What we need is socialism

We live in an era in which socialism has largely lost its meaning. Social-democratic, Leninist, Stalinist, and Maoist governments over the past century which have failed to carry out their supposedly socialist objectives has dealt a serious blow to the integrity of the very concept of socialism.

 “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves” is a socialist principle. Self-emancipation requires that the working class gain power in society. This means the working class needs mass organisations it controls in order to secure its liberation and which looks out to the interests of the working class as a whole; that remains independent of the capitalist political parties and their professional politicians thus rejecting any “partnership” with the employing class. Part of the role of the Socialist Party is to help people see through the illusions of capitalism, to understand that we are faced with this stark choice of socialism or barbarism, and to encourage a vision of self-emancipation as the only means of creating socialism and the essence of what socialism would be. Revolutions are a dynamic process, not a single event or series of discrete events. Marx said that revolution is absolutely necessary not only because the old ruling classes cannot be disposed of in any other way, but because the class overthrowing it can only rid itself of all of the old “shite” (sheisse) and be fit to rule and found society anew only through the process of revolution. And it’s only through struggle that this revolutionary consciousness develops.

The present form of society rests on private ownership of the land and the machinery of production and distribution. The owners of the land and the machinery of production constitute what is known as the capital class. Yet it is the working class produces all the wealth that sustains society and it is held in complete economic and industrial subjection to the capitalist class, which lives on the wealth produced by the working class. The working class must wage class war and be fully conscious of the wrongs inflicted upon it by the capitalist class. The deaths by starvation, the millions of unemployed, the excessive toil for bare subsistence, the poverty, crime, and consequent misery, are all the direct outcome of domination by the ruling class. That class must go. Capitalist class relations perpetuate problems of human suffering that can be eradicated. Capitalism generates morally intolerable levels of inequality of material conditions of people. Capitalism thwarts democracy by placing the basic economic resources and conditions of investment in the hands of private individuals. Capitalism robs most people of meaningful control over much of their work lives because they are pawns in other people’s projects. Capitalism does not merely generate inequality and poverty through exploitation, it generates alienation as well. Capitalist competition and conflict destroys a sense of solidarity among people and built into capitalism economics is greed and fear.

Workers must organise to voice the wrongs. Then it will be prepared for political action to overthrow the usurping class and to abolish classes for ever. The people have to be organised so that they know what they were doing. Socialists need to educate them first. Socialism requires the re-organisation of the economy to serve working people’s needs. Its precondition is therefore the organisation of the working class. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together as a class in support of the socialist party, the party that represents them as a class, and when they do this the government will pass into their hands and capitalism will fall to rise no more; private ownership will give way to social ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wages-system will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty; misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds; the working class will stand forth triumphant and free, and a new era will dawn in human progress of mankind. The Socialist Party demands common ownership of all agencies of wealth production by the people themselves and the control of all industrial affairs on the basis of social equality. There is no escape from the thraldom of capitalism short of its complete overthrow, and this can only be achieved by the class-conscious political strength of the working class. The Socialist Party, therefore, calls upon all workers to forthwith to work unceasingly for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system, and for the emancipation of their class from wage slavery.

Socialists do not provide blueprints for how we should do things differently. Socialism does not depend on some miraculous change in human nature. Instead, the Socialist Party poses this question as the guiding rule of conduct: Will the proposal advance the interests of the working class and aid the workers in their class struggle against capitalism? If it will, the Socialist Party is for it; if it will not, the Socialist Party is absolutely opposed to it. The advocacy of political reforms obscures the working class objective of emancipation from wage slavery, and thus causes the workers to expend time and effort to little purpose.  Whereas the so-called palliatives when adopted by governments they have rarely proved efficacious, and have usually created the need for further legislation restrictions, and therefore kept working class action circular instead of straight. Reforms even if desirable are best obtained by educating and organising for basic ends, inasmuch as sops have ever been conceded when something more fundamental is the demand. The Socialist Party declares against reformism and a programme of palliatives, and urges the workers to concentrate their energies upon abolishing capitalism. Even if palliatives were granted, the capitalists would just take something away somewhere else. Palliatives means just going round and round in circles.

Socialism has gone in cycles. There have been periods when it has gone down and periods when it has risen. It will rise again. Re-establishing the belief in socialism as the viable alternative to capitalism is the critical task of the Socialist Party.  We have to admit that the system has no answers to its crises and there is no light at the end of the tunnel of capitalism. The working class remains “a class in itself”, with interests that are diametrically opposed to the interests of the ruling class. Whether it can became a “class for itself”, realising its power and moving consciously towards overturning the system that exploits and oppresses us all, will only be resolved through the struggle. Those who create the wealth in society need to take back the world. And that is exactly what we will do. We have a world to win.