Something
dangerous is happening. Manipulation of the media has become one of
the growth industries where fake-smiles present fake news offering fake
facts. People are abdicating their power to control their own lives
to those committed to the continuation of their exploitation and
whose task is to trample all over their political intelligence. All
sorts of people who profess to know the facts go on telling us that
the old inequalities have disappeared and the rich are no longer with
us. Something dangerous is happening and it is only if we all
organise ourselves for ourselves that it can be overcome.
But
the facts are not really in dispute. The ownership of land,
factories, transport, etc, is still predominantly vested in the
numerically small capitalist class. Capitalism
has performed the historical task of clearing the way for socialism;
apart from anything else it has reduced the class struggle to one
where there are only two classes. When the working class have won the
struggle they can set up socialism immediately; there is no need for
any half way house.
The proponents of a
transitional society never define it in any concrete terms; what sort
of class structure will it have; who will own the means of
production; will there be a coercive state machine? When
the international working class want socialism they can have it; the
socialist revolution is the next step in social evolution and there
is nothing in between.
The
Socialist Party stands in opposition to capitalism, a system of
minority power where the productive machinery is possessed by a
minority class: 10 per cent of the British population own more than
half the accumulated wealth. Under capitalism the vast majority of
people own no major stake in the productive machinery—they only own
their mental and physical energies which they must sell to
capitalists. The working class is in a position of compulsory
exploitation, and are only permitted to produce wealth if it can be
sold on the market. And it will only be sold on the market if it is
profitable for the capitalists. In other words, wealth is produced
under capitalism for profit and not for use. If there is no profit
there are devastating consequences: food is dumped in the sea while
people starve; cars are left standing in fields; homes remain
unoccupied; workers are actually paid not to produce wealth. The
Socialist Party seeks to end the profits system, not to re-arrange
the furniture within it. Our message is quite clear: abandon the
broad church; reject the high priests of the Labour Party and their
self-appointed vanguards; dismiss the archaic dogma of reformism.
When
workers understand socialism they will consciously and democratically
organise their own emancipation. You cannot get social change in the
interest of the majority of the people unless the majority of the
people want it. If the state is not used by the working class it is
going to be used against the working class. So a socialist majority
must gain control of the state machine. The socialist majority will
elect delegates to do what the workers want, not leaders to act on
our behalf. The ruling class cannot rule without the acquiescence of
the working class. Marx wrote in The
Communist Manifesto
that the socialist revolution will be unlike all previous revolutions
because it will be a revolution of the majority. It is true that Socialist Party does not support demonstrations demanding capitalist reform. We do
not kid workers that the system can be humanised.
We
run society from top to bottom; workers produce all the wealth. It is
the working class which possesses the power to determine the future.
Any attempt to establish socialism which left power in the hands of a
parliament committed to the running of capitalism and armed forces
committed to the defence of capitalism would be bound to fail. The
present system survives because of minority power. Any conception of
revolution or social change which is based on working class followers
placing their faith in an enlightened vanguard is fundamentally
anti-socialist. Where access to the state does not exist, workers
must establish political democracy. The Socialist Party wants
socialism without leaders or followers. We don’t need shepherds
because we’re not sheep. It
is claimed that the average worker cannot understand the case for
socialism and that we are too bookish. It is elitism to imagine that
workers cannot understand what we can understand. The Socialist Party
relates theory to experience in all our propaganda: we talk about and
analyse capitalism and socialism. The Socialist Party will not
participate in struggles to appoint new leaders because we are not
followers. The
Socialist Party has a clear analysis of capitalism and our case
against what exists is based on a clear idea of the future socialist
system. Unlike the non-socialists and the reformist organisations,
the Socialist Party seeks to make the working class aware of the
nature of capitalism, the necessity of establishing socialism in its
place, the need for democratic political action to achieve this and
the impossibility of doing so by means of social reforms.
It
is true that the struggles for reforms of the working class, their
resistance to exploitation, have helped to gain “elbow room” and
that these struggles, along with the needs of industrial capitalism,
have brought about, in varying degrees, the electoral franchise and
the possibility of organising and carrying on propaganda. Nowhere has
it produced socialism, nor will it do so. That will be done only
after the working class have been won over to socialism—the
function of socialists and carried on by no-one else. How much
farther and faster the movement for working class emancipation from
capitalism would have gone if, instead of allying themselves with
sterile movements to “reform” capitalism, and nationalist
movements to establish one capitalist rule in place of another, the
working class had understood and acted upon the international
socialist message of the Socialist Party.
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