Social Revolution Not Reforms

 Ever since its formation the Socialist Party’s attitude towards reforms as palliatives has been criticised. The Socialist Party has always maintained that nothing short of socialism could possibly effect a cure and has consequently steadfastly refused to be drawn into any reform agitation whatsoever urging that the quickest way to get “something now” even, is to organise to obtain the whole, many holds that the best policy consists in agitating for this or that reform with a view to assisting the workers to get something now.  We were called impossibilists for holding such an analysis that said the workers of the world must organise for socialism and refuse to be drawn from the straight path. The ills afflicting the working-class are due to capitalism, with its profit-making motive. The Socialist Party stands for the revolutionary transformation of society. Because of this and because history has proved that a party for revolution cannot be built up on reform programmes, the Socialist Party does not seek to win support by advocating reforms.

Change is needed. What kind of a change is it going to be? Is it to be only the reform of present-day society, capitalism? This is the kind of change the capitalist class envisage. Or will the workers act in their own interest, and perform the revolutionary act of abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism? The choice rests with the working-class. If they want reforms, mere modifications of capitalism which will still leave them fundamentally in the same position as they occupy to-day, they can have them. On the other hand, should they decide to have done once and for all with capitalism, its private property, profits and privileges for the few and its wage-slavery and poverty for the vast majority, there is no one who can prevent them. Should the workers support plans for the reform of capitalism? Or should they take matters into their own hands, abolish the present system, and establish socialism?

Since the early days of capitalism, efforts have been made to make the lot of the worker more bearable, to ease the chafing of his chains. The reformists who busy themselves with this task start with the assumption that capitalism will remain. Any changes they advocate are to be brought about within the framework of capitalism. This is the essence of reformism. Capital and wage-labour, the two bases of capitalism, they leave fundamentally untouched. They do not seek to eradicate these roots of capitalism. They merely try to lessen the pains inflicted on society by the capitalist system.

Capitalism cannot be so modified by reform measures that it becomes “the best of possible worlds” for the working-class. All reformist efforts to solve the fundamental problems of the workers are bound to fail. Capitalism, it must be understood, is a system of society organised so as to provide profit to the owners of industry, the capitalist class. To do this, the wage-worker is set to work, and what he produces belongs to the employers, the capitalists. The wage-worker is given back, in the form of wages, only a portion of what he produces; the rest, the surplus, the capitalist owner retains. Thus, the worker exploited and kept on the poverty line, for the portion he receives as wages is just about sufficient to keep him fit enough to perform his particular job and reproduce his kind—future wage-slaves for the service of the capitalist class. Hence the worker is born poor, he lives his life in poverty and dies still poor.

Frequently, to increase his profit, or to compete more successfully in the markets of world, the capitalist cuts down his production costs. Then he seeks to enforce wage reductions, or he may replace workmen with labour-saving machinery or by adopting a new technique. Moreover, the growth of the unemployment problem has been particularly favourable to the capitalist class in its attack upon the workers’ standard of living, for as soon as there is a reserve army of unemployed workers, the keeping down of wages becomes a more simple matter for the owners of industry since the workers compete with each other for jobs.

The motor of capitalism is the lust for profit, any wage increases won by the workers are, if possible, offset by the employing class, for wage increases mean an attack on profits. Hence wage increases are usually the signal for the introduction of more labour-saving devices, more machinery. Thus, very frequently, more production is squeezed out of fewer workers. The exploitation of the worker becomes more intense.

Whatever reforms are introduced, so long as the present system remains, the following evils will persist:

1. The bulk of what the workers produce will be taken from them.

2. They will be kept on or near the poverty line, and will be thus forced to continue in a slave position, dependent on the capitalist class for a living. They will still stand in need of doles, old age pensions and all the other accessories of poverty.

Often reforms are carried out to improve the lot of the worker prove but of short duration. Should they be of inconvenience to the capitalist class in whose interests present-day society operates, they are, as soon as a favourable opportunity arises, either abandoned altogether or modified to the disadvantage of the workers. All that is necessary is for an industrial crisis or a war to arise—and both these come crashing in on us with regularity—and years of effort for reform measures are as nothing. Then we must say good-bye to the reforms “for the time being,” or at least the reforms are drastically altered. 

Because no solution is possible for the worker under capitalism, we are out to abolish it and replace it with socialism. We aim at nothing less because we know nothing less will satisfy the needs of the class to which we belong. It is also for this reason that we are opposed to all other parties, all of which, at the most, aim merely at modifications of present-day society.

Fellow workers should study socialism. That is the first step. We are confident that a little study will convince them that only by going to the root of their problems can their position be permanently improved. They will realise the need for abandoning reform movements. They will realise the need for revolutionary action, for replacing capitalism with socialism, that is by a society wherein there will be no private property, no profit-making and no wages.

 Socialism is, in fact, a social system wherein the means of life belong to all society and wherein, consequently, production is carried on to satisfy the needs of society. Socialism, having no “ulterior motive,” will make unnecessary the present-day strivings for “a living wage” (which still leaves the workers robbed of the bulk of what they produce). Let the worker, with Marx, say, “Instead of the Conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work !’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system !’ ”

We do not expect tto gain the support of people still unconvinced of the need for socialism—nor do we desire to be supported by non-socialists. Until the majority desire and are prepared to organise for the specific job of establishing socialism, the achievement of the new society is an impossibility. Our task now then is, to propagate socialist principles, to make socialists. Non-socialists, people interested in the reform of capitalism, would hamper us in that job. Once a revolutionary party begins to compromise with capitalism and is willing to help in its administration and reform, such a party is doomed as a weapon for socialism. It ceases to be revolutionary. Once a party adopts reform programmes, it appeals to many kinds of people who are anything but socialist. The result is that the socialists are swamped, and socialism is pushed further and further into the background of the party programme; socialism ceases to be the object of the party. Let the workers, then, reject reformism, and embrace revolution. Let them cease to spend their forces on reformist futilities.

What did you learn in school today? (music)

 

An Administration, Not a Government

1. Society is, broadly speaking, divided into two classes, the slave class and the slave-owning class.

2. Between these two classes there is a conflict of interests—centred around the sale and purchase of labour-power—which can be ended only by the abolition of the slave-owners, i.e., the capitalist class.

3. No one but the slaves themselves can abolish the capitalist class, and so doing achieve the freedom of the workers.

4. As the slave class, i.e., the working class, is the last class to be emancipated, there is no other class to be exploited, hence the need for government automatically disappears. 

The difference, then, between administration and government is that the first serve the people and the other represses them. A good example of administration is to be found in the constitution of the Socialist Party.

The control of the affairs of the Party is vested entirely in the membership of the Party. We have certain officials who are responsible for the execution of the instructions given to them by the Party. If they fail in this work or do it in an unsatisfactory manner, they can be removed from office at any time the Party thinks fit.

We apply this principle to the affairs of society and point out that while we do not dispute the ability of the master class to govern, we do affirm that they cannot administer, for such a function must necessarily be performed in the interests of the workers, and hence can only be carried out by the workers themselves. To talk of a socialist State is to talk in contradictions. The State is a machine designed to maintain the subjection and exploitation of a large mass of people by a few. It developed when the production of wealth surplus to the needs of the producer became possible. Its function was to protect the system of the expropriation of that surplus wealth. Thus, it is a very old institution—and now that we live under capitalism, with its exploitation of the working class under modern industrial conditions, it still carries out the same function. Today, as ever, the state is there to preserve and protect the private ownership of the wealth, power and privilege of the relatively small dominant class in society.

The establishment of world socialism will involve the abolition of the state, but this must be achieved by first gaining control of the entire powers and machinery of governments, including the armed forces. The practical question involved in this is that the socialist majority must be in a position to implement its object. It must be in a position to control events, which means being in a position to enact the common ownership of the means of production and to ensure that society is completely transformed on this basis. At the centre of the capitalist class, power is their control of the forces of the state, therefore this must be taken out of their hands.  The capture of political control by the World Socialist Movement will establish the position whereby socialist delegates will be in control of the machinery of governments at local and national level throughout the world. Their first action will be to implement the common ownership of the means of production. Classes will thus be abolished and an egalitarian community come into being.

Socialism will be a society in which there will be no place for governments, armies, police forces or any of the other oppressive institutions required by capitalism. In socialism the means of production and distribution of wealth will be held in common by society, enabling production to be carried on with the sole purpose of satisfying the needs of human beings. This means that, for the first time in the history of the human race, society will be in a position to eradicate forever the conditions of poverty, want, fear and insecurity, along with violent, aggressive beings which these conditions breed. A society which caters for the needs of its members, because its members will be in control, will not need to set above itself a group of people to rule over it and dictate its actions. When all freely avail themselves of the wealth freely created there will be no need for policemen to stand guard over it to prevent people from taking what they need from what they produce.

Capitalism is a social set-up which produces goods for sale. Socialism will be a society which makes things because people need them. Capitalism has competition, the wages system, and the State. Socialism will have cooperation, open access to wealth, and democratic freedom. Remember this, the next time somebody peddles a socialist State nonsense about the need for a "workers' state". 

Engels is quite clear:

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective capitalist. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more it actually becomes collective capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. But the capitalist relation is not done away with; it is rather brought to a head.”

No Green SNP

 The UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an official advisory body, said the Scottish government would almost certainly miss its world-leading carbon reduction targets for 2030 by a substantial margin.

In its annual report on Scotland’s climate strategy, the CCC said there were “glaring gaps” between its ambitions to cut emissions by 75% by 2030 and its success in meeting them. It was failing on farming, building emissions, recycling, peatland restoration and on cutting car use.

Lord Deben, the CCC’s chair, indicated growing irritation with the devolved government’s faltering progress, which has been the subject of repeated warnings from the committee.

“In 2019, the Scottish parliament committed the country to some of the most stretching climate goals in the world, but they are increasingly at risk without real progress towards the milestones that Scottish ministers have previously laid out,” Deben said. “One year ago, I called for more clarity and transparency on Scottish climate policy and delivery. That plea remains unanswered.”

Hitting the 2030  target was now “extremely challenging”. Emissions only dropped in 2020 because of the Covid crisis; as things stand, Scotland’s emissions would probably fall by 65% to 67%, leaving the country up to 8 megatonnes of CO2-equivalent short of its legally binding 75% target. It also reported that if the climate impacts of Scotland’s consumption of imported goods and energy was included, the rates were 22% higher a head in Scotland than the UK average, at 13 tCO2e a person in 2018.

It found that:

Despite pledging to stop the sales of all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, sales of electric cars in Scotland had fallen behind England.

Scotland’s plans to rapidly decarbonise heating in buildings “were still wholly inadequate” despite recent funding increases.

Scottish ministers were failing to tackle high levels of meat and dairy consumption, key causes of CO2 emissions from farming.

Scotland was meeting only half its target to restore 20,000 hectares (50,000 acres) of peatland a year.

Scottish ministers were failing to work collaboratively with other UK governments on shared climate strategies.

Sturgeon told Scotland’s climate targets are ‘in danger of being meaningless’ | Scotland | The Guardian

FREEDOM (music)

 

The End of the State

 

The Socialist Party has always held that with the establishment of socialism the State will disappear. The State, which exists where society is divided into an owning class and a propertyless class and is a coercive institution through control of which the dominant class imposes its will on the subject class, would lose its function when society ceases to be divided into classes. The state is a coercive institution standing above the rest of society, the state is a product of the division of society into antagonistic economic classes, and that, once these classes are abolished through the common ownership of productive resources, then the state will become redundant; its coercive features will be dismantled and its useful administrative functions merged into the democratic structure of class-free society.

The Socialist Party holds that the way to establish socialism is through political action, i.e. through a socialist-minded majority winning control of the state and using it to abolish capitalism. This done—and we don't envisage this taking very long, so that terms such as "transitional period" and "gradual decline" are quite out of place—the state is dismantled. Its coercive elements are simply disbanded. The useful administrative elements, such as those concerned with health, housing, transport, education, etc. are made more democratic and retained as part of the non-coercive administrative machinery of socialism.

The Left, who actually advocate state capitalism in the name of socialism, often speak about a so-called workers’ state. Such a concept indicates a profound misunderstanding about the nature of socialism. The state is the product of class society. It is the institution with which the propertied class defends itself against those who are propertyless.

The existence of the machinery of state coercion (government, police, courts, prisons) “is a product of society at a certain stage of development: it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms, which it is powerless to dispel". (Engels, Origin of Family, Private Property and State). "As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection . . . nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary."(Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific)

Marx wrote: "All Socialists understand by 'anarchy' this: the aim of the proletarian movement, the abolition of classes, once achieved, the power of the State, which serves to keep the great producing majority under the yoke of a small exploiting minority, will disappear and the functions of government will be transformed into simple administrative functions" (Conspectus of Bakunin's 'Statism and Anarchy').

Marx and Engels genuinely wanted to see established a state-free, class-free society and the means they advocated to achieve this—democratic political action by a democratically-organised working class—are still relevant and valid. An  authoritarian or a one-party dictatorship has to be ruled out as incompatible with Marx and Engel’s aim of a stateless, communist society based on voluntary cooperation. How could people be forced to cooperate voluntarily? They can only do this if they want to, which means that socialism has, by its very nature, to be the outcome of a consciously expressed desire of the majority. Because socialism can only be a democratic society, it can only come about democratically. In the phrase Marx endorsed: the emancipation of the working class can only be the work of the working class itself.

To put it simply, the state is the body which imposes the oppression of the exploiting class over the exploited class. A distinction is always made by Marxists between the state — a body of class coercion — and administration. Of course, socialism will require administration. This will be organised democratically, without the need for an elite or bureaucracy that would be in a position to administer the lives of others. When we refer to the state we are not referring to merely administrative features, such as social services for the old or traffic control.

The Left sometimes makes the claim about the need for a transition period between capitalism and socialism in which the state would be used to develop the productive forces so as to make socialism feasible. The Socialist Party does not endorse Marx and Engels' ideas on this matter, which may have been appropriate to the less developed state of capitalism of the last century, but have no applicability in the modern age of potential material abundance. There need be no transition period between capitalism and socialism: once a majority of workers understand, want and take democratic political action for socialism the new system will be established at once. It is the Left’s failure to understand the possibility of the immediate creation of a class-free society which leads them to talk nonsense about the gradual decline of the state. Having gained control of the State-machine for the sole purpose of democratically dispossessing the capitalist minority, the State will be abolished immediately. There will be no socialist State. The government over people will give place to the democratically organised administration of things.

One Day More (music)

 

Abolish the State

 

The common view of socialism is a collection of confusing misconceptions. One popular idea is that socialism means nothing more than the control of everything and everybody by an all-powerful Big Brother State. Anti-Socialists tell us that with socialism we would all become regimented and lose our individuality. There is the illusion that socialism will create such a pervasive coercive one-party government. Once again, the Socialist Party makes it very clear that socialism cannot be created by any State, benevolent or authoritarian. The Socialist Party is not concerned with the “coming” of any state, but with its “going.” The Socialist Party agrees with Marx and Engels that, ‘with the disappearance of classes, there also disappears the necessity of armed repression or state power’ (Letter to Von Patten, on April l883). The state will, therefore, in due course ‘wither away”. 

We would not now be so inclined to use the words "wither away" which is one translation of what Engels wrote in German. This suggests some quasi-natural and not necessarily rapid process. It does lend itself to interpretation as meaning “gradual decline”. This was probably Engels's own view but it is a decline he envisaged as taking place in the period between the winning of political power by a socialist majority and the establishment of socialism and not in socialism after it had been established. Engels, just as much as us. repudiated the idea that the state should continue into socialism and only then decline. Engels and Marx did envisage a more or less lengthy period of transition between capitalism and socialism.This was understandable in the 1870s when the means of production were much less developed than they are now. Our view is that the "period of changeover” between capitalism and socialism can now be very short. All that is required today to bring the means of production into common ownership under democratic control is, on the one hand, a declaration that all property titles over means of production (stocks and shares, etc) are no longer valid and will no longer be enforced by the state and, on the other, the implementation of the precise arrangements for them to be democratically controlled. Such arrangements will have been worked out before the actual winning of political power by a socialist majority and would be able to be put into practice fairly rapidly after it. This is why we prefer to use. in connection with the end of the state and its repressive organs, terms such as "dismantle”, “abolish” or "dissolve" which suggest an active intervention rather than "wither away”, “die out" and "decline” which can suggest a passive, gradual process.

 

Only when the workers, organised consciously and politically, capture the State and convert it into the agent of emancipation will it be possible to convert the means of life (i.e., the land, factories, transport, etc.) into the common property of the whole people. This revolution within the State, necessary as it is for the social revolution, so far from extending the bureaucracy will abolish it. The first act of the revolutionary administration will be to take direct control and responsibility from the hands of the officials in every department. The working class must itself become the State. As the revolution proceeds and the capitalist class are stripped of their economic privileges, so the workers’ organisation will cease to be political and will become economic. It will be concerned, not with the government of persons, but with the administration of the social means of production and distribution. Class distinctions have been abolished, class antagonism will disappear and with it the need for a repressive force. The concern of society under socialism will not be oppression. Camaraderie will take the place of coercion. Socialism will be a system of society involving a community of shared interests. Socialism is not the result of schemes and dreams. It is but a convenient name for the stage in social evolution made possible and inevitable by the economic tendencies of our time. It is not built up out of vain yearnings and longings.  The Socialist Party understands that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself. Unless we can convince and convert the majority of workers, socialism is an idle dream. If you bring about a revolution with an uninformed or hostile working class, defeat sooner or later faces you. 

When classes disappear so also disappears the need for the state as a public power of coercion resting ultimately on the ability to use armed force to impose the will of those who control it. Socialism will be a state-free society, which follows from the fact that the state is an instrument of the class rule while socialism will be a classless society and so have no place for such an instrument. There is no place in socialism for a state even a declining one.

Genuine cooperation can be born only when working people, having seized political power, use it for the purpose of making the means of production the common property of the whole of society, and proceed to administer them for the common welfare of all. Then the need for the State, for government, will vanish, and mankind will, at last, be free.

I Hate the Capitalist System (music)

 

Socialists Against the State

 

Our aim is socialism, which we define as a worldwide society in which the Earth’s resources will be the common heritage of all humanity under democratic control at the world, regional and local levels as appropriate. It will be a society where we shall work voluntarily as best we can, as far as our ability goes, to suit our joint needs, as part of a cooperative society. It will be a society in which the state, as the public power of repression at the disposal of a ruling class, will have been abolished and replaced by participatory democracy. This is our immediate aim, not some long-term goal.

We think that given the development of productive capacity since Marx made the distinction in 1875 between a “first” (when full free access according to needs would not be possible) and a “higher” phase of “communist society” (when it would), the so-called higher phase can-and should-be established more or less immediately. Although we call such a society “socialism” we have no objection to it being called “communism” as long as it is clearly understood that this has nothing to do with the state-capitalist dictatorships that used to exist in the former USSR or in China today.

We are workers who don’t see ourselves as a group doing anything for other fellow workers other than putting before them the basic socialist propositions that under capitalism there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest between capitalists and workers; that capitalism can never be reformed so as to work in the interest of workers; that what is required is a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use, not profit. If workers want such a socialist society this is something they must do for themselves without following leaders or relying on benefactors. We can’t establish it for them. As we say in our declaration of principles “the emancipation of the working class must be the working of the working class itself”.

We don’t suffer from the illusion that existing MPs or local councillors can do anything to further the cause of socialism. Their job is merely to run the political side of capitalism and capitalism can only be run as a profit system in which priority must always be given to making profits over meeting needs. We also agree that there can be no real democracy under capitalism in the sense of a situation in which everybody has an equal say in deciding what should be done and in which those decisions can be implemented without hindrance. This is not the case today.

Having said this, in many parts of the world a sufficient degree of democracy exists for a socialist majority to be able to use existing elective bodies, such as parliament, to win control of the state machine through the ballot box. Of course, to work, this presupposes a socialist-minded and democratically organised majority outside parliament standing firmly behind the delegates they will have sent into parliament with the single mandate to take the formal steps to stop the state from supporting capitalism.

 

The socialist transformation of society entails the dispossession of the minority capitalist class of their ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution. All of their lands and factories, mines, media and transport will be taken away from them. The machinery of production will become the common property of society. In order for the capitalists to be dispossessed — or "the expropriators to be expropriated", as Marx put it — there is one prerequisite. Working people must be conscious of what they are doing. The dispossession of the capitalists cannot be carried out by politically unaware workers, and nor can the task be performed for them by any enlightened elite. The Socialist Party makes clear, the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves. If the social transformation is carried out in an organised fashion by people who know what they are up against and what they want to establish as an alternative, then what can stop us?

A majority of politically conscious workers must democratically gain control of the state machine. The revolutionary mandate for such political action will not be like any given  in the past. Socialists will enter the state bodies as delegates, not representatives or party leaders. They will be accountable at every move to the socialist movement and their sole purpose in entering the state bodies will be to abolish ruling class power. They will formally enact the abolition of class ownership, and in doing so will express the wishes of millions who have voted for socialism and nothing less.

It is vital that the state, which controls the means of coercion including the police and armed forces, is not left in the hands of the capitalists it presently represents. Unlike previous occasions, the working class will not seek to establish its own state: a workers' state. As Engels pointed out, the workers' conquest of state power will be the last act of the state. The state will be dismantled. Government over people will be replaced by the administration of things. A class-free society will exist the moment that the capitalists are dispossessed. The Socialist Party rejects the self-defeating tactic of insurrection as foolish and dangerous. Even if the insurrectionists won, they would be forced to become dictators over those they will have “liberated" against their will. The sorry history of coup d'etats is sufficient proof of that. If insurrection is advocated by those who envisage majority support for the socialist revolution, then why fight it out when we have available to us the far simpler method of expressing our decision? After all, if a majority cannot be persuaded to vote for socialism it is going to take even longer to persuade them to join an army and fight for it.

We Do the Work (music)