Vast changes are taking place in the world. Those who try to investigate what is going on around them are fobbed off by politicians with trivial phrases and meaningless soundbites. Too often our reaction is to be turn off by politics altogether, to becoming completely cynical to frequently feel powerless and to sink into apathy. The Labour Party is committed to an all-out effort to make capitalism work indefinitely. It does not see a revolutionary transformation of society as the way to solve the problems capitalism has shown itself incapable of solving. It does not want power to pass from the existing state to a revolutionary society set up by the workers to dispossess the capitalist class and create a class-free society. But there is no escape from the problems of our time. We cannot remain passive about issues which affect our daily lives. The slogan calling for unity neglects the vital question: unity for what purpose? It glosses over the class struggle and the need for the workers to increase their own understanding and become conscious that their class has the power to carry through the necessary revolutionary transformation of society.
In every epoch the class commanding the means of production was the governing class. In the Middle Ages, before the manufacture of commodities, the land-owning barons were the dominant class. In this age of commodity production the owners of factories, machinery, raw materials, and banks, constitute the capitalist class which is the dominant class. As methods of production change, those interested in the new methods find their development restricted by the laws and customs framed by the ruling class. Gradually, the class that depends for its rise to power upon the development of the new methods of production grows in numbers and influence, and assumes definite opposition to the existing order. Ultimately the ruling class is driven from power, and the control of society passes into the hands of the class that represents the new methods of production. These now reconstruct society in order to allow the free development of the system, favourable to themselves. In this way the capitalist class gained power, overthrew the landed aristocracy, and instituted constitutional government. The change may be rapid, as in the French Revolution, or slow as in England, where the struggle between the rising capitalist class and the landed aristocracy commenced with the Cromwellian Revolution and did not terminate in the victory of the middle class until the passing of the Reform Act.
In each form of society, there have developed certain antagonisms: the struggle of classes has arisen and created the movement for the overthrow of the existing order. The change does not come from without, but from within, and as a result of conditions created in the old order. Modern capitalism is subject to the same laws as the preceding forms of society. The capitalists’ exploitation of the propertyless worker engenders the class antagonism. The methods of production have changed from simple individualist manufacture to complex machine production. Production is no longer individual, but co-operative. Already the foundations of the new order are laid. The superstructure will be raised when the passage from individual to co-operative production has been completed by the cooperative ownership of the means of production in place of private ownership. We say that the only class—as a class—that is interested in this change is the working class. Socialism, therefore, must come through the medium of the working-class action. Whatever its faults, it is this working-class alone that can take power and establish the Cooperative Commonwealth. It must, of course, possess the necessary ardour before it can achieve this objective.
Marx did not intend his message for select disciples. Marx viewed the working class as a whole. From his vast store of knowledge, he deduced that the workers, by their adoption of the principles he had enunciated, would fulfil his anticipations of the form the working-class movement would ultimately take. To Marx, the workers when they become socialists do not become different from the rest of the working class. Their change in thought is evidence of transformation in the working-class movement. They remain of the workers, struggling with them for emancipation. There are ‘socialists’ who pose as superior but, in any case, the advance of socialism is governed by the progress of socialist thought among the workers. The current socialist movement of today cannot bring about socialism.
The Co-operative Commonwealth will be inaugurated by the majority action of the mass of workers. To assert the contrary is a denial of the very principles Marxists support. Steadily the workers move along the road to socialism. Circumstances compel them to take that road. Economic laws operate whether they are known or not, but if we understand their operation we can bend them to our purpose pad assist society along the course it tends to travel.
As a Socialist Party, we must bring this knowledge to the workers and what tactics must be pursued to that end. The necessity for political action is essential. Whenever the power of the governing class asserts itself, then the workers must fight. The State is the political expression of the dominant class, and since that dominant class uses the machinery of the State—law, justice, coercive forces—to maintain its own privileges and to impose its will upon the labouring mass, the workers contest their claims by political action. The distinction between political and industrial action is false; they are the two poles of the same movement. The reason why some participate in the every-day struggle in the industrial field, and yet decline to take a part in political action, is that they regard industrial action as more important than political. That belief is without justification. If the political movement is the pole, opposite to the industrial movement, the standard of political activity is governed by the level of industrial activity. When a worker votes for a Socialist Party candidate he or she votes against the whole of the capitalist class; votes for one's own class without regard for craft or industrial divisions. The Socialist Party does not act for a particular group, but for the whole working class.
The Labour Party is not a socialist party. Socialist parties are an integral part of the working-class movement. They are the centre from which propaganda is disseminated; members of the trade unions should be the agents of the socialist parties. The stronger the socialist body the better can it permeate the working-class movement. Socialist parties give imagination, and vitality to the workers’ movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment