May's June General Election

VOTE THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION

Theresa May has chosen to call a general election for the 8^th of June, hoping that a victory for her will lead to an increased legitimacy for her negotiations to exit the EU. The Socialist Party welcomes every opportunity to place its case for socialism before our fellow-workers.

Many have noticed that whoever gets elected, nothing much really changes. It has been borne out by hard and painful experience that for the most starry-eyed of us that the politicians we have voted for are not only unable to make good on promises but have actually carried out unwelcomed and unwanted policies.  Why should we believe that it would be any different with Theresa May's campaign pledges? 

Do the trappings of democracy really guarantee a truly democratic way of life? Do they ensure rule by the people? The Socialist Party answers "No!" and says that real democracy involves far more. It is true that the vote, together with other hard-won rights such as the rights of assembly, political organisation and freedom of speech, are most important. At the same time we must recognise that genuine democracy is more than these freedoms and the right to vote. Democracy implies much more than the simple right to periodically choose between representative of political parties. We are not under any illusion about the nature of democracy inside capitalism. To govern is to direct, control and to rule with authority. Operating as the state this is what governments do. But to say that democracy is merely the act of electing a government to rule over us cannot be correct because democracy should include all people in deciding how we live and what we do as a community. Democracy means the absence of privilege, making our decisions from a position of equality. Democracy means that we should live in a completely open society with unrestricted access to the information relevant to social issues. It means that we should have the powers to act on our decisions, because without such powers decisions are useless. 

The Socialist Party does not regard political democracy in itself as sufficient to emancipate humanity. But we do recognise that it provides by far the best conditions for the development of the socialist movement. The realisation that genuine democracy cannot exist in capitalist society does not alter the fact that the elbow room already secured by past struggles can be turned against our masters. The right to vote, for instance, can become a powerful instrument to end our servitude and to achieve genuine democracy and freedom.

The vote is revolutionary when on the basis of class it organises labour against capital. Parliamentary action is revolutionary when on the floor of parliament it raises the call of the discontented; and when it reveals the capitalist system's impotence and powerlessness to satisfy the workers wants. The duty of the Socialist Party is to use parliament in order to complete and to bring to a conclusion the revolution. Parliament, is to be valued not for the petty piecemeal reforms obtainable through it, but because through the control of the machinery of government the socialist majority will be in a position to establish socialism. Where it is available to workers we take the viewpoint that capitalist democracy can and should be used.

In our Declaration of Principles we stress the necessity of capturing the machinery of government including the armed forces. That is the fundamental thing. The method, though important, is second to this but, nevertheless, winning control of the state through the ballot-box is central to the Socialist Party. The ballot box is a tactic. The working class being the key political class, whoever wins its support, wins the day, hence why the different factions of the capitalists vie for working class votes.

The Socialist Party has never held that a merely formal majority at the polls will give the workers power to achieve socialism. We have always emphasised that such a majority must be educated in the essentials of socialist principles. The Socialist Party does not propose to form a government and so does not call for people to "vote us into office". Socialist candidates stand as recallable mandated delegates at elections to act as little more than messenger boys and girls sent to formally take over and dismantle the State. not as leaders or would-be government ministers. 

The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule - they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control.

We need to organise politically, into a political party, a socialist party. We don't suffer from delusions of grandeur so we don't necessary claim that we are that party. What we are talking about is not a small educational and propagandist group such as ourselves, but a mass party that has yet to emerge. It is such a party that will take political control via the ballot box, but since it will in effect be the useful majority organised democratically and politically for socialism it is the useful majority, not the party as such as something separate from that majority, that carries out the socialist transformation of society. They will neutralise the state and its repressive forces and as stated there is no question of forming a government , and then proceed to take over the means of production for which they will also have organised themselves at their places of work. This done, the repressive state is disbanded and its remaining administrative and service features, reorganised on a democratic basis, are merged with the organisations which the useful majority will have formed to take over and run production, to form the democratic administrative structure of the state-free society of common ownership that socialism will be.