Meantime, “in the meantime”

The capitalist system continues in existence, not because it is efficient or beneficial but because the people who suffer under it let the system exist. The working class support for a society which relentlessly deprives them of the fruits of their work which represses and degrades them. What is needed is the working class to stand up against capitalism and no longer permit itself to exploited and oppressed. Instead of at election times when workers duped with the pledges of political parties and politicians, forgetting all the broken campaign promises of the past mark their X  for a pro-capitalist candidate despite the election debate on the “issues” of the election have in fact been fact been a sham. and that the promises they are debating have little more chance of being kept than those they have debated in the past. When it is all over there are tens of millions of votes waiting to be counted, urging capitalism to carry on as before.

One reason for this continual acceptance of capitalism we are told is the problems such as the environmental destruction we face today are just too compelling, too urgent to be ignored. Let’s tackle these first. Then we can get round to establishing socialism. If we don’t, if we allow these issues to overwhelm us, this could rule out your socialist alternative altogether. How for instance could your socialism take root in the barren landscape of a world devastated by climate change. Reformism is designed to alleviate specific social problems arising within the framework of the capitalist system which doesn’t include abolishing capitalism. But the Socialist Party argue, that the cause of these problems are a direct manifestation of the way the system operates and has to operate. They are the unavoidable by-product of its economic conflicts in its remorseless search for profit. They will not disappear until the system itself has been scrapped by making the means of producing and distributing wealth the common property of everyone in society. It means, therefore, ending the exchange relationships of buyer and seller with their conflicting interests. As an attempt to treat the symptoms of a disease while keeping intact its cause has all the efficacy of scraping away the spots in a case of measles.

Postponing socialism “in the meantime” to try to resolve the serious social problems facing humanity, implies that such problems can be solved within capitalism, that they do not derive from the capitalist basis of society. They are not seen as the direct outcome of the competitive pressures capitalism imposes upon politicians and business-owners that constrains them to act in the way they do or removing them if they don’t. Politicians would give the voters all they wished just to remain in power and the corporation would do anything to satisfy their customers. They fail to do so in spite of, not because of, their efforts.

Believing that “in the meantime” we can remedy all the social ills and strife, invite us to accept the improbable: that these problems have just recently sprung into existence just yesterday, or alternatively that nothing previously had ever been done “in the meantime” about them. It is because such problems have survived all manner of attempted remedies throughout capitalism’s history, that the futility of reformism is evident. And it is precisely because of this that the need for socialism is especially urgent, in this age of potential plenty, in which the technology and productive powers at our disposal can now be placed at the disposal of the whole of society ad is no longer straight-jackets by redundant social relationships. Socialism must entail the rejection of reformism for all its will-o’-the-wisp attractions. The divergent aims of reform and revolution cannot be harmonised, that one cannot at the same time help patch up and perpetuate the very system one intends to overthrow.  It is wrong to see socialism as an ultimate and long term aim while “in the meantime” seeking the solution of existing social problems. Reformists are forsaking socialism altogether for capitalism will never present the opportunity to convert that ultimate aim into something immediate. The whole purpose of capitalist ideology and its proponents and apologists is to persuade workers to identify with ruling class interests, to distort social reality, to draw a smokescreen over the basic class cleavage of society; rather than to get workers to see themselves as a class united by common interests against their exploiters.

Beneath the ashes of past movements, embers are burning again. The objective conditions have come together once more for revolution.