Everything is Possible

“Unite the many to defeat the few”

What is it people want? A more fulfilling life and happiness. People not only want change, they want a vision of a better society. The aspiration of every person consists, in the first instance, in safeguarding his or her life, and then in improving it. We want to live for as long and as well as possible. We want to ward off all that can degrade us but we are under great pressure from capitalism.

Mankind will only be able to act usefully when it has managed to destroy all lies, freed itself from all the superstitions and found the truth in the jumble of knowledge and observations. Much of the time of socialists has been spent in merely re-establishing what Marx and Engels said and stood for, to counter various new forms of age-old distortions. Much of what is being passed off for revolutionary theory in our movement is really just dogma which is of no use to anyone, especially the working class. Many on the Left pretend to see further than anyone else, but they do not even perceive that they are marching backwards. The word “revolutionary” is popular and it suffers the same fate of that other word “socialism”. Every petty political bureaucrat runs for office under the banner of this or that revolutionary policy. Every reactionary deed is accomplished under the banner of “The Revolution.”

 We have so long been accustomed to receive without question the teachings of the master class so our message must be clear and unambiguous, and consistent. Man, as a social animal, has a claim upon the society which gave him (or her) birth. This claim involves, in the first place, the right of free access to the means of life. Yet far too many lack the simple necessities of life. The whole aim of socialism is that every human being, white,  black, red, or yellow, shall have equal opportunity to have access to the natural resources which nature has supplied and to the technology which mankind has created and then to have the full social product of his or her labour.

 Capitalism is an economic system which is based on the exploitation of working people by a handful of the extremely wealthy. As long as this basic system continues to exist, so will the misery of the working class. Recognising this, the World Socialist Movement seeks to organise the entire working class into a powerful movement to overthrow the power of the ruling class. . Only by all the workers acting together as one can the working class equal the power of capitalism. In order to maximise their effectiveness the working class must link up together and by organizing themselves they can develop a co-ordinated attack on their common enemy. Such an attack would be much more difficult for the capitalists to defeat. Sometime down the road, the people will break out of the strait jacket of the pro-capitalist parties, and form an independent mass socialist party. Organisation is how the working class will fight for its emancipation and hence why the form of organisation constitute the most important problem in the practice of the working class movement. It is clear that these forms depend on the conditions of society and the aims of the fight. They cannot be the invention of theory, but have to be built up spontaneously by the working class itself, guided by its immediate requirements.

Many still think of the socialist revolution in terms of the former revolutions as a series of consecutive phases: first, conquest of government and instalment of a new government, then expropriation of the capitalist class by law, and then a new organisation of the process of production. We are well schooled by the idea that it is we, the people, who elect the government and therefore it is we who are responsible for the laws of it. We are taught to regard ’the state’ (along with “the law” and so on) as a kind of neutral arbiter or “referee”. The word “state”, however,  is not just another word for “society”. The state is, of course, the centralisation of capitalist economic management.

To the liberal, progressive Left “constructive” parliamentary work is of supreme importance as it constitutes in their eyes the gradual introduction of socialism. A reform here and a reform there, and the socialist state has become perceptibly nearer than it was. They do not perceive that the reforms have not even touched the basic interests of capitalists, and even as palliatives their value, in comparison with the needs, is frequently insignificant. Parliamentary manoeuvres and electoral strategies cannot change historical facts, conjure away class interests and bridge class conflicts.

The election of a Socialist Party candidate to any public body at present, is only valuable in so far as it is the return of a disturber of the political peace. If we do not say, openly and publicly, that a vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledee is a vote cast in favour of a capitalist party and will do the working class no good at all, what the hell are we in politics for?

Without socialism the working class is reduced to a constant struggle against the effects of capitalism because without socialism the system of capitalism remains intact. Socialism is powerless without the working class and the working class cannot advance without socialism. Instead of getting caught up with those who would have us rush with our eyes closed to build “The Left Party”, we will continue our work in trying to bring about the union of socialism and the working class movement. The role of socialists is not to append ourselves to working class struggles that are already happening in any case, but to introduce into them a whole range of other class issues. We must not allow our hearts to run away with our heads. When we criticise the Left we are accused of doing capitalism a favour, by disheartening and confusing many sincere activists. We, on the contrary, think that the Left foster illusions that genuine socialists have long warned against.

Only when the working class assume control of the means of production does exploitation cease. Then the workers direct entirely their conditions of life. The production of everything necessary for life is the common task of the community of workers, which is then the community of mankind. This production is a collective process. First each factory, each work-place, is a collective of workers, combining their efforts in an organised way. Moreover, the totality of world production is now a collective process; all the separate factories combined into a totality of production. When the working class takes possession of the means of production, it has at the same time to create an organisation of production. It is clear that the organisational forms of trade union and political party, inherited from the period of expanding capitalism, are useless here.

It is only by having an extra-parliamentary force to fall back on that the working class can make full use, of its parliamentary power. We can accomplish in parliament what can be accomplished there only on condition that we are ready to defend our right to representation. We must be prepared at any moment to fight for the ballot with all the means at our command. Nowhere can workers accomplish anything worthwhile by the method of compromise which leads always to division and so to a loss of power. Only under the banner of the class-struggle, never under that of legislative bargaining, can the whole working class movement be united, can it finally succeed in unfolding its full power. Instead of a party striving for a rapid transformation of the existing society into a socialist system we should have a party content with reforming capitalism.