Against the Vanguard

We say our revolution will set everybody free.

“World socialism?  Every country that used to be communist is now capitalist. We have democracy and freedom of choice. We say what we want, go where we want, and buy what we want. Nobody tells us what to do or how to think.” argues our anti-socialist critics.

We all heard it said as we campaign for socialism. All that much vaunted free will and freedom of choice quickly disappears when the person’s money does. What we reply is that socialism has never before been tested.

The development of technology and the productivity of labour have become such that it is now possible to relegate scarcity to the past. Humanity now has the possibility of developing civilization on the basis of an economy of abundance. A new era of production is possible a system of almost unlimited productive capacity, automated and self-regulating, which requires progressively less human labour. The only way to turn technological change to the benefit of the individual and for the service of the general welfare is to accept the process and to utilise it rationally and humanely. Production would not be organised on the basis of the blind capitalist market, but in accordance with the needs of the people. Production for profit would give way to production for use. Economic life be democratically managed and controlled carried out to satisfy the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. No matter how  wise they might be, specialist planners could not design production for the needs of the people.

Society no longer needs to impose repetitive and meaningless (because unnecessary) toil upon the individual. Society can now set the citizen free to make his own choice of occupation and vocation from a wide range of activities. People will not live primarily to work; they will work primarily to live. It offers a life-style qualitatively richer in democratic as well as material values. A social order in which men and women make the decisions that shape their lives becomes more possible now than ever before; the unshackling of people from the chains of unfulfilling labour frees them to become citizens, to make themselves and to make their own history. Mankind would no longer be the slave of the machine. The machine would be the  slave. It is clear that the distribution of abundance in a socialist society will be based on criteria different from those of an economic system based on scarcity. Democracy, as we use the term, means a community of men and women who are able to understand, express and determine their lives as dignified human beings. Democracy can only be rooted in a political and economic order in which wealth is distributed by and for people, and used for the widest social benefit. With the emergence of the era of abundance we have the economic base for a true democracy of participation, in which men no longer need to feel themselves prisoners of social forces and decisions beyond their control or comprehension.

Socialism is a practical necessity for freeing all the people from class rule. The idea of a stable society on this basis of peaceful co-operation of classes is an illusion. An educated and conscious working class will insist on democracy. And not the narrow limited democracy of voting every few years. Every day you will have something to say about the work you’re doing, how it should be done and who should be in charge of it, and whether its being directing properly or not. Democracy in all spheres of communal life from A to Z.

Many political groups fancy themselves as ‘leaders’ of the working-class. We do not. The relation of the ‘party’ to the masses plays a large part in Left discussion. The importance and indispensability of the vanguard party is taken as said. The militants who call themselves the vanguard believe that one or other of the myriad parties must direct the class struggle. The Left may remix the song all they want over and over again but the tune remains the same: the cadres of the ‘revolutionary’ party can find the answer yet the mass movements of the people cannot liberate themselves. Repetition doesn't make things true.

The Socialist Party do not see ourselves as yet another leadership, but merely as an instrument of the working class. We function to help generalise workers’ experience of the class struggle, to make a total critique of their condition and of its causes, and to develop the revolutionary consciousness necessary if society is to be totally transformed. What we want people to come to the realisation that they should take over their workplaces, communities, and put themselves in a position to control all of the decisions that effect them directly, and to run things themselves. If we were to be leaders in a vanguard, in the sense of an enlightened minority seeking to gain power over others, we could never achieve this aim, because WE would have the power, rather than people having power over their own lives, collectively and individually. We would also be assuming the arrogance to think we have a monopoly of truth, rather than certain views which we debate with others including among ourselves, coming to a better viewpoint at the end of it. There is a big difference between an organisation that produces propaganda and so on, and helps promote the popular will where people accept decisions because they have been convinced by the case and have freely chosen to do so and a vanguard in the common sense of the word, meaning a party seeking to gain power over the masses. A global revolution is coming that will sustain the environment and ensure basic needs are met for all.

Revolution will be a process of self-education. The 19th Century worker-cum-philosopher Joseph Dietzgen put it this way:
 ‘If a worker wants to take part in the self-emancipation of his class, the basic requirement is that he should cease allowing others to teach him and should set about teaching himself.’