What socialism is not

It is impossible to exaggerate the harm done to the socialist movement by those who, calling themselves socialists, have taught the workers to believe that state-capitalism and social reform are socialism. Millions of workers all over the world have, through this misdirection, been led to support some form of capitalism, trusting that it would solve their problems.  We in the Socialist Party have always been conscientious in explaining what we understand socialism to mean. But being so concerned about being misinterpreted has permitted our critics to ridiculed our principled position as “doctrinaire” or “dogma”. What events have proved is that the Socialist Party's insistence on the need for clear ideas about socialism has been repeatedly justified. What then is Socialism? Socialism is a system of human society of a special kind. Its fundamental is the common ownership of all that is necessary to the common good. This implies the end of buying and selling and the end of the wages system. Now is the time, not for day-dreaming or for getting out plans for reforming capitalism, but for deep thought about the nature of the capitalist system and of its opposite, socialism.

Capitalism moves in cycles of growth and stagnation, boom and bust, job creation and job cuts, increasing and declining investment. It always has, and it always will for as long as it exists. Under the capitalist system, there’s little planning for the ebbs and flows of economic life.  The profits system is not a government-ruled command structure directed by any single state authority – not even that of the president of the world capitalist system’s most powerful state, the United States. If capitalism is in one of its recurring recessions, then the party not in power blames all the woes for the crisis upon the party in office, often including the mess it had inherited. When capitalism is (or seems to be) on an upswing, creating jobs, the ruling government takes the credit for the current state of the business cycle. Whoever is in government would like its citizens to believe it is somehow directly responsible for the economic expansion. Little mention is made by either the ruling party or its opposition that the boom is built on the persistently low wages and weak benefits granted to workers, that the stock-market share prices are inflated in a momentary bubble which will burst eventually, and that the growing prosperity is being concentrated corporate and financial hands, the harbingers of the inevitable crash. One thing we can be sure about is that the next economic crisis is coming.

 Unless a fundamental change in the basis of society is carried out, the world's resources will still be privately owned and utilised for the purpose of profit-making. There will still be two classes with antagonistic interests, one class living by rent, interest, and profit, the other living by selling its labour-power for wages or salary. True, this is “wicked” in the sense that it is unnecessary, but it can only be removed by abolishing its cause, the private ownership of the means of wealth-production and distribution. While there is private ownership (including so-called “public” ownership or State capitalism) it is impossible to have harmony and identity of interest between the classes. The only way to abolish class struggle is to abolish the classes. The post-capitalist world will not just happen. It will correspond to the development of the ideas of the majority. The effort now devoted to thinking out the basic causes of the problems of riches and poverty, unemployment and strikes, will be more valuable than years of scheming to soften the rigours of the capitalist system.

There are many consequences to the daily barrage of lies produced by the capitalist media. The idea of the socialist vision is not pie in the sky.  If you do not desire to continue to live under capitalism you have but one single, simple alternative. How long capitalism endures is a matter for those who suffer under it and who are misled by it—the working class. They have the power to establish a society of harmony. We are talking here about a massive movement of ideas—no less than a majority revolution to overthrow one social system and replace it with another, a historically unique act. This world is owned by a few. Why not consider the possibility of us, the producers in this world, taking it over and running it in the interest of all, with human needs the dominant factor.

The Socialist Party is unique in keeping open platform for the expression of the point of view of opponents. We oppose all forms of suppression, not in response to some abstract principle, but because we recognise that socialist society demands for its operation, as for its achievement, a responsible, intelligent population, used to drawing its own conclusions from the observation of facts and the weighing up of the arguments of opposing schools of thought. We only know our position to be correct because it survives continuous criticism. We do not deny that suppression may be immediately useful to the British governing class. We do deny that it can serve the purpose of the socialist movement.