The only road is the socialist road

Our language has been redefined. Useful terms which could better explain our circumstances have been purposefully perverted so that they are now all but unintelligible. The working class make up about 90% of the population. The 10% at the top, just under the –super-rich, were called the 'middle class'. The 'middle class' are the professional classes and the small business owners. They were never thought of as median income people– in fact, poor people saw them as being rich. The original meaning of “middle class” described those between the European royalty and the peasants. Later it was applied to the capitalists, those with enough wealth to rival the nobility.

The mainstream press have dropped working class from their vocabulary. The term is anathema to the propaganda system as it has developed. It is too descriptive– makes it too obvious that this is the class which does most of the work and produces most of the wealth. Today the working class are called middle class in the mainstream media, and the original meaning is buried deeper than Atlantis. For that matter, the poor are made to be nearly as invisible. This propaganda maneuver has made it easier to hide what’s happening in our economy, when combined with other terms and economic adjustments.

The word “progressive” meant leftist. ‘Communists’, ‘socialists’, labour leaders and even many liberals often defined themselves as progressive. Liberals, in those days, were thought of as centrist. To the right were conservatives – those who control the economy. But the ruling class ensures the mainstream press now call centrist liberals “leftist” and “progressive.” By doing so, and completely ignoring the genuine left-wing which has no TV channel, the language has been twisted into propaganda helpful toward making zombies of the masses, who have no idea what a real leftist is. Bill and Hillary Clinton are called “progressive” in the mainstream media. This is like calling the segregationist George Wallace a civil rights leader. Richard Nixon, who I thought of as extremely right wing when he was president, was far to the left of the Clintons. It was Nixon who signed the bills that authorized the EPA, OSHA, the ABM Treaty and a great many other progressive laws the Clintons would have nothing to do with today. In the time of his presidency, Nixon wouldn’t have dreamed that he could push the Clinton agenda of free trade to curse labor and environmental movements. He wouldn’t have deregulated the banksters and Big Media, or thrown poor children out into the streets with Clinton’s “welfare reform.” During Nixon’s presidency the public were more aware, and the Congress was far to the left of Nixon, tying his hands. Which is why Nixon couldn’t get his medical care system (the precursor to Obamacare) through Congress. Much of the Congress of that time wanted to pass Medicare for all, and opposed Nixon’s plan, which never went anywhere. It took a conservative Democrat, Obama, to get Nixon’s plan approved.

Socialists believe that to waken the conscience and change the consciousness of a nation, one had to be prepared to build an organization, start a publication, speak in a thousand halls to crowds of hundreds, or scores, or tens, if necessary, recruiting comrades from those converted by the sound of one’s voice and the strength of one’s arguments. The real Marxist is a radical democrat, not a would-be dictator.

We’ve seen it before - people eager to run the government for the capitalist class. Each one claims to have a unique approach and program with which they wish to lead to a better tomorrow. But their better tomorrow, not ours. Each candidate is attempting to offer a special brand of snake oil as a cure, but each formula has side effects negating any medicinal properties it might have. Everything they do to try to mitigate the crisis only ends up making it worse. These candidates don’t represent us. Of course we know that, and most people haven’t believed in that farce for some time. That’s why voter turnout is so low. So why are all these clowns running? It’s not merely for self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement, though surely that plays a part for most.

The electoral arena is where the capitalist class as a whole works out its internal differences, and chooses someone to act as their collective representative, in order to preserve and promote their common interests. But while each candidate attempts to fill that role, they must also try to handle the conflicting imperatives of all the different concentrations of capital within the class– financial, banking, industrial, commercial – as they battle it out over which gets to dominate the future of the economy. Banking capital would like the whole economy to just be handed over to the banks. Industrial capital wants to suck the last drops of juice from labor exploitation and the natural world first. Some want the cheapest possible workforce, while others see the need to throw the masses the occasional bone so we don’t upset their whole banquet table. Though these fractions of capital are intertwined, tangled in a web of common ownership and interests, they are simultaneously in conflict, and so finding someone who can represent them as a whole is proving very difficult.

None of the candidates has an alternative to offer that can encompass all of their interests and solve their common crisis. Whoever wins, the future ushered in by the new President will be for capitalists; not for us. We shouldn’t side with one monster over another. Those who try to reconcile fundamentally opposing forces always try to convince us to take sides among the different fractions of capital, to ally with one “lesser evil” over another. But allying with one against another never does us any good. All of them are our fundamental enemy. It’s smarter to let them fight it out, while we strengthen our own forces. We can use the contradictions among them to advance our own struggle.

Forget the debates. While there are superficial differences among them, they are not qualitatively different. It doesn’t matter if a candidate is a “good person” or not. They’re ALL running for the job of capitalist steward. If their intentions were good, they would struggle to overturn capitalism—not to run it, not to fix it. Liberals and socialists running a capitalist economy still have to run the capitalist economy, which has its own non-negotiable imperatives. We can’t solve our social problems by being drawn into this puppet show. Whoever gets elected won’t make things better. The only way to get out of this social crisis is to cut the Gordian knot of capitalism, overthrow it all and build a new economy on a new basis: one for the people, by the people, led by the people, in the peoples’ interests.

Socialists have embarked upon with the ultimate political act: the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. We identify socialism not with public (state) ownership of the means of production, but with the cultivation of mass participation in and control over economic, political, and social institutions and structures in which working people grasp direct control over all aspects of their lives. When the revolutionary process is unfolding, Utopia comes closer to reality, and impossible things appear within reach of the possible. "I" begins to merge with "We," and personal desires with collective strivings. Socialism has been defined and interpreted in lots of different ways. The Socialist Party is one of the few organisations who emphatically maintain that socialism should be identified with abolition of wage-labour. It means the creation of economic equality between people and the transformation of the means of production into the common property of society. When the market is abolished so is the whole economic basis of capitalism, i.e. labour power as a commodity, existence of a value system as the basis for the exchange and distribution of products between different individuals and different sections of society, the money economy etc. A great many use socialist terminology as a wrapping for views and objectives alien to socialism. The world swarms with such socialists. The victory of socialism is not an inevitable and pre-determined outcome of history. Our future depends entirely on the actual practice of our movement and its activists; on what they do, and what visions they have and hold out to the workers' movement. If we do it right, it will work out; if we don't, it won't. There is no historical inevitability here. We regard the socialist vision just as vital as we regard the struggle for wage rises. We are critical of those who seek to keep workers away from the social revolution and the social revolution away from the workers. We consider ourselves not a political party outside the class, but a party with a definite social outlook, within the class itself. The Socialist Party is committed to keeping its revolutionary politics vibrant and relevant. Socialists have always called upon the workers of the world to unite. Yet a slogan is one thing, and practice another.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the social ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to eliminate profit, rent, and interest, and to change our class society into a society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all. For a socialist world! To this inspiring task, we summon all who are oppressed by capitalism. Only a a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. Look how the capitalist world always totters on the brink of destruction. The capitalist parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. They can maintain themselves and that system today only by piling additional burdens upon the people. For the future they offer only war, continued insecurity and increasing reaction. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction of capitalism and the building of socialism. Democratically-elected councils of workers in every industry and district will manage the factories and public services. Freed from the fetters of production for profit, the splendidly-equipped factories will pour out their products without interruption: the productive forces will leap forward to provide almost undreamed-of plenty. Far from being proponents of some all-engulfing statism, socialists see the state, as class antagonisms dissipated, beginning to wither away — being transformed as an instrument to protect class rule into an administrative tool.

Too many of our fellow workers declare that they “aren’t for that commie stuff myself. I’m a capitalist.” Although with no capital, nor much hope. Many fellow workers grow angry at the fast food workers demand for a $15/hr wage. They say their own jobs requires a broad set of skills: interpersonal and technical skills, as well as the crucial skill of performing under pressure often making decisions on their own, in seconds, under chaotic circumstances, that impact on other people'smwelfare and they only make $15/hr. If burger flippers think they deserve the same, good for them. Look, if any job is going to take up someone's life, it deserves a living wage. If a job exists and you have to hire someone to do it, they deserve a living wage. End of story. There's a lot of talk going around workplaces and elsewhere such as Facebook along the lines of, “These guys with no education and no skills think they deserve as much as us? Screw those guys…I'm a qualified electrician, I make $13/hr, fuck these burger flippers.”

And that's exactly what the bosses want! They want us fighting over who has the bigger pile of crumbs so we don't realize they made off with almost the whole damn cake. Why are you angry about fast food workers making two bucks more an hour when your CEO makes four hundred TIMES what you do? It's in the bosses' interests to keep your anger directed downward, at the poor people who are just trying to get by, like you, rather than at the rich assholes who consume almost everything we produce and give next to nothing for it. Many companies executives are fond of issuing motivation statements. They expect employees supporting families on 26-27k/year to applaud that. Can they pay us more? Absolutely. But why would they? No one's making them. Some fast food workers made them. They fought for and won a living wage. So how incredibly petty and counterproductive is it to fuss that their pile of crumbs is bigger than ours? Put that energy elsewhere.

So, Organize. Fight. Win.