Make socialism a threat again

“Socialism, for Marx, is a society which permits the actualization of man's essence, by overcoming his alienation. It is nothing less than creating the conditions for the truly free, rational, active and independent man; it is the fulfillment of the prophetic aim: the destruction of the idols”. - Erich Fromm, Marx' Concept of Man, 1961

Reforms are the stock and trade of politicians. Any social legislation which really has teeth are to sink into the throat of the labour movement. The Socialist Party asks no favours of capitalism and grants it none. The Socialist Party has always held that the essential principle upon which the political party of the working class must be based is the principle of the class struggle. The implications of this are several. The first is that only the class-conscious may be admitted to membership in the organisation since only those who are conscious of the working-class position in society can understand the class struggle and only those who understand the class struggle can intelligently prosecute it on the political field. The second implication of the principle of the class struggle is that the political party of the working class must be uncompromisingly hostile to all other parties, for the reason that political parties are the expression of class interests, and the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class.

The Socialist Party do not give fellow-workers the illusion that their problems can be solved simply by reforming an abuse of the capitalist system. We state clearly that there are no solutions within the capitalist system. The workers and capitalists do constant battle over the level of wages, the price of labour-power. Working people are not content to remain wage slaves of the capitalists. The weak spot of all trade unionism that every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the cause which is capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system and not against the system itself. The capitalists would love to perpetuate this situation. That is why some clever capitalist support trade unions and enter into all sorts of agreements with them. When we fight for a demand like a wage increase, we are merely fighting against the effects of capitalism. Not merely that. We are demanding it from the capitalists. In other words, we envisage the continuation of the capitalist system. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. That is why they very often, in the end, bolster up capitalism. Every wage increase that is won by the workers can be offset by the employers by more intensive work, by stricter supervision etc. So that, usually the worker is back to from where he or she started. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely restricts their struggle to attempts at lessening this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles. We do not, of course, oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. But we must agitate even more for abolition the wage system itself.

How is profit made from producing wealth?  It is created within the process of production itself.

The capitalist with money to invest in production must first convert a part of it into means and instruments of production (raw materials. machinery, a factory); the other part will be needed for hiring workers to come and work in the factory on the raw materials that have been supplied. When the employees have worked up the raw materials into a finished product, new wealth will have been created. This will belong to the capitalist but because we are in an exchange economy, not only new wealth but new value has been created. However, the capitalists are not interested in new value in the abstract, nor even in new value in the form of a portion of the newly produced goods; they are only interested in it in the form of money. To realise this, they must, therefore, sell the products. Once they have done this they have a larger sum of money than they started with; their capital has increased and value has expanded itself. However, not all the money realised from the sale of the product is their profit, as part will represent the value of the raw materials and wear and tear of their machines as well as the upkeep of the factory. It is therefore merely a part of the original capital in a different form. A second part will replace the amount of capital used in hiring the workers to enable a repeat of the operation. It is the third part which is now profit.

The source of this profit is clear: it is the labour of the workers who transformed the raw materials into finished products. In an exchange economy labour, as well as creating wealth, also creates value: where the producer does not own the means of production and where the product of labour belongs to the employer, the new value created also belongs to the employer. A part of this is repaid to the producer in the form of wages, but the rest — what Marx called surplus value — is profit for the capitalist.

The exploitation (for there is no other word for it) of the wage workers takes place fully in accordance with the normal rules of exchange: an equal value is exchanged for an equal value. For what the workers sell to the capitalist is not their labour (the product of labour, or what has been produced) but their ability to work, their mental and physical energy — what Marx called Labour Power. Under capitalism labour power, like everything else is a commodity and has an exchange value. The exchange value of labour power is roughly the cost of training, maintaining and replacing the particular kind of labour power (skilled or unskilled; bricklayer or engineer, clerk or schoolteacher) involved. Wages are the price of labour power or the monetary expression of its value.

Yet today the Left-wing of the workers' movement are less preoccupied with the abolition of the wages system than ever. The old cry for a fair day’s pay echoes itself time and again in our ears, sometimes with different words but always with the same intention.