In
a world of abundance, we suffer from serious shortages and chronic
misery. We face a future that is very bleak indeed unless the system
of exploitation is abolished and replaced with a new socialist
system. It is responsibility of the Socialist Part to rally and
inspire working people. We are mindful, at all times, to keep the
forefront of all our activity: the need to to raise the socialist
consciousness and convince fellow-workers of the necessity for
socialist revolution. There is a silent reaction going on today,
inexorable, unremitting, pitiless, and it is twisting lives of
working people more harshly than many a battle fought on the field.
Union after union, grown accustomed to a familiar routine, has
suddenly found itself grabbed by the scruff of the neck, with all the
complacency shaken out of its officials as they face the spectre of
loss as of members, and years of hard-won achievements in the way of
contracts, seniority accumulations, health and pension funds get
taken from under them. Who is this implacable enemy that has appeared
in our midst, and is spreading disaster in his wake? The media speak
of new technology and artificial intelligence.
The
signs of the growth of automation and increased robotics, the
building up of new industrial centres, are everywhere. Everyone has
heard of ‘automation’ by now and knows it is a new giant stride
in the elimination of human labour in production by the use of
computerised controls. We are entering a distinctly new economic era,
a catastrophic second industrial revolution. Whereas an assembly line
contained a hundred workers, with automation, this same line requires
only a skeleton maintenance crew to service the machine. But this new
technology so expensive, they require such enormous capital outlays,
that even companies that were considered big 10-20 years ago are
unable to raise that kind of investment today. Many will survive only
by permitting themselves to get absorbed by the shrinking number of
giants.
How
are unions meeting this threat? What is the program of the ‘labor
statesmen’ to protect the workingman’s equity in his job, his
seniority and pension rights? How do the officers who head the big
labour federations visualise the union’s role in the changing
economy, and what new strategy or tactics have they devised to
safeguard labour’s position and sustain labour’s strength? If you
are looking for an answer to these questions from the labour leaders,
you have come to the wrong place. They have no answer. All their
elaborate research and legal departments and economic advisers
notwithstanding, the union leaders are as bewildered as the man on
the street. Their actions thus far have been a combination of panic.
On the wage front the picture is a dismal one. The workers are so
demoralised by the job uncertainty, unemployment, outsourcing and
off-shoring of plants, and apparent weakness of the unions, that they
breathe a sigh of relief when their leaders get them a any sort of
increase without their having to strike for it. Labour sights and
goals are getting cut down drastically in this period of reaction and
retreat. But giving up rights won after years of hard struggles is no
solution to anything. Labour cannot even hope by these methods to
stabilise itself on a lower level. Wage cuts and more speed-up are
not a prelude to happier labour-management relationships, but to new
demands for more wage cuts and still more speed-up. The tactic of
conceding wage cuts in order to make businesses ‘more competitive,’
'job security' in the face of unemployment or temporary casual
contracts and conditions, all this has to be stopped in a hurry.
Otherwise, it will not be too many years before working people are on
the receiving end of disaster. Workers cannot afford to mark time
and just hope for things to turn for the better.
It
is our duty as socialists to help guide along right lines the effort
of the workers to choose the correct kind of organisation to fight
their battles in that conflict. According as they choose aright or
wrongly, so will the development of class consciousness in their
minds be hastened or retarded by their everyday experience in class
struggles. In their march to freedom the workers will use every
weapon they find necessary. Tomorrow
belongs to the people. But it can only do so if the people understand
the present state of society and, understanding it, change it. This
change for the working people can only mean the elimination of the
opposing capitalist class. The idea that if we wait things will get
better is mistaken. Capitalism is a disease. Don’t be mesmerised by
leftists running up and down screaming “Revolution”. Don’t be
distracted by one set of reformers demanding a fight against these
particular cuts but not those other cuts. Don’t believe we can
disguise ourselves to infiltrate the Labour Party and take power so
that we can then hand it over to the people. Only the people can take
power. We the people must do it. Why at this time is there so much
talk about workers’ participation from the liberal progressives?
Such calls for workers’ participation is for the purpose of seeing
to it that workers don’t have real control. The only real workers’
control is socialism.
The
Socialist Party deny that reforms can eliminate the injustices of our
society. Those injustices stem from the fundamental character of
capitalism—so the system as a whole must be changed. It has carried
on an unrelenting struggle against reformism in working class
politics, attempting to break the workers from reformist illusions.
There are no automatic, "guaranteed" routes to class
consciousness. The task of socialists is to try to educate people
towards an understanding of what is necessary to change capitalist
society—but no struggle "necessarily" leads to socialist
conclusions.
The
ruling class creates the basic material conditions for its own
downfall. The capitalists, in its drive for profits, continuously
concentrates the means of production and aggravates the contradiction
between the social character of production and the private ownership
of production. The exploitation of the working class and the
oppression of the masses intensifies. This is what is meant when one
says that the proletarian revolution is inevitable. But the working
class, in order to fulfill its historic mission of leading the battle
to overthrow monopoly capital, must become conscious of itself as a
class and of the nature of society. The working class must be armed
with revolutionary class consciousness, and organisation
All
societies, at all times, face the contradiction between the new and
the old, between what is growing and what is dying out. Our society
is dying out. It pollutes all that is fresh, alive, vital, and
growing. The
ballot-box was granted to us by our masters for their purpose; let us
use it for our own. Let us demonstrate at that ballot-box the
strength and intelligence of the revolutionary idea; let us make the
hustings a rostrum from which to promulgate our principles. The
Socialist Party holds that only the working class can bring about
socialism. No other class as a whole has the thoroughgoing interest
in the destruction of capitalism, nor the power and potential
organisational force that the working class has. It is the socialised
conditions of oppression of the working class that bring it into
fundamental contradiction with the individual and private conditions
of ownership that characterise capitalist society.
Our vision remains
undimmed and our resolve unbending. Our
confidence in the party is strengthened by the fact that it has
remained true to the banner of revolutionary internationalism and to
the interests of the working man and working woman at a time when it
counts – during the war. We have not retreated from our principles,
we have not vacillated, we have not given up an inch of them or
sought to gloss them over in the hope of gaining a deceptive and
momentary popularity. And that is how we shall continue to be. Unite
with us for a new age, for a society free of war and oppression, of
exploitation and inequality, for world socialism. There are no
separate roads to socialism. There is only one road and that is the
road of revolution. The purpose and aim of a genuinely revolutionary socialist party is to capture power through a willing majority.
No comments:
Post a Comment