The Left-overs

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." - Shakespeare

The question before the workers of the world is plain, urgent and inescapable. The attacks of capitalism, to maintain its profits, grow ever more sweeping and ferocious, ranging over every field, against both employed and unemployed workers, against the sick and the disabled, holding down wages with new forms of intensified labour, cutting pay-rates. Capitalism can no longer organise production even on its own basis, the fight between profits and the workers’ needs grows ever more desperate. Demands and yet more demands are pressed for cuts in wages, for drastic reduction of the social services, for speeding up, for lowered standards. All the capitalist spokesmen speak of “restructuring,” of new policies of this, that and the other (but never touching rent, interest and profits), to “save” industry. They appeal to the workers to make “sacrifices” to help in this. Struggle after struggle develops of the workers against capitalism for the needs of life. Where will this process end? The labour movement and the trade unions offer no answer; they wait for a business revival. To-day the crisis is more intense than ever. The current cry is for a “living wage.” Can such a policy offer a way out? Not for a moment because no policy of patching up capitalism can avail. Many would-be reformers urge that if only the capitalists would pay higher wages to the workers, enabling them to buy more of what they produce, there would be no crisis. This is utopian nonsense, which ignores the inevitable laws of capitalism — the drive for profits, and the drive of competition. The drive of capitalism is always to increase its profits by every possible means, to increase its surplus, not to decrease it. Individual capitalists may talk of the “gospel of high wages” in the hope of securing a larger market for their goods. But the actual drive of capitalism as a whole is the opposite. The force of competition compels every capitalist to cheapen costs of production, to extract more output per worker for less return, to cut wages. The “gospel of high wages” conceals the real process of capitalism at work - intensified output from the workers, with a diminishing share to the workers.

Capitalism can only lift itself out of the recession by ever fiercer competition that leads to drive the workers harder for less pay. Only the working-class can save the situation by wresting production from the fetters of private ownership and profit-making and organise production for social use. How often do we hear the refrain “Revolution is not practical politics” and that “wild ideas of overthrowing capitalism is not common-sense. Instead we should follow the path of pragmatic gradual progress, make compromises and concede our central demands. How often have we not heard this preached from every capitalist platform and press?

Our current economic system is broken and must be discarded and replaced with an economic system that is compatible with the Earth and its ecosystems. This will require a massive global change in the underlying cultural and political values that drive our current economic system. The central problem is capitalist objective of accumulation that equates with growth, especially continual and endless growth. Some say socialism is a mirage. "Socialism," in common usage, is a word always shifting in meaning. Many use it without defining it, whether from ignorance or design. Socialists need to honestly face down reformist illusions with clear arguments in order to warn other workers who could get sucked into fake left propaganda. The left gravitates around the Labour Party and believes that the best way to 'solve' the crisis of capitalism is to construct a 'better' capitalism. There are some people that would deny that Labour has utterly betrayed its left-wing roots, however evidence of can be seen in the actual economic policies enacted by the Labour regime. The Labour party is no longer a party of the Left and the Left is no more the Left. The so-called “Leftists” hasten to proclaim their “opposition” to the Labour Party policy, to prepare even possibly the union disaffiliation and separation from the Labour Party, and to advocate so-called “socialist” alternatives. But on examination their policy will be found to be only the old policy of the Labour Party dressed up in new clothes. Although they speak roundly of “socialism” against “capitalism,” they do not propose the overthrow of capitalism, the working-class conquest of power, the expropriation of the capitalists; their basis is still the same basis of capitalism, of capitalist democracy, of the capitalist State, as with the Labour Party; and therefore the outcome can only be the same. Their only proposals are for the reorganisation of capitalism by a system of nationalisation, by which they promise a minimum wage for the workers. But in fact, reorganisation in the present period of decline can only, if the capitalist burdens are maintained, be at the expense of the workers. And there is a practical effect of the the Left’s propaganda. They intervene in the critical moments of the workers’ struggle with its proposals of regulation and legislation as an alternative to the workers’ struggle, thus assisting to weaken actual resistance. This is precisely its value to capitalism, to draw the workers from the struggle in the name of phrases of “socialism.” They endeavour to make a “left” appeal to the workers with the use revolutionary-sounding phrases. All these supposed “alternatives” to the Labour Party line are in fact conscious attempts to draw the workers back, as they become disillusioned with the Labour Party, from advancing beyond the Labour Party to the conscious revolutionary fight. It is necessary to break with the Labour Party. The Labour Party has become the chief instrument of capitalism for the enslavement of the workers, and the chief obstacle to the socialist revolution. It is necessary to break with the Labour in order to advance

All the so-called remedies not only fail to touch the root or the evil —capitalist parasitism -  they can only intensify the disease. The crises are of natural scarcity or shortage. Harvests are abundant. Foodstuffs are rotting in the warehouses. Stocks of goods of all kinds are piled up or unsold in warehouses. Millions of workers are willing and able to work; but existing society has no use for their labour. The power of producing wealth is greater than ever. It has grown far more rapidly than population, thus disproving all the lies of those who talk of “over-population” as the cause of the crisis. Capitalism does not use more than a portion of modern productive power, although it wastes most and deliberately cuts down and restricts production in order to increase profits. The crisis is a crisis of capitalism alone. Only the working-class, only socialism can bring the solution. Once capitalism is overthrown, then and only then can production be organised in common for all, and every increase in production bring increasing abundance and leisure for all. The socialist revolution is the only path forward to-day.

The first necessity is the working-class conquest of power. Without power, no change. But what do we mean by “power”? Do we mean simply a change of government? No. What is in question is not simply a change of government on top, but a change of class power; since our purpose, is not simply to carry through one or two legislative measures, but to change the whole class-direction of existing society. The capitalists own the means of production; the mass of the nation live at their mercy, depend on them for the means of life, are in literal fact wage-slaves in their daily lives. The change from a Conservative Government to a Labour Government does not affect this one atom. What is needed is a change in class power. What is needed is that the working-class shall rule — i.e., that the workers shall drive out the capitalists from possession, defeat their resistance, capture their State machine through the ballot-box where possible, and set up our own collective workers’ rule. What is the form of the workers’ rule? Some argue that it will be through elected workers’ councils, elected from the factories, from the community throughout the country, in every town and in every district, and leading up to the central workers’ council, which exercises supreme governing authority on behalf of the working-class. Every industry is organised as a single unit under its own Council, with workers’ control at every stage of production. The direction of all is united in the central Council of Industry or Workers’ Economic Council. The Council of Industry plans out the entire production of the country: so much coal, so much textiles, so much iron and steel goods, etc. The output is calculated, according to the given stage of the productive forces, to meet the two purposes: (1) goods to meet the immediate needs of the population; (2) means of production to extend the productive power in the future. The entire social product thus goes in one of these forms to the workers, whether socially or for individual consumption. The necessary work to be done is spread out over the entire labour force, i.e., the whole able-bodied community, hours being shortened to absorb the labour of all (in place of the capitalist method of overworking some in order to leave the rest unemployed). Necessary adaptations to new forms of work and industrial transference can be rapidly and easily effected, when these no longer involve cutting of rates, loss of skilled status, etc. (as in capitalism compels the justified resistance of the workers), but are carried out with the co-operation of the workers concerned. Agriculture will from the outset require special attention and development, since it has been deliberately neglected and crushed down by both capitalism and landlordism, and a great and growing part of the available land allowed to pass out of cultivation. The removal of all the burdens of rent, mortgages, bank loans, farmers’ profits and middlemen’s squeezings, as well as the obstacles of inadequate machinery, game rights and millionaire preserves, inefficient farming and unsuitable areas; the development of large-scale collective farms; and the close union of agriculture and industry, breaking down the old division of town and country, of rural and industrial workers, will rapidly build up agriculture anew. This is a question of meeting immediate needs; how far, in the final world organisation of production agricultural and industrial areas will be allocated on a world basis, or, as modern technical development appears to indicate, closely united and integrated throughout the world, is a question of the future.

The Socialist Party leaves the actual shape of social democracy to those who create it in the first place. We are not speaking of some utopia, but only of what is immediately and practically realisable so soon as the workers are united to overthrow capitalism and enforce their will. It is thus evident that, on the most immediate practical basis, and leaving out of account the tribute drawn by the capitalist class in the shape of rent, interest and profits but including the enormous increase in production which will result from universal socially organised production, as soon as the change is achieved, it is possible and practicable to realise the most enormous advances in living standards, working hours and conditions of labour. The capitalists and their propagandists in the working-class, the Labour reformists, try to frighten the workers from revolution by holding before them the spectre that revolution means “starvation,” that the workers depend on capitalism for their existence. The contrary is the truth. That the workers can by social revolution rapidly overcome difficulties to rapidly reconstruct and extend production and win prosperity for all. It is the continuance of capitalism that means shortages and hunger spreading. Already millions have been reduced to the barest subsistence basis. Deprivation increases and capitalism already sees no way out except to cut peoples’ living standards further. However, the spirit of struggle is rising in the working-class. What is the first need to-day? To unite the ranks of the workers against the capitalist attacks, to end the present divisions and sectionalism and reformist treachery which has opened the way to the capitalist victories, to organise the workers’ counter-offensive. We need to prepare for this. We need to prepare the new forms of struggle. We need to build up a strong and coordinated army of the working-class for a class war, determined to beat back the capitalist onslaught, determined to awaken and draw into the fight ever wider masses of workers to strengthen our ranks against the bosses attacks, determined to advance our class power but, above all,  determined to overthrow capitalism and establish a socialist society

Fight for Socialism! Forward to the Social Revolution! There is no time to lose.