Educate, Agitate, Organise

The class struggle does not have to exist. The organisation of society could take on a different form, without any class antagonisms. There is no reason for fighting. The fundamental obstacle we face is the capitalist system. Everything that is not of commercial use, or does not serve to facilitate the existence and perpetuation of capitalist power, does not interest the ruling class. Socialism is not a continual fighting with the boss. A socialist community, a co-operative commonwealth, needs socialists for its realisation. The idea of a socialist future has to be re-launched. Socialism is the organisation of production by people who work and are in charge of work.

“To escape its wretched lot,” wrote Bakunin (‘God, and the State,’), “the populace has three ways, two imaginary and one real. The two first are drink and the church, the third is the social revolution.” 

Bakunin spent a large part of his life in premature attempts to “make” revolutions but, in old age,he had glimpses of a sounder method, the educational. The people would make the revolution, but to help on the birth of the revolution we must “first spread among the masses thoughts that correspond to the instincts of the masses.” He asks, in the ‘Memoir of the Jurassic Federation’:
 “What keeps, the salvation-bringing thought from going through the labouring masses with a rush? Their ignorance, and particularly the political and religious prejudices which, thanks to the exertions of the ruling classes, to this day obscure the labourer’s natural thought and healthy feelings .... Hence we must aim at making the worker completely conscious of what he wants and evoking in him the thought that corresponds to his impulses. If once the thoughts of the labouring masses have mounted to the level of their impulses, then will their will be soon determined and their power irresistible.”

 In other words what is required is socialist education. Capitalism does not survive as a social system by its own strength, but by its influence over the workers. The socialist movement will not advance again significantly until it regains the initiative and takes the offensive against capitalism. It requires a clean break with all the perversions and distortions of the real meaning of socialism and a return to the original formulations and definitions, an authentic socialist movement, as it was previously conceived. We have to go back to what socialism is and what it is not. All our socialist pioneers defined socialism as a classless society—with abundance, freedom and equality for all; a society in which there would be no state, not even the mis-named “workers’ state”. Nothing short of this will do. Present day socialists can improve very little on the classic statement of the Communist Manifesto:
“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.”

The Communist Manifesto linked socialism and democracy together as end and means. Marx and Engels also later stated that:
 “The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves" 

This is just another way of saying that the socialist reorganisation of society requires a workers’ revolution. and 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.

 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. Workers have a right to vote. They can exercise the right of free speech and free press. To be sure, this formal right of free speech and free press is outweighed rather heavily by the inconvenient circumstance that the small capitalist minority happens to enjoy a complete monopoly of ownership and control of all the big presses, and of television and radio, and of all other means of media. But outside of all these and other difficulties and restrictions,  a little democracy is better than none. We socialists have never denied that. Throughout the century-long history of our movement, socialists have defended bourgeois democratic rights, limited as they were; and have used them for the education and organisation of the workers in the struggle to establish full democracy by abolishing the capitalist rule altogether.

We are not a party like other parties. The Socialist Party values every democratic provision for the protection of human rights and human dignity and is committed to fight for more democracy, not less. The socialist task is to expand it and make it more complete. The Industrial Workers of the World defined socialism as “industrial democracy”, the extension of democracy to industry, the democratic control of industry by the workers themselves, with private ownership eliminated. The fight for workers’ democracy is inseparable from the fight for socialism, and is the condition for its victory. Socialist Party members, as workers ourselves, toil side by side with the workers on day-to-day problems, and stand against whoever and whatever will lessen the confidence of the working class in itself and in its own independent action.

The special conditions that made possible the 'golden age' of  capitalist ‘prosperity’ in the 1950s and 1960s have disappeared, forever a thing of the past. The disillusionment with old party politics has provided openings for new forms of struggle and the formation of new political identities. The significance is the prospects of a socialist renewal which speaks in terms of  ‘human emancipation’.  A socialist society does not aim at giving workers higher pay and a decent living wage for all. It does not aim at making the working day six hours or four hours, or giving the worker six weeks paid holidays instead of two. What socialists aims at above all is to get rid of the wearisome, dull, grinding labour day after day, year after year, crushing the humane personality, with no prospect of developing the human interests, needs and capacities of man as a human being with aspirations to live and develop a fully human life.

An allegiance to shared ideas and ideals unites the Socialist Party but we haven’t found a smooth road towards socialism as yet. What we need are new styles of work as socialists: new methods of organisation: new forms of socialist agitation; but how and in what ways the old techniques and organisational forms can be supplanted are not easy questions to answer. The likelihood of achieving socialism in the next two or three decades is remote; and many of us will have to accept that the fundamental changes we are working for will not come about in our lifetime. Nevertheless, we retain an unshakable confidence in the socialist future of humanity. The crucial question is the extent to which socialist consciousness can be created. What we need are new styles of work as socialists: new methods of organisation: new forms of socialist agitation; but how and in what ways the old techniques and organisational forms can be supplanted are not easy questions to answer. No one at this stage can offer a blue-print. It will be an exploration in practice. Workers will do what they see it is necessary for them to do. The Socialist Party bases its view of the future of society upon workers’ independent action, because such action will alter the material circumstances of life to such a degree that life and the labour process itself will assume a new purpose and will venture into new spheres and possibilities, working them out by trial and error as men have always done. The short-sighted babble about high wages, unemployment pay, pensions. A few intellectuals even pontificate about the nature of work, but they cannot see that this is a problem which only workers themselves can settle. It is a practical problem for practical people, who are not given to writing books. Marx's writings cannot be treated as Holy Scripture. (To do so is a gross insult to a thinker whose motto for his own work was "Doubt everything.")  Marx analysed the capitalist society he lived in and projected his vision of  socialism from the clues he found in capitalist society. He refused to engage in any elaborate pictures of the socialist future but kept to a minimum outline. New breakthroughs have to await the new experiences of revolutionary workers' societies.

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” (Communist Manifesto)