Our Interests Alone

How often have we heard something like this,  “Marx was a splendid man for his time. But he is now out-of-date.” Karl must be turning in his grave.

The thoughts of people are much troubled about the future and many seem doubtful where the world is headed. It is impossible to look around and see that something is seriously amiss;  the inequalities, the wasted wealth and excessive luxury of the rich compared to the misery and deprivation of the poor. Political reforms have done very little for people. Periods of prosperity, speedily followed by recession. Private enterprise has been tried and found wanting and laissez-faire has had its day.

The creators of all wealth, we, the workers, obtain in wages only what isnecessary to live on and keep a family (so that capitalism has a steady supply of labour-power). All means of production, whether factories, machines or mines, are owned by the capitalist class. Workers possess only their own labour-power which they must sell in order to live. The system of capitalist relations of production is in sharp contradiction with the highly-developed means of production leading to economic crises, bringing the miseries of unemployment and falling wages on the working class.

The class interest of the proletariat is to eliminate capitalism entirely and to build a socialist society, the classless society free from exploitation and from racial, sexual and all other forms of inequality. No party represents the class interests of the working class unless it strives to awaken the workers to a po1itical consciousness that will give them class power. Various political parties and trends claim to represent workers and working class interests. They attempt to win support among workers but their political ideas and aims are pro-capitalist.

The Labour Party, particularly its ‘left’ wing, claims to stand for the workers’ interests and for socialism.  Labour claims that socialism can be introduced gradually through a series of reforms. In the early years of the Labour Party many workers voted for Labour, believing that they could vote in socialism, but the experience of various Labour governments has brought disillusion. Today no-one believes that Labour will establish a new and better political and economic system. Even Labour politicians themselves ask for votes with the claim that they can make capitalism work better than the Tories. Certain industries could no longer be run at a profit by individual capitalists but were still necessary for the whole capitalist economy. Measures presented as ‘socialist’ such as ‘nationalisation’ were introduced but these industries remain controlled and run entirely in capitalism’s interests. Economic policies as advocated by Keynes, such as heavy state deficit financing, the payment of social security benefits and so, in order to keep spending going and the market for goods developing and to escape recession in the economy.  Such measures have been represented by Labour as the triumph of socialism and of the ‘welfare state’ . This is coupled with the line that capital and labour must unite behind the ’national interest’. But the ‘national interest’ is always capitalism’s interest. The Labour Party represents capitalism and no other class. The mass of the working–class no longer holds any illusion that the Labour Party represents its interests or will bring about any real change in the system. At best, the Labour Party is seen as a ‘lesser evil’ than the Conservative Party.  If so-called ‘Left revolutionaries’ support Labour in election campaigns, even as a ‘lesser evil’ or with all sorts of qualifications to their support, they are betraying the working class. This support amounts to an attempt to preserve, or re-establish, workers’ illusions that if Labour had a more left-wing, a more radicl leadership leadership things would be different. No party, no matter how ‘left’ its leadership, can effect important changes to the capitalist system. The Left spread the illusion that the Labour Party can be ‘pressurised’ more than the Conservatives, into making concessions to workers. In practice, efforts to shift the the Labour Party left-ward lead workers’ organisations into compromise and sell-out policies again and again. Today, to advocate support for Labour is to hinder and thwart the fundamental task of presenting the working class with a clear alternative to all pro-capitalist parties and to the whole system of capitalism.

The exploitation and oppression of the working class has never ceased, the need for socialism has never disappeared and the working class remains the revolutionary class. Under capitalism, the exploitation and oppression of the workers forces collective struggles to defend their standard of living to arise. Such struggles are necessary and arise, spontaneously. They are limited in their essential nature to defensive struggles, but are schools for the basic lessons of the collective strength of the working class. Only limited gains are possible even with victories in such defensive struggles.

With the present crisis, the problems of the workers are growing more intense. Dogmatists asserts that all our answers have already been given by Marx and Engels and that we simply have to parrot their words, no real effort at analysis or application of theory being required. Such attitudes repudiate the most fundamental essence of Marxism, its absolute dependence, in originating and testing ideas, on material reality. Our theory is drawn from the lessons of world history and the experience of mankind and the specific experience of class struggle. We certainly cannot neglect research, reading and discussing books, publishing our views and so on. All ideas emerge from practice, from material reality, and must be tested in practice. We certainly must draw on the practice of others. Political agitation is the struggle to raise class consciousness through commenting on specific issues or events. Through such specific issues, aspects of capitalist society can be exposed, the workers’ spirit of resistance sharpened and working class unity consolidated. Such agitation must be directed by a general understanding of capitalism and how to fight it. Unless such educational and agitational work is conducted, we shall not connect our ideas to the actual political and economic struggles going on around us. The socialist case will remain nothing but empty platitudes. To make people understand our main standpoint of anti-capitalist revolution is by linking up every discussion with it. Our party must constantly discuss and thoroughly comprehend the main issues about the political foundation and spirit of anti-capitalist revolution to overthrow the capitalists from political power, and not just give emotional speeches against oppression. Because in a general way the people have a realization about oppression and hunger and they want to fight against oppression. But he who wants to fight against capitalism, at the very next moment on another question he is seen to display an attitude of protecting capitalism. So we need to develop a spirit of all-out fight to destroy capitalism, we need the endeavour to build up a firm anti-capitalist bent of mind embracing the entire mental world, and accordingly prepare ourselves so that each of our discussions becomes effective.

Our task as a socialist party is to uphold our correct politics exposing the wrong politics, the opportunist politics of others, to dispel confusion; but is the work in running our party going the right way to serve this purpose? It is true that we are not in a position politically or organisationally to integrate trade union and community struggles with the world socialist movement. And it is also true that we are not indispensable to such struggles. However, while we can do much useful work, involvement in such struggles is more indispensable to us, to our development as socialists and to our struggle to build a mass socialist party. There is no organisational formula for party-building. However, it is useless unless there exists political unity. We believe also in the open,’frank, discussion. We are against unprincipled ‘take-overs’ of workers organisations and  attempts to claim a leading role in them.

Merely talking against capitalism, giving a list of the capitalist parties misdeeds is not enough.  We are obliged to show why it is necessary to overthrow capitalism by relating it with all the problems of workers. Today we know that our interests are identical as workers. We  hold that an organisation which maintains that the workers have interests in common with their employers—the parasites—is serving the masters’ interests, as opposed to the workers’ interests.