A common criticism on the Socialist Party is that it succumbed to utopianism and imagined that socialism will bring an end to the class struggle and usher in a new classless and stateless society of free brotherhood. We stubbornly clung to the basic concept of Marx, that only the working class, i.e. those forced to sell their labour power in exchange of wages, unites the objective and subjective conditions for building a socialist, i.e. classless society. We have defended that idea throughout our existence and through times that such views were unfashionable. We have maintained steadfastly that the socialist reconstruction of the world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves. The Socialist Party does not intend to lead the masses towards a free and classless society because we adhere faithfully to the motto of the First International: “The emancipation of the workers is an act of the workers themselves.” If the people wait for a revolutionary vanguard to lead them to the classless society or the free society, they will neither be free nor classless. Socialism is rule by the people. They will decide how socialist society is to work. The task of the Socialist Party is to help and guide the transfer of power from capitalists to the people. We cannot build a strong socialist movement until we overcome the confusion in the minds of workers about the real meaning of socialism.
To use the word “socialism” for anything but people’s power is to misuse the term. Nationalisation of mines, railways, steel, etc. in a capitalist class society is not socialism, nor does this constitutes the socialised sector of a “mixed economy”. Such nationalisation is simply state capitalism, with no relation to socialism.
Nor is the “Welfare State” socialist. A socialist society will certainly give high priority to health, education, art, science, and the social well-being of all its members. But welfare and social services in capitalism, to improve the efficiency of workers as a profit-makers, is not socialism but again a form of state capitalism. It can be an improvement in capitalism, just as a 40-hour week is an improvement on a 60-hour week. But it is not socialism. We should always remember that “state socialism” is about as close to the real thing as a poisonous toadstool is to an edible mushroom.
Workers are, and have been for many decades, in a position to capture the state machine and establish socialism, on the one condition that they themselves wish to do so, i.e. that they understand that this is both necessary and possible. Unfortunately, almost the whole working people today are capitalist-minded. Why is this? Because they have been capitalist-educated in a capitalist society. However, the world around us is falling to pieces. The need for revolution is beginning to be widely realised. Mankind for the first time will be taking charge of its own destiny. We will no longer have things happening to us. We will be deciding what is to happen. The problems of the world are not technological ones. The difficulty is a social one – that man has so far been incapable of taking charge because of the class divisions that make it impossible to take decisions for the development of mankind as a whole. Socialism is the society of the free and equal, a democracy defined as the rule of the people. Its misrepresentation has been facilitated for the capitalists by the paid retainers, those academic and media boot-lickers who promote misunderstanding and prejudice against socialism.
The Socialist Party is completely devoted to the idea that socialism cannot be realised other than by democracy. Our task, as socialists is simply to keep restating what socialism and democracy means. The Communist Manifesto said:
“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.”
Marx and Engels linked socialism and democracy together as end and means. The “self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority” cannot be anything else but “democracy” - the rule of the people.
“The first step”, said the Communist Manifesto, “in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”
“The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves”. That Is just another way of saying—that the socialist reorganisation of society requires a workers’ revolution. Such a revolution is unthinkable without the active participation of the majority of the working class, which is itself the big majority of the population. Nothing could be more democratic than that. To make the workers the ruling class is the same thing as to establish democracy. The socialist task is not to deny democracy, but to expand it and make it more complete. That is the true socialist tradition. Democracy is necessity to assure the harmonious transition to socialism.
All the great Marxists defined socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even a “workers’ state”, which have been bureaucratic dictatorships of a privileged minority. Capitalism, under any kind of government is a system of minority rule, and the principal beneficiaries of capitalist democracy are the small minority of exploiting capitalists or party functionaries.
The Industrial Workers of the World used to give a shorthand definition of socialism as “industrial democracy”; the extension of democracy to industry, the democratic control of industry by the workers themselves, with private ownership eliminated. We never hear a “democrat” say anything like that today.
We are assailed by those who claim socialism has failed Which raises the question: What is socialism? The socialist society was to be classless, democratic and worldwide. The things upon which human life and civilisation are based would be produced in abundance, the very need for distribution according to work no longer applies and the actual possibility of distribution according to need comes into existence. “To each according to his need”. By reason of technologica development and the vast extension of leisure, work itself will have become a pleasant pastime instead of dreary drudgery; mankind will have learned to work for society according to ability. The other half also of the slogan descriptive of communist society becomes translated into reality – “from each according to his ability.” Socialism will be a society of associated producers. Property will no longer belong to individuals or be state-owned but to the community, which is now classless; and the state itself will be concerned not with the government of men but the administration of things. The need for the apparatus of force, the “state,” which protects the earlier form of distribution also disappears. That is to say, “the state withers away” completely.
That is the Marxist conception of socialism, and so if we then proceed to say that socialism has been tried and found wanting, we cannot. For, to begin with, it has not been tried at all. How can a society fail which has not yet come into existence?
When Marx spoke of the “inevitability” of socialism, he meant, that, given correct human action it could come into being and that he anticipated that this human action would be taken. He did not mean that socialism was bound to come, mechanically of itself, independent of human action. On the contrary, he expressly stated that the destruction of capitalism could lead to socialism – or mutual destruction of both the capitalist and working class - barbarism. Marx did not say or imply that if you somehow destroy capitalism socialism must dawn. That is a fatalist idea. What Marx did teach and demonstrate was that if you destroy capitalism IN A CERTAIN WAY the road to socialism would be opened. In what way? In the revolutionary way. If socialism is to be the outcome of capitalism’s downfall, it is necessary that mankind take conscious democratic action in that direction. The socialist revolution is no ordinary revolution. The victory of the working class in its fight to bury the capitalist class will be the last class conflict. It is the war to end all wars, the class to emancipate the whole of mankind.
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