All the main parties claims it can solve the country’s problems. But who can believe that the Tories, or the LibDems, or the Labour Party can have any solution to the problems of workers? In elections the Socialist Party of Great Britain takes the opportunity and occasion to criticise the capitalist parties and defend our alternative of socialism. In our election leaflets we expose the Labour Liberals and the Conservatives as the parties of the ruling class. Throughout our campaign, Socialist Party candidates insist that socialism is the only solution for working people. It is only by ending the system where a handful of parasites benefit from that the working class will emancipate itself from exploitation once and for all. Our aim is not just to collect votes but above all it is to popularise our views and draw people into the fight for socialism.
Capitalism is kept alive not by coercion but by ideas and these ideas it instills into the minds of people from the day they start thinking. The schools, the newspapers and books, the tv, radio and cinema are all the means by which the thoughts of people are shaped. They are used by the ruling class that controls them to argue that the society we live in is fundamentally good and correct and by and large, the working class accepts these ideas. If it did not, capitalism could not exist very long. All the organs of ruling class propaganda are mobilised to deceive the masses. They want to sidetrack the workers from the struggle to end the capitalist system and establish socialism. The ‘progressives’ seek only to reform the system, content to defend the capitalists’ profits so long as they aren’t excessive. If the left-wing parties are fundamentally anti-capitalist movement, you’d expect that they would, be weaker when capitalism was doing alright, and stronger when capitalism was doing badly and when an alternative, was clearly necessary. But, it’s the other way round. That suggests the Left is not a fundamentally anti-capitalist movement, but a progressive movement within capitalism, able to grow when capitalism is able to accommodate social progress, but with no alternative to offer when capitalism forces a retreat.
The Socialist Party is not like the other parties which make fake promises they will never keep in order to win workers votes. Most people are not attracted to negative criticism, so they don’t become politically active. Even when life is getting more and more difficult, many believe you can do more to improve your own lot by looking out for yourself than by agitating against the authorities. If you’re unemployed for example, you’ll do better looking for a job, than taking part in protests about it. Often people on the left are even reduced to defending capitalism when trying to persuade others to become active. For example, they want people to take to the streets against the government’s austerity policies. So they say those policies are the cause of all our troubles.
Politicians and economists appear on television and in the press explaining basic principles of Marxist political economy that in not so many words that there’s a world wide capitalist economic recession and there is nothing the or any other government can do about it. In that situation, people have no choice but to put up with lower real wages and welfare benefit cutbacks. After all, it’s happening everywhere, not just in this , so it can’t be the fault of the government. Unlike the leftists, the Socialist Party agree that capitalism doesn’t work and suggests that therefore we ought to get rid of it. But instead the left-wingers insist that it’s all David Cameron’s fault. They pretend that if only the government followed different policies, it would be possible to have rising real living standards, improving health, education and welfare, and what have you. They’re lying. They know they’re lying, their opponents know they’re lying and most important, the people being asked to take to the streets know they’re lying, so naturally they won’t come.
If slaves go on demanding that their masters improve their rations, they deserve to remain slaves, because they accept having masters and they therefore accept slavery. We have to build a movement to overthrow our masters, and run the world ourselves, and solve its problems ourselves, instead of demanding that our masters find some solution for us.
The alternative, as everybody already knows, is socialism, a practical alternative that can really work. But if that’s what we’re fighting for, why can’t we spell out (at least in broad outline), just what it means, and how we propose getting there? Why do we always avoid the issue and just talk about how bad things are now? Are we afraid that Socialism isn’t very attractive and we need to paint a even more grim picture of the way things are now, so as to persuade people to opt for the alternative? And that is perfectly understandable when one looks closely at the sort of “alternative” most people on the Left really want. It is not surprising they don’t want to talk about it and much prefer just denouncing capitalism.
A few on the Left actually want to go backwards to a life of low technology rustic simplicity, described sometimes as primitivism but better portrayed as a regression to the more backward neo-peasant society. Then other left-wingers who once looked favourably towards the state-capitalist systems of Russia and Eastern Europe which is now rapidly disappearing from China, Vietnam and Cuba but still clinging by fingernails to the North Korean workers’ paradise. Yet it doesn’t stop them from nostalgically advocating a return to those types of “socialist” countries, seeking new bosses in a new restrictive regime. But mostly, the majority on the Left simply just want some of the most glaring injustices of capitalist society to be resolved. They want better jobs, housing, education and so forth,. Some believe they can get it without some major upheaval, others argue it needs uprisings.
The Socialist Party has a vision of a better world with fundamentally different social relations. But even we need to rethink the whole approach and really come to grips with the world we’re in and how to change it. As a first step, we need to talk seriously to each other and examine and criticise each other’s ideas in a comradely way. Being united against Cameron and capitalism is not a particularly strong point of unity. We need something deeper to unite us - socialism.
AJJ
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