A new society on new foundations

“Competition is civil war, and monopoly a massacre of the prisoners” - Proudhon

Hunger in the midst of plenty, that distinguishing mark of the capitalist system of production, is intensified a hundredfold during an economic crisis. The anarchy of the market brings about a catastrophic fall in wages, the shutdown of factories, widespread unemployment, disruption of world trade, disturbance of the monetary system, the frantic search of capitalists for new outlets and new markets. To restore profit margins, the government, as executive committee of the capitalist class, drives down the living standards of the workers in order to place the national capitalism in a stronger competitive position. To start the wheels of industry going, the capitalist government pours bail out the banks and subsidises the corporations. The state’s budget takes on undreamed-of proportions. Its balancing becomes ever more precarious and in fact near-impossible. The national debt increases at a dizzying pace. The big bourgeoisie evades and escapes taxation paying little or nothing by loopholes and the use of tax-havens. The bankers not only protect themselves but profit anew. The politicians rely on the method of democratic illusions to baulk and blind the masses to carry out the will of the ruling class, long on promises, short on performance. The vicious capitalist drive to beat down the living standards of the workers is conducted under a barrage of propaganda concerning raising these living standards at the expense of profit. The eventual upturn in business, due in large measure to government spending, permits workers an opportunity to organise and engage in renewed struggles to try and  regain the conditions they had lost during the recession. But the recovery gives to business, a refreshed taste for profits and a new sense of power and confidence. Capitalists will brook no resistance to the expansion of profits by the wage slaves. Anti-union laws subdue any rebellion. No ruling class has ever proclaimed: “We sacrifice you for our class interests.” It is always for for the country and “national” interests. Salvation will been provided not for the workers, but for the capitalist class.

As for curing the ills of the workers by reforming capitalism, particularly in a world where everybody could have a decent, comfortable home, plenty of attractive clothing, abundant food, educational opportunity, money for travel and amusement, it does not make any difference how well-meaning these capitalist saviors may be, there is no way out for people under capitalism. The bosses must run their businesses at a profit in competition with other bosses, and his chief concern is necessarily to keep his costs, including his labour costs, as low as possible. If for the moment the wage rates are maintained, the boss looks for some other way to squeeze out profit, as by putting in “labour-saving” technology and putting workers out on the street. Capitalists make their profits by paying the worker in wages a smaller value than he creates by laboring. The capitalist thus gets what Marx calls surplus value. It is the only way profit can be created. Under modern conditions expensive plants and equipment are increased, but the work is done with fewer workers. Thus they must be exploited ever more fiercely in order that surplus value – profit – may be squeezed out of their labour, the only possible source of profit. Capitalism will force the living standards lower and again lower. There was a time when made concessions to the workers, affording better the standard of living, without cutting into profits. No more. Capitalism now maintains itself only by taking away concessions – wage rates, working conditions and social benefits, etc. – which it once gave. Capitalism cannot be reformed, it must be abolished. The sole hope for humanity, the hope of civilisation, lies in the establishment of a socialist society of production for use, of genuine freedom and equality. Because capitalism must drive the standard of living lower all the time. Any trade union no matter how conservative, meek, respectable, peaceful, will offer resistance. By workers we mean the working class. It includes the miners, transportation, factory workers. It includes also the clerical workers, agricultural workers, many technicians and professionals who are also wage earners. These have to organize in their economic organizations, just as the factory workers. They will more and more engage in the same kind of struggles as the latter. We see this today with the Junior Doctors strikes and before them teachers and other professionals. They will fight for mere existence. The workers cannot save themselves or their movement by being humble and cautious.

We workers cannot obtain plenty and security, deliverance from misery and war, by trying to reform the capitalist economic system. We have to abolish it. And we cannot abolish it except by the revolutionary method. The Socialist Party seeks to build a new society on new foundations. The time has come when in order to exist, in order to prevent complete ruin, the people have to carry on their fight, ever more broadly and intensely, against the economic system which serves the masters.  When we speak of unity today we have to understand clearly what we mean. Unity – on what basis? Merely repeating the word “unity” will not accomplish anything. Membership in a political party of the working class is not on the same basis as membership in a trade union. A union is a mass organisation to which all workers in a given trade or industry belong – Labour Party, Tories, nationalists and assorted leftists. It does not follow that you can put those in a political party, and have a socialist party. The Socialist Party does not deal with immediate issues of wages, hours and conditions of work – that is the role of the unions. The Socialist Party engages with the problem of the economic-political system as a whole, how it must and can be changed or abolished, etc. A revolutionary party must, therefore, have a philosophy, a theory, a program. If it has the wrong one, then at the critical moment it will fail and betray the masses. We have our Declaration of Principles upon which every member must agree. Our primary task, as the Declaration of Principles states, is “The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.” We do not believe that the fellow workers can be delivered from poverty, unemployment, degradation, war, by any reform of the capitalist system under which we live. That system must be abolished, wage slavery must be done away with altogether. The workers must collectively own and democratically control the machinery of production and distribution.