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Not ours any of them....we don't do leaders |
It has been shown that the Labour Party in action compromises on every issue, make deals and bargains with their opponents, drop nearly every principle for which they professed to have stood to gain office or to avoid being thrown out of power.
Within the Labour Party we witness demagogues turned into autocrats, reformers who become reactionaries; of left-wingers who transform into right-wingers all by the simple expedient of promising to appoint them to ministerial positions.
The Labour Party’s record of broken pledges, incompetence, petty jealousies, and political intrigue shows that its members and supporters possess notorious short memories. Labour's failure comes from the basic cause that they are a party which has never set out to organise conscious socialists for a new society and its spokespersons have made it their business to mislead the workers.
You cannot be a socialist and have a leader. You cannot be a socialist and be a leader. Socialism means self-emancipation of the working class by the working class. Only when a majority of workers understand and want it will socialism be a practical possibility. It is all a question of consciousness allied with democratic political action.
Capitalism by its very nature periodically produces booms, slumps, wars and unemployment, and all the other social ills of this day and age. Labour parliamentarians may be credited with the best intentions in the world, but from time to time they find themselves in the unenviable position of having to run capitalism from the government benches. It is then that personalities and party politics count for little, capitalism sweeps them all along leaving a trail of misery and devastation in its wake. Good or bad intentions do not enter into it.
Maybe Labour Leader A is a nicer person - or less of a swine—than Labour Leader B. It is irrelevant. It is possible that one will try hard to do what he or she thinks will be in the interest of “the people”. Good motives do not stand a chance against the limits of historical possibilities.
Capitalism cannot be reformed into a benevolent system. Leaders can be good, bad or indifferent, but they will still do the same thing. They were elected to run capitalism for the capitalist class. That is what they will always do for as long as they are allowed to.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never had time for leaders who aim to come into the working class political movement and get socialism on our behalf, especially when such leaders are jumped-up moralists. Opportunist leaders come and go, and while they plot and intrigue and pat themselves on the backs, the followers, on whose backs they have been riding should buck them out of their saddles.
Despite the abundance of technical and natural resources which mankind now has at its disposal, we are told by Labourites that the abolition of exchange relationships and the introduction of production for use is a utopian ideal so the wages system (rationing) must continue. It is a fact that people, by nature, are not lazy, but on the contrary suffer from the results of inactivity. People might prefer not to work for one or two months, but the vast majority would beg to work, even if they were not paid for it.
George Jackson in one of his prison letters from “Soledad Brother” explains: “Consider the people's store, after full automation, the implementation of the theory of economic advantage. You dig, no waste makers, nor harnesses on production. There is no intermediary, no money. The store, it stocks everything that the body or home could possibly use. Why won't the people hoard, how is an operation like that possible, how could the storing place keep its stores if its stock (merchandise) is free? Men hoard against want, need, don't they? Aren't they taught that tomorrow holds terror, pile up a surplus against this terror, be greedy and possessive if you want to succeed n this insecure world? Nuts hidden away for tomorrow's Winter. Change the environment, educate the man, he'll change. The people's store will work as long as people know that it will be there, and have in abundance the things they need and want (really want); when they are positive that the common effort has and will always produce an abundance, they won't bother to take home more than they need. Water is free, do people drink more than they need?”
Jackson realised that the answer wasn't the supposed "radical” calls from the Left for currency reform or the creation of virtual currencies like bitcoin, but to get rid of money altogether, or more precisely, to make money redundant by bringing about the common ownership of resources.
Socialism differs from other phases of social thought in that it stands for the overthrow of modern society based upon class ownership of the necessaries of life and the building up in its stead of a society of wealth producers owning the means of life in common. The Socialist Party fights for the removal of a system of society which works out to the detriment of the many and we declare ourselves in favour of a new system wherein capital and capitalist governments cease to be. We abide by the dictates of the class struggle and we refuse to associate with those who support the capitalist class.
Therefore we cannot ally ourselves with those who claim to be progressive and on the Left, declining to lower the socialist flag to march with the enemies of socialism. The World Socialist movement tramples down national boundaries, recognises the common link between the workers of every land— their poverty and slavery indicts the ruling-class as a robber class, establishes the fact, that poverty need not exist, that slavery can be abolished by the workers themselves, and that the quarrels of the ruling class are of no concern to the working class.
The working class of the world have a common bond that transcends every tie of race or nationality—their urgent need for emancipation. What matters the name of the country of your birth, if you are a slave in that country? What tie is it that links you to the lordly capitalist ? You are chained to his machines, in his factories and workshops, and driven by the whip of hunger to produce wealth for him while you sink deeper into poverty. You are the robbed, he is the robber; you are the slave, he is the master. In every land the dominant class holds sway over the lives of the workers, moving them like pawns over the chess-board.
The capitalist class enlists from the ranks of the workers themselves all the gifted traitors who can fashion themselves into the semblance of respectable labour leaders, entrusting them with the task of educating the workers in the way they should go for the sake of the “national interest" and capitalism.
When the working class understand that society is run not in their interests, but in the interests of the owners of the means of production and distribution for the purpose of producing commodities for sale at a profit; when appreciation of this one fact opens the way to a conscious realisation of the position of the working class in society; when the moment of truth transpires: the working class will not turn to those Labour Party politicians but will elect genuine socialist representatives to Parliament to end capitalism, and establish socialism.
When socialist knowledge illuminates their minds with the promise of freedom and social well-being, their hands will clasp across borders and nations will no longer have meaning or significance. Nationalism and patriotism serves to obscure the class struggle and keep the workers divided.
The Socialist Party cares little whether the capitalist class divides the Earth among themselves by rivers and seas, or by the lines of latitude and longitude. What concerns us is the class ownership, which we work and organise to abolish.
2 comments:
Just read your latest think piece on the Forum. Why don't you do us all a favour and join the Labour Party. What you are doing in this Party defeats me.
Anonymous seems to have some reading difficulty.To be clear, Labour was formed 1906 ,from a mixed bag of Reformists , Liberals and trade unionists to get reforms for working men rejecting socialism in favour of class collaboration in gradualism.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed by working men and women, in 1904, with the objective of, "The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community".
We ahve not compromised or deviated from this aim.
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