The end of utopia?

NO MORE UTOPIAS—this was the bold headline above an article in the European section of the Guardian on 27 September written by Norberto Bobbio and which had originally appeared in the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

Bobbio thinks that the collapse of what he calls "the communist regimes" in eastern Europe and, particularly Russia, means the end of communism as an idea which has persisted in one form or another for 2000 years.

And he seems to know what communism (we also call it socialism—the two words mean the same) means:

    "The communist ideal is about forming a society which is radically different from any that has gone before, a society based on the elimination of private property. The latter is condemned as being the cause of all the ills afflicting mankind, from minor disputes over boundaries to the great wars that have turned the whole world upside down. It is also about setting up a regime based on common ownership, if not of all goods, at least of those that form the major source of wealth and of man's dominion over man. Right or wrong this is communism".

That is sound enough but he then spoils it by claiming that the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia in 1917 was "the first major attempt to achieve a communist society in the genuine sense of the term, a society in which private property would be abolished and replaced by the almost total collectivisation of a country with a population of millions".

This is nonsense because even Lenin recognised that socialism was impossible in such a backward country as Russia. All the Bolsheviks could do was to hope that revolutions in the developed European countries would come to their aid and, in the meantime, they would begin to modernise Russia by introducing state capitalism. They certainly didn't think that socialism could be established in one country. That idea came later.

So there was no attempt by the Bolsheviks to abolish private property. Even their promise of equal wages, which has nothing to do with socialism anyway, was quickly dropped and large differentials in income were encouraged instead, while the Bolsheviks (who became the Communist Party) made sure that all property came under their direct control and, in effect, ownership.

Bobbio's unhistorical approach is clearly shown when he compares Thomas More's Utopia with state capitalist Russia. He recounts how in Utopia the traveller who has discovered "the happy island where common ownership is rigorously observed" defends it from sceptics who argue that it cannot work because of human nature—greed, laziness, etc—by telling them "you talk like that because you haven't seen what I have seen". It is impossible now, says Bobbio, to give such a reply any more because "no one who has visited a communist country can now say come and see, then you can talk". What connection can there possibly be between Thomas More's 16th century ideal society and 20th century Russian state capitalism?

To those who insist that there has never been communism in Russia Bobbio replies that it is not enough to say this:

    "You have to say why it is so, and suggest which other paths you can follow in order to avoid past mistakes. I don't know of there is anyone around today who can provide answers to these uncertainties".

Yes, signor Bobbio, there are and we will! The Socialist Party and its companion parties overseas have always insisted that communism/socialism can only be established when the essential conditions for it are present. For one thing, the productive forces of society must be developed to the point where they can provide plenty for all. Capitalism itself has long ago solved that problem for us. For another, the majority of the world's workers—all the people who have to work for a wage or salary and in whose interests socialism will be—must agree that it is both possible and desirable. Socialism could not possibly have come about in such an economically undeveloped country as Russia where the vast majority of the population neither understood nor desired it.

The Socialist Party welcomes the collapse of Russian-style "communism" as a significant step in clearing the way for genuine communism to which it has been a serious obstacle for over 70 years. And the idea of a classless, moneyless, worldwide society of production for use will not go away because something entirely different has failed. The proof of this is—and will be—the existence of its advocates in many parts of the world.

Vic Vanni



From  December 1991 Issue No. 1048 Socialist Standard

Italy, 1920

From the December 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

For nearly a month in September 1920, over 400,000 Italian metalworkers occupied the factories, particularly in the industrial centres of the north, Turin, Milan, and Genoa.

Like many other events in working-class history, this has become something of a myth, and generations of left-wingers have been convinced that this was a “revolutionary situation” in which the workers were on the brink of overthrowing capitalism but were “betrayed” by their leaders. An examination of the facts shows that this certainly was not the case.

In August 1920 the Italian metalworkers union (FIOM), faced with a rising cost of living, put in a claim for a wage increase. The employers, badly hit by the slackened demand for iron and steel caused by the end of the war, categorically refused. The union then declared a go-slow. The employers responded with a lock-out and the workers, backed by the union, occupied the factories.

There they stayed for three weeks until the government and others brought pressure to bear on the employers to give in. The workers got their wage increase (plus a vague and useless promise of “union control”) and voted at a conference—later confirmed in a referendum—to resume normal working.

In other words, this was a simple—and successful— trade-union action aimed at getting a wage increase. It was not an attempt to overthrow capitalism. If it had been, then the government would not have maintained the neutrality it did and certainly would not have brought pressure on the employers to settle.

The fact that the government did not intervene or behalf of the employers is to be explained by a conflict of sectional interests within the Italian capitalist class. Before the war, Italy had been ruled by politicians representing the bourgeoisie in the strict sense of the term: the “middle class” (merchants, small traders, etc.) of the towns. They tended to be liberal and anti-clerical in their politics and were led on the political field by Giovanni Giolitti.

Around the turn of the century, however, in the northern cities of Turin, Milan and Genoa a more modern type of capitalist appeared: the big industrialists, who tended to favour expansionist nationalism This conflict came to a head over the attitude Italy should adopt during the first world war. The traditional bourgeoisie favoured keeping out, and even tended to be pro the Central Powers, Germany, and Austro-Hungary. Indeed their bank, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, was partly financed by German capital. Their view did not prevail. Italy entered the war on the British and French side, and Giolitti resigned as prime minister. During the war, the northern industrialists made huge profits which they used to try to take over the Banca Commerciale. The attempt failed but it showed that the conflict existed.

It was Giolitti who was again prime minister in September 1920, and it is because the interests of the section of the Italian capitalist class he represented were not the same as those of the northern engineering employers and steel magnates, that the State was neutral during the factory occupation. It was even alleged that the Banca Commerciale helped to finance the metalworkers in this struggle and had threatened to withdraw credit to the employers if they didn’t submit to the union’s conditions.

All this was known at the time. For instance, the article “Socialism and the Fascisti” in the Socialist Standard for April 1923 dealt with the subject and quoted from other sources, the Nation (New York) and the Western Clarion (Vancouver), and these supported the conclusion that the Italian metalworkers won their economic struggle because of a conflict of interests within the Italian capitalist class.

So there was no revolutionary situation. Of course there was such loud and empty talk of “revolution” and the executive of the reformist Italian Socialist Party (PSI) even met to consider whether or not to launch the revolution (as if it were up to them!) but finally decided, under pressure from its trade-union wing (CGL), not to.

This decision was attacked by various leftists of the day as a “sell-out”, but the evidence shows that it was the only sane thing to do. Any attempt by the workers to transform the economic struggle into an insurrection, even if they had wanted to, would have been easily crushed. After all, workers armed mainly with revolvers, muskets and pikes (yes, pikes!) could stand no chance against the forces of the State.

Indeed when the CGL met to consider the possibility of armed insurrection they were told by the Turin delegation that

Fiat-Centro which seems to be one of the best supplied (with arms) has only 5,000 rounds of machine-gun ammunition . . .

(Quoted in The Occupation of the Factories: Italy 1920 by Paolo Spriano, page 86).

and although Antonio Gramsci, later leader of the Italian Communist Party, repeatedly denounced the leaders of the PSI and CGL he admitted privately that

. . . with a working class which mostly saw everything rosy and loved bands and ballads more than sacrifice, a counter-revolution would have inexorably swept us away. (Spriano, page 134.)

Mere working-class discontent or mass action does not constitute a revolutionary situation. The social and political situation will only become revolutionary when the immense majority of the working class, having come to understand and want Socialism, become revolutionary-minded. That was not the case in Italy in 1920 and unfortunately has never yet been the case anywhere else.

Vic Vanni

To Live is to Thrive, Not just to Survive

Working class power is the essential condition for far-reaching social change by their own hands. To change the world and to create a better one is the aspiration of the Socialist Party, its hope is that tomorrow's world can be free of today's inequalities, hardships, and deprivations, a belief that people can, individually and collectively, influence the shape of the world to come. It is this outlook of society that guides the actions of the Socialist Party. Socialism is a movement for changing the world and setting up a free, equal, human and prosperous society. However, the Socialist Party is not a bunch of utopian reformers nor heroic saviours of humanity.  Socialism is a movement that reflects the vision, ideals, and protest of the working class.  Socialism emerges out of class struggle. This class struggle is the chief source of social change and transformation.  Our goal is one of abolishing classes and exploitation. The capitalist system is behind all the ills that burden humanity today. Poverty, deprivation, discrimination, inequality, political repression, ignorance, bigotry, unemployment, homelessness, economic and political insecurity, corruption and crime are all inevitable products of this system. No doubt apologists would tell us that these have not been invented by capitalism but existed before capitalism, that exploitation, repression, discrimination, women's oppression, ignorance and prejudice, religion and prostitution are more or less as old as human society itself. What is not told is the fact that, firstly, all these problems have found a new meaning in this society, corresponding to the needs of capitalism. These are being constantly reproduced as integral parts of the modern capitalist system. The source of poverty, starvation, unemployment, homelessness and economic insecurity is the economic system in place at the end of the 20th century. The dictatorships, wars, genocides and repressions that define the life of hundreds of millions of people today draw their rationale from the needs of the system that rules the world and a product of the present society's economic and social system and moral values. The capitalist system continually and relentlessly resists people's effort to eradicate and overcome these ills.  The capitalist system and the primacy of profit have exposed the environment to serious dangers and irreparable damages. Academics and intellectuals do not even claim to have an answer to these problems. This is the reality of capitalism today, boding a horrifying future for the entire people of the world.

Capitalism is based on the exploitation of direct producers — the appropriation of a part of the product of their labour by the ruling classes. Without living human labour power that sets instruments of labour to work and creates new products, the existence of human society, the very survival of human beings and satisfaction of their needs, is inconceivable. The more the working class works, the more power capital acquires. Exploitation in capitalist society takes place without yokes on the shoulders or chains around the ankles of the producers- through the medium of the market and "free and equal" exchange of commodities. The surplus value obtained from the exploitation of the working class is divided out among the various sections of the capitalist class essentially through the market mechanism. Profit, interest and rent are the major forms in which the different capitals share in the fruits of this class exploitation. The competition of capitals in the market determines the share of each capitalist section. This surplus also pays the whole cost of the capitalists' state machinery, army and administration, of its ideological and cultural institutions, and the upkeep of all those who, through these institutions, uphold the power of the capitalist class.

With the accumulation of capital, the mass of commodities which make up the wealth of bourgeois society grows, the inevitable result of the accumulation process is the continual and accelerating technological progress and rise in the mass and capacity of the means of production which the working class sets in motion in every new cycle of the production process. But compared to the growth in society's wealth and productive powers, the working class continually gets relatively poorer. Despite the gradual and limited increase, in absolute terms, in the workers' standard of living, the share of the working class from the social wealth declines rapidly, and the gap between the living conditions of the working class and the higher living standards that is already made possible by its own work widens. The richer the society becomes, the more impoverished a section the worker forms in it.

Technological progress and rise in labour productivity mean that living human labour power is increasingly replaced by machines and automatic systems. In a free and human society, this should mean more free time and leisure for all. But in the capitalist society, where labour power and means of production are merely so many commodities which capital employs to make profits, the substitution of humans by machines manifests itself as a permanent unemployment of a section of the working class which is now denied the possibility of making a living. The appearance of a reserve army of workers who do not even have the possibility of selling their labour power is an inevitable result of the process of accumulation of capital, and at the same time a condition of capitalist production. The existence of this reserve army of unemployed, supported essentially by the employed section of the working class itself, heightens the competition in the ranks of the working class and keeps wages at their lowest socially possible level. This reserve army also allows capital to more easily modify the size of its employed work force in proportion to the needs of the market. Massive unemployment is not a side-effect of the market, or a result of the bad policies of some government. It is an inherent part of the workings of capitalism and the process of accumulation of capital.

A majority seeking to replace capitalism by socialism only requires one thing of an electoral system under capitalism—that it should allow a majority opinion to reflect itself as a majority of seats in parliament. We are not interested in whether the system ensures a strong and stable government of capitalism nor in whether it ensures a fair representation of capitalist political parties. As the existing electoral system in Britain does allow a majority viewpoint to be translated into a majority of seats, we see no point in diverting our energies from our task of working towards the emergence of a socialist majority towards working for electoral reform within capitalism.

Must people go without the basic essentials of life at a time when productivity has increased to heights never known before? When mankind was the slave of nature, shortage and want could be explained in something like intelligent terms, but to-day, when his productive capacities are virtually unlimited, he must find some other answer. We live in a society which has the paradox of want in the midst of plenty. There is no difficulty about producing food for the present population of the world, or even twice that number, but the problem is, could politics and economics arrange that the food that was produced was dispersed in the countries that needed it? If European agricultural standards were to be practised on the available cultivable land, there would be enough food produced to give an excellent diet to probably seven times the world’s present.

What many NGOs fail to recognise is the fact that however capable man may be of producing wealth, it is ultimately the question of ownership which decides whether or not he will partake of that wealth. Food, like every other commodity in our modern world, is produced primarily for profit, and the fact that it eventually may satisfy hungry children around the world is incidental and of secondary importance.

When we in the Socialist Party see or read about the atrocities of war, we do not condemn the nation to which the perpetrators belong. Nor do we become enraged at the soldiers of that nation. War itself is the supreme crime from which all atrocities flow. War is the product of capitalism. The real criminals in each country are the ruling capitalists, a tiny minority of the population which sets nation against nation in a mad scramble for markets and profits. The soldiers in each camp are trained and commanded to kill. They are the instruments but not the real authors of war’s barbarism. The truth which the hired propagandists of capitalism try to hide is that workers are forced into war very much against their will. The enemy is by nature just as peaceable, just as kindly, just as fun-loving as any other people. Barbarism and brutality have spread over the entire earth, not because some are inhuman animals while others are civilised human beings, but because nations are pitted against one another in bloody combat by the rulers of the capitalist system. All peoples want peace. But unless the victims of war, the toiling people of every country, put an end to this system, there will be more terrible wars, ferocious, cruel, and devastating. By promoting race hatred, the capitalist rulers keep the working people of different lands divided and hostile to one another. In that way, the capitalists can continue to rule the world and plunge humanity into horrible wars for resources and market share. That is why it is necessary to expose the lies of race hatred, so that workers in every land may unite against capitalism and struggle together for a better socialist world.

We will succeed if we persevere

The Socialist Party, being the political expression of the working class, stands for the overthrow of the existing capitalist system and for the reorgansation of society into a social democracy. This will mean an end to the private ownership of the means of life; it will mean an end to wage-slavery; it will mean an end to the army of the unemployed; it will mean an end to the poverty. It will mean the beginning of a new era of civilisation; the dawn of happier days. It will mean that this Earth is for those who inhabit it and wealth for those who produce it. It will mean society organised upon a co-operative basis, collectively owning the sources of wealth and the means of production, and producing wealth to satisfy human wants and not to gorge the greed of the privileged few. The Socialist Party is the party of the dispossessed and the impoverished. It stands for a world-wide democracy, for the freedom of every man, woman, and child, and for all mankind. It realizes that education, knowledge and the powers these confer are the only means of achieving a decided and permanent victory for the people. The core idea of socialism is that we, working people, deserve better. We have a right to the wealth our labour creates. We demand freedom from a small group of the super wealthy live like modern-day kings. This is the ugly face of capitalism. We want a society based on common ownership, production for use expressing equality, solidarity, and freedom, not fear and hate. 

What about the capitalist – the good, kind, benevolent employer, to whom the expropriated and exploited worker goes cringing for the privilege of being permitted to work? What is his place in our social system? It is to extort another huge slice out of the worker, by buying his or her services as much beneath their true value as he can possibly procure them, and selling them as much above their worth as the circumstances will permit him to extort.

Capitalism has solved the problem of production. The system of capitalism, which already exists over much of the world and is rapidly capturing the rest, has given birth to sufficient productive potential to satisfy all the reasonable demands of mankind. All that now remains to be done is to bring in a system in which these potentialities can be realised to the full. For this is where capitalism has failed. 

The Socialist position is as follows: In society to-day there are two classes – the propertyless or working class and an idle class who own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth. The latter use this ownership and control to force the workers to work for them, and to submit to being robbed of the greater part of the produce of their labour. The master class, being but a tenth of the population can only keep possession of the means of production by their control (through the political machinery) of the armed forces. While the master class has that control it is hopeless for the workers to attempt to seize capitalist property. Let the workers learn their position in society and unite to obtain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces. Such action will make it possible for them to take possession of the means of production and use them for the benefit of all. In that way alone will they be able to usher in a system of society wherein universal unity of interests will abolish all war, be it between classes or nations. 

The working class has many things to remember concerning the history of political parties. The fact stands out clearly that all political factions have used every agency at their command to keep the working class in subjection. The race for profits by our masters is a race that means misery, starvation and premature death for its victims the workers. Therefore our policy must be one of unceasing hostility to capitalism, whether “reformed” or not. Unceasing hostility to all is upholders, whatever they label themselves. We cannot ever ally ourselves with that class whose hands are stained with the blood of our fellow toilers. We can never forget that in the struggle between the workers and the capitalists there can be no truce, no quarter, no compromise!

 It is for us to point again the lesson that the armed forces of the State—nay, the whole machinery of the State—exists but to conserve the interests of the ruling class. The capture of this State machinery must then be the object of our endeavours. Vengeance and our emancipation are one and the same thing, and must both be sought on the political field. As the working class begins to understand the position they occupy in modern society; as they begin to take a hand in settling affairs of social importance, they will make many blunders and mistakes. In the main, however, these will be easily recognised and corrected. But the biggest danger that confronts them—the biggest mistake they can make—is to place power in the hands of “leaders” under any pretext whatever. It is at once putting those “leaders” in a position to bargain with the master class for the purpose of selling out the workers. It allows the master class to retain control of the political machinery which is the essential instrument for governing Society. All the other blunders and mistakes the workers may make will be as dust in the balance compared with this one, and not until they realise this fact will they be on the road to socialism.

The Big Bang (1986)

From the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard
So that was the Big Bang, was it? What revolutionised the Stock Exchange and shook the City actually made no difference to most. Workers woke up one morning to a deregulated Stock Exchange, but would not have had much time to ponder the significance of such a revolution on their lifestyle before they had to get to their work or their place in the DHSS queue.

But of course, such matters must be important, mustn't they? After all, it's on the news every evening, after the royal item and before the Granny-parachuting-for-charity, we get the summary of the share price fluctuations, and hear how the Pound struggled, rallied, finished weakly. As one who after a usual day's work (struggled, rallied, finished weakly) cannot see the significance of it all. I sent off for the Stock Exchange's glossy pamphlet An Introduction to the Stock Market. Thinking that "bull" was what economists talked about (rather than a type of market). I needed to see what all the fuss was about.

The cover had lots of photographs of the type of people who, presumably, own shares: all ages from smiling babies to smiling OAPs; all occupations from cooks to builders. welders to fishermen. They even managed to get half-a-dozen different ethnic groups represented on the pamphlet cover, which is about five more than are effectively allowed on the trading floor of the Stock Exchange, to go by recent reports.

Of course, it's the same sort of rubbish that we get on TV with every advert for the TSB flotation, the idea that becoming a capitalist is as easy as wearing a bowler hat, everyone can do it. It's a popular notion — borne out by the oversubscription for TSB — that we can drag ourselves free from the varying degrees of poverty and pressures of working-class life. There is nothing wrong with wanting to escape that, but there is everything wrong in believing that a handful of shares in the TSB will free you of anything but a few hundred quid.

It is a popular notion because people want it to be true but it has no basis in fact. Research by London Weekend Television shows that the City is not full of self-made men (or women). Those who reach the top in the City still come, predominantly, from a privileged background. Indeed the class division between rich and poor, owners and non-owners did not end years ago with the nineteenth century, nor the nationalisation of the 1945 Labour government, nor the privatisation of the present government and certainly it will not end with the next stock market flotation (there should be one soon), nor with the next boom period (there should be one sometime), nor with a next Labour government.
The situation today has changed little:

• the top one per cent own some twenty per cent of the total wealth in Britain, which is as much as the bottom seventy-five per cent;
• the 20.000 millionaires in Britain own more wealth than half the population put together;
• the top six per cent enjoy forty-four per cent of unearned income, while two-thirds have none.

(They didn't tell me that in the glossy brochure. I had to look elsewhere.)

The fact that some of those who work in the factories now have a couple of shares in British Gas tucked under their pillows, and a fifty pence reduction in their gas bill, will not upset the factory owners.

But isn't the Big Bang going to change all that? Isn't it going to sweep away the inherited privilege of a lucky few, in favour of real rewards for those with courage, enterprise and a will to work hard? You know the sort of person, a cliche that only exists in the head of a Tory Party speech writer he (not she) is pulling himself up by the bootstraps and pulling in his belt, he's got his nose to the grindstone, one foot on the ladder and is on his bike . . . Well, "yes" is the answer if you have eyes to read the brochure with; no is the answer if you also have a brain to think with. Far from opening up the City to the individual and the entrepreneur, the Big Bang means the deregulation of exchanges and emphasis on high technology, allowing very complex and very fast transactions of commodities all over the world. In the USA, this "programme trading" has produced much larger and more frequent swings in the markets. Judgements are decided by short-term market fluctuations. not on longer-term evaluations like the state of the economy in general. Consequently, small investors cannot weather the large swings in the market without large financial backing. It's the big fish that remain.

But regardless of the fluctuations of share prices, the legal business of exploitation is not just a matter of gambling on the Stock Exchange — buying and selling at the right times and the right prices —where you are rewarded for your "courage". All you need to do is sit on your shares and spend the money as it comes in. You don't need talent or guts, just a lot of money. Indeed, a BBC Nationwide news programme a few years ago had an item about a dog (presumably they could not find a parachuting grandmother that day), who placed his paw on the Financial Times and chose the shares for his master. The dog was a millionaire. And his owner looked about as happy as a dog with two million pounds. You can do it too. Try it at home - all you need is a dog and somewhere in the region of £100,000. A trained monkey could do it. Even Gerald Grosvenor (the Duke of Westminster — two billion pounds and two O' levels to his name) can do it.

Most capitalists are the same, they get someone else to do the little bit of work of buying and selling shares. Most hardly even see the Stock Exchange, let alone the factories. land or offices they profit from.

Quite simply, the City cannot be opened up to everyone. As my brochure says (stuck away in the last paragraph on the bottom of page nine), your broker will "tell you honestly if your personal circumstances are such that you would be ill-advised to become an investor". Capitalists need workers but we don't need them. They couldn't tolerate a builder or a manager or a secretary retiring at the age of thirty to live off the proceeds of their work. They need to squeeze as much as possible out of you, from when you are strong enough to work until you are old enough to drop. The rest of your life is your own.

Unfortunately for this scheme of things, capitalism never runs smoothly for very long. The deregulation which has already started has produced some blatant examples of inflated salaries in the City. At a time when wage councils are being abolished and while one-quarter of full-time workers in London are below the poverty line, the news that a few miles away in the City salaries can touch £lm cannot help the government's pleas to workers for wage restraint. At least the Queen has set the right example to Britain's greedy workers by accepting a pay rise below the rate of inflation, in the process boosting her earnings last year from £3,850.000 to over £4million.

Then we have the interesting sight of Thatcher criticising the excessive salaries. The champion of the market-place, outflanked by the uncontrollable nature of the system she supports. For capitalism, which periodically bares its "unacceptable face" that no cosmetic can hide, is the best ever advert for socialism.

We could have a society where personal consumption of wealth will not be restricted by your personal circumstances and where production of wealth will not be restricted by the requirement of a surplus called profit.

Socialism will take the information and communications technology that today enables vast amounts of useless information — like market fluctuations and share prices — to circulate the world in seconds, every second, and will liberate its potential for a society based on production for use, as we liberate ourselves in a movement for World Socialism which makes the Big Bang look a damp squib.

Brian Gardner

Abundance for all

Privately owned industry and production for profit are no longer compatible with social progress or humane and civilised ends. A privately owned world can never be a free world. Such a world is a world of strife and hate.

 The Socialist Party rejects the policy of state ownership, rejects state capitalism as a phase of socialism. State capitalism is not socialism and never can become socialism. Nationalisation of industry is not a socialist measure, nor a measure making for socialism. The Socialist Party is determined to abolish the state. The Socialist Party is the party of the working class. The working class, the only class without which society could not exist, is the coming ruling class, and its emancipation, which will follow the abolition of the wage system, will mean the freedom of humanity, based upon cooperative industry. The Socialist Party, when it gets into power, will take over the businesses and corporations and have them owned and operated by all the people to produce wealth for all the people. Then there will be work for all and wealth for all who are willing to work for it. In other words, the Socialist Party proposes to transfer the sources, means, and machinery of production and distribution from the private hands to the collective people, so that wealth may be produced in abundance, not to enrich a small class, but for the comfort and enjoyment of all.

Socialism is merely an extension of the ideal of democracy in the economic field. At present, industry is ruled by the owners of the machines of production and distribution, who have literally the power of life and death over the people. Socialism proposes to put industry in control of the people so that they may no longer be dependents on others for a job, so that they may be freed from the tribute of profit, and so that they may manage industry in their own way, as seems best to them.

Socialism will bring about a phenomenal development of the productive forces.  The quality and productivity of labour will greatly increase because the producers will – for the first time – have a direct vested interest in production and be healthier and vastly better educated. Socialism will offer the achievement of a decent standard of living for there lies the road to abundance and free distribution according to need. Money will lose its usefulness to the point where it will be dispensed with altogether. Thanks to indoctrination we all receive, this may seem outlandish. Socialism is really the advocacy of abundance and presupposes the ample availability of material goods to ensure full satisfaction of human needs. Such abundance of goods is in no way utopian. 

The Socialist Party aims to end the capitalist system of society, based on the exploitation of man by man, by means of the overthrow of the ruling class of capitalists and the capitalist state, the apparatus of force by which they rule. Our goal is to establish the rule of the working people and to build a socialist society based on common ownership of the means of production, with economic life planned in the interests of the people – a society which will develop the material abundance and create a new society based on the principle “to each according to his needs”. Only in a society which ensures to humanity such an abundance of goods can a new social consciousness be born. We hold that the question of free access without the intervention of money should not be for only to certain health or educational services, but apply to basic needs in foodstuff or clothing an all other products an services - the decommodification of the world. This means the death of capitalism and the birth of socialism. Power and profit – the motive force of capitalism – will then perish. What socialism proposes is wealth for all.

Many say all this is a dream? No, no dream at all, but an immediate possibility. By means of the vast new technology of this modern world, we can produce wealth enough for all without any trouble whatever.  By means of these new applications of robotics and automatin one person can produce a hundred or a thousand times as much wealth as in the times of our fathers. There is no doubt at all about this. Modern innovations have so increased the productivity of mankind that everyone could have an abundance of wealth by working only 3 or 4 hours - not a day but a week. Socialism proposes to get this abundance for all.

What is responsible for this disparity between the steady abundance the workers could produce, and the uncertain pittance that they get? Under capitalist ownership, the capitalists make profits by keeping as much as they can, and paying out as little in wages as they must. They pay the workers the smallest wage they can bargain them down to. On the average, that amounts to a wage which is just enough to get along on, the smallest amount a worker can afford to work for. Even, for a large part of the workers, it amounts to not enough to raise healthy children or maintain their own vigour. This same system prevents the production of abundance. 

This is an era of revolutionary change. For the first time in history, humankind can produce such abundance that society can be free from hunger, homelessness and backbreaking labour. The only thing standing in the way is this system of exploitation and injustice. The struggle today is the beginning of a revolution for a better world.  We invite all who see that there’s a problem and are ready to do something about it to join with us. With our organised strength, we will liberate the thinking of our fellow-workers and unleash their energy. We will win them to the cause for which they are already fighting. We will arouse the people with a vision of a world of plenty. New technology provides better and more products with less and less labour. Society now has the capacity to devote the energies and talents of its people to satisfying the needs of all.

 Radical changes in the way a society produces its wealth call for radical changes in how that society is organised. We will inspire people with an alternative - a society organised for the benefit of all. A society built on cooperation, which puts the well-being of  people above the profits and property of a handful of billionaires. The working class will transform it into common property so it can reorganise society so that the abundance is distributed according to need. We call on you to join us in this cause. The ruling class tries to keep people confused and to keep them from fighting in their own interests. We have to meet the ruling class in this intensifying battle of ideas so that people can take their destiny into their own hands.

You are hardworking men and women. You are the foundation of society. Your labour makes social life possible. Without your labour there would not be any enjoyment of social life. You are the producers of all values. All the wealth you see around you is the result of labour. Do you own the wealth which you produce? No, you do not. You have created the 1% consisting of parasites of society, and you, the wealth-producers live in wage slavery in poverty and misery. You are the fundamental power of society, and you don’t seem to know it. You imagine that you are free, while in fact you are enslaved. The man who owns the means of production controls your means of life. You are dependent on your employer for a job, and for you the job means an opportunity in life. Consequently, the class of men who own the means of production own your very life and control your future. 

You have been asleep while the 1% have accumulated billions of dollars of wealth, which represents the stolen products of the working class.  You elect the same political parties into power whose mission it is today to protect and advance the class interests of capitalism. The politicians flatter you before the day of the election; after the election they despise you. All the pro-capitalist parties are a rotten cause, based on the principle of deceiving the working class for the purpose of enabling the ruling classes to continue their system of exploiting and robbing the workers.

The Socialist Party want you to think for yourselves. Be men and women who do their own thinking. Under the present system of society, you are being robbed whether you receive higher or lower wages because the wage system is based on legalised robbery. Every person should remember that by voting for the parties of capitalism he or she helps to perpetuate wage slavery, strengthening the fetters of hard toil and misery. The political powers of capitalism are organised against you. It is for you to organise under the banner of socialism and the Socialist Party and fight the battles of your own emancipation.

The Socialist Party Offers Solutions

The working class still shows no sign of voting for an openly racist party. But if conditions change and the resentments which now smoulder could burst into fire. The workers, unaware of their class standing and interests, bewildered by the continual crises of capitalism, disillusioned at their leaders' failures, are inflammable material. The threat is always there. In many places, the frustrations and restrictions of working-class life are acute and have in some cases seem to have been accentuated by the arrival of migrants and refugees who, because they are so easily identifiable, make the perfect scapegoat for a demagogue.

The Socialist Party's argument is that the majority of workers must arrive at a clear understanding of socialism before they can get it, that a revolution in ideas must precede the revolution in politics and economics, is often sneered at by those who say that the mass of the population (except, for some reason, the extraordinary people who make this statement) are brainwashed robots, puppets manipulated by TV, and the press.

But capitalism is not a conspiracy. It cannot be controlled by a set of individuals, not even the capitalist class.  Current ideas provide a support for capitalism (though the “mass media” are only a part of their reinforcement), yet capitalism is dynamic, constantly advancing and frequently unpredictable in detail. The very ideas which defend capitalism have to be adjusted or replaced, to fit new conditions. Workers must be trained, not only to do their jobs, but also to be versatile, because their jobs are changing all the time, and also to make radical criticisms of the way capitalism is run, because otherwise inefficient and unprofitable blunders would result. As the Communist Manifesto put it:
  "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production . . . All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their trains of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned . . ."

Today, traditional ideas about work, leisure and “the purpose of life” are under attack, and in retreat. Capitalism has killed God stone dead and is stamping on the twitching corpse. Capitalism extends the juicy carrot of the “Leisure Society”—a golden age of short working-hours and automated abundance, which is ever imminent yet never arrives. Capitalism holds aloft an image of glamour, high-powered pleasure, rest and freedom—whilst the worker’s mind and body are reduced ever more thoroughly to instruments of accumulation. From the belief that work is a grim duty, consumption its reward, capitalism is shifting emphasis to the view that consumption is a duty, work something to be made rewarding.

Around the world, people are questioning the current path that humanity is set on and asking themselves will it lead to disaster, and they’re beginning to ask the harder questions about what to do about it and what sort of transformation is required to create a human future of peace, justice, and equality. We humans now have the knowledge and technology to move beyond the daily struggle for survival that besets the lives of so many. We have the capacity to secure a world of abundance. Achieving such a goal requires that we make the socialist vision our common goal.

People have always moved and explored. We spread to cover the whole world, and we mixed with one another. We continue to do that.  There exists an inevitability of the movement of people, whether as individuals or in groups. But borders are more than just lines on a map. They define the limits of nation-states and their power. We have seen the strengthening and the militarisation of the borders between the US and Mexico, Morocco and Spain, and the EU being described as Fortress Europe, with the deployment of police and troops, the use of razor wire, helicopters, drones, sophisticated people detecting technology, tear gas and rubber bullets, all serving to keep out the poor and desperate, and other "undesirables." Internally, the control includes things like ID checks in public spaces carried out by domestic security agencies such as the police. It means that anyone fitting the profile of an “illegal immigrant” risks arrest — turning parks, public squares, train stations and motorway rests stops into places of potential interrogation for some. Teachers, doctors, landlords in the UK are obliged to check the immigration status and to inform on foreigners. However, people without documentation or the proper papers find different ways to evade controls. The State responds with new strategies of capture. People adapt to evade. And so the process continues.

The Socialist Party advocates and works towards a society where the principle ‘from everyone according to faculties, to everyone according to needs!’ It is not scientific and permissible to lay down an exact blueprint of how future socialist society will be organised. At most, we can enumerate certain basic principles and guidelines, and give an indication in a very broad and tentative outline of the way we think society might be conducted. But the exact administrative structure and precise mode of behaviour of people in a socialist society will be determined by the specific material conditions of that society. What these specific material conditions will be, and how people will react to them, cannot be known to us at the present time.

Most people nowadays hold some grievance with this or that aspect of society. Millions suffer the horrors of capitalist wars. Mental illness is a growing problem. Old-age pensioners are dying from malnutrition, from cold. Slum violence and riots regularly hit the headlines. Waiting lists for hospital beds and operations while the demand for affordable housing outstrips supply. We have no control of the environment.  Most people would agree that each of these grievances could be remedied with a fair measure of goodwill and intelligence.

But the Socialist Party would disagree. 

These problems are all inherent in the way this society is organised. Their solution lies in abolishing capitalism, which embraces the entire world and whose motive is not the satisfaction of human needs or the alleviation of human suffering, but the creation of profit for disposal by the privileged few, and the accumulation of capital.

Capitalism is the society in which a certain group of people, a small minority, monopolise the ownership of the factories, land, mines, transport concerns, and every other point where wealth is produced.  But the mere monopoly of these means of production is not enough to give them a privileged position in society. They must employ workers, people who will produce all society’s wealth but never own more than that which their wage represents. Some say that the workers get a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, but what is ‘fair’? If the working class produce everything then they should receive all of it. But do they? No. The fact is that the workers' wage represents only a fraction of the wealth we have created. We are robbed—but legally. And although we constantly struggle to improve our wages, too many apparently never dream of abolishing the entire wages system.

Some radical reformers think that this is unnecessary. After all, they argue, if you seize all the means of production from the capitalists and institute state ownership, then only the state (and through the state, the people as a whole) will benefit from the wages system. And if the state machine is managed by people who call themselves Marxists or socialists or communists then this is obviously a more just and sane society. A society where people can at last plan their environments; with human priorities to the fore, and unrestricted by the demands of the market economy. But is it?

Will these advocates of state ownership have eliminated the contradictions of capitalism, manifested in a class struggle between the capitalist who strives to intensify exploitation through lower wages, longer hours, and faster production, and the wage slave, whose aim is to raise his or her wage, slow down production, and lessen his or her working hours? And forced into competition with other states and their ruling-classes, will housing have priority over defence or more profitable industries like motor cars and cosmetics? Periodically they crush strikes of dissatisfied workers, ruthlessly, with all the state power at their disposal. Their workers are exploited and oppressed just as surely as we are. 

To summarise, capitalism means the class monopoly of the means of production—its prime motive is profit, and to hell with the interests of the worker. Its mechanism, the means by which it robs, is the wages system. Solutions to capitalism’s problems can be found only after abolishing this system. All other solutions, such as the ‘welfare’ state, social contracts,  treaties end wars, are at best palliatives, at worst,  outright deceit.

And the Socialist Party's solution?

 Don’t follow anyone, don’t believe anyone who offers you paradise—and a wage. And don’t expect us to lead you. We are allergic to sheep. Instead, cultivate your self-reliance and organise yourselves democratically (and that means equal participation in decision- and policy-making, with all tasks not assumed by leaders but delegates) for the conquest of political power. When you have political power as a class, you will be the last class in history to be emancipated. There are none below you, none you will need to dominate to maintain your position as free men and women at last.

Voluntary co-operation on a world scale will replace compulsory economic competition between individuals. Social antagonisms will fade into history. With the abolition of the wages system, the interests of the individual will coincide with those of society. Genuine freedom will have dawned.

The milking system as seen through a glass bottle.

I was listening to a news report dealing with climate change and the effects of plastic bottling of many products, milk being one of the issues. Glass milk bottles have become more in demand result of some people being prepared to pay more for the delivery of bottled milk, this being for them what we all can do to reduce the dumping of plastic. In the same news report, it was pointed out that milk bottles are thicker and heavier than plastic ones, so loading them on trucks would take up more space and for this person to deliver the same amount of milk each day would mean the need of another truck and driver. The costs would be higher and the price was expected to be paid by the consumer. He was hinting that he did not think that this would be welcomed by many others.

Socialists make the point that the driving force in the capitalist system is the need to make a profit. This problem of plastic bottles for milk demonstrates that each business stands on its own to make a profit. When plastic bottles became available for them, hallelujah!,  no longer need to buy glass bottles which don’t last forever, people using them for other things, being smashed etc. No longer having to gather them and wash them. Pluses all around, what people do with them? Who cares, my profits increase and that’s what it’s all about.

I have been making the points around glass bottling: however, the same processes would apply to many other products that are being wrapped in plastic. The best method of solving this and the many other problems the planet Earth is suffering from is to get rid of capitalism, the system at the root of those problems and replace it with common ownership of the means of production.

PH

Our vision of socialism

Many peoples’ ideas of what socialism would be like are dominated by the Stalinist tyranny in Russia or the experiences of Labour or other ‘left-wing’ governments. Socialists have resisted the temptation to draw up a blueprint for socialism as pointless and misleading. If the future society is to be truly socialist, then its details can be decided only by the workers who build it. Consequently, the Socialist Party has limited itself to certain general principles which can be derived from the trends and forces at work under capitalism. For the Socialist Party, its fundamental aim is the creation of a class-free society. 

Capitalism produces its own gravedigger, the working class. To free the working class everywhere from the wage slavery is the prime purpose of the World Socialist Movement. To attain this end the methods pursued and relied upon are based not upon speculation in human goodness or utopian dreams. Socialism is based upon cooperative industry, administered in the equal interest of all. Socialism is a necessity. Production is carried on to-day purely in the interest and for the profit of the class which owns the instruments of production. The means of production should not be used in the interest of the small class which owns them. Socialism would substitute social ownership of these things for the ruling class ownership, and this would also involve the abolition of classes altogether. Socialism does not mean governmental ownership or management. The State of to-day, nationally and locally, is only the agent of the possessing class and as the agent of the possessing class it treats the employees just as other employee are treated. When society is organised for the control of its own affairs and has acquired the possession of its own means of production will be carried on for the use of all and not for the profit of a few.

We mean the establishment of the common ownership and control of the whole of the world’s industry. The entire means of production thus being common property, there would no longer be a propertied class to make a profit. The establishment of socialism means a complete change in society in all its aspects.  Socialism does not presuppose a complete change in human nature and the entire elimination of selfishness. On the contrary, socialism only calls for enlightened selfishness, recognising that it can serve itself only by serving the common interest. Socialism presupposes a condition of things in which the good of all will mean the good of each, and a society so constituted that the individual cannot serve oneself without serving society, and cannot injure society without injuring oneself.

Socialism accepts the theory of evolution in its fullest extent. It bases its view of the universe upon reasoned conclusions. Socialism is materialist, as opposed to antiquated conceptions based on theological dogma. Socialists assert their belief in the speedy downfall of the present system. Social revolution is the objective of the Socialist Party. It is time for the workers’ movement to discard its futile reformism. The working class will use its power to take all important industries and businesses into social ownership and place them under democratic control. All the population will be drawn into administering the new society. This will make rational planning of the economy possible, ensuring an enormous growth in the wealth of society and that this growth serves people’s needs. It will free society from the stains of racial, sexual and national bigotry. It will use the enormous advances of modern science and technology to eliminate the dangers and drudgery of work. It will systematically reduce the hours of the working week and simultaneously raise the educational and cultural level of the people. This will pave the way for the disappearance of any group of privileged experts and for overcoming the divisions between mental and manual labour. It will lead to the disappearance of money and to distribution on the principle, ‘each according to their needs’.

By replacing private ownership of the means of production by common ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned proportional production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another. The Socialist Party calls upon all members of the working class to join it and to win over to the standpoint of our fellow-workers. Workers are not taken in by the propaganda of capitalism. They can see the corruption, the instability, the pollution, waste, and poverty. They can still feel the effects of the last economic crisis. The idea of the free market or nationalisation as answers is no longer believed.

The socialist answer is the abolition of the right of private property, the right to exploit, the right to rob, the right to cause crises, the right to compete, and to cause wars and instead the common ownership of the means of production, so that all may enjoy the fruit of their labour, and consume it.  The Socialist Party works for the

improvement of the conditions of the people and its understanding teaches that in the long run, such is capitalist development, that improvement can only be attained by changing basic social relations, by a shift in ownership and control from the few to the many and when the whole of society is changed by the elimination of the private ownership of the entire means of production, socialism.

Socialist Standard No. 1372 December 2018

Socialist Standard December 2018 as PDF

• Editorial: The vote and its misuse
  
• Pathfinders: The Only Way Is Ethics (Not)
  
• Letters
  
• Brexit, Schmexit
  
• Cooking the Books: Fukuyama goes reformist
  
• Wood for the Trees: The Cool
  
• Material World: Brazil – people elect a populist
  
• Trump’s Economist Advisors Seeing Red Everywhere
  
• Donald Trump: bog standard capitalist
  
• The problem is not the banks … it’s capitalism
  
• Bolshevik anti-socialism
  
• Cooking the Books: Message from Gotha
  
• Proper Gander: Pulling The Trigger
  
• Book Review: ‘Radical Political Economy – Sraffa versus Marx’
  
• Book Review: ‘Asia’s Reckoning – the Struggle for Global Dominance’
  
• Book Review: ‘The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900–68)’
  
• Exhibition Review: Annie Swynnerton – Painting Light and Hope
  
• 50 Years Ago: Law and Order in the U.S.A.
  
• Obituary: Bob Beckett
  
• Rear View
  
• Cartoon: Free Lunch