Why the Socialist Party

Any effort to increase workers awareness for a new society - a socialist cooperative commonwealth - has to to be viewed favourably. We need to know where we are going if we set out on a journey, otherwise, we all risk ending up in different places. Agreeing a consensus on the route and the mode of transport is desirable. We all must learn from our own particular exploitation but it is also necessary to go further and recognise the commonality of how we are controlled and conditioned. Then we seek common cause and action. We cannot create an hierarchy of degree of individual exploitation. 

In order to fit themselves for this task, the working class must acquire the consciousness which alone can enable them to do so. This consciousness must comprise, first of all, a knowledge of their class position. They must realise that, while they produce all wealth, their share of it will not, under the present system, be more than sufficient to enable them to reproduce their efficiency as wealth producers. They must realize that also, under the system they will remain subject to all the misery of unemployment, the anxiety of the threat of unemployment, and the cares of poverty. They must understand next the implications of their position – that the only hope of any real betterment lies in abolishing the social system which reduces them to mere sellers of their labour power, exploited by the capitalists. They will see then, since this involves dispossessing the master class of the means through which alone the exploitation of labour power can be achieved, there must necessarily be a struggle between the two classes – the one to maintain the present system of private (or class) ownership of the means of living and the other to wrest such ownership from them and make these things the property of society as a whole. This is the struggle of a dominant class to maintain its position of exploitation, on the one hand, and of an enslaved and exploited class to obtain its emancipation, on the other. It is a class struggle.
A class which understands all this is class-conscious. It has only to find the means and the method by which to proceed, in order to become the fit instrument of the revolution. What is the role of a revolutionary organisation except to bring under its umbrella all the struggles of the working class into a mass movement? To unify towards one goal. The abolition of capitalism.

With or without revolutionary organisations, workers and oppressed peoples will and do resist and they discover for themselves the best means of that struggle. Unlike the Leninist/Trotskyist parties, the Socialist Party has no programme of assuming leadership of such struggles and its only advice is simple - such movements have to be democratic, and adding the caveat, that such victories which are achieved will never fully satisfy aspirations and may indeed be only transitory and require constant defending.

So, therefore, understanding that the working class (and, of course, it is accepted that we are a heterogeneous class - with conflicting interests at times and in certain places) do engage in the class struggle and require no declaration of class war from any political group, what then is the role of a revolutionary party but to advocate and educate, until itself is in a position of being a mass movement that can go on to organise as the expression of the class.

And what is it we advocate and educate for? A new society that is an alternative to the existing one. And if that is considered as abstract propaganda-ism, so be it, we plead guilty. The real crime, though, is to forget what we struggle for. We understand the limitations of a revolutionary organisation in our present time and make no grandiose claims of our own organisation's importance to the workers' actual battles in the class struggle, that they can and do conduct without the intervention of a revolutionary political party. 

The aim of the Socialist Party is to persuade others to become socialist and act for themselves, organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about a new socialist society. We are solely concerned with building a movement for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a program of policies to patch up capitalism. The Socialist Party seeks to deepen and better articulate our understanding of the world, Publishing and stating our case wherever and however possible while supporting our fellow-workers in the trade unions (and other movements of the working class), supporting their strikes and actions. The Socialist Party consistently advocates a fully democratic society based upon cooperation and production for use. The more who join the Socialist Party, the more we will be able to get our ideas across. The more experiences we will be able to draw on and greater will be the new ideas for building the movement for socialism. The Socialist Party is an organisation of equals. There is no leader and there are no followers. 

The Scottish Workers' Congress: Curious Stuff from Glasgow (1944)

From the June 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

An organisation calling itself the "Scottish Workers' Congress" called a preliminary meeting at Central Halls, Glasgow, on May 21st. What took place at the meeting we do not know at the time of going to press, but, judging from the explanatory leaflet issued beforehand, it is a curious re-hash of reformism, Scottish nationalism and anti-political activity. The 10-point programme contains some of the stock demands of the reformist parties, such as a minimum wage of 3s. an hour, a 30-hour week, double income-tax allowances on all incomes under £600 a year, immediate provision of sufficient decent houses "by prefabrication and other means in Scotland" (our italics), “democratic workers' control of Scottish industry," and “equal pay for the job for both men and women."

Although the leaflet appeals to "all workers to speak and act directly for themselves" (our italics), the 10 points are directed to Scotland and Scotland only, and among them are such points as "an end to the closing down and shifting south of our industry " (our italics).

On its political attitude the leaflet says only that “the Committee is non-sectarian and non-party," and its task "cannot be undertaken by any of the existing organisations. They exist for other purposes."

How it proposes to achieve its aims is not very clearly indicated, though as it apparently rejects political action, and as point 5 wants the factory committee to "take over the workshop where closing down is threatened," we may assume that the Committee intends that the workers shall take "direct action," thus reviving once more the old delusion that working-class political action is unnecessary.

As the 10 points imply the retention of the wages system and minor modifications of the income tax, it is obvious that the Committee does not aim at the abolition of capitalism and the institution of Socialism; which is, of course, made unmistakeable by the narrow nationalist point of view that stands out in all the 10 points.

How thorough-going is the Committee's acceptance of capitalism can be seen from the points relating to minimum wages and to the income tax. It seeks to raise “the standard of living”—but not too much; for not only does the point about income tax envisage some people having more than £600 a year and some having less, but the minimum wage of 3s. an hour for a 30-hour week only means a minimum wage of £4 10s., or £235 a year.

We await further details of this curious organisation.

Editorial Committee.

Our Future Activity

The only logical position in the political world that a genuinely socialist party can take up is that of opposition to all other parties.  We must be in opposition to all other political parties and be distinct from other “Labour" or "Socialist" bodies. For any party that claims the support of the working- class is acting as their enemy if it does so on any other ground than that of a clear recognition of the class war that is being waged. There must be the complete overthrow of the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of life, with its method of production for profit, a goal attained by the capture of political power by class-conscious workers, so that by its control they can substitute co-operative production for use for production for profit. By this change in the basis of society, the workers will have ended the power by which they are kept in their present condition of wage-slavery. Any party that deludes our fellow-workers into believing that anything short of the establishment of the socialist commonwealth will be effectively assisting to perpetuate the capitalist system, with all its infamies. The only principle on which a working-class party can progress is on the lines of the class war, and strenuous opposition to any party not based on those lines. Thus The Socialist Party of Great Britain resolutely opposes Tory, Labour, LibDems, and nationalist as well as all those professing to be “socialists”, who, directly or indirectly, support capitalist politics. The Socialist Party call upon those of the working-class who desire emancipation to enrol themselves in our organisation, to prosecute the class war and the social revolution to a successful resolution.

For many on the Left, the Socialist Party's conception of revolution lacks credibility and that they claim to possess a theory of revolution that does not expect people to wait for the majority necessary to “enact” socialism before doing something about their immediate problems. Some perceive a problem that they can't see how workers who have become socialists can be expected to sit back and wait for a majority to join them before being able to do something constructive. But no-one's asking them to do this. There will be a whole series of "practical" actions, apart from socialist propaganda activity, that will become possible when once there is a substantial minority of socialists (as opposed to the tiny minority we are today). Our pamphlet "Socialist Principles Explained" says:

 "The organisation and day-to-day running of socialist society will be a completely separate issue. It will have been discussed and planned at great length by everybody before the actual take-over of power takes place. "

and:

 "As the old regime is abolished, the new, really democratic, social order, discussed and planned for so long beforehand, will come into operation".
For instance, there will be involved in:-
* the challenges of the practice of democracy within the socialist political party, and the broader socialist movement generally.
* the task within the trade unions to prosecute the class struggle on the economic front in a more class-conscious and democratic way as well as drawing up plans for keeping production going during the period of social revolution while the political action is being taken to end the monopoly exercised by the capitalist class over the means of production.
*participation within the numerous associations, clubs and mutual aid groups that will flourish at this time, to discuss and prepare the implementation of plans in such fields as town planning, education and culture both after and to a certain extent even before the establishment of socialism.
The growing socialist movement would be preparing for the change-over to socialism and drawing up of plans to reorganise decision-making on a fully democratic basis and to reorient production towards the satisfaction of needs once class ownership and the operation of capitalism's economic laws have been ended. People working in organisations like the WHO and the FAO and the host of other NGOs and charities would be dusting off plans to eliminate world hunger and unnecessary disease. Socialist educational and media ventures would be coming into existence.
We in the SPGB can picture a socialist party and movement growing in the future along with many working class organisational forms including trade unions, councils, the old Industrial Workers of the World idea of One Big Union but not without certain caveats. Workers' councils have, in the past, been a very independent body of workers created at the workplace itself (Russia 1905, 1917, Germany 1919, Hungary 1919, the British General Strike, Council movements in Ireland and Scotland in the same period, in Italy, Hungary 1956, Poland 1970). They usually arise in situations of economic and political crises. They also often rise in opposition to the established trade unions. They are very much spontaneous organisations that do not have any clearly defined political goal (in our case, socialism). Their existence can challenge the State, but not necessarily so. Their inherent problem is that they can be political organisations (again not necessarily so) but tied to the prevailing economic structure of capitalism. And because they arise in response to whatever crisis, their coordination is difficult, and the political consciousness of the workers not necessarily socialist in the end. In past revolutions, the councils have swayed back and forth between political parties and movements and there is no "conscious" action other than a responsive one.

Whereas, a socialist party has the advantage because its interest and actions do not revolve around this or that section of the working class, but of the working class as a whole. And it functions as the instrument to "take hold of the state machine", to seize the levers of government. Councils do not nor cannot do that. They can set themselves up as a dual power to the government or State, but the State still has the control of bureaucracy, army, police force, all forces of oppression. What has to be captured is the State itself to dismantle all this "bureaucratic-military machine". The State already exists as a class institution, the representative of the capitalist class. It exists as a creation that "administers" capitalism and thus a Socialist party must come to the fore which challenges the capitalist class in the political arena in order to seize this administration, "lop off its worst parts" and be provided with the institutions already in place to implement socialism. Now, this is where councils if they are established, could come into play.

The Socialist Party cannot control whether or not workers become socialists. What we can offer, and what we have continuously provided, is a theory of revolution which, if had been taken up by workers, would have prevented incalculable misery to millions. Over the years, the Party's theory has led to the formation of a body of knowledge which has been consistently capable of accurate political and economic predictions. For example, in 1917, the Bolsheviks were convinced that they were setting society in Russia on a course of change towards socialism. The Party argued that socialism was not being established in Russia. What followed was the horrendous misery of the Stalinist years. The Party put forward the same view of events in China in 1949. What is happening in Russia and China now? The rulers of these state capitalist regimes introduced free market capitalism. We warned against situations where groups or sections of workers try to stage the revolution or implement socialism when the rest of the working class is not prepared. They will only be prepared when they accept the need to capture political power and THEN the implementation of socialism based on majority support can begin. Otherwise, you may have a situation where a minority may push the majority into a situation it is not prepared for and the results could be disastrous. What comes to mind is the situation in Germany in 1919 when large groups of workers supported the Spartacus group while the majority of the working class still supported the Social Democratic Party. The uprising was put down brutally and the working class was divided. In regards to gradualism and reformism when in 1945 the Labour Party was elected with the objective of establishing a "socialist" Britain, the Party, again arguing from its theory, insisted that there would be no new social order. In fact, that Labour Government steered capitalism in Britain through the post-war crisis, enabling it to be massively expanded in the boom years of the 1950s. What is happening in the Labour Party now? Confused and directionless, it stands utterly bankrupt of ideas. The Labour Party even abandoned its adherence to Keynesian theories which the Party always insisted could never provide policies which would remove the anarchy of capitalism. Its ideas on the progressive introduction of socialism are now only a distant memory.

All theoretical mysteries find their rational solution in human practice and the comprehension of this practice. Hence the idea of choosing between "abstract propagandism" and "doing something now" is as false a choice as choosing between theory and practice. We must have some theory linking the capitalist present and the socialist future. Some theory yes, but not just any theory. This theory must be based both on the class struggle as the motor of social change and on an understanding of the economics of capitalism and the limits it places on what can be done within the framework of the capitalist system. As socialists we are engaged in a necessarily contradictory struggle: on the one hand, we propose the abolition of the wages system as an immediately practical alternative, but on the other, we recognise the need for workers to fight the wages struggle within capitalism. But, as socialists, our main energies must be directed towards the former objective. We could endeavour to remove this distinction between the trade union struggle within capitalism and the socialist struggle against capitalism by adopting the ideas propounded by DeLeon and the Socialist Labor Party, who at one time advocated that socialists should form their own "revolutionary unions" but their failure is a very important case study of the danger of imagining those capitalist institutions such as trade unions can be converted (or substituted) into socialist bodies. They demonstrate that capitalism cannot be transcended from within.
The advantage of a socialist party is that it acts in the interests of the whole class and does not, in the process, disenfranchise anyone. The working class needs a political organisation, not one segmented on the basis of how the industry is set up under capitalism. An organisation of socialists is needed. As it grows then the dynamic of the class struggle changes and goes off into new directions.

 

A letter to The National

MICHAEL Fry constantly criticises what he calls socialism. He compares private capitalism with state capitalism and has a preference for the private capital model. Both systems suffer periods of boom and bust. This happens in the private model of the US and UK, it also happens in the state model of China and Russia.

Socialism has never existed in the modern world as it requires an end to the money economy and competition between nations.

If Michael wishes to refer to socialism I suggest he keeps to examples such as the San people of the Kalahari or the St Kildans of the Western Isles.

Brian Davis, Tongue, Sutherland

http://www.thenational.scot/community/15449838.Letters_I__Our_women_footballers_restore_faith_in_game/

For a world of mutual aid and free association

The World Socialist Movement is the product of international co-operation between socialist organisations and individuals who agree with the Declarations of Principles. It is our intention is to build this movement into an organisation that is truly global. Capitalism today, more than ever, is organised as a global system. Socialism too needs to be world wide. Our task is winning people to socialist ideas, and convincing people who desire social change that the sort of approach outlined in our Declaration of Principles is the appropriate strategy to adopt. We endeavour to promote awareness that social revolution is possible and necessary. Socialism will be built through the class struggle between the vast majority of society (the working class) and the tiny minority 9the capitalists) that currently rule. A successful revolution will require that socialist ideas become the prevailing thought within the working class. This will not happen spontaneously. Our role is to communicate an understanding of socialism in a battle of ideas against the pro-capitalist apologists.

Capitalism is the social system under which we live and is primarily an economic system of competitive capital accumulation out of the surplus value produced by wage labour. As a system, it must continually accumulate or go into crisis. Consequently, human needs and the needs of our natural environment take second place to this imperative. Capitalism is an ever-expanding economy of capital accumulation. In other words, most of the profits are capitalised, i.e. reinvested in production, so that production, the stock of means of production, and the amount of capital, all tend to increase over time ( in fits and starts). The economic circuit is thus money - commodities - more money - more commodities, even more, money. This is not the conscious choice of the owners of the means of production. It is something that is imposed on them as a condition for not losing their original investment. Competition with other capitalists forces them to re-invest as much of their profits as they can afford to in keeping their means and methods of production up to date. As a resul, there is continuous technological innovation. Defenders of capitalism see this as one of its merits and in the past it was insofar as this has led to the creation of the basis for a non-capitalist society in which the technologically-developed means of production can be now—and could have been any time in the last 100 years—consciously used to satisfy people’s wants and needs. Under capitalism this whole process of capital accumulation and technical innovation is a disorganised, impersonal process which causes all sorts of problems—particularly on a world-scale where it is leading to the destruction of the environment. The result is waste, pollution, environmental degradation and unmet needs on a global scale. If society is to be able to organise its production in an acceptable way, then it must abolish the capitalist economic mechanism of capital accumulation and gear production instead to the direct satisfaction of people's needs.

In socialist society, productive activity would take the form of freely chosen activity undertaken by human beings with a view to producing the things they needed to live and enjoy life. The necessary productive work of society would not be done by a class of hired wage workers but by all members of society, each according to their particular skills and abilities, cooperating to produce the things required to satisfy their needs both as individuals and as communities. All wealth would be produced on a strictly voluntary basis. Work in socialist society could only be voluntary since there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work against their will. Socialism does not require us all to become altruists, putting the interests of others above our own. In fact socialism doesn't require people to be any more altruistic than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be well considered by others as well as our material and sexual needs. No doubt too, we will want to “possess” personal belongings , and to feel secure in our physical occupation of the house we live in, but this will be just that – our home and not a financial asset. Such “selfish” behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist. The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of other more negative ones which capitalism encourages.

Goods and services would be provided directly for self determined needs and not for sale ; they would be made freely available for individuals to take without requiring these individuals to offer something in direct exchange. The sense of mutual obligations and the realisation of universal interdependency arising from this would profoundly colour people’s perceptions and influence their behaviour in such a society. We may thus characterise such a society as being built around a system of generalised reciprocity. 

 The Socialist Party case in elections is that we don't want your vote IF you think socialism means nationalisation, higher taxation, welfare state, national liberation, legalising marijuana or whatever. In short, we don't want your vote if you think we need to keep and act within existing capitalism. The Socialist Party explains that we can't do anything for you. We don't promise you anything. We say that if you want socialism you've got to act for yourselves. We can't establish it for you.  We're not making any promises, if you vote for us, you're the one making the promise to work towards abolishing capitalism and the wages system.

The Socialist Party stands in elections to enable any and all who would join the struggle to abolish capitalism to be able to signal to their fellow-workers that that is what they want to do. We stand for the sole purpose of emancipating the working class, not soft-padding the shackles of capital with satin. We only want the votes of those who understand what socialism is, and actually want it and are prepared to do something about it. We're not leaders, we're not looking for followers, we're only standard bearers, so to speak. 

Democracy under capitalism is reduced to people voting for competing groups of professional politicians, to giving the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down to the governing or opposition party. Political analysts call this the “elite theory of democracy” because all that the people get to choose is which elite should exercise government power. This contrasts with the original theory of democracy, which envisages popular participation in the running of affairs and which political analysts call “participatory democracy”.

The most we will get under capitalism is the right to vote, under more or less fair conditions, for who shall control political power - a minimalist form of democracy, but one not to be so easily dismissed, since at least it provides a mechanism whereby a socialist majority could vote in socialist delegates instead of capitalist politicians.

Bourgeois democracy is the best we can hope for under capitalism, but it is not the ideal model possible for the revolutionary. Capitalist democracy is not a participatory democracy, which a genuine democracy has to be. In practice, the people generally elect professional politicians, who they merely vote for, and then let them get on with the job.

In other words, the electors abdicate their responsibility to keep an eye on their representatives, giving them a free hand to do what the operation of capitalism demands. But that’s as much the fault of the electors as their representatives - or rather it is a reflection of their low level of democratic consciousness. It cannot be blamed on the principle of representation as such. 

There is no reason in principle why, with a heightened democratic consciousness (such as would accompany the spread of socialist ideas), even representatives sent to state bodies could not be subject, while the state lasts, to democratic control by those who sent them there.

The Socialist Party has never held that a merely formal majority at the polls will give the workers power to achieve socialism. We have always emphasised that such a majority must be educated in the essentials of socialist principles. It is the quality of the voters behind the vote that, in the revolutionary struggle, will be decisive. The institution of parliament is not at fault. It is just that people’s ideas have not yet developed beyond belief in leaders and dependence on a political elite.

What we in the SPGB propose, is that people should use the vote in the course of the social revolution from capitalism to socialism and vote capitalism out of office. To do this they will need to stand mandated delegates at elections, but these will just be ‘messenger boys and girls’, sent to formally take over and dismantle “the State”, not leaders or government minister wannabes.

The vote is merely the legitimate stamp that will allow for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the state and the end of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of real democracy. This should not be understood as simply putting an X on a ballot paper and letting the Socialist Party and its MPs establish socialism for workers. There must also be that “conscious” and active socialist majority outside parliament, democratically organised both in a mass socialist political party and at work in various forms of ex-trade union type organisations ready to keep production going during and immediately after the winning of political control.

We are a political party that has a membership who doesn’t require a leadership to make its decisions, that has an executive council which doesn’t determine policies, that has a general secretary whose role is to administer and not to control. As a matter of political principle, our party holds no secret meetings, with all its meetings, including those of its executive committee, being open to the public. Thus reflecting the society it seeks to establish.

Socialism is for today

The future, if there is to be a future, will need to be socialist. The apathy of the world's working class has contributed to keeping intact the barbaric and rapacious system of capitalism. People do not believe there is an alternative to capitalism, so capitalism keeps on going.  Socialists, however, are concerned for the suffering of humans and look for a solution to this.

Many on the Left claim to advocate a society based on cooperation and production for use, a sustainable society where production is in harmony with the environment and affairs are run in a decentralised and democratic manner. They argue that only in such a system can ecological problems such as pollution and global warming be solved. However, on further reading, it is perfectly clear that this sustainable society is not socialism, for the continuance of money and the market is assumed, together with private ownership.  Their declared aims appear to be desirable these are contradicted by a fatal flaw in all green policies. They stand for the continuation of the market system. This must mean the continuation of the capitalist system which is the cause of the problems of pollution in the first place. Their ultimate aim is a participatory economy, based on smaller-scale enterprise, with a greatly-reduced dependence on the world market. What is being proposed is the abolition both of the world market, with the competition for resources and sales it engenders, and of existing centralised states, and their replacement by a worldwide network of smaller human communities providing for their own needs. This will involve a steady-state economy based on maximum conservation of materials and energy. But these lofty goals are firmly wedded to a form of capitalism, holding a belief that capitalism can be reformed so as to be compatible with achieving an environmentally sustainable society. They are setting out to impose on capitalism something that is incompatible with its nature. Competitive pressures to minimise costs and maximise sales, profit-seeking and blind economic growth, with all their destructive effects on the rest of nature, are built-in to capitalism. Very few social activists reject capitalism. Most are in favour of some form of capitalism

Socialists are seeking ultimately to establish a “steady-state economy” or “zero-growth” society which corresponds to what Marx called “simple reproduction” – a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them. Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilized at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods.  People must change the social system to a community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs. 

Socialism is a money-free society in which use values would be produced from other use values. Socialism is a decentralised or polycentric society that is self-regulating, self-adjusting and self-correcting, from below and not from the top. It is not a command economy but a responsive one. Socialism is essentially a question of organising productive units into a productive system functioning smoothly to supply the useful things which people had indicated they needed, both for their individual and for their collective consumption. What socialism would establish would be a rationalised network of planned links between users and suppliers; between final users and their immediate suppliers, between these latter and their suppliers, and so on down the line to those who extract the raw materials from nature. The responsibility of these industries would be to ensure the supply of a particular kind of product either, in the case of consumer goods, to distribution centres or, in the case of goods used to produce other goods, to productive units or other industries. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated and not to be confused with the central planning concept) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities and capital. In socialism, wealth would have simply a specific use value.

 Production and distribution in socialism would be a system of coordinated linked chains between users and suppliers, enabling resources and materials to flow smoothly from one productive unit to another, and ultimately to the final user, in response to information flowing in the opposite direction originating from final users. The productive system would thus be set in motion from the consumer end, as individuals and communities took steps to satisfy their self-defined needs. Socialist production is self-regulating production for use. Simply put, in socialism there would be no barter economy or monetary system. It would be an economy based on need. Therefore, a consumer would have a need, and there would be a communication system set in place that relays that need to the producer. The producer creates the product, and then send the product back to the consumer, and the need would be satisfied.

The factor that critically decides the production of commodities within capitalism is the judgement that enterprises make about whether they can be sold in the market. Obviously, consumers buy in the market that they perceive as being for their needs. But whether or not the transaction takes place is not decided by needs but by the ability to pay. So the realisation of profit in the market determines both the production of goods and also the distribution of goods by various enterprises. In the market system the motive of production, the organisation of production, and the distribution of goods are inseparable parts of the same economic process: the realisation of profit and the accumulation of capital. The economic pressure on capital is that of accumulation, the alternative is bankruptcy. The production and distribution of goods are entirely subordinate to the pressure on capital to accumulate. The economic signals of the market are not signals to produce useful things. They signal the prospects of profit and capital accumulation, If there is a profit to be made then production will take place; if there is no prospect of profit, then production will not take place. Profit not need is the deciding factor. Under capitalism what appear to be production decisions are in fact decisions to go for profit in the market.

The function of cost/pricing is to enable a business enterprise to calculate its costs, to fix its profit expectations within a structure of prices, to regulate income against expenditure and, ultimately, to regulate the exploitation of its workers. Unfortunately, prices can only reflect the wants of those who can afford to actually buy what economists call “effective demand”. – and not real demand for something from those without the wherewithal – the purchasing power – to buy the product (or even to express a preference for one product over another. I may want a sirloin steak but I can only afford a hamburger ) .

Socialist determination of needs begins with consumer needs and then flows throughout distribution and on to each required part of the structure of production. Socialism will make economically-unencumbered production decisions as a direct response to needs. With production for use, the starting point will be needs. By the replacement of exchange economy by common ownership basically what would happen is that wealth would cease to take the form of exchange value, so that all the expressions of this social relationship peculiar to an exchange economy, such as money and prices, would automatically disappear. In other words, goods would cease to have an economic value and would become simply physical objects which human beings could use to satisfy some want or other. (One reason why socialism holds a decisive productive advantage over capitalism is by eliminating the need to tie up vast quantities of resources and labour implicated in a system of monetary/pricing accounting.)

Yes, socialism is a real alternative. 

Lothian Socialist Discussion (23 Aug)

The World to Win, A Planet to Save

• Wednesday, August 23, 

  7:30 PM
• Autonomous Centre Edinburgh (ACE)

  17 West Montgomery Place, 

  Edinburgh

  EH7 5HA 
• The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of the worker keeping up the struggle over wages or to resisting cuts. We welcome any upsurge in the militancy and organisation of our class. But we also know, from bitter experience, that work of an altogether quieter, patient, more political kind is also needed.  It is the responsibility of the Socialist Party to challenge capitalist apologists and pseudo-socialists in the battle of ideas and that requires talking to and debating with our fellow workers. We recognise the necessity of workers' solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. But to struggle for higher wages and better conditions is not revolutionary in any true sense of the word, and the essential weapons in this struggle are not inherently revolutionary either. It demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. Participation in the class struggle does not automatically make workers class conscious. Militancy on the industrial field is just that and does not necessarily lead to political militancy, but ebbs and flows as labour market conditions change – and militants in the work-places can in no way count on their supporters on the political field. 
• We do say workers should sit back and do nothing but wait for socialism to arrive, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. But it becomes clear that this is a secondary, defensive activity. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution into the common ownership. Only by conscious and democratic action will such a socialist system of society be established. This means urging workers to want something more than what they once thought was "enough". The Socialist Party is sometimes accused of wanting "too much" because our aim is free access and common ownership. The task of the Socialist Party is to show workers that in fact, it is a practical proposition. To transform this desire into an immediacy for the working class. The Socialist Party would argue that it is about engaging people with the idea of socialism, to talk about a revolution in social relations, and that if workers are already involved in an actual struggle they would be more receptive to the idea more effective it would become. But not inevitably. There is nothing automatic about social change, it has to be struggled for.
• The workers' acceptance of capitalist political and social ideas, like their other ideas, is learned from other people--their parents, their school-teachers, their workmates, the media--and so it follows therefore that the struggle against capitalist ideology must also be a struggle to spread socialist ideas - a role taken on by the Socialist Party.  
• Socialist ideas arise when workers begin to reflect on the general position of the working class within capitalist society. They do then have to be communicated to other workers, but not from outside the working class as a whole. They have to be communicated to other workers who, from their own experience and/or from absorbing the past experience of the working class, have come to a socialist understanding.  
• It's not a question of enlightened outsiders bringing socialist ideas to the "ignorant" workers but of socialist-minded workers spreading socialist ideas amongst their fellow workers. We see socialist consciousness as emerging from a combination of two things - people's experience of capitalism and the problems it inevitably creates but also the activity of socialists in making hearing the case for socialism a part of that experience.
• The Socialist Party has never been in the business to win popularity contests and jumps on any old band-wagon for the sake of recruitment as many other political organisations which have now disappeared, leaving no lasting impact. The fact of the longevity of the Socialist Party as a political body based on agreed goals, methods and organisational principles seems to suggest that we indeed represent some strand of socialist thought that some people are drawn towards.
• The Socialist Party can be proud of its long history in exposing the oxymoron of the "workers state" and attacking the concepts of Leninism (and its spawn, Stalinism, and Trotskyism).
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Fractured Britain

Public support for fracking has fallen to 16%, with opposition at 33%. But it also reported a lack of knowledge of the technology, with 48% of people neither supporting nor opposing it.

Fracking for gas will not work in the UK, according to research carried out at Heriot-Watt university. Prof John Underhill, Heriot-Watt's chief scientist and professor of exploration geoscience, said the geology of the British Isles will not support it. The fracking debate, he has claimed, is 55 million years too late. He said the rocks containing shale deposits in the UK are riddled with fractures. Fifty-five million years ago the rocks on which the British Isles stand were pushed up against continental Europe. They began to tilt. Subjected to enormous forces, the rocks didn't just lift but folded and fractured. 

A tracery of black lines show where fault lines shatter some of the UK's biggest shale deposits: West Lothian, Bowland Shale in Lancashire, the Weald Basin. His research on the influence of tectonic plates on the UK suggested that the shale formations have been lifted, warped and cooled by tectonic action.

 "For extraction to occur," he says, "you need a simple geology in the subsurface. So you can drill and then drill horizontally for long distances with confidence. Not go up, down, around. If you've got a fractured subsurface and something that's uplifted, you've switched off the kitchen in which oil and gas is generated - and you've broken the rock so it's not continuous." 

Successful gas extraction requires shale to be underground at just the right temperature and pressure. That's how it happens in the US. A drill digs deep, then turns to push and frack horizontally along the shale deposit. And that, according to Prof Underhill, is what can't happen here. Because Britain is broken, geologically speaking. "The complexity of the shale gas basins hasn't been fully appreciated so the opportunity has been hyped." He said: "I'm neutral about fracking, so long as it doesn't cause environmental damage. But the debate is between those who think fracking is dangerous and those who think it will help the economy - and no-one's paying enough attention to the geology. Prof Underhill said: "For fracking to work, the shale should be thick enough, sufficiently porous, and have the right mineralogy. The organic matter must have been buried to a sufficient depth and heated to the degree that it produces substantial amounts of gas or oil."

A new type of revolution

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a working-class party and is therefore concerned to do everything possible to arouse the class it represents from indifference into organised action against the present form of industrial organisation to which can be traced the evils under which the workers suffer to-day. No successful conflict with capitalism can be entered into except it be based upon a clear understanding of the class position.  Upon this basis alone can be built the fighting organisations, political and industrial, of the working-class which by concentrating upon the conquest of political power and the substitution of the common ownership and control of the means of life for the present private ownership thereof, shall achieve the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the socialist cooperative commonwealth.

For this task the workers must acquire the consciousness which can enable them to do so. This consciousness must comprise, first of all, a knowledge of their class position. They must realise that, while they produce all wealth, their share of it will not, under the present system, be more than sufficient to enable them to reproduce their efficiency as wealth producers. They must realise that also, under the system they will remain subject to all the misery of unemployment, the anxiety of the threat of unemployment, and the deprivations of poverty. They must understand the implications of their position – that the only hope of any real betterment lies in abolishing the social system which reduces them to mere sellers of their labor power, exploited by the capitalists. A class which understands all this is class-conscious. It has only to find the means and methods by which to proceed, in order to become the instrument of revolution and of change .

Class consciousness was never more needed than now. To the socialist, class-consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other. The class-conscious worker knows where s/he stands in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class. Their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. Class-conscious people need no leaders. The single, simple fact which all working people have to learn is that capitalism causes capitalism's problems, so that the remedy – the only remedy – is to abolish capitalism. In that knowledge they must take hold of the powers of government – for one purpose only: that the rule of class by class shall end. Socialism is not a benevolently-administered capitalism: it is a different social system. Reform is no answer, even though at times – rare times – it benefits working people. The reformer has agreed that capitalism shall continue, and is merely trying to alleviate its worst effects. Has poverty been abolished by the reformers? Ask the old, ask the unemployed or the homeless , or the sick. Has life been made more satisfying by the Welfare State?

Marx expected the working class to develop from a mere economic category (a"class in itself" ) into a revolutionary political actor ("class for itself")—but at least the process started even if it did get stuck on route as it were. A "class consciousness" did develop among particular sections of the working class but this did not develop into a revolutionary socialist consciousness. It stopped at trade-unionism and Labourism, the idea and practice of the working class as a class within capitalism but which wanted a better deal within this system, not to replace it with a classless and exploitation-free society. So, even if a working class "for itself" has never developed, a class consciousness of a lesser sort did.
Marx believed as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves. The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be “spontaneous” in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about (not that such people could not take part in this process, but their participation was not essential or crucial). Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would come to be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto:-“the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

This in fact was Marx’s conception of the workers’ party - a mass democratic movement of the working class with a view to establishing socialism. The self-emancipation of the working class, as advocated by Marx, remains the agenda .

Working class action must be revolutionary. The workers of Britain have common cause with the workers of every other country. They are members of an international class, faced with the same problems, holding the same interests once they are conscious of them. As class consciousness grows amongst the workers in all lands, co-operative action will be planned. It will not stop at the organisation of marches and demonstrations . It will be co-operation to speed the abolition of capitalism.

The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of the worker keeping up the struggle to maintain the wage-scale, resisting cuts, etc. If he always laid down to the demands of his exploiters without resistance he would not be worth his salt as a man, or fit for waging the class struggle to put an end to exploitation. More and more of the workers are forced to realise that their interests are opposed to those of the owning and ruling class, in fact that the continuation of this rule spells disaster to society generally. The class war is far from over. It can only end with the dispossession of the owning minority and the consequent disappearance of classes and class-divided society.