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| WE HAVE A WORLD TO WIN WE HAVE A PLANET TO SAVE |
Today, on the first day of a new year, there is doubt and
uncertainty about the future. But our New Year message is one of hope and confidence that
once the working people take political power into their own hands, they can
build world socialism using all its resources for the benefit of its people and
contributing to human progress throughout the world. We remain convinced that socialism can only come as a result of the taking of power from the hands of
the capitalist class by the working class. The fact that it is possible for
this revolution to take place peacefully does not make it less of a revolution.
The degree to which the capitalist class resists the establishment of socialism
depends in the first place on how well organised, how politically conscious,
how determined, and how strong are the forces of the working class. In the second place, it depends on whether,
faced with this overwhelming force, the capitalists decide to yield to the
democratic will of the people, or stake everything on a desperate resistance.
It is not possible to give any final guarantee as to what the capitalists will
do. But the aim of the working people should be to ensure that the transition
to socialism is a peaceful one. The first condition for this is the organisation
of overwhelming majority of the working class for the ending of the capitalist
system. The more this strength is mobilised, the less likely it becomes that
the capitalists will resort to violence. If they do, the responsibility will be
on them, not on the working class. Let us repeat and never forget, that
democracy, even under capitalist economy, offers the best field for the
development of the class struggle.
Democracy has always been a bread-and-butter
question. The demands of the Chartists were democratic demands for one vote for
every man, for annual parliaments, and so on; but the Chartist leader Stephens
was right when he said the Charter was a ‘knife and fork question’. The workers
who rallied behind the Charter wanted the vote, because they wanted to end
their economic slavery, their twelve-hour day, to end child-labour in the
cotton mills and women’s labour in the mines. Having won the vote in 1867, the
workers in further struggles were able to force through laws giving better
conditions to miners, to factory workers, to seamen; in 1875 they won the right
to picket. And after they had gained a firm legal position for the unions in
1905, British workers were able to win big strikes for wage increases and
shorter hours in the year before the war. Democracy is not abstract. It means
that the people have definite rights – the right to organise, the right to
strike, the right to vote, the right to free speech. These rights are weapons
without which the British people would be no better off today than they were a
hundred years ago. These rights did not drop from heaven. Men died to win them.
Nor can we say that once these rights are won they are safe forever. They
always represent a concession which the capitalists would like to take away. The
struggle for democracy is always going on. In the coming new year, the Tories are intent upon weakening the power of the trade unions. We need to stop them.
Transforming Parliament into an instrument of the will of
the working people, is one of the most important points of our position. When
we speak of Parliament’s role in the transition to Socialism we do not mean the
same thing those who talk of the “Parliamentary road”. We mean a mass
revolutionary movement resulting in a parliamentary majority which takes
decisive action to break the power of the capitalists and transfer political power to the
working class. We do not think capitalism can be “reformed” into socialism. It
is impossible to proceed to the building of socialism if the existing
capitalist state machine is left as it is.
What we mean by socialism is what the Marxist pioneers
meant—the ending of the exploitation of man by man, the abolition of the system
of rent, interest and profit, planned production for use instead of private
profit, and the common ownership of the means of production and distribution by
the people. This is the reason why our Declarations of Principles is set out in
the clearest terms to explain the way towards our aim of socialism. It is only
through this change in social relations and in the material basis of society
that the transformation of man himself can come about, with a great educational
and cultural advances. We reject the standpoint that capitalism has found a way
to solve its problems. We are against all theories which seek to argue that
some sort of “reformed” or “people’s” capitalism can abolish the possibility of
slumps, guarantee full employment and rising standards, and remove the drive to
war. The mounting problems of the workers, the pensioners and benefit
claimants, the women and young people, together with the constant menace of
wars, shows how wrong are those who would have us believe that we are living in
a paradise on earth today. And behind and at the root of all the immediate
difficulties facing the people are the great fundamental problems which only
socialism can solve. Increasingly, people are asking questions about the
world’s future to which only socialism can provide a constructive answer. The
world is ripe and over-ripe for socialism. Only socialism can end the
contradiction between social production and individual appropriation, abolish
the exploitation of man by man, make possible long-term planning, and utilise the
planet’s resources and every new development in technique and scientific
knowledge for the benefit of the people.
They think us dull,
they think us dead,
But we shall rise
again.
A trumpet through the
land shall ring,
A heaving through the
mass,
A trampling through
their palaces
Until they break like
glass.
Ernest Jones
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| FOR WORLD SOCIALISM |
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