Just Admit It: Capitalism Doesn't Work

What is the State? It is the machinery for imposing the rule of one class over another, i.e. government, law, armed forces, police, prisons etc. Where there are no classes dividing society, where there is freedom, there will be no State. Socialist society will be very different. There will be no State because social relationships will be based on mutual cooperation and not on coercion. It will be a world society free of the problems and limitations of the profit economy. This is the Marxist conception of socialism. The common, mistaken idea of Socialism is it where the working class control their own exploitation such as through nationalisation or cooperatives.Such an idea is absurd, as the essence of capitalism is the subordination of wage-labour to capital.

Many disparage the SPGB "fetishism" to majority revolution and the Parliamentarian process but overlook the fact that in 1904 when we laid down our position and principles, more than half the working class did not possess the vote - all women and a still a quarter of men were deprived of it. We were never adherents to the number game.

Nevertheless what existed was suffice according to the SPGB for the working class to use to capture political power. Our aim is to achieve a "functional" majority, rather than advocate as many did in the past, action by a self-defeating minority, hence many often misconstrue our emphasis on the term "majority revolution".

Many gradualists insist we should carry on the campaign to perfect the electoral system with various constitutional amendments such as an assortment of PR proposals, the SPGB continues to maintain that what we have can be used and what is missing is understanding an knowledge among or fellow workers.

What is essential is that the numbers are sufficient for the revolutionary process to succeed and to make socialism work, either as active participants or otherwise fully acquiescing to the events taking place around them.

We cannot recall any member of the SPGB decrying the fall of state-capitalism when fellow-workers in Eastern Europe's Soviet Union satellite countries voted with their feet (and some with their fists) for not following constitutional methods of voting and elections.

A prospective member of the Socialist Party need not have read a word of Marx. The acid test of socialist convictions hinges on such views as: Capitalism cannot be reformed or administered in the interest of the working class or of society; Capitalism, as a social system, is in the interest of the ruling class (albeit that capitalism, historically, was an essential stage of social evolution) and it is incapable of eliminating poverty, war, economic crises; Socialism is the solution to the social problems and irreconcilable contradictions of capitalism; Socialism cannot be rammed down the workers’ throats against their wishes; Socialist success is dependant upon the fervour and enthusiasm of the determined, conscious socialist majority. These are the characteristics of a socialist; a coupling of the head and the heart, theory coupled with action.

We see the work of the Socialist Party to be a trigger that transforms majority ideas from bourgeois into revolutionary ones by education and campaigning and when our numbers arrive, progressing from a propagandist party to a class organising one, such as shown by the attempt of the Socialist Party of Canada and its relationship with the One Big Union.

People should know that we always add caveats to our support for the ballot box - one being that the most important factor is the knowledge and understanding of the person placing the X. Which is why we insist that you don't vote for the SPGB unless you agree with us and your vote is that indication of socialist understanding. The important Marxist ideas we try to convey in or education are the Materialist Conception of History and the Labour Theory of Value, using those concepts in arousing socialist consciousness, on the basis of evidence and unfolding events, that capitalism has outlived its historic usefulness and is now ripe for burial. We, as socialists, are catalytic agents, acting on our fellow-workers and all others to do something about it as speedily as possible. The barest minimum of socialist principles are: socialism is a product of social evolution; the socialist revolution is inherently democratic because of its nature of being conscious, majority, and political; and that socialism is based on the social relations of a community of interests between all the members of society and society as a whole. There can hardly be any compromise or concession on these general principles. Working-class understanding is at a very low ebb, therefore the membership of the SPGB is low but not such a great difference in the number of adherents to other groups to demonstrate they have any better strategy than ourselves. To the accusations from Leftists that we are sectarian and enthralled to dogma we do unrepentantly oppose all the so-called working-class parties which compromise with capitalism and do not uphold the socialist case.

Election periods are the time when workers are more receptive to political discussions, even if it is to explain their apathy and non-involvement. Of course, the importance of election issues and the importance of the casting individual votes will affect the turn-out. At the moment, our involvement in the electoral process is a token one to take advantage of not just the free postage but also to participate in the numerous hustings that are organised in election campaigns. Outside election times, open public political meetings are rare occurrence except as PR events for the established politicians. Nevertheless, our support for parliamentary action is to capture political power, not just a mere propaganda tactic. And we have explained frequently why we see it as a necessity to have control of the State, rather than pursue other anti-parliamentarian strategies. As we are in the UK, our analysis and practice are based on the reality of that. We have built an organisation that we feel is best suited and fit for purpose to express and act as an instrument of our class.

How a socialist party behaves in other countries with different political structures, we do not lay down any strictures on others except to broadly insist that they democratically reflect the will of the majority. This is what we said in 1937 about Spain "... It must be assumed that the Spanish workers weighed up the situation and counted the cost before deciding their course of action. That is a matter upon which their judgement should be better than that of people outside the country..."

Whether we take our seat if elected or exercise the Sinn Fein policy has long been discussed within the Party and the culmination of these debate has always been the elected SPGB MP would take the oath of loyalty to her majesty and sit in the Commons.

And while still a minority, they will not sit on their hands and do nothing. The Party has also decided that SPGB MPs will vote for any reform seen to be in the interest of the working class. As the Socialist Party of Canada member elected to the State Legislature of Albert said:
"When I voted on the last division I did so because I saw an opportunity to benefit a few of my class, the laborers in the construction camp. There is no opportunity to get anything for the workers on this vote, and I shall not vote. On every vote where there is no opportunity to get something for my class, I shall not vote. On every vote where there is no opportunity to get anything for my class, I shall leave the House and refrain from voting."

The Socialist Party is reticent to cite the authority of Marx and Engels since as you pointed out their views differ with time and circumstances, for example, Marx support for some nationalisms and not for others. Elections were less a matter of principle but more of tactical importance rather than a strategy. Marx not only supported, the campaign of the Chartist in the 1850s for universal suffrage but also, through the IWMA, the similar campaign of the Reform League in the 1860s as reported in Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life, By Jonathan Sperber
"Marx vigorously endorsed campaigns for a more democratic franchise, in the hope of increasing worker' parliamentary representation. He was particularly proud of the prominent role of the English leaders of the IWMA in the newly founded Reform League that advocated universal manhood suffrage for Great Britain..."

On the IWMA executive the Reform League was represented by Dell, Cowell Stepney and Lucraft, all three are also on the Executive Committee of the Reform League Also, the National Reform Association, set up by the late Bronterre O'Brien, by its President A. A. Walton and Milner.

" In the spring of 1865 the Central (General) Council of the International initiated, and participated in, the setting up of a Reform League in London as a political centre of the mass movement for the second election reform. The League’s leading bodies – the Council and Executive Committee – included the General Council members, mainly trade union leaders. The League’s programme was drafted under Marx’s influence. Unlike the bourgeois parties, which confined their demands to household suffrage, the League advanced the demand for manhood suffrage. This revived Chartist slogan won it the support of the trade unions, hitherto indifferent to politics. The League had branches in all big industrial cities. The vacillations of the radicals in its leadership, however, and the conciliation of the trade union leaders prevented the League from following the line charted by. the General Council of the International. The British bourgeoisie succeeded in splitting the movement, and a moderate reform was carried out in 1867 which granted franchise only. to the petty bourgeoisie and the upper layers of the working class."

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/archive/eichhoff/iwma-history/notes.htm#n418

" As far as possible they should be League members and their election should be pursued by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect of achieving their election the workers must put up their own candidates to preserve their independence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their revolutionary position and party standpoint to public attention. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the democrats, who will maintain that the workers’ candidates will split the democratic party and offer the forces of reaction the chance of victory. All such talk means, in the final analysis, that the proletariat is to be swindled. The progress which the proletarian party will make by operating independently in this way is infinitely more important than the disadvantages resulting from the presence of a few reactionaries in the representative body. If the forces of democracy take decisive, terroristic action against the reaction from the very beginning, the reactionary influence in the election will already have been destroyed." Marx Address to the Communist League 1847

Marx’s view of universal suffrage was clearly given in his article on the Chartists, in which he said:“But universal suffrage is the equivalent for political power for the working class of England, where the proletariat forms the majority of the population, where, in a long, though underground civil war, it has gained a clear consciousness of itself as a class, and where even the rural districts know no longer any peasants, but landlords, industrial capitalists (farmers) and hired labourers. The carrying of universal suffrage in England, would, therefore, be a far more Socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the Continent. Its inevitable result here, is the political supremacy of the working class.” ‘N.Y. Tribune,’ 25th Aug. 1852;

"The irony of history turns everything topsy-turvy. We, the ‘revolutionists’, thrive better by the use of constitutional means than by unconstitutional and revolutionary methods. The parties of law and order, as they term themselves, are being destroyed by the constitutional implements which they themselves have fashioned.” 1895, the year of his death, Engels in an introduction to a reprint of Marx’s Class Struggles in France

"The possessing class rules directly through universal suffrage. For as long as the oppressed class—in this case the proletariat—is not ripe for its emancipation, just so long will its majority regard the existing form of society as the only one possible, and form the tail, the extreme left wing, of the capitalist class. But the more the proletariat matures towards its self-emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists. Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It can and never will be that in the modern State. But that is sufficient. On the day when the thermometer of universal suffrage reaches its boiling point among the labourers, they as well as the capitalists will know what to do.” Engels, Origin of the Family

To quote M. Rubel, a Marxist scholar:
“The economic and social barbarism brought about by the capitalist mode of production cannot be abolished by a political revolution prepared, organized and led by an elite of professional revolutionaries claiming to act and think in the name and for the benefit of the exploited and alienated majority. The proletariat, formed into a class and a party under the conditions of bourgeois democracy, liberates itself in the struggle to conquer this democracy; it turns universal suffrage, which had previously been ‘an instrument of dupery’, into a means of emancipation”

And did Marx not assist in drafting write the election manifesto for Guesde's French Workers Party in 1880 where the preamble includes the above quote of converting universal suffrage in France "from the instrument of fraud it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation"

Precedents are only of value when the conditions are the same. Indeed our involvement in the electoral process is still trying to transform it from being a tool to fool us and to rule us. We are not yielding or surrendering its potential usefulness to our class enemies.

The constitutional weapon is condemned because the class that controls it use it in their own interest. Thus the blame is placed on the weapon, when we should rather be blaming ourselves for not organising to control it, and instead, leaving it in the possession of our class enemies. The State machine that enables a class to rule is clearly an instrument of repression and must be subverted before the oppressed class can be free. Another analogy would be a bad tradesman blaming his tools. The political machine has never helped the working class because they have never controlled and used it; they have never been conscious of the necessity.

Critics of the Socialist Party believe our concept of a revolutionary working-class party, politically organised, is impossible, purposely ignoring the wide difference that exists between the Socialist Party and other organisations. We await our anti-parliamentarian critics to demonstrate how, without political organisation of the workers, the machinery of government can be captured and rendered ineffective.

There is no doubt that capitalist politicians will exercise all their cunning against the working class party as it advances, the wiles of the politicians will become more subtle, but the Socialist Party is proof against every form of trickery. It carries on the work of organisation openly, free from the suspicion of undemocratic practices. There is a place in proletarian politics for a party such as the Socialist Party that engages in elections. Is it the only weapon or tool of the working class?..of course not.