word “socialism" so some prefer to add the adjective “revolutionary” socialism to distinguish ourselves from those who merely wish to patch up the present system and keep it. Socialists are not “reformers” — we are “revolutionaries.” But even this qualification can be confusing and requires clarification. By revolution, socialists do not mean violence or bloodshed. By “revolutionary socialism” we do not intend it to be a call to arms and to man the barricades. No, we mean by it,  the capture of  political power by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class. This is the essence of revolutionary socialism. Whoever agrees with the necessity of the organisation of the working class into an independent socialist party, distinct from and hostile to all capitalistic parties to capture the machinery of government in order to carry out the principles of socialism is a revolutionary socialist.

The terms socialist and socialism were first used by Robert Owen to describe the views of those who, like himself, were in favour of the substitution of organised co-operation rather than the chaos of competition, well before Marx and Engels adopted the words to signify their political thoughts. An alternate label, social-democrat, was first used, and made popular, by the Chartist leader Bronterre O’Brien, also some time before Marx and Engels. A social-democrat, according to O’Brien, was a man who regarded social questions as of paramount importance and desired to solve them by collectivist and democratic action. O’Brien took and used the term social-democrat to express the views of those who wished to bring about a complete social reconstruction under democratic forms.

Socialism starts out with the observation that our present system divides society into two classes, the “have all” and the “have nothing” class, and that it is the great mass of the people that do all the useful work who belong to the “have nothing” class. All the misery, all the injustice and disorder, result from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its law on another class, and on society as a whole. The thing to do, therefore, is to break down this supremacy of this one class. All difference of class must be abolished by transferring to the whole body of the democratically organised community, the ownership of the means of production and of life, which to-day, in the hands of a single class, is a power of exploitation and oppression. The universal co-operation of all  must be substituted for the exploitative rule of the minority.

Socialists recognise the class war between the propertyless class and the possessing class as the inevitable historic outcome of the capitalist system and of the direct economic and social antagonisms which it has engendered and fostered.

Socialists formed into a political party will  use political institutions to educate and to prepare, as far as possible, peacefully for the socialist revolution. Socialists hold that the methods of giving legal expression to this great socialist change should be completely democratic in every respect.

Socialists aim is to transform capitalist property into social property and end the domination of the capitalist class which degrades humanity. Socialism will abolish all all classes, raises humanity to its highest level.

Socialists see that those antagonisms can only be resolved by the complete control over all the means of production, distribution, and exchange, by the whole people, thus abolishing the class State and the wages system, and constituting a Co-operative Commonwealth or a Social-Democracy.