Social Democracy is Socialism

 

Social Democracy is but another term for socialism. The words "freedom and equality" are part of the political vocabulary of each and every one of us. But if asked: What is freedom? and you will be told, "Freedom means freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, freedom of association and assembly".

Ask: What is equality? and you will be told: "All citizens are equal before the law, with no difference between the high-born and the yokel."

Such definitions have nothing to do with true freedom or true equality. 

A revolution in one country is certainly not feasible. Also from an economic point of view. An economic crisis cannot remain isolated in one country. It transcends as you know all countries. The system is international. 

The Socialist Party is positive and constructive. It stands for complete political and industrial democracy. We earnestly urge all fellow workers to join us to bring order out of chaos and happiness out of misery. The struggle of the proletariat for emancipation must be fought along political lines, using in the immediate struggle the parliamentary phase of political action by electing where possible our representative to political office. Our first aim must be winning to our cause the mass of the proletariat by propagating revolutionary principles. The great goal toward which we all strive, namely, industrial democracy – that is, that the working class may own, control and manage the industries for themselves.  Socialists reason workers will be willing to fight for their complete emancipation from capitalist wage slavery. The only question is: When?

Failing to understand the functions of the state, workers do not know that as long as the capitalist class are in control of it they must put into effect all legislation, and we can be certain that they are not going to legislate to benefit the working class. We, the Impossibilists, have always been charged by them for not being constructive. They were the “practical” socialists. What have they done that is constructive? These “socialists” who were always crying “constructive work” have performed no constructive work themselves. They can point to nothing that they have done that has been of any material benefit to the socialist movement. As for performing any educational work or developing the members of the movement, they have done nothing.

Capitalist Exploitation.

 The essence of the capitalist system is the ownership and control of the materials and tools of production and distribution by a small class whose legal title to the lands, forests, mines, railroads, quarries, mills, factories, and other industrial and commercial utilities and plants gives them control over the lives of the working masses. The workers subsist in a new form of slavery, wherein labour-power is paid for by wages, and the bare chance to live depends upon employment by some capitalist master. Employment depends upon the production by the worker of a margin of value over and above what he receives for his labour-power. The capitalist master has no liability on account of the wage-worker, except that of payment for labour-power on a time or piece basis.

The concentration of ownership and control of the economic resources of the nation in the hands of a few individuals or corporations means even more arbitrary control of the lives of the working masses by a decreasing capitalist class. It means artificial manipulation of production for maximum returns on investment, that is, the attempt to limit production so as to maintain the desired level of prices. Not only lessened production and higher prices result from the very progress of capitalism — by the innate character of the system — but also constantly recurring periods of interrupted production with hundreds of thousands of workers thrown out of their only means of livelihood, the blind, servile victims of a system which response to but one impulse — profit.

If there is anything the capitalist class likes and which it tries to bring about, it is to have the workers resort to armed insurrection methods. Engels’ preface to The Civil War in France, gives the death blow to the advocates of physical force. After pointing out that the development of capitalism had rendered barricade fights and armed insurrection obsolete from the revolutionist’s standpoint; after characterising the revolutionist who would select the working-class districts as the starting point for a violent upheaval as a lunatic; Engels goes on to say: “Does the reader now understand why the ruling class, by hook or by crook, would get us where the rifle pops and the sabre slashes? Why, today, do they charge us with cowardice because we will not, without further ado, get down into the street where we are SURE OF OUR DEFEAT IN ADVANCE? Why are we so persistently importuned to play the role of cannon fodder?”

 The SPGB is opposed to violence or the advocacy of violence in the labour movement because it knows that such tactics are playing right into the hands of the capitalist class. It is not cowardice that dictates the SPGB position but common sense and it is not heroism or bravery that dictates the advocacy of violence by the Workers Party. It is not heroism that makes a fool rock a boat in deep water, it is idiocy. We can go a step further than Engels and say that he who advocates violence today is either a lunatic or a police spy.

The SPGB alone of all the organisations on the political field has a concrete platform, clear, concise, and logical, and it is the only one possible of inaugurating. The SPGB alone points the way to freedom.

What we are striving for is a transformation of the foundations of society, that is, the emancipation of labour.