This is real socialism

Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), while the great majority of the population consists of proletarians or semi-proletarians. Because of their economic position, this majority can only exist by permanently or periodically selling their labour power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes. Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class (the proletariat) by the capitalist class. In Britain and Europe capitalist economic relations (those between the class of capitalist employers and the class of wage workers) grew up within feudalism and became dominant with the overthrow of the feudal social order which took place in the revolutions of 1640 and 1688 in Britain, and later on in Europe.

For the workers, capitalism has meant widespread unemployment, accompanied by homelessness. At the same time, the exploitation of those in jobs has become more intense. Mass poverty escalates while multi-million fortunes are accumulated by the capitalist class. The development of exchange throughout history has led in the modern world to close ties being established between all the civilised nations on earth. The emergence of capitalism as a social system greatly accelerated this process. It also brought forth two powerful, antagonistic classes, the decisive classes of the system: capitalists and workers. Its international character meant that the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation from class exploitation and oppression also became, and has remained, international.

The contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation is the basic contradiction of the capitalist system, impelling its development and giving rise to the motive force of capitalist society, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It also manifests itself as an antagonism between the high level of organisation in the individual factory or enterprise on the one hand, and on the other, the anarchy of production prevailing in the social economy as a whole. The anarchy of production is the tendency of capitalist producers, in general, to produce to the maximum without regard to their competitors or to the capacity of the market to absorb their production. Technological development under capitalism, stimulated by competition, together with other conditions favourable to the concentration of capital, leads to the steady growth of larger enterprises at the expense of many small ones. At the same time, it reduces the employers’ demand for human labour, which lags behind the supply, resulting in the development of a large pool of unemployed, a ’reserve army’ of labour, and in the intensified exploitation of those in work. The existence of such a reserve army enables capitalism to expand rapidly in ’normal’ times, providing a ready-to-hand supply of extra labour in boom times which can be laid off whenever it suits capital. It can be seen, then, that while technical progress brings about the greater productivity of labour and increased social wealth, it cannot get rid of the evils of capitalism or solve the problems of the working class. Rather, it intensifies them. Only socialism, which results from the class struggle of workers against capitalists, can solve them. Production is socialised to an ever-greater degree while the means of production are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Social production and the socialisation of labour are enhanced by the advance of technology, creating a material basis for the transformation of capitalism into socialism i.e., classless society. That is, it becomes both possible and necessary for the working class, the main and decisive productive force in capitalist society, to carry out a social revolution which it is the historic mission of the working class to accomplish. By replacing private ownership of the means of production by common ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned production organised for the well-being and development of all of society, the socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another.

In Britain, the Independent Labour Party was formed in 1893. Marxists called it the “Independent of Socialism” party as it was never Marxist or revolutionary; it was, as Frederick Engels called it, “the bourgeois Labour Party”. So despite rhetoric about the early Labour Party being more “socialist”, there was nothing genuinely socialist about them. It was all phony propaganda. What left-wing Labourites seek to establish is state capitalism, not socialism - the capitalists are still the ruling class, and the working class was still the exploited class. The Labour Party in its early years relied on the working-class for its support and most of its members were working people. To some, this is taken as a sign that Labour was a workers’ party. Yet whether a party is actually a political party of the working class does not depend merely on a membership of workers but also upon the people who lead it, its programme, the content of its actions and political policies. The history of the Labour Party that we have outlined shows that it has never been a genuine workers’ party. Time after time workers’ living conditions and democratic rights have actually got worse under Labour governments.