The Socialist Path

The path of the socialist revolution is not an easy one and the history of the working class movement proves this as it has been full of false shortcuts and wrong turnings, leading to class collaboration and compromise. Humanity has gone through the two most savage and bloody wars of its history. For a hundred years the world has known no rest or respite as poverty, hunger and war has continued to wreak destruction. Tens of millions of men women and children perish needlessly. The threat of a new world war hangs over our heads permanently as the crisis over Ukraine brings back the Cold War and this time there can be no debate of its cause, it is a battle not of ideology but a war for economic advantages. Humanity’s resources are wasted in senseless adventures while people’s basic needs remain unsatisfied and our environment is spoiled. There is an increasingly imbalance between civilisation’s capacity for progress and the wretched misery that hundreds of millions of people must live under daily.

We ask: why this? Who is responsible? What economic, political, and social system creates and perpetuates this? How can things be changed? And the answer is that, despite diversity in political regimes, in language, and in culture and beyond differences in race and nationality, the vast majority of the people of the globe share a common condition: that of living in a society where the owners of the means of production impose their will over those who possess nothing or little. In other words, the vast majority of people live in a society divided into social classes where the propertied classes, the capitalists, dominate those of us who have little or no property, the working class. The economic base of this social regime is the capitalist system.

The reason for existence is in its name – employers and investors own the means of production and distribution for the purpose of the accumulation of capital; a capitalist who does not constantly expand is, as a general rule, a capitalist condemned to disappear.Yet, the capitalist has nothing if he cannot find in society a large number of people who have no other means of subsistence but the sale of their labour-power in exchange for a wage equivalent to the strict minimum for survival. The secret of capitalist exploitation lies precisely in the fact that what the capitalist buys from the worker is not his or her work but rather labour-power. If the capitalist had to pay for the work furnished, he would not be able to make the profit he does. Let’s look at an example to illustrate this.

Suppose that a worker produces 10 pairs of shoes a week which sell for $25.00, thus making a total value of $250.00 per week on the market. This worker receives a weekly wage of $100.00. Where does the value of the shoes come from? The raw materials – the leather, thread, and glue – along with the other means of production such as electricity, the machines, etc. alone account for $75.00 to which is added the value added by the worker’s labour, i.e. $250.00 less $75.00 or $175.00. This sum represents the amount that the worker added by his work to the value of the materials that he was given at the beginning. If the capitalist paid the worker according to the value of his labour, he would have to give him $175.00. However, this is not what happens because the wages paid to the worker do not correspond to the value of the work he furnishes; rather, they correspond, on the average, to what it costs the worker to reproduce this labour-power or, in other words, to recuperate his energies and ensure his subsistence given the cost of living and the living conditions at a given time.

There lies the essence of capitalist exploitation: the worker gives a certain value of work to the capitalist but his or her wages do not correspond to this value but to only a fraction of it. The value of the non-paid work is called the surplus-value; the capitalist appropriates this non-paid fraction which constitutes the source of his profit, the source of capital. Here lies the key to the exploitation of the employed by the employer, the key to the enrichment of the bosses on the backs of workers.

“The workingmen have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.” There is good reason to always recall this elementary truth in the “Communist Manifesto”, for it is a truth that capitalist ruling classes are always seeking to camouflage. In Scotland various factions within the ruling class have been exhorting workers to abandon its own interests for the sake of the Scottish “nation”. For the members of the ruling SNP government in Holyrood, to fight unemployment and poverty, English “colonialism” must first be fought. As far as they are concerned, the role of the Scottish worker is to supply the foundation blocks of the “homeland”, and to make it into an independent State. Sturgeon declares “Elect me, I am the saviour of our country, forget about your exploitation and your misery for the time being. Instead, help us get more subsidies and more powers: then you’ll get more jobs...” While the Labour Party rivals and the aspiring Murphy insert their own nationalist demands with their grandiose defence of UK unity. Both have one aim: getting people to abandon the point of view based on its specific class interests so that it falls into rank behind their particular section of the ruling class, getting the workers to postpone its main objective forever; putting off putting an end to the real source of exploitation, of oppression and of crises, capitalism itself. This boss class has learned how to exploit the spirit of sacrifice that the people has demonstrated under difficult conditions, in order to get it to serve its own interests using its lies and demagogy to divide and rule. They can also count upon its lickspittle lackeys and mouthpieces to appeal to national loyalty “Be more productive and things will be better for the country...” that’s what they say repeatedly to justify their latest model of class collaboration. Its media, newspapers, radio, and television, never let up in their calls for peace between the classes.

The only true solution is socialist revolution. There is no middle path between capitalism and socialism. The capitalist swindlers have launched a most savage attack against the working class. The difficulties which the capitalists are presently facing brings it to bear upon those that creates its wealth, onto the backs of the working masses. The capitalist class has joined ranks to use its instrument of repression, the State, to inflict laws, one more oppressive than the next, upon the heads of the people in its efforts to intensify its exploitation in order to increase its profits. Impoverish and divide is their austerity policy. The capitalist owners use their state power, their government, to shift responsibility for the young, the elderly, the disabled and the sick, the impoverished. Social reforms gained in the past the capitalist class now wants back. Pauperisation, a large reserve army of the unemployed working class, our weakened trade unions, necessities for capitalist recovery, provides the leverage in the bosses' drive against the entire working class. The propertied 1% keep coming at us, relentless and ruthless, and their resources—political and financial—are large. Class struggle waxes and wanes. Certain workers have become demoralised and embittered, making them susceptible to conspiracy theories and they become the feeding ground for right-wing and fascist-minded groups who try to scapegoat other workers, both native-born and foreign newcomers for the faults of capitalism.   

We are advancing along a difficult path, one which places us in irrevocable opposition to the capitalist bosses and their allies. The objective of any movement dictates or determines its activity, its work, its demands. It follows, therefore, that for a movement to be a revolutionary one, or aspire to be one, it must have a revolutionary objective. Capitalism is a system that can and has absorbed and integrated many reforms and it automatically rejects all reforms that run counter to the logic of the system (such as completely free public services which cover social needs). The structure can only be abolished by overthrowing it, not by reforming it. We must continue to demonstrate that we stand for the emancipation of all men and women and that our aim is to end forever the exploitation of man by a small exclusive class. It is regrettable that we still have people who have not learned from former experiences, who still insist that it is possible to achieve freedom with the weapons and instruments of former times. This self-appointed minority wish to impose ‘freedom’ on people, who themselves form an elite, without any contact or support from the mass of the people, those who make the question of violence and insurrection the focus of the struggle are going to find themselves isolated and will surely fail, as other efforts of a similar nature failed in the past. The task of the Socialist Party is to organise the people not for revolt, not for rebellion, not for insurrection but for revolution. A social revolution that will change the entire political and economic system.

One of the basic problems of today is lack of class consciousness among the people. We, as socialists \do not believe that capitalism will suddenly collapse as a result of some miracle or inner contradictions. We do not believe we should sit on the sidelines and interpret current events hoping for some revolutionary event happening. We must build a movement of people who are aware and conscious of all the many avenues that are open to the movement. We accept the key teaching role that struggle has, and of the experience born from such struggles. We understand that it is only by trying to expand actual living working class struggles against the employers and of the capitalist system, can a rise be achieved in working class consciousness. Only through such struggles can the workers build the actual organs through which they can tomorrow take over the administration of the economy and the State, freely elected workers committees at factory or street level which will federate themselves afterwards locally, regionally, and thenworld-wide. That is that the conquest of political power by the working class really means. This will be a long path but if we build our foundations on a conscious people we cannot but succeed.

“However, our politics must be working-class politics. The workers’ party must never be the tagtail of any bourgeois party; it must be independent and have its goal and its own policy.” — Friedrich Engels, Apropos of Working-Class Political Action