Ideas must be met with ideas

The distribution of wealth begins in the process of production and the fight over the surplus it produces. This is the heart of the labour-capital relationship and of the accumulation process. Capital accumulation will become a source for further expansion and greater exploitation, strengthening the hand of the bourgeoisie over the workers and intensifying the exploitation. The working class has always been inspired by one idea—the overthrow of capitalist society, built on slavery, exploitation and violence. In this struggle of labour against capital, the working class can win only by mustering all their forces against the common enemy, bound in one strong proletarian organisation. This is why for the working class, in order to save itself from economic enslavement and from the menace of war—unity is imperative. It is up to the workers to be ready, and resist with a might never exerted before. Every determined fight binds the workers together more and more and so prepares for the final conflict. Every battle lifts the curtain more and more, clears the heads of our class to their robbed and enslaved conditions, and so prepares them for the acceptance of socialism, and the full development of the class war to the end of establishing socialism.  A win at football is the result of many moves and counter-moves. We do not lie down when our side loses a goal. No, we pull up our sleeves determined to get two goals in return. Let us be up and at ‘em. We attack where we are strong and we attack when the opposition is weak. It’s the “battle plan” for the working class in class warfare.

Without a clear understanding of basic questions, we will hesitate and flounder in confusion. And the capitalist class will gain and keep the initiative. There is no logic, no pattern to the capitalist system. Its apologists and its defenders are almost always wrong. The enemy’s cynicism, the demagoguery and the ability to shift principles are there for all to see.

Certainly, the day-to-day struggle over conditions of work and pay do not automatically lead to revolution; these struggles have been going on in Britain for 300 years; and we would surely have had a revolution by now if they were sufficient. And near on a hundred years of experience of the Labour Party politicking should be enough to convince us that reformist roads to socialism are doomed to fail. The capitalist state is strong enough to accommodate the gradualist manoeuvres of the left wing. Revolution will only occur in Britain when the working class mobilises to assume overthrow the whole capitalist class and assume control over its state machine. The working class is fighting – it has always had to fight for its survival – but that fight is not yet conscious. People learn through the ability of the Socialist Party to sum up the experience of the working class, not simply by hearing abstract calls for socialism.

Racism, nationalism and sexism are the scourges of the working class. It is used by demagogues to set working people at one another’s throats, to prevent a united working class from confronting the capitalists in a powerful class struggle that could put an end to oppression and exploitation once and for all. Capitalism only survives because of its ability to divide and conquer. For peace and good will among the workers of all races, creeds, sexes and nationalities is the beginning of the end of the rule of the bosses. The ruling class knows this all too well. The workers have been slow learning this lesson. The destruction of every barrier; racial, religious, national or otherwise that divides the workers is the first step in strengthening our class. Clearing away all the differences that have been planted in the ranks of the workers by the employers and their stooge politicians, will demonstrate the solidarity of the working class. This solidarity will inevitably express itself in the economic struggles. 

More importantly, these economic struggles will intensify the class struggle, heighten the political thinking of the workers and impel them to decisive political action against the bosses. The employers of the workers are members of another class, an enemy class that conducts continual class warfare against the workers as a class. The bosses know the source of the workers’ dissatisfaction and unrest, that it springs from work, living conditions, and place in society. The argument often used was that if the company’s profits went up by such and such a percent, so the workers’ wages should go up that much, too. With a better understanding of the workers’ “fair share” of the capitalists’ pie-in other words, the crumbs, we try to show how it boils down to a question of one class against another, with no common interests between them.

On with the battle of ideas