The SPGB Programme

To change the world and to create a better one has always been an aspiration of people throughout human history. The hope that tomorrow's world can be free of today's inequalities, hardships and deprivations, the belief that people can, individually and collectively, influence the shape of the world to come, is a deep-rooted and powerful outlook in society that guides the lives and actions of vast masses of people. Clearly, everyone's image of an ideal world is not one and the same. However, throughout human history certain ideas have always come to the fore as the measures of human happiness and social progress.

Socialism sees the state as the organisation of the ruling class, an instrument of oppression and violence, and it is on these grounds that it does not countenance a "state of the future". In the future there will be no classes, there will be no class oppression, and thus no instrument of that oppression, no state of violence. The "classless state" is a contradiction in terms, a nonsense, an abuse of language, and if this idea is prevalent it is  really no fault of Marx and Engels or their teachings. They made clear that socialism is a STATELESS society,  the "administration of things" replaces the bygone "government of men".  If this is the case then what, in reality, does the distinction between anarchists and Marxists consist of?

There are two sides of the social revolution: the destructive side and the creative or reconstructive side. The destructive side shows above all in the destruction of the capitalist state,  the capture of power by the workers can become a reality only through the destruction of the power of the capitalist class. Once the workers has taken power, the most urgent task is to build socialism.

The socialist society for Marx and Engels was a free association of completely free men, where no separation between ‘private and common interest’ existed: a society where ‘everyone could give himself a complete education in whatever domain he fancied’. For ‘man’s activity becomes an adverse force which subjugates him, instead of his being its master’ when there is ‘a division of labour’; everyone must then have a profession, that is a ‘determined, exclusive sphere of activity’ he has not chosen and in which ‘he is forced to remain if he does not want to lose his means of existence’. In their socialism, on the contrary, a man would be given ‘the possibility to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner’, as he chose (‘The German Ideology’).

Marx and Engels never believed that socialism could be brought about on Earth by the will of the few and imposed on man generally. Nor were they advocates of what many consider hal-measures or steps towards socialism.

“State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution... neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital... The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme (Anti-Dühring)

During the twentieth century many organisations began labelling themselves as socialist, communist and Marxist. Most of these movements had very little in common with the basic principles of socialism  and, in reality, only desired certain reforms and moderations within the framework of the capitalist system. What took place in Russia was not the construction of socialism but the reconstruction of the capitalist national economy according to a stateist and managed model. Instead of the ideal of common and collective ownership, state ownership of the means of production was established. Wages, money and the wage-labour system all remained. This state-capitalist model became the economic template for other countries.

There was another alternative of  cooperative factories where ‘the associated labourers’ are ‘their own capitalists’, that is, ‘using the means of production for the employment of their own labour’, and according to Marx, the way in which a new mode of production may naturally grow out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production has reached a certain stage (Capital, Volume 3, Chapter 27).

 ‘The general capitalist’ (whether state or co-op) and the direct producers are wage-earners, that therefore the relations between them according to Marx are still the relations between capital and labour, between employer and proletarians.

Marx and Engels never had the contempt for democracy. They did not wish to destroy it, but to enlarge and perfect it.  ‘The emancipation of the working classes must be won by the working classes themselves’, as Marx wrote in the first sentence of Provisional Rules of the First International. Towards the end of his life, Engels again emphasised it once more, when he wrote in the introduction to the 1895 edition of Marx’s Class Struggles in France: ‘When it is a question of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for body and soul.’

Socialists are not a bunch of utopian reformers and heroic saviours of humanity. Socialist society is not a fantastic design or recipe conceived by well-wishing know-alls but a social movement arising from within modern capitalist society itself, a movement that reflects the vision, ideals and protest of a vast section of this same society. The history of all societies to date has been a history of class struggle, n uninterrupted, now open and now hidden, struggle has been going on between exploiting and exploited, oppressor and oppressed classes in different epochs and societies. This class struggle is the chief source of social change and transformation.

The capitalist system is behind all the ills that burden humanity today. Poverty, deprivation, discrimination, inequality, political repression, ignorance, bigotry, cultural backwardness, unemployment, homelessness, economic and political insecurity, corruption and crime are all inevitable products of this system. No doubt apologists for capitalism tell us that these have not been invented by capitalism, but have all existed before capitalism, that exploitation, repression, discrimination, women's oppression, ignorance and prejudice, religion and prostitution are more or less as old as human society itself.

What is being covered up here is the fact that, firstly, all these problems have found a new meaning in this society, corresponding to the needs of capitalism. These are being constantly reproduced as integral parts of the modern capitalist system. The source of poverty, starvation, unemployment, homelessness and economic insecurity at the end of the 20th century is the economic system in place at the end of the 20th century. The brutal dictatorships, wars, genocides and repressions that define the life of hundreds of millions of people today draw their rationale from the needs of the system that rules the world today and serve specific interests in this world. Women's oppression today is not the result of medieval economy and morality, but a product of the present society's economic and social system and moral values.

Secondly, it is the capitalist system itself that continually and relentlessly resists people's effort to eradicate and overcome these ills. The obstacle to workers' struggle to improve living conditions and civil rights is none other than the ruling class and its governments, and parties. Wherever people rise in the poorer regions to take charge of their lives, the first barrier they face is the armed force of the local and international capitalist class. It is the state, its enormous media and propaganda machinery, institution of religion, traditions, moralities and educational system which shape the backward and prejudiced mentalities among successive generations. There is no doubt that it is capitalism who stand in the way of the attempt by millions of people, driven to the edges and more or less clear about the outlines of a society worthy of human beings, to change the system. The consequences of the capitalist system's contradictions and crises are not confined to the economic sphere. Devastating global and regional wars, militarism and military aggressions, autocratic and police states, stripping people, and especially workers, of their civil and political rights, rise of state terrorism, resurgence of the extreme Right and of religious, nationalist, racist and anti-woman groups. The capitalist system and the primacy of profit have exposed the environment to serious dangers and irreparable damages.

The wage-labour system, the daily compulsion of the great majority of people to sell their physical and intellectual abilities to others in order to make a living, is the source and essence of the violence which is inherent of this system. This naked violence has many direct victims: Women, workers, children, the aged, people of the poorer regions of the world, anyone who asks for their rights and stands up to any oppression, and anyone who has been branded as belonging to this or that 'minority'.

 In this system, thanks essentially to the rivalry of capitals and economic blocs, war and genocide have assumed staggering proportions. The technology of war and mass destruction is far more advanced than the technology used in production of goods. The global arsenal can annihilate the world several times over. This is the system that has actually used horrendous nuclear and chemical weapons against people.  Capitalism can also take pride in its remarkable advances in turning crime, murder, abuse and rape into a routine fact of life in this system.

It is easy to see how the capitalist world is a world that is upside down. This inverted world must be put right side up. This is the task of and  the aim of the world socialist movement.  Capitalism is a world system, the working class is a world class, and the workers class war is a daily struggle on a global scale. Socialism is an alternative that the working class presents to the whole of humanity. The  socialist movement must be organised on a global scale with the building of an  International, as the body uniting the workers' global struggle for socialism, as an urgent task of the various sections of the workers’ movements around the world.

The socialist revolution puts an end to the class division of society and abolishes the wage-labour system. Thus, market, exchange of commodities, and money disappear. Production for profit is replaced by production to meet people's needs and to bring about greater prosperity for all. Work, which in capitalist society for the overwhelming majority is an involuntary, mechanical and strenuous activity to earn a living, gives way to voluntary, creative and conscious activity to enrich human life. Everyone, by virtue of being a human being and being born into human society will be equally entitled to all of life's resources and the products of collective effort. From everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their need — this is a basic principle of communist society. Not only class divisions but also the division of people according to occupation will disappear. All fields of creative activity will be opened up to all. The development of each person will be the condition of development of the society. Socialism is a global society. National boundaries and divisions will disappear and give way to a universal human identity. Socialist society is a society free of religion, superstitious beliefs, and archaic traditions that strangle free thought.

In socialism the ideals of human freedom and equality are truly realised for the first time. Freedom not only from political oppression but from economic compulsion and subjugation and intellectual enslavement. Freedom to enjoy and experience life in its diverse dimensions.

It is not a dream or utopia. All the conditions for the formation of such a society have already created within the capitalist world itself. The scientific, technological and productive powers of humanity have already grown so enormously that founding a society committed to the well-being of all is perfectly feasible. The spectacular advances in communication and computer technology during have meant that the organization of a world community with collective participation in the design, planning and execution of society's diverse functions is possible more than ever before. A large part of these resources is now either wasted in different ways or is even deliberately used to hinder efforts to improve society and satisfy human needs. But for all the immensity of society's material resources, the backbone of communist society is the creative and living power of billions of men and women beings freed from class bondage, wage-slavery, intellectual slavery, alienation and degradation. The free human being is the guarantee for the realization of communist society.

 It is not a utopia. It is the goal and result of the struggle of an immense social class against capitalism; a living, real and ongoing struggle that is as old as capitalist society itself. Capitalism itself has created the great social force that can materialise this liberating prospect. The staggering power of capital on a global scale is a reflection of the power of a world working class. Unlike other oppressed classes in the history of human society, the working class cannot set itself free without freeing the whole of humanity. a co-operative society is the product of workers' revolution to put an end to the system of wage-slavery; a social revolution which inevitably transforms the entire foundation of the production relations.  Nowhere in socialist theory is use of force viewed as a necessary component of workers' revolution.

The immediate aim of the Socialist Party is the social revolution of the working class. A revolution that overthrows the entire exploitative capitalist relations and puts an end to all exploitation and hardships. Our programme is for the immediate establishment of a society without classes, without private ownership of the means of production, without wage labour and without a state; a free human society in which all share in the social wealth and collectively decide the society's direction and future. Socialism is possible this very day.