Socialist Courier

Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Our Power is the Vote

Working people are in immediate need of having their sufferings alleviated, but, unfortunately, the sad fact of their suffering is not enough to bring about the change. There is a class in society called the "capitalist class", which has control of the necessaries of life. This class consists of the fortunate 5 per cent or so. The other 95 per cent. of the population produce the wealth that is appropriated by the 5 per cent. There must be something wrong somewhere. The 95 per cent. of society would probably be interested to know how they are robbed—yes, robbed!—of the wealth which they have produced.

The 5 per cent say to the 95 per cent, "We possess the means for producing all you need; if you will work for us we will return to you sufficient out of what you produce to enable you to go on working for us."

Of course, they do not exactly use these words. Stating facts would not coincide with their interests.

Most workers are probably not aware that the means of production, i.e., machinery, raw material, etc., are absolutely worthless to the capitalists until their labour power has been applied to them. But even if they do not know this, the fear of having their jobs taken from them by others of the 95 per cent. forces them to accept the terms of the capitalists.

The majority of "unskilled" labourers work for a miserable subsistence wage. On the average they are paid according to the cost of their production and maintenance. The small number who do receive a better scale of living are being paid for the higher cost of their production, i.e., training. This does not alter the fact that they also are exploited by their employers. The workers' wages, whatever they be, are paid out of the results of their labour. The surplus goes to supply the capitalists with their profits. Now comes the rub. The reason the working class are deprived or robbed of the surplus produced is that they do not OWN and CONTROL the means of production so therefore must submit to those who do.

Does it not appear incredible that such a small percentage of the population—the 5 per cent.—should be able to subject the 95 per cent. to such a palpable form of robbery ?

Capitalism has become a very complicated affair, far too complicated to allow of the personal management of the capitalists. Hence various institutions necessary to their maintenance have come into being. The most important of these institutions is the State, through which all the other institutions are controlled—for example, education, the media, and the military. The capitalists propose certain representatives for Parliament, and the workers, carefully educated by the capitalist media to believe that they really represent working-class interests, obediently vote them in. These capitalist henchmen— Tory, or Labour, it makes not the slightest difference—proceed to pass laws for the safeguarding of their employers' interests.

In the face of these facts, the anti-parliamentarians exclaim "Political action is futile ! We will make a revolution whether the time be ripe or not. Since the workers are so desperately in need of some change. We will educate them when the revolution is an accomplished fact."

They propose to set about this "revolution" by bringing what they term the economic factor to the fore. By this they mean a general strike. Of course, it is difficult to imagine for one moment that a spontaneous general strike could be brought about, since the anti-parliamentarians already recognise that the time is not yet ripe for a political revolution. The workers have not at present reached the essential state of class-consciousness.

But suppose for a moment that conditions do tend favourably to such an upheaval, note what would surely result. The strike would cause the stoppage of all transport; foodstuffs would diminish in a very short time.

The capitalist class would not suffer from the shortage: they could quite easily recruit volunteers from their own ranks, or conscripts from the Army, to be in a position to satisfy their own needs. For keep in mind that they still own the means of production and distribution. Finally, if the strikers would persist for a prolonged period, the armed forces of the nation, which are controlled through Parliament, would prove the deciding factor. All the heroism and martyrdom in the world would avail nothing against the ruthless machine-guns and other instruments of civilised warfare, which undoubtedly would be brought forward to induce the working class to realise the futility of rebelling against such a power. An uprising of this description can only add to the misery of the workers without advancing their cause in the least.

It should be quite obvious that the whole power of the capitalists lies in a government that can summon the inevitable deciding factor, force, when needed. Therefore the only logical thing for the workers to do is to capture that government, and so in a constitutional manner gain control of the armed forces.

This can only be accomplished when the majority of the working class have reached class-consciousness—in other words, when the bulk of the workers have arrived at a complete understanding of their position as wage-slaves under the existing system of society.

They will then utilise their powers of voting to further their own interests instead of the interests of a class that has always ruthlessly oppressed them.

Tuesday, May 05, 2020

Changing things for the better

The Socialist Party visualise a future society that would be based on the common ownership of the means of production, the elimination of profit in the means of production, the abolition of the wage system, the abolition of the division of society into classes. When we speak of the means of production, we mean that wealth which is necessary for the production of the necessities of the people. The industries, the transportation, and so on. We don’t propose the elimination of private possession of personal effects. We speak of only those things which are necessary for the production of the people’s needs. They shall be owned in common by all the people.

As classes are abolished, as exploitation is eliminated, as the conflict of class against class is eliminated, the very reason for the existence of a government in the strict sense of the term begins to diminish. Governments are primarily instruments of repression of one class against another. According to the doctrine of Marx and Engels and all of the great Marxists who followed them, and based themselves on their doctrine, we visualise, as Engels expressed it, a gradual withering away of the government as a repressive force, as an armed force, and its replacement by purely administrative councils, whose duties will be to plan production, to supervise public works, and education, and things of this sort. As Engels expressed it, the government of men will be replaced by the administration of things. The “government” of a socialist society in reality will be an administrative body, because we don’t anticipate the need for any military, jails, repressions, and consequently that aspect of government dies out for want of function.

What we mean by “social revolution” is a political and economic transformation of society which fundamentally affects the property system and the method of production. A political revolution can occur without any radical transformation of the underlying economic structure of society, the property basis of society. A social revolution, on the other hand, affects not only the government, but affects the economic system.

The class struggle between workers and owners can have only one possible ending. Sooner or later the great mass of the people who do the work will see that their own separate interests are bound up with the interests of their class. They will see that it is folly for them to support in luxury the owning class. They will unite to overthrow the capitalist system under which we are living, and to establish the cooperative commonwealth. By this we mean a society in which the good things of life shall not be produced for the proﬁt of a privileged minority, living off the labour of others. We mean a society in which there shall not be a ruling class a class of workers under them, but in all shall rule — in which human equality shall be not a phrase but a fact.

The working class is made up of people with one common interest — to get the wealth they produce and use it in living a happier life. They will have no subject class under them, that they could govern if they chose. All they need to do is to abolish the capitalist class as a class and treat the capitalists like anyone else. They will thus establish equality, not because it is so beautiful in theory, but because it is the only practical way of doing the work they want done.

When we talk of equality, we do not mean that all the money or all the wealth of the country will be “divided up.” That is something never advocated by the Socialist Party. We don’t need the money nor the mansions nor the limousines that the capitalist have today. We want the use of the Earth and of the technology, to produce all the good things we need. Again, it is no part of the Socialist Party programme to make wages exactly equal for all but to abolish wage slavery. When the cooperative commonwealth is in operation the rewards of the various kinds of labour will tend to adjust themselves automatically. If it is hard to ﬁnd street-cleaners and easy to ﬁnd librarians, it will be a simple matter to increase the rewards and reduce the hours of streetcleaners until a balance is reached. The Socialist Party would not take away the artist’s brushes. We only hold that machinery so complex that they have to be used in common should be owned in common.

We say that this class struggle must ﬁnally end in the downfall of the capitalist system, and the building of the cooperative commonwealth. We say that if the cooperative commonwealth is to be brought about it is social revolution. There is a simple way to get hold ofthe machinery of government. It is by voting for the party of the working class, that is, the Socialist Party. We do not mean to say that the election of one Socialist Party ofﬁcial or of a hundred Socialist Party ofﬁcers will in itself bring any great measure of freedom and happiness to the working class. As long as the capitalists control any part of the machinery of government, they will use that part to nullify any measure that may be passed in the interest of the working class. Our constant aim therefore is to organise the workers into a party which shall ﬁnally dislodge the capitalists from power once for all, and establish the cooperative commonwealth. The organisation of the Socialist Party may grown into the organisation of the cooperative commonwealth, and it is worth the best efforts of every worker to make this organisation as effective as possible.

Monday, May 04, 2020

Don't trust others to do your thinking.

Politics is the business of government, i.e., the control and management of people. Workers should know that all the results of capitalist production spell trouble and conflict of interests between worker and worker.

The Socialist Party shows that present-day society is divided, in the main, into two distinct classes—the workers on the one hand, by whose labour, applied to the nature-given material, all wealth is produced, and on the other hand the capitalist class, who own and control the wealth and the means by which it is produced. The workers have to sell their labour power in order to live, to those who own the means by which alone that labour-power can be applied to wealth production. The interest of the workers is to get as much by the sale of their labour-power as they can. To achieve this result they organise in trade unions. Seeing, however, that the workers produce all the wealth, and yet remain poor and are denied the opportunity of living when they are, through no fault of theirs, unemployed, the question arises why such an unreasonable state of things exists. To understand an effect the cause must be sought. The cause of all present-day social evils lies in the root of the capitalist system—private ownership and control of the means of living. In this ownership they are secured by the political power given to them by a politically ignorant working class. This political power enables them to control the armed forces, which are used to conserve the interests of the ruling class. The workers, therefore, have to deprive their masters of this political power as the first step toward their freedom, and only knowledge and organisation can enable them to do this, therefore, the Socialist Party exists to bring that necessary knowledge to the workers and to organise them in a political party for the conquest of political power by and for the working class. We point out to fellow-workers the difficulties and anomalies of the capitalist system of wealth production. We point out the hopelessness of reforming a system of society that is rotten to its foundations.

The Socialist Party understands that the workers are wage-slaves, and that their position in society must necessarily be a servile one. That being the socialist's conception of the working class, nothing can be done to permanently better their condition. Economic freedom can only be realised when the workers organise and capture political control. It is consequently hostile to all other political parties, and claims to be the only party in this country worthy of working-class support.

The Socialist Party looking at all phenomena in the light of socialist knowledge, sees that until the present system of private property ends, the majority of the people—the working class, that is—will remain in their present condition of penury, sordidness, and degradation, dependent upon another class for their very existence.

We look towards our own class—the working class— for help in our task of making socialists. We ask for their co-operation so that when capitalism falls, out of the wreck the working class will rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of an outworn and unregretted order, into a new world of freedom and happiness.

To non-Socialist Party member the present outlook is, without question, bleak and black. Only when one hears the lessons taught by socialists, that it dawns upon us that capitalist society is doomed by its governing laws and that we will eventually progress to a different and, as we believe, a superior society, will hope appear and allay ones fears and disappointments.

Sunday, May 03, 2020

Use your power to vote

The quest for profits invariably prevails over the concerns for humanity. Political systems offer a choice between one party that supports a brutal, unrestrained version of capitalism and another party that supports a marginally less brutal version of capitalism. At each election, we enjoy a choice – between an evil and a lesser evil. Is it hardly surprising that politics and politicians have been so discredited? We should not be surprised that the “thought-leaders” for shutting down discussion and debate upon what really is the common good.

There is the false belief that you stand to lose by not choosing what is often claimed to be the lesser of two evils. Don’t be sidetracked by the specious plea that you have to choose between two evils when you can reject both by choosing socialism. We don’t have to choose the lesser of two evils – we can help towards something better. A world where the resources of the planet have stopped being the property of rich individuals, corporations or states and have become the common heritage of all. On that basis goods and services can be produced directly to meet people’s needs without the intervention of markets. Neither a free market nor a controlled market but a non-market society.

We don’t have to accept the self-fulfilling prophecy that capitalism is our only option. Imagine that all the people in the world made informed, collective and democratic decisions about what kind of system would best meet their needs and solve global problems. Would they choose a money and property system that forced nearly half their total number to try to survive on a dollar a day? Or would they prefer to organise production and distribution of goods and services on the basis of what they need, without the profit system?

Would they, if and when given the chance to vote, do so overwhelmingly for candidates who—whatever labels they attached to themselves or their parties—stood for the continuation of some form of capitalism? Or would they elect delegates, from among their own number, to initiate the process of setting up and running a fundamentally new form of world society, a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution?

Would they embrace nationalism, involving armed forces paid to kill “the enemy” with whom they have no quarrel? Or would they regard themselves and behave as citizens of the world, regardless of any geographical, cultural or philosophical attachments they may feel?

Would they divide themselves into classes, rich and poor, leaders and led, privileged and unprivileged, dominant and submissive, superordinate and subordinate, master and servant, powerful and powerless?

Or would they, despite individual differences in abilities, personalities, interests, tastes, likes and dislikes, think and behave as members of the one human race, not perfect, sometimes fallible or irrational, but never deliberately cruel or anti-social?

Whatever words they use to explain or sloganise their ideologies, all parties except the Socialist Party stand for the continuation of some form of capitalism. From their point of view, a vote for their own candidate is best; a vote for one of their competitors is second best.

Not voting could be a worrying sign of alienation from the system. Worst of all, a vote for the Socialist Party candidate – or, where none stands, writing “socialism” across the ballot paper – would indicate the beginning of a resolution to replace capitalism with socialism.

Don’t forget, there was some justification for the argument that: “The Labour hell is one degree cooler than the Tory hell.” So “Choose the lesser of two evils.”

Today, after successive administrations of the same system, the difference in temperature is too small to get excited about.

Support for socialism isn’t a matter of campaigning to make the poor rich in today’s terms of material consumption. That wouldn’t be environmentally sustainable. The socialist aim isn’t even equality in the sense of sameness, like amounts of work contributed or goods and services consumed. Socialism is essentially about social equality, encouraging and enabling every human being to realise their full potential as giver and taker, not buyer and seller, in the context of society itself moving towards reaching its full potential.

Saturday, May 02, 2020

The Socialist Party's Answer

The work of the Socialist Party is modest indeed. It is to construct the only thing of worth to the cause of socialism — a body of intelligent working-class opinion. Our aim is toward socialism, then the path of our advance lies in "Talk Socialism," until working men and women cease to content themselves with any amelioration of capitalist conditions, and organise for their twofold task: to destroy the system that binds them to toil, and attain to freedom by building anew. The solution to this is in the hands of the working class. All that is needed is the political knowledge to apply it. Because capitalism does not change fundamentally. neither does the case for its abolition. We know why socialism must be established, and how, and who will do it. The one remaining question is: When?

Capital is a means of robbery, whether in the hands of the few or the many, and being so must be abolished. Robbery and slavery are the basis of present-day society, and that basis must be ended in the interests of toiling humanity. Capital is unpaid labour, therefore robbery and slavery are the terms used to denote the conditions of human beings who are compelled to submit to being robbed, bludgeoned, and butchered through their ignorance of the factors operating within the capitalist system and the means necessary to remove them. This ignorance is not dispelled by so-called socialist organisations preaching capitalist economics. If progressives believe that capital will exist under socialism—which they claim— and if capital can only arise through exploitation, then, clearly exploitation will continue! To take it a little further, if capital is taken out of the hands of the few and placed in the hands of the whole of the people as in cooperatives, then the people, collectively, are going to exploit or rob themselves collectively! The absurdity can be seen. Workers are not not the owners of capital. That is the role exclusively of the capitalist class, who exploit the workers, who assert their privileged standing through capitalism's laws and its coercive state machine but who are prepared to break those laws if they see it as being to their immediate advantage to do so. What we have is capitalism and socialists are doing their best to persuade the working class to get rid of it and replace it with a worldwide system of common ownership.

Capitalism, by its very nature, cannot run smoothly. It is teetering on the edge of another war. The EU are at loggerheads with one another and with America. The wars in Syria, Libya and Afghanistan are helped along by outside nations anxious to sell their latest war equipment and to test its efficiency in the same way as during the Spanish Civil War. States not at war view battlefields as opportunities for making a profit.

The Socialist Party puts forward the case for a society of free access, a society without buying and selling, money and wages, employers and employees. This is what socialism really means. Over the years its meaning has been changed and distorted in so many different ways that in most people's minds socialism now means either the kind of dictatorial society that existed in Russia, or state intervention in industry and housing, or the promises of social reform, full employment, higher wages, etc. that come from the Labour Party. But socialism means none of these things. It means a society in which everything is owned in common and in which people democratically take all the decisions that affect their lives. The situation at present is that these decisions are left to a government which, whether right or left wing, can only act in the interests of the profit system and of that small minority of the population who own most of the wealth and who, through the profits they make, don't need to work for a wage in order to live.

Most of the problems, whether local or wider, which most of us experience (poor public services, not enough money, dissatisfaction at work, anxiety and stress, etc.) derive from the fact that we have extremely little control over our own lives. We are made unable to exercise control both because our personal resources are limited (lack of money) and because important social decisions are out of our hands (lack of democracy).

The Socialist Party answer to this is for people not to place trust in leaders but to take action themselves, peacefully and democratically, to bring about a free access society without the use of money or any such thing where we all take freely what we need from the abundance of goods and services which with modern technology we are capable of producing. A society where we organise things for the benefit of all not in the interests of a wealthy few. This is an entirely practical proposition once the majority of people want it. The Socialist Party exists to help spread the idea and to encourage people to establish a society which will put it into practice.