Genuine Revolutionary Socialism

 

The Socialist Party is often told, “Your ideas are excellent but the word socialism has so many unfortunate associations that distance people.”

 The word socialism conjures up negative connotations. To many working people the word socialism means the same thing as the Communist Party dictatorship which ruled in Russia.

It is because of the confusion attached to the word socialism that our critics take great delight in flourishing the term wherever and whenever they can. We of the Socialist Party have nothing to do with such brands of so-called “socialism” or “communism.” We are Marxists because we know that Marxism is the only revolutionary socialism of the working class, and that is the only genuine socialism. History has demonstrated the spuriousness of every other brand. Socialism will not fall from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the goodwill and compassion of the capitalist exploiters.  Socialism can be realised only as of the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The class struggle is the motive force of history. Politics has no serious meaning except as the expression of conflicting class interests. Marx and Engels asserted, and we repeat after them, that there is an irreconcilable conflict of class interests between the workers and their capitalist exploiters. 

Capitalism robs the toilers of what they produce.  Socialism marks the birth of the era of prosperity for the workers. Under capitalism everywhere, wealth piles up automatically in the hands of the parasitic owners of the industries, while the masses of actual producers live barely at subsistence level.

When we say we will establish the cooperative commonwealth they still call us socialists. Whenever revolutionary socialists discuss the socialist road for their own country, they talk in terms of a worldwide struggle. Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true world commonwealth, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without masters and slaves. This global administration will not be a government of a dominant economic class but will be a decision-making body of all the peoples that inhabit the planet. Its primary duty will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people.

 The only possible remedy is the abolition of the private ownership of productive wealth. Socialism will destroy tile root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life.  With socialism, the instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with profit as the prime motive of production, the divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth?

In abolishing classes in society, socialism will transform the form and type of governments that exist today. Governments will change into administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the weapon of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political and the economic rule of Big Business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class.

Socialism will solve the problem of poverty by abolishing capitalism. Socialism will not concern itself with profits but with providing decent housing for all the people. Socialism will create a system of health care in which the physical constitution and improvement of humanity will be the paramount consideration.  The aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but to apply technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. Our world contains all that is necessary for socialism. All around us we see elaborate establishments containing the equipment and machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvellous technology to create a fruitful life of abundance. Only socialism can place automation and robots where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

 People have a choice to make. Either we continue on the path of capitalism, one full of chaos, war and poverty or we take the socialist road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time. 

The War for Hearts and Minds

 What the Socialist Party means when it is referring to the social revolution. By the term “revolution” is meant that complete change in the relationship between the classes in society, and the fundamental change in the institutions of society that are brought about by the rise to power of a class that has hitherto been held in subjection. And socialists, when we speak of the social revolution, refers to those changes in society which will be brought about when the working class, holding political supremacy, is the dominant class in society, and takes possession of the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution.

The Labour Party is a reformist organisation engaged in advocating the patching up of the present system of society. Although some of its leaders are termed socialists, and at times have claimed that title, they have time and time again made it quite clear that they are nothing other than reformers. The real cause of the slavery of the working class is not touched by any reforms. The cause of that slavery, with its poverty and insecurity, is the private ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution. It is true that the capitalist mode of production, with its property basis, was necessary for the development of the instruments of production to their present stage of efficiency. But the development of the machinery of production has long since reached the stage necessary for the production of the means of life in abundance for the whole of society. The present system is based, however, upon the production of commodities for profit. The struggle for markets wherein to sell these commodities becomes keener and keener, especially as the capitalist mode of production, with its more and more efficient machinery, extends in the one-time backward countries. Wars, commercial crises extending over long periods of years, unemployment, and the reduction in the workers’ standards of living—these are some of the consequences of this struggle for markets. More commodities are produced than can be sold for a profit. Therefore restrictions are deliberately put upon production itself. This is not always done openly, but cases occur, and have been restored in order to promote an artificial scarcity.

Socialism, the remedy for the workers’ slavery, cannot be brought about gradually, as the reformers would try to persuade their dupes. It can only be brought about by dispossessing the master class of the means of wealth production, and that cannot take place until the working class has made itself the ruling class in society. To accomplish this the proletariat must win political power, which means the control of the armed forces of the State. By this revolutionary method alone will it be possible to abolish private property in the means and instruments of wealth production and to substitute production for use for production for profit.

What are we organised for? What is our chief bond of unity? What is our avowed object? The abolition of capitalism. We work for the coming of the cooperative commonwealth. Our first aim must be winning to our cause the majority of working people by promoting revolutionary principles in the struggle for emancipation that must be fought along political lines, using in the immediate struggle the parliamentary phase of political action by electing where possible our representative to political office. A socialist movement unites and is guided by a cause. That cause today is a vision of humanity crossing into a new world of human freedom, peace and brotherhood, a world free of exploitation, ignorance and strife. No force exists that can prevent the people struggling against intolerable conditions from coalescing. The socialist vision is one of peace and harmony. Today, the level of the means of production makes realising this cause possible.

Manipulation of people’s thinking has relied upon the old tactic of divide and conquer. Working people are confused. They don’t know where to throw a blow or who to blame for their poverty and misery. The ruling class understands that as long as people lack a vision and remain confused about who is their friend and who is their foe, it can maintain its supremacy. The ruling class is waging a vicious, relentless campaign for the hearts and minds of the people. It emphasises “me, me, me, and to hell with everyone else.” Socialists must win the war for the hearts and minds of the people.

An Address to Fellow-Workers

 

We address you not as citizens of one country to citizens of another but as world socialists to fellow-workers of the world. We reject frontiers as artificial barriers put up by governments. All are brothers and sisters and the world should be theirs. All should be social equals with free access to the plenty that could be if only the means of living belonged to a socialist world community. We oppose governments everywhere, all nationalism, racism and religion, all censorship, all wars and preparations for war.  We support class struggle for better wages and conditions against the employers and the government.  Do not be misled by those who say that universal suffrage is a fraud. Learn from your masters. You too must organise to win political power if you want a new society. Do not let cunning politicians return to power on your backs. Ignore those who would be your leaders. Rely on your own understanding and organisation. Turn universal suffrage into an instrument of emancipation. Do not underestimate what a task it will be to change society. It will be a hundred times more difficult than changing the government. A democratic world community, based on common ownership with production for use not profit, can only be set up when people want it and are ready to take the steps needed to get it up and keep it going. Democratic political action is the only way to socialism. There are no short cuts. We must have a majority actively on our side.

Do not be misled by demagogues, those who praise Lenin, Trotsky, Mao or Che Guevara, who would use you for their own mistaken ends. They think that an elite should use discontent and unrest to gain power so to set up a new society. What dangerous nonsense! Look at former state capitalist Russia where a new privileged class ruled, with police intimidation and censorship, over an increasingly restless population. Look at state capitalist China where power-hungry bureaucrats and new oligarchs cynically manipulate the people in their own sordid squabbles. Learn the lessons of history: elite action leads to elite rule. No socialism unless by democratic political action, based on socialist understanding. The task we face is to build up a strong world-wide movement for socialism. What is needed more than anything else in this period of social unrest is a clear, uncompromising statement of the case for a socialist world community.

We are keen to grow and spread. We want to increase the size and reduce the price of our journals. We have a dozen pamphlets we should like to publish. We seek to improve and widen our online presence. We want to train and equip new speakers and writers. We want—we want a hundred things; but chiefly and above all we want socialism.

We shall not get socialism until we get you. If you are thoroughly convinced of the desirability of socialism and  our method of attaining to it, your place is with us. Do not come in because you think something should be done for the suffering poor. Do not come in because you have a  kind heart and feel charitably disposed towards your fellows. We are engaged in a grim struggle. The enemy will not go down before an onslaught of sentiment. Come in clear-eyed and clear-headed, knowing that you are part of the working class, knowing that your class is a subject class, held in bondage by a parasitic useless class, small but politically powerful; knowing that you can wrest that power from them, and then—and only then—can remould our world.

We as socialists are not prepared to compromise our opposition to defenders of capitalism masquerading as ”friends” of the workers. The class struggle is not going to disappear by wishful thinking; nor will it go away by the introduction of economic or social reforms nor by draconian anti-trade union legislation. While capitalism remains, the class struggle remains. The solution to this struggle between capital and labour, a solution propounded by socialists throughout this century, is that workers must organise politically to abolish capitalism. Trade unions, strikes, and other manifestations of the class struggle can only go so far. They are always limited by the class position of the workers and the vagaries of the trade cycle which capitalism periodically passes through. In the end, workers must realise that it is in their immediate interests to push the class struggle to its limit and abolish capitalism.

Socialism - A Solidarity Society

 

The World Socialist Movement must be independent and uncompromising. It must also stand firmly by democracy, by the methods of socialist education and political organisation, and the method of gaining control of the machinery of government and the armed forces through the vote and only with the backing of a majority of convinced socialists. We do not take sides in ruling class quarrels. Capitalism is based on class ownership, class antagonism. What, then, is the remedy? It is so plain and reasonable that the slowness of the workers to accept it is a matter for recurring amazement. Abolish the capitalist ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. Rid society of this institution which has now become a fetter for the mass of the population. Let society itself, through its own democratic control, utilise the land to produce food for the needs of the whole community, and the factories and railways, etc., likewise. Let us have our means of life turned into means of producing the requirements of humanity, not the profits of a class. Let us turn our two hostile communities into one real community, freed forever of the rivalry of interests between those who own and those who do not own, a rivalry which restricts the production of useful and beautiful things, condemns vast masses to sordid poverty, excites class hatred and international war, and poisons human relationships in a war of the jungle instead of a co-operative endeavour to enrich life. Socialist propaganda by a socialist organisation is still the only road to socialism. Though disillusioned with conventional mainstream political parties, the workers find new illusions to keep them from the path to socialism.

 So long as the capitalist class control the means of life, every economy and every improvement in the education, health, and technical ability of the workers, male and female, only results in their becoming more productive slaves. The fruits of their increased productivity go to the masters and not to themselves. This is the central fact ignored or obscured by these so-called leaders of labour. Whether the workers follow the Left-wingers’  “to nationalisation” plus reforms, or the more militant to “cooperatives” plus reforms, they are doomed to disappointment. The only road to emancipation is the conversion of the means of life into the property of the whole people. To this end, we call upon the workers to organise consciously, and politically for the capture of the machinery of government.

 Socialism, undiluted and unadulterated, is what the Socialist Party wants. As to why we want it, only look around you. Billions in need food, health-care, housing, etc., and the means exist ready to hand whereby they can produce them but we are as far away as ever from economic security. 

 The Social Revolution offers the only way out. Muster, then, under our banner, with a view to its speedy accomplishment.  The only solution to their troubles is the abolition of the cause—the private ownership of the means of life. Until they decide to carry this abolition through, their position as a whole is bound to grow worse by the operation of the factors given above. To abolish their slavery; to establish the common ownership and control of the means of wealth production and distribution, the workers must first seize the governing machinery of society. This is the political machinery, with its centre in Parliament. At any general election, the workers can do this, because they have the vast majority of the votes. But behind the vote is needed knowledge. Only when the majority of the workers understand they are slaves will they be in the position to end their subjection. Until then they will remain slaves.

 The Socialist Party message is that they are two phases of one thing—the system of capitalism. Capitalist progress means high productivity, profits, economy of labour to the capitalist, but ill-health and nervous tension, robbery of, and unemployment, to the worker. Every strike of any size causes inconvenience and sometimes suffering. But to follow the above argument to its logical conclusion means that the workers must accept anything the masters choose to impose, even though it may mean greater suffering than would be entailed by a strike!

 On the economic field the workers’ powers are limited, and in the ultimate, can always be beaten by the possessors of political power. But, as Marx has pointed out, these everyday struggles, with all their limitations, are a product of the system, and cannot be avoided unless the workers are ready to sink below subsistence level.

 When a sufficient number are enlightened then we shall see the workers organise into the Socialist Party, putting forward their delegates and voting them into Parliament. With this control, they will be able to enter into possession of the means of life and end the misery and hardship of the present system and replace by the system that will secure comfort and happiness to all— namely, SOCIALISM.

OUR BATTLE-CRY: SOCIALISM AND EMANCIPATION!

 Profit and interest, only come from the exploitation of wage labour. The capitalist needs efficiency in his wage-slaves for the production of profit, just as the farmer needs well-fed cattle. Capitalists cannot by legislation solve the fundamental conflicts between contending classes. They cannot permanently make the working class content with the capitalist economic system. We do not underestimate the enormous obstacles in the path to socialism. The greatest obstacle is to get the workers to understand and want socialism. The Socialist Party alone has seen that there must be socialists before there can be socialism and acts on it. The great mass of workers do not understand socialism and do not want it. Until there are sufficient socialists, organised in a socialist party, there will not be socialism. The way to increase the number of socialists is to support the Socialist Party. Our method, and the only effective method of building up a genuine socialist party, is to base our organisation on socialist knowledge, and the clear grasp of socialist principles by each member.  Socialism, as a system of society, cannot be carried on, nor can power for socialism be obtained without first securing a socialist majority. The Socialist Party takes its stand on the policy so clearly stated and defended by Marx and Engels that the working class must, as a preliminary to the establishment of socialism, gain control of the political machinery of society. They can do this in the advanced capitalist countries through political organisation and the use of the vote; the working class possessing, as they do, the overwhelming majority of votes.  The Socialist Party is not prepared to join with parties whose aims and methods are contrary to the interests of the working class and a hindrance to the achievement of Socialism. 

The object of the capitalist class, in general, is to exploit the working class. When capitalist states quarrel, the object of the quarrel and the prize for the victor is a re-division of the wealth of which the working-class is, under capitalism, normally robbed. Armaments exist to give the capitalists security. The position of the workers is as secure or insecure in defeat as in victory. The workers have nothing to defend. National defence is a purely capitalist question. Not national defence, but the overthrow of capitalism is the object of the Socialist Party. Socialism alone is worth struggling for. That is the message of the socialist to all the working-class dupes of the closely-allied superstitions of religious, racial and patriotic rivalries. The cost of war casts a shadow over civilians as well as combatants. Death and mutilation, the loss of health, the breaking up of homes and the frustration of hopes and plans. Under the cloak of patriotism and national defence,  the blessing of the press and the politicians, workers are thrown against each other in battle. They do not know that they are fighting to defend or to extend the interests of the class that lives by robbing them of the fruits of their labour. For the working people in all countries every death, every wound and every hour of suffering is in vain. War solves no working-class problems, and from a working-class point of view, is a crime.

No "remedy" for unemployment is worth considering which leaves untouched the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, and leaves the workers dependent for their livelihood on the possibility of goods being sold at a price profitable to their masters. The Socialist remedy is the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth, and the production of goods for the use of the members of society in place of production for sale and private profit. There is no other solution of the unemployment problem. The Socialist Party, right from its foundation, attacked the policy of political bargaining. We held then, as we do now, that a Socialist Party must be independent and must be based on the demand for socialism, not on a programme of reforms to be obtained by cooperating with capitalist parties. 

 

If the workers would turn their attention to socialism, the whole form of the struggle with the employing class would change. So far, despite heroic fights by trade unionists against wage reductions, the employing class have never had reason to fear that the working class were turning away from their belief in the capitalist system. But when a considerable body of workers learn the lesson that no reformist policy or party is of any use, and begin to understand and support the demand for socialism, we can confidently anticipate a less aggressive and less cheese-paring attitude on the part of employers. They will, when that time comes, be anxious to surrender part of their wealth in the hope that by so doing they may stave off the day when they must yield it all. We shall then be well on the way to the acquisition by society of the means of wealth production now privately owned by a privileged class.

 

The Socialist Party tells the workers that socialism is the only remedy for their troubles. There is no time which is not a proper time for them to work for socialism. This is true whatever the excuse offered by defenders of capitalism. Whether the crisis is a war crisis or a trade crisis, the Socialist Party will continue to promote socialism. Workers who understand the working of capitalism will see through the excuses to the capitalist interests behind them and will help us with our task.

 

Capitalism will not collapse.

 

We live in a system of society known as capitalism, and whose outstanding features are private property and wage-earning. A certain few fortunate individuals are the owners of the land, the railways, factories and other means of production, and the non-owners have to work for a wage or a salary in the service of the owners of property. Society is divided into a class of workers who must work to live, and a class of capitalists who can live without working. We know from everyday experience that there is no wealth without work, yet the workers are poor and the non-workers are rich. Wealth (excluding the air and other things abundantly supplied by nature) is produced by work. The work is performed by the great propertyless mass, the working class, but the means of wealth production, the machines, the land and so on, are owned by a class of non-workers, the capitalists. From this arises a great cleavage of interests, for it makes the workers dependent upon the owning-class since they cannot live except by entering the service of the owners. Out of the total wealth produced by their labour, the workers receive but a part as wages, the remainder being retained by those who employ them. The one class lives by selling its services and the other by owning property. The everyday struggle over the division of the product sets these classes in perpetual antagonism, but the Socialist Party urges the workers to aim consciously not merely at increasing their share but at destroying the system of society that compels them to maintain a propertied class at their expense.

For the socialist all forms of "living by owning," rent, interest and profit are in effect nothing more than forms of exploitation, or robbery, of the wealth producers.

If this is correct, then it follows naturally that it is in the interest of the workers all over the world to act jointly in resisting any attempt to heighten the degree of that exploitation, and in overthrowing the system which is based upon exploitation. The Socialist Party says that the poverty of the poor and the riches of the wealthy are the results of the system of private property, and the only remedy is its abolition. The enemy of the working class is the capitalist class. The only safe rule of conduct for the workers is to stand firmly on the basis of their class economic interests. From this standpoint, there can be no circumstances requiring them to participate in capitalist wars or trade rivalries. Even the supposed hardships resulting from military defeat do not outweigh the arguments in favour of the socialist course of action. Workers should not fight for "country and empire," because they have nothing to fight for. They should refuse to help solve the economic problems of capitalist industry, or the political problems of capitalist empires and concentrate all their energies on the fight for socialism. The duty of socialists is to keep this issue always to the fore, not to rouse deadly national hatreds which obscure the class divisions in society and slow the growth of socialism.

Workers can solve their problems only by gaining control of parliament for THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF INTRODUCING SOCIALISM. A party that seeks to gain political control for any other purpose must therefore be anti-socialist and anti-working class. The Labour Party seeks to gain control for a variety of reforms, including such capitalist schemes as nationalisation. Some reforms may in themselves be good, most are indifferent and some, like nationalisation, are for the working class wholly bad. But whether good, bad, or indifferent, they are not socialism, and do not, and cannot, aid in hastening Socialism. Socialism presupposes a socialist working class. The propagation of reforms does not make socialists. First, it makes reformers and then drives them through disillusion to despair. The Left has not socialist aims. Its guiding belief is in its ability to administer capitalism better than the capitalists themselves. This may be true, but it is not socialism.

Let us face the facts. Capitalism is strong, and the capitalists are growing wealthier. They have forgotten their post-war panic and are confident of the stability of their system. The machinery of capitalist organisation, the banks, foreign trade, etc., may bring their problems, but it is absurd to suppose that the capitalists will, in the long run, allow members of their own class to imperil the system by persisting in methods, such as unrestricted competition, which have become more dangerous than useful. The confidence of the capitalists in the stability of capitalism rests on the docility of the working class. Capitalism continues because the workers unthinkingly accept it. To devise means of prolonging this convenient condition of the workers' minds is the chief and the potentially fatal problem of the capitalist class. Capitalism will not collapse.

It will end when the workers organise to bring it to an end. To educate and organise the workers for that purpose is the only problem with which socialists should concern themselves.