Reformism and Deformism

The revolt against the ruling class was never so much alive as today. The ruthless march of capital is daily recruiting and making rebels out of both the young and old by grinding down wages to the point of bare subsistence. As a consequence workers are becoming more revolutionary than ever before. All over the world the ruling classes are busy devising measures to stem the rising tide. Even in the United States the “conspiracy of silence” has ended and socialism is once again being discussed from press and platform. Meanwhile the Socialist Party of Great Britain as an organisation and its companion parties in the World Socialist Movement has failed to make a corresponding growth. The Socialist Party of the future must find its strength.

Socialists concern themselves with analysing the capitalist system, pointing out its defects and advocating the replacing of the capitalist system by the collective ownership and democratic administration of the means of production and distribution. Socialism is not advanced necessarily in response to or because of great economic  distress. These crises may point out the fact that something is wrong but the suggestion of the remedy and the cure for these ills is quite a different problem. Socialism is our immediate demand. The overthrow of capitalism is our only platform. The purpose for the Socialist Party is not that of a “uniting the whole of the workers,” but that of expressing the interests of the working class and encouraging its fighting class-conscious spirit.

 Reformist demands are like shopping lists and this isn’t surprising since political parties try to collect the maximum number of votes so as to get themselves elected to government. They’re a hodge-podge collection in which everybody can find something which pleases them, a package of electoral promises for one and all. To go out amongst the people and try to get them to vote for our candidates merely because we promise them some palliative amelioration is to enter into competition with the Labour Party and its left-wing on their own ground, for there is no earthly reason why the workers should prefer our brand of reforms to those of these others. We can offer no more and no better reforms than can any other party under capitalism and the workers would be entirely correct if, on the basis of an appeal for reforms, they would turn their backs to us and vote for the more electable parties. We distinguish ourselves fundamentally from all reformist groups by carrying on a campaign solely for socialism, which is not only correct but common sense. The Socialist Party refuses to have anything to do with dangling the hook and bait of immediate demands for acquiring votes. The Socialist Party declines to transform itself into a mere vote-catching machine.

 Concessions gained are by-products of the class struggle, not our aim, and gained only because of our strengthened position against, and over the opposition of the capitalist parties. If we fail to educate, to organise and to prepare the working class for a clear understanding of, and for the attainment of the socialist objective, temporary concessions gained can, instead of becoming partial victories on the way, be turned into retardation of the struggle. It is absolutely necessary to make clear our object and the limitations of immediate partial demands and not to arithmetically add new demands for every ill of the present situation appearing as solutions in themselves, such ends only in reformism pure and simple.

Day-to-day struggles must be subordinated by a socialist party to the realisation of the final goal. The pursuit of immediate objectives, reforms within the framework of the capitalist system supposedly means evolution from capitalism to socialism results in the strategy that the movement is everything, the final aim is nothing. The reformists set their demands as ends in themselves. They sow confusion in the minds of the workers.  The reformist platforms in practice cannot bring us closer to our revolutionary goal. It leads in another direction. It will not serve to develop class consciousness through struggle because the struggle, which it is conducting, is based on reformist premises.

If the socialist movement and the labour movement are ever to become one it will be necessary for socialism to be raised beyond an utopian aspiration. Workers require a concrete goal towards which to strive, which it comes nearer to with every battle. Every effort that preserves or increases the self-consciousness of the proletariat or its spirit of co-operation and discipline, is worth the making. Victory will not he born out of degradation, as many have believed.

Workers have a sense of realism and to put forth propositions outside of the realms of possible achievement under existing conditions then workers will give no serious support to an appeal for their backing on the basis of immediate demands that are manifestly unrealisable under the given conditions. Let us leave reformers to wrangle over reforms. Such a policy cannot mobilise the workers under the socialist banner but on the contrary helps to put new life into an otherwise rather feeble social reformism. Let us make our chief task to spread the propaganda of revolution.

There can be no peace and no unity between the exploiter and victim. There is no more unity between the employer and employee than there is between the robber and the robbed. There is a clash of interests. There is antagonism. The capitalist strives to secure for himself as much of the workers’ product as he can get by force or fraud or both; the workers, resisting exploitation, strive to get as big a share of their own product as they can force the boss to yield. That is fundamental. That is the law of capitalist society. It is the division of classes. It is the never ending class conflict as long as capitalism lasts. Capitalist society is a battle ground and the workers are an army on the march against the enemy. The State is not neutral, nor an ally it sometimes pretends to be.

There are many more struggles. Each day brings its own tasks. Each step the capitalists and their State demands new struggles of the workers. These struggles are not separated from each other. They are intertwined into a united whole. One struggle helps another. One victory makes others more easy. All of them strengthen the working class. All of them weaken the capitalist system. These struggles have not been invented. They are a necessity. They are an outcome of existing conditions. They are vital to the very existence of the workers. These struggles will be the more effective, the greater the masses that participate in them and the stronger their unity and will to fight. The Socialist Party is against the opportunism which concentrates the attention of the workers on immediate demands while posing socialism as some distant and ultimate goal.