Workers' Control

 

Socialism is a product of the mass movement, and can never divorce itself from practice. Socialism is not an idle dream. Socialism is the ideal and ideology of the exploited class. It can be misleading simply to advocate seeking happiness for all humanity, as humanity is not a whole, and it is divided into two antagonistic classes. We are materialists, We understand that the arrival of social revolution cannot be determined by our good intentions. Only a social revolution can allow us to build a really free and really egalitarian society. Today "freedom” and “equality" are part of the vocabulary of each and every one of us. However, the reality is that those words mean that the capitalists can loot the common wealth of our planet and are allowed to live in peace. The people who stand most vehemently against socialist ideas are those who understand them the least.

“Reformism” is the doctrine of those who, while saying they support a social transformation of society propose to arrive at this goal by a series of reforms realised within the framework of Parliament. Those political parties who say they are of the “vanguard” and proclaim themselves revolutionary are all more or less reformist. The more reformist they are, the less revolutionary they are, and, consequently, the less revolutionary they are, the more reformist they are. There is but one plank for the Socialist Party platform - the abolition of wage slavery. It is important to recognise reformism as traps and lures to divert our movement from its aim of emancipation. The Socialist Party is frequently accused of professing the doctrine of “all or nothing.” In this accusation there is some truth, but only some. 

The Socialist Party holds that involvement in daily struggles is not inherently reformistic. Indeed, such involvement, conducted in principled, class conscious, non-opportunistic fashion is an indispensible aspect of the class war. In practical terms, the worker can, by participating in workers' daily struggles, gain first hand knowledge and experience that will aid him or her in improving strategy and tactics thus bringing socialist perspectives to the attention of the workers involved. We will not declare themselves satisfied and won’t be so until we have forever ended capitalism and substituted for it, our principle: the well-being for each and for all. All our work is aimed at this goal:  economic and social liberation, the complete emancipation of the workers, the producing class.  We seek to free those who are exploited and enslaved by the capitalist system.

Cooperatives and employee-owned businesses resolve none of the basic problems facing workers under capitalism. All the basic relations of capitalist production, exploitation of wage labor, production for sale and profit, and the like remain in effect. It isworker capitalism, not worker management. No matter who owns it, it's going to have to be run like a conventional enterprise.

Even if an individual "worker-owned" company were to be run collectively and democratically by its workers, it would still function within the overall context of a capitalist economy. "Worker ownership" does not miraculously free a company from the anarchy of the marketplace, competition, and the effects of capitalism's recurrent economic crises. In order to compete in such a climate, "worker-owned" enterprises have little choice but to intensify exploitation just as much as their capitalist-owned competitors do. They must, modernise outmoded equipment and lay off workers made superfluous by automation, and pay the market rate for wages, and no higher.

It is understandable that at times such as these of insecurity some workers will be attracted to the idea of "worker-ownership." They are desperately seeking ways to assure a livelihood for themselves and their families. But the experience of cooperative schemes demonstrates that they do not attack the cause of workers' misery. In fact, to make such schemes "succeed" in a capitalist context, workers must make more sacrifices and intensify their own exploitation.

Yet, such schemes do demonstrate that production in no way depends on the superintence of the  capitalist class whose sole function is to drain off the social wealth produced by workers' labor. But, if the concept of worker ownership is to truly benefit workers, it must be effected on a society-wide basis. To do that, a socialist revolution is needed to abolish the entire system based on private ownership and control of the means of production by a parasitic capitalist class. The potential of worker ownership can be fully realised only by replacing an economic system based on exploitation, competition, the market and the profit motive with one based on social co-operation for the common good. What workers must gain is not nominal ownership of individual enterprises, but real control of the entire economy.