For a worldwide socialist society

Working people spend a major part of our lives working for the benefit of another class. We sell our abilities to the highest bidder and lose something irreplaceable—our time. We’ve little control in the organisation of our working life, in what we produce, the quality of what we make and so on. We pass hour after hour, every day, engaged in monotonous, repetitive drudgery which mean little to us but which help give our masters, the capitalists, a life of freedom.  And what can we have instead of this wage-slavery? A worldwide socialist society where we won’t be supporting any parasite owning class and we won’t be wasting our time making weapons, working in finance and the like. We'll democratically manage our own work as society requires and we'll only turn out the best available and possible.  We can achieve security, abundance and fulfilment in a socialist society. This is why we say nothing short of socialism will do.

The ownership of immense wealth by a small minority is very often the result of inheritance. So if social privilege is a reward for merit, the only merit which is being referred to is the wisdom of a baby such as Prince George is to be born from the womb of a royal parasite rather than a worker. According to this theory, Prince William’s son, who will never need to go out and sell his royal labour power, is being rewarded for his initiative, enterprise and intelligence. The fact that he is as yet illiterate is quite beside the point. Social parasitism is not confined to the aristocracy. A parasite is an organism which lives by feeding off other live organisms. Such is the position of the entire capitalist class. They can only accumulate capital so long as the majority of people will produce wealth and receive a price for their labour power which is less than the value of their product. The exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class is the social equivalent of biological parasitism. The capitalists get their money and power by hard work -Yes, by our hard work.

Oh, for sure the apologists for the capitalist economic system will bring forth the example of the self-made man. But they also have become wealthy by employing and exploiting the labour of others. Richard Branson did not pilot the jets of Virgin Air. Occasional members of the working class do manage to make their way in to the exploiting class, but they can only ever do so by riding on the backs of their fellow workers. Most people are born and die in a class which subjects them to the dictates of the labour market. Capitalism causes poverty because it limits workers’ access to wealth. Wages and salaries determine how much members of the working class can eat, where we can live, and every other aspect of our social existence. Under the wages system, all workers are impoverished in the sense that we are denied ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. The only way to end poverty is to abolish classes and this can only happen when what is now the property of private capitalists or the state is transferred to the common ownership and democratic control of the whole community. Being hired and fired is a part of working class culture and always will be so long as we allow capital to use us when and where it wants. Our class must one day make the capitalist system the victim of the biggest redundancy of all.

The Socialist Party repudiates any programme of immediate demands, on the grounds that such programmes do not serve as a means of organising for socialism but thrust the socialist objective into the background, and attract non-socialist elements. While it is true that workers have to struggle over wages and conditions this must be confined to the industrial, trade union field, separate from the political. Some reforms may be of sectional or temporary benefit but this in no way equals the effort required to achieve them. The capitalist class often offer concessions both to improve the productive capacity of workers and to quiet social unrest. But a growing socialist movement will bring more concessions to the working class than any amount of pleading or agitation for reform. We have seen the alleged Labour parties gain mass support and political power and once they are in government we have learned that capitalism cannot be run in the interest of the working class. Outside parliament the working class movement brought forth movements that claimed it was possible to get socialism by industrial action, by-passing Parliament. Bitter reality has shown the fallacy of this views. Whoever controls Parliament controls the armed forces and police, and in prolonged strikes, the suffering of the workers far outweighs any discomfort to the capitalists. But syndicalist ideas still linger on. The Bolsheviks of 1917 saw the birth of the Leninist theory of revolution. In a predominantly capitalist world and lacking both productive capacity and the acceptance of socialist ideas by the population, the only way Russia could develop was along capitalist lines. A repressive state capitalist regime masquerading as socialism developed, adding to the confusion and misunderstanding of workers and thus making the spread of socialist ideas that much harder. The lesson is that the most important part of revolution being the working class it must first be ready. It is impossible to get socialism without first making socialists.