Organise for socialism

"Organise—organise—organise." Ernest Jones, Chartist

Socialists consider the economic factor the determining factor in the development of society. The primary concern of human beings has always been to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. As human beings lived together, certain necessities drove them to invent certain machines and with the invention of these machines production increased and with the increase in production changes occurred in the economic and social system. Struggles arose between groups and the victors made slaves out of the vanquished. A system of slavery arose and the forces of production continued to develop. More machines were invented; the forces of production increased; society developed further and ever further and class struggles arose; slaves revolted against masters; the social system based on slavery could no longer function effectively and that social system was displaced by a new system. What is known as feudalism came into existence? He who owned land had the right to exploit the man who worked on the land and this man who worked on the land was called a serf. In comparison with the chattel slave, he was a free man but nevertheless he could not leave the land. The discovery of the Americas gave a tremendous impetus to the development of industry; new markets came into being; new machinery was invented; the forces of production grew and with it a new and powerful class arose – the merchant class of the Middle Ages – and it is this merchant class that constituted the beginning of modern capitalist class. We call that class the “bourgeoisie” and this class began a struggle against the feudal nobility and finally conquered and became the dominant class in society. Thus you see that, in the opinion of socialists, a class struggle has existed since time immemorial. The chattel slaves struggled against the masters, the plebeians struggled against the patricians, the serf against the feudal nobility; and today we have the fundamental struggle between the capitalists who own the wealth and the wage workers who create the wealth. And is this struggle a result of man’s will or desire? No, it is a struggle that is due fundamentally to the development of economic forces.

 Look at our social system and you can see for yourselves how the class struggle operates. Worker against the employer and against Wall Street. Why is our society subjected to these struggles? Because each social group wants a larger share of the income that society produces. In comparison to the number of wage workers, the Socialist Party constitutes a minute group; the class struggle goes on without us. Unfortunately, it has not as yet achieved an influence which can permit it to play a decisive role in that struggle. The struggle between the worker on the one hand, anxious to get a higher wage, and the employer on the other hand, anxious to make more profit, is a struggle that will go on regardless of the desire or the intention of any man. There are some employers who are willing to give higher wages but they are prevented by the law of competition under capitalism. By and large, the employers are anxious to make more and more profits and, because of that, the class struggle must necessarily continue.

To achieve socialism workers must first gain political power. Revolutions cannot be prevented by any law. Like convulsions in nature, they are the result of the evolution of forces beyond the power of man to stop. The capitalist class under feudalism had economic power; but also required political power to consolidate and guarantee its economic power. So they obtained political supremacy by a revolutionary overthrow of the feudal aristocrats and nobility. The workers under capitalism have no economic power (except in the sense that they can bring industry to a halt by withdrawing their labour power) and neither have they political power. Before they can take over the means of production and proceed to construct a socialist society, they will have to capture the machinery of government. Whereas all previous forms of state served the purpose of guarding the property interests of a minority of the people against the majority, once the workers have used the state as the instrument of the vast majority of the population for the purpose of abolishing all forms of exploitation and because the necessity for any state exists only because there are classes in society, and one class requires the instrument of the state to rule over the other classes,  the defining coercive elements of the state will wither away.

What is the aim of the Socialist Party? You can begin by reading our Declaration of Principles. We want a social revolution. We want a socialist society where all the productive wealth is owned in common and there is no exploitation. The fundamental basis of socialism is the development of the forces of production to a point where enough can be produced to satisfy the needs of all members of society. The productive forces of society will be so greatly developed and the education of the people will be such as to enable society to follow the principle: From each according to his ability; to each according to his need. The fundamental feature of a socialist society is that all the means of production – the railroads, the mines, the factories – are owned by the people and the goods that are produced, are produced for use. Under the present system, which we call capitalist, the means of production are owned by private persons or corporations or the government and, although there may be some owners who are benevolent employers they operate their industries not because people need the goods that they produce but because they want to make a profit. In socialism, the people will decide how many pairs of shoes, how much coal, how many houses are needed to satisfy the needs of the people and proceed to manufacture them. The productive wealth of society – not personal possessions such as a laptop or a car – but the productive wealth of society – machinery, factories, mines – will be owned in common by the people, and goods will be produced for the use of the people. There are no classes under socialism – that is, there is no class that owns the wealth and no class that is exploited. Today a worker has only his labour power and he or she sells that to someone who owns machinery and he or she gets a wage in return and the man who owns the machinery makes a profit out of the labour power. That is what socialists term exploitation of labour.

Socialism is a world system. All peoples will cooperate to produce enough goods to satisfy the reasonable needs of every human being. Every region will produce that which it is best fitted to produce. If one part of the world can produce good machinery then let it not busy itself with producing agricultural products. Let some other area best fitted for the production of agricultural products produce those products. Peace will come to a world cooperating in this way, which will be made possible only by socialism, which will do away with capitalist cliques fighting for colonies and markets. We reject the idea that one nation or one people is superior to any other nation or any other people. To us all human beings are equal. The prejudices that exist are a product of the social system and not inherent in human nature. The brotherhood of man will be made possible and real under a socialist society which will do away with economic conflicts.

The word “revolution” does not necessarily imply violence. It simply means a radical change and social revolution means a radical change in society. Do we not speak of the Industrial Revolution, a revolution in science, a revolution in transportation? The French revolution was a social revolution because the merchant and capitalist class displaced the feudal class. The power to rule society was transferred from the landowning feudal nobility to the merchants and industrialists. Our goal is to transfer the economic and political power from the capitalists to the workers. There may be political revolutions that are not social revolutions. The revolutions that occur frequently in Latin America are political revolutions because they do not change the social system. A social revolution may or may not be accompanied by violence and no one knows exactly how it will occur in the future. The responsibility for a revolution lies not upon us but upon the ruling class and what they do when they are democratically appropriated and dispossessed by the majority. Throughout history, there have been men who dreamed of changing society. They saw the poverty, the oppression, the persecution and hatred prevailed in the world despite that it is capable of producing tremendous quantities of goods to satisfy, beyond all imagination, the needs of the people.  Capitalism has reached a point where mankind must take control of the productive forces and begin producing goods for the use of the people – and this means socialism – or else it will be hurled into the abyss. This is our belief and this is what we teach.

We do not advocate the idea that people should take up arms and destroy the government and thereby bring a change in the social system. Blanqui insisted that a social revolution required only a courageous, armed small group. Marx declared that the liberation of the people is the task of the people themselves and not the task of a few agitators, no matter how determined and courageous. The majority of the people must understand what is necessary and must be willing to struggle to achieve their liberation. In the Communist Manifesto is found the following statement:

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense majority.”

Marx, therefore, accepted the fundamental principle: the necessity of convincing the majority of the people to accept the ideas of socialism. The Socialist Party aims to get a majority of the people to accept its ideas. Why should we advocate a violent change from capitalism to socialism? The fact that we want a majority of the people to accept our ideas proves beyond all doubt that we want a peaceful transformation. We want to take over the means of production peacefully. The only real possibility of avoiding violence is for the working class to organise so solidly and strongly that the capitalists will not attempt the use of violence.

The working class are the ones to initiate the struggle against the capitalist system. In the first place, they come more directly in conflict with the owners of industry – in the big steel mills, auto plants, mines, etc. In the second place, the workers are used to working together – cooperation is the key word under socialism and the workers in their factories learn to work cooperatively. They understand that it is necessary under conditions of modern industry to work cooperatively in order to build an automobile or a complicated machine. Our task in the Socialist Party is to inform our fellow-workers of our ideas. Our task is to convince them that our ideas and our solution to the problems of mankind are correct. We can use only the power of persuasion and no other power. We attempt to educate fellow-workers to act independently in their own interests on the political field and also to exhaust all possibilities of a peaceful change. The more we emphasise that possibility, the more the people understand that possibility and prepare for it, the less will be the violence. We are, of course, not pacifists. As much as we hate the violence that exists in society, we see no alternative to the necessity of destroying the violence of the minority with the violence of the majority.

The agony, the death of millions of human beings in senseless famines and wars are not abstractions to us. We feel them keenly and we react to them and we try to create a world where destruction and war and poverty and disease will not be the lot of mankind. We proclaim that it is possible to build a new social system guaranteeing every human being a decent livelihood and a chance to develop his or her individuality, free from economic worries, free from the dangers of war. We say that we have reached an epoch where mankind must go forward to socialism or else back to barbarism. We base our activities upon a theory that has withstood the test of time and events.