First of all it is a wrong conception to believe that
socialism is going to be introduced by a socialist Government acting as an
entity separate and apart from the people and managing their affairs for them.
There will be no socialism until a majority understand socialism and organise
to get it. They will decide what they want done and how they want it done. Once
political power has been obtained, they, the majority, will decide how the
proceeds of production are to be distributed among the members of society.
Apart from the early period when there may be an insufficiency of certain kinds
of goods (a heritage from capitalism) goods will be freely accessible to the
members of society. There will be no private ownership of the means of life,
hence no relationship of employers and employed and no buying and selling of
labour-power. In other words, there will be no wages because there will be no
system of wage-labour.
Under capitalism the
means of production and the products are the private property of the capitalist
class. Money serves the purpose (among others) of enabling workers and
capitalists to realise in a convenient form their respective shares of the
products which the workers produce and the capitalists own; the workers’ share
being their wages based on their cost of living. A money system is neither
necessary nor possible under socialism. The means of production and the
products will no longer be privately owned. The workers will not be in the
position of selling their labour-power to a propertied class, and goods will
not be the object of buying and selling transactions because buying and selling
are only conceivable between private owners. Money will have lost its purpose
and there will be no financial questions.
The workers are always having it drummed into them that they
have a common interest with the capitalist class in maintaining capitalism. We
are not concerned with the financial policy debates that arise under capitalism
between the different sections of the capitalist class, although these
questions greatly exercise the so-called “left-wing” organisations. They
conceive it to be their duty or their interest to try to teach the capitalists
how best to run capitalism, whereas we are concerned with pointing out to the
workers how to get socialism.
The Socialist Party does not want to ‘nationalise the means
of production. We, want to do nothing of the kind. Nationalisation or state
capitalism is an arrangement by which the capitalists exploit the working class
through the Government instead of through private companies. Under
nationalisation the capitalists receive their property-incomes as before and
remain the owners of the means of production. The difference consists in the
holding of Government securities instead of company shares. It often means the
replacement of a varying ratio of interest by a fixed rate. The change is in
the interests of some of the capitalists. It is not in the interest of the
working class. The Socialist Party has always opposed nationalisation. What
socialism consists of is the removal of the capitalist class from their
privileged positions as owners and controllers of the means of production and
distribution. The change is a simple one. When a majority of the workers are
socialist and are organised in the Socialist Party, they will gain control of
the machinery of Government. By so doing they will have taken away from the
capitalist class their only means of retaining their hold over the means of
production, etc. Their political power taken from them, the capitalists will
then just cease to be a propertied class.
The power of the capitalist to own and control his
factories, land, workshops, &c., and only to permit these things to be used
by the workers when and on such conditions as he thinks fit, is based on the
laws of property and the armed forces which enforce those laws. That power is
centred in Parliament and the rest of the political machinery, because it is
Parliament which makes those laws and Parliament which maintains and controls
the other political machinery and those armed forces. The Bank of England, like
other private business concerns, exists and operates only by virtue of Acts of
Parliament. It has no "power” and indeed no existence except that which
Parliament permits. This fact is obscured by the circumstance that usually the
capitalists in control of Parliament and the capitalists in control of the Bank
of England either belong to the same group or see eye to eye because they have
identical interests.
Very often a question posed to Socialist Party election
candidates is “Why stand when you can’t win?” Our reply is that the goal of the
campaign to inspire working people with an alternative vision of how society
can run. We, in the Socialist Party, need to present a view of a democratic
socialist society which can only be achieved through building a mass social
movement. The reorganisation and transformation of our society, from a
capitalist to a socialist society requires understanding, knowledge and the
bonds of fraternity forged in the course of a struggle. The task that lies
before us all is to build the confidence and the understanding, the political
clarity which comes only through struggle that will enable the workers to take
on and defeat not just an individual employer, but the entire employing class.
It requires perseverance. Global warming and global warfare are not problems
for politicians to solve while the rest of look on. What’s emerging from all this is that
humanity has to evolve for its own survival, and evolution is going to take all
of us. We’re all in it together.
Today, the two looming “existential” threats are the
possibility of nuclear war, and unprecedented climate change, yet neither of
these seems to unduly concern our politicians. Brexit, a dispute between two
capitalist class factions makes the daily headlines. Capitalism thrives on war,
and we forget this historical fact at our peril. Nor do they seem worried about
the drastic consequences of global warming, which has been denied, ignored, or
downplayed in the media.
Workers creates the wealth and power that is then used
against them. To be competitive, capitalists replace workers with machinery
(computers and robotics) and cut wages. Weaker capitalists go bankrupt; their
businesses are absorbed by the stronger, and ownership is concentrated into
fewer hands. Workers’ organised ability to protect themselves from capital has
waxed and waned. Today, it seems to be at a low point. Nevertheless, the
capitalist class fears a mass international revolutionary working-class
movement with the potential to end their rule and replace it by a productive
system based not on the exploitation of the many for the profit of a few, but
on human need: from each according to abilities to each according to needs.
After a hundred plus years of campaigns to discredit, distort, defame, and
demonise, the spectre of such a movement still haunts the ruling class.
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