The road to socialism

The Socialist Party policy is one of spreading revolutionary ideas amongst the workers, organised and unorganised, in order that capitalism shall be abolished and socialism established. That is the work of a mass movement. Leader-hunting is an old pastime. Over the years, we have grown familiar with the dreary process of some politician starting his or her career as a left-wing firebrand.  What the militants want is the leaders’ jobs. What the workers want is knowledge, not leaders. What makes a working class party is socialist principles, not political expediency. Why do so many leaders seem to betray the trust in them? Because they can only administer a policy which, whatever niggling reforms it may contain, leaves the capitalist social system intact. Capitalism has its inevitable problems. The betrayals are in the fact that the leaders promise that, with them in control, we can have one without the other. That is why men who climbed to power through the trade unions have sat in a government which has broken strikes. Leaders exist by virtue of the ignorance of their followers. With political understanding, they are unnecessary. Knowledge, then, is the key.  The working-class movement should concern itself with the spread of socialist knowledge and with principles, not personalities. If the workers continue to put their trust in leaders and cherish the ever-renewed hope that at last, they have found the inspired political Moses, who will lead them out of the wilderness, they do so at their peril. We are makers of history, not spectators. When the change from capitalist insanity to production for need comes about we will not be watching it on the box. We will not be following leaders or be waiting for the revolution to be announced from a podium. The socialist revolution will be the activation of human consciousness, transforming us from viewers of the spectacle to makers of the future. When will socialism rule? When the majority decides that they will no longer be ruled by others.

The parties that claim the loyalty of the working-class to-day are saturated with the worship of the “great men”, self-appointed guardians of the interests of the working class,  preaching empty platitudes and futile reforms, all alike in deserving the uncompromising hostility of the workers. The Socialist Party propagates great principles and not “great men”.  The Socialist Party rejects all attempts at taking out of the hands of the working-class the control of its destiny, taking as its watchwords, "The emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself.” The ruling class does not rely on one demagogue to “lead a nation,” there are many volunteers and much competition, with almost as many policies and palliatives—most of them quite shallow and easily exposed. It is the workers themselves, by their adulation, that create personalities; that makes a man great in the modern sense. When the "Hero” has gone the way of all flesh, the false and unscientific ideas that he foisted on an over-credulous working class are examined by those who come after with coolness and deliberation, and their verdict must necessarily be that those associated with it were either knaves or dupes. There is only one way for the worker to escape this verdict: to study socialism. The Socialist Party claims that dependence on leadership is a menace to the working-clam movement and that not emotionalism and leader-worship but knowledge, understanding, and self-reliance are the workers' road to emancipation.   Workers must understand the cause of capitalism's problems and realise that they will be solved only by the establishment of socialism. Without that, we face the chaos and brutality of capitalism. With it, a happy, free and plentiful world is ours for the taking. A movement of workers brought up to be spell-bound worshippers of oratory and personality are going to acquire the knowledge and self-reliance necessary. 

The workers have still a fair road to travel before they will get rid of the superstition of "Leadership" or the dope of "good" and "bad" leaders.

We don’t object to leadership because we want to be awkward, but because we see it as one of the biggest obstacles to the spread of socialist ideas. Capitalism has developed to the point where workers run society from top to bottom. Owners of capital need not play the smallest part in the undertaking which produces their rent, interest or profit; they can even have their wealth added to while in a lunatic asylum. Yet still, most workers haven't seen the possibility of a world without masters, a world which would be run in the interests of all mankind instead of those of a capitalist or “leading” class. There are no leaders in the socialist movement because there will be no leaders inside socialism—there can be none in a society based on equality of status and the willing co-operation of all in production solely for use.

Leadership only makes sense when there is a ruling class and a ruled class, and it implies that most people are incapable of organising affairs in their own interest and so must accept the dictates of a few. Ours differs from all previous revolutionary movements in that it doesn’t aim to replace one ruling class by another but to abolish classes altogether. All leaders are placed in a privileged position by their followers, who either agree with the policies laid down or think they can do nothing about them. By contrast, socialism means that nobody will be placed in a position of governing others.

One of the main reasons for people acquiescing in the continuation of capitalism is that they are led to believe it is the only possible system. It is just because they are so used to being told what is good for them that they are often puzzled when we say “We can’t lead you to socialism—you must understand and build it yourselves.” The blunt truth is that if people want leaders they want class society, and if they want class society they cannot want socialism. But more and more of them will become interested in socialism because they are faced with the same problems as we are, and failure to solve them within capitalism will eventually lead them to see the necessity of abolishing it. We do our best to point out the road to socialism and to encourage others along with it, but there can be no substitute for their knowledge of what is needed to achieve the goal.

We are always eager to help people to understand our case and to discuss with them the difficulties and objections they have concerning it. From our understanding of the past and the needs of the present, we try to show what the future class-free society will look like. But what you propose is that we should work out all the details in advance, and present them to the as yet non-socialist majority as a sort of pill to be taken for their sufferings under capitalism. If we did that, however, we should be acting no differently from the reformers who offer to lead the working class to better conditions and consistently fail to do so. The lesson is that no matter how well-meaning you may be, once you are given political power you must follow where events lead and, without a majority of socialists, that cannot be to socialism.

You have only to look at the Labour Party to see why in its early days quite a few of its leaders were no doubt sincerely in favour of abolishing capitalism and they thought that the working class would have to be led to it, and the means they adopted were those of getting into Parliament on the votes of reformists in order to advocate socialism. So they stood for Parliament, but when they were elected the means (political power) became the end in itself. Thus we see that as such leaders push themselves forward their “socialism” recedes farther into the future and is eventually lost altogether. You must not confuse such leaders of the working class with the delegates the socialist movement chooses to carry out its will. The former has no mandate to abolish capitalism even if they wished to do so—the latter are the instruments the majority in society will use to institute Socialism. To think in terms of political power without political knowledge on the part of those who make up that power is to oppose all that socialism means.