We Are Many, They Are Few

What is the place of socialism in the world and what is its future? These questions are inseparably tied to the more relevant question, “What is our view of socialism?” If socialism is being advocated what kind of socialism is it? Are we being utopian in the sense of advancing a pleasant but impossible dream?

Apologists for capitalism have long devoted enormous efforts to arguing against socialism. They argue that it is a completely utopian exercise that flies in the face of human nature but more seriously some on the left suggest that talk by the Socialist Party of a peaceful transition to socialism is nothing but naiveté, a denial of history’s lessons. But is this true? While there are examples of ruling classes using force to block social change, there are also instances where corrupt and discredited regimes have been swept away without mass blood-letting. The brutal South African apartheid regime gave way to the forces of freedom without the country being thrown into civil war; Russia and its Eastern Bloc satellites jettisoned the Communist Party dictatorships and state-capitalist economies practically bloodlessly. Iran threw out the Shah, Philippines rejected Marcos. Thus a peaceful transition is possible. We would be organised in the workplaces and communities so as to defend democratic change.

Today millions of people feel alienated from the political process (nearly one-third of the population doesn’t vote.) Many people see politics as disconnected from their day-to-day lives, even an obstacle to their aspirations. But the Socialist Party is well aware that along with political action to capture the state machine, new popular institutions and indirect forms of governance will likely emerge during the revolutionary process that draw millions into struggle and devolve and disperse political power to the grassroots. We need a radically different political system: a system of participatory democracy that empowers the people who are currently excluded from genuine decision making power. This would be based on organisations of popular democracy in localities, workplaces and schools which could directly make decisions affecting their respective communities. Any administrators or officials elected by these bodies should be subject to recall through a simple process if their electors are dissatisfied.

The problems we face are not the result of mistaken policy positions by government or a poor choice of leaders. They are the inevitable product of a system based on the interests of a tiny minority. Under capitalism, a tiny handful of people—the capitalist class, “the 1%”, control the means of production, distribution and exchange. They own the corporations that own the mines, factories, banks, transport networks, supermarket chains, media empires, and so on. It is not enough to simply appeal to the better nature of the current rulers or try to persuade them by clever arguments to make changes. Even to win very limited reforms and improvements within the current system requires the pressure of a popular mass movement. This is because the corporate elite fight ferociously when their interests are challenged. We need revolutionary change. Revolution doesn’t mean a violent coup by a minority: a revolution can only come about when the majority of people see the need for radical change, and are actively involved in bringing it about. A revolution is a mass struggle to create new and far more democratic forms of political power and a new social system.

If our vision of socialism is simply a modified version of what presently exists today, don't expect too many to embrace it. Only a vision that is forward looking will capture the imagination which places people at the centre of a new society and, and this is paramount, its creation. Our picture of socialism must be painted in many colours. Socialism's vision and practice must be democratic, emancipatory but above all humanistic.

Economic crisis alone, however, is not the sole cause of revolutionary change. It doesn't follow that it will simply automatically emerge out of everyday struggles. As someone once said, people do not live by bread alone; they also need ideas, understanding and inspiration. The soil in which our revolutionary ideas take root is prepared by the cumulative effects of many different material conditions - economic, political, social, and moral - taking place over time, during which people's understanding grows deeper and their political consciousness expands in sophistication going beyond the simplistic "the system sucks".  Cut-and-dried formulas, simplistic answers, and high-sounding slogans with no reflection in concrete reality are of little help. The old determinist idea that an economic breakdown is followed by "the revolution" should be discarded. Socialism must be the product of a united and politically engaged majority. The point of political action isn't to conjure up illusory shortcuts to socialism. It is to change the world. If we struggle for the new society then it must really be new.

Socialism cannot be achieved without the support and activity of the majority of people. Marx and especially Engels thought that universal suffrage, for example, is big step forward and important weapon in hands of working class. Marx wrote in the Statute of the First International that liberation of working class must be done by itself. It is expected to be done by it and only by it because if socialist revolution is fundamental change of one society with another, if it means that the class of owners who ruled for centuries have to disappear economically, it is impossible to reach this aim only with activity of political organisation, no matter how well organised, mass and supported it is. It is said that new society is in the interest of great majority of people. If this society is to come, this majority have to understand and accept it as its interest and ideal. You can't liberate those who don't want liberation. The substance of socialism is that there is no a group of people who will be in position to hold the power and in that way to exclude all others from exercising democracy. The Paris Commune was the best example of self-governing society. Marx highly evaluated this experience which had so strong impression on him. Engels also described the Paris Commune as a form of dictatorship of proletariat, although it proclaimed political freedoms, multi-party system and workers' self-management in enterprises. Rosa Luxemburg insisted that, “without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of the press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.” Hence, the requirement of “socialist democracy,” she insisted, “begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and the construction of socialism.” Socialist democracy is not to be conceived as applying merely to the political sphere, narrowly conceived, but would have to extend to all aspects of public and private life. Socialism is not just a dream or a utopia that can be wished into existence. It depends on workers taking over the massive wealth of capitalism and using it for human need.

“Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes [people].” - Lewis Henry Morgan