It's Everything Change

Workers are not yet class conscious, they have not yet developed even the concept of independent political action, and, on the whole, are permeated through and through with the ideas of capitalism. These incontestable facts are the starting point of our fundamental task: to struggle for the development of class consciousness. The working class can open up the way to a new world. They are the majority. They have the power. All that is necessary is for the working class to understand it—and to use it.

The capitalist system, the system which puts profits above all other considerations, has long outlived its usefulness. Capitalism has exhausted its progressive role; now it must leave the stage to a higher system. Capitalism has done its work. Capitalism now offers no future to the people but depressions, wars, dictatorships, violence and a final plunge into barbarism. To avoid such a fate, the workers must go into politics on their own account, independent of all capitalist politics. They must take power and reorganise the economy on a socialist basis, eliminating capitalist wars, profits and waste. It will be so productive as to ensure a rich living for all who are willing and able to work, and provide security and ample means for the aged and infirm. The economy of the entire world will be united and planned on a socialist basis. This will bring universal peace—and undreamed of abundance for all people everywhere. The real upward march of humanity will begin. Socialists want no part of this current nightmare world. It is true that humanity is confronted with a problem of survival on this planet. But the human species will survive. And in order to survive, it will do away with the social system which threatens its survival. Socialism will win the world and change the world.

 Reformism is a blind alley which diverts the workers from a class advancement and even from any real struggle for their immediate needs. The capitalists, bent on loading the burden of the recent crisis onto the backs of the workers, are preparing thereby the necessary conditions for a labour revolt. In this way they will convince the workers, as propaganda has been unable to convince them, that there is no way out but to fight. Under such conditions the prospect of a series of stormy battles, of which workers have many times shown themselves capable, is by no means unreasonable. The defensive struggle of the workers is gaining momentum, although slowly and in a tentative fashion, although, there is nothing in the facts to sustain those blockheads who describe the situation as a “workers’ offensive”. The theory that the workers are not inclined to strike during periods of wide unemployment receives a certain confirmation from economic history but it is quite false to construct a law to the effect that the workers will not strike during the crisis. They may well do when push becomes shove as in the proposed new Tory anti-union regulations. In the course of these struggles the workers will learn the most necessary lessons from their own experiences. In that event the socialist movement would get a hearing the like of which has not been granted before.

Today industry operates blindly, without a general plan. The sole incentive for the operation of each and every factory in this country is the private profit of the owners. There’s no general coordination. There’s no concern about what’s going on in other industries or in other parts of the same industry. There’s no concern about whether the people need this or that, or don’t need it. The sole driving motive for the operation of each and every individual corporation is the private profit of the owners. The decisions on production are made, not by consumers, what the people need and want; not by the workers, what the workers would like to make; not by scientists and technicians who know best of all, perhaps. The main decisions on production under capitalism—what shall be produced, how, where, and when—are made by financial magnates remote from the factories, remote from the people, whose sole motive is profit in each case.

What are the results of this system, which can be rightly called call the anarchy of capitalist production? One result is wasteful competition. Another result is the preservation of obsolete machinery and methods and the suppression of new technological innovation.

Consider the waste represented by the conspicuous consumption of the capitalist social parasites. That is absolute waste. The huge share of the product of labour that goes to these non-producers furnishing them with luxuries is all pure waste. That’s not all. Consider the waste of militarism and war. Just think of it! Billions of dollars every year wasted on the military budget at the present time, under the present system, which they say is the best in the world and the best that can ever be, wasted on military equipment and preparation for war.

There is the waste of advertising. Only 10% of advertising is useful—that 10% which comprises announcements, explanations of new processes and so on, which will be used under the new society. The other 90% of advertising is devoted to lying, fakery and conning the people, and trying to get them to favour one identical product over another, or to buy something they don’t need and that won’t do them any good, and then buy something else to overcome the effects. That is pure waste. And then, there’s another waste connected with advertising, as with so many other non-productive occupations—the waste of human material, which really shouldn’t be squandered. Just think of all the people prostituting their talents in the advertising racket to deceive and to promote misleading advertising campaigns.  There are millions of such people, engaged in all kinds of useless, non-productive occupations in this present society. Advertising is only one of them. Look at all the lawyers in this country. What are they good for? Look at all the landlords, lobbyists, salespeople, promoters—hordes of non-productive people in all kinds of rackets, legitimate and illegitimate. What are they good for? What do they produce? All that is economic waste, inseparable from the present system.

Costliest of all the results of the anarchy of capitalist production is the waste of economic crises—the periodic shutting down of production because the market has been saturated and products cannot be sold at a profit. This is what they euphemistically call a “depression”—an unavoidable cyclical occurrence under capitalism.

What will a really civilised person in the future think when reading history books that there was once a society, long ago, where the people might be hungry and that workers were eager to produce food but because the hungry people couldn’t afford to buy food, the workers weren’t allowed to feed them?   What will the people of the future think of a society where the workers lived in constant fear of unemployment? He or she can work all his or her life and never be free from that fear. Having a job depends, not on the willingness to work, nor on the need of the people for the products of labour; it depends on whether the owners of the factories can find a market for the products and make a profit at a given time. If they can’t, they shut down the factory, and that’s all there is to it.

Socialists do not conceive of socialism as an arbitrary scheme of society to be constructed from a preconceived plan, but as the next stage of social evolution. Our view of the future socialist society, therefore, is not a blueprint for implementation, but just a broad forecast of the lines of future development already indicated in the present. The architects and builders of the socialist society of the future will be the socialist generations themselves. The Socialist Party refrains from offering these future generations instructions. Auguste Blanqui, the French revolutionist, said: “Tomorrow does not belong to us.” We ought to admit that, and recognise at the same time that it is better so. The people in the future society will be wiser than we are. We must assume that they will be superior to us, in every way, and that they will know what to do far better than we can tell them. We can only anticipate and point out the general direction of development, and we should not try to do more. But that much we are duty bound to do; for the prospect of socialism—what the future socialist society will look like—is a question of fascinating interest and has a great importance in modern propaganda. We are quite justified, therefore, in tracing some of the broad outlines of probable future development; all the more so since the general direction, if not the details, can already be foreseen.

Workers can and must put a stop to this monstrous squandering of the people’s energies and resources. Just by cutting out all this colossal waste—to say nothing of a stepped-up rate of productivity which would soon follow—the socialist reorganisation of the economy will bring about a startling improvement of the people’s living standards. The first condition will be to stop production for sale and profit and organise planned production for use, to eliminate the profit motive; to eliminate all conflicting interests of private owners of separate industries. All science will be pooled and directed to a single aim: production for the benefit of all. There will be a revolution in the production of food when the economic side of it is lifted out of this terrible backwardness of private ownership and operation for profit. One thing is absolutely certain, from a reading of the scientific literature and all the experiments already in progress: The productivity of the farms, of the land, can be increased many times and there can be food in abundance for all.

 “If we’re all doing well and living good, producing more than we really need in an eight-hour day—then why the hell should we work so long?” will be the first and most natural reaction of the workers. This question will arise in the councils of the workers in the shops at the bottom, and will be carried up via their delegates throughout their industries. And the logical answer will go along with the question: “Let’s shorten the working day. Why should we work eight hours when we can produce all we need in four?” That may appear to be a simple answer to a complicated question, but many things will be simplified when the anarchy of capitalist production for profit is replaced by planned production for use. That will be a very simple and natural and easy thing to do, because socialism will have the means, the abundance, the productivity—and all this will be produced for use, for the benefit of all. The system of planned economy will provide the people with abundance, and what is no less important, the time to enjoy it and get the full good out of it. I have spoken of the four-hour day, but that would be only the beginning, the first step, which is more than possible with the productive machinery as it is today. But the productivity of labour under the new, more efficient system will be expanded all the time.

And since there will be no need to pile up profits for the benefit of non-producers; since there will be no need to find ways of wasting the surplus—the natural, logical, and inevitable conclusion will simply be to cut down the hours of labour to the time actually needed to produce what is needed. The greatest boon, and the precondition for changing the way of life into a truly humane, cultured, and civilised way of life, will accrue from the progressive shortening of the working day. That’s only the beginning. You can count on a shorter work day, and there will still be abundance and super-abundance. When people get accustomed to leisure, they soon learn what to do with it.

Workers will also decide, freely and voluntarily out of the generosity of solidarity and a world outlook which the vision of socialism has given to them, to work, say, an extra hour or two a day, for a certain period, to produce the tools and machinery and other things to raise the living standards of the undeveloped countries. And this will not be a loan or foreign aid with strings attached. They will simply say to their kinfolk in less-favoured lands: “This is a donation from other workers to help you catch up with us and firm up the foundations of world socialist cooperative commonwealth.

When there is plenty for all, there is no material basis for a privileged bureaucracy and the danger, therefore, is eliminated. From the very beginning, we will go in for real workers’ economic democracy. Democracy is not only better for ourselves, for our minds, and for our souls, but is also better for production. Democracy will call out the creative energy of the masses. When all the workers participate eagerly in the decisions, and bring together their criticisms and proposals based upon their experience in the shops, higher production will result. Faults in the plans will be corrected right away by the experience of the workers; misfits and incompetents in the leading bodies will be recalled by the democratic process; officious administrators will be given the boot. An educated and conscious working class will insist on democracy. And not the narrowly limited and largely fictitious democracy of voting every four years for some big-mouthed political faker picked for you by a political machine, but democracy in your work. That’s where it really counts. Every day you will have something to say about the work you’re doing, how it should be done and who should be in charge of it, and whether he or she is directing it properly or not. Democracy in all spheres of communal life from A to Z. A self-conscious working class that has made a revolution will not tolerate bureaucratic tyrants of any kind. Counterrevolution will not be tolerated but outside that society will keep its nose out of people’s private affairs. Counterrevolution can hardly be a serious threat because the workers are an overwhelming majority, and their strength is multiplied by their strategic position in the centres of production everywhere. How is there going to be any kind of a counterrevolution with such a broad and solid social base? The Socialist Party doesn’t think the capitalists will try it. The real exploiters are a very small minority. They couldn’t get enough fools to do their fighting for them, and they are opposed in principle to doing their own fighting. The little handful of recalcitrant capitalists who don’t like what is happening could easily be given an island or two, for their exclusive habitation. Let them take their bonds and stock certificates with them—as mementos of bygone days—and give them enough caviar and champagne to finish out their useless lives while the workers get on with their work of constructing a new and better social order.

When socialists propose a future along these lines, there is always someone who will say: “Utopia! It can’t be done!”