Reset the System

Engels denied nationalisation equalled socialism, and if it was then the German dictator Otto von Bismarck was a ‘socialist.’ There was nothing socialist about such state ownership. The Socialist Party counter-pose genuine social ownership to state-capitalism. The basis of socialist society must be the common ownership of the means of production. The machinery in factories, the transportation networks, the mines, all the communications , the land and farms must all be at the disposal of society. All these means of production must be under the control of society as a whole, and not as at present under the control of individual capitalists or capitalist corporations. What do we mean by 'society as a whole'? We mean that ownership and control is not the privilege of a class but of all the persons who make up society. In these circumstances society will be transformed into a huge working organization for cooperative production. Global production will be organised. No longer will one enterprise compete with another but will operate as one vast people's workshop. The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. With socialism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic cooperative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. The essence of socialism lies in this, that the organisation shall be a cooperative organisation of all the members of society, that puts an end to exploitation, that abolishes the division of society into classes. In such conditions, money will no longer be required.  A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value.  Products will simply be supplied according to the needs of the people, for there will be an abundance of everything. 

 Capitalism is all about a small group of capitalists who controls everything; production has been organised, so that capitalists extract surplus value from the workers, who have been practically reduced to slavery. Here we have the exploitation of one class by another. Here there is a joint ownership of the means of production, but it is joint ownership by one class, an exploiting class. This is something very different from socialism, although it is characterized by the social nature of the organisation of production. Such an organisation of society would reduce one of the fundamental contradictions, the anarchy of production. But it would have strengthened the other fundamental contradication of capitalism, the division of society into two warring halves; the class war would be intensified. Such a society would be organised along one line only; on another line, that of class structure, it would still be rent asunder. Socialist society does not merely organize production; in addition, it frees people from oppression by others by creating the cooperative character of socialist production in every detail of organisation. With socialism, for example, there will not be elected delegates to manage factories, nor will there be persons who do one and the same kind of work throughout their lives. Under capitalism, if a man is a bootmaker, he spends his whole life in making boots; if she is a pastry-cook, she spends all her life baking cakes. Nothing of this sort happens in communist society. In socialism people receive a many-sided culture, and find themselves at home in various branches of production.

If in a socialist society there will be no classes this implies there will likewise be no State. The State is a class organization of the rulers. The State is always directed by one class against the other. A capitalist State is directed against the proletariat, whereas a workers State is directed against the bourgeoisie. In socialism there are neither landlords, nor capitalists, nor wage workers; there are simply people - comrades. If there are no classes, then there is no class war, and there are no class organisations. Consequently the State has ceased to exist. Since there is no class war, the State has become superfluous. There is no one to be held in restraint, and there is no one to impose restraint.

Who is going to work out the plans for social production? Who will distribute labour power?  How, they ask, can socialism be run without any direction? It is not difficult to answer these questions. It will be entrusted to various kinds of administrative bodies and we can suggest such United Nations departments such as FAO, ILO, and WHO. The State, therefore, has ceased to exist. There are no groups and there is no class standing above all other classes. The State will die out.

With socialism there will be the liberation of the vast quantity of human energy which is now absorbed in the class struggle. Just think how great is the waste of nervous energy, strength, and labour - upon the political struggle, upon strikes, revolts and their suppression, trials in the law-courts, police activities, the State authority, upon the daily effort of the two hostile classes. The class war now swallows up vast quantities of energy and material means. In the new system this energy will be liberated; people will no longer struggle one with another. The liberated energy will be devoted to the work of production.

Secondly, the energy and the material means which now are destroyed or wasted in competition, crises, and wars, will all be saved. If we consider how much is squandered upon wars alone, we shall realise that this amounts to an enormous quantity. How much, again, is lost to society through the struggle of sellers one with another, of buyers one with another, and of sellers with buyers. How much futile destruction results from commercial crises. How much needless outlay results from the disorganization and confusion that prevail in production. All these energies, which now run to waste, will be saved in socialist society.

The organisation of industry on a purposeful plan will not merely save us from needless waste, in so far as large scale production is always more economical. In addition, it will be possible to improve production from the technical side, for work will be conducted in very large factories and with the aid of perfected machinery. Under capitalism, there are definite limits to the introduction of new machinery. The capitalist only introduces new machinery when he cannot procure a sufficiency of cheap labour. If he can hire an abundance of cheap labour, the capitalist will never install new machinery, since he can secure ample profit without this trouble. The capitalist finds machinery requisite only when it reduces his expenses for highly paid labour. Under capitalism, however, labour is usually cheap. The bad conditions that prevail among the working class become a hindrance to the improvement of manufacturing technique. This causal sequence is peculiarly obvious in agriculture. Here labour power has always been cheap, and for that reason, the introduction of machinery in agricultural work has been extremely slow. In communist society, our concern will not be for profit but for the workers. There every technical advance will be immediately adopted. The chains which capitalism imposed will no longer exist. Technical advances will continue to take place inside socialism, for all will now enjoy a good education, and those who under capitalism perished from want - mentally gifted workers, for instance - will be able to turn their capacities to full account. There will be no place for the parasites who do nothing and who live at others' cost. 

Socialism will signify an enormous development of productive forces. As a result, no worker in socialism will have to do as much work as of old. The working day will grow continually shorter, and people will be to an increasing extent freed from the chains imposed on them by nature. As soon as man is enabled to spend less time upon feeding and clothing himself, he will be able to devote more time to the work of mental development. Human culture will climb to heights never attained before. It will no longer be a class culture, but will become a genuinely human culture. Concurrently with the disappearance of man's tyranny over man, the tyranny of nature over man will likewise vanish. Men and women will for the first time be able to lead a life worthy of thinking beings instead of a life worthy of brute beasts.

The critics of the socialist idea have always described it as a process of sharing things out equally. They declared that the communists wanted to confiscate everything and to divide everything up; to parcel out the land, to divide up the other means of production, and to share out also all the articles of consumption. Nothing could be more absurd than this notion. Above all, such a general division is impossible. We could share out land and money, but could not share out transport systems, machinery and various other things of the sort. Furthermore, such a division, as far as practicable, would not merely do no good to anyone, but would be a backward step for mankind. It would create a vast number of petty proprietors. But we have already seen that out of petty proprietorship and the competition among petty proprietors there issues large-scale proprietorship. Thus even if it were possible to realize such an equal division, the same old cycle would be reproduced. It is why socialists are not swayed by the proponents of co-ops. Socialism is a huge cooperative commonwealth.

The idea of the co-operative commonwealth

One condition of success for socialism is that its adherents should explain its aim and its essential characteristics clearly, so that they can be understood by every one. We must do away with many misunderstandings created by our adversaries and some created by ourselves. The main idea of socialism is simple. Socialists believe that society is divided into two classes by the present form of property-holding, and that one of these classes, the wage-earning, the proletariat, is obliged to toil for the other, the capitalist, to be able to live. All this misery, all this injustice and disorder, results from the fact that one class monopolises the means of production and of life, and imposes its laws on another class and on society as a whole. All differences of class must be abolished by transferring the ownership of the means of production and of life, which is to-day a power of exploitation and oppression in the hands of a single class, from that class to the organised community. The abusive rule of the minority must be substituted by the universal co-operation of people associated in the shared and joint ownership. And that is why the essential aim of socialism is to transform capitalist property into social property.

 With socialism private ownership and production for profit will be supplanted by common ownership and production for use. Working people will work together in harmony instead of being arrayed against each other in competitive warfare. They will collectively own the means of production, and there will be work for all.

The Socialist Party aims to replace the present capitalist system, with its inherent injustice and inhumanity, by a social order from which the domination and exploitation of one class by another will be eliminated, in which economic planning will supersede unregulated private enterprise and competition. The present system is marked by glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity, by chaotic waste and instability; and in an age of plenty it condemns the great mass of the people to poverty and insecurity. Power has become more and more concentrated into the hands of a small irresponsible minority of financiers and industrialists and to their predatory interests the majority are habitually sacrificed. When private profit is the main motivation to economic effort, capitalist society swings between periods of feverish prosperity in which the main benefits go to speculators and profiteers, and of catastrophic recession, in which the common people’s normal state of insecurity and hardship is worsened. We believe that these evils can be removed only in a planned and socialised economy in which our natural resources and principal means of production and distribution are owned, controlled and operated by the people.

 Socialism is not a system of society in which individuality will be crushed out by regimentation. What we seek is a proper democratic collective organisation of our economic resources such as will make possible a much greater degree of leisure and a much richer individual life for every citizen. This social and economic transformation can only be brought about by political action. Political action is not to be despised, nor is any other that will help to break down the domination of the master class and hasten the emancipation of the proletariat. It will be time enough to forswear political action when the master class no longer strive to retain their mastery of the political machine. We do not believe in change by violence. The old parties are the instruments of capitalist interests and cannot serve as agents of social reconstruction, and that whatever the superficial differences between them, they are bound to carry out policies in accordance with the dictates of Big Business interests who fund them. The Socialist Party aims at political power in order to put an end to this capitalist domination of our political life and the establishment of a planned, socialised economic order, in order to make possible the most efficient development of the national resources and the most equitable distribution of the world’s wealth.

The principles of the Socialist Party are fixed and immutable. Our object aimed at, the end to be attained, remains ever the same, that object being social and economic freedom and equality for all, and the realisation of the highest individual development and liberty conceivable for all, through the social ownership and control of all the material means of production and existence. 

The Socialist Party will not rest content until it has eradicated capitalism and the establishment of the cooperative commonwealth. Our primary function is to organise a political party, independent and class-conscious. The purpose of a Socialist Party is the realisation of socialism. We refuse to subordinate that goal to any other.

The problem is capitalism. The solution is socialism

Socialism is not some pipe-dream. Capitalism has created the economic conditions for socialism. Socialism will bring social ownership of social production. It is the next step in the further evolution of society.

The means of production – the factories, mines, mills, offices, farm fields, transportation system, media, communications, medical facilities, retailers, etc., will be transformed into common property. Private ownership of the means of production will end. The economy will be geared not to the interest of profit, but to serving human needs. This will release the productive capacity of the economy from the limitations of profit maximisation. A great expansion of useful production and the wealth of society will then become possible. Rational economic planning will replace the present anarchistic system. Coordination and planning of production will aim at building an economy that will benefit the people. Because capitalism has already developed an advanced economy, socialism’s task will be to reorient this structure towards social needs. The protection of the environment would be ensured. Socialism will uphold the principles of democratic controlled common ownership, production for the people’s needs, and the elimination of exploitation.  The elimination of private ownership of the main means of production will permit a more equitable distribution of social wealth. There will be no billionaires nor paupers. 

The capitalist system of production, under which we live, is the production of commodities for profit instead of for use for the private gain of those who own and control the means of production and distribution. Out of this system of production and sale for profit spring all monopolies (arising from and following competition) and out of it, naturally, grow an overwhelming percentage of moral evils, and the entire problem of misery, want, and poverty that, as a deadly menace, now confronts civilisation.

Socialism is human association reduced to a practical program. It recognises that life in society is constantly passing through a process of evolution. It declares that labour is the sole creator of value and that the laborer is entitled to the full social value of the things he produces. It teaches that the only way to attain the just distribution of wealth to those who produce it is through the common ownership, control, and operation of the means of production and distribution, such as lands, mines, factories, transport, communications, etc. It asserts that this production should be for use and not for sale or profit, thus doing away with all private monopoly of the means of subsistence, and all forms of graft, corruption, and extortion in every department of society, and with a vast amount of unproductive labour and an immense number of useless and harmful occupations. Socialism would conserve and not abolish private possessions. Thus homes and all personal belongings not used to produce more wealth would remain individually owned.

The cooperative commonwealth is our goal. In order to be understood socialist philosophy must be studied. If you wish to oppose its ideas, study it. No person has a right to be a socialist or to criticise it without understanding the subject.  The problem before us is how are the land and the tools of production to be removed from private ownership to social ownership, while at the same time distribution (at first of the necessaries of life, and later on of the full products of wealth) is secured on an equable basis for all wealth producers?

The Socialist Party aims at the complete emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital. This emancipation can be achieved by the transfer to social ownership of all the means and objects of production, a transfer which will entail:

a) the abolition of the present commodity production (i.e., the purchase and sale of products on the market) and

b) its replacement by a new system of social production according to a previously drawn-up plan with a view to satisfying the requirements both of society as a whole and of each one of its members. 

This socialist revolution will give rise to the most radical changes in all social relationships. It will introduce consciousness where there now reigns blind economic necessity by simplifying and giving purpose to all social relationships. it will at the same time provide each citizen with the real economic possibility of participating directly in the discussion and decision of all social matters.

This direct participation of citizens in the management of social affairs presupposes the abolition of the present system of political representation and its replacement by direct popular decision making. The emancipation of the workers must be the matter of the workers themselves, as the interests of labour in general are diametrically opposed to the interests of the exploiters, and as, therefore, the higher classes will always hinder the above described re-organisation of the social relationships, the necessary preliminary condition for this reorganisation is the capture of political power by the working class in each of the countries concerned. Only this temporary domination of the working class can paralyse the efforts of counter-revolution and put an end to the existence of classes and their struggle.

CAPITALISM IS THE ROOT OF OUR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS.

Democratic control over the means of production and the establishment of socialism is the only solution to unending war and the destruction of our environment. The profit motive is incompatible with safeguarding the world’s resources. So long as it is profitable, environmental destruction is perfectly ’logical’ under capitalism which forces governments to exploit their resources dangerously for short term gain. Humanity’s problem is not limited resources but the waste of resources which is an essential part of the process of capital accumulation. There is destruction of indigenous people and their sustainable ways of life; hijacking of fertile land for cash cropping and clearance of forest for cattle ranching. The diverse environment movement has been valuable in highlighting and researching many of these specific problems. They are advancing the view that sustainable life systems living in harmony with nature are a real alternative but fail to place the blame upon the exploitative system of capitalism.

And it is the only road to the reversal of the possible descent into barbarism. Common ownership and democratic control over society is the goal of the Socialist Party and, practically speaking, the only thing that will save the world. This cannot be reformed into being. Supporting radical sounding or so-called socialist candidates of capitalist parties muddies the truth that the system of capitalism itself is the real enemy of the working class. Socialism is not about fighting for reforms or demands. Reformism is not socialism. Capitalism is no longer expanding and progressive. It is a retreating and increasingly reactionary social system. 

The workers who produce the wealth have no decisive voice in operating the economy. They do not have the most elementary of all rights—democratic control over their means of livelihood. We are living under a system which is more and more clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity. It has vast productive potential, but only means poverty and oppression for the masses. It brings deprivation to working people. It imposes draconian cuts in living standards on the already poor, simply in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class. Capitalism is responsible for the damage to the environment.  Its armaments industry cynically profits from a series of local wars of unparalleled destructiveness. The root cause of all this is capitalism’s quest for profit, which takes precedence over any human well-being. Capitalism threatens the future of humanity. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It has undergone many changes in its history, but these have simply meant finding new ways to exploit working people. The only solution is to end it and build a new social system. 

Socialism aims at controlling the means of wealth production on behalf of working people. Only they fully know the needs and demands of the processes of wealth production. Socialism is the only democratic solution to the many problems humanity faces. It has been the custom for people to be told that they must look to the State for salvation that their hope lay in government  regulation. Socialism was often seen as economic growth minus capitalist crises, and state control was seen as a definition of socialism. The laws of capitalist expansion was thus taken on board, rather than seeing socialism as a qualitatively different.

Working people must speak and act like one. In this lies its future.

We have nothing but we should have everything

As long as capitalist production remains, wages will not rise much above what is needed for the maintenance of labour power. The capitalists, the masters of the governments, will grant reforms when they see that it is the only way to hang on, when they think they can survive through concessions, and as long as they stay the workers will remain slaves. However much the workers win, it will only mean that the chains of slavery are coated in velvet or silk, yet still chains. Without suppressing the cause, you will never suppress poverty and slavery. The conflict between capital and labour can only be resolved by the abolition of wage labour and its replacement by cooperation. As long as private property remains the base of our society, poverty, slavery, misery and all their consequences will continue for the workers. Improving the lot of the workers can never succeed without leaving the framework of private property as basis of society, and that our aim is and remains the conversion of private property into social property.

Socialists are convinced that, a system for transforming the world’s natural resources to provide benefit for world’s people, capitalism no longer fit for purpose; that the capitalist system not only fails to find solutions to basic human problems, but now presents an obstacle to the solution of those problems.

This conviction does not arise from an irrational hatred of capitalism. Socialists have acknowledged the progressive phase of capitalism in many ways. It was definitely more productive, for example, than the static stagnant feudal system it replaced.

So why do socialists argue that it is categorically not the best possible mode of production for the modern world?

One reason is that certain anomalies arise out of the very nature of capitalism whereby the system is unable fully to utilize the forces of production it has helped to create. Goods are produced in the expectation of profit; when profit is realised it attracts more investment leading to increased production, competition and falling prices. At or before the point where goods cannot be sold at a profit, production will cease, regardless of all other considerations.

To take the argument out of the realms of theory we have only to look at the examples of food and housing; the lack of these is killing people in large numbers on a daily basis; the materials and labour to satisfy those needs are lying idle. The best that can be said for the system is that it is unable to connect these two facts (in practice action is taken to prevent the connection being made).

Reformism

Some entertain the idea that either you can deal with the evidently unattractive features of the system so that it works better for everyone or that you can modify it bit by bit until it becomes a different and better system. These reformists seem to think that capitalism is a game: that one day long ago somebody picked two sides, marked out the pitch and wrote a rule-book which could be amended if the same side kept winning all the time.

Of course, within the system there are various administrations and multitudinous laws but the idea that these can be used to make the system work counter to its natural tendency is sadly mistaken. Even aspects of capitalism which don’t seem to benefit anybody at all can’t be artificially controlled by those charged with administering it.

The point is that, in capitalist society, truly significant policies are implemented, rather than decided, by those we are pleased to call our elected representatives. Some administrations, of course, are aesthetically more pleasant than others or, if you like making moral judgements, morally better than others, but if we look behind the surface appearances, they are all running the same system.

There are no answers in capitalism for the working class because you won't get satisfactory answers by asking irrelevant questions. For the vast majority of the world’s population the answer is neither left-wing government nor right-wing government — it’s no government: not private, state or mixed ownership of the world’s resources, rather the common ownership which amounts to no ownership. And whether capitalist ownership is administered on a local, regional, national or international level will, on the whole, make no difference to the working class. By the very fact of this ownership, we will remain the subject class.

Two classes

At present there are only two classes: the minority ruling class of capitalists who determine the course of most peoples lives through their monopoly of the means of wealth production, and the majority subject class—the working class which is unable, in society as presently constituted, to stake any claim to the means of life except by selling its labour power to the owners of capital.

This does not mean that no capitalist ever does any useful work; for many reasons, not least the basic human need for stimulation, many capitalists work quite hard. But neither their privileged position in society nor their claim on the world's resources depends on any work they do, but on their exploitation of the working class. Neither does it mean that all workers work all the time; but it does mean that to ensure their survival workers must strive to sell their labour power.

In Britain not so long ago. and in some parts of the world today, if you were unable or unwilling to sell your labour power you would quite literally be left to die of poverty-related causes. In most developed countries today you will be kept alive in return for a promise to work when you are needed. But whether you have or haven’t got a job you will be left in no doubt about your class status. The media are full of stories of evictions, disconnections, people living on inferior diets, etc. The superficial message is usually “This type of thing shouldn’t be happening in 20th century Britain and your fearless reporters will expose this type of scandal wherever we find it!” The real message is "Just in case you were thinking of arguing with the boss, skipping the rent or mortgage, etc. remember this could be you”.

That, in a nutshell, is the negative side of the class division in capitalist society. The positive side is that the forces of production have grown so huge and complex that the ruling class is no longer able even to organise the exploitation of the workers; it has to employ workers to administer the system which exploits us so that for some time now the entire capitalist system is run from top to bottom by the working class on behalf of the capitalist class.

This is of crucial importance as it means the capitalist class would be totally powerless should the only other class in society identify the conflict of interests and act in its own best interest instead of finding common cause with its oppressors. Because the ruling class not only lives on wealth produced by the workers but is protected by armies consisting of workers and served by administrations staffed by, and largely elected by, workers, the only thing required for the working class to end its subjugation is that it recognises its interest and acts on it.

One reason this does not happen is that the working class is fragmented and encouraged to recognise a variety of pseudo-interests and even pseudo-classes which cannot be defined in any meaningful way. Black people are told that white people can’t be trusted and vice-versa. People are brainwashed into believing they belong to nations whose boundaries are determined by their masters. Women are told that male oppression is responsible for their subjugation. Gods with various names, personalities and agendas are pressed into service. Any differences between people, whether they are as real as gender or as artificial as national boundaries, as deeply rooted as folk culture or as superficial as skin colour, will be exploited to prevent the working class from recognising its unity.

All we have to do is take control of the resources and the machinery of administration we already run for the capitalists and run it for ourselves: the potential is there to improve the world and. if we acted as a class, the capitalists could not stop us doing this.

Socialism

There is no convincing evidence from history or science to suggest that, released from artificial constraints, humanity will act irresponsibly—indeed there is much to suggest that such irresponsibility as exists now is largely due to insecurity, frustration, alienation and other products of property society.

What socialists can say, because of our understanding of the limiting features of capitalism, is that after the abolition of capitalism social production will be directly for the satisfaction of human needs, that distribution will involve free access to available wealth according to self-assessed needs; that buying, selling and money will play no part, thus preventing the accumulation of wealth; and that things will be administered by a participatory democracy far in advance of the political system we have at present. Socialists are convinced that humanity is capable of this.