Yet the avaricious character of capitalist appropriation knows no bounds. The drive of the corporations to accumulate and concentrate constant capital and cut down variable capital for wages is reducing the market in all types of goods and generating one crisis of over-production after the other, resulting in the financial strangulation of the people. The bourgeoisie has the illusion that it can solve its problems by accelerating the privatisation of state assets, deregulation and trade and investment 'liberalisation' It has run amuck in trying to dismantle the social services of its own state and to blame the working class for the ravages of the system of capitalism.
There is great confusion in the world today over the question of what is socialism. Our aim is to try to clear some of this up.
In the mid-19th century, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels penned a series of books that reflected on this change, developed a theory for explaining social change and political revolution. One of the key insights of Marxism was to identify political revolutions as rooted in wide struggles for power among social classes. On this basis, the revolutions above can be distinguished. The earlier ones are revolutions led by the rising capitalist class against feudalism. The later ones reflect the growth of the working class with the industrial revolution. They express the working class struggle for power against the new capitalist rulers. When feudalism was overthrown, and “free” capitalist society emerged, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the toilers. Various socialist doctrines immediately began to rise as a reflection of and protest against this oppression. But early socialism was utopian socialism. It criticised capitalist society, it condemned and damned it, it dreamed of its destruction, it indulged in fancies of a better order and endeavoured to convince the rich of the immorality of exploitation. However, utopian socialism could not point the real way out. It had not explained the essence of wage-slavery under capitalism; it did not examine the process of social development; it did not identify a social force capable of creating a new society. These were developments that Marx and Engels provided. It was the stormy revolutions everywhere in Europe, and especially in France, accompanying the fall of feudalism, that ever more clearly revealed the struggle of classes as the basis and the motive force of the whole development. Not a single victory of political freedom over the feudal class was won except against desperate resistance. Not a single capitalist country evolved on a more or less free and democratic basis except by a life and death struggle between the various classes of capitalist society. Marx was able to draw from this the deduction that world history revolves around class struggle. Marx and Engels repeatedly exposed the way people fell victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learned to discover the interests of some class behind the moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. They argued that the supporters of reforms and palliatives will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realise that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is maintained by the forces of some ruling classes. They insisted that there is only one way of defeat these classes, and that is to find in the very society which surrounds us, the forces capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new. The task of socialists was not to concoct utopian schemes but to enlighten and organise these forces for this struggle. Marx and Engels transformed socialism from a Utopia into a science. For the first time in history, they armed the working class with a fully-developed scientific theory.
Parliamentary elections provide an opportunity for the capitalist class to apply their ability to deceive the people. At every election, we are asked to choose between capitalist parties offering minor variations of the same diet of falling wages, reduced social services, poverty and desperation for many, and support for wars. The working class has made repeated attempts to elect representatives to parliament but the capitalists have been adept at co-opting and corrupting these. After all, parliamentary democracy is a fundamental capitalist institution; the capitalists created parliaments to secure their power after the defeat of feudalism centuries ago. They set the rules and know the game backward. The reality has been while Labour politicians talked about socialism, in practice, they carried on running capitalism. They did introduce certain reforms which ameliorated the effects of some of the worst features of capitalism in the spheres of health, housing, and family support. Collectively, these became known as the ‘Welfare State’ – but they were not socialism. The essential feature of capitalism, that very thing which makes the system one of exploitation and robbery of the mass of wage workers by the ruling class of capitalists, namely the private ownership of the means of production and exchange, this remained untouched. There are many workers who have belonged to the Labour Party, and some who still belong, though far fewer. But this by no means makes it a political party of the workers. All their ‘socialism’ amounted to was state capitalism, in which the state was controlled and run by the capitalist class.
The Socialist Party does not shy away from the electoral struggle, however. We do not seek salvation in the false promises of the capitalist parties nor offer false hope of a reformist road to socialism. We see the election as an opportunity to criticise capitalism. Every political party defends the interest of one class or another in society. On all questions, in every battle, the Socialist Party defends the interests of the working class and works for its victory over the capitalists. We believe that socialism will be brought about by workers’ own efforts, our struggles in the workplace and in society. As Karl Marx put it: “The emancipation of the working class is the act of the workers themselves”.
1 comment:
...arm yourself with mental dynamite
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