The Road to Socialism

The Socialist Party’s conception of revolution is often criticised for its lack of credibility since it is assumed that people have to wait for the overwhelming majority necessary to “enact” socialism before doing something about their immediate problems. The Party does argue that the work for socialism must be the building up of a majority of socialists who will then be in a position to remove the capitalist features from production as a conscious political act and that until a socialist majority is achieved, the class monopoly of the means of production, the wage-labour/capital relationship, commodity production, the operation of the market, and the state, will continue to be both the form of social production and its administration by governments. The Party’s theory of revolution insists that socialism can only be established by the democratic, conscious political actions of a majority of socialists and it is not just any theory culled from a textbook of bourgeois sociology. The theory is based both on the class struggle as the motor of social change and on an understanding of the economics of capitalism and the limits it places on what can be done within the framework of the capitalist system.

Members of the Left reject the Party’s theory of revolution as “impossible”. Their argument was that without a majority of socialists, and prior to the formal enactment of common ownership, a working-class government could set society on a course of change in the direction of socialism. In control of the state and all legal processes, such a government would grant the widest freedom of action to the trade unions and thus set up a partnership with the trade unions pursuing working class interests on the industrial field and a government doing the same on the political field.

The unions would maximise the workers’ share of the social product at the point of production. The government would provide housing, health care, and education, etc. At the same time, such a working-class government would begin the process of establishing common ownership through the nationalisation of the means of production and through “taxing the rich out of existence”.

The Party rejected this gradualist policy at the beginning of the century and this rejection has been vindicated by experience and has led to the Party’s traditional case for abolishing class ownership by one short, sharp political act. With a growing socialist majority, the class struggle will take new forms, not least because the ruling class will become ever more cunning and ruthless as its hegemony is more and more threatened. Critics have accused the Socialist Party with some foolish ideas which we do not hold such as the use of Parliament alone. The Party is aware that the use of parliament by a socialist majority is just one part of a much broader movement for change in which the revolutionised ideas and activities of millions of class-conscious workers will be rather more important than the actions of delegates in parliament. 

 The Socialist Party presents our objective as an immediate solution to the problems of the present and not as a futuristic utopia. All serious socialists do this. What on earth would be the point of proposing an alternative to capitalism which will only be capable of liberating workers after they are dead?  Our appeal to workers is upon the basis of class interest and our appeal will be successful because the class struggle generates class consciousness in workers. Most people who like socialism as a “nice idea” but despair about its achievements are utopians, and as such, they lack a sense of liberation as an historical phenomenon—a product of victory in the class war. 

The reason why the Socialist Party rejects the gradualist theory and policy is that the Party’s theory of revolution was formulated from an application of Marxian economic theory to the workings of capitalism on the one hand, and from the nature of socialism on the other. This established a framework of limitations and possibilities of what could be achieved by the working class acting in its interests. From this work, it became a political premise that the economic operation of capitalism could not be controlled in a manner which would allow for any gradual realisation of working-class interests amounting to the gradual establishment of socialism. Moreover, a society which would be consciously and democratically controlled by its members in the interests of all its members could only be established by the conscious political act of a majority. This is what the Left reject—thoroughly and out of hand—even in face of the fact that the force of the Party’s arguments has not diminished with the passing of time; on the contrary, as capitalism has continued to develop as a world system, it has become more compelling.

 It is highly demonstrative that the contemporary Left has failed to offer strategies for the struggle other than reformist ones: struggle for minorities’ rights, for women’s equality, for the rights of immigrants and homeless, defending the environment and so on, that is they have offered actions aimed at improving capitalism partially (which helps to make capitalism more attractive to a greater number of people and thus decreases the number of socialist fighters) not at destroying it. And certainly all this, does not pose any threat to the rule of capital. A socialist revolution, which can only be worldwide and which will not run in the same pattern common for the previous bourgeois and state-capitalist revolutions is not a matter of the distant future.

The  Left, at best, talk of the need to "transcend" capitalism in general, in some distant future but do not call for an immediate struggle for social revolution. There are those (although few in number and weak in influence) and who do. But somehow their calls fail to ring the bell with wide, and even narrow, masses of the workers. When the ruling classes are forced to take such a measures against the workers that will inevitably blow up the class peace, i.e. to refuse to limit the working day, to terminate the dole system, to actually eliminate the social infrastructure of the welfare state, to crack down on protests, these circumstances may lead to the class organisations of workers (such as trade unions) radicalising, to the capitalist society betraying its class nature, to the general public opening up to the revolutionary propaganda, and consequently, to the class struggle reviving and then to a social revolution.

The Socialist Party's aim is a revolutionary change in society. Socialism does not mean a different kind of government or State control of industry. It means a completely different social system, based on the ownership of all the means of life by everybody. Socialism means a world where the things of life will be produced solely to satisfy the needs of mankind, instead of for the purpose of realising a profit for your bosses; a world where the whole of humanity will own and control the means of living and where wars and international strive cannot exist: a world where people will no longer be subject to the threat of unemployment and to the perpetual struggle to make ends meet—in short, a world where everyone will freely and equally associate and enjoy all the fruits of their labour. We're talking about a world community without any frontiers. About wealth being produced to meet people's needs and not for sale on a market or for profit. About everyone having access to what they require to satisfy their needs, without the rationing system that is money. A society where people freely contribute their skills and experience to produce what is needed, without the compulsion of a wage or salary.  There is no need for the food we eat, or the clothes we wear, or the houses we live in, to be restricted by the size of our wage packets. There is no need for the output of factories and farms to be restricted by having to make a profit. The productive resources are sufficient to make it possible to abolish buying and selling and thus money and to go over to free distribution of the things people need.

How is the Socialist Party is going to do all this? The answer is that it is not. YOU are going to do it. No politician can help you.