Demand Tomorrow Today

What is socialism? If we are socialists, what are we actually striving for? 

The Socialist Party conceives of socialism as the next stage of social evolution. The builders of the socialist society of the future will be the socialist generations themselves. The Socialist Party refrains from offering these future generations any instructions or blueprints. Auguste Blanqui, the French revolutionist, said: “Tomorrow does not belong to us.” We recognise that. The people in the future society will be wiser than we are. We also assume that they will be superior to us, in every way, and that they will know what to do far better than we can tell them. 

The Socialist Party can only point out the general direction of development, and we should not try to do more. But the prospect of socialism and what the future socialist society will look like is a question of interest and has a great importance. We trace some of the broad outlines of probable future development; the general direction, if not the details. Socialism will undoubtedly bring about a revolutionary transformation of human activity and association in all fields. There is the necessary evolutionary reorganisation of the labour process and the premise for a society of shared abundance.

The World today is full of stark and bewildering contradictions. The greatest industrial and agricultural power in history cannot feed, house and provide a decent livelihood for millions. Countless others sweat and toil away all their lives just to survive while billionaires squander fortunes on pet projects such as spaceships. Poverty and economic insecurity exist alongside affluence and extravagance. Politicians say they want international cooperation and peace, but they continue to build mighty military machines. Politicians endlessly speak about the sanctity of the family and morality. Yet the world suffers social decay. Violence against women and their sexual exploitation are unmatched. Mass media may be very sophisticated technically, but offer not much more than fantasy and escapism. Real life, in contrast, cries out for work for the welfare of humanity.

What is the reason for these contradictions between the promises, the potential of this society, and its stark reality? Why is there such an agonising gap between what is and what could be! The answers to these questions cannot be found in cynical condemnations of “human nature” or apologies about the “way things are.” No!

 Capitalism, a system of exploitation, violence, racism and war, the social system under which we live, is responsible for the contradictions in society. Capitalism thrives on the private ownership and control of society’s wealth and production – production involving the interconnected efforts of millions of working people. The super-rich have one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits, and they accomplish this by dominating the economics, politics, and cultural life. The capitalists will throw workers out into the streets to starve, promote violent racism, and build a military arsenal that can destroy the world several times over – anything for profits! This is an irrational and unjust system. But life does not have to be this way.

We can improve our lives and we can eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the capitalist system. We can replace capitalism with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits, becomes the chief concern. Such an economic and political transformation will be radical, but a revolutionary solution is what it will take to bury the miseries of capitalism. The socialist revolution has become a historical necessity and possibility. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle and win socialism.

 Socialism will qualitatively improve the lives of the working and oppressed peoples of the World. If the working people, and not the corporations, controlled the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives. We could have a society which lays the basis for the equality of all. We could live in a World that is not preparing constantly for war and environmental self-extinction. These are the hopes that encourage the Socialist Party forward. The first 1% takes forever, 10% is like waiting for a sneeze – you know it’s inevitable but it takes longer than you think after that to 50% happens incredibly fast.

The Socialist Option

We neither delude nor attempt to delude anybody with fake promises. Neither do we buoy them up with false hopes. We ask only for votes from those who were prepared to endorse the position set out in our manifesto in its entirety. We do all that was humanly possible to prevent any but the class-conscious recording their votes for us. No other party putting forward candidates in any election can say as much or nearly as much. To them, therefore, every X on the ballot paper is of an unknown quantity. But we can say with truth that there is very little of the unknown quantity about our votes, they were votes for principles—class-conscious votes.

Our critics condescendingly repeat, parrot like, the formulae: “Don’t ask for the moon. You must be prepared to work with anybody who is going even a little way in your direction. It is nonsense to talk of revolution. You must work for your socialism in small doses, such as nationalisation as practical steps .” Our critics seeks socialism on the instalment plan. Reformist deny the class struggle, mistaking the progressive reorganisation of production for the progressive improvement in the lot of the working class, and ignores the fact that the fruits of increased organisation of production are denied to the wage-slaves. The great problems would, however, be untouched by the majority of the reforms proposed. Various sections of the exploiting class would benefit, but, even though these reforms were inscribed upon the tablets of the law, the workers would remain competitive wage slaves and a subject class. We have always to remember that all energy spent on these side-tracks is lost to the great movement forward. 

The simplest characterisation of a socialist mode of production is that, unlike all class societies, there is no ruling class that extracts surplus labor from the direct producers. Socialism means simply post-capitalism, an economy that disallows private property of the means of production and has no social divisions.

Our mission is simple. We have to proceed with our educational propaganda until the working class have understood the fundamental facts of their position—the facts that because they do not own the means by which they live they are commodities on the market, never bought unless the buyers (the owners of the means of life) can see a profit to themselves in the transaction, always sold when the opportunity offers because in that only can the necessaries of life be obtained. We have to emphasise the fact that no appreciable change is possible in the working-class condition while they remain commodities, and that the only method by which the alteration can be wrought is by the working class taking the means of life out of the hands of those who at present hold them, and whose private ownership is the cause of the trouble. Before this can occur the workers will have to understand the inevitable opposition of interests between them and the capitalist class, who, because of their ownership of the means of life, are able to exploit them, so that they will not make the mistake of voting into power, as they have always done hitherto, the representatives of the interests of those owning the means of life, because those who dominate political power dominate also the armed forces that keep the working class in subjection. Therefore are we in opposition to all other political parties, holding on irrefutable evidence, that these other parties are confusing what must be clear to working-class minds before a change can be effected. This is our mission, and we shall conduct it with all the energy we have at our command. 

The State is, by its very nature, a fundamentally coercive set of institutions which must be removed immediately before anything like socialism can be established". The big question is: how? How can the State be removed? Some anarchists share our aim of a state-free society of common ownership and popular participation where the principle of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" will apply and where money will be redundant. This is the view put forward, in the past, by such anarchists as Kropotkin, Rudolf Rocker and Alexander Berkman and. today, by Murray Bookchin. The main differences between us and them is over how to get to a class-free, stateless, money-free society. We favour majority democratic action on the grounds that the establishment of a society based on voluntary co-operation and popular participation has to involve such co-operation and participation (i.e. democratic methods) and say that when such a majority comes into being it can use existing political institutions (the ballot box and parliament) to establish a socialist/ communist society. They are opposed to this, but are not able to offer a viable alternative. The anarcho-communists pose a spontaneous mass popular upsurge, the anarcho-syndicalists a general strike and mass factory occupations—both of which ignore the State and the need to at least neutralise it before trying to change society from capitalism. Can we work with them? Well, if they can abandon their prejudice against democratic political action via elections, we invite them to join us in campaigning for a cooperative commonwealth.

We can only think of three possible ways of achieving a socialist society, two of which in our view wouldn’t work. The first would be to try to smash the State in an armed uprising. To do this the revolutionaries would have to be able to defeat militarily the forces of the State and so have to build up their own army, organised, as armies must be on a hierarchical basis. In the event of victory this new coercive force would have to be dissolved; otherwise it would turn into a new State. And it would be back to square one. We have to say, however, that we see no prospect of an armed uprising being either successful or even likely in the developed capitalist parts of the world. In fact, for countries like Britain, it's a quite mad idea.

A second possibility would be to refuse to co-operate with the State, to withdraw support from it so that it would just become an empty shell. It makes more sense than trying to defeat the State militarily but, to succeed, it would require the support of the overwhelming majority of the population.

But why not take the third way of using existing electoral and semi-democratic institutions—which, imperfect as they are and must be under capitalism, do still allow a majority to get its way—to win control of the State. Not, as you seem to think, to form some "socialist government" or "workers' state", but to dismantle it, by lopping off its coercive features and retaining and democratising any useful administrative features? That would be much easier, more direct and less risky. Which is why we favour it.

As Rosa Luxemburg contended, until a socialist revolution is successful, the most important result of any struggle is the building of working-class self-confidence and organisation which expresses an understanding of self-emancipation of the working class as both means and end

A Manifesto for World Socialism

Yet every day our cause becomes clearer and the people more clever – Joseph Dietzgen, Social Democratic Philosophy

Capitalism is a system of violence. Poverty is built into its operation. The struggle for a livable planet is a life-and-death issue. Corporate greed has polluted our air, turned our soil toxic and poisoned our waters. Our survival necessitates social control of technology and production and the elimination of the blind consumerism that causes us to squander so many of the world's resources needlessly. The environmental movement holds revolutionary potential. The threat to the environment touches everyone. The need to deepen their understanding of the relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. People will have to change how they live and how society is organised. We believe in a socialism where fulfillment will be found in the relationships among people and not in the consumption of things. Only conscious socialist planning by all of society can make this a reality.

Without revolutionary organisation, we cannot advance the revolutionary movement. As working people, we need our own party to fight for our interests, to help unify our struggles and to enable us to bring about socialism. The Socialist Party's job is to continue the work of socialist propaganda at all times without fear or compromise. We point our fellow-workers to a new world, the cooperative commonwealth. When they want it it is within their grasp. If they have to fight for it with only a fraction of the courage, sacrifice and determination they fight the quarrels of their masters, then no combination of powers, even were they a thousand times more powerful than they are, could stand against it. New movements will arise which promise an easy road to the new world. There will be disappointments and set-backs. But out of the struggles and their lessons there will be some who will learn, and they will add to the strength of the socialist movement, preparing the way for the inevitable time when masses must accept the socialist message. Historically, the stage has not yet been reached when workers in large numbers grasp the socialist's message. But it can be hastened the more our message is spread. It is the business of all socialists to work for this end. It is your job if you are a socialist, to lend a helping hand in every possible way and so assist the movement to take all the shocks and use all the opportunities that the future may hold for it. socialism is an historical necessity thrown up by the economic and social development of centuries. The alternative to it is chaos and conflict. As socialists we are conscious agents of the process of history.

The Socialist Party's aim is to abolish poverty. That can be done only by abolishing the system based on class division—those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.

The reformer does not want to abolish poverty in the only way in which it can be done. Instead he wants to diminish poverty or remove some of the features that result from poverty. The most fatuous form this desire takes is to be found in the recurrent schemes for keeping rich and poor, but mixing them up a little—just as a defender of slavery might dwell on the beautiful thought of occasional friendly gatherings of slaves and slave owners.

There is, however, no indication that our rulers can cure unemployment. The capitalist employs a person for the purpose of producing a profit. If he or she can make no profit, he will not hire the worker, but will fire him or her, and so the unemployed army is created and will number millions, as our experience has shown us prior to the war.

The socialist way is to cure unemployment by socialising the machines and factories so that no man can be hired or fired by a capitalist owner, who now is solely concerned with a profit. Under Socialism, there would be no private owner to dictate to labour, and as a corollary there would he no profit. A man would have the right to work and the right to live. There would be no inequality of income, no money required to buy goods, and the wealth produced would be freely consumed by its creators, that is, the entire population. The workers alone have the power to change the world, provided they understand and apply the socialist remedy, i.e., of expropriating the machines and factories from their masters and making them into social property.

A Socialist Party does not waste time and energy chasing reforms. It seeks political power for the sole purpose of abolishing capitalism. The socialist ideal is, of course the substitution of collective ownership and control for capitalistic ownership and control with the consequent extinction of exploitation altogether. The Left are for state capitalism or collective exploitation. We are not concerned with state capitalism. We are concerned with socialism which is the negation of capitalism. Consequently state capitalism cannot be the ideal of any socialist. Ergo those who preach state capitalism or collective exploitation are not socialists.

It has always been the contention of Socialist Party that:

1. Capitalism, wherever it operates, despite differences in climate, language and culture, produces the same set of conditions from which inevitably flow the same problems. This is not to say that conditions are everywhere identical under capitalism; different areas are often undergoing different stages of capitalist evolution, depending on historical background. However, when Industrialism comes, late or early, capitalism comes with it: they are bound up in each other.
2. Capitalism, desiring always a submissive working class, seeks everywhere to condition the people: through religion, universities, the media of disseminating thought and ideas.
3. Despite the constant effort in this direction, there exists, invariably in capitalist society, groupings that contradict and are in opposition to capitalist society (where it hurts them) and towards one another.

Don’t like the world as it is? Imagine something different. The proposed alternative society to capitalism can only be socialism. What is involved is suppressing the production of exchange values for the benefit of the capitalist minority and replacing it with the production of use values for the satisfaction of real human needs, democratically determined. There is no other possible choice, no other possible alternative to this mode of production.

Workers World Unity

The SNP's opened in Aberdeen

The Socialist Party has always claimed that at the bottom of all war there is an economic cause. Under capitalism politics and economics are often divided in workers’ minds. Declaring “spheres of influence” really means exclusive possession of foreign markets and trade privilege. Capitalists must find some means of enlisting people to fight their wars. That means is nationalism. Economic causes are, of course, the root of wars. But today it is easier than ever to obscure this fact. Nationalism is the cloak behind which the economic causes work. Nationalism is the best disguise for the intrigues and machinations of capitalists. As Herman Goering said in 1945: “Naturally, the common people don't want war...but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

Nationalism is always dangerous and creates an opening to chauvinism and xenophobia.

Nationalism holds that members of a national group, regardless of class have a communal integrity that is stronger than the ties between workers of different nations. Nationalism always claims certain virtues as the peculiar, exclusive possession of certain nations. If individuals make such claims, they are laughed to scorn. Why — with what logic — may nations make such claims? Nationalism claims that the culture belonging to one nation is distinct from that belonging to any other. This was so in the past, but the natural evolution of mankind is making it less so. Increased means of communication — the mass media, the internet — have caused nations to exchange ideas until today there is no essential difference between any one of the countries of the world. Even language is tending to become universal with the prevalence of English as a second language. More people understand each other today than ever before. It is only by artificial that nationalism is kept alive. Nationalism is an unmitigated curse. It leads inevitably to chauvinism and to national aggression. It leads to a patriotism for the soil, for the particular bit of the earth’s surface on which a particular person has been born. Capitalism versus socialism is not a crucial issue to the nationalist.

Socialism adopts a policy of unrelenting antagonism toward nationalism. Socialism recognises and emphasises that the class struggle determines all our action – that the national ideology is a fetter upon the emancipation of the proletariat – and that the social revolution is international in scope and purpose. We value the international unity of the working class. So we must fight for the closest possible alliance of workers irrespective of any-reshaping of the frontiers of individual states. We do not, and cannot, favour a native-born employing class over the foreign version. A divided international working class, split by nationalism can never build its strength to challenge the capitalist system of exploitation.

Liberate minds, not nations

Fight the Good Fight - Class Struggle

"Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another." - Plato

The class struggle is a struggle between collective Capital, i.e. the class of capitalists or employers, and collective Labour, i.e. the working class. A class is a category with common economic interests, the interests defining the class. The interests of employers and workers are diametrically opposed. The capitalists’ interest is to continue private ownership of the means of production, and to appropriate as much as he can of the social product (wealth) which is currently produced by the working class. The working class resist this process by taking defencive action, mainly through trade unions and strike action. Their economic interests can only lie in the removal of the conditions which give rise to this struggle. This means the abolition of capitalism and the replacement of private ownership by common ownership (Socialism). It is not possible to reconcile these opposing interests. The class struggle is an organic part of the capitalist system of production and consequently is inseparable from its operation.

The whole social and economic system rests on the capitalists’ control of the political machinery. That control in turn is based on the support of the majority of the population who either actively or by default vote for political parties who propose to continue and administer the capitalist method of production. The Socialist Party's immediate task is to impart socialist knowledge. Capitalism can last only as long as the majority of the workers are prepared to preserve it, and as long as it lasts the so-called abnormal periods of economic blizzards and wars will continue. These crises are normal to capitalism, and it is the duty of workers to grasp this fact and work to end this system. The social problems we are troubled with to-day can be solved only when everyone has free access to the means of life; when goods are produced solely for use and freely distributed amongst the members of society. Socialism offers all that is worth-while to the workers. It is an historical necessity, and it is in their interests, and we earnestly ask them to give serious thought to it as the solution to their problems. Only from the workers' class-conscious political activities can Socialism be achieved, and war, want and insecurity be banished from the earth for ever. Mere resistance to government policies is insufficient as it cannot even achieve its purpose because it cannot rid the world of capitalism. It is perfectly clear that the class struggle is ultimately a struggle for political power, the issue being common ownership vs. private ownership. There is no half-way house. This is the revolutionary proposition, and this is the sole issue upon which the Socialist Party seek political support.

It is not the function of a Socialist Party to advocate, support, or oppose, or otherwise participate in reformist issues. This includes agitation or protest against the withdrawal of any reform previously granted. Reformist schemes designed to improve the lot of workers under capitalism can never express socialist political activity in the class struggle, or have any prospect of achieving a socialist revolution, and it is a waste of the workers’ time and energy to attempt to improve capitalism. But instead of workers using their votes to abolish Capitalism, they use the same vote to keep it going, even if on a temporary reform basis. This is not in their interests, either in the short or long term, as history has shown. Whilst the “welfare of the working class” under capitalism is not worth the effort wasted on trying to enhance it, the political welfare of the working class is our concern, and ours alone. This is why we are hostile to those political parties and groups, be they right-wing or left-wing, who mislead the workers by pretending that their real interests lie in making capitalism more comfortable.

Reforms are not revolutionary, and it is highly debatable whether or not they are effective in the long or short term. The main point which is sometimes forgotten is that the introduction or the withdrawal of any legislative measures endorsing reforms depend ultimately on the will of the capitalists who control the political machinery. It is they alone who have the final word, and their attitude will be determined by their economic and political interests and not on the particular merits of the reform, no matter what the social need. The struggle to obtain or retain reforms, i.e. changes in capitalism made by and through the machinery of government in such fields as housing, pensions, health, education, , or political activity over prices, and high rents, is not part of the class struggle, because such activity accepts and favours the retention of private property. It is no excuse to justify this on the grounds that the workers are unable or unwilling to understand socialism, and that their lives should be made a little easier in the meantime. This is the Gospel of Despair. By the same political act (the vote) the workers can obtain socialism. What is lacking is socialist understanding. If that is so, then it is the plain duty of those who do understand to devote their entire activity to the spread of socialist ideas. The Socialist Party does not waste time and energy chasing reforms. It seeks political power for the sole purpose of abolishing capitalism.

The struggle for higher wages, etc. is not reformist. It is an aspect of the class struggle. It is not the will of the capitalist that determines what wages he shall pay. As the product of labour is divided into Wages and Profits one cannot relatively expand without the other relatively contracting. Almost invariably the employers are opposed to higher wages, or shorter working hours, which is, in effect, the same thing. More money for less labour. Economic forces decide this issue. The Strike by workers, the Lockout by employers, wage increases are gained against the will of the employers, and wage reductions enforced against the will of the workers. This is open class conflict. Workers who take part in strike action, either inside or outside trade unions, are not committed to any particular political point of view. Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, Labourites, Tories, will unite for the common objective — not through choice, but through necessity. They do not have to squander their votes to get higher wages as is the case with reforms. 

A nail in the coffin (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

I was born in 1900 and am four years older than the party. I became a socialist after hearing Alec Shaw destroy Peter Kerrigan [of the Communist Party] at an outdoor debate in Clydebank in 1928. Since then I have voted by writing Socialism across my ballot paper, although in recent years through old age I have not bothered. But recently I was able to vote for a socialist for the first time in my life. Although I had to be taken in a wheelchair and the effort may well have killed me, I feel as if I have finally hammered a nail into the coffin of Capitalism. I feel as if the ice age is over and the next century will be ours.

By voting and reading a comment in the Standard by Steve Coleman "we are a movement not a monument" I feel rejuvenated. Some time ago I was given a book called The Monument which claims to be a history of the SPGB. The author says this is not an official history as he did not have access to the party's records. The book is therefore anecdotal and relies heavily on the writer's memory (or imagination). An example of the dubious nature of this information is the tale of Glasgow branch voting to expel John Higgins for bringing a gas mask to a branch meeting during the war.

This statement caricatures the men and women who were stalwarts in the struggle for socialism in those days. There is no other comment in the book about Glasgow comrades which leads me to think that Mr Barltrop has never been there.

Jimmy Brodie was a joiner, like myself, and he used to give history and economics classes during the lunch hour on whichever boat we were working on. The steel bulkhead was the blackboard (the location was changed daily to avoid the gestapo) and the socialist message remained on the walls for weeks. These classes were attended by hundreds of workers and the debates engendered carried on into worktime much to the consternation of foremen and managers. Not to speak of the Commie second fronters.

It took a lot of guts to advocate the socialist case in the emotional climate of the 1940s. Tommy Mulheron was prominent in the dock strike. Alec Shaw in Howdens. Joe Richmond an apprentice where I worked organised a strike in 1943 which brought the firm to its knees. In spite of Union opposition the apprentices won.

My branch of the union had lots of socialists, Willie Travers, Joe Richmond, Jimmy Craig, Eddie Hughes, John Fitton, Jimmy McGowan, Willie Henderson, so that it became known as the Socialist Sixth. These men were indefatigable exponents of the Socialist case, some of them were speakers for the party, but all of them were influential in the Union. The Socialist Party has never had leaders, it has no need of them. But it has had its heroes and been all the stronger and richer for them. This book, The Monument, diminishes these men whose worth is greater than all the Maxtons, Bevans, Pollitts and Gallachers, whose names are still revered by many workers today.

The present Socialist Party stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before and should give credit to the breadth and depth of those shoulders. Surely, approaching its centenary, the party can write an official history, not only of the party but the whole world wide Socialist movement.

Do not leave it to the Barltrops of this world. Do not let our heroes die without trace if left to word of mouth they will become as myth and legend, more fantasy than fact, and spawn books like The Monument which does the Movement a disservice.

I am now 94 years old and must be one of the last of my generation. I grieve that my old comrades have died unsung although they were heroes all.

Yours for the Revolution,

Paddy Small, Glasgow

Socialist Knowledge is Power

"One advantage the workers do have—that of numbers but numbers are useless unless organised by experience and guided by knowledge." - Marx (Inaugural Address of the First International)

We believe that socialism is the only way to solve the economic worries of the world. The Socialist Party strives at all times to bring to the notice of the workers of the world our ideas. But what good our efforts do is too often dissipated because of the confusing influence of what we call "pseudo-socialists”. Socialism is not central planning and a command economy. It is not nationalisation of the banks, railways, transport, coal mines and heavy industries. It does not mean the bureaucratic dictatorship which rules over the workers as in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states. None of these are common ownership. These are some of the things which are not socialism.

Socialism will have been reached when the raw materials contained in the earth, and all the industrial products which men and women use, all those instruments of production and distribution will be commonly owned, and in that day there will be no nations, but only a community of' people. Democratic control means majority control, and that is directly opposite to state control, which is government for a minority, even though elected by the majority.

 It is the Government, and all the paraphernalia and trappings which go with it, that is the "State." The workers of every country are dimly conscious that the capitalists exploit them. So the State machinery uses propaganda to check their consciousness so long as it is quiescent, and force to put them down if it becomes. The educational machine is used by the State to instil into the minds of children the idea that each nation, and the people living in it, is an almost divine unit that is held together by ties of blood, language, love of country, religion, and way of life. That is the job of the State, to bully and persuade the workers over whom it has power into a perpetual belief that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

 Those workers who succumb to its influence are its willing wage-slaves. Of those who do not, some become Socialist Party members.

Socialism and Counter-Revolution

The Socialist Party views capitalism as one whole cloth which, although woven into different patterns, and sometimes of mixed materials, nevertheless has one basic texture—the exploitation of the workers by a class that lives on the surplus, over and above that which the worker receives as his or her wages.

WORLD SOCIALISM is a society without frontiers, classes, property or rulers. Only democratic political action by the working class, without leaders or dogmas, will lead to the of a socialist society. A conscious majority, using delegates and not leaders, must take control of the state and abolish its coercive functions and the profit system in all its forms.

 Will socialism need to use the state machine to combat a counter-revolution, begun perhaps, by former members of the ruling class? The answer, in a word, is "no." But how can we be confident of this? If a majority of women and men has decided to abolish the social relations of capitalism and establish a classless society (and the only way that it can be established is by the democratic action of the majority), then a bloody-minded contingent of financiers, aristocrats or factory owners who refused to yield up to society what they once jealously guarded as theirs could be very easily immobilised without violence. In order to be effective, any counter-revolutionary force would need a variety of resources which the majority of us would have to make sure it did not get. It would need electricity, petrol, food, drink and most essentially workers who are soldiers. 

Is it a reasonably foreseeable prospect that after the factories, offices, media, transport systems and so forth have been taken by the community, a significantly large number of soldiers will still be willing to turn their backs on their fellow workers and engage in violence to wrest the factories from the community and put them back into the hands of a minority? When a "revolution" is nothing more than a change of president or regime (because some murderous bandit or junta of professional killers has violently ousted the last lot in a coup) then you can see why, from the point of view of the would-be leaders, a counter-revolution would make sense. 

Counter-revolutions can be enacted in this way without the majority of workers even getting the chance to discover the original revolution. In socialism, anyone who seriously entertained the idea of dissuading the majority from operating the means of life in the interests of all and giving back the farms, factories. offices and media to a minority to operate for profit would certainly have their work cut out, probably for the first time in their life.

One objection to a society of common ownership is that there is just not enough wealth in the world to sustain a system of free access. But this idea is nurtured today by the artificial scarcity created by the profit system: goods and services are only produced if there is a market for them. On the face of it. goods are scarce; potentially, however, there is no shortage at all. Sometimes it may be too costly to, say, extract a mineral from the ground or irrigate barren land. Socialism would do away with all the restrictions of a private property society.

Socialists are confronted daily by those who believe that the answer to social ills is to reform society a little at a time, and a section in the pamphlet is therefore devoted to the issue of reformism. What emerges clearly is that there is no common ground between reformism and revolutionary action: if you seek reforms you openly accept the political and economic structure of society and limit your activity to effecting superficial changes. By opting for revolutionary action, on the other hand, socialists are aiming solely at a fundamental alteration in social relationships. 

Socialists possess no blueprint as to how administration will be conducted within a system of common ownership and democratic control, but two points are quite clear. Firstly, socialism will not be a centralised society. After all, we are talking about a world society (socialism cannot be established in one country or city) and it is inconceivable that there will be a single global administration. Secondly, it is very likely that there will be plenty of opportunities for local community involvement in decision-making in a socialist society, with local bodies and global bodies feeding ideas and initiatives into one another on the basis of dynamic democracy. But not until society and everything in it belongs to the people who inhabit it can we speak of genuine democracy.

The Socialist Party's Pledge

Marxism holds that the leading force in transforming society from capitalism to socialism is that class which is itself a product of capitalism, the working class or, as Marx more precisely defined it, the proletariat, i.e., wage workers who earn their livelihood through the sale of their labour power and have no other means of existence. Everywhere people are waking up and fighting against the oppression and exploitation which is a daily fact of their lives. The lies of the ruling class about “prosperity” in this country are being further exposed everyday. There is prosperity alright – but it is for a handful of rich capitalists – the conditions of the working people are getting worse and worse. Capitalism casts all the burden on the workers – wages stay the same, but profits continue to rise. The situation in health care, housing and government services is rapidly deteriorating. The source of all these conditions and injustices is capitalism. Once it is no longer possible to make a profit from racism, from bad housing and from the general misery of people, these problems can be quickly solved. 

Capitalism is set up with one thing in mind – to make the most profits possible for the handful of people who own the banks and corporations. It is the system under which we, and our parents and grandparents before us, have done all the work. We mine the mines, build the buildings, manufacture all the products: and then get just enough to live on – if we fight hard enough for it! On the other hand the small capitalist class builds up huge fortunes off of our labour and do no work themselves, except running all around the world spending the money that we made for them. No movement can afford to neglect its educational activities, and that the mischevious results of the false ideas spread by the enemies of Labour can only be combated by the spread of socialist ideas.

The goal of the Socialist Party is to replace world capitalist economy by world socialism. It is mankind’s only way out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which threaten to degrade and destroy the human race. The Socialist Party appeals for support, believing that the wage-earners must take into their own hands all available means of emancipating themselves and their children from wage slavery. A socialist society will abolish the class division of society, i.e., simultaneously with the abolition of anarchy in production, it will abolish all forms of exploitation and oppression of man by man. 

Society will no longer consist of antagonistic classes in conflict with each other, but will present a united commonwealth of labour. For the first time in its history mankind will take its fate into its own hands. Instead of destroying innumerable human lives and incalculable wealth in struggles between classes and nations, mankind will devote all its energy to the struggle against the forces of nature, to the development and strengthening of its own collective might.

By abolishing private ownership of the means of production and converting these means into social property, the world socialism will end the competitive and blind processes of the market, by consciously organised and planned production for the purpose of satisfying rapidly growing social needs. With the abolition of competition and anarchy in production, devastating crises and still more devastating wars will disappear. Instead of colossal waste of productive forces and spasmodic development of society-there will be a planned utilisation of all material resources and a painless economic development on the basis of unrestricted, smooth and rapid development of productive forces.

The abolition of private property and the disappearance of classes will do away with the exploitation of man by man. Work will cease to be toiling for the benefit of a class enemy: instead of being merely a means of livelihood it will become a necessity of life: want and economic inequality, the misery of enslaved classes, and a wretched standard of life generally will disappear; the hierarchy created in the division of labour system will be abolished together with the antagonism between mental and manual labour; and the last vestige of the social inequality of the sexes will be removed.

 At the same time, the organs of class domination, and the State in the first place, will disappear also. The State, being the embodiment of class domination, will die out in so far as classes die out, and with it all measures of coercion will expire. Under such circumstances, the domination of man over man, in any form, becomes impossible, and a great field will be opened for the social selection and the harmonious development of all the talents inherent in humanity. Culture will become the acquirement of all, which in turn will release human energy for the powerful development of science and art.