Revolutionary Change

Ever since the dawn of The Industrial Revolution, capitalism has had a relentless impact on the environment, causing devastating climate change. We in the Socialist Party/World Socialist Movement do not shout for minimum reforms or minor changes to current worldwide production methods in an attempt to mitigate or offset the damage already done.

Instead we believe that the only real solution is an end to the root cause of the problem, that is capitalism itself – nothing more nothing less.

You see, the SPGB/WSM is like no other movement, insofar as we are the only group calling for an end to capitalism, and for it to be replaced by global socialism i.e. a world based on a revolutionary change of the means of production to be transferred from private hands, and instead held in common ownership and shared equally by the working class of the world according to individual needs.

We believe that it is the workers of the world who do all the producing and wealth creation, yet we are the last to realise the benefits when profits are growing. And the first to experience the hardships of downturns, recession and austerity.

The Socialist Party has been advocating revolutionary change since it’s inception in 1904. If you would like to learn more, then please visit https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/ where you will find all the information you need, including details of points of contact in your area.

P.E.

It is socialists who are the good samaritans

From capitalism to socialism; that is the way society is headed. It represents the main line of evolution of the humanity towards the next higher social stage. The World’s objective conditions are more than ripe for revolution. The industrial base and productive capacity for socialism is already at hand. The great problem now before the workers is for us to get the political power. Once in control, we will have advantages which will greatly speed the tempo of technological development. 

Socialism will put a stop to the whole series of capitalist waste. The socialist system will greatly increase the productive forces and production itself by liquidating the contradiction between the modes of production and exchange, it does away with economic crises, with all their waste and loss. There will be no capitalist class to demand its profit before production and distribution take place. By taking over the ownership of industry and the land, working people will put a sudden stop to the manifold forms of robbing the workers and farmers on the basis of private ownership of the social means of livelihood. All forms of capitalist interest, rent and profit will be abolished. Capitalists, mortgage holders, landowners and investors perform no useful function in society. Their rake-off from industry and the land is sheer robbery. 

To further social progress the task is to abolish this class of parasites. Socialism will wipe out great wastes, inherent in the unplanned, competitive capitalist system. It will liquidate the hundreds of useless and parasitic occupations, such as wholesalers and retailers, jobbers, and the entire management level of “middlemen,” the real estate sharks, stock brokers, advertising specialists, salesmen, lawyers, government bureaucrats, police, clerics, and sundry capitalist quacks, fakers, and grifters. It will turn to useful social purposes the immense values consumed by these socially useless elements.

The capitalist class, with their policies of mass poverty, exploitation and war, are a menace to the humanity. Ending the gigantic robbery which is the very base of the capitalist system will at once release vast resources and natural wealth for useful social ends. Unemployment, with its misery and suffering, will become a thing of the past. The many millions who now walk the streets unemployed will have fruitful work to do, to the benefit of all society. With the limitations of the capitalist market removed, the road will be opened to virtually unlimited expansion of industry and mass consumption. 

Socialism will result in an enormous increase in industrial and agricultural efficiency. The socialist system of planned production, based upon social ownership of industry and the land, is incomparably more efficient than the anarchic capitalist system founded upon private property, competition and the exploitation of the workers. Socialism will also conserve the natural resources of the planet which are now being ruthlessly wasted in the mad capitalist race for profits and will have as one of its principal aims the careful preservation of all the natural resources.

Socialist industry will be operated upon the basis of a planned economy. The aim of the whole industrial machine will be to achieve the highest possible standards for the producing masses, not the welfare of a few capitalists. Production will be scientifically calculated in advance. The needs of the people and the possibilities of the industries will be carefully studied and met. With a thoroughly organised industrial system the carrying out of the production plans will be easy and natural. A socialist society without a planned economy is unthinkable, even as it is unthinkable that a capitalist society should work on the basis of scientific planning. In building socialism the workers will secure mastery over industrial techniques.

War, with its ghastly bill of agonies and suffering, will end. It is characteristic of capitalism to justify all the robbery and misery and terrors of its system by seeking to create the impression that they are caused by basic traits in human nature, or even by “acts of god.” Preventable disasters are made to appear almost as natural phenomena over which mankind has no control, like tornadoes and earthquakes. The same general attitude is taken with regard to war. War is put forth as arising out of the very nature of humanity. Man is pictured as a war-like animal, and therefore capitalism escapes responsibility. War becomes more or less inevitable. This is all nonsense.

 Mankind is by nature a gregarious and friendly species. We do not make war because we dislikes others of our own species, differing in language, religion, geographical location, etc. Our wars have always arisen out of struggles over the very material things of wealth and power. This is true, whether since we have been living in a tribal, slave, feudal or capitalist economy. We have obscured the true reason for wars with an intense religious garb or with nationalist slogans about making the world safe for democracy. The cause of modern war is, the expansionist policies of the capitalist nations to rob each other in the world struggle for markets, raw materials and territory. In a society in which there is no private property in industry and land, in which no exploitation of the workers takes place and where plenty is produced for all, there can be no grounds for war. The interests of a socialist society are fundamentally opposed to the murderous and unnatural struggle of international war. It will not be christianity which will bring peace and goodwill on Earth but socialists creating a unified, organised world where the economic system will be one great organisation. The raw materials and natural resources  of the world will be at the disposition of the peoples of the world.

The Road To The Future

Stormy days are ahead for the toiling masses everywhere, and unity is a life-and-death question. The capitalist system has become a murderous brake upon civilisation. It must be abolished and socialism established socialism, by removing the capitalist ownership of industry and exploitation that are the modern cause of poverty, war, and innumerable other social disasters.

Politicians are conscious liars—often proudly so. Indeed, that’s their job, to persuade people to support them regardless of their merits rather than because of them, and to justify the actions that the economy demands they make. Politicians confront journalists, grinning from ear-to-ear, knowing their interviewer knows that they are lying, as they dance through the empty ritual of a media interview.

The issue of taxation dominates contemporary political discourse, with each party competing to be the Party of Low Taxation, whilst simultaneously offering voters higher public services. Tories allege the tax burden has risen, Labour states that tax rates have been cut, endless streams of statistics are hurled in either direction, with illumination being no-one’s goal. In the meantime, leftists bleat and demand that Labour “tax the rich and make them pay”. On top of all that, the immense complexity of the taxation system and tax havens, coupled with intricate shifts in the economy and in methods of presentation, makes it a struggle to try to accurately find out what is really happening.

As a part of the politicians image campaigns, and their half-truthful manifesto, they pledged themselves to lower income tax when elected. In the manner of political debate, this allowed their speakers to state that they were going to lower taxes (that is, income tax) even as and when they were going about raising the overall tax burden. The shift from taxation directly on the point production to indirect taxation on consumption has been gradually going on.

There are limits, though, to the extent to which a government can exploit a monopoly or oligopoly to levy duties. If businesses are able to pass on the tax increase to the consumer in the form of higher prices this can cause problems. In some circumstances, if the price of a product rises alternative products are sought and demand is choked off. But since both tobacco and fuel, for example, are in their own ways essential with few if any substitute goods available, the result of any price increases caused by tax rises is that black markets and resentment grow up (as the state capitalist regimes in the former Soviet bloc found out). Recently the government has had to increase the amount of money spent on enforcing tobacco excise duty, which has eaten in considerably to its taxation gains.  Despite the tantalising promises of politically safe revenue for governments, there are limits to the amounts that can be levied through excise duties.

The reality of the government’s position is that the state is effectively a tax-farming business, and like other businesses, it is entirely subject to the ebbs and flows of the market. It can only raise so much taxation, from any given source and the economy as a whole, as the state of the market will bear. Given that the surplus value siphoned off via taxation is surplus value that cannot be re-invested for capital accumulation by the private sector, taxation represents a restriction upon the capitalist class. Hence, historically, high taxation has been seen as anathema by the capitalists. The amount of tax revenue the state can garner is entirely circumscribed by the needs of profitability.

State spending cannot add to the total of demand in the economy, all it can do is actuate demand, and guide it to overcome consumption problems (e.g. such as sustaining the reserve army of labour). In an economy without nationalised units of production—such as we now have—the best it can do is simply help circulate goods.

Capital can tolerate the lost potential valorisation in times of plenty, but when accumulation and profitability slow, it begins to resent the resources lost to unproductive expenditure. Given that taxation has risen from about 9 percent of GDP at the beginning of the century to nearly 40 percent now, a figure that both Labour and Tories seem unable to reduce, it is clear that taxation is becoming too burdensome upon capital.

Like a ragged, has-been stage magician, the government must keep on performing its budgetary tricks to give the appearance of doing something—anything—to keep hold of some sort of interest in its audience. Taxes go up, go down, and are moved from place to place in a blinding game of find the lady. Underneath it all is a watered-down version of an old illusion—the illusion that the state can control the economy, can direct its course, by playing around with its tax structure. That the act remains the same, time after time, will not stop the show, since the has-beens refuse to stop. They need booing from the stage.

Socialism—a system of society in which production would be controlled and directed by working people in the interest of the people is the alternative to the existing system. Apart from tolerating the existing system in the hope that by patching and mending in the hope that somehow or other it will become less and less unbearable— apart from this, socialism is the only alternative before the workers.

Green Marxism

"Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it concentrates the historical motive force of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil...But by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism...it compels its systematic restoration as a regulative law of social production, and in a form adequate to the full development of the human race...All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress toward ruining the more long-lasting sources of that fertility...Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the worker." - Marx, Capital 

The planet and its peoples will not be saved without getting rid of capitalism. Capitalism’s need for accumulation and expansion makes it impossible to reconcile economic growth with ecological sustainability. 

Today’s economy has already created the basis for abundance where society can produce enough for all of us to live a decent comfortable and secure life.

People of the world must overthrow capitalism and establish world socialism where production is for human need instead of profit. 

Nothing short of a socialist revolution will save humanity and nature. As hard as it may be for Friday for Climate school-student protesters and XR activists to accept, pleading for reform, demanding governments bring in green regulations and legislations are futile calls, for the capitalists will turn a deaf ear to anything which will undermine their drive to make profits.

A further look at Russian History

Indeed, during and after the first world war a number of working class militants such as Luxemburg came to recognise that the traditional social democracy policy of seeking to win a parliamentary majority on an electoral programme of reforms of capitalism could never lead to socialism. Luxemburg was very much sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, just as many others were in this early period when information was still scanty and Bolsheviks message was the prevalent one. She had criticisms of "big" policies such as attitudes towards the peasants and nationalities.S

he also differed on the issue of the Constituent Assembly.

"To be sure, every democratic institution has its limits and shortcomings, things which it doubtless shares with all other human institutions. But the remedy which Trotsky and Lenin have found, the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions." 

It was never suggested a coalition or power sharing with "bourgeois" parties such as with the Cadets but with those parties recognised by workers as legitimate expressions of their politics and interests, the SRs and Mensheviks, particularly the Left of them. (for the sake of debate we have to focus on Russia ie Petrograd and Moscow and not the Ukraine and Georgia and other regions deserving their own analyses.)

Interesting that the offer of alliance you referred to with fellow workers parties was also the time that Lenin was still committed to the Constituent Assembly that Luxemburg and Martov both supported

"The compromise would amount to the following: the Bolsheviks, without making any claim to participate in the government... A condition that is self-evident and not new to the S.R.s and Mensheviks would be complete freedom of propaganda and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly without further delays or even at an earlier date. The Mensheviks and S.R.s, being the government bloc, would then agree (assuming that the compromise had been reached) to form a government wholly and exclusively responsible to the Soviets, the latter taking over all power locally as well. This would constitute the “new” condition. I think the Bolsheviks would advance no other conditions, trusting that the revolution would proceed peacefully and party strife in the Soviets would be peacefully overcome thanks to really complete freedom of propaganda and to the immediate establishment of a new democracy in the composition of the Soviets (new elections) and in their functioning. Perhaps this is already impossible? Perhaps. But if there is even one chance in a hundred, the attempt at realising this opportunity is still worth while." - Lenin

But notice, the implication that soviet power is a necessary condition. What was the standing and allegiance of the soviets towards in September? Did the Bolsheviks dominate the soviets? Your mention of July Days was a time when Lenin actually disavowed the power and independence of the soviets and even many of his grassroots Bolsheviks.

The storming of the Winter Palace, was done by a few hundred pro-Bolshevik soldiers planned by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, of which Trotsky was the chair and which had a Bolshevik majority and which took its orders directly from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. So, although the soviets had played a part in overthrowing Tsarism and opposing the Kerensky government, the events of November were a Bolshevik take-over.

Were the mass of the Petrograd workers consciously involved in deciding on the revolution? No. On the morning of 7 November the workers of Petrograd woke up to find that in the night the Bolshevik Party had assumed power, the Bolsheviks had carried out a revolution while they were asleep.

The MRC was set up by the Soviet on the basis of defending Petrograd because it was rumoured of another potential Kornilov plot or an imminent invading German army. It was not set up on the basis that it would overthrow the provisional government. But then, under the pretext of organising the military defence of Petrograd from this phantom invading German army, Trotsky at the head of the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee, took over the garrison unit by unit, through a system of commissars, first securing vital points like the train stations and telegraph office, then finally taking the Winter Palace'

"even when the compromisers were in power, in the Petrograd Soviet, that the Soviet examined or amended decisions of the government. This was, as it were, part of the constitution under the regime named after Kerensky. When we Bolshevists got the upper hand in the Petrograd Soviet we only went on with the system of double power and widened its application. We took it on ourselves to revise the order sending the troops to the front, and so we disguised the actual fact of the insurrection of the Petrograd garrison under the tradition and precedents and technique of the constitutional duplication of authority” - Trotsky - Lessons of October

It would be misleading to say that it was carried out by the proletariat organised in soviets as such. Were non-Bolshevik proletarians in District soviets aware this was coming? No. Were the Left-SR participants in the MRC? No. Were even the moderate wing of leading Bolsheviks supportive? No.

But as I said the actual action did receive popular endorsement as it was perceived to be resulting in a coalition of workers parties, not a Bolshevik one-party state. The total lack of opposition to the Bolsheviks and the absence of support for the Provisional Government reflected the sympathies of the workers. Support for the action after the event from the Soviet of Petrograd Trade Unions and the All-Russian Soviet of Factory Committees amongst others. The factory committees rallied to the Bolsheviks because the latter appeared to support the workers' aspirations. The majority of the members of the Petrograd Soviet were in favour of the overthrow of the Kerensky government, but did this mean they were in favour of the installation of a Bolshevik government? What they were in favour of was a coalition government formed by all the "workers" parties, i.e. the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and others. This was in fact favoured by many within the Bolshevik Party itself, but they were over-ruled by Lenin who went to great pains to disguise his party's coup as the formation of a soviet government, which it wasn't. Once they got governmental power the Bolsheviks side-lined the soviets almost straightaway. The soviets were always considered as a cover to secure Bolshevik power.

This leads us to another important divergence of our respective positions. Post-October and the situation of the soviets does find us disagreeing. Anarchists, Left SRs and Mensheviks scholars tend to coalesce in their criticisms of the treatment of the soviets by the Bolsheviks - and naturally enough, those sympathetic towards Lenin take a different view but surely the proof of the pudding is very much in the eating. The soviets were institutionalized by the July 1918 constitution, which voided them of all revolutionary and autonomous content.

To sort of sum up, within the Socialist Party, some members think Lenin and the Bolsheviks were genuine socialists who were inevitably bound to fail to introduce socialism because the conditions weren't there for this and that their method of minority dictatorship was mistaken. While other members believe they were elitists, Jacobinists or Blanquists, from the very start who were always going to establish the rule of a new elite even though they labelled themselves socialists.

Rather than Bolshevik elitism was an inevitable product of the decision to build state capitalism in Russia in the aftermath of the October revolution, it was the other way round, the decision to build state capitalism was an inevitable product of the Bolsheviks' elitism.

Both analyses are an advance on the degenerate party and deformed workers’ state propositions offered up.

Overall,the Socialist Party sympathises more with Martov's viewpoint than Luxemburg's. One was on the ground and the other was in a German prison during much of the key moments and we can imagine much of her sources were limited compared to an active participant...but again Luxemburg from a distance could perhaps see the wood rather than Martov who could only perhaps perceive the trees.

Outside the Socialist Party, this article resonates so it is deserving of being credited.

http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Ratner/Prematur.html

IMPARTING LENINIST IDEAS