The revolutionary use of the vote

 The vote is a gain, a potential class weapon, a potential "instrument of emancipation" as Marx put it. Despite Lenin's distortions, Marx and Engels always held that the bourgeois democratic republic was the best political framework for the development and triumph of the socialist movement. This is another early socialist position we see no reason to abandon.

Certainly, political democracy under capitalism is not all that it is purported to be by many supporters of the system and it is severely limited, from the point of view of democratic theory, by the very nature of capitalism as an unequal, class-divided society. Certainly, "democracy" has become an ideology used to give capitalist rule a spurious legitimacy. But it is still sufficient to allow the working class to organise politically and economically without too much state interference and also, we would argue, to allow a future socialist majority to gain control of political power.

In a vote between lesser of two evils, "Vote Cholera or Vote for Typhoid", (btw, someone once said "Those who choose the lesser of two evils soon forget that what they chose is an evil".)

Not voting at all is valid, but casting blank ballots or some other form of actively announcing not voting is better .One or two spoilers/blank voters can be ignored, tens of thousands or even millions could not be - especially if backed by a vocal movement explaining the situation. (see the Argentinian example, for instance , http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1598855.stm ). In Britain, Canada and most of Europe, etc we don't think we've any fundamental objection to the electoral system; the provisions for voter registration, nomination of candidates, counting of votes, declaration of result,etc can be inherited by socialism and, with modifications, continue to be used. We also think, of course, that the present electoral mechanisms can be used to express and count, more or less fairly and accurately, a majority desire for socialism. So we've no interest in running down the system as such. The way to show that you accept the electoral system but reject the sham choice is to go and use it but not vote for any of the candidates.

There is nothing inherently elitist about the electoral approach. It is how you use that approach that makes it elitist. The World Socialist Movement (WSM) is not asking people to vote for them so they can solve the problems the electorate have to contend with. The WSM it is saying quite clearly that workers need to understand and support socialism themselves in order for it to come about It cannot be imposed from above. Furthermore, we constantly makes the point to workers in elections that if they dont understand or support socialism then they should not vote for the WSM. The WSM does not propose to come "into office", ie to form a government and so does not propose "to vote itself into office". Nor to we propose that other people should "vote us into office" either. What we do propose is that people should, amongst other things, use the vote in the course of the social revolution from capitalism to socialism; that they should, if you like, vote capitalism out of office. To do this they will need to stand recallable mandated delegates at elections but these will be just this: messenger boys and girls, not leaders or would-be government ministers, sent to formally take over and dismantle "the central State". 

The situation we envisage in which a majority vote in socialist delegates is one where the revolution, in respect of socialist ideas has already begun to accelerate. The vote is merely the legitimate stamp which will allow for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the States and the end of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of real democracy. It is the Achilles heel of capitalism and makes a non-violent revolution possible. What matters is a conscious socialist majority outside parliament, ready and organised to take over and run industry and society; electing a socialist majority in parliament is essentially just a reflection of this. It is not parliament that establishes socialism, but the socialist working-class majority outside parliament and they do this, not by their votes, but by their active participating beyond this in the transformation of society.

Basically, there are only three ways of winning control of the State: (a) armed insurrection; (b) more or less peaceful mass demonstrations and strikes; (c) using the electoral system.

The early members of the WSM adopted, in the light of then existing political conditions, for (c), but without ruling out (b) or even (a) should these conditions change (or in other parts of the world where conditions were different).

But this was never understood as simply putting an "X" on a ballot paper and letting the Socialist Party and its MPs establish socialism for workers. The assumption always was that there would be a "conscious" and active socialist majority outside Parliament, democratically organised both in a mass socialist political party and, at work, in ex-trade union type organisations ready to keep production going during and immediately after the winning of political control.
Having adopted (c), various other options follow.

Obviously, if there's a socialist candidate people who want socialism are urged to vote for that candidate. But what if there's no socialist candidate? Voting for any other candidate is against the principles. So what to do? The basic choice is/was between abstention and spoiling the ballot paper (by writing "socialism" across it). The policy adopted and confirmed ever since was the latter, ie a sort of write-in vote for socialism.

The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule-they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control.

We need to organise politically, into a political party, a socialist party. We don't suffer from delusions of grandeur so we don't necessary claim that we are that party. What we are talking about is not a small educational and propagandist group such as ourselves, but a mass party that has yet to emerge. It is such a party that will take political control via the ballot box, but since it will in effect be the useful majority organised democratically and politically for socialism it is the useful majority, not the party as such as something separate from that majority, that carries out the socialist transformation of society.

They will neutralise the state and its repressive forces and as stated there is no question of forming a government , and then proceed to take over the means of production for which they will also have organised themselves at their places of work.

This done, the repressive state is disbanded and its remaining administrative and service features, reorganised on a democratic basis, are merged with the organisations which the useful majority will have formed to take over and run production, to form the democratic administrative structure of the state-free society of common ownership that socialism will be.

This is perhaps a less romantic idea of the socialist revolution but a thousand times more realistic. Which is why we think this is the way it will happen.

When the time comes the socialist majority will use the ballot box since it will be the obvious thing to do, and nobody will be able to prevent them or persuade them not to. At that time it will be the anti-electoralists who will be irrelevant. A real democracy is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of leadership. It is about all of us having a direct say in the decisions that affect us. Leadership means handing over the right to make those decisions to someone else. We have at our disposal today the very means, in the form of modern telecommunications, that could enable us to resuscitate the ancient model of Athenian democracy on a truly global level.

Social Democracy was Socialism

It was William Morris long ago who said the job of socialists is to make socialists.

"It should be our special aim to make Socialists, by putting before people, and especially the working-classes, the elementary truths of Socialism; since we feel sure, in the first place, that in spite of the stir in the ranks of labour, there are comparatively few who understand what Socialism is, or have had opportunities of arguing on the subject with those who have at least begun to understand it; and, in the second place, we are no less sure that before any definite Socialist action can be attempted, it must be backed up by a great body of intelligent opinion - the opinion of a great mass of people who are already Socialists, people who know what they want, and are prepared to accept the responsibilities of self-government, which must form a part of their claims."

The Socialist Party does not so easily dismiss the electoral process

What’s our case for elections?

We don't want your vote IF you think socialism means nationalisation, higher taxation, welfare state, national liberation, legalising marijuana or whatever. In short, we don't want your vote if you think we need to keep and act within existing capitalism.

We tell you we can't do anything for you. We don't promise you anything. We say that if you want socialism you've got to act for yourselves. We can't establish it for you.

We're not making any promises, if you vote for us, you're the one making the promise to work towards abolishing capitalism and the wages system

Whether Scotland is in or out of the UK, or whether we use the British pound or the euro, doesn't make any difference to workers daily lives. For Shetlanders or those in the Western Isles, Holyrood as remote as the Westminster parliament, and people know they have no control of what happens. Neither have the politicians. Nobody controls or can control the way capitalism works.

The Socialist Party position is to enable any and all who would join the struggle to abolish capitalism to be able to signal to their fellow workers that that is what they want to do. We stand for the sole purpose of emancipating the working class, not soft-padding the chains of capital. We only want the votes of those who understand what socialism is, and actually want it and are prepared to do something about it. We're not leaders, we're not looking for followers, we're only standard bearers.

A vote for the Socialist Party is a vote that says you are ready to signal to your fellow socialists that they are not alone. A signal to your fellow workers that some people take the actual idea of socialism seriously, rather than relegating it to some bedtime fairytale never-never land once the work of running capitalism is supposedly done.

Democracy under capitalism is reduced to people voting for competing groups of professional politicians, to giving the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down to the governing or opposition party. Political analysts call this the ‘elite theory of democracy’ because all that the people get to choose is which elite should exercise government power. This contrasts with the original theory of democracy, which envisages popular participation in the running of affairs and which political analysts call ‘participatory democracy’.

The most we will get under capitalism is the right to vote, under more or less fair conditions, for who shall control political power - a minimalist form of democracy, but one not to be so easily dismissed, since at least it provides a mechanism whereby a socialist majority could vote in socialist delegates instead of capitalist politicians.

Bourgeois democracy is the best we can hope for under capitalism, but it is not the ideal model possible for the revolutionary. Capitalist democracy is not a participatory democracy, which a genuine democracy has to be. In practice, the people generally elect professional politicians, who they merely vote for, and then let them get on with the job.

In other words, the electors abdicate their responsibility to keep an eye on their representatives, giving them a free hand to do what the operation of capitalism demands. But that’s as much the fault of the electors as their representatives - or rather it is a reflection of their low level of democratic consciousness. It cannot be blamed on the principle of representation as such.

There is no reason in principle why, with a heightened democratic consciousness (such as would accompany the spread of socialist ideas), even representatives sent to state bodies could not be subject, while the state lasts, to democratic control by those who sent them there.

The Socialist Party has never held that a merely formal majority at the polls will give the workers power to achieve socialism. We have always emphasised that such a majority must be educated in the essentials of socialist principles. It is the quality of the voters behind the vote that, in the revolutionary struggle, will be decisive. The institution of parliament is not at fault. It is just that people’s ideas have not yet developed beyond belief in leaders and dependence on a political elite.

What the Socialist Party proposes is that people should use the vote in the course of the social revolution from capitalism to socialism and vote capitalism out of office. To do this they will need to stand mandated delegates at elections, but these will just be ‘messenger boys and girls’, sent to formally take over and dismantle ‘the state’, not leaders or government minister wannabes.

The vote is merely the legitimate stamp that will allow for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the state and the end of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of real democracy. This should not be understood as simply putting an X on a ballot paper and letting the Socialist Party and its MPs establish socialism for workers. There must also be that ‘conscious’ and active socialist majority outside parliament, democratically organised both in a mass socialist political party and at work in various forms of ex-trade union type organisations ready to keep production going during and immediately after the winning of political control.

The Socialist Party is a political organisation that has a membership who don’t require a leadership to make its decisions, that has an executive council which doesn’t determine policies, that has a general secretary whose role is to administer and not to control. As a matter of political principle, the Socialist Party holds no secret meetings, with all its meetings, including those of its executive committee, being open to the public. Thus emulating the society it seeks to establish.

The Cry of the People

“And yes, we do need hope, of course we do. But the one thing we need more than hope is action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.” - Greta Thunberg 

Many people these days will tell you ‘socialism is dead’, usually with the collapse of the USSR. However, the reformists do not know what they want; they are everything and nothing. It is amazing these days to see how many and how diverse are the people who mean to change the world. Those ‘world changers’ find that they do not suddenly decide to change the world and—hey presto!—it is changed. They offer us a new world…but later…far, far later.

The support of the majority of the population is necessary for the socialist transformation of society. No social order will personal freedom be so assured as in a society based upon communal ownership.

In his first draft of ’The Civil War in France’ Marx wrote that ‘the general suffrage, till now abused either for the parliamentary sanction of the Holy State Power, or a play in the hands of the ruling classes’ was ‘adapted to its real purposes, to choose by the communes their own functionaries of administration and initiation’

Engels wrote to Paul Lafargue in 1892: ‘Look what a splendid weapon you have now had in your hands in France for forty years in universal suffrage if only you’d known how to make use of it!’

In ’The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’ Engels recognised that ‘the possessing class rules directly through the medium of universal suffrage’, but only for so long as the working class is ‘not yet ripe to emancipate itself. To the extent that the proletariat ‘matures for its self-emancipation’, it ‘constitutes itself as its own party and elects its own representatives, and not those of the capitalists. Thus universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class.’

For Marx and Engels the democratic nature of a socialist revolution depended on its enjoying the support of the majority of the people. The majoritarian nature of the proletarian movement was emphasised, as we have seen, in the ‘Communist Manifesto’, “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority." The winning of a majority was considered essential by Marx and Engels not only on grounds of expediency, but also because of the democratic nature of the socialist project. In a revolution, wrote Engels, where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, ‘the masses must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for with body and soul’.

Socialism offers the only solution to the contradictions of capitalism, so every serious attempt to find a way out leads surely and inexorably to socialism. From the old World to the new World means a change, a very great change, and those who propose to take the job in hand had better make a study of Marxism, if they wish to know how to get on with the job. The interests of working people in all countries are the same. Society's crying need is for the international unity of the working class to abolish capitalism and substitute for it a cooperative world of abundance and freedom. It is the need for dignity, for progress, for survival. The people of the world can have socialism if they want it or they can choose, in one way or another, extinction.

The aim of the master class is to keep the workers ignorant, for an ignorant subject class, not knowing how to act in their own interests, can be more easily and inexpensively kept in subjection than an educated one. In fostering this ignorance the first thing to be done is to preserve the inertia of the mind – the tendency of the mind to run in an unchanging direction. Fellow workers, there is but one meaning attaching to class rule, and that is class plunder. As long as you are ruled poverty will be your lot, for those who rule over you can always plunder you and always will. You are ruled, not by kings, but by those who possess the land, mines, factories, machinery, railways, and other means of production and distribution, and just because they possess those things. Since you are denied access to those things all the doors of life are shut against you except that of the labour market. You must become wage slaves – must sell your energies to those who own the productive forces. This means that goods are produced for profit, and that profit, that wealth you produce but which is taken away from you, goes to glut the market and to throw you out of work, so that you and your children starve when the warehouses are fullest.

The remedy for all this is to take these means of production and distribution away from their present owners and make them the property of the whole community. Food will then be produced to feed people, not for profit, and clothes to clothe them, and houses to shelter them. All able-bodied adults will take part in the necessary social labour, and all will partake freely of the wealth produced.

Month after month, year after year, our fellow-workers appear to be too satisfied with the capitalist system—or too apathetic — to want to put an end to it. They seem to look with an almost fatalistic resignation on the possibility of another recession. We, too, hope that the day will soon come when they will realise that whether at the forthcoming election they vote Labour or Tory politicians into power; they will still continue to live under capitalism and will have to suffer the worries and indignities of that system. When that day comes—and it cannot come too soon for us—they will decide to abolish capitalism and establish socialism. To do this the workers must first study socialism and organise to capture political power, in order that the political machinery may be used to end for ever the class domination which political power alone upholds. To try and bring that day nearer is the aim and work of members of the Socialist Party, its companion parties in the World Socialist Movement and friends and sympathisers around the world. 

Scotland goes secular

 

A majority of Scots do not belong to a religion.

In the Scottish Household Survey 2019 annual report, which Scotland's chief statistician published on Tuesday, 56% of adults reported that they did not belong to any religion.

The figure, which stood at just 40% in 2009 and has risen by four per cent since the 2018 report.

 The proportion of adults who say they belong to the Church of Scotland has sharply declined since 2009, from 34% to 20%.

How to end poverty

For the 1983 film Mazdoor (Worker), Hasan Kamal wrote a song that captures the essence of this sentiment:

Hum mehnat-kash is duniya se jab apna hissa maangenge
Ek baagh nahin, ek khet nahin: hum saari duniya maangenge. (When we labourers demand our share of the world. Not just an orchard, not merely a field: we will demand the whole world)

Hasan Kamal, from the 1983 film Mazdoor (Worker),

Capitalism vacillates between a major contradiction: between social production and private property. Capital – namely money that thirsts to make more money endlessly – organises all the forces of production into one effectively organised social process that generates maximum profits to the owners and minimum possible wages to workers. The remarkable network of social production ties workers in one part of the world to another, brings commodities from there to here. This network promised to link people together and to allow humans to enjoy the fruits of each other’s labour. The problem, however, is that the immense productivity of capitalism stands on the foundation of private property. Capital is restless and must always seek a profit. It is through the control of the production process that capital exploits labour and draws out surplus value. Private capital controls the system of social production, and appropriates the social wealth produced, with little share to the actual producers. The control of capital over the production process prevents the flowering of the creative power of human labour; the pressure of profit, the fruit of private property, seeks to draw more and more from the workers whose own resourcefulness is stifled by the demands of routine, obedience, and conformity enforced by the social relations of production. Poverty is not an unfortunate manifestation of this system, but its necessary product. To eradicate poverty – which is a shared human dream – requires us to do more than seek welfare and charity. Charity and welfare might lighten the suffering, but they cannot do more than that. The producing class needed to be organised to overthrow the system of private property and to found a system based on socialist principles.

The capitalist system has lurched from crisis to crisis, unable to face its deeply rooted contradictions and unable to offer solutions to endemic social problems. Marxism remains an essential framework to analyse the system. Capitalism has no doubt changed in many different ways, developed a greater role for finance for instance; but it remains governed by the system of social production and private gain, by capital’s immense power over the system of production and accumulation. Harsh conditions of work and life, the fight over labour time and intensity, the pressures of unemployment and hunger illuminate the centrality of class exploitation in our social order. The political fight must be waged by the workers not for this or that reform alone but for the transformation of a system that continues to generate poverty. The capitalist system, by its nature, produces diabolical levels of poverty; the future does not seem possible within the system. Socialism is the great hope that we can go beyond a system that immiserates billions of people.

Adapted from here

https://dissidentvoice.org/2020/09/not-just-an-orchard-not-merely-a-field-we-demand-the-whole-world/

 

Our Commandment - Thou shalt not be stolen from.

Socialism stands for the abolition of robbery and the abolition of poverty. We therefore declare that the present capitalist system is based upon the legalised robbery of the wealth producers by the capitalists, and the undoubted object of socialism is to get rid of these property monopolists as speedily as possible. Socialism promotes peace, solidarity and goodwill among all peoples. No other political influence has operated half so powerfully to eradicate racial animosities and national rivalries. As socialists we have no quarrel with the workers of any nation on earth. There is ample room for all in the world, it is only the conduct of industry for profit-making on behalf of the plutocracy that makes each nation fight every other nation. Stop this, and begin to produce for use and there is harmony for all.

Socialism does not seek to destroy but to construct, to build fine homes. Socialism does not aim at making people the slaves of governments, but to surely get rid of all governments other than the self-government of free citizens. Socialism does not aim at robbing the rich but at preventing the rich from continuing to rob the poor. Socialism is the recognition and adoption of the principle and practice of association and co-operation. Socialism gives each of us the responsibility of being our “brother’s keeper.” If a child, woman or man is hungry, socialism says there is something wrong in our social system, and upon us all individually and collectively rests the responsibility of righting the wrong. If a city contains one slum dwelling or a number of such, socialism says to each of us raze the slum to the ground and let the sun shine. If men or women are over-worked, and so prevented from fully sharing in the joys of life, socialism bids us to immediately lessen the toil. Socialism does not seek to destroy individuality, but to make it possible for each person to develop his or her faculties up to the highest possible pitch of perfection.

Men, women and children are dying by millions because they are barred from getting life’s necessaries. This in the midst of an abundance of wealth the like of which the world has never known before. Our principle is one of  comradeship based on the socialisation of the means of production and distribution and the complete emancipation of labour from the domination of capitalism. For the working class capitalism means a growing insecurity of their existence, of misery, oppression, enslavement, debasement, and exploitation.

The capitalist mode of production, because it has the creation of profit for its sole object and is based upon the divorcement of the majority of the people from the instruments of production and the concentration of these instruments in the hands of a minority. Society is thus divided into two opposite classes, one, the capitalists and their accomplices, the landlords and bankers, holding in their hands the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and being, therefore, able to command the labour of others; the other, the working-class, the wage-slaves, the proletariat, possessing nothing but their labour-power, and being consequently forced by necessity to work for the former. 

Private ownership of the means of production has today become the means of expropriating workers, and small farmers, and enabling the non-workers – capitalists and large landowners – to own the product of the workers. Only the transformation of capitalism’s private ownership of the means of production – the land, mines, raw materials, tools, machines, and means of transport – into common ownership, and the transformation of production of goods for sale into socialist production for use, managed for and through society, can bring it about that the great industry and the steadily growing productive capacity of social labour shall for the hitherto exploited classes be changed from a source of misery and oppression, to a source of the highest welfare and of all-round harmonious perfection.

This social revolution means the emancipation not only of the workers, but of the whole human race, which suffers under the conditions today. But it can only be the work of the working class, because all the other classes, in spite of mutually conflicting interests, take their stand on the basis of private ownership of the means of production, and have as their common object the preservation of the principles of contemporary society.

The battle of the working class against capitalist exploitation is necessarily a political battle. The working class cannot carry on its economic battles or develop its economic organisation without political rights. It cannot effect the passing of the means of production into the ownership of the community without acquiring political power.