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| RISE - AROUND IN CIRCLES |
Among RISE’s policies are a minimum wage of £20,000, maximum
wage of £100,000, free public transport, an income-based Scottish service tax
instead of council tax, ending charitable status for private schools, and,
ultimately, an independent Scottish republic with its own currency. RISE
advocates the construction of half a million new affordable houses over the
next 25 years. Of course, there is no guarantee that five consecutive
governments would maintain the massive building scheme. Abolish Police Scotland
which was established in 2013. RISE proposes to return to local forces and to
end the practices of stop and search and police carrying guns that were
introduced under Police Scotland. Rise also wants to abolish the Offensive
Behaviour at Football Act, which critics have claimed criminalises young
football fans. RIAE advocates the decriminalisation of all drugs, and the
introduction of a public programme of drug rehabilitation. The policy states
that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has resulted in organised crime and
addiction. RISE proposes the “public ownership” of energy companies. It calls
for the gradual phasing out of the oil industry to be replaced with renewable
energy, which Rise policy says Scotland has in abundance. Although a
transferance of ownership is implied in the policy, there is no detail of whether
private energy companies would be compensated and how much this would cost. RISE
will campaign to have employers who use zero hours contracts sanctioned with
the withdrawal of subsidies and awards. The policy is one of several that RISE
will campaign for under the auspices of an Employment Freedom Bill. Other
policies attached to the Bill, much of which could only be instituted if
employment law is devolved to Scotland, include employee involvement in
workplace decision making and trade unionism taught to children at school
level.
These policies are not unexpected and nor are they steps
towards socialism but simply the usual platform of the Left to make capitalism
run better and not to abolish it. We do not deny that certain reforms won by
the working class have helped to improve our general living and working
conditions. Indeed, we see little wrong with people campaigning for reforms
that bring essential improvements and enhance the quality of their lives, and
some reforms do indeed make a difference to the lives of millions and can be
viewed as "successful". There are examples of this in such fields as
education, housing, child employment, work conditions and social security.
Socialists have to acknowledge that the "welfare" state, the NHS and
so on, made living standards for some sections of the working class better than
they had been under rampant capitalism and its early ideology of laissez faire,
although these ends should never be confused with socialism. However, in this
regard we also recognise that such "successes" have in reality done
little more than to keep workers and their families in efficient working order
and, while it has taken the edge of the problem, it has rarely managed to
remove the problem completely. Socialists do not oppose reformism because it is
against improvements in workers' lives lest they dampen their revolutionary
ardour; nor, because it thinks that decadent capitalism simply cannot deliver
on any reforms; but because our continued existence as propertyless wage slaves
undermines whatever attempts we make to control and better our lives through
reforms. Our objection to reformism is that by ignoring the essence of class,
it throws blood, sweat and tears into battles that will be undermined by the
workings of the wages system. All that effort, skill, energy, all those tools
could be turned against class society, to create a society of common interest
where we can make changes for our common mutual benefit. So long as class
exists, any gains will be partial and fleeting, subject to the ongoing
struggle. What we are opposed to is the whole culture of reformism, the idea
that capitalism can be tamed and made palatable with the right reforms.
We oppose those organisations that promise to deliver a
programme of reforms on behalf of the working class, often in order to gain a
position of power. Such groups on the Left, often have real aims quite
different to the reform programme they peddle. Many of the Left are going to
put before the working class only what they think will be understood by the
workers - proposals to improve and reform the present capitalist system- and,
of course they are going to try to assume the leadership of such struggles as a
way of achieving support for their vanguard party. These Left parties may try
to initiate such struggles themselves and they will try to muscle in on any
struggles of this sort that groups of workers have started off themselves. But
it's all very cynical because they know that reformism ultimately leads nowhere
(as they readily admit in their theoretical journals meant for circulation
amongst their members, though not in the populist, agitational journals). The
purpose in telling workers to engage in such struggles is to teach them a lesson,
the hard way which is the only way some on the Left think they can learn i.e.
by experiencing failure. The expectation is that when, these reformist
struggles fail the workers will then turn against capitalism, under the Party
Leadership. It is the old argument, advanced by Trotsky in his founding
manifesto for the "Fourth International" in 1938, that socialist
consciousness will develop out of the struggle for reforms within capitalism:
when workers realise that they can’t get the reforms they have been campaigning
for they will, Trotsky pontificated, turn to the "cadres" of the
Fourth International for leadership. All that's achieved is to encourage reformist
illusions amongst workers. The ultimate result of this is disillusionment with
the possibility of radical change.
The Socialist Party does not accept the view that nothing
but socialism concerns the socialist and in regards to trade unionism has
stated that the non-revolutionary phase of the struggle between the classes is
as inevitable as the revolutionary. When the worker acquires revolutionary
consciousness he is still compelled to make the non-revolutionary struggle. We
fight in the here and now, where we are and where we can, rather than tell
everyone to wait until the revolution comes and that all struggle is a
diversion from creating a united Marxian socialist party of the world. It
doesn't mean we have to sit around and wait for a revolution. A blanket opposition
to everything that does and can happen in capitalism in the guise of being
supportive of working class interests and being true to socialist principles,
they would involve actions (or sometimes, inaction) would be ridiculous and
taken to its ultimate, logical conclusion would lead to the situation whereby
socialists in parliament determinedly resolved to oppose all reform measures as
a matter of course, even those of clear benefit to workers or the socialist
movement (and by doing so inadvertently allying themselves with the forces of
reaction to keep wars going, or oppose factory legislation and anything else
that might benefit workers).
Every organisation has to decide what it is working for, and
whether that aim is important. When the first of the parties in the World
Socialist Movement was founded in 1904, it decided it was going to work for
socialism. Socialists are, of course, not immune to the human tragedies which
occur daily, by the millions, and which has generate thousands of reformist
groups trying to stem the tide. Socialists made a choice. They chose to use their
time and limited funds to work to eliminate the cause of the problems. One can
pick any problem and often one can find that real improvements have taken
place, usually after a very long period of agitation. Rarely, if ever, has the
problem disappeared, and usually other related problems have cropped up to fill
the vacuum of destruction or suffering left by the "solution". The
mistaken idea that we should devote our energies to improving capitalist
society through reforms has led, certainly in absolute terms, to the most
destructive century in history. What has been the most pernicious lie of the
century? It is that hope for the future lay in the gradual, imperceptible, but
certain amelioration of capitalism through the process of reform. The false
hope of piecemeal improvement of an essentially cancerous system captured the
imaginations of millions, exhausted their energies in the reformist struggle to
humanise the profit system, and then left them dumbed by frustration. Whether
the changes were to come through Holyrood or by gaining control of local
councils or by humanitarian and "green" appeals for a nicer, gentler
world, the system which puts profit before need has persistently spat the hope
of humane capitalism back in the face of its advocates. The progressive
enthusiasm of millions has been stamped out in this way. Dare we imagine how
different it would have been if that energy—or even a half or a tenth of that
energy—which has gone into reforming capitalism had gone into abolishing it?
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