The Battle of Democracy

What is the nature of our society? What is the controlling force which is guiding our destinies, and regulating our actions towards our fellow men and women? Could it be replaced by a better system? The Socialist Party pose these questions and provide some answers. It is the working class alone that satisfies all human wants, and keeps humanity alive. What about the capitalist – that good, kind, benevolent employer, to whom the expropriated and exploited labourer goes hat in hand, cringing for the privilege of being permitted to work? What is his place in our social system? It is to extort another huge slice out of the worker. The worker need not hope for a reasonable wage. The capitalist has but to dismiss some of his hands, or fill their places with labour-saving machinery  and those thrown out of employment will immediately under-cut those employed in order to be reinstated. If the latter do not accede to a reduction of wage, they will be dismissed to make room for the one who offers their services cheaper. If the workers form a union, and strike for higher wages, they cannot hold out for long as the strike reduces them to poverty.

 The government may differ in form, and whether it be a theocracy, an autocracy, a constitutional monarchy or republic, they are alike in fact. Whatever they may be called, presidents are virtually kings, plutocracies are like aristocracies, and in many countries political dynasties are no better than hereditary rule. Whatever the form of government, they are all marked by this general characteristic – they all rest upon theft and robbery expropriation and exploitation. Whatever the fiction of political freedom, economic slavery underlie the social structure.

That the present social system has failed must be apparent to all. It has made the many servants to the few; it has checked the best human endeavours, and facilitated every method of exploitation; it disinherits the great mass, and ordains their lifelong misery before they are even born. The oligarchs rule the world.

 It is useless to preach thrift to those who have nothing to save, or to hope for universal prosperity when the enrichment of the few is caused by the plunder of the many. Again it is foolish to imagine that a general patronage of co-operatives and the like, will ever tend to ameliorate social wrongs; for their gains always implies someone else’s loss. These “remedies” are no remedies at all.

 The robbery of the people by rent, interest and profit, must be abolished – abolished peacefully, purposefully, and permanently. But how can we do it? How can we get from the present unjust, destructive system, into one in which justice and happiness shall be the distinguishing characteristics? How shall we fight out of the present blood-thirsty system without the shedding of blood which has marked the rebellions of the past?  It can be done. It must be done. It shall be done. But how? By the revolutionary use of the vote, that’s how.

The vote is a potential class weapon, a potential "instrument of emancipation" as Marx put it. He and Engels always held that the bourgeois democratic republic was the best political framework for the development and triumph of the socialist movement. For Marx the key task of the working class was to win "the battle of democracy". This was to capture control of the political machinery of society for the majority so that production could be socialised. Then the coercive powers of the state could be dismantled as a consequence of the abolition of class society. Marx said that you cannot carry on socialism with capitalist governmental machinery; that you must transform the government of one class by another into the administration of social affairs; that between the capitalist society and socialist society lies a period of transformation during which one after another the political forms of to-day will disappear, but the worst features must be lopped off immediately the working class obtains supremacy in the state.

If there were a working class committed to socialism the correct method of achieving political power would be to fight the general election on a revolutionary programme, without any reforms to attract support from non-socialists. In fact, the first stage in a socialist revolution is for the vast majority of the working class to use their votes as class weapons. This would represent the transfer of political power to the working class. We adopt this position not because we are fixated by legality, nor because we overlook the cynical two-faced double-dealing which the capitalists will no doubt resort to. We say, however, that a majority of socialist delegates voted into the national assembly or parliament would use political power to coordinate the measures needed to overthrow the capitalist system. Any minority which was inclined to waver would have second thoughts about taking on such a socialist majority which was in a position to wield the state power.

The vote is not a gift to the people from the ruling class out of the benevolence of their heart. It was fought for and ceded by the wealthy to the poor out of fear and so we don't advocate de facto disenfranchisement of the worker by promoting political abstention. The right to vote can become a powerful instrument to end our servitude and to achieve genuine democracy and freedom. Working people with an understanding of socialism can use their vote to signify that the overwhelming majority demand change and to bring about social revolution. The first object of a socialist organisation is the development of the desire for socialism among the working class and the preparation of the political party to give expression to that desire. What our capitalist opponents consequently do when the majority wish to prevail will determine our subsequent actions . If they accept defeat, well and good. If they choose not to accept the verdict of the majority which is given through the medium of their own institutions and contest that verdict by physical force, then the workers will respond in kind, with the legitimacy and the authority of a democratic mandate. The important thing is for the workers to gain control of the political machinery, because the political machine is the real centre of social control - not made so by capitalist rulers but developed and evolved over centuries and through struggles. The power over the means of life which the capitalist class has, is vested in its control of the political machinery.

It is the quality of the voters behind the vote that, in the revolutionary struggle, will be decisive.