Socialism is for today

The future, if there is to be a future, will need to be socialist. The apathy of the world's working class has contributed to keeping intact the barbaric and rapacious system of capitalism. People do not believe there is an alternative to capitalism, so capitalism keeps on going.  Socialists, however, are concerned for the suffering of humans and look for a solution to this.

Many on the Left claim to advocate a society based on cooperation and production for use, a sustainable society where production is in harmony with the environment and affairs are run in a decentralised and democratic manner. They argue that only in such a system can ecological problems such as pollution and global warming be solved. However, on further reading, it is perfectly clear that this sustainable society is not socialism, for the continuance of money and the market is assumed, together with private ownership.  Their declared aims appear to be desirable these are contradicted by a fatal flaw in all green policies. They stand for the continuation of the market system. This must mean the continuation of the capitalist system which is the cause of the problems of pollution in the first place. Their ultimate aim is a participatory economy, based on smaller-scale enterprise, with a greatly-reduced dependence on the world market. What is being proposed is the abolition both of the world market, with the competition for resources and sales it engenders, and of existing centralised states, and their replacement by a worldwide network of smaller human communities providing for their own needs. This will involve a steady-state economy based on maximum conservation of materials and energy. But these lofty goals are firmly wedded to a form of capitalism, holding a belief that capitalism can be reformed so as to be compatible with achieving an environmentally sustainable society. They are setting out to impose on capitalism something that is incompatible with its nature. Competitive pressures to minimise costs and maximise sales, profit-seeking and blind economic growth, with all their destructive effects on the rest of nature, are built-in to capitalism. Very few social activists reject capitalism. Most are in favour of some form of capitalism

Socialists are seeking ultimately to establish a “steady-state economy” or “zero-growth” society which corresponds to what Marx called “simple reproduction” – a situation where human needs were in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them. Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilized at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods.  People must change the social system to a community where each contributes to the whole to the best of his or her ability and takes from the common fund of produce what he or she needs. 

Socialism is a money-free society in which use values would be produced from other use values. Socialism is a decentralised or polycentric society that is self-regulating, self-adjusting and self-correcting, from below and not from the top. It is not a command economy but a responsive one. Socialism is essentially a question of organising productive units into a productive system functioning smoothly to supply the useful things which people had indicated they needed, both for their individual and for their collective consumption. What socialism would establish would be a rationalised network of planned links between users and suppliers; between final users and their immediate suppliers, between these latter and their suppliers, and so on down the line to those who extract the raw materials from nature. The responsibility of these industries would be to ensure the supply of a particular kind of product either, in the case of consumer goods, to distribution centres or, in the case of goods used to produce other goods, to productive units or other industries. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated and not to be confused with the central planning concept) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities and capital. In socialism, wealth would have simply a specific use value.

 Production and distribution in socialism would be a system of coordinated linked chains between users and suppliers, enabling resources and materials to flow smoothly from one productive unit to another, and ultimately to the final user, in response to information flowing in the opposite direction originating from final users. The productive system would thus be set in motion from the consumer end, as individuals and communities took steps to satisfy their self-defined needs. Socialist production is self-regulating production for use. Simply put, in socialism there would be no barter economy or monetary system. It would be an economy based on need. Therefore, a consumer would have a need, and there would be a communication system set in place that relays that need to the producer. The producer creates the product, and then send the product back to the consumer, and the need would be satisfied.

The factor that critically decides the production of commodities within capitalism is the judgement that enterprises make about whether they can be sold in the market. Obviously, consumers buy in the market that they perceive as being for their needs. But whether or not the transaction takes place is not decided by needs but by the ability to pay. So the realisation of profit in the market determines both the production of goods and also the distribution of goods by various enterprises. In the market system the motive of production, the organisation of production, and the distribution of goods are inseparable parts of the same economic process: the realisation of profit and the accumulation of capital. The economic pressure on capital is that of accumulation, the alternative is bankruptcy. The production and distribution of goods are entirely subordinate to the pressure on capital to accumulate. The economic signals of the market are not signals to produce useful things. They signal the prospects of profit and capital accumulation, If there is a profit to be made then production will take place; if there is no prospect of profit, then production will not take place. Profit not need is the deciding factor. Under capitalism what appear to be production decisions are in fact decisions to go for profit in the market.

The function of cost/pricing is to enable a business enterprise to calculate its costs, to fix its profit expectations within a structure of prices, to regulate income against expenditure and, ultimately, to regulate the exploitation of its workers. Unfortunately, prices can only reflect the wants of those who can afford to actually buy what economists call “effective demand”. – and not real demand for something from those without the wherewithal – the purchasing power – to buy the product (or even to express a preference for one product over another. I may want a sirloin steak but I can only afford a hamburger ) .

Socialist determination of needs begins with consumer needs and then flows throughout distribution and on to each required part of the structure of production. Socialism will make economically-unencumbered production decisions as a direct response to needs. With production for use, the starting point will be needs. By the replacement of exchange economy by common ownership basically what would happen is that wealth would cease to take the form of exchange value, so that all the expressions of this social relationship peculiar to an exchange economy, such as money and prices, would automatically disappear. In other words, goods would cease to have an economic value and would become simply physical objects which human beings could use to satisfy some want or other. (One reason why socialism holds a decisive productive advantage over capitalism is by eliminating the need to tie up vast quantities of resources and labour implicated in a system of monetary/pricing accounting.)

Yes, socialism is a real alternative. 

Lothian Socialist Discussion (23 Aug)

The World to Win, A Planet to Save

• Wednesday, August 23, 

  7:30 PM
• Autonomous Centre Edinburgh (ACE)

  17 West Montgomery Place, 

  Edinburgh

  EH7 5HA 
• The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of the worker keeping up the struggle over wages or to resisting cuts. We welcome any upsurge in the militancy and organisation of our class. But we also know, from bitter experience, that work of an altogether quieter, patient, more political kind is also needed.  It is the responsibility of the Socialist Party to challenge capitalist apologists and pseudo-socialists in the battle of ideas and that requires talking to and debating with our fellow workers. We recognise the necessity of workers' solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. But to struggle for higher wages and better conditions is not revolutionary in any true sense of the word, and the essential weapons in this struggle are not inherently revolutionary either. It demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. Participation in the class struggle does not automatically make workers class conscious. Militancy on the industrial field is just that and does not necessarily lead to political militancy, but ebbs and flows as labour market conditions change – and militants in the work-places can in no way count on their supporters on the political field. 
• We do say workers should sit back and do nothing but wait for socialism to arrive, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. But it becomes clear that this is a secondary, defensive activity. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution into the common ownership. Only by conscious and democratic action will such a socialist system of society be established. This means urging workers to want something more than what they once thought was "enough". The Socialist Party is sometimes accused of wanting "too much" because our aim is free access and common ownership. The task of the Socialist Party is to show workers that in fact, it is a practical proposition. To transform this desire into an immediacy for the working class. The Socialist Party would argue that it is about engaging people with the idea of socialism, to talk about a revolution in social relations, and that if workers are already involved in an actual struggle they would be more receptive to the idea more effective it would become. But not inevitably. There is nothing automatic about social change, it has to be struggled for.
• The workers' acceptance of capitalist political and social ideas, like their other ideas, is learned from other people--their parents, their school-teachers, their workmates, the media--and so it follows therefore that the struggle against capitalist ideology must also be a struggle to spread socialist ideas - a role taken on by the Socialist Party.  
• Socialist ideas arise when workers begin to reflect on the general position of the working class within capitalist society. They do then have to be communicated to other workers, but not from outside the working class as a whole. They have to be communicated to other workers who, from their own experience and/or from absorbing the past experience of the working class, have come to a socialist understanding.  
• It's not a question of enlightened outsiders bringing socialist ideas to the "ignorant" workers but of socialist-minded workers spreading socialist ideas amongst their fellow workers. We see socialist consciousness as emerging from a combination of two things - people's experience of capitalism and the problems it inevitably creates but also the activity of socialists in making hearing the case for socialism a part of that experience.
• The Socialist Party has never been in the business to win popularity contests and jumps on any old band-wagon for the sake of recruitment as many other political organisations which have now disappeared, leaving no lasting impact. The fact of the longevity of the Socialist Party as a political body based on agreed goals, methods and organisational principles seems to suggest that we indeed represent some strand of socialist thought that some people are drawn towards.
• The Socialist Party can be proud of its long history in exposing the oxymoron of the "workers state" and attacking the concepts of Leninism (and its spawn, Stalinism, and Trotskyism).
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Fractured Britain

Public support for fracking has fallen to 16%, with opposition at 33%. But it also reported a lack of knowledge of the technology, with 48% of people neither supporting nor opposing it.

Fracking for gas will not work in the UK, according to research carried out at Heriot-Watt university. Prof John Underhill, Heriot-Watt's chief scientist and professor of exploration geoscience, said the geology of the British Isles will not support it. The fracking debate, he has claimed, is 55 million years too late. He said the rocks containing shale deposits in the UK are riddled with fractures. Fifty-five million years ago the rocks on which the British Isles stand were pushed up against continental Europe. They began to tilt. Subjected to enormous forces, the rocks didn't just lift but folded and fractured. 

A tracery of black lines show where fault lines shatter some of the UK's biggest shale deposits: West Lothian, Bowland Shale in Lancashire, the Weald Basin. His research on the influence of tectonic plates on the UK suggested that the shale formations have been lifted, warped and cooled by tectonic action.

 "For extraction to occur," he says, "you need a simple geology in the subsurface. So you can drill and then drill horizontally for long distances with confidence. Not go up, down, around. If you've got a fractured subsurface and something that's uplifted, you've switched off the kitchen in which oil and gas is generated - and you've broken the rock so it's not continuous." 

Successful gas extraction requires shale to be underground at just the right temperature and pressure. That's how it happens in the US. A drill digs deep, then turns to push and frack horizontally along the shale deposit. And that, according to Prof Underhill, is what can't happen here. Because Britain is broken, geologically speaking. "The complexity of the shale gas basins hasn't been fully appreciated so the opportunity has been hyped." He said: "I'm neutral about fracking, so long as it doesn't cause environmental damage. But the debate is between those who think fracking is dangerous and those who think it will help the economy - and no-one's paying enough attention to the geology. Prof Underhill said: "For fracking to work, the shale should be thick enough, sufficiently porous, and have the right mineralogy. The organic matter must have been buried to a sufficient depth and heated to the degree that it produces substantial amounts of gas or oil."

A new type of revolution

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a working-class party and is therefore concerned to do everything possible to arouse the class it represents from indifference into organised action against the present form of industrial organisation to which can be traced the evils under which the workers suffer to-day. No successful conflict with capitalism can be entered into except it be based upon a clear understanding of the class position.  Upon this basis alone can be built the fighting organisations, political and industrial, of the working-class which by concentrating upon the conquest of political power and the substitution of the common ownership and control of the means of life for the present private ownership thereof, shall achieve the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the socialist cooperative commonwealth.

For this task the workers must acquire the consciousness which can enable them to do so. This consciousness must comprise, first of all, a knowledge of their class position. They must realise that, while they produce all wealth, their share of it will not, under the present system, be more than sufficient to enable them to reproduce their efficiency as wealth producers. They must realise that also, under the system they will remain subject to all the misery of unemployment, the anxiety of the threat of unemployment, and the deprivations of poverty. They must understand the implications of their position – that the only hope of any real betterment lies in abolishing the social system which reduces them to mere sellers of their labor power, exploited by the capitalists. A class which understands all this is class-conscious. It has only to find the means and methods by which to proceed, in order to become the instrument of revolution and of change .

Class consciousness was never more needed than now. To the socialist, class-consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other. The class-conscious worker knows where s/he stands in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class. Their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. Class-conscious people need no leaders. The single, simple fact which all working people have to learn is that capitalism causes capitalism's problems, so that the remedy – the only remedy – is to abolish capitalism. In that knowledge they must take hold of the powers of government – for one purpose only: that the rule of class by class shall end. Socialism is not a benevolently-administered capitalism: it is a different social system. Reform is no answer, even though at times – rare times – it benefits working people. The reformer has agreed that capitalism shall continue, and is merely trying to alleviate its worst effects. Has poverty been abolished by the reformers? Ask the old, ask the unemployed or the homeless , or the sick. Has life been made more satisfying by the Welfare State?

Marx expected the working class to develop from a mere economic category (a"class in itself" ) into a revolutionary political actor ("class for itself")—but at least the process started even if it did get stuck on route as it were. A "class consciousness" did develop among particular sections of the working class but this did not develop into a revolutionary socialist consciousness. It stopped at trade-unionism and Labourism, the idea and practice of the working class as a class within capitalism but which wanted a better deal within this system, not to replace it with a classless and exploitation-free society. So, even if a working class "for itself" has never developed, a class consciousness of a lesser sort did.
Marx believed as the workers gained more experience of the class struggle and the workings of capitalism, it would become more consciously socialist and democratically organised by the workers themselves. The emergence of socialist understanding out of the experience of the workers could thus be said to be “spontaneous” in the sense that it would require no intervention by people outside the working class to bring it about (not that such people could not take part in this process, but their participation was not essential or crucial). Socialist propaganda and agitation would indeed be necessary but would come to be carried out by workers themselves whose socialist ideas would have been derived from an interpretation of their class experience of capitalism. The end result would be an independent movement of the socialist-minded and democratically organised working class aimed at winning control of political power in order to abolish capitalism. As Marx and Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto:-“the proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority”.

This in fact was Marx’s conception of the workers’ party - a mass democratic movement of the working class with a view to establishing socialism. The self-emancipation of the working class, as advocated by Marx, remains the agenda .

Working class action must be revolutionary. The workers of Britain have common cause with the workers of every other country. They are members of an international class, faced with the same problems, holding the same interests once they are conscious of them. As class consciousness grows amongst the workers in all lands, co-operative action will be planned. It will not stop at the organisation of marches and demonstrations . It will be co-operation to speed the abolition of capitalism.

The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of the worker keeping up the struggle to maintain the wage-scale, resisting cuts, etc. If he always laid down to the demands of his exploiters without resistance he would not be worth his salt as a man, or fit for waging the class struggle to put an end to exploitation. More and more of the workers are forced to realise that their interests are opposed to those of the owning and ruling class, in fact that the continuation of this rule spells disaster to society generally. The class war is far from over. It can only end with the dispossession of the owning minority and the consequent disappearance of classes and class-divided society.

Why we must have socialism

With confidence in the correctness of our political position, enthusiasm for the socialist cause we champion, and strong in conviction that comes from understanding and knowledge, we send fraternal greetings to our comrades the world over and restate anew our unwavering determination to prosecute relentless class war against all the forces of capitalism in whatever guise they come; and pledge ourselves to struggle against working-class oppression and against exploitation exposing mystifications and obscurantism that deludes the working-class and creates impotency. That any organisation to deserve the support of the working-class must strenuously work on behalf of that class, and that class alone. The Socialist Party will keep in the forefront the red flag under which the workers of all nations must muster themselves if they would win to their freedom; to keep that flag unfurled and boldly held aloft and to never lower it; to march by the undeviating road that leads direct to our goal, turning neither to the right nor to the left to curry favour with ignorance or to secure advantage at the cost of principle — to do all that men and women may to educate and organise the working-class.

 Capitalism has accumulated more resources than human history has ever witnessed, yet appears powerless to overcome poverty and starvation? What are the mechanisms by which affluence for a minority seems to breed hardship and indignity for the many? Why does wealth seem to go hand in hand with squalor? Is there is something in the nature of capitalism which generates deprivation and inequality? Capitalism has developed human powers and capacities beyond all previous measure. Yet it had not used those capacities to set men and women free of fruitless toil. On the contrary, it had forced them to labour harder than ever. We sweat every bit as hard as our ancestors. This, Karl Marx considered, was not because of natural scarcity. It was because of the peculiarly contradictory way in which the capitalist system generated its fabulous wealth. Equality for some meant inequality for others, and freedom for some brought oppression and unhappiness for many. The system's voracious pursuit of power and profit had turned foreign nations into enslaved colonies, and human beings into the playthings of economic forces beyond their control. It had blighted the planet with pollution and mass starvation and scarred it with atrocious wars.
Were not Marx's ideas responsible for despotism, mass murder, labour camps and the loss of freedom for millions? The truth is that Marx was no more responsible for the monstrous oppression of the "communist" world than Jesus was responsible for the Inquisition. Marx would have scorned the idea that socialism could take root in impoverished, backward societies like Russia and China. If it did, then the result would simply be what he called "generalised scarcity," by which he means that everyone would now be deprived, not just the poor. It would mean a re-cycling of "the old filthy business"—or, in less tasteful translation, "the same old shit." Marxism is a theory of how developed capitalist nations might use their immense resources to achieve prosperity for their people. It is not a programme by which countries totally bereft of material resources, a democratic civic culture and heritage, or a skilled, educated work force might catapult themselves into the modern age. Marx was not foolish enough to imagine that socialism could be built in such countries without more-advanced nations flying to their aid. And that meant that the common people of those advanced nations had to wrest the means of production from their rulers and place them at the service of the wretched of the earth. Marx's goal is leisure, not labour.
Marx was not some utopian. He believed that the world could be made a considerably better place. In this, he was a realist, not an idealist. Those with their heads in the sand are those who deny that there can be any radical change. The whole of human history disproves this viewpoint. A man who witnessed the horrors of England in the midst of the industrial revolution was unlikely to be starry-eyed about his fellows. He understood that there are more than enough resources on the planet to resolve most of our material problems. Socialism does not depend on some miraculous change in human nature.
The way we go about our business, the way we are organised in our daily life is reflected in the way we think about things and the sort of world we created. The institutions we build, the philosophies we adhere to, the prevailing ideas of the time, the culture of society, are all determined to some extent or another by the economic structure of society. This did not mean that they were totally determined but were quite clearly a spin-off from the economic base of society. The political system, the legal system, the family, the press, the education system were all rooted, in the final analysis, to the class nature of society, which in turn was a reflection of the economic base. Marx maintained that the economic base or infrastructure generated or had built upon it a superstructure that kept it functioning. The education system, as part of the superstructure, therefore, is a reflection of the economic base and served to reproduce it. This did not mean that education and teaching is a sinister plot by the ruling class to ensure that it kept its privileges and its domination over the rest of the population. There are no conspirators hatching devious schemes. It simply means that the institutions of society, like education, are reflections of the world created by human activity and that ideas arise from and reflect the material conditions and circumstances in which they are generated. Some of those who defended feudalism against capitalist values in the late Middle Ages preached that capitalism would never work because it was contrary to human nature. Some capitalists now say the same about socialism. No doubt there is a tribe somewhere in the Amazon Basin that believes no social order can survive in which a man is allowed to marry his deceased brother's wife. We all tend to absolutise our own conditions.
Marx explained that "each new class which puts itself in the place of the one ruling before it, is compelled, simply in order to achieve its aims, to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society i.e. ..to give its ideas the form of universality and to represent them as the only rational and universally valid ones". Ideas become presented as if they are universal, neutral, common sense. However, more subtly, we find concepts such as freedom, democracy, liberty or phrases such as "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay" being bandied around by opinion makers as if they were not contentious. They are, in Marxist terms, ideological constructs, in so far as they are ideas serving as weapons for social interests. They are put forward for people to accept in order to prop up the system. Ideas are not neutral. They are determined by the existing relations of production, by the economic structure of society. Ideas change according to the interests of the dominant class in society. Gramsci coined the phrase "ideological hegemony" to describe the influence the ruling class has over what counts as knowledge. For Marxists, this hegemony is exercised through institutions such as education, or the media. Again the important thing to note about this is that it is not to be regarded as part of a conspiracy by the ruling class. It is a natural effect of the way in which what we count as knowledge is socially constructed. The ideology of democracy and liberty, beliefs about freedom of the individual and competition are generated historically by the mode of production through the agency of the dominant class. They are not neutral ideas serving the common good but ruling class ideas accepted by everyone as if they were for the common good.
Marx was against people setting themselves up as superior to ‘ordinary’ workers as if they and only they had the ability, foresight, and knowledge to discern what socialist society would be like. This elitism had no place in the socialist movement for Marx. Marx was keen to emphasise the creativity and spontaneity of the drive towards socialism, and to chart and assess the practical experiments of workers in this endeavour. Thus, for example, he enthusiastically followed the course of and wrote about the Paris Commune of 1871, where workers’ power was manifested in novel and exciting ways. The tragedy of labour is that we labour to create a vast, global social structure powered by capital (which depends upon us for its existence) that oppresses us, and limits and constrains human and social possibilities. We work to build our own cages. The struggle for communism is both the struggle against the constraints and limitations of capitalist social life and for a new form of human society. Alienation, boredom, the length of the working day, and so on can be key issues. Explaining the mode of exploitation in the capitalist labour process would be essential – how it is that value and surplus value is produced. The exploration of the perverted form of human life in capitalist society, and the ways that human life is being capitalised (the human as a form of capital – human capital). Any ‘anti-capitalist’ revolution worthy of the name would have to break with the totalising and all-consuming ‘logic’ of capital from day one of any revolutionary transformation. The ‘education of the future’ is part of the struggle for a new society
Marx believed in the uniqueness of the individual. The idea permeates his writings from end to end. He had a passion for the sensual. His so-called materialism is at root about the human body. Again and again, he speaks of the just society as one in which men and women will be able to realize their distinctive powers and capacities in their own distinctive ways. His goal is pleasurable self-fulfillment. To achieve true self-fulfillment, human beings must find it in and through one another. It is not just a question of each doing his or her own thing in grand isolation from others. That would not even be possible. The other must become the ground of one's own self-realization, at the same time as he or she provides the condition for one's own. At the interpersonal level, this is known as love. At the political level, it is known as socialism, a set of institutions which will allow this reciprocity to happen to the greatest possible extent, a socialist commonwealth, in which each person's participation in the project augments the welfare of all the others and vice versa. This is not a question of some saintly self-sacrifice. The process is built into the structure of the institutions.

ORGAN-ISED CHAOS (A Fantasy-Part 2) - weekly poem

ORGAN-ISED CHAOS (A Fantasy-Part 2)

A non-pc response to the Government's proposals

to allow people to self-determine their gender.

I'm Richard also known as 'Jade',

A 'Dirty Dick' am I;

The Government should have me 'spayed',

Cos as a 'woman' I'm 'self-maid',

And joined the WI.

I've sneaked inside their ladies loo,

And it's a trifle weird;

My 'gender change' seems quite taboo,

They see me and the air turns blue--

They've set light to my beard!

I'm puzzled by their swearing fits,

Or why each loo door shuts;

They view my drag-show booby bits,

And Cheongsam dress with slinky slits,

Then kick me in the nuts!

It's great since women's rights began,

That we have come this far;

Although I'm sad, as born a man, (1)

I would have liked to be a Gran,

But couldn't burn my bra.

Germaine Greer, therefore, should withdraw,

And not sound like a prick;

Because she is a sexist bore,

For saying women are much more,

Than just a cut-off dick. (2)

And if such 'ops' make most men wince,

Because such surgery hurts;

The Government's scheme could convince,

Usain Bolt to run women's sprints, (3)

And Scotsman to wear skirts!  

(1) Paris Green (born Peter Laing)  a pre-op transgender murderer, was

transferred to a man's prison after having sex with the female inmates.

(2) Germaine Greer said: “Just because you lop off your dick

and then wear a dress doesn’t make you a f***ing woman”.

(3) Martial arts fighter, Fallon Fox, a former man, gave her

female opponent such a beating that Fox lost her licence.

© Richard Layton

How it might happen

Socialism is the recognition of the suppression and oppression of the working class under the present form of society, based as it is upon their exploitation and subjection. Working-class emancipation can only be achieved by a collective effort, organised and aimed at the conquest of the political power.

 Many believe that our capitalist society is the only world possible. The truth, though is tragically plain. Capitalism involves the perennial affliction poverty. It doesn’t matter that an individual or family needs a decent food or a comfortable house if they do not have enough of the rationing vouchers that capitalism calls money, then tough. Capitalism has one driving force, and that is to make profit, not to supply resources to prevent pressing social need
Capitalism is run in the interests of those who own the means of making wealth. The working class, who own nothing in the way of creating wealth, have no choice but to work for the capitalist class for wages or salaries, and through their labour create every last penny of profit for the privileged class. A caring, people-based society would readily see the solution: apply the skills and resources to the problem. That will not happen in our capitalist society, for the missing ingredient of profit cannot be made in sufficient quantities.  It makes no difference that society wishes to do something about it, for the capitalist rule is No Profit, No Solution.

Capitalism runs governments, not the other way round. Reforms are a redistribution of poverty, not wealth. And reforms are reversible. Remember the Welfare State? Real socialists do know the solution and it’s the only one that tackles the real problem, not merely the symptoms. Capitalism needs to go.

The fundamental position of the SPGB is that "Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul] . “- (Engels 1895) .

There is no easier road to socialism than the education of the workers in socialism and their organisation to establish it by democratic methods. Shortcuts have proved to be cul de sacs. The Party’s case is that socialism will be established by the conscious democratic political action of a majority of workers using the electoral machinery, which in this country means parliament. Only a democratically elected socialist majority can introduce socialism after the capture of the machinery of government. Should an anti-socialist, undemocratic minority attempt to sabotage or disrupt social organisation and administration, a socialist society necessarily take such action as was requisite to ensure social harmony. the democratic state has been forced, against its will, to bring into being methods, institutions, and procedures which have left open the road to power for the workers to travel upon when they know what to do and how to do it. In this country the central institution through which power is exercised is Parliament. To merely send working class nominees there to control it is not sufficient. The purpose must be to accomplish a revolutionary reorganisation of society, a revolution, in its basis, which will put everybody on an equal footing as participants in the production, distribution, and consumption of social requirements as well as in control of society itself. So that all may participate equally, democracy is an essential condition. Free discussion, full and free access to information, means to implement the wishes of the majority which have been arrived at after free decision, and means to alter decisions if the wishes of the majority change. In most of the less developed countries political democracy does not yet exist. The governments there, whether representing the old landowning or the emerging capitalist class, stifle criticism and threaten the organisation of opposition parties and even of trade unions as plots to overthrow them. In such circumstances socialist activity is very difficult and the workers (being only a minority of the population), besides trying to organise into a socialist party ought also to struggle to get the freedom to organise into trade unions and win elementary political rights. As in the advanced capitalist countries, however, this should still involve opposition to all other parties in order that the socialist issue shall be kept free from confusion.

 Ordinarily industrial action, that is, action by trade unionists on the industrial field is circumscribed firstly by capitalist control of state power, secondly by the fact that the capitalists with their wealth and their ability to rely on the backing of the state power can always defeat a strike if they choose to fight to a finish, thirdly by the lack of socialist consciousness in the great majority of the workers and their consequent preoccupation with sectional issues and inability to take a class view. The minority of the working class who are in trade unions and the workers outside alike vote predominantly for capitalist parties in elections and look to these parties to try to solve working class problems within the framework of capitalism. The strike normally operates through financial pressure on employers by interrupting production and the flow of profits and is correspondingly ineffective in times of bad trade and heavy unemployment when indeed the employers may themselves choose to halt production by lockouts.

Various organisations claiming to be socialist but working only to secure a modification of the policy of a government within capitalism, or to secure the election of a Labour Government to introduce measures of state capitalism, advocate so-called "political strikes" to force a government to change its policy or to resign. One of the obvious weaknesses of such movements is that as they are directed against one government, which large numbers of workers support at elections, and in favour of an alternative government, large numbers of trade union and other workers who will support an industrial strike will not support a "political" one.

 "Political" strikes are not new. In the nearly two centuries of continuous trade union organisation in this country they have been advocated and tried on a large number of occasions, in particular to prevent a tightening up of trade union law. Not one of them has ever succeeded in preventing the government from passing trade union legislation which it was bent on introducing. Recognising the facts of the situation trade unions have been far more effective in finding ways round hampering laws, especially as there have always been some employers who have chosen to connive at breaches of the law and have used their influence to make laws inoperative.  In the years 1970-1973 there have been a dozen or more "political" strikes directed mainly to prevent the passage of the Industrial Relations Act or the payment of fines under the Act, or against the Government's wages policy Act and rising food prices. At the cost of about £30 million in wages, they achieved absolutely nothing.  Serious "political" strikes to overthrow a government come up against the whole state power and many of those who advocate them do so as part of a policy designed to get the workers to engage in the suicidal tactic of armed conflict with the police and armed forces.

We represent the political interests of the working class as a whole. We are opposed to capitalism as a whole, high profits or low profits, high wages or low wages. Unfortunately, there is the belief of many individual workers that the most positive step they can take in life is to struggle constantly for higher wages. This is no end in itself, and while workers persist solely in such a struggle and ignore socialist ideas they help to perpetuate capitalism.

The Socialist Party's distinctive view of the conditions that must exist and the step that must be taken before the establishment of socialism can be inaugurated is that there must be a predominantly socialist working class and that it must “organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local", in order that the machinery of government, including the armed forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation. This is based on the Marxist conception of history that every class struggle necessarily becomes a political struggle, in which the subordinate class seeks to wrest the dominant state power from the hands of the old ruling class.

 For so long as capitalist political parties and their agents control the law-making bodies, the armed forces, courts and police, the administrative and tax-gathering departments, local councils, etc, all organisations and actions, whether industrial or political, are strictly limited in their scope because whenever the government decides that a vital capitalist interest is seriously threatened it will use all of its powers to protect capitalist property and privilege. The government's ability to take such action depends on the willingness of the workers in government administration, the armed forces and police, etc to carry out orders. When the socialist movement becomes much stronger among the working class generally it will increasingly influence the outlook and sympathies of workers in the administration, armed forces, etc and the government's freedom of action will be correspondingly lessened.

After the process of establishing socialism has been completed the idea that capitalism might be re-established is remote from reality, nevertheless, opponents of the Party ask us to consider how socialist society would deal with an attempt to achieve this by force. A minority who may wish to return to capitalism will be free to propagate their views and to organise democratically to win over the majority, but they will operate at the tremendous disadvantage that they will already have lost "the battle of ideas". There remains the hypothesis of a small minority who might attempt to sabotage or disrupt social organisation and administration.

The control of the armed forces during this period will be an effective deterrent without these forces having necessarily to be used. The state machinery, including the armed forces, will have passed out of the control of the capitalists and come under social control; Socialists will constitute the majority in all occupations in which the working class predominate -- in production, transport, communications, police and armed
forces. The supporters of capitalism will have been reduced to a minority and the mass of society will be made up of people who either want or accept the new system. The overwhelming mass of the people will participate, or fall in line with, the process of reorganisation (in other words that while the workers will participate in the movement and probably individual capitalists, the capitalists as a whole will realise that the game is up, as they have lost the power of effective resistance.