The SPGB and the Anti-Statists

The Socialist Party calls for a revolution without leaders to abolish the wages system and we are therefore implacably opposed to Leninism and its concept of a centralised vanguard to lead the working class.

 In our view the working class must organise consciously and politically first, for the conquest of the powers of government, before it can convert private property in the means of production into common property. Our reasoning goes like this. We want the majority in society (workers of all kinds) to take over and run the means of production in the interest of all. However, at the moment these are in the hands of a minority of the population whose ownership and control of them is backed up and enforced by the State.

The State stands as an obstacle between the useful majority and the means of production because it is at present controlled by the minority owning class. They control the state, not by some conspiracy, but with the consent or acquiescence of the majority of the population, a consent which expresses itself in everyday attitudes towards rich people, leaders, nationalism, money and, at election times, in voting for parties which support class ownership. In fact it is such majority support expressed through elections that gives their control of the state legitimacy. In other words, the minority rule with the assent of the majority, which gives them political control. The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule - they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control. We simply argue that it is quite possible, and highly desirable, for a large majority to establish socialism without bloodshed. The more violence is involved, the more likely the revolution is to fail outright, or be blown sideways into a new minority dictatorship. Far better, if only to minimise the risk of violence, to organise to win a majority in parliament, not to form a government, of course , but to end capitalism and dismantle the State.

There are those who describe themselves as class-struggle anarcho-communists, who as their name suggests, are anarchists who are also communists, standing for common ownership without buying and selling, in accordance with the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. They are more or less for what we choose to call socialism.  So long as there are revolutionaries out there with the energy to act and the will to think, we want to talk to them. The difference between us is not the same as our hostility to the opponents of socialism but upon a difference on  the question of the better way to achieve it. No-one can be exactly sure which form the revolutionary process will take and it may well involve some of the things some anarchist point to. However, we in the Socialist Party believe that the potential use of parliament as part of a revolutionary process may prove vitally important in neutralising the ruling class's hold on state power. For us, this is the most effective way of abolishing the state and thus ushering in the revolutionary society. We emphasise mass democratic political action by a majority of the global working class which may well involve socialist delegates being sent to parliaments as the best means for attaining world socialism, while the class struggle anarchist’s predominant view is the revolutionary process is more in terms of community/worker resistance and direct action through the likes of strikes and mass disobedience. However, nevertheless, some of their views seem remarkably similar to those of the Socialist Party.
“Anarchist communism would depend on mass involvement. This is both to release everyone's inventiveness and ideas and to prevent the formation of some sort of elite. Two forms of organisation are crucial in this context. The first is regular mass meetings of communities and workers, to ensure that full discussion and participation in matters affecting a locality could be achieved. The second is federation, as many issues need a broader perspective than the local. Federalism would run through successive bands—local, district, regional, international—to take decisions appropriate to that band” [The Anarchist Federation’s ‘Against Parliament. For Anarchism’.]

We hold that the means have to prefigure the end but reached this conclusion from a quite different starting point: that of democracy in the proper sense. Democracy means, literally, the rule or power of the people, i.e. popular participation in decision-making. It allows various ways of reaching a decision but, in the end, if consensus cannot be obtained, it has to come to a vote; in which case the majority view prevails. Democracy does not mean that all decisions have to made at general assemblies of all concerned or by referendum; it is compatible with certain decisions being delegated to committees and councils as long as the members of these bodies are responsible to those who (s)elected them.

Socialism is a society based on the common ownership of the means of life but, since something cannot be said to be commonly owned if some have a privileged or exclusive say in how it is used, common ownership means that every member of society has to have an equal say. If there wasn't such democratic control there wouldn't be common ownership, so there wouldn't be socialism.  Democratic control is not an optional extra of socialism. It is its very essence. This being so, socialism cannot be imposed against the will or without the consent and participation of the majority. It simply cannot be established for the majority by some vanguard or enlightened minority. That is our case against all forms of Leninism. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action. No minority revolution can lead to socialism, not even one that destroys the state (our case against certain anarchists) - and of course socialism will involve the disappearance of the state as a coercive institution serving the interests of a minority. Hence our conclusion that the movement to establish socialism, and the methods it employs, must "prefigure" the democratic nature of socialism.

Anarchists admit that not all decisions can be made by general assemblies or referendum, they get round this by saying that "delegation" is acceptable. But any attempted distinction between "representative" (bad) and "delegate" (good) is just playing with words. The SPGB's anti-reformism, allied with our insistence on gaining control of the machinery of government through the ballot box, goes beyond the  simplistic equation of reformism with electoral activity and revolution with anti-parliamentarism.

The Socialist Party maintains (as a fact, and not because we like it) that the great majority of workers have no wish for socialism, nor possess an understanding of it. Because of prevailing traditional ideas, most workers see capitalism as the only practicable method of running society. We also realise that we face a difficult struggle considering the stranglehold the ruling class have over the ideas held by the working class. We face powerful weapons wielded by the State which operate from the day we enter this world until the day we leave it. Insurrectionists would fail in any attempt to overthrow the capitalist system while the masses are still conditioned in this way. Workers in conflict with management may often counterpose their own conceptions and ideas of how production should be organised but these conceptions and ideas are equally capitalist in character. The number of workers who understand the need for doing away with production for sale and profit, remains very tiny. Socialist understanding does not drop out of heaven like the holy ghost, in the space of a few hours.

 A number of Leftists who claim to be communist insist that the class struggle alone will be the basis for the change without the need for education by an external 'elite', by which they mean, in this instance, the Socialist Party. Our problem is a movement that thinks that 'material circumstances' talk to humans. Whilst it retains that philosophy, it won't take the necessary steps to build a conscious workers' movement, because it believes that ideas, propaganda and education are not the basis of the change. Whilst we keep pretending that consciousness emerges from material circumstances, we will continue to be irrelevant. Those of us who have become socialists/communists are just members of the working class arguing the case for socialism with our fellow workers. We are not an elite from outside the working class, not even those of us who have got together in a separate organisation to do this more effectively.
What in fact we are doing is trying to ensure that hearing the argument for socialism is part of the "experience" of the working class since (as all of us here know) there is no such thing as experience without thought. So the Trotskyists (and others) are wrong to argue that the working class can learn to be against capitalism through mere struggle or by the experience of failure to achieve some reform without them also hearing the case for socialism argued. Which they reject as casting pearls before swine. Socialists are no more than workers who argue for Communism/Socialism. They cannot be an 'elite' who 'know' better, but simply a group of workers who hold another opinion out, for the consideration of the wider class. If the wider class say they prefer capitalism, the wider class are 'correct'. There is no route allowing the 'knowing elite' to compel the class to 'understand the truth'. The class always 'knows best' what its interests are. If we can't persuade the class otherwise about their interests, then we are wrong. Simple. We are not an external elite, but a group of workers who have 'got it wrong' in the opinion of the majority of workers.
They believe that if they have the theory (which the workers don't need to be cognisant of) and push workers to have 'experiences' driven by a theory which is provided for them by this 'knowing' elite, then the unconscious workers will then develop the correct consciousness after their experiences. It's bollocks, of course. If workers 'fight for higher wages', and lose, they don't conclude that they should get rid of wages, but that since the bosses have the power to set wages, and that workers need higher wages (as the 'knowing' elite have told them, thus the need for their 'struggle'), then they need to cosy up to the all-powerful bosses, and their bosses' ideas. Thus, 'low wages are caused by immigrants'. "Everybody knows that!".
Struggle without conscious theory is not only scientific nonsense, but is nothing to do with workers developing their consciousness, and realising, prior to their own struggle, that they need to destroy the wage system. If workers can't grapple with theory and make democratic decisions based upon their understanding, then workers really can't run the world.

 Many class-struggle anarchists take the view that  revolutionary goals emerge from industrial or social struggles. If any form of "struggle" intensifies, it is welcomed  as a sign of "rising consciousness" (even if often the workers involved are just as conservative in their ideas as they were before). If the "struggle" escalates even further, this is now seen as a "revolutionary situation," and in such situations the actions of determined activists, usually a minority of  the participants, are thought to be decisive. It is argued either that the workers really do want a revolution, but this desire is "inarticulated" (even "instinctive"!) Or else it is admitted that they have no such aim, but the claim is made that in certain circumstances they will be forced by necessity to adopt the revolutionary course.  Emma Goldman declared, in an essay entitled “Minorities versus Majorities”, that “the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass”. These views are often defended with the statement that people learn by experience. In an economic recession with mass unemployment, socialists will recognise this as a consequence of the anarchic capitalist market. However, born-again fundamentalist christians will conclude that lack of righteousness and prevalence of sin among the population has brought divine  retribution. While common-or-garden reformists will believe that incompetence or  abnormal circumstances are responsible. Meanwhile, the extreme right-wing fascists and the left wing will put the blame on “finance capitalists" and attack political democracy and demand better leadership. Most workers, sadly,  will probably decide that "their” country has been too soft on too many immigrants, idle benefit scroungers and commie-led trade unions wreckers. These ideas will largely determine the way they act and vote. Naturally, experiences spark off changes in ideas, but until the possibility of socialism has become widely known and discussed, there is no hope for the emergence of mass socialist understanding. When two explanatory systems compete in people's minds, then events may decide which is adopted. But given the present near-monopoly of capitalist ideas, it is impossible for the minds of millions to wake up to socialism until there is a sizeable socialist movement spelling out the arguments for social revolution.  Those anarchists who seriously believe the people in struggle do draw conclusions which are fundamentally socialist in content, not that they occasionally do, nor that they might do, but that they always and must do,  must explain if this were the case why we shouldn’t have achieved socialism long ago.

In fact,  experience does not lead of itself to a specific conclusion. If a group of people are subjected to a similar experience, they may draw a variety of conclusions about it: the decisive factor will be the system of ideas they have formed before the experience. If we are to appreciate how the revolution in ideas (a necessary precondition of the social revolution) will occur, we must first rid ourselves of the simplistic fallacy that people change their minds only when they burn their fingers. We have to win the battle of ideas, and the test of the winning is a vote.