Revealing Socialism

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Common misconceptions about socialism why socialism it wouldn’t work, of how it goes against “human nature,” and that there is no incentive to work, and so on are caused by a basic misunderstanding of what socialism is. This is not surprising, given the fact that the word socialism is so loosely tossed around so much. Socialism is poorly understood. What is crucially missed is that socialism means more democracy and freedom, not less. Over a century’s worth of state propaganda regarding socialism emanating from the West and the USSR has intensely distorted the public understanding of the concept. Many associate it with state monopoly, authoritarian central planning, and a one-party police state. If socialism meant any of these things, it should justly be discarded in the waste bin of history. Socialism has traditionally meant the opposite of these things: it has meant worker freedom and worker democracy. The public as to what socialism really is, don’t generally have a clue and the ruling class media made sure of that. The education machine also does a wonderful job in mystifying the meaning of socialism.

Socialism, as commonly understood means widespread government ownership of business. This is not socialism as we see it. Socialism is not state or municipal ownership. Nor even ownership by co-operatives. “Socialism” is also used to refer to welfare state policies, and progressive taxes. Not only do these things have little to do with socialism, sadly the same concepts are peddled by both the so-called left just as much as the right. The only difference is that the former says this “socialism” might be good in moderate amounts, while the right sees it as tyranny. In any case, both sides are wrong. Socialism is not a reform, it is a revolution. We are not reformers — we are revolutionists. Let it be clearly understood that by revolution Socialists do not mean violence or bloodshed. We mean by revolutionary socialism the capture of the political powers of the nation by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class. Socialists would regard it a calamity to the cause, as well as to humanity to have a violent upheaval in society. If such should be the case it would be not the result of the teaching of socialism, but rather the result of the refusal of the rulers to accept the socialist democracy. For socialism offers a possible peaceful solution.

Socialism means as our basic tenet explains “From each according to ability, to each to each according to needs. Production has already reach undreamed heights—to satisfy everyone’s needs and there can be plenty of everything. In socialism instead of working because they have to, because they are made to by the threat of poverty and privations, people will work because they want to out of a sense of responsibility to society and because work satisfies a felt need in their own lives. Socialists seek to abolish private property.  There are two kinds of private property. There is property which is personal in nature, consumer’s goods, used for private enjoyment. Then there is the kind of private property which is not personal in nature, property in the means of production. This kind of property is not used for private enjoyment, but to produce the consumer’s goods which are. Socialism does not mean taking away the first kind of private property, e.g. your clothes, your home; it does mean taking away the second kind of private property, e.g. the factory that makes clothes, the building company that constructs houses. socialists want more people to have more personal private property than ever before. It means taking away private property in the means of production from the few so that there will be much more private property in the means of consumption for the many. More personal possessions for use and enjoyment if we want them, not private property for making profits and exploitation. That’s socialism.

Socialism, to make it clearer, is a mode of production that entails certain means and forces of production, in the form of factories, infrastructure, raw materials, tools, and such, and relations of production, which refers to the property relations between the means of production and their owners. Under capitalism, the means of production are mostly in the hands of private individuals who depend on a massive army of people who don’t own any means of production. The latter obtains their subsistence by selling their ability to do labor with the means of production owned by a capitalist. According to the property relations in capitalism, the worker does not own anything he or she produces with the means of production provided by the capitalist. They are entitled only to a wage, which must necessarily be significantly lower than the amount of value the worker creates. In short, capitalism is a system wherein production is socialised, which is to say it is carried out by masses of people, and profit, the surplus value that they create by their work, is privatised, meaning it goes to the private individuals who own the means of production.

Socialism means a full, happy and useful life. It means the opportunity to develop all your faculties and latent talents. It means that, instead of being a mere chattel bought and sold on the labour market, an appendage to a machine, a robot to produce of wealth for others, you will take your place as a human being in a free society of human beings, and a participant in its decision-making committees and councils. Your work in a socialist society will not be dependent on the caprices either of the capitalist market. When things are produced to satisfy human needs, instead of for sale and profit, involuntary redundancy and lay-offs will be an impossibility. The "demand," instead of being limited to what people can buy, will be limited only to what people can use. Nor will unemployment because of labour-saving new technology be possible in socialism. Instead of dismissing workers from jobs, the improved methods and facilities will cut hours from the working day. Full employment and jobs for all under capitalism are only possible when capitalism is preparing for, or engaged, in war. Socialism alone can give jobs for all and open wide the doorway to economic opportunity. Hours of work in socialism will be the minimum necessary to fulfill society's needs. Work is not the end and aim of man's existence; it is the means to an end. We do not live to work; we work to live. Socialism will, therefore, strive in every way to lighten the load of mankind and give the leisure to develop faculties and live a happy, healthful, useful life. By the elimination of capitalist waste and duplication caused by irrational competition, and by opening jobs at useful work to all who are currently deprived of it, we could produce an abundance for all by working four hours a day, three of four or five days a week, and thirty or forty weeks a year. People will be able to take regular sabbatical years. The so-named “gap-year” will be available for all age groups.

Socialism is, to put it in the simplest words, another way of organising society to the present system. It isn’t “redistributing” the wealth, welfare programmes, or “equal shares” for everyone. Socialist production is socialised, and the ownership of the means of production is also socialized. This means the means of production and distribution, the machines, the transport infrastructure, all belong to the people in common. Writing in the 19th century, Marx envisioned some kind of paper certificate to represent the amount of labour performs as a form of access to the common treasury, and unlike money it would not circulate. Obviously in a modern economy this kind of system for accounting of labour credit would be fraught with problems even with the power of computers. Better that we do away with any form of artificial rationing and enjoy free access to the fruits of our collective labours.

The Race To The Bottom

  The announcement in February that Target, the second largest US discount department store retailer, will be opening one hundred and thirty-five stores in Canada, starting in March 2013 brought a swift retort from the head of Walmart, Canada, Shelley Broader. She said, "When people ask me what our target strategy is, I say we have a WalMart strategy. That's about helping people save money so they can live better." That sounds a little strange from a company that pay their employees little enough to live on, let alone save. Even stranger considering how WalMart force their suppliers to fire union employees lowering their standard of living; strange, too, considering the companies they have ruined in competition, hence more grief and unemployment. Socialists do not take sides in competitions between capitalists as they are all at the same game – lowering labour costs for more profits – and the only way to end this race to the bottom is to get rid of the profit system. John Ayers.

Socialism? What Is It?

The Socialist Party and its companion parties stand alone in their consistent advocacy of the socialist solution. Their examination of society has taught them that nothing less than socialism can suffice. These parties at present form only the nucleus of the great working class movement which must finally rise to bring this program into effect. The workers cannot depend upon others to do the job for them. It is a job that requires conscious and deliberate effort on their part. It is a job which they must do themselves.

Many varied interpretations that have been placed upon socialism. Stalinism and Hitlerism have both been described as socialism. Labour parties frequently come forward with lengthy lists of reforms or elaborate plans for “nationalisation” and describe these as socialism. Social reform is not socialism. Neither is government ownership. Socialism has not yet been established in any country. It exists today only as an independent working class movement striving against the opposition of capitalist and labor parties alike, its energies directed without deviation towards a single goal. There are no short cuts to socialism. Workers must guard against such nonsense if they are not to be fooled by political charlatans or people who have themselves been fooled. For this reason among others the socialists stress the necessity for socialist education. The workers must understand socialism before they can serve usefully in the struggle for its attainment.  It can be achieved only through the conscious political organization of the working class. But with that organization accomplished, no obstacle can stand in the road.

Socialism may be had for the taking. Take it. The workers must ultimately turn to socialism as the only means of finding release from the problems of capitalism. Even though it were possible (which it is not) for the present system to provide considerably improved conditions for the workers, that would still be no justification in the eyes of an informed persons for its continued existence. It has solved the problem of wealth production, but it has failed to solve the problem of distribution. It divides the toil of the workers between production and a myriad of unnecessary activities related to distribution. It is wasteful and destructive of men and materials. Its conflicts over markets, trade routes and sources of raw materials breed wars that grow ever more terrible in their dimensions. It is a haven of luxury and idleness for a useless parasite class. It is a fetter on further social progress.

The Greens will not achieve anything substantial because they are concerned with dealing with the effects of pollution, not the cause, i.e. the ownership of the tools of production (the resources, the factories, the land, the transportation systems, the mercantile and banking systems, etc.) by a minority, and the need to produce commodities with a view to profit, that rides roughshod over environmental concerns and other human needs. That destruction of the planet also affects the capitalists themselves, merely highlights the insanity of the system. For a business to survive, it must show a profit quickly and maintain its profitability to compete with other companies. In such a situation, human needs, including those of the capitalists, become meaningless.

In a socialist society, with the abolition of the profit motive, very different priorities will be apparent. Whereas water, and anything else people need may be moved from one place to another, environmental and human considerations would be prime motivators. The latest technology and safe, clean practices would be demanded and care of the eco systems on which human life depends, would be possible as the drive for profit and all that entails would have disappeared.

Socialism solves the problem of distribution. Its introduction will mean the conversion of all the means of production and distribution from private or class property into the common property of all the members of society. Goods will no longer be produced for sale; they will be produced for use. The guiding principle behind the operations of industry will be the requirements of mankind, not the prospects of profit. Production under socialism will be pre-determined, and distribution effected with neither advertising nor sales staff, thus reducing wasted materials to the minimum and making possible the transfer of great numbers of workers to desired occupations.

The ending of exchange relationships will bring at the same time the ending of an exchange medium. There being neither sale nor profit associated with the production and distribution of goods, neither will there be money in any of its forms. Currency, credit and banking, whether private or “socialized”, will pass out of existence.  The advent of common property means the abolition of private or class property, which in turn means the abolition of class society together with the class struggle. The antagonistic classes of today will become merged in a people with common interests, and the former capitalists will have the opportunity of becoming useful members of society. This will not only remove the greatest of the burdens resting today on the backs of the workers, it will also further augment the available labor supply, by the inclusion of the capitalists and their former personal attendants, thus contributing to the general reduction in labor time needed to produce society’s requirements.

Since unemployment means not only idleness but also severance from the means of subsistence, such a condition could not exist under socialism. That there will be plenty of leisure time, however, is beyond question. It will be the conscious aim of society to constantly reduce the obligations of its members to production, thereby providing ever-increasing leisure time in which to enjoy the proceeds of their labor.

Wars constitute another wretched feature of capitalist society that will come to an end under socialism. Since they arise from the struggle of the capitalists over markets, etc., and since these struggles will no longer play a part in the affairs of society, they will remain only as a ghastly memory from a horrible past.

Socialism will not solve all the problems of human society. But it will solve all the basic economic difficulties that are a constant source of torture to so many of its members. The solution of a single one of these difficulties would warrant its introduction. The solution of them all renders it imperative.

Elementary Lessons Still To Be Learned.

This is how the so-called socialists around the world act. In France, journalist Gwyn Dyer predicts a big victory for 'socialist' candidate, Francois Hollande. Dyer writes, "What Hollande has actually promised is slightly less austerity than Sarkozy." (EMC , April 26, 2012). In Venezuela, that renowned 'socialist' Hugo Chavez has tried to manipulate the capitalist system to bring cheap food to the poor (yes, they are still there). According to The New York Times (April 29 2012) he has mandated the prices that the manufacturers can charge to keep prices low. The result, as expected, is that the manufacturers simply stopped production and there are shortages of even the basic food supplies in a very rich country. Lesson? What passes for socialism in the in the tiny minds of would-be leaders and the press has nothing to do with real socialism. You cannot divorce manufacturers from profit. If there is no profit, there is no production. Both are very elementary lessons for socialists. John Ayers.

Self-Management or Self-Exploitation

A co-operative is simply self-exploitation

People are suffering and hungry for a solution. People are becoming increasingly atomised, alienated, and anxious. With the financialisation of capital and globalisation it seems that power is concentrating in the hands of a few – a class – the elite capitalist class. The situation that we are in is getting worse politically, socially, and economically, and a Left that is so divided we can't get organized to oppose the powers that be. Today the Left faces the same problem that it has faced since the 1800s, which is being comprised of so many factions that there is no popular and radical force to challenge the current power structure.

Gallup in 2013 showed that 70% of workers "emotionally disconnected" and approximately 20% are "actively disengaged" meaning that they are acting out their unhappiness and, effectively, sabotaging their workplaces. Productivity and profitability are higher for cooperatives than for capitalist firms. It makes little difference whether the Mondragon group is compared with the largest 500 companies, or with small- or medium-scale industries; in both comparisons the Mondragon group is more productive and profitable. The major basis for co-operative success, and the survival of capitalistically unprofitable plants, has been superior labor productivity, higher physical volume of output per hour, higher quality of product and also economy of material use. The point is that the survival of firms is determined neither by productivity nor the volume of profit, but by the rate of profit. Firms whose rate of profit is too low are ejected from the market. But those that maintain a high rate of profit compared to their competition survive, even if they are grossly inefficient or if their profits are not exactly impressive. Co-operatives have an abysmally low rate of profit almost by default, because the owners of the co-operative are also its labourers. So they receive remuneration that is much higher than the necessary cost of reproduction of labour-power.

And that is why, while co-operatives are re-discovered as an exciting new thing in bourgeois liberal circles every decade or so (seriously, they're about as new and radical as municipalisation, which I swear I saw some lost soul advocating on RevLeft a couple of weeks ago), and a lot of them are formed, very few survive until the next cycle (and those that do tend to be held together more by political will than market forces).

A key problem of worker cooperatives is that they exist within the context of capitalism, ie the pressures of the market competition, and context of wage labour. Proponents leave unaddressed the classic criticisms of worker cooperatives, which aren’t just theoretical but based on real problems that cooperatives have encountered in practice. For sure, co-ops are a positive creation when workers occupy the workplace after abandonment by the owners that has happened in various situations and different countries in history.

But co-ops can’t “out-compete” capitalism. Corporations will always have larger capital to invest in research, technology, machinery and their willingness to cut costs through lower wages, less environmentally sounds practices, outsourcing, etc, will give them an advantage. Second, is that cooperatives are subject to market pressures to compete just the same as capitalist enterprises and this lends itself to pressures to create the same practices of corporations. For instances, in the Mondragon cooperatives there have been strikes in the past, outsourcing and low wages in production sites opened developing countries, as well as a trend towards unelected management that is more like a typical capitalist corporation. It is self-managed capitalism, because it offers no solution for changing the underlying logic of capitalism, which is production for maximum profit. There would be restrictions on the lengths to which a self-directed enterprise would go as opposed to a traditional capitalist company, but those restrictions would likely not hold up when they threaten the survival of the enterprise.

Co-ops do not eliminate owners. What happens is that ownership changed hands. And whereas previously a company might have had a few influential shareholders, it now has a few hundred (or thousand) But private property has not been abolished. Socialists aim to abolish the social structures that allow for the division between the rich and the poor - private ownership, money, markets etc. Socialists advocate the socialisation of the means of production, not the dilution of ownership of the same. "Capitalist" isn't a needlessly obtuse term of abuse for people we don't like, it denotes people who own capital, the means of production under capitalism. The owners of a co-operative are collective capitalists. The problem is that what exploits us isn't the bosses, but capital. As long as the purpose of productive units is to produce value, workers will be enslaved to the production of value, regardless if there are an enterprise’s owners. Coops aren’t an alternative way to socialism because they still produce value. Both capital and value are social relationships. By making them the owners, workers do not abolish the relation of ownership, nor do they abolish the anarchy of the market etc. etc.

Many cooperatives face the same issues as small business owners face. Often worker cooperatives are in the service, food or other specialty industries with lower profit margins and because they are smaller and do not have the advantages of scale which larger companies do, workers are often are forced to work long hours at lower wages to stay afloat. I’ve heard this called by some “self-managed exploitation.” As well, many cooperatives such as these in part remain afloat because they produce niche products like radical books or vegan/specialty food products that don’t really compete with the major corporations that dominate their industry.

There will be a tendency of worker cooperatives to see their needs and interests as an entity apart from and/or above other workers. After all, as cooperatives exist within a market system, their interests are to compete with other companies and expand their market share. This is a key and important difference between workers cooperatives, where the means of producing goods and services are owned by a specific group of workers competing with other cooperatives and capitalist companies through a market system and the deeper and post-capitalist goal of a socialized economy whereby all the means of producing goods and services are seen as belonging to society as a whole and while directly operated and run by the workers at each entity would be federated and coordinated in a horizontal manner to produce products and services based on need.

Even sympathetic observers such as Noam Chomsky understands the limitations:

“Worker ownership within a state capitalist, semi-market system is better than private ownership but it has inherent problems. Markets have well-known inherent inefficiencies. They’re very destructive. … [what is needed is to] dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems. Take the most advanced case: Mondragon. It’s worker owned, it’s not worker managed, although the management does come from the workforce often, but it’s in a market system and they still exploit workers in South America, and they do things that are harmful to the society as a whole and they have no choice. If you’re in a system where you must make profit in order to survive. You are compelled to ignore negative externalities, effects on others.”

Cooperatives that exist under a market economy inevitably replicate the problems of capitalism although it makes life better for some, but it doesn’t end the system of exploitation. They reproduce capital and prioritises sectional interests of pockets of workers of the class interests over the working class as a whole. Socialists regularly use the term “wage slavery.” What is meant by this is that workers under capitalism are not ‘slaves’ to a particular boss, but through the system of wages they are compelled to work for employers as a class in order to survive. This is why anti-capitalist labour radical such as the the IWW believe that an end to capitalism required a struggle to organise workers eventually leading to workers to taking control of their workplaces and what they called the “abolition of the wage system.” Men and women will never be free from exploitation and oppression until all work is voluntary and access to all goods and services is free. This is a practical proposition now. Tinkering with administrative forms is of no use. Buying and selling must be abolished. The wage packet—the permission to live—must be abolished. It is true that our masters live off the fat of the land in luxury, but even if they adopted the austere puritanical lifestyle of a monk we should still be slaves.

The most crucial error of Richard Woolf and Gar Alperovitz models is that the essential features of capitalism are retained, yet they believe capitalism can be guided by "workers' management" towards humane and liberating ends. The market is to remain, but not, apparently, its laws. It should be obvious that if any enterprise produces to sell, and pays its bills out of its revenue, it will be subject to the same basic market laws as any other enterprise. Of course, at the moment these laws are observed and interpreted by management, which then makes the decisions and' imposes them on the other workers in the interests of the shareholders. But it should have occurred to Woolf and Alperovitz that these same laws might have the same force whoever does the managing and even if the shareholders, so to speak, are the workers. This is a suggestion which proponents of a “new economy” ought at least to consider. "Capitalism without capitalists" could never in fact come about. Should the working-class reach a level of understanding where they could pressurise the owning class out of existence, they would long since have passed the stage where they would have abolished the wages system and established socialism. They argue for some sort of “self-managed capitalism” that could only exist on paper.

Even if we consider "capitalism without capitalists" in our imaginations, we can see it would be no improvement on capitalism with capitalists. Workers collectively administering their own exploitation is not an objective socialists should aim for. Those groups demanding "workers' management," "workers' participation" and "workers' control" (though their various adherents distinguish very loudly between these three) will probably be used by capitalism, as in Yugoslavia, to give workers the impression that the enterprise they work for in some way belongs to them. If all employees can be drawn into the process of management, and can be given the illusion of an identity of interests between workers and employers, this helps to muffle the class struggle and enhance the process of exploitation.

The basic contradiction of capitalism is that between socialised production and class monopoly of the means of production, which manifests itself as working class discontent with its general conditions of life, not just its work experiences under capitalism. If this was better understood it would be realised that socialism is not just concerned with emancipating workers as workers (i.e. wealth-producers) but as human beings (i.e. as men and women). It would also give them a clearer conception of socialist society. Socialism aims not to establish "workers power” or “workers control” but the abolition of all classes including the working class. It is misleading to speak of socialism as workers ownership and control of production. In socialist society there would simply be people, free and equal men and women forming a classless community. So it would be more accurate to define socialism/communism in terms of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by and in the interest of the whole people.

Frequently defenders of co-operatives will resort to the argument that they are at least a stepping stone towards socialism. But socialism is the movement against capitalism in all its forms. Co-operatives are just as much a "transitional form" as joint-stock companies are. And I don't think anyone is naive enough to claim, in 2014, that joint-stock companies are "socialist" in any way. Marx didn't say that stock companies are "socialist" in any way. He said they are an association, and cease to be individual property, which is an antithesis to old form. However, they remain trapped in capitalism. There can be no transition from one thing to something else that is in complete opposition to it. The task of socialism is not a change in management, but a social transformation of all institutions and structures of society. If there are cooperatives exchanging their products, there's self-managed capitalism and not socialism. You say you like the idea of not having a CEO or boss, but you will still have a market dictate and can be just as cruel – never mind the inequality. Cooperative labour will of course be a pillar of socialism, but not in the context of competitive markets. It is impossible to have a nice sort of capitalism. Capitalist firms are brutal not because their owners are bad people, whatever that means, but because they need to be brutal to their workers in order to prop up the falling rate of profit. If they can't do that, they are ejected from the market, it's that simple. Socialists are not opposed to "Big Business” per se but business, period. If co-operatives are to supersede capitalism, their production has to be regulated by a general plan determined by society as a whole, which means that they cease being co-operatives because co-operatives are distinguished by their status as autonomous business entities.

Compromising with co-ops and building from the ground up (and all other such nonsense that utopian liberals who want to call themselves socialist preach) has led to nothing but dead ends. It didn't work in France with Louis Blanc, it didn't work in Algeria under Ben Bella or in Tito’s Yugoslavia. It didn't work anywhere, and it won't work, ever. The idea is to change the way people live and work together. Not to replace the system we have now with co-op's then call it a day and quit. Co-operatives are simply another form of private property. They aren't changing the system.

To sum up, the economics Woolf and Alperovitz support is simply the dead-end of self-managed capitalism, which is every bit as reactionary as private or state capitalism. The communist society we are fighting for can only be established by the complete destruction of ALL private property, money, wages and markets - whatever their form. We don't want to own or manage our own misery. Socialists stand for a society based on the abolition of remuneration in the form of wages and democratic control and an economy based on the destruction of the wage system, and a de-linking of the value of labor in production from the distribution of society’s wealth to its members. It is simply not possible anyway to measure an individual’s contribution to production, our production is largely social. The contribution of an individual is very difficult to isolate from the contributions of countless others that make work possible. Any such attribution can only be arbitrary. Having co-workers judge each other’s work would turn gossip and in-fighting at work presently from an annoyance into a system of power over wages. The assets of a co-op do not cease being capital when votes are taken on how they are used within a society of generalised commodity production and wage labour. That is to say there remains an imperative to accumulate with all the drive to minimise the labour time taken to do a task this requires, even in a co-op.

Complex problems have simple solution

Governments agree that it is an imminent environmental crisis yet they are unwilling to act in an effective manner that shows that they have taken the facts on board. Inaction is attractive when polluters do not care about the impacted and refuse to accept the fact that ultimately everyone on planet Earth is vulnerable. Politicians commit large amounts of money climate research yet pays scant attention to its science. Negotiations to tackle climate change have remained largely political lip-service. There is no longer any talk of binding commitment to emissions reduction by nations and instead proposals for vague voluntary self-monitoring action. The further away the target dates for measures are, the easier it is for political leaders to agree to such plans. The nearer the implementation of these dates is, the less enthusiastic support for them. The urgency of the climate crisis demands that the world decarbonises urgently. No one can predict the outcome of the December Paris climate summit, but few expect the measures it may endorse to be tough enough to keep future increases in global temperatures below two degrees Celsius, the maximum amount most scientists believe the planet can absorb without incurring climate disasters far beyond anything seen to date. We cannot allow politicians to intentionally refuse to act now and shift responsibility for action to generations yet unborn. No. We must not allow that.

The World Bank and the International Energy Agency as well as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have acknowledged that substantial percentage of known reserves of fossil fuels must not be burned, that is, they must be left underground if catastrophic temperature increase is to be avoided. This reality now makes it urgent for nations to close their fossil shops and for corporations to shift their attention to clean energy and other forms of production. A large-scale wind, water and solar energy system can reliably supply the world’s needs, significantly benefitting climate, air quality, water quality, ecology and energy security. Is that what we see? No. The obstacles are political, not technical. Rather than work on urgent transition from fossil fuels, nations and corporations are embarking on more extreme and reckless modes of exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, including fracking and deep seas drilling. Rather than shifting to safer and cleaner energy forms, many countries, including many on the African continent, are celebrating new oil and gas finds. They are delirious with joy and getting set to enjoy the pyrrhic bounties that the sector promises. Without the new finds, it was already estimated that the value of fossils to be left underground topped 22 trillion dollars. Those fuels -- oil, natural gas, and coal -- will, of course, continue to dominate the energy landscape for years to come, adding billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon to the atmosphere. Not surprisingly, the oil states and those energy corporations continue to dream of a future in which they will play a dominant role. The fact that such fossils to be left underground are often referred to as stranded resources suggests that corporations and governments will don the garb of saviour to rescue the resources from being stranded!

False solutions such as agro-fuels (ethanol) and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) have already had serious negative impacts on our peoples. Geo-engineering experiments have failed spectacularly, and even if they were to succeed, all scenarios reviewed by scientists and by the ETC (Erosion, Technology and Concentration) Group show that Africa would suffer severe negative impacts from such moves. As one highly regarded physicist told a recent meeting, “geo-engineering experiments have shown that it is totally useless.” It is a silver bullet that permits polluters to keep polluting and cannot deliver on its promise to suck released carbon from the atmosphere. The climate crisis can be tackled by working with nature and not against it. We have to halt activities that have known negative impacts, including dependence on industrial agriculture and its litany of artificial and chemical inputs. We have to say yes to life and no to mining. It may be inconveniencing, but the pleasures and so-called easy life of today cannot justify a knowing condemnation of the planet and peoples to unacceptable future. We must all stand up, speak and act against climate crimes.

Individual mass movements must all coalesce in the global space to demand the urgent change of this present mode of production and halt the intentional crimes to the environment.  “The cost of doing business.” That’s what corporations call it then they claim a deduction from their taxes for the damage they’ve done to people and the planet. It’s a cost of doing business all right; a cost to us, of doing business with them the way we currently do it, and it’s just one of the reasons so many people are calling for a whole new system.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon kept spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days while the media was warned off and the company told the public lies. BP was been found guilty of gross negligence and misconduct. They’ve been slapped with $42 billion in fines and damages. But the BP not only threatening politicians they’ll pull out of the Gulf entirely if their fines aren’t reduced, they’re claiming a lot of that money back, thanks to a tax loophole that will enable BP to claim as much as 80 percent of the damages they've paid out so far as an ordinary business expense.

It’s not just BP either. Car makers, chemical companies, mine owners and those notorious banksters routinely deduct part of their court ordered payouts from their taxes. Which means that means we the people who sustain the damage, are also the ones subsidizing the damages. Big Business has too much power and that’s dangerous for people and the planet. That is why some of us are seeking an alternative system: not just renewable energy, not nationalization of energy companies but an entirely new social and economic system. Some in the green movement offer a utopia of small is beautiful with local businesses and co-ops. It is utopian because capitalism grows anew out of all commodity production; a utopia of small businesses can only be the prelude to the return of competitive cut-throat capitalism.

There’s a revolution going on right now. Don’t take the detours and don’t accept the delays. Right now, we live in terrible times. Horrific wars in the Middle East seem endless, with atrocities committed by all the participants. The future of our planet is in doubt because of the destructive, wasteful and polluting logic of capitalism. In most societies, sexism, racism and xenophobia are widespread, and prospects for many cannot but be worrying and depressing. The Socialist Party does not believe we are born racist or sexist – we are made so by the social conditions we live in. We are confident in our ability to persuade the majority.

The Socialist Party is are not in the business of falsifying reality. We are not a religious sect that seeks to isolate its members from reality. There are no capitalist solutions to climate change. We reject the idea that national interest can be fully defeated under capitalism. On the contrary, we argue that the system relies on divide and rule, that commercial rivalries are the natural by-products of the prevailing economic order. No amount of carbon taxation or emission capping agreements will succeed. A wind, water and solar energy plan gives the world a new, clean, efficient energy system rather than an old, dirty, inefficient one. Is it feasible to transform the world’s energy systems? Could it be accomplished in a short time? Only through socialism is the answer. We are revolutionaries not reformists. We are for revolutionary change as the only way to combat climate change. Capitalism is no friend of the Earth; its need for economic expansion makes it the enemy of the people.

Wage Slavery

Now that you have voted for one of the political parties that supports the capitalist system, you can now be assured of the continuance of your servitude and subservience to the ruling class.  

Slavery seems like an outmoded form of life from previous centuries. Many people blithely assume that "wage slavery" is merely a metaphor, at worst a rather benign situation in which an employer says:

"You be my slave for forty hours per week and I'll give you just enough money to pay your bills . Just be here Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 (plus when instructed to work overtime.) Deal?"

Whatever we feel, slavery is very much a fact of life for all people in the world today. A person is a slave if he or she has lost control over his or her life and is dominated by someone or something--whether he or she is aware of this or not. Wage slavery is the condition in which a person must sell his or her labor-power, submitting to the authority of an employer, in order to merely subsist. The very essence of capitalism is slavery: the enslavement of workers by the capitalist class. You have probably endured the subjugation of a "boss" or "director" or "committee," and you know that the coercion, even if masked as "job description," "supervisor evaluation," or "company directive" can be as repressive as if there were literal chains fastened around your arms and feet. Most business enterprises use the leadership style of "management by whim," oppressing the worker.  

 A capitalist slave is:

Forced to work at a "job" owned by a capitalist (owner of jobs, the means of production, and the profit from the jobs) through necessity or through mental or physical threat. He or she is “owned” or controlled by a capitalist "employer" through wages, hours, working conditions. We are dehumanised, treated as a commodity: a faceless entity filling a slot, a hired hand, at the mercy of the capitalist. The capitalist can--and does so with a vengeance--destroy jobs by "staff reduction," automating jobs by robots, or out-sourcing jobs to a cheaper labour location. Without a voice as to how much profit the capitalist can make from the worker's labour and cannot bargain for higher wages or safe working conditions. Unable to support himself and his family when he cannot find a job. Reduced to poverty or destitution or death by an ever-reduced job "market". Today, all workers suffer under wage slavery bonded debt servitude. 

A wage slave can't quit an oppressive job to find a less slave-like job, because in our present society, almost all jobs involve wage-slavery. So the options are obey and stay, die of starvation, or become a vagrant, which is illegal. It should be noted that this description of the present economic situation is not something you hear on TV or radio or read in newspapers or magazines, not because it's incorrect or misleading, but because "it's just the way things are" or any such straightforward description is deemed "communistic" or "socialistic."

 Southern plantation owners and the capitalists who made millions from the international slave trade in earlier decades of our history brainwashed most Americans into believing that chattel slavery was a "fact of nature." In the same vein, capitalists have programmed most contemporary Americans into believing that the evils of capitalist slavery are "necessary to the smooth running of society." Just as the the United States finally rid itself of chattel and bond slavery through realizing that slavery was not "natural"--in fact evil and unnatural workers throughout the world must now free themselves from capitalist slavery. We must replace capitalism with a commonwealth polity that ensures that all people can live free from slavery of any kind. Our political and economic systems must assure that all citizens have the means whereby they can sustain themselves and lead a free and productive life.

 Under the "wage slave" system you don't receive the full compensation for your work. By the very nature of the employer-employee relationship, you get less compensation than you should, because the employer takes excessive profits. Let's take a look at how this happens by examining a very simple example of an exchange. The stark reality of "wage slavery" is that the owners of the means of production (capitalists) are now taking the jobs to sweatshops. The owners want to pay even less than they now are and they want cheaper production costs as well. They don't care if the workers in these other countries are in literal bondage to their overseers. And they certainly don't have any concern if American workers become destitute and homeless.

    

 In the first tens of thousands of years of our human history people lived in a community-oriented culture and identity was associated with interdependence and cooperation--all for the common good. In this culture of mutual concern and mutual obligation, people took care of one another. They shared common values and interests, completely different from the values of a market-driven approach to life. According to this common welfare approach to life the community decided about how resources are used.

But from the beginning of capitalism, the wealthy class—factory owners, bankers, speculators, --had adopted a completely opposite way of life: every person for himself. The world view of the ruling class saw the community as a system of exchange between producers and consumers, capitalists and workers. The holy of holies for the merchant class was the "free market" ideology, according to which each man pursues only his own self-interest. According to this dogma, society is held together, not on the basis of common welfare, but by the "invisible hand of the market" implemented through impersonal contracts. According to the view of the employing class, the state is to be controlled by elites or "better people" who decide what is best for the "common people." All other capabilities--learning, pursuit of happiness, freedom, human concern--are to be subordinated to property. The state's only role is to assure that the impersonal market system runs smoothly. This requires that the government use violent force when it becomes necessary to protect personal property.

    

We must realise that our economic situation at present--a very few obscenely rich people owning companies and corporations and having captured political power--is one which we can and must change. Our current economic and political circumstances are not written in stone; humans have lived under very different political and economic conditions throughout our history. We must begin to overthrow this present state of affairs where all workers suffer under capitalist wage-slavery. The political system and the economic situation should be directed toward the welfare of all Americans, not just a few. We can bring about these changes; it is not impossible. We must first make all aware of our present plight and then begin in all possible ways to overthrow wage-slavery and building cooperative commonwealth communities.

Polling Day

 SPOIL  YOUR BALLOT PAPER:

A WRITE IN VOTE FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Don't Believe The Deceit

In all countries, the fight for the social revolution has yet to take place. Elections are such depressing things. Once again the power to register a desire to change society in a fundamental way was open to the workers (in the shape of their vote) and once again it will be squandered on pro-capitalist parties. Despite their shortcomings, elections to a parliament based on universal suffrage are still the best method available for workers to express a majority desire for socialism. It is a basic tenet of the Socialist Party that the establishment of socialism involves the capture of political power via the ballot-box.

For this to happen presupposes the existence of a "bourgeois democracy". But while such an arrangement is undeniably preferable to political dictatorship we don't entertain any illusions about the nature of this "bourgeois democracy". It is a very limited kind of democracy indeed. Under this kind of democracy, the population is permitted to choose between representatives of different political parties to supposedly "represent" them in parliament; thereafter control is surrendered to the politicians. But the politicians themselves are constrained to operate within parameters set by the economic system for which they stand. Based upon minority ownership of the means of living, capitalism can only ever operate in the interests of the capitalist minority, not the electorate as a whole.

Every few years groups of professional politicians compete for your vote to win themselves a comfortable position. All of the other parties and candidates offer only minor changes to the present system. That is why whichever candidate or party wins there is no significant change to the way things are. Promises are made and broken, targets are set and not reached, statistics are selected and spun. All politicians assume that capitalism is the only game in town, although they may criticise features of its unacceptable face, such as greedy bankers, or the worst of its excesses. They defend a society in which we, the majority of the population, must sell our capacity to work to the tiny handful who own most of the wealth. They defend a society in which jobs are offered only if there is a profit to be made. Socialists have little concern for the apparent moral consistency (or otherwise) of individuals, be they MPs or not. It’s the system we live under that we are interested in. As defenders of capitalism the right honourable gentlemen and ladies at Westminster have rarely been "right", and are certainly unlikely "honourable" role models. As exemplars of capitalism's principles, however they would appear to embody all the necessary tight-fisted, money-grabbing, elements. Workers' confidence in the money system has clearly taken a significant bashing as pensions evaporate, redundancies are announced and house repossessions increase. The legitimacy of our leaders – whether business or political – is under increasing attack. Bankers have been an easy scapegoat for the fundamental failings of the economic system, capitalism. It is likely that some of that anger focused on bankers has been generalised against those in power in the form of the political class represented at Westminster. And seldom before can the political choice provided for us have seemed so narrow. Threatened by ridicule from the public, the main political parties – between queuing up to show their contrition and denouncing their own excesses in terms reminiscent of some Maoist show trial – have spoken with one voice, the pro-capitalist voice. For brevity and clarity we can call them the Capitalist Party, the real political opponent of the Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party urges a truly democratic society in which people take all the decisions that affect them. This means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders and led. In such a society people would cooperate to use all the world’s natural and industrial resources in their own interests. They would free production from the artificial restraint of profit and establish a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. Socialist society would consequently mean the end of buying, selling and exchange, an end to borders and frontiers, an end to organised violence and coercion, waste, want and war.

So in May’s General Election you can vote for candidates who will work within the capitalist system and help keep it going. Or you can use your vote to show you want to overturn it and end the problems it causes once and for all. When enough of us join together, determined to end inequality and deprivation, we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of a society of real democracy and social equality. You might think, with this economic depression, that capitalism does nothing but make a slave out of you, and that it’s only the rich that benefit. It’s always workers suffering. It’s all about the money. While money and capitalism exist, it always will be. If your local candidates are not saying this, why bother voting for them? Well, why not make a statement rather than stay silent. All you have to do is write something across your ballot paper ‘World Socialism’ A vote’s always worth using, even when there’s nobody worth voting for.

SPOIL YOUR VOTE, WRITE-IN FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

A Socialist Candidate on Video

More of the same or socialism?

In this general election we're putting up a limited number of candidates, but are you one of those very many people who doesn't see the point in voting, and can't be bothered with politicians? Fewer and fewer people are bothering to vote in elections correctly realising that it will have little effect on their everyday lives. You may have noticed that whoever gets elected, nothing really changes. This is because politicians normally have no intention of changing anything. They're really doing very nicely out of the system as it is, thank you, slump or no slump. While they enjoy their executive lunches, cars and kickbacks, the rest of us miserable suckers are supposed to toe the line, "yes" the bosses, and work ourselves into early graves to earn wages that wouldn't buy one of their bottles of claret. We're not politicians, and don't let our party name, and the fact that we are standing for election, fool you into thinking we are. We represent an idea dismissed by politicians, and avoided by anyone who prefers the status quo. This idea is revolution.

Revolution is a scary word, but it doesn't have to be scary. If you prefer, think of it as a kind of social "upgrade", like building a better and faster computer. We don't advocate violence, although we can't know of course that the rich will quietly abdicate when they see that the game is up. But there is a personal revolution to face, as well, because a free society requires responsible members, not children who just play "follow-the-leader" and do as they are told. It's true that we get the society we deserve. Revolution consists in learning to deserve better.

Technology is producing abundance so fast that prices keep falling. It means that there is a higher level of civilisation, of science, or arts, of culture, of personal fulfilment, waiting to arrive. We are standing on the very threshold of that post-scarcity world. All we have to do, as individuals, is take one step. In our strange politics there is no mention of the EU. No mention whatsoever of local issues. No promises of "I'll do this and I'll do that", no flattery, no sweet talk. If you vote for us you won't get a wage rise or a tax cut. Those other candidates are happy to continue with the private property society. They are selling you out, and selling your kids out, and their kids after them. They are politicians. We are private citizens democratically organised as a party to advertise revolution but not lead it, to abolish political power not keep it for ourselves, to promote a free society without rulers, and to disband when we have served our purpose. So if you vote for us now, it's not because we've conned you into it with charming lies. It's because you've just taken that all-important small step, the step that begins the journey.

Is the revolution we are talking about at all likely? The odds seem to be stacked against it. Indeed, when we put forward the idea, most people can scarcely believe we are serious. "It's a nice idea but it will never happen" is the usual response. The assumption is that socialism will rely upon everybody being altruistic, sacrificing their own interests for those of others. But socialism would actually involve people recognising their common interests.

SPOIL YOUR BALLOT IF YOU WANT SOCIALISM

There was a time when the idea of a capitalist society would have been dismissed as a hopeless utopian dream. To a peasant living in feudal society, the idea of radical change would appear as hopeless as it may appear to you now. To them, feudalism would have appeared as eternal and unchanging and unchangeable as the present system appears to us now. So we're not too surprised that people find it difficult to take our ideas on board.

We have the ability to change things if we act together. The power to transform society lies in the hands of those who create everything—the working class. This is the source of our power, should we eventually use it. The power not to make a few reforms, but to change the whole system, to make a social revolution.

A Write-In Vote for World Socialism

Karl Marx did argue that under certain conditions a socialist-minded working class would be able to gain control of political power peaceably via elections. Having said this, our position does not rest on what Marx said, as we don't slavishly accept him as an infallible authority, but on our own analysis of the facts which in our view confirm Marx's point of view. Many on the Left reached differing conclusion and declare there is no parliamentary road to socialism, describing it as a blind alley. The standard argument against the revolutionary movement contesting elections is that this inevitably leads to it becoming reformist; revolutionary MPs whatever may have been their original intention, end up merely administering capitalism. This, they claim, can be seen from the history of, first, the European Social Democratic parties which once claimed to be Marxist and, more recently, of Green parties which said, as in Germany, that they were only going into parliament to use it as a tribune from which to proclaim the need for an ecological society. When, however, it comes to explaining why this happens they fall back on the lame explanation of “power corrupts”.

We can agree that this is what happened to these parties but offer an alternative explanation: that such parties went off the rails because they advocated reforms of capitalism and not just its abolition. The originally Marxist Social Democratic parties had in addition to the “maximum” programme of socialism what they called a “minimum programme” of immediate reforms to capitalism. What happened, we contend, is that they attracted votes on the basis of their miniumum, not their maximum, programme, i.e. reformist votes, and so became the prisoners of these voters. In parliament, and later in office, they found themselves with no freedom of action other than to compromise with capitalism. Had they been the mandated delegates of those who voted for them (rather than leaders) this could be expressed by saying that they had no mandate for socialism, only to try to reform capitalism. It was not a case of being corrupted by the mere fact of going into national parliaments but was due to the basis on which they went there and how this restricted what they could do. In short, it is not power as such that corrupts. It is power obtained on the basis of followers voting for leaders to implement reforms that, if you want to put it that way, “corrupts”.

The Socialist Party advocates only socialism and nothing but socialism (the so-called “maximum programme”, if you like.) The correct formula is contesting elections only on the basis of delegates being given an imperative mandate for the sole purpose of carrying through the formalities involved in winding up capitalism.

The politicians, the media and the rest of what are called ‘opinion formers’ insist that we have democracy, that we have free elections which allow us to choose whatever form of government we wish, unlike countries where a dictatorship exists. Such dictatorships usually allow elections where the people may approve or disapprove of given candidates within the dictatorship but have not the freedom to vote for any other parties or for independent candidates. In other words the people have imposed on them by force, corruption or the control of information a specific political regime and have not got the necessary democratic machinery to challenge that regime. In fact in most of the so-called democratic countries it could be said that the astronomical costs of challenging for political power have been deliberately manipulated in order to ensure that those who cannot attract rich backers will be denied meaningful access to the democratic process. Effectively this means that in the same way as people in dictatorships are denied the right to make real political changes, in Britain and other allegedly democratic societies prohibitive financial restrictions are placed in the way of the working class organising politically to effect real economic change.

This does not mean that socialists equate dictatorship and bourgeois democracy. Within the latter we are free to organise politically and to develop our support to the extent where we can eventually overcome the embargoes and impediments that capitalism’s restricted democratic forms impose on us, whereas in the former any Socialist work is necessarily clandestine and can invoke severe penalties. What we can equate is the hypocrisy of bourgeois politicians, who rightly condemn those capitalist dictatorships where political freedom is denied and yet are willing participants and vociferous defenders of a form of capitalism wherein financial impediments exist that make a mockery of real democracy.

Real power today does not lie in elected bodies but in the hands of those who own the world’s wealth. Labour, Tories, Nationalist and the others in this election are just arguing over how to use the scraps thrown from the billionaire’s table. A system based on private property has to be run in the interests of its owners. Their profits have to come first. So long as inequality of wealth and power exist elections such as these are just about who is to run this system. The only rational choice is to reject the compromisers and reformists and use every resource available to end it. You don’t need to vote for any particular party to get rubbish collected, schools built or amenities provided. Communities don’t need leaders to get those things for themselves. You know what you need better than any careerist politician ever could and, if there was real democracy, could easily arrange this. Under the present system, though, you only get them, so long as those who own the world make the resources available. But they always give priority to making more profits, so these things are always under-resourced and never done properly.

In the general elections on 7th May, as in all elections, you have a choice. You can vote for candidates who would work within this system and help keep it going. Or you can use your vote to overturn it and end the blights once and for all. You can send a clear signal to other people like yourselves upon whose hard work this system is built that you want to put an end to it, by refusing to vote for any of the capitalist parties and instead writing “World Socialism” across the ballot paper.

At this stage contesting elections can essentially only be an exercise in political education, of getting ideas across. It is why we contest elections today knowing perfectly well that we have no chance of getting elected. When enough of us join together determined to end inequality and deprivation we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of real democracy and equality. Our common efforts could feed, clothe and house every man woman and child on Earth without exception but we are held back because the owners of the world demand their cut before they’ll let us use the world’s resources. The iron laws of No Profit, No Production and No Profit, No Employment are a cage for us.

If you agree with the idea of a society of common and democratic ownership where no-one is left behind and where things are produced because they are needed, and not to make profits for some capitalist corporation or to enrich some bloated millionaire, and are prepared to join with us to achieve this, then vote for World Socialism.

SPOIL THE BALLOT PAPER - WORLD SOCIALISM

Emma Goldman on Patriotism (video)

Voting Revolution

Socialism can only be established by the majority political action of a working class that wants and understands it. To establish socialism, the working class must first win control of political power and to do this they must organise as a political party. In modern political conditions — the overwhelming numerical superiority of the working class, universal suffrage, political democracy, an army and civil service recruited from the workers — the working class can, and should, use elections and parliament as the way to winning power for socialism. A socialist party should contest elections whenever it can, but only on a socialist programme. Where there are no socialist candidates, the party should advocate the casting of blank or spoiled voting papers and never engage in anarchist-type anti-election propaganda. The anarcho-syndicalist idea of a general strike of industrial unions as a means of overthrowing capitalist rule is obviously impractical since it leaves the means to crush any such strike, the state machine, in the hands of the capitalists. Much the same can be said of the use of soviets or workers' councils as an alternative to parliament. 

The Trotskyist Vanguard

Despite their shortcomings, elections to a parliament based on universal suffrage are still the best method available for workers to express a majority desire for socialism. Furthermore, although parliament run by Labour or Tory politicians is incapable of controlling the economic system in a rational and humane way, it is the centre of political control in the advanced industrial countries. The minority of people who now monopolise the ownership of wealth do so through their control of parliament by capitalist parties elected by workers. Control of parliament by representatives of a conscious revolutionary movement will enable the bureaucratic-military apparatus to be dismantled and the oppressive forces of the state to be neutralised, so that Socialism may be introduced with the least possible violence and disruption. Parliament and local councils, to the extent that their functions are administrative and not governmental, can also be used to co-ordinate the emergency measures when socialism is established.

We are not saying that workers councils are therefore quite useless. On the contrary; like trade unions they can often play a useful role under capitalism in the struggle of workers to maintain or improve working conditions and wages, and to resist capitalist authority at work. Factory or workplace committees, or something similar, would also play an important part in the democratic management of production inside Socialism.

Representatives elected by workers to parliament have continually compromised to the needs of capitalism, but then so have representatives on the industrial field. The institution is not here at fault; it is just that people's ideas have not yet developed beyond belief in leaders and dependence on a political elite.

The idea of fair and free elections would give the ruling class political apoplexy. Imagine a general election where socialists had a level playing field, an election that was in effect a plebiscite on the question of socialism or capitalism.  The traditional parties of capitalism would be united in telling us about the remarkable plethora of reforms they intended to introduce to ease poverty in certain areas, to reduce crime, to tackle the housing problem, help the aged, build nuclear bomb shelters, etc.

The socialists would not be offering any reforms of the old, failed system in which the vast potential of the planet is owned and controlled by a relatively small minority of people who allow the production of goods and services only when it holds the promise of profit for them. On the contrary, we would be asking for a mandate to abolish the entire concept of ownership in the means of production and distribution so that everyone could freely participate in wealth production and everyone would be free to take from the common pool of wealth thus created in accordance with their needs. Further, in the context of what we are discussing, we would be offering the establishment of an open and genuine system of participative democracy in a world where the massively destructive and ubiquitously corruptive power of money would no longer exist.

Liberate Yourself

In the Socialist Party’s Declaration of Principles we lay down the few simple essential principles we think are necessary to understand and act upon in order to achieve emancipation from wage slavery. Briefly summed up these propositions are as follows:

All social wealth is produced by the working class and owned by the master class. Between these two classes there is a class struggle which can only be abolished by the emancipation of the workers from wage-slavery; i.e., by the replacement of capitalist private ownership by social ownership. This emancipation must be the work of the working class itself, and, as the capitalist class retains its position by the control of the machinery of government, the working class must organise to capture the political machinery in order to use it as the agent of emancipation. Finally, as all political parties represent class interests, the working-class political party must be hostile to all other parties. These are the broadest principles that can be adopted by the working class to work out its emancipation. If action is taken outside these elementary principles the working class movement is plunged into a morass. The working class will not emancipate itself until it desires socialism; the working class will not desire socialism until it has gained an understanding of the necessary principles. In other words, socialism is impossible until the necessary knowledge is acquired by the workers. Therefore the work for socialists is to communicate knowledge as much as possible of their ideas.

Working for socialism is plodding, uphill work. We cannot force the pace—we must work and wait. No amount of misguided emotion can obscure the fact that workers have not yet reached the stage when they are prepared to use the weapon by which they can usher in socialism – the vote. When the workers first won the suffrage many of them voted for their bosses out of a sort of feudal loyalty, and others were cheaply woo'd with flattery and petty bribes. Only a few then saw that they had in their grasp the instrument to gain their emancipation. Then began a slow growth to political maturity. Many workers still have to learn that a government that wishes to do so can discover numerous ways of evading an election pledge without having to make the candid admission that it was given merely to catch votes; and even when pledges were honoured the results were singularly below the expectation. Becoming more wary, some electors have eventually ceased to believe in quick, easy remedies and ready promises, and came to expect from the parties long, detailed and ponderous programmes promising painful reconstruction operations extending over several years, to be followed by a very nice time for all. Capitalism, however, never does give security and prosperity to the workers and never runs smoothly. How fare the people now? Working harder, eating less, getting day by day shabbier, they face cheerless austerity with nothing more inspiring than still more plans to replace those already scrapped, more promises about the good time coming, and more nauseating sermons from our betters about thrift. There are no "better ways" of running capitalism.

Being a politician is a sort of profession, like a lawyer or a doctor. A politician’s trade is to get into parliament or the local council to run the administrative side of capitalism. To do this, they must get elected and, to get elected, they must promise to do things for people; they must find out what’s worrying people and then promise to do something about it. This is why parties don’t need principles. Or, put another way, they only need one principle (if it can be called that) and that’s “get elected”.

Politicians just promise people what they want to hear. This kind of politics is dominant today and rests on a number of assumptions and has a number of consequences. It accepts the status quo. It accepts capitalism and seeks merely to work within it. Politics becomes a question of choosing the best capitalism-management team from amongst competing groups of politicians. You vote for a politician to do something for you and you reward them for the service by voting for them. Politics becomes an activity in which only a minority - the professional politicians - participate. Most people’s only involvement in politics is, literally, once every few years when they go and put an X on a ballot paper. Then they go home and let the person elected get on with the job. Elections become more and more a sort of referendum, a plebiscite on the record of the outgoing government or council. People’s participation in politics becomes simply giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the outgoing administration. If they don’t mind what they’ve done, they vote them in again. If they’re not happy then they vote in some other lot. Politics becomes a spectacle in which people are just passive spectators watching the goings-on of politicians. The media - especially TV - play to this, presenting politics in between elections as a soap. But it is not even a good spectacle. It’s boring and the actors are all second and third rate. It doesn’t work either. Nothing seems to change and nothing does change. The same old problems continue, with the professional politicians only being able to tinker about and patch things up a little.

The end result is that politics in seen as completely boring and that people don’t want to know about it, except in the few weeks before a general election. People know that voting doesn’t change anything and that the only power they have is to vote the Ins Out (or In again) or vote the Outs In; to change the management team, while their day-to-day lives are unaffected and unchanged. No wonder people become apathetic, resigned and cynical.

Can things change? Yes, they could but it’s not going to be through conventional politics, only through a quite different kind of politics. A politics which rejects and aims to change the status quo. A politics which involves people participating and not leaving things up to others to do something for them. Electoral agitation supplies us with a method of unsurpassed value for getting into contact with fellow workers, and for compelling the other parties to defend themselves publicly against the attacks we deliver upon their opinions and their actions. Politics is not just about the antics of career politicians - or at least doesn't have to be.

If you want a better world, you are going to have to bring it about yourselves. That’s The Socialist Party’s basic message. It’s no good following leaders, whether professional politicians or professional revolutionaries. In fact, following anybody (not even us) won’t get you anywhere. The only way is to carry out a do-it-yourself revolution on a completely democratic basis. Democratic in the sense that that’s what the majority want. And democratic in the sense that that majority, rather than following leaders, organises itself on the basis of mandated and recallable delegates carrying out decisions reached after a full and free discussion and vote. That’s what politics can be, and should be. And has to be if things are ever to change.