Socialism - Pure and Simple

The Socialist Party has always insisted upon two things. Socialism is the only final solution to the problems of modern society. And socialism can be established only by a working class who consciously opt for it because they understand it. This insistence has doubtless hampered our numerical growth. How many applicants have we turned away because, on examination, we have discovered that they were religious or held nationalist attitudes to politics? It might make it easier to gain more support if our attitude were more flexible; if we campaigned for higher pensions. Easier, perhaps; but futile beyond a doubt and In any case, there are enough organisations doing that already and probably making a better job of it. Our achievement, in political terms, is that we have kept out of it. We have kept the only worthwhile issue clear: Socialism versus Capitalism. 

Socialism is a reaction against capitalism and because of this, it is often described in what may seem negative terms. It is often described as a world of withouts—without money, without national barriers, without social classes, and so on. Yet each of these negatives is, in fact, a positive, active element of the future socialist world.

Socialism will be a world without money. This is so because money is essential to Capitalism; in what we are pleased to call an advanced society, it is a convenient method of exchanging wealth. Nobody escapes this. Everyone who works for a living exchanges his labour power for the things he needs to live, and this exchange is carried out by money, in the form of wages.

Money is essential to capitalism because all wealth, in one way or another, is produced for exchange, or sale. This is an inevitable development from the basis of capitalism, which is the class ownership of the materials and apparatus which are needed to produce wealth.

But money is one of capitalism’s symbols of restriction. Most of us never seem to get enough of it; even if we earn a bit more—if, say, we get a rise in wages—we usually find that this is wholly or partly wiped out by a price rise. Money is convenient for capitalism but for most people, it is anything but a good idea.

The end of money, then, also means an end to the restrictions which money entails.

This will not leave an economic vacuum, with no method of circulating goods. Socialism will replace money with a system of free distribution. This will spring from the basis of socialism just as money does from the basis of capitalism.

Socialism will be based upon the universal ownership of all the things which go to produce and distribute wealth. One of the consequences of this will be production for use and free access which all human beings will have to whatever is produced.

No more massive effort will probably be needed for this than is needed to turn out Capitalism’s wealth today. The administration of it will be largely a statistical exercise of finding out where each sort of wealth can best be produced and where it is needed, and arranging production and transport.

There will probably be points of distribution, specially designed to hold and to pass out particular types of goods; bread, for example, will need different facilities from clothing. From these distribution centres people will simply help themselves.

Nobody will go along with a pocketful of metal discs or paper notes. Nobody will have to sign any cheques or surrender any coupons. Because human beings need certain things, they will make them and distribute them. Society will devote its knowledge and energy to the task of satisfying its own needs.

The restrictions and poverty of capitalism, negatived by socialism’s basis, will be replaced by the positives of free availability of goods. Socialism will be man's culmination to his search for control over his environment. It will negative each aspect of capitalism with its own positive. It will replace poverty with abundance, fear with security, repression with freedom, strife with brotherhood. In countless ways, we have kept our political honour. We have not urged workers out to slaughter each other on battlefields. We have not broken strikes, nor planned the production of weapons. We still want now what we wanted when we were formed in 1904—Socialism, simple and, yes, pure. We have seen many upheavals in our time, wars, revolutions, strikes. Our analysis has not faltered and in every basic requirement has been proved correct. This is not to say that we have not made mistakes. We did not envisage what the Nazis did to the Jews with their death-camps.

But perhaps as a political party, our gravest mistake was our optimism in thinking socialism nearer than it was.