The Socialist Compass

Humanity is at one of the most important crossroads in its history, having spread across the globe and advanced through various stages of hunting and gathering to industrial capitalism. This evolution has seen an explosion of technological progress and economic output. But now our actual existence as a species is threaten by impending environmental catastrophe. Humanity is indeed at a crossroads — and capitalism is in the way.

If you don’t know where you want to go, no road will take you there. You need to know your destination and politically that means possessing an understanding of the goal. You need a vision for the future. Socialists hold a very clear vision in their hearts and minds, a vision of a society which would permit the full development of human beings – a society which allowed everyone to develop their potential - and that would not occur because decreed and bestowed from above but, rather, as a result of the conscious self-activity of people themselves. Common ownership of the means of production and distribution is the way to ensure that our communal, social productivity is directed to the free development of all rather than used to satisfy the private goals of capitalists, groups of producers, or state bureaucrats. Production for use organised by workers themselves permits workers to develop their own capacities by combining thinking and doing in the workplace and, thus, to produce not only things but also themselves as self-conscious associated producers. This is the vision of the society we want to build. This is where we want to go. And if we don’t know that, no road will take us there. But knowing where we want to go is not enough. There a relationship between our objective, and the road we choose to take us to it. We have to now agree how to get there.

Marx and Engels used the terms interchangeably. Years later, and especially under the influence of Lenin, socialism became an intermediate stage between capitalism and communism but there is no basis for that in Marx’s writings. Lenin conceived of socialism as the first stage of communism, but this is not in Marx who sought a society of free and associated producers — “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force.” People who say “well, that’s communism (a utopian society), but socialism has a different principle—to each according to their contribution/work/deeds is a distortion of Marx. Marx didn’t have two stages: socialism and communism. Marx had one society which comes on to the scene defective initially because it inherits all these defects from the old society. But developing that new society cannot be carried on by building on those defects. That argument goes back to Lenin, who argued that until people are highly developed, we have to have the state control where they work, how much they get, and the “socialist principle” is to each according to his contribution. But the tendency to want an equivalent for everything you do is the defect inherited from the old world. That’s what you have to struggle against, not build upon. “Only in a revolution”, wrote Marx and Engels, can the working class “succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew”.

In a Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, Engels stated:

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers – proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.”

State ownership was only advocated to further develop productive forces to make way for socialism. But in the Communist Manifesto, it called for nationalisation of productive forces. However, this is now redundant because production is already built up. Social (common) ownership of the means of production is, of course, not the same thing as state ownership. Socialism, the creation of social wealth has only one objective – to further the interests of the people, by raising living standards, improving and extending social services and unleashing the cultural forces now stifled by the domination of capital. Socialism will not only alter the basic institutions of society in a radical way. Building upon the human capacity for practical intelligence and caring solidarity, which people have always shown themselves able to display in some measure, even under the most adverse conditions, socialism will in time change the whole tone of people’s day-to-day relations with one another. People will start to take increasingly direct charge over their affairs collectively. Labour itself will become, in Marx’s words, “not only a means of life, but life’s prime want.” People will tend to become less socially passive and competitive, and more critical-minded and co-operative. Creative labour for the good of society and the individual will be characteristic of the citizens of a socialist commonwealth, a classless society founded on an abundance of material and spiritual wealth in which the state will wither away and people will each contribute according to their abilities and receive according to their needs. By eliminating the tremendous waste caused by military production and wars, economic crises, overproduction, planned obsolescence of consumer goods, unemployment, cut-throat rivalry, and competitive advertising, the socialist state will place at the disposal of society huge amounts of previously wasted resources, production for use can be planned to meet the needs of our people without the profit-driven promotion of over-consumption and the socialist economy will create the conditions necessary to fully implement an ongoing prudent use of natural resources and ecologically minded management of the environment.

The working class is the social force in the struggle to replace capitalism with socialism. Because the system of private property is the source of its oppression, the working class can liberate itself only by abolishing this system and replacing it with a system based on social ownership of the means of production. This new system is the only one capable of doing away permanently with all of the abuses and injustices of capitalism. Unlike all previous social transformations, the socialist revolution demands conscious action by the working class. Socialism can only be achieved through the united action of millions of working men and women conscious of their social interests and the steps necessary to realise them. Because the socialist revolution seeks to substitute socially planned economic development for the existing system of exploitation of the producers, the new system cannot develop spontaneously once capitalism is abolished. It requires the conscious restructuring of social relations to eradicate the division of society into classes. Socialism can be self-sustaining because it can work. Capitalism, based on permanent expansion and accumulation of capital, can’t. Socialism is a flexible and adaptable system.

Socialism is a trinity – common ownership of the means of production, social production self-organised by workers, and production for use for all communities needs. While necessary, worker management on its own as often advocated by those who support co-operatives or syndicalism is not sufficient for the construction of socialism. The danger of sectional interests working for their own benefit rather than that of the common good remains a major problem. In a nutshell, what we mean by ‘socialism’ is a world economy controlled by workers and consumers and devoted to the needs of humanity rather than the narrow interests of business owners and their investors.  If you want to see socialism in action, simply visit your local public library. Anyone can use the public library for free. Anyone can go to the library, browse, use their computers, check out books, movies, CD’s, whatever, all for free. It is a community resource of many dimensions. The library is also somewhere to go when there’s nowhere else to go. Marx had nothing against public libraries having sat in reading room of the British Library doing his research. Even an avowed capitalist such as Andrew Carnegie couldn’t deny the social benefit of libraries and used his philanthropy to build them. Use of the public library is not means-tested. No one is making a profit.  It provides a social good that cannot be measured in dollars and cents. The same model can be applied to every aspect of society. The library shows people on a daily basis that there is another way to do things besides relying on the private-owned for-profit capitalist market. Libraries are a model that must scare those powerful men and women who cannot abide the idea of a common public good not built on a profit model. Libraries are highly subversive.

However the real issue is control of the means of production by the working class, not social services, no matter how beneficial. Otherwise, the founder of modern socialism would be Otto von Bismarck who set up the beginnings of a welfare system explicitly so as to ensure the loyalty of the working class