No choice but socialism

 

The Socialist Party can understand why many want Boris and the Tories out. They’re an arrogant lot who think they’ve got some divine right to rule while grinding down the poor and lining their own pockets. But it is better to act on the basis of reason rather than such a gut reaction.

The question to ask is: will their replacement by another group of politicians make any difference in our lives?

The argument that it will is based on the illusion that governments have with power to improve economic and social conditions which they don’t actually possess and that all that is needed is to replace one set of politicians who accept inequality by another set who claim that they don’t. Our argument is that what happens in the economic and social field is determined not by what governments want but by the blind workings of the economic laws of the profit system. In other words, it is not governments that control the way the economy works but the way the economy works that places limits on what governments can do and indeed, in the end, virtually dictates what they do. Governments exist to run the political side of the profit system but the profit system can only be run as a system in which priority has to be given to the profit-making. "Profits first” is a basic economic law that all governments must respect.

 

So any government, whatever its political colour or the promises and aspirations of its members, has to do this. This is why a Keir Starmer  government will be no different in practice from the Tory government that has just been voted out, not that the Labour Party is against the profit system even in words.

Maybe you are too young to remember the last Labour government but we can assure you that, if there is a need to maintain or increase profit levels, the new Starmer government will cut back spending on education and the NHS and will discourage trade-union action—just as the earlier Labour Party governments did. If you don’t believe us, just wait and see

 

The striking difference between our approach and the reformist approach is the contrast between our programme and campaigning and that of the various other parties calling themselves socialist. We advocated a fundamental change in the basis of society. They merely offered reforms. We stand for socialism and nothing else. We make no promises as to what “we” would do to make things better under capitalism. We simply say that capitalism can't be reformed to work in the interests of the majority and that the way-out is to get rid of the profit system and replace it by a system based on common ownership and democratic control geared to meeting needs not making profits.

In a bid to get as many votes as possible the Left promised the moon. In other words, they play the game of conventional electioneering politics to the full. However, all their promises are pie-in-the-sky in the sense that capitalism could not afford them. This does not stop these parties entering into great detail about what they would do if elected. The Left are jokers, insulting people’s intelligence. They just pluck figures out of the air to make what they consider attractive promises—but which most people consider ridiculous—without even checking that their various promises are compatible with each other. People are not stupid and clearly do not take these promises seriously. Do they take us for fools? The answer is, yes, they do. As Leninists, they believe that ordinary workers are only capable of acquiring what they call a "trade union consciousness" means which mean wanting more under capitalism. So that’s what they offer to provide for workers, knowing full well that capitalism will be unable to deliver, in the hope that they can get the workers with themselves as the leaders to overthrow capitalism.

People are quite capable of understanding the idea of socialism. What could be easier to understand than a society where productive resources belong to no one but are democratically controlled and used to produce goods and services directly to meet people’s needs and not for profit? People certainly understand very well when someone is just dangling bait before them.