Beyond Protest

Capitalism creates many problems and subjects the working class to all kinds of pressures. What is somewhat puzzling about the whole painful business is that, despite so much experience in protesting and all the accompanying disillusionment, people still persist in trying to deal with individual issues in isolation and make little if any attempt to relate either one problem to another, or to relate all the problems to a common cause. It seems that for every outrage committed by capitalism, and for every inhumanity and frustrated need, there is a group of people ready to mushroom into an organisation and start protesting.

Socialists are not opposed to the idea of protesting as such. There was certainly plenty to protest about — there always is. What concerns us is to get it into its social perspective so as to achieve a more fruitful form of expression. The fact that the horrors of capitalism do produce some response in terms of protest demonstrations is more hopeful than an attitude of indifference. But, unless workers learn from previous fruitless experiences to avoid going over the same ground again, nothing is gained.

The widespread ignorance of class interests among workers offers no permanent hindrance to our socialist policy. That ignorance is due to certain causes, and the lack of interest in revolutionary ideas among the masses. If a collapse of conditions causes vast discontent, can anything be hoped for if the working-class are ignorant of socialism? Discontent in itself is not sufficient. Without working class action based on socialist consciousness, there can be no social transformation. That conditions are likely to develop anti-capitalist views among the workers is so well-known to the capitalists there that they have spent fabulous sums in controlling almost every agency of education and opinion, including the labour leader. The open and constant use of the wealth of the few to control affairs by so-called corruption is inevitable. This, however, will not prevent or influence the awakened worker once be realises that economic and political action are essential for him or her, and that neither political or economic action are in themselves corrupt or need ever be corrupt once the workers understand and control the economic and political organisations for themselves and in their own interest.

The alternative to capitalism is seen as a society in which all forms of exchange and money will be abolished and all land and property will be taken into the control of the community. Capitalism is the system of minority private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution, the majority having only their labour power to sell to earn a living—only the profit of the privileged class is maximized. Socialism is the system of society, never yet established anywhere because it requires a majority of convinced socialists based on common ownership and democratic control, and production solely to meet human need. What is usually called “socialism” (government ownership) is state capitalism. Capitalism means capitalists compete for markets and workers have to compete for jobs, whereas socialism means that all individuals have free and equal access to the wealth the world is capable of producing. Why should anyone fear a system that means abolishing war, poverty, privilege and exploitation of the majority by the minority? Nearly everything that we need to-day— food, clothes, and the rest—are produced by businesses, and therefore with the object of making a profit. That is why bad food is often produced, shoddy clothes are often made, houses that you can nearly blow over are often built, and the workers who produce the needed goods are paid such low wages that many of them spend the whole of their lives in a state of poverty that often takes away the wish to remain alive. The Socialist Party intends to have all this altered. Instead of somebody, or some company, having to buy the machinery and other things before food and clothes can be made, we say, let the land and machinery belong to the whole of the people, and let us arrange things so that some will make machinery, others will plough the land, some will go down in mines, others will drive the trains, and so on. As each took an equal part in making what we all needed so each would take an equal part in using what was made.

Now if we had such a state of affairs we would only make the best things we could, and we would make them in the best way. Everyone that could would take his part in making things, so that they would be neither rich unemployed nor poor unemployed. Some will say the idea of everyone working together in such a manner is impossible—each will want to get the lion's share of what is made and do as little as he can. When, however, everyone understands that by not doing his part either in the work or the consuming he is only hindering the producing of things, and therefore, in the long run, doing himself an injury, then there will be, in the main, neither slacking nor greediness. Besides, there will be so little work for each to do and such an abundance of things to be got that these inherited vices will soon disappear.