Capitalism without capitalists

The Socialist Party is not primarily concerned in moralistic arguments of “fair play” and “fair pay” to indict capitalism. The caviar and yachts of the billionaires matter little to compare to the misdirection of production: the subordination of consumption to accumulation and the immensity of organised waste and destruction.

Mankind will never be free from exploitation and oppression until all work is voluntary and access to all goods and services is free. Socialism, according to the Socialist Party, means a world-wide society, democratically controlled, without profits, wages or money. This is a practical proposition now. Attempts to end such problems as war, poverty and degrading drudgery, inside a society based on wages and profits are bound to fail. Many organisations and persons come forward with plans to re-arrange the wages system. Their most crucial error is the belief that the essential features of capitalism can be retained, and can be turned by “workers’ management” towards humane and liberatory ends. They envisaged an exchange market economy in which everybody would be paid in circulating money a more or less equal wage with which to buy goods which would be on sale at a price equal to their value (amount of socially necessary labour embodied in them).  They imagine that slavery can be operated in the interests of slaves. They are wasting their time. Advocating a self-managed market economy is not advocating socialism at all,

The basic contradiction of capitalism is that between socialised production and class monopoly of the means of production, which manifests itself as working class discontent with its general conditions of life, not just its work experiences under capitalism. A failure to recognise this is the one great weakness of the leftist groups. Some appeal to the authority of Marx where writing in 1875 Marx conceded that, in the early stages, consumption would have to be rationed (he suggested this be done by means of labour-time vouchers, but specifically said that these would no more be money than a theatre ticket was), but eventually all goods and services would be free for everybody to take according to need. Today, nearly a hundred and fifty years later, this stage could be reached very rapidly once socialism had been established.

If the market is to remain it should be obvious that if any enterprise produces to sell, and pays its bills out of its returns, it will be subject to the same basic market laws as any other enterprise. Of course, at the moment these laws are observed and interpreted by management, which then makes the decisions and’ imposes them on the other workers in the interests of the shareholders. These very same laws must have the same force whoever does the managing and even if the shareholders, so to speak, are the workers. This is a suggestion which advocates of cooperatives ought at least to consider. Workers collectively administering their own exploitation is not the aim of the Socialist Party.  Movements for “workers’ management,” “workers’ participation” and “workers’ control” are used by capitalist apologists to give workers the impression that the enterprise they work for in some way belongs to them. If all employees can be drawn into the process of management and can be given the illusion of an identity of interests between workers and employers, this helps to stifle the trade union struggle and enhance the process of exploitation. This is not what the radical cooperativists want, but then neither was the monolithic monopolistic structures of nationalisation what Leftists sought. “Workers’ management” is a cul-de-sac, to replace the cul-de-sac of state-ownership.

The Socialist Party understands that the socialist revolution is a complex and many-sided struggle to eliminate the wages system itself. We do not advocate workers control of production whilst striving to retain the market economy of capitalist production. Without the destruction of the market, the ramifications of capitalism would grow stronger, not weaker. Workers cannot control production and retain the wages system. The Socialist Party calls for the abolition of commodity production and wage labour and describes socialism as"a system where men and women can have full control over social wealth in common, for use, and so control their own natures. It is a completely different kind of production; for the sake of useful consumption of the society as a whole, not for the creation of commodities to exchange by buying and selling. While under capitalism use-values are only the material form of exchange-values, and commodities are produced for sale, under socialism production cannot be limited by the requirements of profit, of capital accumulation, but must be determined by the needs of the human community. The consumption of the working class cannot be limited by its wages or the value of its labour power, but will be determined by its needs and technical capacity of the productive apparatus which it sets in motion. The elimination of wage labour, of production based on the law of value, is not a task for some future or higher stage of socialism, but the immediate task. Socialism is not just concerned with emancipating workers as workers (i.e. wealth-producers) but as human beings (i.e. as men and women).  The Socialist Party goal is not to establish "workers power” but the abolition of all classes including the working class. It is thus misleading to speak of socialism as workers ownership and control of production. In socialist society, there would simply be people, equal men and women forming a class-free community.