Self-Management or Self-Exploitation

A co-operative is simply self-exploitation

People are suffering and hungry for a solution. People are becoming increasingly atomised, alienated, and anxious. With the financialisation of capital and globalisation it seems that power is concentrating in the hands of a few – a class – the elite capitalist class. The situation that we are in is getting worse politically, socially, and economically, and a Left that is so divided we can't get organized to oppose the powers that be. Today the Left faces the same problem that it has faced since the 1800s, which is being comprised of so many factions that there is no popular and radical force to challenge the current power structure.

Gallup in 2013 showed that 70% of workers "emotionally disconnected" and approximately 20% are "actively disengaged" meaning that they are acting out their unhappiness and, effectively, sabotaging their workplaces. Productivity and profitability are higher for cooperatives than for capitalist firms. It makes little difference whether the Mondragon group is compared with the largest 500 companies, or with small- or medium-scale industries; in both comparisons the Mondragon group is more productive and profitable. The major basis for co-operative success, and the survival of capitalistically unprofitable plants, has been superior labor productivity, higher physical volume of output per hour, higher quality of product and also economy of material use. The point is that the survival of firms is determined neither by productivity nor the volume of profit, but by the rate of profit. Firms whose rate of profit is too low are ejected from the market. But those that maintain a high rate of profit compared to their competition survive, even if they are grossly inefficient or if their profits are not exactly impressive. Co-operatives have an abysmally low rate of profit almost by default, because the owners of the co-operative are also its labourers. So they receive remuneration that is much higher than the necessary cost of reproduction of labour-power.

And that is why, while co-operatives are re-discovered as an exciting new thing in bourgeois liberal circles every decade or so (seriously, they're about as new and radical as municipalisation, which I swear I saw some lost soul advocating on RevLeft a couple of weeks ago), and a lot of them are formed, very few survive until the next cycle (and those that do tend to be held together more by political will than market forces).

A key problem of worker cooperatives is that they exist within the context of capitalism, ie the pressures of the market competition, and context of wage labour. Proponents leave unaddressed the classic criticisms of worker cooperatives, which aren’t just theoretical but based on real problems that cooperatives have encountered in practice. For sure, co-ops are a positive creation when workers occupy the workplace after abandonment by the owners that has happened in various situations and different countries in history.

But co-ops can’t “out-compete” capitalism. Corporations will always have larger capital to invest in research, technology, machinery and their willingness to cut costs through lower wages, less environmentally sounds practices, outsourcing, etc, will give them an advantage. Second, is that cooperatives are subject to market pressures to compete just the same as capitalist enterprises and this lends itself to pressures to create the same practices of corporations. For instances, in the Mondragon cooperatives there have been strikes in the past, outsourcing and low wages in production sites opened developing countries, as well as a trend towards unelected management that is more like a typical capitalist corporation. It is self-managed capitalism, because it offers no solution for changing the underlying logic of capitalism, which is production for maximum profit. There would be restrictions on the lengths to which a self-directed enterprise would go as opposed to a traditional capitalist company, but those restrictions would likely not hold up when they threaten the survival of the enterprise.

Co-ops do not eliminate owners. What happens is that ownership changed hands. And whereas previously a company might have had a few influential shareholders, it now has a few hundred (or thousand) But private property has not been abolished. Socialists aim to abolish the social structures that allow for the division between the rich and the poor - private ownership, money, markets etc. Socialists advocate the socialisation of the means of production, not the dilution of ownership of the same. "Capitalist" isn't a needlessly obtuse term of abuse for people we don't like, it denotes people who own capital, the means of production under capitalism. The owners of a co-operative are collective capitalists. The problem is that what exploits us isn't the bosses, but capital. As long as the purpose of productive units is to produce value, workers will be enslaved to the production of value, regardless if there are an enterprise’s owners. Coops aren’t an alternative way to socialism because they still produce value. Both capital and value are social relationships. By making them the owners, workers do not abolish the relation of ownership, nor do they abolish the anarchy of the market etc. etc.

Many cooperatives face the same issues as small business owners face. Often worker cooperatives are in the service, food or other specialty industries with lower profit margins and because they are smaller and do not have the advantages of scale which larger companies do, workers are often are forced to work long hours at lower wages to stay afloat. I’ve heard this called by some “self-managed exploitation.” As well, many cooperatives such as these in part remain afloat because they produce niche products like radical books or vegan/specialty food products that don’t really compete with the major corporations that dominate their industry.

There will be a tendency of worker cooperatives to see their needs and interests as an entity apart from and/or above other workers. After all, as cooperatives exist within a market system, their interests are to compete with other companies and expand their market share. This is a key and important difference between workers cooperatives, where the means of producing goods and services are owned by a specific group of workers competing with other cooperatives and capitalist companies through a market system and the deeper and post-capitalist goal of a socialized economy whereby all the means of producing goods and services are seen as belonging to society as a whole and while directly operated and run by the workers at each entity would be federated and coordinated in a horizontal manner to produce products and services based on need.

Even sympathetic observers such as Noam Chomsky understands the limitations:

“Worker ownership within a state capitalist, semi-market system is better than private ownership but it has inherent problems. Markets have well-known inherent inefficiencies. They’re very destructive. … [what is needed is to] dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems. Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.”

Cooperatives that exist under a market economy inevitably replicate the problems of capitalism although it makes life better for some, but it doesn’t end the system of exploitation. They reproduce capital and prioritises sectional interests of pockets of workers of the class interests over the working class as a whole. Socialists regularly use the term “wage slavery.” What is meant by this is that workers under capitalism are not ‘slaves’ to a particular boss, but through the system of wages they are compelled to work for employers as a class in order to survive. This is why anti-capitalist labour radical such as the the IWW believe that an end to capitalism required a struggle to organise workers eventually leading to workers to taking control of their workplaces and what they called the “abolition of the wage system.” Men and women will never be free from exploitation and oppression until all work is voluntary and access to all goods and services is free. This is a practical proposition now. Tinkering with administrative forms is of no use. Buying and selling must be abolished. The wage packet—the permission to live—must be abolished. It is true that our masters live off the fat of the land in luxury, but even if they adopted the austere puritanical lifestyle of a monk we should still be slaves.

The most crucial error of Richard Woolf and Gar Alperovitz models is that the essential features of capitalism are retained, yet they believe capitalism can be guided by "workers' management" towards humane and liberating ends. The market is to remain, but not, apparently, its laws. It should be obvious that if any enterprise produces to sell, and pays its bills out of its revenue, it will be subject to the same basic market laws as any other enterprise. Of course, at the moment these laws are observed and interpreted by management, which then makes the decisions and' imposes them on the other workers in the interests of the shareholders. But it should have occurred to Woolf and Alperovitz that these same laws might have the same force whoever does the managing and even if the shareholders, so to speak, are the workers. This is a suggestion which proponents of a “new economy” ought at least to consider. "Capitalism without capitalists" could never in fact come about. Should the working-class reach a level of understanding where they could pressurise the owning class out of existence, they would long since have passed the stage where they would have abolished the wages system and established socialism. They argue for some sort of “self-managed capitalism” that could only exist on paper.

Even if we consider "capitalism without capitalists" in our imaginations, we can see it would be no improvement on capitalism with capitalists. Workers collectively administering their own exploitation is not an objective socialists should aim for. Those groups demanding "workers' management," "workers' participation" and "workers' control" (though their various adherents distinguish very loudly between these three) will probably be used by capitalism, as in Yugoslavia, to give workers the impression that the enterprise they work for in some way belongs to them. If all employees can be drawn into the process of management, and can be given the illusion of an identity of interests between workers and employers, this helps to muffle the class struggle and enhance the process of exploitation.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is that between socialised production and class monopoly of the means of production, which manifests itself as working class discontent with its general conditions of life, not just its work experiences under capitalism. If this was better understood it would be realised that socialism is not just concerned with emancipating workers as workers (i.e. wealth-producers) but as human beings (i.e. as men and women). It would also give them a clearer conception of socialist society. Socialism aims not to establish "workers power” or “workers control” but the abolition of all classes including the working class. It is misleading to speak of socialism as workers ownership and control of production. In socialist society there would simply be people, free and equal men and women forming a classless community. So it would be more accurate to define socialism/communism in terms of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interest of the whole people.

Frequently defenders of co-operatives will resort to the argument that they are at least a stepping stone towards socialism. But socialism is the movement against capitalism in all its forms. Co-operatives are just as much a "transitional form" as joint-stock companies are. And I don't think anyone is naive enough to claim, in 2014, that joint-stock companies are "socialist" in any way. Marx didn't say that stock companies are "socialist" in any way. He said they are an association, and cease to be individual property, which is an antithesis to old form. However, they remain trapped in capitalism. There can be no transition from one thing to something else that is in complete opposition to it. The task of socialism is not a change in management, but a social transformation of all institutions and structures of society. If there are cooperatives exchanging their products, there's self-managed capitalism and not socialism. You say you like the idea of not having a CEO or boss, but you will still have a market dictate and can be just as cruel – never mind the inequality. Cooperative labour will of course be a pillar of socialism, but not in the context of competitive markets. It is impossible to have a nice sort of capitalism. Capitalist firms are brutal not because their owners are bad people, whatever that means, but because they need to be brutal to their workers in order to prop up the falling rate of profit. If they can't do that, they are ejected from the market, it's that simple. Socialists are not opposed to "Big Business” per se but business, period. If co-operatives are to supersede capitalism, their production has to be regulated by a general plan determined by society as a whole, which means that they cease being co-operatives because co-operatives are distinguished by their status as autonomous business entities.

Compromising with co-ops and building from the ground up (and all other such nonsense that utopian liberals who want to call themselves socialist preach) has led to nothing but dead ends. It didn't work in France with Louis Blanc, it didn't work in Algeria under Ben Bella or in Tito’s Yugoslavia. It didn't work anywhere, and it won't work, ever. The idea is to change the way people live and work together. Not to replace the system we have now with co-op's then call it a day and quit. Co-operatives are simply another form of private property. They aren't changing the system.

To sum up, the economics Woolf and Alperovitz support is simply the dead-end of self-managed capitalism, which is every bit as reactionary as private or state capitalism. The communist society we are fighting for can only be established by the complete destruction of ALL private property, money, wages and markets - whatever their form. We don't want to own or manage our own misery. Socialists stand for a society based on the abolition of remuneration in the form of wages and democratic control and an economy based on the destruction of the wage system, and a de-linking of the value of labor in production from the distribution of society’s wealth to its members. It is simply not possible anyway to measure an individual’s contribution to production, our production is largely social. The contribution of an individual is very difficult to isolate from the contributions of countless others that make work possible. Any such attribution can only be arbitrary. Having co-workers judge each other’s work would turn gossip and in-fighting at work presently from an annoyance into a system of power over wages. The assets of a co-op do not cease being capital when votes are taken on how they are used within a society of generalised commodity production and wage labour. That is to say there remains an imperative to accumulate with all the drive to minimise the labour time taken to do a task this requires, even in a co-op.

Complex problems have simple solution

Governments agree that it is an imminent environmental crisis yet they are unwilling to act in an effective manner that shows that they have taken the facts on board. Inaction is attractive when polluters do not care about the impacted and refuse to accept the fact that ultimately everyone on planet Earth is vulnerable. Politicians commit large amounts of money climate research yet pays scant attention to its science. Negotiations to tackle climate change have remained largely political lip-service. There is no longer any talk of binding commitment to emissions reduction by nations and instead proposals for vague voluntary self-monitoring action. The further away the target dates for measures are, the easier it is for political leaders to agree to such plans. The nearer the implementation of these dates is, the less enthusiastic support for them. The urgency of the climate crisis demands that the world decarbonises urgently. No one can predict the outcome of the December Paris climate summit, but few expect the measures it may endorse to be tough enough to keep future increases in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius, the maximum amount most scientists believe the planet can absorb without incurring climate disasters far beyond anything seen to date. We cannot allow politicians to intentionally refuse to act now and shift responsibility for action to generations yet unborn. No. We must not allow that.

The World Bank and the International Energy Agency as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have acknowledged that substantial percentage of known reserves of fossil fuels must not be burned, that is, they must be left underground if catastrophic temperature increase is to be avoided. This reality now makes it urgent for nations to close their fossil shops and for corporations to shift their attention to clean energy and other forms of production. A large-scale wind, water and solar energy system can reliably supply the world’s needs, significantly benefitting climate, air quality, water quality, ecology and energy security. Is that what we see? No. The obstacles are political, not technical. Rather than work on urgent transition from fossil fuels, nations and corporations are embarking on more extreme and reckless modes of exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, including fracking and deep seas drilling. Rather than shifting to safer and cleaner energy forms, many countries, including many on the African continent, are celebrating new oil and gas finds. They are delirious with joy and getting set to enjoy the pyrrhic bounties that the sector promises. Without the new finds, it was already estimated that the value of fossils to be left underground topped 22 trillion dollars. Those fuels -- oil, natural gas, and coal -- will, of course, continue to dominate the energy landscape for years to come, adding billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon to the atmosphere. Not surprisingly, the oil states and those energy corporations continue to dream of a future in which they will play a dominant role. The fact that such fossils to be left underground are often referred to as stranded resources suggests that corporations and governments will don the garb of saviour to rescue the resources from being stranded!

False solutions such as agro-fuels (ethanol) and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) have already had serious negative impacts on our peoples. Geo-engineering experiments have failed spectacularly, and even if they were to succeed, all scenarios reviewed by scientists and by the ETC (Erosion, Technology and Concentration) Group show that Africa would suffer severe negative impacts from such moves. As one highly regarded physicist told a recent meeting, “geo-engineering experiments have shown that it is totally useless.” It is a silver bullet that permits polluters to keep polluting and cannot deliver on its promise to suck released carbon from the atmosphere. The climate crisis can be tackled by working with nature and not against it. We have to halt activities that have known negative impacts, including dependence on industrial agriculture and its litany of artificial and chemical inputs. We have to say yes to life and no to mining. It may be inconveniencing, but the pleasures and so-called easy life of today cannot justify a knowing condemnation of the planet and peoples to unacceptable future. We must all stand up, speak and act against climate crimes.

Individual mass movements must all coalesce in the global space to demand the urgent change of this present mode of production and halt the intentional crimes to the environment.  “The cost of doing business.” That’s what corporations call it then they claim a deduction from their taxes for the damage they’ve done to people and the planet. It’s a cost of doing business all right; a cost to us, of doing business with them the way we currently do it, and it’s just one of the reasons so many people are calling for a whole new system.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon kept spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days while the media was warned off and the company told the public lies. BP was been found guilty of gross negligence and misconduct. They’ve been slapped with $42 billion in fines and damages. But the BP not only threatening politicians they’ll pull out of the Gulf entirely if their fines aren’t reduced, they’re claiming a lot of that money back, thanks to a tax loophole that will enable BP to claim as much as 80 percent of the damages they've paid out so far as an ordinary business expense.

It’s not just BP either. Car makers, chemical companies, mine owners and those notorious banksters routinely deduct part of their court ordered payouts from their taxes. Which means that means we the people who sustain the damage, are also the ones subsidizing the damages. Big Business has too much power and that’s dangerous for people and the planet. That is why some of us are seeking an alternative system: not just renewable energy, not nationalization of energy companies but an entirely new social and economic system. Some in the green movement offer a utopia of small is beautiful with local businesses and co-ops. It is utopian because capitalism grows anew out of all commodity production; a utopia of small businesses can only be the prelude to the return of competitive cut-throat capitalism.

There’s a revolution going on right now. Don’t take the detours and don’t accept the delays. Right now, we live in terrible times. Horrific wars in the Middle East seem endless, with atrocities committed by all the participants. The future of our planet is in doubt because of the destructive, wasteful and polluting logic of capitalism. In most societies, sexism, racism and xenophobia are widespread, and prospects for many cannot but be worrying and depressing. The Socialist Party does not believe we are born racist or sexist – we are made so by the social conditions we live in. We are confident in our ability to persuade the majority.

The Socialist Party is are not in the business of falsifying reality. We are not a religious sect that seeks to isolate its members from reality. There are no capitalist solutions to climate change. We reject the idea that national interest can be fully defeated under capitalism. On the contrary, we argue that the system relies on divide and rule, that commercial rivalries are the natural by-products of the prevailing economic order. No amount of carbon taxation or emission capping agreements will succeed. A wind, water and solar energy plan gives the world a new, clean, efficient energy system rather than an old, dirty, inefficient one. Is it feasible to transform the world’s energy systems? Could it be accomplished in a short time? Only through socialism is the answer. We are revolutionaries not reformists. We are for revolutionary change as the only way to combat climate change. Capitalism is no friend of the Earth; its need for economic expansion makes it the enemy of the people.

Wage Slavery

Now that you have voted for one of the political parties that supports the capitalist system, you can now be assured of the continuance of your servitude and subservience to the ruling class.  

Slavery seems like an outmoded form of life from previous centuries. Many people blithely assume that "wage slavery" is merely a metaphor, at worst a rather benign situation in which an employer says:

"You be my slave for forty hours per week and I'll give you just enough money to pay your bills . Just be here Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 (plus when instructed to work overtime.) Deal?"

Whatever we feel, slavery is very much a fact of life for all people in the world today. A person is a slave if he or she has lost control over his or her life and is dominated by someone or something--whether he or she is aware of this or not. Wage slavery is the condition in which a person must sell his or her labor-power, submitting to the authority of an employer, in order to merely subsist. The very essence of capitalism is slavery: the enslavement of workers by the capitalist class. You have probably endured the subjugation of a "boss" or "director" or "committee," and you know that the coercion, even if masked as "job description," "supervisor evaluation," or "company directive" can be as repressive as if there were literal chains fastened around your arms and feet. Most business enterprises use the leadership style of "management by whim," oppressing the worker.  

 A capitalist slave is:

Forced to work at a "job" owned by a capitalist (owner of jobs, the means of production, and the profit from the jobs) through necessity or through mental or physical threat. He or she is “owned” or controlled by a capitalist "employer" through wages, hours, working conditions. We are dehumanised, treated as a commodity: a faceless entity filling a slot, a hired hand, at the mercy of the capitalist. The capitalist can--and does so with a vengeance--destroy jobs by "staff reduction," automating jobs by robots, or out-sourcing jobs to a cheaper labour location. Without a voice as to how much profit the capitalist can make from the worker's labour and cannot bargain for higher wages or safe working conditions. Unable to support himself and his family when he cannot find a job. Reduced to poverty or destitution or death by an ever-reduced job "market". Today, all workers suffer under wage slavery bonded debt servitude. 

A wage slave can't quit an oppressive job to find a less slave-like job, because in our present society, almost all jobs involve wage-slavery. So the options are obey and stay, die of starvation, or become a vagrant, which is illegal. It should be noted that this description of the present economic situation is not something you hear on TV or radio or read in newspapers or magazines, not because it's incorrect or misleading, but because "it's just the way things are" or any such straightforward description is deemed "communistic" or "socialistic."

 Southern plantation owners and the capitalists who made millions from the international slave trade in earlier decades of our history brainwashed most Americans into believing that chattel slavery was a "fact of nature." In the same vein, capitalists have programmed most contemporary Americans into believing that the evils of capitalist slavery are "necessary to the smooth running of society." Just as the the United States finally rid itself of chattel and bond slavery through realizing that slavery was not "natural"--in fact evil and unnatural workers throughout the world must now free themselves from capitalist slavery. We must replace capitalism with a commonwealth polity that ensures that all people can live free from slavery of any kind. Our political and economic systems must assure that all citizens have the means whereby they can sustain themselves and lead a free and productive life.

 Under the "wage slave" system you don't receive the full compensation for your work. By the very nature of the employer-employee relationship, you get less compensation than you should, because the employer takes excessive profits. Let's take a look at how this happens by examining a very simple example of an exchange. The stark reality of "wage slavery" is that the owners of the means of production (capitalists) are now taking the jobs to sweatshops. The owners want to pay even less than they now are and they want cheaper production costs as well. They don't care if the workers in these other countries are in literal bondage to their overseers. And they certainly don't have any concern if American workers become destitute and homeless.

    

 In the first tens of thousands of years of our human history people lived in a community-oriented culture and identity was associated with interdependence and cooperation--all for the common good. In this culture of mutual concern and mutual obligation, people took care of one another. They shared common values and interests, completely different from the values of a market-driven approach to life. According to this common welfare approach to life the community decided about how resources are used.

But from the beginning of capitalism, the wealthy class—factory owners, bankers, speculators, --had adopted a completely opposite way of life: every person for himself. The world view of the ruling class saw the community as a system of exchange between producers and consumers, capitalists and workers. The holy of holies for the merchant class was the "free market" ideology, according to which each man pursues only his own self-interest. According to this dogma, society is held together, not on the basis of common welfare, but by the "invisible hand of the market" implemented through impersonal contracts. According to the view of the employing class, the state is to be controlled by elites or "better people" who decide what is best for the "common people." All other capabilities--learning, pursuit of happiness, freedom, human concern--are to be subordinated to property. The state's only role is to assure that the impersonal market system runs smoothly. This requires that the government use violent force when it becomes necessary to protect personal property.

    

We must realise that our economic situation at present--a very few obscenely rich people owning companies and corporations and having captured political power--is one which we can and must change. Our current economic and political circumstances are not written in stone; humans have lived under very different political and economic conditions throughout our history. We must begin to overthrow this present state of affairs where all workers suffer under capitalist wage-slavery. The political system and the economic situation should be directed toward the welfare of all Americans, not just a few. We can bring about these changes; it is not impossible. We must first make all aware of our present plight and then begin in all possible ways to overthrow wage-slavery and building cooperative commonwealth communities.

Polling Day

 SPOIL  YOUR BALLOT PAPER:

A WRITE IN VOTE FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Don't Believe The Deceit

In all countries, the fight for the social revolution has yet to take place. Elections are such depressing things. Once again the power to register a desire to change society in a fundamental way was open to the workers (in the shape of their vote) and once again it will be squandered on pro-capitalist parties. Despite their shortcomings, elections to a parliament based on universal suffrage are still the best method available for workers to express a majority desire for socialism. It is a basic tenet of the Socialist Party that the establishment of socialism involves the capture of political power via the ballot-box.

For this to happen presupposes the existence of a "bourgeois democracy". But while such an arrangement is undeniably preferable to political dictatorship we don't entertain any illusions about the nature of this "bourgeois democracy". It is a very limited kind of democracy indeed. Under this kind of democracy, the population is permitted to choose between representatives of different political parties to supposedly "represent" them in parliament; thereafter control is surrendered to the politicians. But the politicians themselves are constrained to operate within parameters set by the economic system for which they stand. Based upon minority ownership of the means of living, capitalism can only ever operate in the interests of the capitalist minority, not the electorate as a whole.

Every few years groups of professional politicians compete for your vote to win themselves a comfortable position. All of the other parties and candidates offer only minor changes to the present system. That is why whichever candidate or party wins there is no significant change to the way things are. Promises are made and broken, targets are set and not reached, statistics are selected and spun. All politicians assume that capitalism is the only game in town, although they may criticise features of its unacceptable face, such as greedy bankers, or the worst of its excesses. They defend a society in which we, the majority of the population, must sell our capacity to work to the tiny handful who own most of the wealth. They defend a society in which jobs are offered only if there is a profit to be made. Socialists have little concern for the apparent moral consistency (or otherwise) of individuals, be they MPs or not. It’s the system we live under that we are interested in. As defenders of capitalism the right honourable gentlemen and ladies at Westminster have rarely been "right", and are certainly unlikely "honourable" role models. As exemplars of capitalism's principles, however they would appear to embody all the necessary tight-fisted, money-grabbing, elements. Workers' confidence in the money system has clearly taken a significant bashing as pensions evaporate, redundancies are announced and house repossessions increase. The legitimacy of our leaders – whether business or political – is under increasing attack. Bankers have been an easy scapegoat for the fundamental failings of the economic system, capitalism. It is likely that some of that anger focused on bankers has been generalised against those in power in the form of the political class represented at Westminster. And seldom before can the political choice provided for us have seemed so narrow. Threatened by ridicule from the public, the main political parties – between queuing up to show their contrition and denouncing their own excesses in terms reminiscent of some Maoist show trial – have spoken with one voice, the pro-capitalist voice. For brevity and clarity we can call them the Capitalist Party, the real political opponent of the Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party urges a truly democratic society in which people take all the decisions that affect them. This means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders and led. In such a society people would cooperate to use all the world’s natural and industrial resources in their own interests. They would free production from the artificial restraint of profit and establish a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. Socialist society would consequently mean the end of buying, selling and exchange, an end to borders and frontiers, an end to organised violence and coercion, waste, want and war.

So in May’s General Election you can vote for candidates who will work within the capitalist system and help keep it going. Or you can use your vote to show you want to overturn it and end the problems it causes once and for all. When enough of us join together, determined to end inequality and deprivation, we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of a society of real democracy and social equality. You might think, with this economic depression, that capitalism does nothing but make a slave out of you, and that it’s only the rich that benefit. It’s always workers suffering. It’s all about the money. While money and capitalism exist, it always will be. If your local candidates are not saying this, why bother voting for them? Well, why not make a statement rather than stay silent. All you have to do is write something across your ballot paper ‘World Socialism’ A vote’s always worth using, even when there’s nobody worth voting for.

SPOIL YOUR VOTE, WRITE-IN FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

A Socialist Candidate on Video

More of the same or socialism?

In this general election we're putting up a limited number of candidates, but are you one of those very many people who doesn't see the point in voting, and can't be bothered with politicians? Fewer and fewer people are bothering to vote in elections correctly realising that it will have little effect on their everyday lives. You may have noticed that whoever gets elected, nothing really changes. This is because politicians normally have no intention of changing anything. They're really doing very nicely out of the system as it is, thank you, slump or no slump. While they enjoy their executive lunches, cars and kickbacks, the rest of us miserable suckers are supposed to toe the line, "yes" the bosses, and work ourselves into early graves to earn wages that wouldn't buy one of their bottles of claret. We're not politicians, and don't let our party name, and the fact that we are standing for election, fool you into thinking we are. We represent an idea dismissed by politicians, and avoided by anyone who prefers the status quo. This idea is revolution.

Revolution is a scary word, but it doesn't have to be scary. If you prefer, think of it as a kind of social "upgrade", like building a better and faster computer. We don't advocate violence, although we can't know of course that the rich will quietly abdicate when they see that the game is up. But there is a personal revolution to face, as well, because a free society requires responsible members, not children who just play "follow-the-leader" and do as they are told. It's true that we get the society we deserve. Revolution consists in learning to deserve better.

Technology is producing abundance so fast that prices keep falling. It means that there is a higher level of civilisation, of science, or arts, of culture, of personal fulfilment, waiting to arrive. We are standing on the very threshold of that post-scarcity world. All we have to do, as individuals, is take one step. In our strange politics there is no mention of the EU. No mention whatsoever of local issues. No promises of "I'll do this and I'll do that", no flattery, no sweet talk. If you vote for us you won't get a wage rise or a tax cut. Those other candidates are happy to continue with the private property society. They are selling you out, and selling your kids out, and their kids after them. They are politicians. We are private citizens democratically organised as a party to advertise revolution but not lead it, to abolish political power not keep it for ourselves, to promote a free society without rulers, and to disband when we have served our purpose. So if you vote for us now, it's not because we've conned you into it with charming lies. It's because you've just taken that all-important small step, the step that begins the journey.

Is the revolution we are talking about at all likely? The odds seem to be stacked against it. Indeed, when we put forward the idea, most people can scarcely believe we are serious. "It's a nice idea but it will never happen" is the usual response. The assumption is that socialism will rely upon everybody being altruistic, sacrificing their own interests for those of others. But socialism would actually involve people recognising their common interests.

SPOIL YOUR BALLOT IF YOU WANT SOCIALISM

There was a time when the idea of a capitalist society would have been dismissed as a hopeless utopian dream. To a peasant living in feudal society, the idea of radical change would appear as hopeless as it may appear to you now. To them, feudalism would have appeared as eternal and unchanging and unchangeable as the present system appears to us now. So we're not too surprised that people find it difficult to take our ideas on board.

We have the ability to change things if we act together. The power to transform society lies in the hands of those who create everything—the working class. This is the source of our power, should we eventually use it. The power not to make a few reforms, but to change the whole system, to make a social revolution.

A Write-In Vote for World Socialism

Karl Marx did argue that under certain conditions a socialist-minded working class would be able to gain control of political power peaceably via elections. Having said this, our position does not rest on what Marx said, as we don't slavishly accept him as an infallible authority, but on our own analysis of the facts which in our view confirm Marx's point of view. Many on the Left reached differing conclusion and declare there is no parliamentary road to socialism, describing it as a blind alley. The standard argument against the revolutionary movement contesting elections is that this inevitably leads to it becoming reformist; revolutionary MPs whatever may have been their original intention, end up merely administering capitalism. This, they claim, can be seen from the history of, first, the European Social Democratic parties which once claimed to be Marxist and, more recently, of Green parties which said, as in Germany, that they were only going into parliament to use it as a tribune from which to proclaim the need for an ecological society. When, however, it comes to explaining why this happens they fall back on the lame explanation of “power corrupts”.

We can agree that this is what happened to these parties but offer an alternative explanation: that such parties went off the rails because they advocated reforms of capitalism and not just its abolition. The originally Marxist Social Democratic parties had in addition to the “maximum” programme of socialism what they called a “minimum programme” of immediate reforms to capitalism. What happened, we contend, is that they attracted votes on the basis of their miniumum, not their maximum, programme, i.e. reformist votes, and so became the prisoners of these voters. In parliament, and later in office, they found themselves with no freedom of action other than to compromise with capitalism. Had they been the mandated delegates of those who voted for them (rather than leaders) this could be expressed by saying that they had no mandate for socialism, only to try to reform capitalism. It was not a case of being corrupted by the mere fact of going into national parliaments but was due to the basis on which they went there and how this restricted what they could do. In short, it is not power as such that corrupts. It is power obtained on the basis of followers voting for leaders to implement reforms that, if you want to put it that way, “corrupts”.

The Socialist Party advocates only socialism and nothing but socialism (the so-called “maximum programme”, if you like.) The correct formula is contesting elections only on the basis of delegates being given an imperative mandate for the sole purpose of carrying through the formalities involved in winding up capitalism.

The politicians, the media and the rest of what are called ‘opinion formers’ insist that we have democracy, that we have free elections which allow us to choose whatever form of government we wish, unlike countries where a dictatorship exists. Such dictatorships usually allow elections where the people may approve or disapprove of given candidates within the dictatorship but have not the freedom to vote for any other parties or for independent candidates. In other words the people have imposed on them by force, corruption or the control of information a specific political regime and have not got the necessary democratic machinery to challenge that regime. In fact in most of the so-called democratic countries it could be said that the astronomical costs of challenging for political power have been deliberately manipulated in order to ensure that those who cannot attract rich backers will be denied meaningful access to the democratic process. Effectively this means that in the same way as people in dictatorships are denied the right to make real political changes, in Britain and other allegedly democratic societies prohibitive financial restrictions are placed in the way of the working class organising politically to effect real economic change.

This does not mean that socialists equate dictatorship and bourgeois democracy. Within the latter we are free to organise politically and to develop our support to the extent where we can eventually overcome the embargoes and impediments that capitalism’s restricted democratic forms impose on us, whereas in the former any Socialist work is necessarily clandestine and can invoke severe penalties. What we can equate is the hypocrisy of bourgeois politicians, who rightly condemn those capitalist dictatorships where political freedom is denied and yet are willing participants and vociferous defenders of a form of capitalism wherein financial impediments exist that make a mockery of real democracy.

Real power today does not lie in elected bodies but in the hands of those who own the world’s wealth. Labour, Tories, Nationalist and the others in this election are just arguing over how to use the scraps thrown from the billionaire’s table. A system based on private property has to be run in the interests of its owners. Their profits have to come first. So long as inequality of wealth and power exist elections such as these are just about who is to run this system. The only rational choice is to reject the compromisers and reformists and use every resource available to end it. You don’t need to vote for any particular party to get rubbish collected, schools built or amenities provided. Communities don’t need leaders to get those things for themselves. You know what you need better than any careerist politician ever could and, if there was real democracy, could easily arrange this. Under the present system, though, you only get them, so long as those who own the world make the resources available. But they always give priority to making more profits, so these things are always under-resourced and never done properly.

In the general elections on 7th May, as in all elections, you have a choice. You can vote for candidates who would work within this system and help keep it going. Or you can use your vote to overturn it and end the blights once and for all. You can send a clear signal to other people like yourselves upon whose hard work this system is built that you want to put an end to it, by refusing to vote for any of the capitalist parties and instead writing “World Socialism” across the ballot paper.

At this stage contesting elections can essentially only be an exercise in political education, of getting ideas across. It is why we contest elections today knowing perfectly well that we have no chance of getting elected. When enough of us join together determined to end inequality and deprivation we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of real democracy and equality. Our common efforts could feed, clothe and house every man woman and child on Earth without exception but we are held back because the owners of the world demand their cut before they’ll let us use the world’s resources. The iron laws of No Profit, No Production and No Profit, No Employment are a cage for us.

If you agree with the idea of a society of common and democratic ownership where no-one is left behind and where things are produced because they are needed, and not to make profits for some capitalist corporation or to enrich some bloated millionaire, and are prepared to join with us to achieve this, then vote for World Socialism.

SPOIL THE BALLOT PAPER - WORLD SOCIALISM

Emma Goldman on Patriotism (video)

Voting Revolution

Socialism can only be established by the majority political action of a working class that wants and understands it. To establish socialism, the working class must first win control of political power and to do this they must organise as a political party. In modern political conditions — the overwhelming numerical superiority of the working class, universal suffrage, political democracy, an army and civil service recruited from the workers — the working class can, and should, use elections and parliament as the way to winning power for socialism. A socialist party should contest elections whenever it can, but only on a socialist programme. Where there are no socialist candidates, the party should advocate the casting of blank or spoiled voting papers and never engage in anarchist-type anti-election propaganda. The anarcho-syndicalist idea of a general strike of industrial unions as a means of overthrowing capitalist rule is obviously impractical since it leaves the means to crush any such strike, the state machine, in the hands of the capitalists. Much the same can be said of the use of soviets or workers' councils as an alternative to parliament. 

The Trotskyist Vanguard

Despite their shortcomings, elections to a parliament based on universal suffrage are still the best method available for workers to express a majority desire for socialism. Furthermore, although parliament run by Labour or Tory politicians is incapable of controlling the economic system in a rational and humane way, it is the centre of political control in the advanced industrial countries. The minority of people who now monopolise the ownership of wealth do so through their control of parliament by capitalist parties elected by workers. Control of parliament by representatives of a conscious revolutionary movement will enable the bureaucratic-military apparatus to be dismantled and the oppressive forces of the state to be neutralised, so that Socialism may be introduced with the least possible violence and disruption. Parliament and local councils, to the extent that their functions are administrative and not governmental, can also be used to co-ordinate the emergency measures when socialism is established.

We are not saying that workers councils are therefore quite useless. On the contrary; like trade unions they can often play a useful role under capitalism in the struggle of workers to maintain or improve working conditions and wages, and to resist capitalist authority at work. Factory or workplace committees, or something similar, would also play an important part in the democratic management of production inside Socialism.

Representatives elected by workers to parliament have continually compromised to the needs of capitalism, but then so have representatives on the industrial field. The institution is not here at fault; it is just that people's ideas have not yet developed beyond belief in leaders and dependence on a political elite.

The idea of fair and free elections would give the ruling class political apoplexy. Imagine a general election where socialists had a level playing field, an election that was in effect a plebiscite on the question of socialism or capitalism.  The traditional parties of capitalism would be united in telling us about the remarkable plethora of reforms they intended to introduce to ease poverty in certain areas, to reduce crime, to tackle the housing problem, help the aged, build nuclear bomb shelters, etc.

The socialists would not be offering any reforms of the old, failed system in which the vast potential of the planet is owned and controlled by a relatively small minority of people who allow the production of goods and services only when it holds the promise of profit for them. On the contrary, we would be asking for a mandate to abolish the entire concept of ownership in the means of production and distribution so that everyone could freely participate in wealth production and everyone would be free to take from the common pool of wealth thus created in accordance with their needs. Further, in the context of what we are discussing, we would be offering the establishment of an open and genuine system of participative democracy in a world where the massively destructive and ubiquitously corruptive power of money would no longer exist.

Liberate Yourself

In the Socialist Party’s Declaration of Principles we lay down the few simple essential principles we think are necessary to understand and act upon in order to achieve emancipation from wage slavery. Briefly summed up these propositions are as follows:

All social wealth is produced by the working class and owned by the master class. Between these two classes there is a class struggle which can only be abolished by the emancipation of the workers from wage-slavery; i.e., by the replacement of capitalist private ownership by social ownership. This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself, and, as the capitalist class retains its position by the control of the machinery of government, the working class must organise to capture the political machinery in order to use it as the agent of emancipation. Finally, as all political parties represent class interests, the working-class political party must be hostile to all other parties. These are the broadest principles that can be adopted by the working class to work out its emancipation. If action is taken outside these elementary principles the working class movement is plunged into a morass. The working class will not emancipate itself until it desires socialism; the working class will not desire socialism until it has gained an understanding of the necessary principles. In other words, socialism is impossible until the necessary knowledge is acquired by the workers. Therefore the work for socialists is to communicate knowledge as much as possible of their ideas.

Working for socialism is plodding, uphill work. We cannot force the pace—we must work and wait. No amount of misguided emotion can obscure the fact that workers have not yet reached the stage when they are prepared to use the weapon by which they can usher in socialism – the vote. When the workers first won the suffrage many of them voted for their bosses out of a sort of feudal loyalty, and others were cheaply woo'd with flattery and petty bribes. Only a few then saw that they had in their grasp the instrument to gain their emancipation. Then began a slow growth to political maturity. Many workers still have to learn that a government that wishes to do so can discover numerous ways of evading an election pledge without having to make the candid admission that it was given merely to catch votes; and even when pledges were honoured the results were singularly below the expectation. Becoming more wary, some electors have eventually ceased to believe in quick, easy remedies and ready promises, and came to expect from the parties long, detailed and ponderous programmes promising painful reconstruction operations extending over several years, to be followed by a very nice time for all. Capitalism, however, never does give security and prosperity to the workers and never runs smoothly. How fare the people now? Working harder, eating less, getting day by day shabbier, they face cheerless austerity with nothing more inspiring than still more plans to replace those already scrapped, more promises about the good time coming, and more nauseating sermons from our betters about thrift. There are no "better ways" of running capitalism.

Being a politician is a sort of profession, like a lawyer or a doctor. A politician’s trade is to get into parliament or the local council to run the administrative side of capitalism. To do this, they must get elected and, to get elected, they must promise to do things for people; they must find out what’s worrying people and then promise to do something about it. This is why parties don’t need principles. Or, put another way, they only need one principle (if it can be called that) and that’s “get elected”.

Politicians just promise people what they want to hear. This kind of politics is dominant today and rests on a number of assumptions and has a number of consequences. It accepts the status quo. It accepts capitalism and seeks merely to work within it. Politics becomes a question of choosing the best capitalism-management team from amongst competing groups of politicians. You vote for a politician to do something for you and you reward them for the service by voting for them. Politics becomes an activity in which only a minority - the professional politicians - participate. Most people’s only involvement in politics is, literally, once every few years when they go and put an X on a ballot paper. Then they go home and let the person elected get on with the job. Elections become more and more a sort of referendum, a plebiscite on the record of the outgoing government or council. People’s participation in politics becomes simply giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the outgoing administration. If they don’t mind what they’ve done, they vote them in again. If they’re not happy then they vote in some other lot. Politics becomes a spectacle in which people are just passive spectators watching the goings-on of politicians. The media - especially TV - play to this, presenting politics in between elections as a soap. But it is not even a good spectacle. It’s boring and the actors are all second and third rate. It doesn’t work either. Nothing seems to change and nothing does change. The same old problems continue, with the professional politicians only being able to tinker about and patch things up a little.

The end result is that politics in seen as completely boring and that people don’t want to know about it, except in the few weeks before a general election. People know that voting doesn’t change anything and that the only power they have is to vote the Ins Out (or In again) or vote the Outs In; to change the management team, while their day-to-day lives are unaffected and unchanged. No wonder people become apathetic, resigned and cynical.

Can things change? Yes, they could but it’s not going to be through conventional politics, only through a quite different kind of politics. A politics which rejects and aims to change the status quo. A politics which involves people participating and not leaving things up to others to do something for them. Electoral agitation supplies us with a method of unsurpassed value for getting into contact with fellow workers, and for compelling the other parties to defend themselves publicly against the attacks we deliver upon their opinions and their actions. Politics is not just about the antics of career politicians - or at least doesn't have to be.

If you want a better world, you are going to have to bring it about yourselves. That’s The Socialist Party’s basic message. It’s no good following leaders, whether professional politicians or professional revolutionaries. In fact, following anybody (not even us) won’t get you anywhere. The only way is to carry out a do-it-yourself revolution on a completely democratic basis. Democratic in the sense that that’s what the majority want. And democratic in the sense that that majority, rather than following leaders, organises itself on the basis of mandated and recallable delegates carrying out decisions reached after a full and free discussion and vote. That’s what politics can be, and should be. And has to be if things are ever to change.

All change for no change

In the weeks of electoral excitement before polling day you will have been made to appreciate, at least a bit, that you are, for the moment, important people. Between elections you look up to politicians and big business men as important, but during elections it is they who go to endless trouble to influence you and win your support for them and their policies. It is you who can make or mar the career politician and you who can place power in the hands of a government which during its term of office can, by taxation or by subsidies, raise some industries to prosperity and bring others to their ruin. It is you who give power to governments in whose hands rest decisions about peace and war. Whichever of them, you, the workers, vote for in an election, it is a defeat for you, a betrayal of your own interests. Capitalism exists only because you, the workers, allow it to exist.

Despite being unable to find lasting solutions to workers’ problems, political parties must always try to combat voter disillusionment. Behaving like chameleons, they must search for ways to improve their image, reinvigorate old policies and give the appearance that this time things will be different, this time the electorate will be given exactly what it wants. Parties strive to  engineer their own metamorphosis, re-branding policies and redefining the agenda.

Today politics is about achieving political power, with the main political parties contesting to maximise their share of votes in a political market in the same way as competing corporations do. The reality of politics today is that political parties represent the corporate face of organised groups of career-orientated politicians whose cushy, well-paid jobs are dependent on selling old and failed political formulae dressed in worthless verbiage to a gullible electorate. It is not a question of honesty, sincerity or wise people elected to government may indeed be able to soften some of the nasty features that capitalism throws up, but a government endowed with wisdom could not make a system of economic anarchy and competition - a system predicated on the exploitation of the many by the few - run in the interest of the many. The socialist case is that the social and economic system that has got to be changed and not its particular political functionaries.

Voters vote governments out because they appear incompetent, incapable of finding solutions to the daily problems that confronts wage and salary earners. But government can never solve these problems because their permanent solution lies only in the abolition of capitalism and the wages system. Economic laws that politicians are powerless to change and leave little room for manoeuvre determine what politicians do and how they must react. It is not the deceitfulness of politicians that is the problem but rather the economic structure of society.

But it is not just political parties that refuse to think outside the framework of capitalism. Most people rarely question the structure of society and passively support the system that always works against them. In misguided expressions of defiance that flow from frustration and lack of understanding, voters repeatedly swap Labour governments for Conservative, or Conservative governments for Labour - as they have on seven separate occasions since the second world war – in the hope that it will somehow make a difference. They are always disappointed by the outcome. Mandating a political party to administer capitalism means that workers surrender political power to their class enemy and condone the continuation of their own exploitation, their insecurity and their poverty - a lesson that workers seem unable to grasp as the same mistake is slavishly repeated over and over again. Trading one group of careerist politicians for another can never be the answer, changing society’s economic structure is the only answer.

Yet another set of dishonest politicians will be after your vote at the general election. However, in some cases they are calling themselves 'socialist'. Our analysis of them is not based upon some narrow sectarianism—it's based upon principle. We do not, nor have we ever, supported capitalist parties, especially those that dress up in revolutionary garb in order to hoodwink the workers. Parties such as TUSC are an expression of all the political mistakes made by the working class last century—from the Labour Party to the Soviet Union. We do not doubt that well-meaning individuals get caught up in such chicanery for no other reason than a desire to see a better world. However, sentiment can never be a substitute for the class struggle.

The Green Party sees itself as the political arm of the wider environmental movement, arguing that it is not enough to be a pressure group, however militant, like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth. Greens, it says, should organise as well to contest elections with the eventual aim of forming a Green government that could pass laws and impose taxes to protect the environment. We say that no

government can protect the environment. Governments exist to run the political side of the profit system. And the profit system can only work by giving priority to making profits over all other considerations. So to protect the environment we must end production for profit. Pollution and environmental degradation result from the inappropriate ways in which materials from nature are transformed into products for human use. But what causes inappropriate productive methods to be used? Is it ignorance or greed, as some Greens claim? No, it is the way production is organised today and the forces to which it responds. Production today is in the hands of business enterprises, all competing to sell their products at a profit. All of them—and it doesn’t matter whether they are privately owned or state-owned—aim to maximise their profits. This is an economic necessity imposed by the forces of the market. If a business does not make a profit it goes out of business. “Make a profit or die” is the jungle economics that prevails today. The Green Party is not against the market and is not against profit-making. It imagines that, by firm government action, these can be tamed and prevented from harming the environment. This is an illusion. You can’t impose other priorities on the profit system than making profits. That’s why a Green government would fail.

Capitalism is a splintered society; divided not just by sectional ownership of the means of production but by the economic rivalry of independent states striving to exercise authority over given geographical areas. Conventional political parties endorse the framework of capitalism and compete to win control over the state and to administer the economic system within its boundaries, which necessarily means perpetuating the wages system and the persistent hardship for wage and salary earners. The policies propounded by these parties are similar because they are manifestations of the same political imperative – a continuation of capitalism – and are distinguishable only to the extent that they propose different organisation methods to administer the same economic system.

UKIP can make huge gains in the elections proclaiming the merits of British sovereignty. We can only wonder at the mainstream parties fears of a surge in support for UKIP. Considering the views of the Labour and Conservative parties on asylum seekers and migrant their objections to UKIP do seem a little hypocritical. They may genuinely abhor the racists in UKIP but have been unsuccessful in confronting them where they have made political gains because to do so would mean acknowledging the shortcomings of a system which they champion and which gives rise to the politics of racism. If anything the rise of UKIP is the product of the total failure of all the reformist parties to make capitalism a fit society to live in. And this is not the fault of the mainstream parties, for they are controlled by the system and not vice versa despite their claims and promises. When capitalism fails to deliver, when despondency and shattered hopes arise from the stench of the failed promises and expectations that litter the political landscape, is it any wonder that workers fall for the scapegoating lies of nationalists and the quick fix they offer?

Governments do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They can only act within the narrow limits imposed by the profit-driven market system whose rules are “profits first” and “you can’t buck the market”.

Doing It Our Way

People who come into contact with the Socialist Party are often surprised that the revolution we urge is one that can be brought about by parliamentary means. They are used to associating revolution with the violent overthrow of governments, not with peaceful democratic elections. Throughout the long history of the Socialist Party we have thought long and hard about the state and its repressive forces and our understanding goes something like this:…

…We want the useful majority in society to take over and run the means of production in the interest of all. However, at the moment these are in the hands of a minority of the population whose ownership and control of them is backed up-and, when necessary, enforced-by the state and its repressive forces. The state stands as an obstacle between the useful majority and the means of production because it is at present controlled by the minority owning class. They control the state, not by some conspiracy, but with the consent or acquiescence of the majority of the population, a consent which expresses itself in everyday attitudes towards rich people, leaders, nationalism, money, etc. and, at election times, in voting for parties which support class ownership. In fact it is such majority support expressed through elections that gives their control of the state legitimacy. In other words, the minority rule with the assent of the majority, which gives them political control. The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule-they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control....

Alternative ways of dislodging the owning class have been suggested, such as the head-on clashes with the forces of the state by a determined minority that you advocate. This is foolish, not to say suicidal: the state wins every time. The plain fact is that you can't "smash the state" while it still enjoys majority support-and when those who control it no longer enjoy majority support there is no need to try to "smash" it: the majority can use the power of their numbers to take control of it via the ballot box, so that it is no longer used to uphold class ownership. To do so they will need to organise politically, into a political party, a socialist party. This is what we advocate. We don't suffer from delusions of grandeur so we don't necessary claim that we are that party. What we are talking about is not a small educational and propagandist group, but a mass party that has yet to emerge. It is such a party that will take political control via the ballot box, but since it will in effect be the useful majority organised democratically and politically for socialism it is the useful majority, not the party as such as something separate from that majority, that carries out the socialist transformation of society. They neutralise the state and its repressive forces-there is no question of forming a government-and then proceed to take over the means of production for which they will also have organised themselves at their places of work. This done, the repressive state is disbanded and its remaining administrative and service features, reorganised on a democratic basis, are merged with the organisations which the useful majority will have formed to take over and run production, to form the democratic administrative structure of the stateless society of common ownership that socialism will be.

This is the way we think it will happen. When the time comes the socialist majority will use the ballot box since it will be the obvious thing to do, and nobody will be able to prevent them to persuade them not to. At that time it will be anti-electoralists who will be irrelevant.

At the moment it is the peaceful activity of undermining people's support for capitalist ideas that is the most revolutionary and subversive activity that opponents of capitalism can engage in because it is precisely people's pro-capitalist ideas, not the repressive forces of the state, that maintain capitalism in being. Yet you consistently dismiss such revolutionary activity as mere propagandising. The socialist position on the use of parliament is summed up by the following: Once there is an organised, determined majority, the success of the socialist revolution is assured, one way or the other. It is then a question of the best tactic to pursue to try to ensure that this takes place as rapidly and as smoothly as possible. In our view, the best way to proceed is to start by obtaining a democratic mandate via the ballot box for the changeover to socialism. The tactical advantage is that, when obtained, it deprives the supporters of capitalism of any legitimacy for the continuation of their rule. Another related point to make is that the organisation of the socialist majority that develops within capitalist society will have to reflect  the essentially democratic nature of the future society it will establish. It will in fact have to prefigure that society and so be entirely democratic, and without a leadership which can impose decisions on the rest. All important decisions, in fact, will come from the majority via referendums or meetings of mandated, wholly accountable and recallable delegates.

We favour majority democratic action on the grounds that the establishment of a society based on voluntary co-operation and popular participation has to involve such co-operation and participation (i.e. democratic methods) and say that when such a majority comes into being it can use existing political institutions (the ballot box and parliament) to establish a socialist society. Many anti-parliamentarians are opposed to this, but are not able to offer a viable alternative (the anarcho-communists pose a spontaneous mass popular upsurge, the anarcho-syndicalists a general strike and mass factory occupations—both of which ignore the state and the need to at least neutralise it before trying to change society from capitalism). If they can abandon their prejudice against democratic political action via elections, we invite them to join us in campaigning for a classless, stateless, moneyless society.

Discover Real Socialism

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is the longest surviving political party in the UK calling itself socialist. If the SPGB has lasted for this length of time it must have been because we fill some need in working-class politics in Britain. But what need? A distinguishing feature of the Socialist Party has been its insistence on the existence, as a precondition for socialism, of a working class imbued with socialist understanding ("You can’t have socialism without socialists") and that, once a sufficient majority of workers have acquired such understanding, we can, and we should, use existing electoral institutions to win control of political power with the sole purpose of abolishing capitalism and ushering in socialism.

The Socialist Party only contests elections on the "maximum programme" of socialism and nothing else, i.e. without any manifesto of vote-catching reforms to capitalism. This refusal to advocate reforms has been another distinguishing feature of the Party and although not against reforms as such (how could a party composed of workers and committed to the working-class interest be opposed to any measure that improved, however marginally and temporarily, conditions for workers) it opposes reformism in the sense of a policy of actively seeking reforms. Our position is that there is intrinsically nothing wrong with institutions where delegates assemble to parley (parliaments, congresses, councils or soviets). What is wrong with them today is that such parliaments are controlled by the capitalist class. Remove class society and the assemblies will function in the interest of the whole people. Socialism, however, will be a stateless society. The State, which is an organisation composed of soldiers, policemen, judges, and gaolers charged with enforcing the law, is only needed in class society, for in such societies there is no community of interest, only class conflict. The purpose of government is to maintain law and order in the interests of the dominant class. It is in fact an instrument of class oppression.

In Socialism there will be no classes and no in-built class conflicts. The phrase 'socialist government' or 'workers state' is a contradiction in terms. Where there is socialism there is no government and where there is government there is no socialism. As far as the machinery of organisation and administration is concerned, it will be local, regional, national and international, evolving out of existing forms. The Socialist Party proposes that the whole system of money and exchange, buying and selling, profit-making and wage-earning should be entirely abolished and that instead, the community as a whole should organise and administer the production of goods for use only, and the free distribution of these goods to all the members of the community according to each person's needs. The basis of industrial organisation and administration will start from the arrangements existing under capitalism at the time of the transformation, and this will present no difficulties because the socialist movement will already be thoroughly international, both in outlook and practical organisation. The revolutionary transformation of society must be brought about by the will of the great majority of the people if it is to succeed.

Glasgow Branch seeks to inspire other workers with a new social vision and ignite their imagination with revolutionary ideas and that is the purpose of this Day School. Discussion and debate are essential to the progress of the movement.

The General Election: More Worthless Promises

Speaker: John Cumming, Glasgow Branch

Two Cheers for Democracy

Speaker: Brian Gardner, Glasgow Branch

Why just fight austerity?

Speaker: Paul Bennett, Manchester Branch

Admission Free. Questions and Discussion Welcome. Refreshments will be available

May Day Greetings - There is a Better Way - May Day is Our Day

We think that a traditional socialist May Day should be celebrated by having a picnic and a good time. It's a day that reminds us that the oppressive capitalist system is to be followed by socialism, which is parallel to the idea that the harshness of Winter is followed by Summer. May Day had become deeply embedded in the consciousness of the workers. May Day is our day. The Red Flag is our flag.

The capitalist class is desperately striving to force working people to pay for the worldwide economic, social and ecological crises it has created. Around the world, the governments that are run by and for the rich are escalating their attacks against our fellow workers. In their insatiable quest to maximise profits, the employers and their state crush everything that stands in their way. We must dare to struggle and dare to win. Reject the divisions fomented by the ruling class and unite and fight.

There is a Better Way.  Revolution is the Way

Even though, on this day the Socialist Party is too small to take to the streets, it represents the liberating ideas of the struggle for socialism. What is our vision for a socialist tomorrow?

• Work and leisure in a society of shared abundance

• A renaissance of art and culture

• A world in harmony with nature

This new world has a name: socialism, the complete reorganisation of all aspects of social, economic and political life. This new world will not happen by itself; it will come from a revolution that is the overthrow our masters by the ourselves alone. We have the ability to run the society; in fact, without us, they would be nothing.

The World Needs Socialism!

Socialism Requires Revolution!

The Revolution Needs Us!