Who produces all the wealth, manages and runs capitalism from top to bottom? The working class - that is who. Please do not equate Marxism with Leninism. A bit like blaming Jesus for the sectarian Christian divisions manipulated by power-seekers. There is an honourable anti-Bolshevik tradition in Marxist politics:
‘We have often stated that because of a large anti-socialist peasantry and vast untrained population, Russia was a long way from socialism. Lenin has now to admit this by saying: “Reality says that State capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us” (The Chief Task of Our Times)…If we are to copy Bolshevik policy in other countries we should have to demand State capitalism, which is not a step to socialism’ (Socialist Standard, July 1920).
‘Both Trotsky and Stalin draw up their programmes within the framework of state and private capitalism which prevails in Russia’ (Socialist Standard, December 1928).
‘[all the Bolsheviks] have been able to do is to foster the growth of State capitalism and limit the growth of private capitalism’ (Socialist Standard, July 1929.)
The social democratic experiments of the Labour Party were all attempts to manage capitalism with reforms. But capitalism cannot be reformed and shorn of its concomitants of war (business by other means) and poverty, absolute or relative (essential, to keep us as wage-slaves.) It cannot be shorn of its economic cycle of booms and busts.
“In 1918, in the shadow of the Russian revolution, they made a deliberate, conscious, ideological choice, that they would not pursue the syndicalist road, that they would not pursue the revolutionary road – it was a real choice in those days. They would pursue the parliamentary road to socialism.” Neil Kinnock
That just amounted to their infamous Clause 4 definition of 'common ownership' with a 'means of exchange'. In other words, not socialism at all, but nationalisation, state ownership and not common ownership, retaining the wages slavery system, prices and social classes. They are bourgeois vacillators between potential winning capitalisms, masquerading as radical. The Labour party was never a socialist party but a reformist one. Capitalism cannot be reformed however noble or ignoble the politician.
Representative democracy is seriously flawed, not least by the principle of leadership. Representation is a myth. It is a surrendering of power within a restricted choice of capitalist politicians. Proportional Representation merely diffuses the political power over us giving an ersatz illusion of choice of bosses. In a class society, the politicians are elected to govern 'over' us in the interests of the dominant economic class. This is the only control they exert, 'over us', as they are powerless in respect of the economic conditions of the day in a market society where production is for sale with a view of realising a profit and capitalist , left right or centre politicians, can only deceive themselves that they can alleviate in some way the inevitable concomitants of a capitalist society, of war (business by other means) and poverty (absolute or relative).
In a socialist society, a real one, not a capitalist reformist pretend one, we won't need any classes or political leadership, as we will have local, regional and global control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, in a world owned in common, where production is for use and there exists free access, "from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs", with recallable delegates where we need to delegate administrative tasks.
Socialism isn't a commodity for sale, but a social relationship of classless free access in a post-capitalist social system which will arise out of the present system without the contradictions of private ownership, production only for sale, or social elites with advantageous access to the social product. Once people aspire to dissolve governments and elect themselves, no power can stop them. Nothing will stop an idea when its time has really come. Socialists have always wanted working people to ‘take control’ of their collective destiny. That’s what real socialism is all about. This is not possible under capitalism because it is a system governed by uncontrollable economic laws which impose themselves on people whatever they want or decide. The only way to take control (‘back’ is out of place since the majority class of wage and salary workers has never had any control) is to take control of the places where we work and where wealth is produced and run them for the benefit of all.
Socialism and communism mean the same thing. 'Common' or 'social' ownership. Just because power-hungry politicians utilised the name 'socialism' to sell their dodgy reforms as 'socialistic' doesn't alter one iota the definition of socialism. It is a commonly owned, world of free access and democratic control over the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth. Nothing to do with nationalisation, state ownership or any of the paraphernalia of state-regulated market capitalism.
Socialism has to be the work of a politically conscious worker class themselves organising to this end. The democratic ends determine the means rather than the Leninist/Stalinist justifying of them. We have a post-capitalist world to win. Socialism will not be the bloody capture of power by a minority, but the politically aware and responsible act of the immense majority, expressed "peacefully if we can violently, only if we must".
The workers of the world already run capitalism from top to bottom, it is just a change a change of ownership, from private or state into common ownership and democratic control, with production for use and not for sale, allied with free access and voluntary production.
Wee Matt
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