Real Workers' Power

WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

How can a social change be brought about?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain  has never relied on some sort of mystic faith in the inevitability of socialism to make things turn out all right in the end, so long as we repeat the right phrases. They will turn out all right in the end only if people make it happen.

Armed revolution is no longer practical. Non-violent resistance is a more effective method for bringing about desirable social change in the modern world than violence.  We are not primarily interested in maintaining that non-violence is morally preferable to violence, but that non-violence is superior as an instrument to bring about social change.  Socialists are against the sporadic, meaningless and inevitably self-defeating violence that suffering and resentment are always likely to provoke. Riots and violence alone will not achieve socialism. It is easy to understand the hatred of so many whose bodies are tormented and rent asunder by society: however, as soon as the hell in which they live is lit up by an ideal, hatred disappears and a burning desire of fighting for the good of all takes over. We are we are aiming at a better, a more human world but socialists will deal with the society that confronts them, not with hopes. The wrongs of society do not depend on the wickedness of one master or the other but rather on masters and governments as institutions; therefore, the remedy does not lie in changing the individual rulers, instead it is necessary to demolish the principle itself by which men dominate over men.

The owning, employing class are the ruling class because it controls the government. The government protects the capitalist class by protecting the source of its economic strength - private property. It is the will of the capitalist class that the rights of private property be protected. It uses its control of government to write down its will and call it the law of the land. It uses its control of government to enforce its will, the law. The law is the voice of the ruling class.

The process by which the capitalist class rules is called a democratic form of government. Democracy literally means “rule of the people”. We, however, live in a class society in which one class maintains its favourable economic position because it controls the rule by the people. True enough, the majority of people support the present system and therefore the capitalist class controls the government only as long as the majority of the voters permit them to.

Those who read the Leftist websites and journals will be well accustomed to their demands. “Public control of Banking and Finance ”, “the immediate re-nationalisation of the mines and railways” We should be asking ourselves who is the public? Who the “nation”? The outside observer will notice that the  Left makes “socialism” and “public ownership” or “nationalisation” synonymous terms.  Socialism which leaves the working class as a subject class is not socialism. The sooner this is grasped the sooner will it be realised that “workers’ control” as promised by the Bolsheviks continued to  subordinate the workers to the “Workers’ State”. The  path to socialism is not through state-capitalism.

Nor let there be any ambiguity about the use of the word socialisation. The Socialist Party mean by it, and so does every socialist worthy of the name, common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution. As socialists we base our political policy on the class struggle of the workers, because we know that the self-interest of the workers lies our way. That the self-interest may sometimes go awry does not affect the correctness of our position.