Wage Slavery Abolitionists

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed to work for socialism. We have carried on the hard struggle to build up a party of socialists, understanding and ready to work for Socialism. Our aim is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines, and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever to the wage-system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish the world cooperative commonwealth. Our tactics are as clear as our goals. We find ourselves opposed by the left-wing who believe that it was useless to advocate socialism. Their method is to try to win working-class support by promising and agitating for reforms. The workers, they claim, do not want socialism, but “something now.” Let us promise them what they want and thus get a Labour Party government. The numerous benefits it will bestow on the workers will then win their support for the introduction of socialism. This theory is based on a series of misconceptions. The work, however, of building a Labour Party thrusts socialism into the background. It also assumed that a Labour government could run capitalism to remove the grave problems which have been, and are being, produced by capitalism. It assumes that unemployment, poverty and the like, are the outcome, not of the system, but of the stupidity, malevolence or incompetence, of politicians. It overlooked the very important lesson that the party which happens to be in office gets blamed by working-class electors for the evil effects of the capitalist system on themselves. The Socialist Party has been the only organisation which declined to abandon socialism in order to build up the Labour Party, and the only organisation which will not be implicated in the disgust and disillusion which will follow the inevitable failure of Labour governments. The day that the workers are ready to vote solidly for socialism the game is up. It only remains, therefore, for the workers to look beneath the surface of all their troubles to find that the remedy for each and every one of them is socialism. Armed with the necessary knowledge, we, workers, are all-powerful and the capitalists know it, and that is why their paid hirelings disseminate so much confusion on the subject.

Although we cannot specify in advance a utopian blueprint lets try and describe free access socialism. Suppose that the new social system was to start tomorrow, we are not proposing just the abolition of money. In fact, the abolition of money alone, would solve no problems and undoubtedly create many difficulties. But what we propose is, that the whole system of money and exchange, buying and selling, profit-making and wage-earning be entirely abolished and that instead, the community as a whole should organise and administer the productions of goods for use only, and the free distribution of these goods to all members of the community according to each person’s needs. Simply put, in socialism there would be no barter economy or monetary system. It would be an economy based on need. Therefore, a consumer would have a need, and there would be a communication system set in place that relays that need to the producer. The producer creates the product, and then send the product back to the consumer, and the need would be satisfied. For socialism to be established the productive potential of society must have been developed to the point where, generally speaking, we can produce enough for all. This is not now a problem as we have long since reached this point. Socialism does presuppose that productive resources (materials, instruments of production, sources of energy) and technological knowledge are sufficient to allow the population of the world to produce enough food, clothing, shelter and other useful things, to satisfy all their material needs. The new social system must be world-wide. It must be a World Commonwealth. The world must be regarded as one country and humanity as one people.

We are not so naive as to imagine that the changeover from world capitalism to world socialism will occur over a single weekend. The changeover can be envisaged as taking place over a relatively short period of time of, say, five years (we don't know.) Yet even before the full establishment of socialism people will have started to do what is needed to begin creating the new world. Local life will soon become largely self-administering and local plans will be devised to make the best alternative uses of buildings that no longer served their original purposes, such as banks, ammunitions factories, and stately homes. Communities able to grow their own food can very quickly become self-sufficient: food surpluses distributed elsewhere to areas of need without any requirement to pass through the asphyxiating intermediary of the market although later it will not be a question of communities passing on their surpluses to one another (most, if left to themselves, wouldn't have any surplus); it is a question of them being interlinked in a single network of production which in the end embraces the whole world. Wider co-ordination will ensue. It is as well to be aware to what extent local communities are interconnected and interdependent and that this places severe limits on what needs could be met locally. The fact is that people in small communities aren't able to produce all they need or anything like it. The final stage of the production of a range of goods for everyday use could be done locally--food, clothes, shoes, furniture--as well as repairs but neither (most of) the raw materials nor (in most cases) any of the metals to make the tools and machines used in this final stage could be produced locally. The community will ascertain what are the requirements of the people - anything and everything that the people desire. Food, clothing, housing, transport, sanitation — these come first; all effort will be to supply those first; everyone will feel it a duty to take some part in supplying these. Then will follow the adornments and amusements. There will be a real sense of working together for a common goal - a true community. If you read people’s reminiscences of the Second World War or the Depression of the Thirties, you will find time and again the refrain, “Times were hard, but everybody pulled together.” It matters not how accurate these memories are; what is crucial is the way that cooperation and solidarity are seen as positive values, to be cherished and kept in the memory.

"It's a nice idea but it will never happen" is one of the most common responses to the suggestion that it is in our interests to work towards building a socialist society. The assumption is that socialism will rely upon everybody being altruistic, sacrificing their own interests for those of others. In fact, socialism doesn’t require people to be any more altruistic than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. It is enlightened self-interest that will work for the majority. The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of others which capitalism encourages (acquisitiveness, competition)

Given the control of human affairs that a socialist system would bring, people in socialism would be able to take charge of their destiny. What is undeniable is that we are a species with great talents. In science, technology, in art, crafts, and design we can call upon a wide range of great skills. The point now is to release these for the benefit of humanity and a new era for humanity will have begun. Production for profit will have been confined to a barely-understandable and barbaric past.