For a New World

We repudiate any idea of any socialist party "holding office" or "forming a government". The establishment of socialism will not be like a change of government, with the socialist party winning an election, forming a government and using its parliamentary majority to legislate socialism into being.

We do not say to fellow-workers: "Vote for us and we’ll introduce socialism for you".

What we say is: "If you want socialism, this is something you will have to do for yourselves; only you can establish socialism, not some party on your behalf".

What we are talking about is not a change of government nor a change to be achieved by a government, but a change in the basis of society—a social revolution, to be carried out by the actions of the immense majority. We advocate that this social revolution should be accomplished by democratic political means; so contesting elections, going into parliaments, etc will be involved, but the mechanics of electoral systems in particular countries are mere technical details. The important element is the socialist consciousness and democratic self-organisation of the working class who are the immense majority.

When the socialist movement has reached the stage when it is near to winning control of political power—the socialist political party really will be the majority working class organised politically for socialism. This means that it will be up to the socialist-minded majority itself to decide how to handle the sort of tactical issues you raise as hypothetical problems.

All we can say now is that whatever is decided will be decided democratically, in the light of the fact that socialism cannot be established unless and until a majority want it, and in accordance with the socialist principle that under no circumstances should socialists take on any responsibility for running capitalism.

The change-over to the situation you mention where a person elected for a locality would be the mandated delegate of the people of that locality won’t be able to take place until a classless society has been established. This, along with the procedures and practices it implies—report-back meetings, mandating conferences, referendums, right of recall, rotation of posts, etc— will in fact be the basis of the democratic decision-making structure of the new society. Socialists see society and the individual as reciprocal terms; the one couldn’t exist without the other.

We don’t want power; we want the majority to take power into their own hands. This in fact is the aim of the socialist revolution: to bring the means of production under the democratic control of all the people. But if this is the case why not organise just to take over the means of production? Why bother to also organise to win control of parliament and the state? This has been the main difference between us and those anarchists (by no means a majority, by a long way) who agree that common ownership can only come about through the majority organising themselves consciously and democratically.

We favour the socialist majority taking electoral action, as well as organising at their places of work, because we see this as the best way for them to ensure that the socialist revolution proceeds as smoothly and peaceably as possible. To try to ignore the state, whose role today is to uphold and protect capitalist property rights, would be a completely irresponsible policy as this would be to increase rather than minimise the risk of violence. Given the existence of a socialist majority, the sensible way to proceed would be to use the vote to take the control of parliament out of the hands of the supporters of capitalism, so neutralising the state while at the same time giving the socialist revolution an unchallengeable democratic legitimacy.

Unless you subscribe to the so-called “iron law of oligarchy" which says that elected representatives will always sell out, you have to explain why the socialist majority would be able to control the delegates it might send to some such extra-parliamentary body as a congress of workplace committees or a conference of neighbourhood councils (or whatever else it is you see as the alternative to parliament) but not those it sent into parliament. We say that, if they can do it in the one case, they can do it in the other too.

The phrase “workers’ control” is today frequently used as if it were some sort of definition of socialism. In fact it is not, implying as it does the continued existence of a working class and control of the productive system by units less than society. Clear thinking is uncommon on this whole question of workers’ control. It seems to be a slogan full of meaning. A closer examination discloses its inadequacy. 

The Socialist Party recognises the need for an organisation to arrange the affairs of society as a whole via a network of interconnected free federations of local communities with as much decentralisation as feasible. In our view the State, as a coercive instrument, only flourished in class societies and was the instrument whereby a ruling class controlled society. In the class-free society of the future there would be no coercive government machine, control would be purely administrative. With socialism, there could be no permanent conflict groups; society as a whole would exercise democratic control over the means of production.