Against Reformism

The Socialist Party holds to a vision of world solidarity where men and women are in control of their own destinies. In socialism there will be no social organ of coercion — in short, no state, not even a so-called "workers' state" — and so no police, no armed forces, no courts, no prisons, no machinery to coerce people to do what they might not want to do.

Socialism will be a state-free society in which people will co-operate, on the basis of common ownership and democratic control. to produce what they need as individuals and as communities. This co-operation will be entirely voluntary and so will have to be undertaken because people want to because they realise that it is necessary and in their best self-interest. In other words, because they have a socialist understanding.

Clearly, since such a society can only function with the voluntary co-operation and conscious participation of its members, it can only be established by people who want it and who understand all its implications. By definition, socialism cannot be established by a minority. It is just absurd — a contradiction in terms — to suggest that some minority could force the majority to co-operate voluntarily. The main features of socialism are world community, common ownership, democratic control, production for use, free access. Socialism is an immediate possibility. All the conditions for its establishment are present except one — precisely the majority socialist understanding we have been discussing. In other words, as soon as this last condition is met. as soon as a majority of wage and salary earners want and understand socialism, it can be established immediately, without any so-called "transition period".

Fellow workers, the only remedy for your precarious and poverty-stricken condition is to be found in the recognition of your class position. You must recognise that you are mere cogs in the industrial machine, that you are permitted to work only so long as there is profit to be derived from your labour. You must understand what you want and how to get it; then there will be no room for labour "leaders." You would not need to be led. and you could not be misled. You must organise then inside the Socialist Party, and work consciously for that revolution which will replace poverty and misery for those who do the world's work with plenty for all.

The Socialist Party shows that the road to socialism does not lie through “palliatives,” and that even where each measure may affect a slight improvement in the lot of any workers, they are by their nature simply patches on a rotten fabric, and consequently in no way installments of the new society. In short, nearly all so-called palliatives do not ameliorate; and even where they may do so, the economic development of capitalism progressively produces ill effects that ever outstrip every palliative effort, and make the need for Socialism more imperative.

Further, even were the work of the Socialist Party simply an attempt to cause the enactment of reform measures that would appreciably benefit the whole working class, it would first be necessary for the Party to conquer the power of the State. Thus even for reform worth the name, a revolution would be necessary, whereas socialism could be had at the same price. Moreover, the workers could be more easily united as a whole for socialism than for a programme of sectional, mutually conflicting, pettifogging reforms.

These are some of the reasons, together with the important fact that the economic trend makes socialism the only practical proposition, that makes it impossible for The Socialist Party to put forward a reform programme.

The task of the working-class party is the conquest of the governmental machinery and forces, for socialist ends. Consequently, support is only useful to the party on that understanding. To pander to the reform mania would attract non-socialists and weaken the party, while the absence of positive or useful result would spread disgust and apathy.

A reform programme is, in fact, fraudulent, particularly from the socialist standpoint. Therefore, while willing to secure any amelioration or help possible for the workers in their fight against capital the Socialist Party realises that socialism transcends all else, and stands distinct from all other parties on a programme of Socialism and nothing but socialism. No palliation could be effective enough, in view of the necessary conditions of the development of capitalism, to put back the hour of emancipation to any appreciable extent. It could only demonstrate once more the helplessness of anything short of socialism. What does put back the hour of emancipation is the false hope in reform assiduously fostered by astute capitalists and ignorant or corrupt Labour politicians. The sooner the working class learn the lesson of the working-class movement the quicker shall we have started on the road to our emancipation. That lesson, surely, is that the position of our representatives in Parliament must be one of absolute independence from any pro-capitalist party, and that such independence most be based upon their hostility to capitalist parties.

The working class, having learnt that capitalist exploitation is the source of their social evils and their enslavement, will seek to emancipate themselves and solve their social problems by the abolition of capitalism through the establishment of socialism. Parliamentary action must always be guided by that object, and no compromise with the enemy is possible or desirable. The essential factor is the education of the workers in the principles of socialism, for on the “rank and file” rests the responsibility of a “leader’s" shortcomings. The failure of the Labour Party to “make good" is useful in showing how it can not be done, but is a useless waste of time to those of us who knew it could not be done that way.