The World Commune

Today we are in a global recession and governments everywhere are engaging in reducing spending and imposing austerity cuts. But why should it always be the workers, the actual producers, us poor wage-slaves, and never the real scroungers, those in the City of London and on Wall St, who are called upon to sacrifice themselves for the common good? The answer to this question is perfectly simple. It is because we are living in a capitalist world, a capitalist system, and the Government and all the political institutions of which it represents, exist to maintain, capitalist interests. To make profit is the sole object of all production. Investors and hedge-fund managers are not concerned with supplying human needs. All they are concerned about is making profit by the exploitation. It is truly absurd that a mere handful of plutocrats should be masters and owners of the wealth of the world. All misery, all injustice and disorder, results from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its laws on another class and on society as a whole. We are seeing signs that the working class wakening up to the fact and is beginning to rouse from its long slumber. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always maintained that the working class should jealously guard the right and the power to strike; that they should refuse to be shackled by any sort of compulsory arbitration, or any other restriction on their right to withhold their labour; and we have always given support to workers who have been on strike. Victory will come to the working class only if it is conscious and willing to struggle.

 Socialism will not come into existence unless the majority of the people are willing to struggle for socialism and that means that they have some idea of what it is. If the people who vote for a socialist do not do so because he or she is a socialist but because they do not know that he or she is a socialist, of what use can that be for achieving the socialist goal? Socialism must depend upon the consciousness of the working class and not upon their lack of knowledge. The idea that we should first be elected to office and then teach socialism to the masses is so utterly absurd that it should not even be discussed. It can be stated with the greatest of assurance that a party described as a  socialist which refrains from teaching socialism with the idea that they will do so after elected will forget all about socialism once in office.

The first condition of success for socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. We must do away with many misunderstandings created by our adversaries. The work of the SPGB is to help to educate the people by every effective means; and the knowledge we have to help them to is threefold--to know their own, to know how to take their own, and to know how to use their own. Part of our function is to educate the people by criticizing all attempts at so-called reforms, whose aim is not the realisation of equality, but the hindering of it. State capitalism’s or nationalisation, or by whatever name it may be called, aim is to make concessions and  administrative changes to the working class while leaving the present system of capital and wages still in operation.  With state ownership exploitation will continue as in private enterprise. Class relations which leaves the working class as a subject class is not socialism.

Socialist society will be voluntary in the sense that all people will agree in its broad principles when it is fairly established. A world socialist society is the only solution for the contradictions in the present capitalist  society. Only a socialist society can utilize rationally the natural resources and productive machinery of the earth in  the interests of the peoples of the earth. A federation of socialist  communities can alone solve the conflict between  the efficient development of productive forces and the restrictions of artificial national boundaries. All differences of class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the whole community. The rule of the minority must be substituted the universal co-operation of everyone. And that is why the essential aim of socialism is to transform capitalist property into social property. The rights of all individuals are guaranteed to-day, to-morrow and for ever.

Socialism will be an emancipated world, a society of economic and social equals wherein class divisions, privileges and disabilities will for the first time in history be impossible; a system of social ownership of the means of production industrially administered by the workers on an organised and harmonious plan, ensuring from every man according to his capacity and to every man according to his needs, under the motto “All for each and each for All”. The social revolution is the essential objective of the World Socialist Movement when the class war has been for ended, when humanity shall no longer cower under an oppressor and when none shall be called master and none servant. Socialism makes possible a society where there are no national prejudices or racial antagonisms or religious persecutions. It removes the CAUSE of these poisons. It makes possible a free society of human beings.