Capitalism must go

Workers have no country.

We have a world to win

Wipe the nationalist, xenophobic, slavers away from your mouth. Immigrant workers are not scabs. Every country now is part of an integrated global economy and class structure. It is the capitalist class's country and the capitalist class's world. Why should workers, who produce all the wealth in the world be denied the right to go where they please to engage in economic activity, or be restricted in their movements, while the parasite capitalist class can export their capital or exploit workers in wealth making opportunities for their self-enrichment, anywhere they damn well please without let or hindrance? Why should workers on benefits (reserve army of wage-enslaved labour for future exploitation by the capitalist class) have to jump through bureaucratic red-tape hoops, for the basic human need of a place to live, while the capitalist parasite class can have luxury homes all over the world? Why should the world’s workers, who produce all of the wealth, have to put up with inferior housing, while the parasite class live in mansions? Stuff the landlords. Immigration is hardly a factor in governments, Labour and Tory stopping building council houses and encouraging their sale, with no 'like for like' new builds.  Immigrants are not the cause of the housing crisis. They suffer the consequences just the same as we all do. The problem is capitalism's production for sale with private, corporate and state ownership of resources by the minority global and national capitalist parasite class. Food, housing, heating and clothing could be freely available as tap water used to be in a sane, democratic, production for use, free access, commonly owned post-capitalist society.

The idea that immigrants can only have a negative effect on wages and living standards is a common one. Nigel Harris in ‘The New Untouchables’ quotes research that argues that ‘modern econometrics cannot find a single shred of evidence that immigrants have an adverse impact on the earnings and job opportunities of natives of the United States’. And he gives the example of the Los Angeles economy which expanded in the 1970s, largely as the result of increased demand caused by legal and illegal immigration.

Likewise the increase in immigration in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s did not lead to increased unemployment – rather the massive explosion in unemployment levels in the 1970s and beyond was caused by the boom-bust cycle of the capitalist system itself. Secondly, immigrants and refugees are not a drain on the social security system – in fact, as Harris shows, they contribute far more to the ‘system’ than they receive in return. Whether you look at Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain in the 1960s, few of which drew retirement pensions, or whether you take Mexican migrants to California, where a 1980 study found that less than 5 percent received any assistance from welfare services, and in all sectors, except education, they paid far more than they received – a net balance sheet shows that the ‘host’ nation gains far more than it gives in return.

Furthermore, migration has another very favourable benefit for the ruling class in the ‘host’ country – namely that they don’t have to contribute to the cost of raising and educating the immigrant worker.

It is the system of capitalist production that produces unemployment, homelessness, destitution and crumbling health services, – not workers, be they ’indigenous’ or foreign. The bosses hope to keep the worst-off sections of workers fighting with each other over shrinking pieces of a small pie instead of uniting to fight for a decent life for all.

The rationale of immigration control is that such chauvinist legislation is founded on the nation state and the feverish competition in which that nation state is engaged. It splits and divides workers from their main objectives, and, in the long run, weakens their strength all over the world. It cannot be contemplated by a world socialist.

The only possible attitude of progressive workers, is opposition to immigration control. We have to reject all laws that divide the working class into legals and illegals. It is the height of treachery to our class and we would do well to remember that the working class stretches far beyond Britain’s borders. It is blatant racism, and opportunism to opt for a policy of blaming the immigrant for all British workers’ woes, even if this will strike a chord with the basest instincts of many workers.

Before anything constructive can be done, capitalism must go and, with it, the artificial division of the world into separate, competing states. This leads inevitably to war, when the capitalist parasitic class thieves fall out. (Business by other means). War and poverty are inevitable concomitants of capitalism. We need to abolish the out-moded and old-fashioned division of the world into nation states. Instead we need to cooperate on a world basis to meet our material needs and energy requirements.

A choice of extreme Tory cuts or less extreme Labour cuts. No, it is no choice. Capitalism must go. A plague on all parties who wish to retain capitalism. Socialism should be hostile to all the parties of capitalism, Red, Blue, Green, Tartan or whatever flag they drape over their wage-slavery administration exploitative activities. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It comes into the world oozing blood form every pore.

Only workers themselves can bring to fruition the post-capitalist revolution of free-access, delegated democracy, production for use, a price-free, wageless, moneyless, society. Business is not 'people friendly'. Real socialism will do away with the business of exploiting workers in return for a wage or salary and channeling profits to the few. Dissolve all government 'over' you and elect yourselves into common ownership and democratic control over all the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

The socialist alternative to the profit system is:

• common ownership: no individuals or groups of individuals have property rights over the natural and industrial resources needed for production.

• democratic control: everybody has an equal say in the way things are run including work, not just the limited political democracy we have today.

• production for use: goods and services produced directly to meet people's needs, not for sale on a market or for profit.

• free access: all of us have access to what we require to satisfy our needs, not rationed as today by the size of our pay-cheque or state hand-out

The socialism we are espousing takes care that no elites can emerge, with a majority revolution. 

Firstly: Production for use creates a superabundance of necessities, so hoarding will be silly) when we all have the collective power and any democracy is delegatory, with recall-able delegates, when we need to use them, locally , regionally and globally. This, rather than representative democracy as presently where we surrender power to elected or unelected political elites. Secondly: Socialism is administration 'of resources' rather than, capitalist government, 'over people.

Capitalist bourgeois democracy is flawed in this regards as you seem to have figured, but perfectly adequate, to run top down administrations 'over' people, thus entrenching power, as all previous revolutions have been minority led ones to establish minority class dominance, although they used the majority to achieve their aims. There will be no government over people in the post-capitalist commonly owned world. This is an essential feature of minority ownership in capitalist class society. In a classless, commonly owned society, government ceases to exist as an oppressive necessity, loses this feature and becomes an administration of resources. People will organise wealth production and distribution themselves, locally, regionally and globally. In a real delegatory democracy rather than a representative government on behalf of a ruling elites. All wealth will spring, as it does presently, from labour. The difference will be as it is a production for use society, utilising the technological potential capacity of the present, to produce a superabundance of necessities, instead of rationing it, stifling production through the market necessity to profit for a few. There will be no means of exchange as markets cease to exist, when all wealth is owned in common. Don't follow leaders. Elect yourself instead to a democratic post-capitalist system of production for use and free access.

"From each according to their ability to each according to their needs".

Wee Matt

Eight years of CND (1966)

From the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

For CND the great days are over. Nowadays, almost the only sign that it ever existed is the annual Easter demonstration. And yet, in its day the campaign made a terrific impact on the British political scene. Its slogan and adopted symbol were universally recognised; it was half of an argument which split the mighty Labour Party from top to bottom and which consistently hogged the headlines and correspondence columns of the National Press.

CND was the marvel of a time notorious for its political apathy, but the wonder is not that it happened at all, rather why it took so long to materialise. From the moment Rutherford split the atom it became simply a question of time before the warlike, capitalist society would utilise this new source of energy for its own destructive ends.

Nevertheless, those thirteen years between Hiroshima and the formal launching of CND need some explaining. After 1945, most people felt that the Bomb would never be used again. The “aggressors” had been vanquished and anyway only the USA possessed the secret. The outbreak of the cold war plus Russia's entry into the Nuclear Club aroused fears which were aggravated by the Korean conflict and the development and subsequent testing of the vastly more powerful H-Bomb.

With the Lucky Dragon episode the volume of protest gathered force during the early 'fifties. Later on, literature and the cinema reflected this trend; Robert Jungk’s book Brighter Than A Thousand Suns, set many a mind working, while the film, Hiroshima Mon Amour, evoked horror by its display of grossly mutated children born of parents who were radiation victims.

Anti-nuclear groups sprang up everywhere and the Suez affair in 1956, helped swell the ranks. The same year, Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin’s Russia, followed by the brutal suppression of the Hungarian uprising, brought new recruits already well versed in the business of protest. Likewise, disgruntled “left-wingers” saw in the disarmers a lever with which to alter Labour’s defence policy. Add to these religious groups, Anarchists,etc., and we have the ingredients of what eventually emerged as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in February, 1958.

But the majority were not politically involved at all. Mostly, they came from what is wrongly called a “middle-class-background”—Teachers, Students, Clerks. They were not even social reformers, accepting the world more or less as it was, with one reservation—Nuclear weapons Many did not even oppose conventional weapons, considering these, at any rate, necessary to defend “our” country. Alex Comfort, a prominent Campaigner, summed up this attitude at the inaugural meeting when he said .. .

“If we are asked, as we will be, ‘What is your alternative? How else do you think this country should be defended?' We may indeed propose alternative policies. But we are bound to reply, ‘Whatever policy may be right, this one (Nuclear weapons) is wrong'.” This simplicity of aim was epitomised in the slogan which, today. CND is trying to forget—“Ban the Bomb.”

So CND was united by the slenderest of threads and even then only sometimes. The Communist Party, for instance, was prepared to march against the Bomb—provided it was British or American. When Russia resumed testing in 1961, CND held a protest demonstration in Glasgow culminating in an attempt to hand a petition to a visiting Russian Diplomat. The Communists were conspicuous by their absence.

And although the British Party’s Report of its 1963 Conference could say ... “We deplore the tendency of the peace movement to divide, to break up into rival groups on questions of tactics in the struggle,” it did not mention that the Japanese Party had just split the movement in Japan by refusing to condemn Russian tests as well as American.

It seemed to them that they must succeed, as even the famous—scientists, entertainers, clergymen—added to the clamour for Britain to unilaterally renounce nuclear weapons.

Indeed, the point was reached where CND could claim that a third of the population shared their view, but significantly this opinion was never tested at the Polls. The reason is not hard to find. Many of the campaign's supporters were committed to the various political Parties and it was to these, in the final analysis, that they owed their allegiance.

A Mr. Feltz discovered this when he considered standing as an official unilateralist at Barnet at the General Election. He subsequently stood down because he found . . . “CND supporters' loyalties greatly divided. After I had addressed them, I received a telephone call saying they had decided not to alienate themselves from the Labour Party.” (Guardian, 21/2/64). More recently, various CND'ers were engaged in a public squabble over whether or not to support the Labour candidate at the Hull North By-election.

This pre-occupation with the Labour Party provides the key to the Campaign’s efforts to win that Party over to its point of view. If 1960 was CND’s high-point then this was because of its “victory” at the Labour Conference that year, when a unilateralist resolution, backed by leaders of several of the largest Trade Unions, won a majority of votes.

Those CND supporters in the unions were illogical. They knew that, in this jungle-world of conflicting economic interests Nation and Nation, Employers and Employers, are engaged in an endless struggle. All very well Ted Hill of the Boilermakers prattling about Britain facing the world “armed only with moral dignity of purpose,” but he had no answer to his opponents’ invitation to try negotiating with the Employers on the same basis.

Predictably, Gaitskell and the majority of Labour MP’s, recognised a sure-fire vote-loser when they saw one, refused to accept the verdict and by organising a little more efficiently easily reversed the vote the following year. Many CND'ers, dismayed by this, turned to non-democratic action such as sabotage, and when this failed to produce results, dwindled away to the extent that a much-ballyhooed National demonstration at Faslane in 1964 could muster a mere seven hundred supporters.

To-day, CND simply does not know where it stands. The initial idea of unilateralism has been replaced by policies which are extremely vague; its one-time adherents are hiving-off to the futility of reformist politics or to frustrated inactivity.

Has CND achieved nothing, then? What about the Test Ban Treaty? Campaigners like to think that their activities influenced the great powers to agree to a cessation of testing, but the facts are that both sides stopped testing only because each saw it as being in its own interests to do so. Mr. MacNamara, the American Secretary of Defence, claimed that the Moscow Treaty meant that the USA . . . “can at least retard Soviet progress and prolong the duration of our technical superiority.’' The Russian Government denied this, insisting that it was they who stood to gain in a military sense from the Treaty (Guardian, 14/8/63).

Whatever happens, if one side feels it is losing on the deal, then the tests will be restarted notwithstanding the most solemn pledges.

Can we not even agree that whatever its faults, CND fulfilled a useful function by drawing attention to one of Capitalism’s horrors? But the Bomb was too big an issue to be ignored forever and for CND to claim all the credit for the growing awareness is to emulate the Rooster who imagined his crowing brought the Sun up every morning.

And could we not, by joining the March, have used the opportunity to gain recruits? Actually, we did gain new members without marching a single step; we did this by simply selling our literature and discussing. More important, we played no part in perpetuating an organisation which we knew to be wrong and would inevitably lead to disillusion on a grand scale.

Always, there are groups in protest against some aspect or other of this social system. CND’ers come into this category. They leave intact the very thing which spawned nuclear weapons—the private property basis of Capitalism—so their cause is hopeless.

Supposing the Bomb could be banned. If two Nations, possessing the necessary technical knowledge, should quarrel seriously enough over the things wars are really fought for— markets, sources of raw materials, strategic Bases, etc—and even supposing they commenced fighting with “conventional,” “moral” weapons, would not the losing side set its scientists to producing nuclear weapons in order to stave off defeat? If history is anything to go by, the side which was winning would use the Bomb and justify this by claiming it had brought hostilities to a speedier conclusion.

It would require several volumes to deal with every “solution” which CND’ers have dreamt-up over the years. From World Government or alignment with the “uncommited Nations” (some strange bedfellows in this lot), to “disengagement” and the farcical “Steps Towards Peace,” every straw has been clutched at.

Anyway, even if it were possible, Capitalism minus the Bomb would not solve the problem of war; a world based on the common ownership of the means of wealth production, alone, will do that. So, being after something fundamentally different, we have no alternative but to oppose CND.

One final point. We do not deny the sincerity of many campaigners; the energy and ingenuity they displayed in tackling a job they considered important provided further proof that once working men and women get on the right track Capitalism’s days are numbered.

Vic Vanni

Glasgow Br.

Upside-Down World

Capitalism is not serving the majority of humanity. Capitalism is an economic system which has as its goal the production of capital. This capital is then used to produce more capital, ad infinitum. Anyone who tells you that socialism can be just a cozier, nicer version of capitalism, must be considered suspect.

Capitalism divides the persons engaged in work - producing the goods and services upon which life depends - into two basic groups: employers and employees. In capitalism, the former buy the labor power of the latter. Employers hire employees in two distinct groups. One group (production workers, blue-collar workers etc.) is set to work with tools, equipment and work-spaces to transform raw materials into finished products, both goods and services. The other group (enablers, white-collar workers etc.) is set to work doing the necessary clerical, supervisory, security and managerial tasks that support the first group to produce those finished products. Employers make all key production decisions - what to produce, how and where - with little or no input from employees. Employers likewise make all the key decisions about what to do with the enterprise's profit or surplus. Employees again have little or no power over the disposition of the profits their work achieves.

Let’s say that you’re getting paid $15 an hour by a business owner in a stable, profitable firm. You’ve been working there five years, and you put in about sixty hours a week. No matter what your job is like — whether it’s easy or grueling, boring or exciting — one thing is certain: your labor is making more (probably a lot more) than $15 an hour for your boss. That persistent difference between what you produce and what you get back in return is exploitation — a key source of profits and wealth in capitalism. And, of course, with your paycheck you’re forced to buy all the things necessary for a good life — housing, health care, child care, a college education — which are also commodities, produced by other workers who are not fully remunerated for their efforts either.

Socialists want a world without private property. We don’t want a world without personal possessions— the things meant for individual consumption and enjoyment. Instead, socialists strive for a society without private property — the things that give the people who own them power over those who don’t. That’s the socialist vision: abolishing private ownership of the things we all need and use — factories, banks, offices, natural resources, utilities, communication and transportation infrastructure — and replacing it with social ownership, thereby undercutting the power of elites to hoard wealth and power. And that’s also the ethical appeal of socialism: a world where people don’t try to control others for personal gain, but instead cooperate so that everyone can flourish.

The power created by private property is expressed most clearly in the labor market, where business owners get to decide who deserves a job and who doesn’t, and are able to impose working conditions that, if given a fair alternative, ordinary people would otherwise reject. And even though workers do most of the actual work at a job, owners have unilateral say over how profits are divided up and don’t compensate employees for all the value they produce. Socialists call this exploitation. Exploitation is not unique to capitalism. It’s around in any class society, and simply means that some people are compelled to toil under the direction of, and for the benefit of, others. In a socialist society you and your fellow workers wouldn’t spend your day making others rich. You would keep much more of the value you produced. This could translate into more material comfort, or, alternatively, the possibility of deciding to work less with no loss in compensation so you could go to school or take up a hobby. That may sound like a pipe dream, but it’s entirely plausible. Workers at all levels of design, production, and delivery know how to make the things society needs — they do it every day. They can run their workplaces collectively, cutting out the middle-men who own private property. Indeed, democratic control over our workplaces and the other institutions that shape our communities is the key to ending exploitation.

Why be a wage-slave?

“See yonder poor, o'er – labour'd wight,

So abject, mean, and vile,

Who begs a brother of the earth

To give him leave to toil,

And see his lordly fellow-worm

The poor petition spurn,

Unmindful, tho’ a weeping wife

And helpless offspring mourn.”

Burns

The term wage-slaves refers to those who, lacking capital or means of production, have only their labour power to sell to make a living. This describes the vast majority of people in today’s capitalist societies whose sole means of subsistence is the sale of their capacity to work. Just as the feudal-era serf had no choice but to enslave him or herself and his or her family to the manor-house lord, the modern-day serf must indenture him or herself to employers to own a car or home or buy a college education. Unlike the slave and the serf, he or she is a "free" labourer and bound neither to an individual master nor to the soil. He or she is "free" to work or to be idle; "free" from the soil —"free" from the ownership of the means of production and from a secure livelihood; and often "free" from employment because of the competition for the job. The goal of socialists is the abolition of the wage system, which implies the end of capitalism. Profit-determined production will be replaced by one satisfying the actual needs and ambitions of the associated producers. The market economy will end and we will have a planned economy. Social existence and development will no longer be determined by the uncontrollable expansion and contraction of capital but by the collective conscious decisions of the producers in a classless society.

Dependence upon a job and the wages haunts the workers like their shadow. An invisible chain binds them to their machines. There is no escaping the struggle. The workers do and must struggle to keep up their wages and to better their standard of living. In this struggle the odds are always against them and on the side of the capitalists. The competition for jobs keeps wages down to a minimum. If, for a time, there is a brief industrial boom, it is always followed by a panic and unemployment. Every improvement, every invention that increases production, is a further threat. Many instinctive feel that it is getting the worse and ask, “What are we going to do about it?” Organisation is the greatest weapon that the workers have at their disposal. All that the workers have ever gained has been through the power of organisation. The organised power of the workers, of course, presupposes a certain amount of understanding. The power of numbers alone will not solve the mighty problem that confronts the workers. Organisation must be backed by the power of knowledge. Workers must become aware and conscious of the class struggle towards the conquest of political power and the taking possession of the industry and communications. They have to learn that the purely economic struggle has its limitations. And organise for the abolition of the system of wage labour. There is a working class and a capitalist class. There is a class war. Socialism is the expropriation of that capitalist class. You cannot get socialism by a dodge or by intrigues with the capitalist parties. All the capitalist spokesmen, policies of this, that and the other and appeal to the workers to make “sacrifices” to help in this but never touching rent, interest and profits. All these so-called remedies not only fail to touch the root or the evil — the burdens of capitalist disorganisation and parasitism but they can intensify the disease. The crisis is not a crisis of natural scarcity or shortage. Harvests are sufficient to feed all and production capable of providing for all. Millions of workers are willing and able to work who presently cannot. It would seem natural that the outcome should be great abundance for all but that is not the result to-day under capitalism. Why? Because capitalists cannot organise production for use.

Would-be reformers of capitalism including most on the Left urge that if only the capitalists would pay higher wages to the workers, enabling them to buy more of what they produce, there would be no crisis. The advocate the minimum wage, the living wage, the universal basic income. This is utopian nonsense, which ignores the inevitable laws of capitalism — the drive for profits, and the drive of competition. The drive of capitalism is always to increase its profits by every possible means, to increase its surplus, not to decrease it. Individual capitalists may talk of the “gospel of high wages” in the hope of securing a larger market for their goods. But the actual drive of capitalism as a whole is the opposite. The force of competition compels every capitalist to cheapen costs of production, to extract more output per worker for less return, to cut wages and just mostly talk to conceal the real process of capitalism at work -intensified output from the workers, with a diminishing share to the workers.

There is no future on the basis of capitalism. Unless we overthrow capitalism starvation await us if many of the scientific predictions on climate change prove to be even remotely true. Capitalism can find no solution. World collapse or workers’ revolution — this is no longer a debating issue of the future, it is a life and death issue; a fight for life that draws close. The future is in our hands. There is no going backwards, only going forward to the socialist future. The battle between the people’s needs and capitalism grows ever fiercer. It can only end in revolution. We have reached the dead-end of reformism and now the only path before us is revolution. There are voices crying out to know how a world can produce so much food that people starve, and so many manufactured goods that people go without. It is a question capitalism cannot answer. Capitalism has no solution. Only the working-class through socialism can bring the solution - to organise productive power to meet human needs. Only socialists can cut through the bonds of capitalist property rights and organise production for use, to bring common ownership and increase abundance and leisure for all. This is the aim of the Socialist Party to end the power of the capitalist class, to drive the capitalists from possession, and to organise social production. The means of production, the factories, mines, land, railways, docks, ships, becomes the property of society. The workers are free to organise production according to coordinated and connected plans. There is no longer the capitalist anarchy of production by competing businesses for an unknown market, with the consequent gluts and slumps. Instead, the workers are able to determine: We shall produce so much coal, so much iron, so much steel, so much agricultural machinery, so much textiles, cultivate so much land with such and such crops, etc. directed solely to supplying the needs of every man, woman and child. It is production for use, not for profit and every expansion of production means greater abundance and leisure for all.

Capitalism can only seek to prolong its life by casting its burdens upon the backs of workers by ever renewed attacks upon the working conditions and living standards. Various sections of capitalists fight to increase their own competitive power, to cheapen costs of production, to enlarge their own share of the market. But this cutting of costs, since capitalist rent, interest and profits are sacred, can only be carried out at the expense of the workers. Businesses all have the same task; to reduce the living standards of of workers and increase market share at home and abroad. Wages, employment conditions and working hours are attacked on every side with demands for cuts. Labour is intensified. Increased output demanded from every worker for less reward. Speed-up and rationalisation by redundancy or imposition of part-time working are the order of the day. The employers’ offensive extends to the unemployed, no less than the employed workers and it extends equally to all the social services in the Welfare State which are now treated as an unnecessary extravagance to be pared. Health, education and housing are now unaffordable. All these measures requires the weakening of the workers’ struggle. So we see such measures as the Trade Union Bill presently going through Parliament to make more and more strikes illegal; to increasing use of the police and the courts against the workers on strike.

This then is the alternatives before the working class – the continuance of capitalism that means hunger and want for more and more people. Capitalism already grudges the bare subsistence and seeks to reduce it even more. Or socialist revolution, leading to new life for all.

Why Fear Socialism?

The goal of the Socialist Party is the achievement of the co-operative commonwealth, a social system based on the elimination of all classes and class differences, a system without exploitation or oppression. Today, the whole world is now chained to the capitalist system. The aim of the socialist revolution is to overthrow the capitalist class for the creation of a classless and stateless society in which the guiding principle will be ‘From each according to ability, to each according to need’. The struggle to bring about the socialist transformation of the capitalist economy will not be easy but once the working class abolishes capitalist relations of production and replaces them by non-oppressive, non-exploitive ones then the alienation characteristic of capitalism will begin to disappear. People gain control of their productive activity and the products of their labour so their antagonistic estrangement from each other and their aversion to work are overcome. Productive activity will become once again a creative, fulfilling and truly human activity. The division between work and non-work will gradually disappear and people will freely choose what to produce rather than being constrained by immediate necessities. The human species will embark upon a completely new stage of its historical development free from the oppression and exploitation of class society. The state machine is no longer necessary, and the state withers away.

In a society where each grabs what he can at the expense of the rest, naturally, it is not surprising that in a system of society where the aim is to get rich by any means, crime of every kind should flourish. Faced by the corrupt example of capitalism generally many take to lives of open crime and try to seize at the point of a gun what the capitalist “banksters” steal through exploiting the workers, by a corner on the stock exchange, or by corrupting the government. The main difference between their operations is primarily one of dimension. The mafia is an altogether legitimate child of American capitalism, and it is no accident that they are an object of admiration. But there is no place for human sharks who prey upon the vulnerable. The abolition of capitalism destroy the basis of the crimes against property, but an evolving moral code and effective educational system, will greatly diminish the “crimes of passion.” Capitalism blames crime upon the individual, instead of upon the bad social conditions which produce it. Hence its treatment of crime is essentially one of punitive prison sentences. But the failure of its prisons, with their terrible sex-starvation, graft, over-crowding, idleness, inane discipline, ferociously long sentences and general brutality, is overwhelmingly demonstrated by the rapidly mounting numbers of recidivism. Capitalist prisons are actually schools of crime. The capitalists, as is their wont, seek to justify the destructive types by asserting that they are rooted firmly in human nature. Such appeals to “human nature,” however, must be taken cautiously. Changed social conditions develop different “human natures.”

A socialist revolution is the most profound of all revolutions in history. It initiates changes more rapid and far-reaching than any in the whole experience of mankind. Millions of workers, striking off their age-old chains of slavery, will construct a society of liberty and prosperity. Socialism will inaugurate a new era for the human race, the building of a new world. The world will become a place well worth living in, and what is the most important, its joys will not be the monopoly of a privileged ruling class but the heritage of all. Anti-technology is the absurdity of capitalism in despair. We should not fear automation but see it as an emancipator from the drudgery and poverty of the past. We will control the robots; not let it enslave us as it has done under capitalism. It would be the sheerest nonsense and quite impossible not to take advantage of every labour- and time-saving device. Socialist society will know how to develop the artistic and the creative impulses of the people which will not be shackled by poverty and slavery, where the arts and sciences will not be hamstrung by the profit-making motive, where the masses are not poisoned by anti-social codes of morals and ethics, and where every assistance of the free community is given to the maximum cultivation of the intellectual and artistic powers of the masses—there we need have no fear that society will be robotized by the new technology. Life in socialist society will be varied and interesting and individual will vie with one another, as never before, to build the useful and create the beautiful. Capitalism, based upon human exploitation, stands as the great barrier to social progress. Socialism releases the productive forces strong enough to provide plenty for all.  Socialism frees humanity from the stultifying effects of the struggle for mere basic existence and opens up before it new horizons of joys and tasks. The day is not so far distant when our children or grand-children will look back with horror upon capitalism and marvel how we tolerated it so long.

Socialist society will bring to an end ignorance, strife and misery and will organise the economics of the world upon a rational and planned basis, enhancing the systematic conservation the world’s natural resources and facilitating the beautification of the world, by liquidating congested slum cities and merging the joys and conveniences of country and urban life in town planning. Capitalism, with its wars, wage slavery and poverty undermines the health of the human race and destroys its well-being. Because of the idiocy of the system, its antiquated moral codes, its exploitation, capitalism has thwarted the evolution of the human species, retarded the very evolution of mankind itself in mind and body.  For many generations Utopians have dreamed of ideal societies, understanding humanity’s capacity for a higher social life than the existing dog-eat-dog so-called civilisation we have now. But they had little conception of what was necessary for social revolution. Their Utopias were mere speculations disconnected from actual life and so fell upon deaf ears. The socialist revolution is no longer an abstraction, a mere theory for the far–off future. Today, world socialism can be a reality. Socialism will carry humanity soaring to heights of achievement far beyond the dreams of even the most hopeful Utopians. Capitalists ridicule the idea of such a revolution makes a strong and stubborn resistance but the world capitalist system is subject to inherent weaknesses and is in decay. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot save it once the majority of people develop revolutionary consciousness and those toilers of the world are now organising to put a final end to their wage-slavery. 

Our message to fellow workers

Many people became frightened by the immensity of the task of achieving a socialist society. The thought of creating a whole new stage of history is a daunting one. There will no longer be the need for the state since the state will be replaced with common administration by all of society. Socialism eliminates the anarchy of capitalism and its crises, by collective ownership of the means of production and collective planning of the economy controlled by the working class. Society will be transformed and the community of workers established, a completely classless society. Technology will no longer be weapons in the hands of the capitalists to grind down the working class, and workers will no longer be a mere extension of the machine, as they are under capitalism. Instead technology will become tools in the hands of the working class to benefit all of society. This will unleash the stored-up knowledge of the working class and inspire people to make new breakthroughs.  Unemployment will end, because socialism will be able to make full use of the labour of everyone in society, while at the same time developing and introducing new scientific to expand output. As increased automation replaces workers, people will not be thrown into the streets, but shift to other jobs and the working hours will be reduced. Work itself will become a joy and enrichment of a person’s life, instead of a miserable means to sustain existence, as it is under capitalism. People will have a wide and diverse variety of organisations to remake and administer society. Imagine how it will feel when all mortgages and debts immediately disappear.

Socialism will bring about well-constructed housing for people. Under capitalism, it is more profitable to speculate in land, maintain slum housing and put capital into buildings for big business than to build decent housing for the masses. It is only because the rule of capital has so greatly distorted development, and brought such decay. Slums will be pulled down, and in their place new homes and other community facilities will be built. Homes will built near places of work, doing away with unnecessary commuting and with easy access to medical clinics, nurseries and schools. A socialist society will make available public laundries, cafeterias, nurseries and other facilities near the home and work. This will make it possible to greatly reduce the burden of household work, and free women–and men as well–to play a greater part in productive labor and the political role of the working class in ruling and revolutionising society. Health care will be freed from the nightmare of big business and the drug companies. Under socialism health care and hospitals will no longer be about cost-cutting but a means for the working class to prevent disease and to preserve the health of the people. Capitalist education prepares the great majority of youth only for existence as wage-slaves and perpetuating the capitalist system. Children are taught to compete against each other. Under capitalism education is geared to maintain the division of society into classes, the conditions of capitalist exploitation and the rule of the capitalists over the working class and masses of people. Education in socialist society will promote cooperation in place of competition, stressing the living link between theory and practice, between knowing and doing.

Capitalism promotes cynicism, despair, and the lie that the masses of people are at fault for all the problems of society–since these can hardly be covered up. It tries to demoralize people with the idea that they are the helpless pawn of mysterious and sinister forces. When it deals with the problems ordinary people face every day, it tries to paint them as purely “personal problems” not stemming from the nature of society itself, or at most as the fault of some “bad” people with “bad” ideas, not representing any class. In all its forms it aims at deflecting the anger of the people away from the ruling class back onto themselves–hate people of another nationality, or the other sex, hate yourself, hate people in general, hate anything but the ruling class itself. It glorifies parasites–whether bank president, gangster or pimp. Socialists shine a spotlight on the crimes of the ruling class and illuminates the real reason for the evils and the sufferings of the people in society – capitalist exploitation.

Socialists point the way to a brighter future. There is no such thing as “human nature”. In the slave system, it was considered “natural” for one group of people, the slave-owners, to own other people, the slaves. In capitalist society, this idea is regarded as criminal and absurd, because the bourgeoisie has no need for slaves as private property (at least not in its own country). But it has every need for wage-slaves, proletarians. So it presents as “natural” the kind of society where a small group, the capitalists, own the means of production and on that basis force the great majority of society to work to enrich them. The slave-owners and the capitalists have one fundamental thing in common–they are both exploiters, and they both regard it as the correct and perfect order of things for a small group of parasites to live off the majority of laboring people. They differ only in the form in which they exploit and therefore in their view of how society should be organised to ensure this exploitation. When humanity has advanced to socialism, society as a whole will consciously reject the idea that any one group should privately own the means of production. Then wage-slavery, based on the ownership of capital as private property, will be seen as just as criminal and absurd as ancient slavery, based on the ownership of other people as private property. The working class has no interest in promoting private gain at the expense of others and every interest in promoting cooperation. For only in this way can it emancipate itself and all humanity. Appropriating the means of production from the overthrown employing class is an act which will be accomplished almost immediately once the workers have won political power.

The Ways and the Means

The 19thC German socialist Wilhelm Liebknecht wrote of parliaments

“…Although the principle of representation cannot be altogether abandoned, it should however be reduced to a strictly indispensable minimum, in particular, the legislative and government functions should be exercised by committees and not by parliament, where, as every experienced person knows, debates are not serious deliberations but mere theatrical performances. Even today the major work of the Reichstag has to be done in committees.

Committees elected by the people for specified purposes, which can meet whenever common interests are involved, and which have to submit to plebiscite all laws before they come into force; the people possessing not only the right to reject, but also the right to introduce legislation; in addition, complete freedom of the press and of assembly, and a government which has no power to wield against the people – this is, in rough outline, my idea of the future mode of legislation and government – so long as it may still be possible to call it government at all.”

From the day of its foundation the Socialist Party of Great Britain has struggled consistently to utilise every opportunity provided by the parliamentary system in Britain to further the struggle for socialism, and to voice case for socialism. However, at the present time, the very electoral system itself, based upon the deposit system and the electoral machinery of the capitalist parties in each constituency, make it extremely difficult for a party to even put up a candidate. We need new ways of thinking and new ways of organising yet those who talk of ‘new ideas’ and ‘new methods of organising’ embrace ideas and methods easily as old as those they criticise. The class war is a war, with our class enemy continually trying to take advantage of weak points in our side, to encourage division and fragmentation. In order to preserve its power the dominant class is ready to make temporary concessions. It knows how to wait for the ebbing of the movement so as to take with one hand what it had to concede with the other. There are ways of clarifying ideas and developing organisation to coordinate struggle. We do not stand in awe of the “sacred writings,” defending “scripture” at all costs against experience. The struggle for socialism is within a human context not “holy writ”.

Every election is fought on one or two main issues, and on these alone but once the mandate has been given on that one or two questions politicians arrogates to themselves the right to rule and decide on every issue without the slightest reference to the wishes of the electorate. If a political leader chooses to act in a manner contrary to the wishes of his electors in a dozen other questions, the voters have no redress except to wait for another election to give them the opportunity to return some other gentleman under similar conditions and with similar opportunities of evil-doing. True democracy within capitalism is in short supply. This worn-out and corrupt system offers no promise of improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the dark clouds of despair. This system offers only a perpetual struggle for slight relief within wage slavery. It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery. Capitalism gives to the people the right to choose their master, a voice in the selection of their ruler. Yet the fundamental feature that goes unquestioned is the continued subjection to a ruling class once the choice of the personnel of the rulers is made. The freedom the socialist seeks is to change the choice of rulers which we have to-day into the choice of administrators of decisions voted upon directly by the people; and will also substitute for the choice of masters (capitalists) the appointment of reliable delegates under direct democratic control. That will mean true democracy – real social democracy.

A world movement must be founded on the class struggle, based upon the recognition of the irrepressible conflict between the capitalist class and the working class. All intelligent workers realize the capitalist system fails to supply the needs of the vast majority of the human race, and that it must be overthrown before the people can have freedom. It is time for the workers of the World to learn their own power and use it for their own benefit. Unorganized they are a helpless mob to be exploited by capitalists, betrayed by politicians, and bludgeoned by the police. Organized under the banner of socialism they become a coordinated force to press forward to the goal of freedom.

Our “party line” put forward is – ‘Spoil your ballot and organize for socialism. This is no plea for apathy or political somnolence. It is a slogan which requires a vigorous campaign to explain the full and correct political significance of such an act.

Instead of slavishly scapegoating fellow workers, we should get up off our knees, be making common cause with workers of all lands to remove this iniquitous system of capitalism. Capitalism and its inevitable concomitants of war, poverty, and planetary despoliation is well past its sell-by date. Time to establish a post-capitalist production for use, free access world for all of the world’s people. This is no Utopia either. It is an immediate and practical proposition and has been since the start of the 20th century never mind this one. It only requires a majority to opt for it and no force will stop it. Capitalisms usefulness is well past is sell by date hence the two world wars of last century as in ruling class, rivalry sought to assert territorial claims over each other’s markets, raw materials and trade routes. What is Utopian is the notion that capitalism can be reformed, tamed of its aggression and made more egalitarian.

We need new ways of thinking and new ways of organising yet those who talk of ‘new ideas’ and ‘new methods of organising’ embrace ideas and methods easily as old as those they criticise. The trouble with “revolutionary” vanguardists is that they, either, think in terms of some foreign country, or “activists” who never have had any actual connection with the labour movement and know nothing about working class. They try to shape the workers to fit their theories, instead of fitting their theories to the workers. The reason that the vanguardists hate the ballot box is because they know they are the minority and have not the patience to await the test of discussion and time. They don’t want the counting of noses, because they know the count will go against them, and because voting requires deliberation. They don’t want deliberation, they want action and hope to carry their case on a wave of excitement. Back of all this there always crops out the Leninist/Stalinist contempt of majority rule. They believe themselves to be the enlightened minority. Right now they would lead us into “mass action” and right into the capitalists’ hands.

“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.” William Morris

The Time Is Now

You can’t compromise your way to your goal. Putting forth a vision for radical transformation of all we know is scary. We need people who are willing to stand together to build a movement for social change that unites people behind a vision of a world based on socialist principles. So we have a choice, we can stick with the known, what is comfortable, what seems to be pragmatic at this time or we can take a strong, bold stance for our highest values, goals and dreams. We have to unite, communicate, know our strengths and attack the repression and oppression that the state is imposing upon us. There’s just us. Just-us. Justice. It’s up to us to change everything. We have to change the system and we have to be radical about it. We have to have everyone we can, doing what they think best, giving everything they have.

Politicians and economists, more often than not echoing one another, speak of a new regime of higher wages, more consumption, and increased standards of living, which would result in the end of poverty. Their prophecies are always answered with a collapse of the good times are a-coming. The ballyhoo of prosperity ends in the most disastrous of recessions. The captains of industry and finance always appear bewildered by the onset of a depression, at no time do they really understand the movement of the economic forces they exploit. Their invocations to the new era of prosperity for all are quickly forgotten. Always, in one form or another, capitalism creates an ideology to disguise and justify its predatory character. It is a necessary device of class domination. But when the disguise disappears, as it must, and the hopeless reality is revealed, the economic crisis of capitalism will become a political crisis and an era of momentous social struggle and change.

Much of the ballyhoo about pending prosperity was invented by professionals who were mesmerized by the “easy money” of speculation. But the prosperity was unequally distributed, only meagerly shared by the workers. There was grinding poverty and terrible insecurity. The number of strikes decreased considerably, but the strikes that did occur were brutally suppressed. Not only that: even if prosperity had been as great as claimed, it was still woefully far behind prevailing potential of technological resources. For capitalism always restricts production and consumption, the possibilities of abundance and leisure potential in the productive forces of society. Social justice will never prevail until industrial despotism has been supplanted by global industrial democracy.

One decisive victory is all that’s needed for a new day is the reformist’s mantra. That new day, however, never ever comes as our rulers quickly learn of other ways to exploit workers. Occupy presented a danger to the entrenched oligopoly because Occupy wasn’t offering solutions like electing representatives or voting for Democrats. The overall consensus was that the system didn’t work and something new was needed. Anything can happen when enough people doubt the basic legitimacy of their government for the doors open to the possibility of real change. Despite its eventual reverses, the Occupy movement represented one of the most serious challenges to the state’s legitimacy in a long while. “Why don’t they offer any solutions?” lamented the establishment media, reflecting the fear of the elite that Occupy targeted the entire political system. If it is true that Sanders has moved the debate on economic justice and corporate control it is up to us to demand much more, such as a real democracy that allows all to have a say.

What many radicals are pursuing is not socialism. What have to show for it? Have there been reforms? In many cases, yes–even significant ones like large scale social welfare program. Has exploitation been ended, the enrichment of a few on the labor of the many? Hardly. Poverty? Scarcely. Is the economy planned to benefit the people? Have the creative powers of the masses been unleashed? Of course not. Reformists are content with class divisions, the dominance of the capitalists, a liberal-orientated government that does not challenge the existing structures.

There is no race but the human race. War, racism, sexism and all the other categories of inhumanity still practiced and profitable must end if we are to have a future as a truly human race. Scapegoating makes sense to the thoughtless or those responsible for maintaining a system that demands a social under-class in order to protect a wealthy over-class.

Human resourcefulness and natural resources are wasted by this system, which makes “profit” the only object in business. Ignorance and misery, with all concomitant evils, are perpetuated by this system, which makes human labor a commodity to be bought in the open market, and places no real value on human life. Science, technology and invention are diverted from their humane purposes and made instruments for the enslavement of men women and children. Labor, manual and mental, being the creator of all wealth and all civilization, it rightfully follows that those who perform all labor and create all wealth should enjoy the fruit of their efforts. But this is rendered impossible. The fruits of cooperative labor are appropriated by the owners of the means of production, by the owners of machines, mines, land, and the means of transportation.

The Socialist Party calls upon all citizens to unite under its banner  so that we may be ready to conquer capitalism by making use of our political liberty and by taking possession of the political power, so that we may put an end to the present barbarous struggle, by the abolition of capitalism, the restoration of the land, and of all the means of production, transportation, and distribution, to the people as a collective body, and the substitution of the cooperative commonwealth for the present state of unplanned production, industrial war, and social disorder — a commonwealth which, although it will not make every man equal physically or mentally, will give to every person the free exercise and the full benefit of his or her faculties, multiplied by all the modern factors of civilization and ultimately inaugurate the universal brotherhood of mankind. The Socialist Party will help make democracy, “the rule of the people,” a truth by ending the economic subjugation of the overwhelmingly great majority of the people.

Break the Chains!

In 1920 919,000 American voters wanted Eugene Debs, who ran on a socialist ticket five times, to be president of the United States and the platform on which he ran demanded the ownership of the means of production be transferred from private to public control. Debs demanded the supreme power of the workers ‘as the one class that can and will bring permanent peace to the world.’ He declared that then ‘we shall transfer the title deeds of the railroads, the telegraph lines, the mines, mills and great industries to the people in their collective capacity; we shall take possession of all these social utilities in the name of the people. We shall then have industrial democracy. We shall be a free nation whose government is of and by and for the people.’ Debsian socialism struck a chord in the hearts of the people. Debs preached the Golden Rule, the basic law of social life – ‘Each for all, and all for each.’

If Debs was to rise from the grave would he feel pleased at the progress of his cause. Capital is still in the private hands of the ruling class. There is not yet socialism. He would see clearly that America, despite its great technological advances is spending more money on war and business subsidies than it spends on education, health and general social uplift. Debs would recognize as Noam Chomsky has, that Bernie Sanders is much like Teddy Roosevelt who sought to break the power and reform the trusts of in his own time. For Debs palliatives were not the solution. The only possible way to save the present-day world was to cut to the root of the problem and establish an industrial democracy. Half-measures as proposed by Sanders cannot meet the challenge. Tinkering with monetary and fiscal policy has proven bankrupt. Welfare policies will do little to correct the deep-seated structures of regional and social inequality. Legislative reforms, aimed at the most blatant abuses of corporate power, will falter, for the corporations will hold the government to ransom through their control of desperately needed investment. So much so that a reform-minded Sanders government will buckle under this pressure, and will pass legislation, cutting social services and suppressing the basic rights of workers. It is not speculation but a conclusion reached by reading actual history. Capitalism has failed, and so have efforts to reform it. Why return to old policies that have proved wanting and believe they will now work. For socialists such as Debs, the needs of people, not profit, are the driving force of society. The system cannot function if common working men and women were to take matters in their own hands!

It must be apparent to every person that there exists a class war being waged by the capitalist classes to secure a greater share in the exploitation of labor. Aside from the false promises put forward by the capitalist class, put forward to mislead the workers, we must ever be on our guard against the crafty apologists of wrong, posing as the friends of labor. Class struggle mean no compromise and an unrelenting struggle against capitalism

The World Socialist Movement declares emphatically that it will work uncompromisingly for social revolution to establish industrial democracy by the mass action of the working class. It also declares that the international unity of the workers is imperative and, therefore, works to bring about that unity, regardless of all barriers, territorial or racial. Capitalism is world-wide. It pays little attention to national boundary lines. Capitalists often try to cover up their crimes with a cloak of patriotism, but the only patriotism they know is that of the dollar. Capital seeks the most profitable investment. If an American capitalist can invest more profitably by out-sourcing he will do so. Workers also must not confine themselves to geographical divisions or national boundary lines, but must follow the globalization of industry. The workers of all countries co-operate to carry on industry regardless of national boundary lines, and they must organize in the same way to confront the transnational corporations. The modern wage worker has neither property nor country. Ties of birth and sentiment which connect him with any particular country are slight and unimportant. It makes little difference to him what country he exists in. When the workers are educated to the real nature of the profit system they lose all respect for the masters and their property. They see the capitalists in their true colors as thieves and parasites, and their "sacred" property as plunder. They see state, church, press and university as tools of the exploiters and they look on these institutions with contempt. They understand the identity of interests of all wage workers and realize the truth of the I. W. W. slogan: "An injury to one is an injury to all."

What we want is not workers’ participation in their own exploitation, but social control over production, so that communities can impose their own priorities, their priorities for what to produce and how to produce - production for need, not for profit.

Educate the Educators

The education of the people, not the few alone, but the entire mass in the principles of industrial democracy is the task of the people themselves. The socialist’s is to set them thinking for themselves, and to hold ever before them the ideal based upon mutual interests. A capitalist world can never be a free world and a society based upon warring classes cannot stand secure. Such a world is full of strife and hatred and such a society can exist only by means of repression and domination.

The Left has often advocated state capitalism, sometimes misleadingly designated as “state socialism”. Whenever the state nationalized an industry, whenever the state imposed its control over industry, the Left naively accepted this as an abandonment of capitalism, as a symptom of the growing importance of socialism and the transformation of capitalism into Socialism. State capitalism emphasizes the fact of the state, of government, being an economic agency of the ruling class. State and capitalist industry, government and ruling class, become one and indivisible. State capitalism, accordingly, is not an abandonment of capitalism: it is a strengthening of capitalism. What came about was not socialism nor a step towards socialism but merely another expression of capitalist power and supremacy. Socialism is not state ownership or government management of industry, but the opposite: Socialism’s earliest act is to abolish the state. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. State capitalism attempts to regulate and direct capital and labor. State regulation may, to some measure, prove onerous to the capitalist, but is accepted as the necessary condition for the progressive promotion of his interests, however, it proves much more onerous to the employee. Socialists rejects “co-operation” with the capitalist, in industry as in politics and the policy of trying to maintain industrial peace by coercion and cajolery. One means of cajolery is an arrangement by which the workers may “co-operate” with the employers in the consideration of matters affecting a particular industry or factory. It brings the workers under the sway of the capitalist in ways that weakens the independent action of our class by offering a sham democracy in the factories and offices. Industry is not transformed into a state function ruled through a ministerial department, but transformed into new administrative norms of the organized associations of producers. The Socialist Party rejects state ownership, rejects state capitalism as a “phase” of “socialism” that can “grow” into “socialism”.  This concept of transformation in practice doesn’t transform capitalism, it transforms the socialist movement into a caricature and a prop of Capitalism. The Socialist Party insist upon the social management through industrial democracy.

For sure, there is still some room for reform and betterment of conditions in the present social system, but this is of minor matter compared to the need for industrial and social reorganization. The real great change in history must be the socialization of the means of our daily life. Privately owned production for individual profit are no longer compatible with civilisation’s progress. With all its tremendous technology through invention and discovery this capitalist world of ours has not yet learned how to feed itself. There is no longer any excuse for hunger. All the materials and all the forces are at hand and easily available for the production of all things needed to provide food, clothing and shelter for every man, woman and child, thus putting an end to the poverty and misery which sicken humanity. But the technology must be released from private ownership and control, socialized, democratized, and set into operation for the common good of all instead of the private profit of the few. Common ownership and democratic control are inseparable. To the working class belongs the future.

There is no room for misunderstanding among us as to what our position means and requires. It requires a clean break with all the perversions and distortions of the real meaning of socialism and democracy and their relation to each other, and a return to the original formulations and definitions. Nothing short of this will do. Only a revolution that replaces the class rule of the capitalists by the class rule of the workers can really establish real social democracy. Socialists seeks to inaugurate a system of industrial democracy in place of capitalist autocracy and control. Like capitalism itself industrial democracy knows no boundaries, color, race, creed or sex. As capitalism knows only profit, industrial democracy knows only the exploitation by which profit is possible. Socialists organize to make exploitation an impossibility. Socialism is not about getting more wages, less hours and better conditions, but achieving social power. It means solving social problems and of making the workers themselves representative of a new society working for the good of all and the profit of none. The workers ensuring their own free development, their own liberation—is the liberation of all society, for the workers are society, in fact and numbers. The capitalists as a class, are a useless parasitic minority that can be dispensed with. Workers have no interests in common with capitalists and in fact, their material interests are in conflict. It is declared purpose of the Socialist Party to abolish the wage-system, and supplant it by a system of industrial co-operation in which the community shall have full control for its own benefit. The social revolution becomes a fact when people have acquired sufficient consciousness of their control over society to establish that control in practice. The capitalist state will weakened by socialist parliamentary criticism and action. The capitalist state will be undermined by the developing class power and struggles of workers’ movement by all the means of action at its disposal. But for parliamentarianism to be of value it must relate itself to other forms of struggle and abandon its policy of reformism.

This is our planet. We want it back

Capitalism can no longer operate in the interests of the majority of humanity. These days people are so suspicious of capitalism that the supporters of it stress more and more upon the necessity of reforming its abuses, until finally they are falling over each other to show that they are really in favour of some sort of “socialism.” Needless to say what they call socialism is only capitalism in disguise, but the trick works. They all in greater or lesser degree adopt as their slogan “We are all socialists now.” Capitalism is a social set up which produces goods for sale. Socialism will be a society which makes things because people need them. Capitalism has competition, the wages system, the state. Socialism will have cooperation, free access to wealth, democratic freedom. Remember this, the next time somebody airily holds forth on a so-called socialist platform or programme.

To talk of a socialist state is to talk in contradictions. For the state is a machine designed to maintain the subjection and exploitation of the large mass of the people by a few. It developed when the production of wealth surplus to the needs of the producer became possible. Its function was to protect the system of the expropriation of that surplus wealth. Thus, it is a very old institution—and now that we live under capitalism, with its exploitation of the working class under modern industrial conditions, it still carries out the same function. Today, as ever, the state is there to preserve and protect the private ownership of the wealth, power and privilege of the relatively small dominant class in society. Part of the state’s work is in the organisation of the military machine. This is a world in which wealth is produced with the object of a profitable sale. This means that nations are always in keen competition for markets and so forth. In continually seeking to outdo their foreign competitors, they land themselves into all manner of risky situations. These in turn cause the perpetual crises, diplomatic wrangles and international tensions which we all know so well. The armed forces, run by the State, are there to push each nation's interests in these disputes.

Millionaires devote money to a political party that they think will uphold their interests. The only thing that can undermine the power of the ruling class is working-class political knowledge; the only way in which the political control can be wrested from the ruling class is by political action based upon sound working-class political knowledge. Workers throughout the capitalist world, support a society which impoverishes and degrades them. It is painful for them to face the reality of their support for capitalism — to face their own responsibility for all the wars and for the global destitution. Yet to face reality, and to live up to our responsibility, is all that it needs. The world has everything now to make it a place of peace and abundance except the political will to make it so. At the moment there may appear to be nothing serious to disturb the tranquility of the capitalists. But that means little. The modern working class inherits the lessons of history, half-formed ideas of the goal towards which historic evolution is relentlessly marching shape themselves in the minds of millions of workers. The seeds of generations of propaganda have been sown, and who knows when and how events which neither capitalists nor workers can control will develop rapidly those half-formed ideas into socialist convictions and bring to maturity the seeds sown in past generations? Political catastrophes, like those in Nature, appear to occur suddenly, but they are not sudden to those who understand that they are the culmination of the innumerable past factors in historical development. Events will show clearly to workers that socialism is the only logical outcome of the class struggle and the only solution for their poverty and insecurity.

The only way of salvation for the workers lies in the transformation of private property into commonly owned property and the organisation of industry on a co-operative basis of production for use and not for profit. No capitalist party will legislate for this— they dare not, on the pain of self-extinction. The only party that dare go to the legislative assemblies to do this is the Socialist Party organised on the lines of the class war, with its tactics and policy in accord with its principle, with a clear knowledge of the fact that rent, profit, and interest exist because the workers—the wealth-creators—are robbed of the wealth they produce, whether taken from them by private capitalists or by the capitalist state. A revolutionary socialist party can act in the real interests of the workers, and for the workers of this country that party is The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Beyond Protest

Capitalism creates many problems and subjects the working class to all kinds of pressures. What is somewhat puzzling about the whole painful business is that, despite so much experience in protesting and all the accompanying disillusionment, people still persist in trying to deal with individual issues in isolation and make little if any attempt to relate either one problem to another, or to relate all the problems to a common cause. It seems that for every outrage committed by capitalism, and for every inhumanity and frustrated need, there is a group of people ready to mushroom into an organisation and start protesting.

Socialists are not opposed to the idea of protesting as such. There was certainly plenty to protest about — there always is. What concerns us is to get it into its social perspective so as to achieve a more fruitful form of expression. The fact that the horrors of capitalism do produce some response in terms of protest demonstrations is more hopeful than an attitude of indifference. But, unless workers learn from previous fruitless experiences to avoid going over the same ground again, nothing is gained.

The widespread ignorance of class interests among workers offers no permanent hindrance to our socialist policy. That ignorance is due to certain causes, and the lack of interest in revolutionary ideas among the masses. If a collapse of conditions causes vast discontent, can anything be hoped for if the working-class are ignorant of socialism? Discontent in itself is not sufficient. Without working class action based on socialist consciousness, there can be no social transformation. That conditions are likely to develop anti-capitalist views among the workers is so well-known to the capitalists there that they have spent fabulous sums in controlling almost every agency of education and opinion, including the labour leader. The open and constant use of the wealth of the few to control affairs by so-called corruption is inevitable. This, however, will not prevent or influence the awakened worker once be realises that economic and political action are essential for him or her, and that neither political or economic action are in themselves corrupt or need ever be corrupt once the workers understand and control the economic and political organisations for themselves and in their own interest.

The alternative to capitalism is seen as a society in which all forms of exchange and money will be abolished and all land and property will be taken into the control of the community. Capitalism is the system of minority private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution, the majority having only their labour power to sell to earn a living—only the profit of the privileged class is maximized. Socialism is the system of society, never yet established anywhere because it requires a majority of convinced socialists based on common ownership and democratic control, and production solely to meet human need. What is usually called “socialism” (government ownership) is state capitalism. Capitalism means capitalists compete for markets and workers have to compete for jobs, whereas socialism means that all individuals have free and equal access to the wealth the world is capable of producing. Why should anyone fear a system that means abolishing war, poverty, privilege and exploitation of the majority by the minority? Nearly everything that we need to-day— food, clothes, and the rest—are produced by businesses, and therefore with the object of making a profit. That is why bad food is often produced, shoddy clothes are often made, houses that you can nearly blow over are often built, and the workers who produce the needed goods are paid such low wages that many of them spend the whole of their lives in a state of poverty that often takes away the wish to remain alive. The Socialist Party intends to have all this altered. Instead of somebody, or some company, having to buy the machinery and other things before food and clothes can be made, we say, let the land and machinery belong to the whole of the people, and let us arrange things so that some will make machinery, others will plough the land, some will go down in mines, others will drive the trains, and so on. As each took an equal part in making what we all needed so each would take an equal part in using what was made.

Now if we had such a state of affairs we would only make the best things we could, and we would make them in the best way. Everyone that could would take his part in making things, so that they would be neither rich unemployed nor poor unemployed. Some will say the idea of everyone working together in such a manner is impossible—each will want to get the lion's share of what is made and do as little as he can. When, however, everyone understands that by not doing his part either in the work or the consuming he is only hindering the producing of things, and therefore, in the long run, doing himself an injury, then there will be, in the main, neither slacking nor greediness. Besides, there will be so little work for each to do and such an abundance of things to be got that these inherited vices will soon disappear.

Grass Roots (1968)

Grass Roots (1968)

Book Review from the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Constituency Labour Parties in Britain by Edward G. Janosik (Pall Mall Press, 45s.)

Edward Janosik has produced here a study of the organisational and political nature of constituency Labour Parties. The blurb on the dust jacket claims that the book contains “a body of reliable data from which sound generalisations could be made". Unfortunately, the author, an American who spent a year in Britain, has little or no experience of his subject and his data has been acquired by interviewing what he calls  “key leaders" of thirty six CLPs.

Before joining the Socialist Party of Great Britain I was a CLP secretary—a “key leader”—for some years and my own impressions of the Labour Party are very different from those gained second hand by Janosik. He must really be naive if he thinks that the party machine (Transport House) isn't all that powerful in the selection of parliamentary candidates. True, there is a procedure laid down which appears to give the “grass roots" a great deal of independence in the matter, but the machine, through its local paid officials, can and often does see that the dice is loaded in favour of nominees acceptable to it by turning a blind eye to blatant irregularities in the delegations to selection conferences.

Also, Janosik's claim that there is little evidence of organised factionalism in the CLP's is to anyone who has ever been active in the Labour Party, sheer nonsense. Before such events as the election of office-bearers, the choosing and instruction of delegates to national and local conferences, the selection of parliamentary and municipal candidates, each faction will normally meet in conclave to decide a course of action against the others.

Janosik does admit that his studies were carried out at a time when a general election was pending. Such an event is always a great unifier as CLP's are basically an electoral machine whose function is to secure the return of candidates representing a very broad viewpoint of how British capitalism should be run. Not that the "unity" ever lasts very long. After the votes have been counted the various factions, left and right, will cheer their heads off together if Labour wins but it is only a short while before the back-stabbing begins again. If Labour loses then, of course, it commences right away.

The book does reveal, in passing, some of the skeletons in the Labour cupboard. For instance, the fact that candidates are sometimes chosen with an eye to the religious prejudices of the electorate. Also dealt with is the degrading "pulling out” of the Labour vote on election day. This consists of the party activists plaguing everyone suspected of Labour sympathies to come out and vote. Fleets of cars are provided for this spectacle and no wonder, for if the average Labour voter were left to vote of his or her own accord then there would be a lot less Labour MPs in Parliament.

The myth that the CLP’s are bastions of militancy against the reactionary leadership also takes a knock. Actually, the vast majority of Labour Party are simply apolitical and are only concerned with humdrum fund-raising and social activities.

Janosik's book cannot fail to impress whoever is obsessed with discovering the facts relating to the average age and occupational, religious, educational background of CLP leaders and there are abundant tables dealing with all this and more. Doubtless, the Robert McKenzie, Abrams and Rose crowd will be fascinated, but really, the author has failed to get under the skin of his subject and to see it for the corrupt, undemocratic and anti-socialist organisation that it is.

Perhaps we shouldn't blame him too much for that After all, thousands who have spent a lifetime in its ranks still haven’t seen through it either

Vic Vanni

Glasgow Branch