Changing the world

Under capitalism, the conditions of labour are dictated by supervisors who are driven to maintain or increase profits by the fear of losing their jobs. With socialism, where the whole people owned the land and means of wealth production, they would arrange their own conditions of labour. They would naturally adopt the shortest, easiest and safest methods to achieve their objectives because such a course would give them the maximum amount of leisure. In any case, freedom to exercise craft pride would be possible in socialism, under capitalism it is not. The worker’s business is to work. He or she must work in such a way as to satisfy the capitalist greed for profits; there is no time for him or her to find pleasure in it.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to replace a society divided into property-owners and non-property-owners, by a system of society in which the only claim to the enjoyment of wealth produced, will be the rendering of service by all who are fit to do so. This involves the suppression of all incomes derived from the ownership of property, but does the Labour Party propose that suppression? If not, the Labour Party is not a socialist party, and cannot be trusted to advance socialism. The capitalist class does, at present, own and control the means of producing wealth, and will not, without compulsion, yield its legal right to live by the ownership of property. Rather than face this fact, rather than admit that the class struggle exists and can be abolished from society only by the victory of the working-class majority, the Labour Party proclaims its belief in the possibility of achieving socialism without destroying the property rights of the capitalist class. It believes that it has found a solution to the ancient problem of making omelettes without breaking eggs. It will have “socialism” without “confiscation.”

All of the Labour Party’s nationalisation proposals involve the payment of compensation in the shape of interest-bearing bonds to the former owners. Now, apart from the futility of trying to introduce socialism piecemeal, industry by industry, what will be the position when the Labour Party has finished nationalising all the essential services? The capitalist class will still be property-owners —their property being Government Bonds instead of company shares, etc. They will still live by owning, and without rendering service.

The working class will still be engaged in producing wealth for the benefit of the capitalist class. Socialism will not be in existence, and no important working-class problem will have been solved.

The alternative advocated by us is to propagate socialism and organise the working-class in a Socialist Party on a clear-cut socialist programme.  The working-class are the great majority. When they become Socialist they will endeavour to obtain possession of the machinery of government in the usual “constitutional” way.

 Until a larger number of the workers understand and desire socialism, mass media devoted to the propaganda of socialist principles remains a project for the future. In the meantime, this blog will continue to advance the object of the Socialist Party, which seeks to organise all workers who desire to replace the present system of capitalism by a system based upon the possession and administration by the whole community of the means necessary to produce and apportion wealth to the full needs of all.