It doesn’t have to be like this

Letter to the Editors from the April 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

We have a choice. But who are we? We are the working class, a majority suffering from the manipulation and intimidation of a privileged minority. Why do we let them get away with it? We have a choice!

They keep on telling us with their own devious brainwashing techniques, through schooling, university education methods and other more sophisticated types of propaganda, how to be good little citizens in this ever-changing world of technology.

How nice it would be if all the tales of leisure and pleasure were true; alas, for the majority of us. the reality could not be more harsh, despairing or demoralising.

I relate my own personal experience as a victim of the society which we all inhabit.

I have recently parted company with my employer of some six years, to find myself depending on state handouts to support my wife, two children, mortgage etc. A story familiar, no doubt, to many thousands of families. My income more than halved.

The irony is that with less money now than I have ever had in the last 16 years of selling my mental and physical skills to the highest bidder, not forgetting the necessity to purchase essentials like food to eat. clothes to keep warm, the feet remains that I have never—throughout my working life—experienced such feelings of overwhelming satisfaction, and pleasure which I derive from simple things in life (as we know it), like being able to go to a library, taking a stroll in the park, enjoying the local wildlife, all at no direct expense. The true value of some of the most breathtaking scenery in this otherwise spoiled, war-torn world is awesome.

I have just left behind sixteen miserable years of being stuck in a fume-filled factory churning out poxy pop group fly-posters, laboriously and repetitively standing in front of a manual hand-operated printing table, sometimes for up to fourteen hours a day, in order to achieve a decent wage to be able to "afford” essential commodities and appliances like cookers, washing machines, fridges, etc. or other less necessary items like portable CD players, and that other all-mod-con, the glorious television, on which programmes of interest are few and far between. I used to waste many an hour glued to the likes of Dale Winton, churning out his usual "camp” (or should it be crap) style of innuendo and obscenity. all in the name of entertainment.

The more I think and wonder at the complexity of the world-wide capitalist system which the majority of us have to endure, and the minority have on their side, the more I ask myself, why? Why do we continue to restrict ourselves to its unforgiving grasp?

It doesn’t have to be like this. We have the power, the resources, the technology and the communication skills to free ourselves from its relentless torture, but only we the working class can do it The master class will not volunteer to do it for us. They depend on our skills, our labour. Let us not be denied the true fruits of these labours. Throw down your shackles, fellow workers, rid this world of the ongoing bloodbath that we see. night after night on our TV screens.

P.E. 
Scotland

It’s time to choose life over death

Socialism is a society where the associated producers are the masters of the process of production. Socialist politics seeks an emancipatory future worth fighting for. The Socialist Party is convincing the majority of workers that a better future is possible. It holds a vision of industrial freedom and abundance. For the first time in the history of humanity—the possibility exists to produce not only enough for the plentiful consumption of all members of society, but also to offer each person sufficient leisure so that culture - science, art - is not only the preserve and  monopoly of the ruling class but transformed into the common property of the whole of society. Socialism makes emancipation and freedom possible for all of society. Socialism will develop automation and the technology to dramatically reduce the labour needed for providing the necessities of life. Socialists will take over the machinery of production - not switch it off. All of society will enjoy extended free time.

Critics of the Labour Party are rapidly increasing in number. We find that under Labour Party governments there exists capital, exploitation, wage slavery, armies, police, prisons, unemployment, wars, kings and queens, House of Lords,  prime ministers, profits, taxes, poverty, plutocrats and parasites of all kinds. All of which entitles one to ask in comparing it with the present capitalist system of government: "What is the difference ?" If this is all the Labour Party can do, compare to the socialist object, then ask yourself is it worth while bolstering up these fakers even through your trade union affiliation. Clearly something more is needed than the Labour Party.

There is, perhaps, no other epoch in history so murderous  and brutal as the present. Even the days we call the "Dark Ages" have no records of men, women and children slaughtered wholesale. Herod has been out-Heroded by dozens of petty war-lords. Nero fiddled while burning a city, a modern general burns scores of them. When will you join with us in waging the only war worth while—the class war—in order to dethrone capitalism's thieves and inaugurate the socialist co-operative commonwealth? If you acquiesce in the continuance of capitalism, and accept the possibility of more wars, then some of you will pay with your lives.

The Socialist Party alone maintains its hostility to all forms of religion. It considers all religious beliefs to be incorrect and a barrier to the acceptance of the socialist case. Therefore one of the tasks of a socialist is to show the falsity of religious ideas and not to compromise with them. A socialist cannot be religious, and when socialism is established religion will be dead, for the overwhelming majority of the world’s population will have become socialists. If anyone remains who wishes to keep his or her rosaries or sing hymns they will be tolerated. But a world of enlightenment and security will not provide fertile soil for the growth of religious ideas, which flourish in the rubbish heap of misery and ignorance.

Changing the World

In a society based upon common ownership wealth would be produced solely for use. All members of society would be occupied in producing things to satisfy their needs. This is possible with the present industrial machinery. All that is required is that the workers realise this and take steps to bring it about.

Apologists for capitalism maintain that even if the wealth the workers produce was divided equally among all members of the population, the increase in the average worker's income would be insignificant. But this isn't the socialist's argument. A socialist recognises the potential productive capacity of mankind with modern machinery and realises how production is misused in present society. A socialist takes into consideration the waste that goes on under capitalism. In a system based on private ownership where goods are produced for sale a vast number of workers are engaged in all the multiple tasks which arise from the sale of commodities and the realisation of the profits contained in them. The waste of productive effort in the cheap shoddy goods the majority of the community must buy.

To-day a minority of the population, the capitalist class, own the means and instruments for producing wealth. It necessarily follows that the vast majority of the population, the working class, must sell their labour power to this minority. In return they receive barely enough to keep them at the customary standard of living. If they were to receive more than was sufficient to keep them they would attempt to free themselves from that economic enslavement. The working class then must produce wealth for the capitalist class and receive in return just sufficient to bring them back to the factory to produce more wealth for their masters. The tremendous productive capacity of man's labour power applied to modern industrial equipment together with the working class receiving only the necessities of life results in the great difference in income that exists between most members of capitalist class and most workers.

The growth of air, soil and water pollution, the destruction of forests, the greenhouse effect, all are setting up a catastrophic scenario where the very survival of humanity is at stake. Environmentalists are mistaken if they think they can ignore capitalism. The logic of the capitalist market and short-sighted profit is doomed to fail as it is is inherently antithetical to ecological rationality.

We can start projecting a vision beyond capitalism, imagining a reality much like our own, but without the corrosive and toxic effects of capitalism. The conditions around this world have deteriorated so much, going back decades. People are desperate to figure out why things are breaking down and how we can build a new world. The concept of socialism is the production of use values, of goods necessary to satisfy human needs. The purpose of technical progress for Marx is not the endless production of goods, but the cutting of working hours and the lengthening of free time. Socialism is not state control of the economy. It involves planning, but not the central planning of an command economy from above. Socialism aims at winning a decent life for ordinary people. Socialism involves bringing production under democratic control. The emancipation of humanity has to be total and global. The overthrow of capitalism, of private property, commodity production, and wage labour, is a necessary precondition for human emancipation and the birth of a really class-free society, which roots out all forms of social inequality.

Socialism is merely a possibility, nothing more. There is no automatic socialist future, no guaranteed progress and no “final crisis of capitalism” leading by itself to the proletarian utopia: the choice between socialism and barbarism is still open, and its outcome depends on each one of us. But socialism happens to be the only possible alternative to a collapse of human civilisation if not even the disappearance of humanity. An association of intelligent individuals has the social and economic power to take the fate of society out of the hands of Big Business and to reshape that society on the basis of world-wide massive solidarity and co-operation between the producers. We call upon our fellow-workers to devote all one’s power and energy to helping the working people to fulfil that potential.

There is no middle road.

"You are dreamers!" How often have we in the Socialist Party heard this. Yet what is the reality that our fellow-workers face?

The economic and social system prevailing in the world is known as capitalism. Capitalism is an economic term.  It is applied by political economists and sociologists to the economic system of our civilisation, by means of which men achieve economic independence and have the privilege of living idly upon the labour of others, who produce a surplus value above that which they receive for their own sustenance. Capitalism refers to the system. A capitalist is one who profits by the system. The dominating features of capitalism are the private ownership of capital, the production of goods for profit and the division of society into two classes, namely, the capitalist class and the working class. The land, factories and  all the means of producing the nation’s wealth are owned by the capitalist class. The people own nothing except their muscles and brains, that is, their power to work.

The worker has nothing to sell but his or her labour power. We sell our capacity to work to an employer for so many hours a day for a certain price, that is, wages. Since one cannot separate labour power from one’s body it comes to this, that a worker actually sells oneself like a slave. Socialists call our fellow-workers, “Wage slaves”. Wages are determined by what it costs to keep one person and  family. How many do you know who can save out of their wages? They may be able to put something by in a goodyear, but when bad years come savings are gone. It is a fact that on the average a working man is not more than two weeks removed from penury. 

The capitalist will only employ people if he can make profit out of it. Just calculate the value of the goods you turned out in a day when you were in the factory, and what you receive back for your work. The difference between the two is the employer’s profit. Profit is the result of the unpaid labour of the worker. In capitalist England, the workers are continually robbed of the results of their labour. The capitalist will compel the worker to work as hard and as long as he can, for as little money as possible. What does capitalism offer workers? A life of toil on a bare subsistence. Always the dread fear of the sack. Capitalism can offer its workers nothing but wage slavery. If capitalism remains in existence, the worker will still remain subjugated to the capitalist. There will still be riches and leisure for the few, toil, and poverty for the rest of us.

The crises of capitalism on a world scale gave rise to a growing radicalisation among some sections of the population.

Our aim is a commonwealth without State, without Government, without classes, in which the workers shall administer the means of production and distribution for the common benefit of all. Socialism is primarily an economic transformation, brought about by the class struggle between the working class and the capitalist class, and it will change the character of all who come under the influence of the new conditions. The transformation of civilisation into the co-operative commonwealth, involving the greatest change known at least to modern history. Our object is the abolition of wage slavery; severance with all capitalist, reform parties; abolition of class rule; the establishment of world socialism, the brotherhood of man.

The most common objection to electing candidates to capitalist legislatures is that, no matter how good revolutionists they are, they will invariably be corrupted by their environment and will betray the workers. This belief is born of long experience. Socialists elected to Parliament have as their function to make propaganda; to ceaselessly expose the real nature of the capitalist State, to obstruct the operations of capitalist government and show their class character, to explain the futility of all capitalist reform measures. The new society is not to be built.. as we thought, within shell of the capitalist system. We cannot wait for that. 

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION IS HERE. Together we shall form a worldwide Co-operative Commonwealth. When we speak of the socialist commonwealth, we think of that great global confederation of free peoples united in one common bond. We look forward to a world when there is no longer a master, no longer a slave and  the abolition of wage slavery and establishment of the cooperative commonwealth.