The Siren Song of Self-Management

An 'ideal' capitalism could tolerate the self-management of the conditions of production: as long as a normal profit is made by the firm, the organisation of the work can be left to the workers." – Barrot & Martin, ‘Eclipse and Re-emergence of the Communist Movement’

The most widespread image of a so-called ‘socialism’ is a regime is one of state ownership and planned economy, directed by the ‘revolutionary’ party. Ultimately, this means the virtual fusion of State and party with the unions reduced to the role of a transmission belt for State requirements aimed at the working people. Since the State is axiomatically defined as ‘socialist’ and the party as ‘revolutionary’ the schematic conclusion is that these institutions are the same thing as the power of the working people and citizens. Workers’ self-management such as co-operative production under the joint control of the workers in an enterprise, can also be achieved under capitalism. But under capitalism, it can only lead to workers driving down their own conditions (as a result of capitalist competition) or to the collapse of the enterprise. We do not advocate it under capitalism except as a survival strategy to better the conditions of a few lucky wage-slaves.

Of course, this was never the conception of Marx. However, he only offered only qualified endorsement of alternative methods of organising the economy.

‘the co-operative movement will never transform capitalist society. To convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour general social changes are needed, changes ... never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, namely the state power, from the capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.’

The path to socialism is not through nationalisation, syndicalism or cooperatives. Let there not be any ambiguity about the use of the word socialisation – the means of production and distribution is the common property of all the people. The socialisation of private property is the foundation of a class-free society. Socialists seek to abolish the domination of capital and to construct a new society – a socialist society. The Socialist Party fully supports the idea of self-management but we are alone in demanding it to be real self-management rather than facades which simply give workers the illusion of self-management.

The State is the expression of the collective interests of the ruling class in a particular society. Therefore, to bring something under state ownership does not mean to ‘nationalise’ in the sense of ‘socialisation’, where ownership is transferred to the ‘nation’, the whole society. To bring something under state ownership, simply by having the workers get their wages from the state rather than from private bosses, is not sufficient to transform social relations in a socialist sense.

The idea of self-management is, from the very start, a confused one. What most people instinctively understand by it is a society in which relatively small groups, like workers in a single factory, organise all aspects of the running of their individual units. Health workers or teachers, for example, would thus organise at the local level in their hospitals or schools, while consumers would be organised in neighbourhoods. To restrict the concept of self-management to single factories is a pretence. If socialism cannot exist in one country, how can it survive in even one city much less one enterprise?

It is also a question of social democracy. A power station may well supply electricity to a million people and a single factory can produce enough to satisfy the needs of a million people. It is quite untenable to suggest that the control of those resources should be under the control of 200 or 300 people who just happen to work in that particular power plant or factory. The way in which its energy and goods are produced distributed are not the only concern the producers but also all the workers who are going to consume its products and their needs which must be satisfied.  There is absolutely no reason why a select number of workers should be given the right to dictate decisions which will affect millions of workers.

With the arrival of socialism, we will inherit a vast array of technological and logistic tools of capitalism, from networks of retail stores to transnational corporation supply chains. There exists thus today, in the technology that the working class will acquire on the day it takes power, tools of coordination and it would be  absolutely utopian to want to fragment economic decision-making to these levels. Decisions can be taken in a flexible centralised manner in a democratic way. Such organisation need not be a command-economy of plans issued from above.

Not only can workers not implement decisions against the operations of market laws which allows the survival of competition and imposes certain unavoidable imperatives on the units of production.

There have been many examples of workers’ self-management that went wrong, there have even been some that have ‘succeeded’ – in capitalist terms that is! All that they have succeeded in, however, has been to transform themselves into profitable capitalist enterprises, operating in the same way as other capitalist firms. There is the evidence of Bolivian mining cooperatives transforming into collectives of capitalists which even go so far as employing workers without letting them enter the cooperative, and paying low wages while keeping for themselves their shares in the prosperity of the cooperative.

For sure, we are not dismissing the workers facing redundancies occupying their factory, seizing the ‘booty’ as it were, either for leverage or simply to provide a livelihood. Or denying some workers who have been very fortunate enough the opportunity to find an escape from conventional employment.

Our case is that for a permanent solution for everyone, is to organise industry at a social level, thus allowing for an effectively planned economy consciously run by all the people as a whole.

Leninism is pseudo-revolutionary drivel

There is a class struggle going on. The national interest is not the same as the workers class interest. The working class have never had a government that cares a damn about them. It is past time they stopped looking for one.

"The workers must organise for their emancipation. They can do this, and only they can do it. I cannot do this for you and I want to be frank enough to say I would not, if I could. For, if I could do it for you somebody else could undo it for you. But, when you do it yourselves, it will be done for ever -and until you do it, you have got to pay the penalty of your ignorance, indifference and neglect." -Eugene Debs

Even Attlee's famous reforming government brought troops out against workers 8 times in the bosses’ interest.

Here is Labour's record for using troops to break strikes. 1945: Dockers. 1946: Smithfield porters. Southampton dockers. 1947: Road transport workers (including Smithfield), dockers, Tower Bridge operators. 1948: Buckingham Palace boiler-room workers, dockers (State of emergency declared under Emergency Powers Act of 1920). 1949: Dockers, Smithfield road haulage drivers, gas maintenance workers. 1966: seamen. 1975: Glasgow refuse collectors. 1977: Air traffic control assistants, firemen. 1978: Naval dockyard workers. During the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978-9 Merlyn Rees, the then Labour Home Secretary, informed Parliament of the plans made to protect the interests of British capitalism:

The government were ready at any time to call on the assistance of the Services and to proclaim a state of emergency should that have been necessary. The contingency plans were kept constantly under review by ministers. 160 service instructors were trained and 15,000 servicemen were recalled from leave over the New Year period and kept on short notice. Detailed contingency plans had been prepared for requisitioning of tankers and restricting the use of fuel to priority purposes. To put the plans for requisitioning tankers into effect would have required a proclamation of a state of emergency. If necessary parliament would have been recalled. In the event it has not been necessary to put any of these plans into operation. (Hansard, 15 January 1979. col. 1318)

When the Labour government did eventually use the troops during this major industrial dispute it was against . . . the ambulancemen. Ambulance crews were particularly badly paid, with a minimum basic rate of 38.44p per week and the rejection of their claim for a two-thirds increase on 12 January led to their participation in the general local authority workers one-day stoppage on 22 January.  The Labour Party administration of capitalism under Callaghan replied by calling in the troops. In London 50 army vehicles and 85 police were brought into use with the police providing the first line of cover backed up by the volunteer services, and troops only being summoned when these could not cope.

Workers should not just recall the anti-working class actions of past Labour governments but should also understand why. It is the working class who produce the wealth in society and it is the exploitation of their labour-power that has created the vast accumulation of wealth represented by the means of production and distribution. These are not owned by the workers but by the capitalist class and are used to make profits irrespective of workers' unfulfilled needs and wants. This state of affairs is made possible because the capitalist class control the state through Parliament where its various political parties, including the Labour Party, now sit. The Labour Party, throughout its various terms in office, has always supported the interests of Capital against Labour because it is a capitalist party. It has never been, is not and never will be a socialist party.

Trotskyism is just left-wing capitalism in practice (state-capitalism) a top-down rule over the workers by a minority who think workers are too dumb to understand what socialism/communism is, and have to be led by a party into it. It bears no relation to what Marx envisaged but is a Leninist distortion. It is not Marxism. It is Leninist pseudo-revolutionary drivel, justifying a dictatorship over the proletariat. The task of creating the socialist post-capitalist, production-for-use, free-access, commonly-owned world is that of the working class itself. There is no short cut to this. It is time you started to educate yourself then, as to why poverty, absolute or relative and war, (which is business by other means),  are inevitable concomitants of capitalism, how capitalism cannot be reformed

Wee Matt

Online For Macy's, Inline For Unemployed.

On August 11, Macy's said it would close 100 stores next year and boost its online investments as it tries to become more competitive. This will mean unemployment for 14 per cent of their present staff. In the past year and a half sales have been down as Macy's battled competition on various fronts. People are spending more on home improvements, travel and spas. When they buy clothes they are going to T .J. Maxx or fast fashion chains, such as H & M.

It's probable that years ago, many of Macy's workers thought they had job security as many certainly did in Eaton's and Simpson's in Canada.

Under capitalism, there is no security.

John Ayers.

PEOPLE OR PROFIT

Voting for socialism means voting for yourself

With elections, the media always hype it all up as if some sort of real change is about to be in the offing, and the political party apparatchiks are out and about trying to convince the cynical and sceptical public to vote for their same old tried and tired solutions and policies. We in the Socialist Party offer something a lot different.

The world can now easily produce wealth sufficient to adequately house, feed, care for and educate the global population. Instead, we see hunger, disease and homelessness around the world despite the concerns of governments and charities. We see rising child poverty and an increasing gulf between rich and poor. Rates of depression and anxiety are becoming an epidemic. Capitalism is failing: it now acts as a barrier, preventing production being geared to human need. Rather than constantly tinkering with this system, we should start looking beyond it to an alternative: a classless world community based on production for human need, not profit.

The mainstream candidates contesting elections (whether openly pro-capitalist or supposedly socialist) are asking you to believe that they can run this society a little bit better. I’d argue that history shows that the money system actually ends up running them. Their pre-election promises usually amount to nothing. So don’t vote for them - it only encourages the idea that capitalism can be made better. A vote for the Socialist Party, in contrast, is a statement that you don’t want to live this way and that you think another world is possible.

What is apparent is the extent to which all the parties try to manage the agenda for the election. They all want to encourage the debate to be around the handful of high-profile “flagship” issues where they feel they are on strong ground.

But it’s always phrased along the lines of “knocking on doors, we keep hearing that XXX is the real issue of the day”. Funnily enough, we don’t hear the Lib Dems, for example, say “recent canvassing returns indicate that voters actually don’t give a monkey’s f*** about our policies one way or the other”. The assumption is that voters are stupid and can only remember 3 or 4 things at a time, so why give them more than that to consider. Indeed, a cursory glance at the election leaflets of the mainstream candidates suggests they premise their case on the assumption that the average person on the street is an imbecile. What it all means is that the campaign may centre around a handful of issues only. That may appear to appeal to the Socialist Party. After all, we are the ultimate single issue party - Abolish Capitalism. But while this is a single issue no-one is pretending that it is a simple case. Sure it’s not complicated, the case for putting human need ahead of profit, but soundbites don’t do our case justice.

We are also handicapped in the eyes of the modern voter by the fact that we are not in a position to make promises, and what’s more, we aren’t going to “do anything” for anyone. The other parties are falling over each other to be seen to be offering some immediate palliative

It's all very well having a vote - but are you normally given any real choice? Let's face it, if it wasn't for the politician's head on the front of the election leaflet, could you tell which party was which? It's tempting, in the absence of any real alternative, to get drawn into the phoney war that is political debate today.

Whether Labour, Tory, Lib Dem or UKIP they all spout the same promises. But it always amounts to the same thing - they offer no alternative to the present way of running society. Do you really think who wins an election makes any difference to how you live? And do politicians (whether left-wing, nationalist or right-wing) actually have much real power anyway?

OK, they get to open supermarkets and factories, but it's capitalism and the market system which closes them down. We have endless problems of poverty, poor services and all the issues politicians love to spend time telling you they can solve if only given the chance.

Socialists don't believe any politician can solve these problems, as long as the flawed basis of our society remains intact. In fact, we believe only you and your fellow workers can solve these problems. In truth, there is nothing the Socialist Party can do for the working class that it is not already capable of doing for itself. We believe that it will take a revolution in how we organise our lives, a fundamental change. We want to see a society based on the fact that you know how to run your lives, know your needs and have the skills and capacity to organise with your fellows to satisfy them.

You know yourselves and your lives better than a handful of bosses ever can. With democratic control of production, we can ensure that looking after our communities becomes a priority, rather than something we do in our spare time. We all share fundamental needs, for food, clothing, housing and culture, and we have the capacity to ensure access to these for all, without exception.

If you agree with this aim, then we ask you to get in touch with us, get involved and join in our campaign to bring about this change in society. Together, we have the capacity to run our world for ourselves. We need to build a movement to effect that change, by organising deliberately to take control of the political offices which rule our lives and bring them into our collective democratic control.

The Socialist Party make no promises, offers no pat solutions, only to be the means by which you can remake society for the common good.

 John Bisset

It’s share or die.

The sole aim of the Socialist Party is to establish socialism and abolish the right of one man to rob another of the fruits of his or her labour. This is what makes our Party different from all others. No-where in the world has socialism ever been established despite claims to the contrary. Our policy is for the people to taking the affairs of their world into their own hands, where the bankers, landlords, and profiteers no longer exist. Common ownership prevails. As a result, freed from all capitalist restrictions, there is rapid and continuous economic development with living standards and quality of life rises. Science and culture advance. Such a social system alone is the guarantee that robotics and automation can really flourish, serving the people, not the profiteer. We know we are asking a lot from our fellow-workers in organising a movement for socialism. Fellow-workers must start to find the true path to their emancipation. The independent interests of the working class must be kept to the forefront – the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. Ours is a great aim to make the working class the masters of their own destiny, to win political power, and establish socialism. Supposing, though, that the working class does not succeed in destroying the capitalist social order of misery and war, what then? A future of constant poverty, permanent exploitation and perpetual war? We cannot believe that our fellow-workers will long suffer existing conditions of misery. We are confident that before long they will grow aware of their degradation and seek to break once and for all the chains of exploitation and establish the true free society of socialism. For those who point to the pervading presence of xenophobic nationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, we say a practical demonstration of socialism would dispel such darkness. Men and women must exert their conscious influence and action.

Many media pundits declare nationalism has triumphed over socialism. They rightly recognise that nationalism and socialism are antagonistic ideologies. The Socialist Party accept that national and class divisions will persist for a long time. We possess no doubt about the outcome: The revolutionary process will inevitably abolish both class and national divisions. World socialism will triumph. Nationalism helps bind the working class to the ruling class of its nation. Socialism unites the working people of the world against the global capitalist class. The international working class will determine its own destiny and as long as the working class holds nationalist ideas, it is allowing its destiny to be determined by the bosses and politicians. Class unity must be established between the oppressed and exploited regardless of nationality and race. That is basically the same point that Marx made when he said, “labour in the white skin can not be free as long as labor in the black skin is branded.” And in referring to the need to overcome the hostile attitude of the English worker towards the Irish workers, Marx wrote: “He...turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself.” Socialists do not fan the flames of nationalism nor stoke the hatred of racism that further divides the working class.

The main difference between us in the Socialist Party and the average political activist is that we understand the identity of our aims while they do not as yet. The main tenets of socialism are, our people are divided into different classes by their economic position. There is first the possessing or capitalist class. That class as a class does not live by work but by income in the shape of rent, profit or interest. It owns the land upon which we all must live with all the natural wealth under the surface and above it. It owns the means of transportation and communication, and all the modern machinery and technology and instruments of work, the factories and farms, the offices, mines and  mills.

Then there is the working class, a class of persons who by their daily toil create and augment the wealth of the rich but barely manage to sustain themselves alive. They cannot work without the use of the modern machinery of wealth production. They must sell their labour-power to the owners of this machinery. The industries are operated for the private profits of the capitalists. Hence every capitalist concern seeks to retain the largest possible share of its income for its owners and stockholders and to pay as little as possible to the workers as wages. The industries of the world are the personal property of the capitalists and are conducted by them without responsibility or accountability to the people. When it pays them they keep “their” business going, when it does not pay them they stop operations and deprive millions of workers of their jobs and bread. Between these two classes, there is war. By “class war” we do not necessarily mean open and physical conflict, but a constant and acute antagonism of interests which mostly smolders under the surface and sometimes erupts into violent hostilities. This class war can only end with the end of economic classes and class divisions, and that is what socialism seeks to accomplish.

The Socialist Party proposes a complete and radical reorganisation of our whole industrial system. Concretely we demand that all basic industries be taken out of private hands and be transformed into common ownership operated by appropriate the democratically appointed public agencies for the benefit of the people. That implies planned production for use with the total elimination of private profit and exploitation. The Socialist Party do not expect or desire a sudden, cataclysmic change by insurrection but a rapid, transformation. The hope of the Socialist Party lies in the organization by the workers of a political party of their own, challenging the power of the old capitalist parties and electing their own delegates to legislative and administrative bodies in numbers strong enough to capture the machinery of government. That is why the Socialist Party stands for independent working class political action; that is why it is a Socialist Party. The socialist movement is a labour movement, a political labour movement. It cannot exist as anything else. If the socialist movement is weak it simply indicates that the labour movement has not yet developed sufficient political consciousness to realise that it should support its own class in politics as well as in the economic field. If the workers were organised politically and selected their own delegates they could have a working class majority.

BE REASONABLE, DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE.

A socialist society will be a classless society, in which all the means of producing wealth are owned in common. Instead of being divided into workers and employers, rich and poor, society will be an association of free people, all making their special contributions to the well-being of society, which in return will supply them with what they need in order to live full and happy lives. Such a society can be summed up in the slogan:

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

For this to be possible, Socialism must be based on abundance. Production will be organised in such a way that there is plenty of everything for everybody: not only food, houses and so on, to satisfy material needs; but also education, healthcare, and sport, so that people can lead fulfilling lives. work, instead of being simply a means of earning a living, will have become the natural expression of men’s lives, freely given according to their abilities. Moreover, the nature of work will itself have changed. Through the development of science, much of its drudgery will have disappeared and every man and woman wild develop their mental and physical capacities to the full

Socialism not something which can exist in one country, isolated from the rest of the world. On the contrary, it must eventually embrace all the peoples of the world; and in so doing it will put an end to all war. Because no wars can take place in a truly international society there will be no need for armies. Thus, for the first time, mankind, united in a world-wide family of nations, will be free to devote all its creative energies to completing the mastery of nature.

Because it will be a community of plenty, where there is enough for all and therefore no advantage can be obtained by theft or other forms of crime, all need for courts of justice and police will have disappeared. In other words, the State, which is the sum of all these institutions will itself disappear. Instead of one section of society ruling and oppressing another, men and will have grown accustomed to living together in society without fear and compulsion.

The unity and harmony of mankind is an age-old dream. Is this goal just an illusion? No, answer socialists, it can be achieved. God did not create mankind – or anything else. Man has created and recreated himself. The Supreme Being for man is man himself – not man as he is at any given stage, but man in the making, man as he can and will be. Mankind has reached the point where a truly human mode of existence is within sight. Society is not the product of human nature. Human nature, good, bad, or indifferent, is the product of society. The qualities of human beings are endlessly changeable, just as their potential capacities are boundless. Human nature is malleable. Human nature is like clay that can be moulded and re-moulded and recast into very different, almost unrecognizable, forms. Whole of social evolution testifies to this flexibility of humankind. Society makes people what they are and prevents them from being otherwise. That is why socialists say there is no such thing as human nature in general, but human behavior. Socialists assert that if society shapes men, men in turn can reshape society through their collective efforts. Society forms people – and then people transform their social relations and their selves in the process. But, add the historical materialists, the ways in which people behave toward one another and the kind of ties they have with one another, are determined, both in the first and final instance, by the productive powers they possess. And the degree in which they can change their social relations, and the directions of the evolution of their social organisation, depends upon the capacities of their system of production. The material historical conditions under which people live and labor are so decisive because they fix the framework of social action, both in its extent and in its limits, at any given time. It is possible to outgrow these conditions but it is not possible to jump out of them or over them at will.  Socialists recognise that human behavior can be changed only by altering the social structure.

The supreme task of our age is to abolish capitalism as an outmoded and dangerous system and proceed to build socialism on a world scale. This can be done only through the action of a working class majority, not because of their better qualities as individuals, but because of their position and functions in the economy. They are the principal objects of exploitation under capitalism and the fighters against it. And they become the bearers of a higher mode of production and builders of a superior social system under post-capitalist conditions. Socialists place active conscious human beings at the very centre of the historical process and social change. Mankind, as producers, have produced their own history. Unfortunately, up to now, humanity has not produced their history in a conscious or planned manner – and that is why the net result of their work has led to such contradictory and detrimental consequences.

But now with automation scientific technology and other industrial accomplishments, mankind has the chance of eliminating all relations of oppression and exploitation and then lightening the burdens of necessary labour – and other curses – imposed by the low levels of labour productivity. A socialist future will be able to achieve the total abolition of all compulsory work to become free to do with as he or she pleases. They will produce wonders. Creativity and imagination are the finest qualities of mankind. The aim of socialists is to bring about those conditions which will make both individual and collective ingenuity the rule, rather than the exception, in human life.

The Socialist Party believes in human decency and dignity. It endeavours to aid the exploited against the exploiters and the oppressed against their oppressors, and take whatever actions to clear the way to a free and equal society.

SOCIALISM MEANS ONE WORLD

Just as capitalism is a world system of society, so too must socialism be. There never been, and never can be, socialism in just one country because its material basis is the world-wide and interdependent means of production that capitalism has built up. The bulk of the wealth produced in the world today is produced by the co-operative labour of the millions employed to operate these means of production. What is needed now, to establish socialism, is a conscious political decision on the part of these billions across the world to run society in their own interests. This will be done by taking the means of production throughout the world into common ownership, with their democratic control by the whole community, and with production solely for use.

Common ownership will be a social relationship of equality between all people with regard to the use of the means of production. No longer will there be classes, governments and their state machinery, or national frontiers.

Democratic control will involve the whole community in making decisions about the use of the means of production. Instead of government over people there would be various levels of democratic administration, from the local up to regional and world levels, with responsibility being delegated if necessary to groups and individuals.

Production for use will bring production into direct line with human needs. Without money, wages, buying and selling there will be a world of free access. Everyone will be able to contribute to society by working voluntarily, according to ability. Everyone will be able to take freely from whatever is readily available, according to self-defined needs.

The motivation for this new world comes from the common class interest of those who produce but do not possess. An important part of this motivation comes from the global problems thrown up by capitalism. Ecological problems make a nonsense of the efforts of governments. War and the continuing threat of nuclear war affect us all. The problem of uneven development means that many producers in the underdeveloped countries suffer starvation, disease and absolute poverty. All of these problems of capitalism can only be solved within the framework of a socialist world. Ecological problems require the sort of long-term planning and development of which competitive, international capitalism is incapable. Converting the armaments industry (capitalism's biggest industry) from producing weapons of destruction to producing useful things to satisfy human needs will take time. Ending world hunger and poverty, above all, makes the world-wide co-operation of socialism an urgent necessity.

But this does not rule out local democracy. In fact, a democratic system of decision-making would require that the basic unit of social organisation would be the local community. However, the nature of some of the problems we face and the many goods and services presently produced, such as raw materials, energy sources, agricultural products, world transport and communications, need production and distribution to be organised at a world level.

Corresponding to this, of course, there would be a need for a democratic world administration, controlled by delegates from the regional and local levels of organisation throughout the world.

The World Socialist Movement, of which the Socialist Party is a constituent part, expresses the common class interest of the producers. Because political power in capitalism is organised on a territorial basis each socialist party has the task of seeking democratically to gain political power in the country where it operates. If it is suggested that socialist ideas might develop unevenly across the world and that socialists of only a part of the world were in a position to get political control, then the decision about the action to be taken would be one for the whole of the socialist movement in the light of all the circumstances at the time. It would certainly be a folly, however, to base a programme of political action on the assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly and that we must, therefore, be prepared to establish "socialism" in one country or even a group of countries like the European Community.

For a start, it is an unreasonable assumption that socialist ideas will develop unevenly. Given the world-wide nature of capitalism and its social relationships, the vast majority of people live under basically similar conditions, and because of the world-wide system of communications and media, there is no reason for socialist ideas to be restricted to one part of the world. Any attempt to establish "socialism" in one country would be bound to fail owing to the pressures exerted by the world market on that country's means of production. Recent experience in Russia, China and elsewhere shows conclusively that even capitalist states cannot detach themselves from the requirements of an integrated system of production operated through the world market.

Faced with this explanation of how the world could be organised, many would reject it in favour of something more "realistic", including some who call themselves socialist. They seek to solve social problems within the framework of government policies, the state machine, national frontiers, money, wages, buying and selling. But if our analysis of capitalism as a world system is correct—and we've yet to be shown how it's wrong—the state politics are irrelevant as a way of solving social problems, Viewed globally, state politics only make sense when seen as a means for capturing political power in order to introduce a world of free access

John Bissett

Make socialism a threat again

“Socialism, for Marx, is a society which permits the actualization of man's essence, by overcoming his alienation. It is nothing less than creating the conditions for the truly free, rational, active and independent man; it is the fulfillment of the prophetic aim: the destruction of the idols”. - Erich Fromm, Marx' Concept of Man, 1961

Reforms are the stock and trade of politicians. Any social legislation which really has teeth are to sink into the throat of the labour movement. The Socialist Party asks no favours of capitalism and grants it none. The Socialist Party has always held that the essential principle upon which the political party of the working class must be based is the principle of the class struggle. The implications of this are several. The first is that only the class-conscious may be admitted to membership in the organisation since only those who are conscious of the working-class position in society can understand the class struggle and only those who understand the class struggle can intelligently prosecute it on the political field. The second implication of the principle of the class struggle is that the political party of the working class must be uncompromisingly hostile to all other parties, for the reason that political parties are the expression of class interests, and the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class.

The Socialist Party do not give fellow-workers the illusion that their problems can be solved simply by reforming an abuse of the capitalist system. We state clearly that there are no solutions within the capitalist system. The workers and capitalists do constant battle over the level of wages, the price of labour-power. Working people are not content to remain wage slaves of the capitalists. The weak spot of all trade unionism that every worker must realise is that through trade union struggle we are not fighting the cause which is capitalism but only its symptoms. We are fighting against the effects of the system and not against the system itself. The capitalists would love to perpetuate this situation. That is why some clever capitalist support trade unions and enter into all sorts of agreements with them. When we fight for a demand like a wage increase, we are merely fighting against the effects of capitalism. Not merely that. We are demanding it from the capitalists. In other words, we envisage the continuation of the capitalist system. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. That is why they very often, in the end, bolster up capitalism. Every wage increase that is won by the workers can be offset by the employers by more intensive work, by stricter supervision etc. So that, usually the worker is back to from where he or she started. What all workers must understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely restricts their struggle to attempts at lessening this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the fatal limitation of trade union struggles. We do not, of course, oppose trade union struggles or refuse to participate in them. But we must agitate even more for abolition the wage system itself.

How is profit made from producing wealth?  It is created within the process of production itself.

The capitalist with money to invest in production must first convert a part of it into means and instruments of production (raw materials. machinery, a factory); the other part will be needed for hiring workers to come and work in the factory on the raw materials that have been supplied. When the employees have worked up the raw materials into a finished product, new wealth will have been created. This will belong to the capitalist but because we are in an exchange economy, not only new wealth but new value has been created. However, the capitalists are not interested in new value in the abstract, nor even in new value in the form of a portion of the newly produced goods; they are only interested in it in the form of money. To realise this, they must, therefore, sell the products. Once they have done this they have a larger sum of money than they started with; their capital has increased and value has expanded itself. However, not all the money realised from the sale of the product is their profit, as part will represent the value of the raw materials and wear and tear of their machines as well as the upkeep of the factory. It is therefore merely a part of the original capital in a different form. A second part will replace the amount of capital used in hiring the workers to enable a repeat of the operation. It is the third part which is now profit.

The source of this profit is clear: it is the labour of the workers who transformed the raw materials into finished products. In an exchange economy labour, as well as creating wealth, also creates value: where the producer does not own the means of production and where the product of labour belongs to the employer, the new value created also belongs to the employer. A part of this is repaid to the producer in the form of wages, but the rest — what Marx called surplus value — is profit for the capitalist.

The exploitation (for there is no other word for it) of the wage workers takes place fully in accordance with the normal rules of exchange: an equal value is exchanged for an equal value. For what the workers sell to the capitalist is not their labour (the product of labour, or what has been produced) but their ability to work, their mental and physical energy — what Marx called Labour Power. Under capitalism labour power, like everything else is a commodity and has an exchange value. The exchange value of labour power is roughly the cost of training, maintaining and replacing the particular kind of labour power (skilled or unskilled; bricklayer or engineer, clerk or schoolteacher) involved. Wages are the price of labour power or the monetary expression of its value.

Yet today the Left-wing of the workers' movement are less preoccupied with the abolition of the wages system than ever. The old cry for a fair day’s pay echoes itself time and again in our ears, sometimes with different words but always with the same intention.

The Vanguard Elite

Lenin is rightly known for having stood for a "centralised hierarchical vanguard party to lead the masses" Up until the First World War Lenin was a left-wing Social Democrat who argued that, under the autocratic political conditions of Tsarism, Social Democrats there had to organise as a hierarchical centralised party in order to overthrow the Tsarist regime, but that for Western Europe,  he accepted the German party's model of an open, democratic party pursing a maximum programme (of socialism) and a minimum programme of reforms of capitalism, contesting elections, etc. The trouble is that he changed his position after 1917. He now said that the organisational form and tactics that he had advocated for the overthrow of Tsarism (which was not in fact how Tsarism ended as it collapsed more or less of its own accord; his tactics only worked to overthrow the weak government that emerged following this) should also be applied in Western Europe for the overthrow of capitalism. This is when he would have ceased to be a Social Democrat and became a Bolshevik. The organisation of such groups of followers of Bolshevism are certainly centralised, but has little to do with any democratic process. Leninists imagine that workers are only capable of reaching a trade union consciousness and flatter themselves that their consciousness as a vanguard is higher. Actually, it’s the other way round. Most trade unions have democratic constitutions, even if largely these days only on paper. The Leninist theory of organisation is a throw-back to political conditions such as existed in Tsarist Russia, and its introduction into more politically-developed Western Europe following the coming to power of the Bolsheviks in Russia has been an unmitigated disaster for the working class and socialism. As a theory of leadership it is anti-socialist and to be rejected on political grounds. In practice it can easily lead to such aberrations such as personality cults and so is to be rejected on grounds of human dignity too.

Alex Callinicos of the present-day Socialist Workers Party, a hierarchical organisation which is dominated by a self-perpetuating Central Committee and which prides itself on ruthlessly banning all internal factions and organised dissension, expressed the vanguard party`s creed:

"A revolutionary situation places a premium on effective organisation and leadership. Events move very quickly, and on a snap decision may hang the fate of the entire revolution. What is needed is a cool and clear head, a firm sense of the ultimate objective, the ability to make rapid tactical judgements, and an organisation capable not only of making decisions, but of carrying them out." (The Revolutionary Road to Socialism)

Under democratic centralism, the party leadership is nominally elected by the members, but an outgoing leadership will propose to a conference the new leadership and central committee by means of a "slate" (or list) of candidates. Members do not vote for individuals but for such a slate and it is rare indeed for an alternative slate to be proposed. This explains the "remarkable continuity of the leaders of Leninist parties over the years. It should also be noted that this process of a self-perpetuating leadership explains the enormous power and prestige such a leadership has relative to its own organisation.

The Socialist Party is against leadership, and yet we elect an executive committee, stand candidates in elections, and have 'leading' members, i.e some individuals who have more influence, though not more power, than others. A crucial difference between that of electing delegates and representatives is  that delegates only have as much power as is mandated to them and can be recalled. Representatives have power abdicated to them wholesale. Writers or speakers are NOT leaders. Their function is to spread knowledge and understanding, as teachers. Quite different from that we must have leaders (great men) to direct their followers (blind supporters) into a socialist society. Socialism is not the result of blind faith, followers, or, by the same token, vanguard parties. Despite some very charismatic writers and speakers in the past, no personality has held undue influence over the Socialist Party. Simply check the two published histories of the Party to see on just how many occasions and on how many issues those so-called leaders have not gained a majority at conferences or in referendums.

 We actually have a test for membership.  This does not mean that the Socialist Party has set itself up as an intellectual elite into which only those well versed in Marxist scholarship may enter. One purpose of it is to place all members on an even basis. The Socialist Party's reason is to ensure that only conscious socialists enter its ranks, for, once admitted, all members are equal and it would clearly not be in the interest of the Party to offer equality of power to those who are not able to demonstrate equality of basic socialist understanding. Once a member, s/he have the same rights as the oldest member to sit on any committee, vote, speak, and have access to all information. Thanks to this test all members are conscious socialists and there is genuine internal democracy, and of that we are fiercely proud. Consider what happens when people join other groups which don't have this test. The new applicant has to be approved as being "all right". The individual is therefore judged by the group according to a range of what might be called "credential indicators". Hard work (often, paper selling) and obedience by new members is the main criterion of trustworthiness in the organisation. In these hierarchical, "top-down" groups the leaders strive at all costs to remain as the leadership, and reward only those with proven commitment to the "party line" with preferential treatment, more responsibility and more say. New members who present the wrong indicators remain peripheral to the party structure, and finding themselves unable to influence decision-making at any level, eventually give up and leave, often embittered by the hard work they put in and the hollowness of the party's claims of equality and democracy.

The Socialist Party is a leader-free political party where its executive committee is solely for housekeeping admin duties and cannot determine policy. An EC that is not even permitted to submit resolutions to conference. All conference decisions have to be ratified by a referendum of the whole membership. The General Secretary has no position of power or authority over any other member being simply a dogsbody. Mandating delegates, voting on resolutions and membership referendums are democratic practices for ensuring that the members of an organisation control that organisation – and as such key procedures in any organisation genuinely seeking socialism. Socialism can only be a fully democratic society in which everybody will have an equal say in the ways things are run. This means that it can only come about democratically, both in the sense of being the expressed will of the working class and in the sense of the working class being organised democratically – without leaders, but with mandated delegates – to achieve it. In rejecting these procedures what is being declared is that the working class should not organise itself democratically.

What is at stake here is not a question of tactics or strategy but principle. We believe, to use Lenin's words but reverse their meaning, that workers, exclusively by their own efforts, are capable of a socialist consciousness. Workers are human beings and individuals in themselves; they are not dumb masses to be tricked, led, deceived, and lied to, for the greater good. That's why, actually, we are not sectarian and the left are. We join workers struggles as workers. We take part in the democratic process as equals with our fellows. We do not join for purposes of our own; we have no programme of demands hidden up our sleeves to be produced at a later date, nor a one-party dictatorship to produce as a nasty surprise at an even later date. That's why, when we join workers struggles as individuals and not as a leadership party, and reject the left, we are not being sectarian -- quite the opposite. We are being principled socialists. Workers do not need any advice or leadership from socialists when it comes to struggling to defend their own interests within capitalism. They do it all by themselves all the time. However, such struggles have their limits within capitalism: they cannot go beyond the law of value, and the combined forces of the capitalists and the state can almost always defeat them if they put their mind to it. Workers who realise this tend to become socialists. As they become socialists, they see the necessity for going beyond such day to day struggles (these unavoidable and incessant guerrilla battles, as Marx put it) and the need for a political party aimed solely for socialism. This political party must not advocate reforms, not because it is against reforms (how on earth could a working class party be against reforms in the working class interest?), but because it wants to build support for socialism, and not for reforms.

Leaders? Not Here

Many workers think we cannot function without leaders. This is a fallacy and one perpetuated by the master class to help them maintain their rule over our lives. Indeed, so prevalent is this philosophy, that from the cradle to the grave we are taught to mistrust out own intelligence and to look up to our ‘betters and superiors’ (schools, church, politicians, parents etc) and to accept without question the plans they draw up for our future.

It is assumed leaders run the world. Well, we think it is we, the workers who run the world. Politicians might make government policy, which becomes law, but it is we who build and man the hospitals and schools. It is we who build the bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports, all the products that humans need to survive. It is we who produce everything from a pin to an oil-rig and provide humanity with all the services it needs – we the working class. We don’t depend on leaders for these skills or for their guidance. They have no monopoly on our knowledge and intelligence and the inventions we dream up, but benefit from them the most. If all the world’s leaders died tomorrow, few would really miss them and society would function as before. If all the bosses decided not to turn up at their factories, their business would still function because it is we who see to it that they function. Do you need a boss standing over you all day in the office or workplace, showing you how to work? Are you constantly in search of the guidance of a more superior individual to tell you how to run your life?

The concept of leadership has emerged as a result of class society and will end when we abolish class society, when abolish the capitalist mode of production and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living, because of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other and information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we possess are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. The master class perceives all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

Only sheep need leaders, and if workers want to be sheep then they can expect to get fleeced. The truth is, we have been led for so long by idiots that we have forgotten our own collective strength and lost sight of just what we, as a species, working together, are capable of.

The WSM has no leaders and has existed for over a hundred years without one. If someone can lead you into socialism, there will always be someone who can lead you out again. Socialism must be the free and conscious decision of the majority, otherwise it will never work. Our position is now as it was in 1904 at our inception – there is nothing that we can do for the working class that it is not already capable of doing for itself. For Socialism to be a success, it must be established without leaders and followers. It must be established by ordinary people all over the world uniting and working together to establish a new system peacefully and democratically – a world in which the exploited at last regain control of their own destiny.

John Bissett

Is it democracy?

In the run up to their annual conference, the Socialist Workers Party, publishes Pre-conference bulletins. One such bulletin from 2012 bulletin contains the SWP constitution.  Some snippets:

“Branches and/or districts elect delegates to Conference on a basis proportional to their membership, as determined by the Central Committee.[...]

(5) Central Committee The CC consists of members elected by the Conference according to the following procedure: The outgoing Central Committee selects and circulates a provisional slate for the new CC at the beginning of the period for pre-Conference discussion. This is then discussed at the district aggregates where comrades can propose alternative slates.

At the Conference the outgoing CC proposes a final slate (which may have changed as a result of the pre-Conference discussion). This slate, along with any other that is supported by a minimum of five delegates, is discussed and voted on by Conference.

Between Conferences the CC is entrusted with the political leadership of the organisation and is responsible for the national direction of all political and organisational work, subject to the decision- making powers of Conference.”

Note: there is no specification of the size of the CC, so they can always co-opt oppositionists to the official slate.  Also note the CC controls the size of conference, which can make it more manageable.

This is justified thus:

“The necessity of a revolutionary party flows from the fact that although the working class must collectively emancipate itself, the ideological domination of the ruling class means there is considerable uneveness within the working class in terms of its confidence, organisation and ideas. The role of a revolutionary party is to draw together the militant minority who understand the need for revolution, not to substitute for the class, but to constantly seek ways to act to increase workers’ combativity and confidence and in the process win wider layers of workers to socialist ideas.[...] And the existence of a leadership is a necessity. Uneveness in terms of experience, confidence and clarity of ideas exists not just inside the working class as a whole, but also within the revolutionary party. The more roots the party has inside the working class, the more it is able to intervene in the class struggle, the greater this uneveness will be.” (CC statement). 

Note, it assumes that the leadership is the pinnacle of this uneven consciousness, and instead of seeking to challenge the "unevenness" seeks to work within it, and in effect justifies a technocratic/theocratic elite dictating to the ignorant, rather than a two way dialogue between revolutionaries and workers.  After all, for all we (naturally) assume that we are right, we enter into debate, and have to withstand the possibility that we may be proved wrong.

Little has changed since the Socialist Party published a educational document on the SWP in 1995. Here's an extract on Conference Procedure from section III:

The main item on the agenda is a report by the Central Committee on the political “perspectives” which is usually a document of pamphlet-length. The Central Committee also submits other reports – on work in special areas of activity (industry, students, women,) internal organisation, finance – for the Conference to discuss. In the SWP, branches still have the formal right to submit motions, but they are strongly discouraged from doing so. As an explanatory note intended for new members, accompanying documents submitted for the party’s 1983 Conference put it:

“Branches can submit resolutions if they wish and these may [sic] be voted on. But in recent years the practice of sending resolutions to conference has virtually ceased” (Socialist Review, September 1983).

What this means is that it is the Central Committee – the leadership – which quite literally sets the agenda for the Conference. The branch delegates meet, therefore, to discuss only what is put before them by the Central Committee. Not that the delegates are delegates in the proper sense of the term as instructed representatives of the branches sending them:

“Delegates should not be mandated . . . Mandating is a trade union practice, with no place in a revolutionary party”.

Since voting on motions submitted by branches is dismissed as a “trade union practice”, another procedure, more open to manipulation by the leadership, is operated:

“At the end of each session of conference commissions are elected to draw up a report on the session detailing the points made. In the event of disagreement two or more commissions can be elected by the opposing delegates. The reports are submitted to conference and delegates then vote in favour of one of the commissions. The advantage of this procedure is that conference does not have to proceed by resolution like a trade union conference”.

No branch motions, no mandated delegates, what else? No ballots of the entire membership either. In the first volume of his political biography of Lenin, Cliff records in shocked terms that “in January 1907 Lenin went so far as to argue for the institution of a referendum of all party members on the issues facing the party”, commenting “certainly a suggestion which ran counter to the whole idea of democratic centralism” (Lenin, Building the Party, p. 280)

In fact no official of the SWP above branch level is directly elected by a vote of the members. One power that the branches do retain is the right to nominate members for election, by the Conference delegates, to the National Committee, but, as over presenting motions, they are discouraged from nominating people who do not accept the “perspectives” espoused by the Central Committee. So elections do take place to the National Committee but on the basis of personalities rather than politics. However, it is the way that the Central Committee is elected that is really novel: the nominations for election to new central committee are proposed not by branches but . . . by the outgoing central committee! Once again, in theory, branches can present other names but they never do.

It is easy to see how this means that the central committee – the supreme leadership of the organisation – is a self-perpetuating body renewal in effect only by co-optation. This is justified on the grounds of continuity and efficiency – it takes time to gain the experience necessary to become a good leader, so that it would be a waste of the experienced gained if some leader were to be voted off by the vagaries of a democratic vote. Choosing the leadership by a competitive vote is evidently something else “with no place in a revolutionary party” any more than in an army.”

This, incidentally, is how the Politburo was (s)elected in the USSR which the SWP admits was state-capitalism. In particular, the slate system of electing (in effect co-opting) the "leadership". This was the practice of Communist Parties everywhere, including those in power. As far as I know, it is still practised in China, Cuba and North Korea. The thing is of course that for the SWP this would still continue after "the revolution", a recipe for the sort of state capitalism they rightly criticise in the old USSR. But then they always did support state capitalism in Russia under Lenin and up until Trotsky was exiled in 1928.

Note the way the SWP avoids votes.  The CC slate is circulated, and ambitious members who come forward will just be added, there are no votes at conference just summaries of debate.  There is no way to quantify dissent (an important tool for anyone seeking to build a new majority). Of course, SWPers condemn nose counting, asking why the vote of one person should determine the outcome; and I've seen in practice a reluctance to just settle arguments with a vote, with the 'leading' member able to drag out debate in order to try and get their way. This could be sold, we suppose, as an attempt to build consensus (indeed, wasn't that how occupy worked as well), but we soon see that without the right to be outvoted, a determined minority can come to dominate discussion.

Other Leninist organisations are criticising the SWP for not applying "democratic centralism" properly. Our criticism is more fundamental: we are critcising "democratic centralism" as such.

The Alliance for Woerkers Liberty’s constitution clearly spells out what "democratic centralism" means in practice -- a hierarchical organisation dominated by its leaders:

“To be effective, our organisation must be democratic; geared to the maximum clarity of politics; and able to respond promptly to events and opportunities with all its strength, through disciplined implementation of the decisions of the elected and accountable committees which provide political leadership”.(emphasis added)

Below the "leadership", there are two levels of membership: "candidates" and "activists":

“Members will normally be admitted as candidates, to go through six months of education, training and disciplined activity before being admitted as full activists. A branch or fraction may, at the end of six months, extend the candidate period if it judges that the above requirements have not been fulfilled adequately. In such a case the candidate has the right to appeal to the Executive Committee. Candidates do not have the right to vote in the AWL”

On promotion to "activist", members are required to, among other things:

“2. Engage in regular political activity under the discipline of the organisation;

4. Sell the literature of the AWL regularly;”

They have to ask "leave of absence" if they can't do this for some reason:

“A member suffering from illness or other distress may be granted a total or partial leave of absence from activity for up to two months; but the leave of absence must be ratified in writing by the Executive Committee, and the activist must continue to pay financial contributions to the AWL.”

If they stop selling the AWL's paper without this permission, then they are in trouble:

“Where activists have become inactive or failed to meet their commitments to the AWL without adequate cause such as illness, and there is no dispute about this fact, branches, fractions, or appropriate committees may lapse them from membership with no more formality than a week's written notice. Activists who allege invalid lapsing may appeal to the National Committee.”

They can even be fined:

“Branches, fractions, and appropriate elected committees may impose fines or reprimands for lesser breaches of discipline. Any activist has the right to defend himself or herself before a decision on disciplinary action is taken on him or her, except in the case of fines for absence or suspensions where the AWL's security or integrity are at risk.”

As to branches and "fractions" (AWL members boring from within other organisations), they can elect their own organisers but these are responsible to the leadership not to those who elected them:

“Each branch or fraction shall elect an organiser and other officers. The organiser is responsible to the AWL and is subject to the political and administrative supervision of its leading committees for the functioning of the branch or fraction and for ensuring that AWL policy is carried out.”

They can even give orders to those who elected them:

“Branch or fraction organisers can give binding instructions to activists in their areas on all day today matters.”

But if they step out of line the leadership can remove them and replace them with someone of their choice::

“The Executive Committee and the National Committee have the right in extreme cases, and after written notice and a fair hearing, to remove branch or fraction organisers from their posts and impose replacements.”

What self-respecting person would want to be a member of such an organisation? 

The Leader Cult

Unlike most other political parties, ours is wholly democratic with policy decisions developed within branches and presented at our conferences and then passed to the membership as a whole in a party poll to ratify, and not by any leadership. The internal democratic culture of the Socialist Party is probably one of the things the party can be most proud of. We object to leadership because we see it as an obstacle to the spread of socialist ideas. As yet most workers haven't seen the possibility of a world without bosses or masters, the world which would be run in the interests of all. However, there are no leaders in the World Socialist Movement for there will be no leaders in socialism—there can be no privileged persons in a society based on equality of status and the willing co-operation of all in production solely for use. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has existed for 112 years without a leader and is a strong example that such a form of organisation is possible and resilient.

To speak for the Socialist Party is usually enough for some to view you its leader as the teacher in the class-room; the lecturer at college; the captain of a ship, or the conductor of an orchestra. Aren't they leaders? "A single violinist is his own Conductor. An orchestra requires a separate one"  said Karl Marx. In most job-processes involving group co-operation a supervisor to coordinate. What about the surgeon in the operating theatre? Isn’t he a leader? Even the SPGB has a General Secretary so  isn't he you’re your leader? Doesn’t the SPGB elevate Marx to the position of a leader?

Socialists are interested in leadership from a number of different perspectives. Capitalism as a class society engenders owners of the means of wealth production, the privileged, the leaders; and non-owners, the unprivileged, the followers. Most of the followers don't oppose the system, which is why it persists. They elect leaders to get the best deal they can from the system. Socialism as a classless society based on social and political equality (though not on the absence of difference) is inconsistent with leadership. However, socialism is not inconsistent with some functions associated with leadership such as organisation, co-ordination – and even inspiration. There are those who perceive the necessity and inevitability of leadership as an objection to socialism - “There will always be leaders and followers and you can't change human nature.” This objection needs to be met.

Leadership only makes sense when there is a ruling class and a ruled class, and it implies that most people are incapable of organising affairs in their own interest and so must accept the dictates of a few. Ours differs from all previous revolutionary movements in that it doesn’t aim to replace one ruling class by another but to abolish classes altogether. All leaders are placed in a privileged position by their followers, who either agree with the policies laid down or think they can do nothing about them. By contrast, socialism means that nobody will be placed in a position of governing others. If there are leaders then there must be the led, but there cannot be much difference between their ideas since a leader can only offer to lead where he is likely to be followed. He is not really in advance of his followers because if he stops leading them in the direction they think is the best open to them they will soon desert him for another who will. It may be a bit clichéd now but there is a saying “Where the masses go, the leaders will follow!“ People who are easily persuaded to think one way by a powerful personality can usually be persuaded by a more powerful one to change their minds. Socialist ideas do not depend on such barren methods for their growth. The blunt truth is that if people want leaders they want class society, and if they want class society they cannot want socialism. We do our utmost to sign-post the road to socialism and to encourage others along the way but there can be no substitute for their knowledge of what is needed to take that path. We are always eager to help people to understand our case and to discuss with them the difficulties and objections they have concerning it. From our understanding of the past and the needs of the present, we try to show what the destination of the socialist movement will look like. But we cannot work out all the details in advance. If we did that, however, we should be acting no differently from the reformers who offer to lead the working class to better conditions and consistently fail to do so. The lesson is that no matter how well-meaning you may be, once you are given political power you must follow where events lead and, without a majority of socialists, that cannot be to socialism. To think in terms of political power without political knowledge on the part of those who make up that power is to oppose all that socialism means.

In socialism,  there will have to be administrators. Hopefully, people with a flair for organising, and their job will be to help a socialist society to run smoothly, ensuring that production and free distribution of the good things of life take place to the benefit of all. But they will not have the power to dictate to, to coerce, or give promises to the rest of the population as leaders do at present. They will be the agents—not the masters—of the people. In socialism, there will be not leaders but delegates—the difference being that delegates carry out the instructions of—not give orders to—the people who voted for them.

On 16 June 1836, the London Working Men's Association was formed and its first secretary, William Lovett, explained:

"We had seen enough of the contentions of leaders and the battles of factions; to convince us, that no sound Public Opinion, and consequently no just Government, could be formed in this country as long as men's attention was constantly directed to the useless warfare of pulling down, and setting up, of one Idol of Party after another…The masses, in their political organisations, were taught to look up to "Great Men" (or to men professing "greatness") rather than to great Principles. We wished therefore to establish a political school of self-instruction among them, in which they should accustom themselves to examine great social and political principles, and by their publicity and free discussion, help to form a sound and healthful public opinion throughout the country...We have not wished, neither do we desire to be, Leaders, as we believe that the principles we advocate have been retarded, injured or betrayed by Leadership, more than by the open hostility of opponents. Leadership too often generates confiding bigotry, or political indifference on the one hand, or selfish ambition, on the other. The principles WE advocate are those of the peoples' happiness, and for these to be justly established, each man must Know and feel his Rights and Duties. He must be prepared to guard the one; and perform the other with cheerfulness. And if Nature has given to one Man superior faculties, to express or execute the general wish, he only performs his Duty at the Mandate of his bretheren; he is therefore the "Leader" of none, but the equal of ALL."

"An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought." - ANON

The Curse of Xawara (1998)

 From the June 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tragedy being enacted in Northern Brazil appears to be moving towards its last act. It is a tragedy that has been enacted throughout the history of private property.

The fate of indigenous people invaded by a more economically developed society makes a sorrowful catalogue of human misery. The Native Americans slaughtered in the United States in the last century, the butchery of the Aborigines in Australia and now the destruction of the Yanomami people in Brazil.

It has been estimated that there were over 100,000 Yanomami roaming the watershed of the Rio Branco and Orinoco rivers in the Northern Amazon basis when the Spanish colonises reached the New World. It is reckoned that they have lived in these tropical rain forests for something like 40,000 years but it is now though that only 22,000 of them survive, 9,400 in Brazil and the rest in Venezuela.

Unlike many other tribal groups, the Yanomami have managed to resist integration with modern capitalism. Portuguese exploiters, who attracted indigenous people into their settlements and into slavery, failed to lure the Yanomami from their traditional communal culture. Likewise, early missionaries failed to convert them to their guilt-ridden religious opium. The Yanomami preferred inhaling the Yakuna (a hallucinogenic tree extract) and practising their traditional rites and ceremonies. Modern anthropologists consider them to be one of the last remaining societies on earth that still live in kinship groups and inhabit "malocas" (communal huts). They exist on a staple diet of cassava gathered from their manioc plantations and game from the jungle, such as monkeys and turtles. They live the semi-nomadic life that once was the norm for all of humankind. They are a living example of humanity's communal past. Tragically, they appear doomed. Modern capitalism will probably see to that.

Many of them were killed in the 1970s when the Brazilian military government, in an attempt to open up the amazon to gold speculators and cattle barons, built the first highway through the Yanomami's terrain. The road was never finished but thousands of the Yanomami were. They were killed by the infections, such as Yellow Fever, brought by the road builders. The 1990s were to see an increase in the encroachment of capitalism in their way of life. Their reservation of 9,000 square kilometres was reduced to 2,000 and the government allowed another 256 square kilometres of their land to be exploited for gold mining in 1990. Little attention is paid to "human rights" when capital becomes involved. Some 45,000 gold miners have poured into their land, polluting their rivers with mercury, blowing up villages, and shooting children (they call them "monkeys") out of the trees for sport.

The recent forest fires have devastated even more of their forests. Many of these fires were started deliberately to clear land for cattle. The Yanomami must have to forest to live, without it they must die. There are laws in Brazil that debar the exploitation of the shrinking rain forest area that the Yanomami inhabit, but these are largely ignored by a government desperate to advance the development of capitalism in Brazil.

These last remnants of a former stage of human society have at present little chance of survival. Neldo Campos, the state governor, voiced the insatiable voice of modern capitalism when he said; "There is too much land for the Indians, and the devastating economy of the state will make it inevitable that hungry colonisers will want to move in on the indigenous reserves."

The Yanomami language is a linguistically isolated one with many dialects, making anthropologists believe that they once occupied a much larger area than at present. Their word for disease and epidemics is "Xawara" which they see as an evil spirit that lives in the bottom of the world. They have the same word for gold. They see the "nabebe" (white men") as having an insane desire to bring disease and gold from the bottom of the world.

The working class of the so-called "civilised" world must establish World Socialism very soon, otherwise, the men, women and children of the Yanomami people have little hope of survival. After all, as workers, we also suffer from the curse of Xawara.

Richard Donnelly

The emancipation of the working class is an act of self-emancipation.

“If you fight you won't always win. If you don't fight you will always lose.” – Bob Crow

It seems bad for socialists. It looks as if we live in is an age of inhumanity. All around, there are world crises with men and women appearing to be unable to do much about it. Resources that should be used to house the homeless and feed the hungry are squandered on ever more costly wars. Our present society is founded upon the exploitation of the propertyless class by the propertied. This exploitation is such that the propertied (capitalists) take for themselves, i.e., steal the amount of new values (products) which exceeds the price of the wage-labourer. The owning class sucks the body and soul from the propertyless, for the price of the mere cost of existence (wages).

While the workers are not class-conscious – that is, knowing and understanding their class subjection and its cause, and therefore knowing and understanding their class interest in overthrowing the institutions which keep them so – this is not so with the capitalist. They are thoroughly class-conscious. And as Warren Buffet has pointed out, it is they who are winning the class-war. But all is not yet lost. Although the idea of socialism is presently confined to a small minority in the working-class movement, at times of great crises and upheavals, when people are thrown into confrontations with their ruling class and strive to seek a way out of a world of despair and desperation they will look towards the revolutionary alternative of socialism. But socialism is not something which comes ‘from above’. It will not be achieved, on workers’ behalf, by an enlightened elite in a vanguard party engaging in minority action. Working people will play a purely passive role, looking on while others transform society for them. Only workers can liberate themselves. No one can do it for them. In Marx’s words, socialism is ‘the self-emancipation of the working class’.

Socialism involves the transfer from present day private ownership to common ownership of all those agencies of wealth production necessary for supply of life’s necessaries for the whole people. The root basis of this is found in the fact that private ownership of the means of wealth production fails most lamentably to provide all the people with the commodities of life. Let that fact never be forgotten, private enterprise utterly fails men and women in obtaining for themselves a sufficiency of the necessaries of life. Capitalists own and control industrial establishments in every manufacturing country, and the means of obtaining trade is by competing in the world’s market against all other capitalists in the same trade also seeking a share of the market; to compete effectively, they must place the commodity on the market as cheaply as, or cheaper than, other competitors. In order to do this they must ever have regard to cheapening the cost of production.

The mission of socialism is so to organise production that wealth can be so abundantly produced as to free mankind from want and the fear of want, from the brute necessity of a life of arduous toil in the production of necessaries of life. We want the people to directly and collectively own the industries, utilities, transport systems, natural resources etc., and democratically decide how these vital means of living should be used. With genuine socialism, workers aren’t exploited, because production is purely for use—not profits, which force employees to work much longer and harder than necessary, often in unwanted jobs. With production for use, there is free access to food, goods, electricity, trains, health care etc. as the means for providing these then belong to the people. You don’t buy what you already own! With genuine socialism, there’d be no inequality, no unemployment, no homeless, no poverty, no debts, no lack of much-needed health care, and no deceitful politicians! Food can be of the highest quality. The competition for profits drags standards down since firms must cut workers and corners, which, inevitably, means the cheapest ingredients and most vile practices end up being used.

Some say socialist ideas as Utopian, a good idea but people are too greedy, too selfish for it to work in practice. They forget that each and every day we work together co-operatively on a massive scale. They forget all the solidarity that is expressed in our daily lives. Socialists are concerned with enlarging and developing the individuality and the potentiality of every human being. The capture of political power should not be regarded as an end in itself, but rather as a means of freeing and emancipating human beings from the poverty, suffering, and the oppression. In order to acquire the basic democratic socialist values of liberty, equality, and fraternity into terms of practical politics, we will require to break away from the practice of clinging to outmoded concepts and outdated dogmas. We have to reconstruct socialism as a vision of freedom. Our politics cannot be confined to revolutionary rhetoric.