Organising for a Better World

The Socialist Party position is often caricatured yet our goal is a society in which capitalist class oppression has been ended. And in which exploitation, oppression, all forms of discrimination, war, are all ended. We have a society in which there is no state. We have a society within which the resources, the wealth of society, are owned in common and managed democratically by society at large. For that to be achieved, the working class first of all has to get rid of the capitalist system; has to get rid of the private ownership of the means of production. It has to bring about the rule by the working class and that achievement has to be an act by the working class itself. The act of changing society, that revolutionary act, that transformative act by the working class is, in a sense, the most democratic act ever in history; it is the majority class in society acting in its own interests to change society for the benefit of all humanity, now and in the future.  So, the first thing is that the party has to be socialist, needs to understand what it is about, needs to have a clear understanding of its ultimate objective and needs to try to inspire millions and millions of people about that objective. What could be more inspiring than getting rid of poverty, getting rid of oppression, getting rid of the exploitation of the vast billions on the planet? It is a goal that could mobilise millions of people and it is one that we shouldn’t shy away from. It must be our aim to build a mass party. We cannot achieve the socialist transformation of society, without a party that comprises millions of people. Not small ‘revolutionary’ parties acting in their own name, their own interests, but a mass party. Because if the act of changing society is the act of the working class itself, then it can’t be achieved by an individual, an army or a generalissimo; it can’t be achieved by a small party, however good the Marxist of that small party might be. These could not carry out a democratic transformation. There will be social situations that will raise questions to which people will want answers and if the party is capable of giving answers to those questions then it will draw larger numbers of people to it. It will be a process of patience, of slow accumulation, of rapid accumulation and so on, by intervening in all of the struggles of the working class, whether in the workplace, in local communities or wherever they arise.

Some people think that by arguing for a party that sets its goal as being transformative of society, of ending capitalism, that somehow that is all it’s interested in is just abstract propaganda for some pie in the sky that you are not confronting the issues now. Nothing could be further from the truth. If we want to build the sort of party we have to involve ourselves in all the struggles of our class. We participate, as individual socialists, in all struggles to win concessions if we can, to stop attacks that make our situation worse. But we should always try to explain the link between the attacks that we are facing now with the general struggle being waged against us by the capitalist class that is an integral aspect of the present system of organising society. We should explain that if we want to end the constant, repetitive attacks on our class, then the only way to do that is to end the system that drives those attacks, that is, we need to end capitalism. We, as Marxists, explain that the austerity agenda, for instance, did not just come out of nowhere; it does not come out of the blue and it is not simply a matter of an ideological attack by some right-wing politician who are merely mean-spirited. What makes them carry out these attacks is the nature of capitalism itself. Capitalism now is generally not producing the same rate of profit as it did in earlier periods. This drives the capitalist class to find ways of restoring the rate of profit. This means intensifying the rate of exploitation and opening up public services to the private profit-seeking sector. This determination to restore the rate of profit drives the attacks on the working class in an attempt to take back gains that have been won in the past. We might achieve a reprieve but if we do then that reprieve can only be temporary because the capitalist class will be forced by the demands of the profit system to keep coming back and attacking our class because they have to make our class pay for their crisis of profitability. Our class is the sole generator of the surplus that makes their profit. We are returning, in a sense, to a more ‘normal’ form of capitalism that existed before the Second World War; a capitalism ‘red in tooth and claw’.

The question that The Socialist Party pose to our class is why do we tolerate this? Why do we accept the perpetuation of a system in which we work but they benefit? When we say ‘we’ we’re talking about the overwhelming majority in the world. There 7 billion population of whom the overwhelming number are toilers, workers or those who have to work to survive. Very, very few are those who own the means of production, who own the profit made by others. Surely, if you think about it in terms of those numbers, it would be a simple matter of turning the world upside down in a flick of a switch but, of course, it’s not that simple. The working class has the power to change society but it does not know it. It does not know how to use that power, or for what purpose.

Socialism is not won at the ballot box but when we, the people, working together, take over the means of production, deciding what to produce and how, and getting us all able to participate in the production and distribution of all goods and services we need and like to the degree any of us is able. The objective of socialism is that we're all able to enjoy the fruits of our labours. We know that we would require at most only a four hour work week and could afford ourselves the opportunity to enjoy our ability to provide for all, as well as to live most fulsome lives. The inevitability of capitalism's collapse is not an automatic process. Capitalism has to be overthrown. Work for these changes wherever you are. We certainly do in the Socialist Party.