Why we are socialists

When the working class has power it can build socialism. The political power of the capitalist class is exercised, not merely through the parliamentary institutions, which it modifies or discards according to the situation but through its own class control of all institutions, by its own officers of the Army, Navy, Air Force, police force, law courts, press, schools. It is only possible to conquer this class domination when, the majority of the workers are prepared to throw off the capitalist class control in all phases of social, industrial and political activity, and themselves take control of the factories, mines, workshops, railways, etc. There can be no real democracy unless it is a workers’ democracy that is in power. Real democracy means the mass of the population being at once voters and administrators. This is can be possible under a system of workers’ councils or peoples’ communes or another form of participatory decision-making that is deemed fit and proper at the appropriate time and place

The establishment of a socialist, planned economy, based on the needs of the people, will mean the end to the chaos of capitalist production with its lack of planning, repeated crises, unemployment and criminal waste. The guiding principle will be “from each according to ability, to each according to needs”. Exploitation, oppression, and degradation will not exist in socialism. Commodity production, that is, production for sale or exchange on the market, will not exist. The system of wage labour will be abolished. The means of production will be held communally and private property will be eliminated.

With the abolition of classes and class distinctions, all social and political inequality arising from them will disappear. The conflicts of interest between workers and farmers, town and country, manual and intellectual labor will disappear. As classes will not exist, the state will not be necessary as an instrument of class rule and will wither away. We socialists are up against the fact of life that many people have to be convinced afresh that socialism does in fact represent a better and more fulfilling life, that the idea of the withering away of the state is not a pipe-dream, but a realistic sketch of the future state of human society. New recruits to socialism will be created only when people believe these things again, and only by cogent reasoning and intellectual demonstration can we hope to convince them. They will certainly never be won by repeating the tired old mantras and shibboleths. Socialism has been the goal of the working class political movement since the time of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Essential aspects of their political program can be found in the Communist Manifesto, which still has considerable relevance for our own time. Marx and Engels outlined the most important measures to be carried through by the proletarian dictatorship: expropriation of the expropriators, the replacement of private ownership of the means of production by social ownership, the abolition of exploitation of man by man and of the exploiting classes, and the ensuring of a rapid rise of the productive forces of society. Marx and Engels foresaw that in socialist society anarchy of production would be replaced by planned development of social economy.

Capitalism, no matter how it plans and hopes and prays, would never actually be able to do more than drive the worker to the bedrock of subsistence – although there is plenty to provide  feather-bed luxury for all. It is the very essence of capitalism to keep labour at a minimum point, just sufficiently above the starving point so that it can continue to produce. It should be clear that socialism will not come into existence unless the majority of the people are willing to struggle for socialism and that means that they have some idea of what it is. If the people who vote for a socialist do not do so because he or she is a socialist but because they do not know that he or she is a socialist, of what earthly use can that be for achieving the socialist goal? Socialism must depend upon the consciousness of a knowledgeable majority and not upon their lack of understanding. The idea that we should first be elected to office and then teach the idea socialism utterly absurd. From the point of view of achieving socialism a few hundred votes, obtained conducting a campaign where socialist ideas are stressed, are worth ten times more than if thousands of votes are cast in a campaign where the necessity for the struggle for socialism was not emphasised. Some within the socialist movement have expressed the opinion that the word “socialist” has kept the workers away and have advocated a change of terminology and language name as a method of weaning the working class away from the mainstream parties. The working class will come to accept the ideas of socialism party not because all the workers will read our literature but because bitter experience will teach it that there is no other way out. The working class always tends to take what appears to be the easiest path and only after constant disappointments will it come to realize that the path of revolutionary struggle offers the only solution. Our party was the only party that pointed out during the general election that there is no alternative for the working class other than socialism. The fundamental issue of our election campaigns is always socialism versus capitalism.

A reformist wants to achieve an immediate demand without struggle and as one of the necessary steps to achieve socialism without struggle. The socialist wants to educate the workers in the struggle as a step towards the final struggle for power. We take it for granted that socialism cannot be introduced by a change of the constitution and the enactment of one law after another. We take it for granted that the state is an instrument to serve and protect the interests of the capitalist class. One can shout from now till doomsday that socialism is necessary and that it is better than capitalism but to educate workers one must explain the significance of great events that agitate the minds of vast numbers of people. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong – in fact quite the contrary – in describing a picture of future socialism. But a picture book which has as its purpose winning workers over to the socialist movement which does not contain a word about the class struggle and which indicates that all the workers have to do, in order to get these nice things shown in the pictures, is to vote the socialist ticket, is worthy of the worst type of reformism.

If the political power of the working class is not used as a means to establish common ownership over the means of production and to abolish wage-labour, if this power is not exploited to bring about the economic revolution which constitutes the essence of the socialist revolution of the proletariat, then any victory is doomed to failure. Socialists are not out to create a bloody revolution. Socialists work for the improvement of the conditions of the people. Their understanding of social science teaches them that in the long run, such is capitalist development, that improvement can only be attained by changing basic social relations, by a shift in ownership and control from the few to the many. Capitalism produces its own grave-diggers, the masses of the wage workers and they reach a point where it is no longer possible to live, they see the limitations of the trade union struggle in the persistence of insecurity ... private ownership must go, social ownership must take its place, socialism.