The Importance of Democracy

 

The Socialist Party is the only party that is or can be truly representative of the interests of the working class, the only class essential to society and the class that is destined ultimately to succeed to political power, “not for the purpose of governing men,” in the words of Engels, but “to administer things.”

 

The owning class is necessarily the ruling class. It dictates legislation and in case of doubt or controversy has it construed to its own interest. The present forms of government are based solely upon private property of the means of production and are wholly coercive. The only vital function of the present government is to keep the exploited class in subjection by their exploiters. Parliaments and legislatures, as a rule, act wholly in the interest of the ruling capitalist class. Courts of justice, so-called, decided cases of importance not upon their merit, but in the interest of the ruling class. Marx was right in declaring that the economic basis of society determines the character of all social institutions and the institutions noted therein are modified in proportion only as this basis changes.

The Socialist Party is a revolutionary party as its basic demand is the common ownership of the means of production and distribution and the operation of all industries in the interest of all the people. This will mean an economic democracy and upon this vital principle, the Socialist Party differs diametrically from every other party.

Between private ownership and common ownership, there can be no compromise. Oil and water don’t mix. One produces for profit, the other for use. Socialism secures for every man and woman their full product of his or her toil, abolish class rule, wipe out all class distinction, and makes this earth for the first time a habitable place.

The Socialist Party seeks to organise the workers of the world, irrespective of nationality, into one unified PARTY OF LABOUR. Our aim is socialism. Our method is the political organisation at the ballot box to secure the election of representatives of socialist principles to all the elective governing public bodies. The Socialist Party pledges itself to pursue, unfalteringly and undeviating, its great object – common ownership of the means of producing and distributing all wealth. In other words, a world socialist cooperative commonwealth.

The capitalist system of production, under the rule of 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 the problems of misery, war, and poverty. The capitalist system is a modern Frankenstein’s monster that is destroying its own creators.

Socialists assert that production should be for use and not for sale or profit, thus doing away with exploitation along with a vast amount of unproductive labour and an immense number of useless and harmful occupations. The cooperative commonwealth is their goal. No person has the privilege to become a Socialist Party member without understanding the subject. Equally, no one has the right to criticise socialism without first studying it. The Socialist Party demands that the world’s wealth be repossessed from the control of private interests and turned over to the people to be administered for the benefit of all.

The supreme task of socialists of all the world is to dedicate ourselves to the imperishable principles of international socialism; to strengthen the bonds of working-class solidarity; to deepen the traits of conscious internationalism. The Socialist Party extend to the socialists of all the world our greetings and hail them all our brothers, sisters and our comrades. A new page of human history is to be written, the message social democracy, internationalism, peace and prosperity. The Socialist Party will continue the class-conscious political battle of labour. We are working with all effort for the cooperative commonwealth. We are all cosmopolitans, endorsing in the fullest sense international revolutionary socialism,  engaged in the overthrow of capitalism. 

In its struggle for a new society, the Socialist Party seeks to attain its objectives by peaceful means. So long as the ballot box, the right of assembly, free media and civil liberties are maintained, appeals to force and violence will not attract working people. Coercion is not the weapon of socialism but of the short-sighted representatives of the ruling classes who stupidly believe that social movements and ideals can be destroyed by repression. The Socialist Party depends upon the education and the organisation of the working class. If capitalism can be superseded by a majority vote, the Socialist Party will rejoice. If the capitalist system should collapse in general chaos and confusion, which cannot permit orderly procedure, the Socialist Party, will not shrink from the responsibility of organising and maintaining true democracy as a worthy means to progress.

The darker the night, the sooner the dawn

The working class is international in character. Its solidarity is based on the common bonds of exploitation and oppression. Workers ought not to be blinded by the hatred against foreign-born workers which the capitalist class attempts to indoctrinate into them. The division between the native and foreign-born workers can only help the ruling class to more thoroughly exploit the native workers. Unite and fight. 

Technological innovation and improvements have been very profitable to the bosses and very costly to the workers. Workers have been displaced, not to be replaced. Workers can depend upon no one except those of their own class. 

Among workers there are two distinct types.

One represents the worker who remembers the treatment meted out by the bosses in the past, recognises one’s own status in society. That type of worker is unalterably opposed to capitalism.

The other type who exists is narrow-minded and short-sighted. People with no convictions other than prejudices,  who only believe that three meals a day, work and sleep, is the be all and end all of their existence.

Are those who say they are against capitalism and its consequences moving towards a common vision of a new social system? Or are they merely advocating for another version an exchange market economy achieved by some reforms? Replacing capitalism in its entirety with economic democracy and ending wage slavery ought to become the aspiration of those struggling against the system.

It is time to stop allowing the bosses to ride rough shod over us. It is time to resist the wage-slashing, work-intensifying drive of the companies.

Socialism object is to save mankind. We adhere to the basic conceptions of Marxism because their essential elements have proved to be true. The Socialist Party is know for its  ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ when it comes to the socialist revolution but not so much for detailed plans and blueprints. But without a coherent vision of a better world and the organisation working people will likely go nowhere. Socialism means a future system of society where capitalism, with its markets, commodities, values, prices, exchange, surplus value, capital, money, competition, nations, etc., is no more; instead, there is a conscious, planned society where production is for use on such an enormously improved technological level that there will be plenty for all. The State will have withered away, together with racism and religion.

Socialism involves bringing production under democratic and egalitarian control where people in their communities will decide what it will look like and how it will work. They will decide. As majoritarians we seek to ensure the greatest possible participation in policy making by those affected by the policies. Social democracy requires the widest participation in decision-making at all levels

The Socialist Party does not set itself up as a vanguard elite to but encourages working people to gain power on their own behalf. Workers cannot transform themselves unless they are free to do so. It is as Rosa Luxemburg once said,  “Missteps made by an actually revolutionary labour movement are historically more valuable than the infallibility of the best of central committees.”

Political principles are not gambling chips to bargain with. If the Socialist Party differs from other political organisations, it is in this: that the membership and not a few leaders or office holders control and direct the movement. It is this very difference which constitutes our chief strength. True democracy involves cooperation, and upon our ability to cooperate successfully everything depends. And cooperation in turn involves adaptation to one another; the ability to accept the will of the majority wherever and whenever expressed, as our individual will, until such time as our individual will can be expressed by the majority. And this again in turn involves trust in the movement as an organised force, the exercise of solidarity toward each other, and the prevalence of the spirit of comradeship throughout the movement. The real fear is that where a few people, the ungoverned and ungovernable become the dictators of the movement. There need be no fear of any kind of such bureaucracy so long as the party procedures remains in the hands and under the control of the membership. The Socialist Party must be more than a mere political party; it must be so managed and controlled to the highest degree of democracy.

Our role is to hasten the oncoming social revolution - the emancipation of the working class of the world and the freedom and happiness of all mankind.

Forward fellow workers. Onwards!

 

Revolution approaches. We must stand in solidarity  for freedom and happiness. 

 To want bosses and at the same time to want to be free is to seek the impossible. It is necessary to choose once and, for all, between two things, either to be free, completely free, rejecting bosses, or to be enslaved and perpetuating the power of the boss over men and women.  The boss or politician is necessary only under a system of economic inequality. To talk of bosses between equals is a contradiction, unless we speak of equals in servitude, brothers and sisters in chains, as we workers are now.

 There are some who say that it is impossible to live without bosses or government; if it is the bourgeois that say such things, they are right in their reasoning because they fear that the poor will seize away their riches that they have amassed by making the worker sweat and toil; but for what do the poor need bosses or government?  We have had and have hundreds of proofs that humankind does not need bosses or government if not in the case of economic inequality.

 No one is going to hand workers socialism on a silver platter...least of all a handful of philanthropic oligarchs. When workers vote for a strike they know what they are in for: loss of wages, picketing in all weather and at all hours, increasing debt at home. The bosses lust for mountains of profit to increase their power and domination over this country and the whole world. It has nothing to do with the necessities of life. The workers strike to get a living wage, for decent hours and conditions. THESE ARE NECESSITIES OF LIFE.

 Parasitic ruling classes have always spread the idea that they are indispensable. The more useless they become, the more insistently they try to impress their importance upon workers’ minds. The capitalists, contend, in order to justify their existence, that they alone are competent to rule the state and control industry. The opposite is true. The capitalist class  no longer performs any essential functions in modern society, any more than the appendix performs any useful function in the human body. Today the capitalist, like a diseased appendix, imperils the very life of humanity. This source of infection must be removed before society can regain its health – and only the revolutionary working class can perform that surgical operation.

Society does not depend today upon the capitalist exploiters but upon the working people, they oppress and exploit. If these workers lay down their tools and folder arms  then production stops. But if every stockholder did nothing, the workers in the manufacturing plants could continue to turn out products for everyone to use.

The worker who now operates a lathe can direct a machine shop tomorrow and an entire industry the day after. It can be done collectively by organised workers in socialism, who will own, organise and operate industry by means of democratic councils. They will then produce not for the enrichment of a few but for the enjoyment of all. The capitalist rulers try in every way to keep workers from gaining this understanding.

We workers are robbed as producers, robbed of the surplus labour, of the surplus value which the capitalist divide among themselves as profits, rent, interest. The bosses want “cheap government” and view the state bureaucracy as gangsters who rob the robbers with a protection racket called taxation. They want the support of the working class to  curtail its expenses by attempting to shift the tax burden to the other sections of their class.  In this struggle to hold up profits each section of the capitalists wants the other section to pay the tax, yet each section wants to dictate to the political office boys what to do. The financiers desire to push the burden on the shoulders of the industrialists and the industrialists would like to place the taxes on the landlords, who all hope to shift it to the small capitalist. When the capitalist thieves fight each other they want us to help them. We workers would be more than foolish to help one section of the capitalist gang against another section on the question of spending budgets war, taxes or any other struggle. The capitalist bandits as a whole rob the workers and feud over the division of the spoils. It is not our problem. Rather, our problem is to expropriate the expropriators. Our main struggle must be at the point of production. 

 

Liberty and Freedom

The Socialist Party wishes to put into practice the  ideals of political, economic and social emancipation, to bring to an end inequality that

springs from the principle of private property. To abolish that principle means to bring about the free initiative and the free association of human beings. But for the principle of private property there would be no reason for government, which is needed solely to keep the property-less poor rebelling against those who have got into their possession the social wealth. Humanity remains divided into two classes whose interests are diametrically opposed - the capitalist class and the working class; the class that has possession of the land, the machinery of production and the means of transporting wealth, and the class that must rely on its muscle and mind to support itself.

Between these two social classes there cannot exist any bond of friendship or fraternity, for the possessing class always seeks to perpetuate the existing economic, inequities which guarantees it enjoyment of the fruits of its robberies, while the working class exerts itself to destroy the iniquitous system and institute one in which the land, the houses, the machinery of production and the means of transportation shall be for the common use.

The Socialist Party advocates that every human being, by the very fact of having come into life, has a right to enjoy each and every one of the advantages modern civilisation offers, because those advantages are the product of the efforts and sacrifices of the working class from all time. 

The Socialist Party denies the  so-called sacredness of private property because it subjects the greater number of human beings to toil and suffering for the satisfaction and ease of a small number of capitalists. 

There must be a taking possession of all the industries by those working in them, who should bring it about similarly that the lands, the mines, the factories, transportation, and communications shall be in the power of each and every one of the inhabitants, without distinction of colour or sex. Everything produced will be owned in common by the community and  all will have the right to take what their necessities require.

People aspires to satisfy wants with the least possible expenditure of effort, and the best way to obtain that result is to work the land and industry in common. Let each, according to ability, tastes, and inclinations choose the kind of work that suits best, provided it does not become a charge on the community. Freed of masters and based on the necessities of the inhabitants of each region, nobody will suffer want.

It is the responsibility of working people tobreak the chains that make us slaves. To leave the solution of our problems to the rich is to put ourselves voluntarily in their clutches. All the ills that afflict humanity spring from the existing system which compels the majority to toil and sacrifice itself that a privileged minority may satisfy its wants and even its caprices while living in ease.

The evil would be less if all the poor were guaranteed work, but production is not regulated for the satisfaction of the needs of the workers but for what the bourgeoisie can profit from. To make an end of all this its is necessary that the workers take into their own hands the land and the machinery of production, so that they themselves may regulate the production of wealth in accordance with their own needs.

The tedious long hours of drudgery under the present capitalist system, and the conditions under which it is carried on, in a short time impacts upon a the worker’s health and has its origin solely in the contempt with which the capitalist class looks on those who sacrifice themselves for it.

Obliged to regard as enemies even the members of our own class it is natural that in such circumstances there should be developed in the human being anti-social instincts and that suspicion and distrust should be the inevitable fruits of the old and hateful system we are trying to destroy, to its very lowest roots, that we may create in its stead a new one of love, of equality, of justice, of fraternity, of liberty. 

Let us by the mutual consent be free individuals.

As long as there are rich and poor, governors and governed, there will be no peace, nor is it to be desired that there should be; for such a peace would be founded on the political, economic and social inequality of millions of human beings who suffer hunger, outrages, the prison and death, while a small minority enjoys pleasures and liberties of all kinds for doing nothing. 

We men and women who desire the good things to which nature invites us and which our brawn and brain  have created. It is for you, then, to choose. We say choose expropriation of the wealthy and the abolition of all impositions upon our liberties.

What is Revolutionary Change?

 

Socialism will come about not through violent insurrection but through the peaceable organisation. Force may overthrow governments, and set up new regimes, but even governments cannot long remain unless they obtain the acquiescence of the governed.

Still more egalitarian society, functioning, not under the authority and economic pressure, but by the common will, can never flourish except by the active cooperation of the masses.

The education of our fellow workers is an enormous endeavour but there can be no socialism until working people desire socialism and act.

Socialism is not through hate but through human harmony.

Socialism is built not upon the bodies of the dead but upon the shoulders of the living.

The Socialist Party does not want a bloody revolution. Revolution only means change. There have been revolutions in art, industry and social relations which have not caused bloodshed.

It is a question of changing a social system based on the assumption that a few are entitled to use the lives and labour of the many for personal profit and power, the forces of the State, based on this assumption, oppose the contention that the many have the right to organise a system of society which will provide for ownership and administration of the natural resources of the planet in the interests of the many and not in the interests of the few.

A socialist system must be the change from a capitalist system of ownership, exploitation and control to one of ownership, administration and control of the affairs of society by the men and women who produce its wealth. 

Socialism maintains that there can be no fundamental change in the living conditions of the working people while a minority holds economic power in the natural resources and in the right to exploit the majority for individual advantages. The basis of exploitation is the use of men and women for personal profits and power.

Socialism is the reorganisation of society on the basis of ownership by the working people of the land, mines, factories, means of transport, as well as the health, educational and cultural services required to fulfil their needs. 

Socialism is a system of society in which the land, the means of production, and distribution are held in common.

Production is for use, as and when required, not for profit, exchange or sale.

The organisation of production and distribution is done by those who do the work.

Each production unit works for the general welfare of all of society.

Socialism is a class-free society in which all shall have leisure and culture, and all shall be secured from want.

Labour produces all wealth and to labour, it should justly belong.

To the owner of the means of wealth production belongs the product of labour. The capitalist system is based upon private or capitalist ownership of the means of wealth production, therefore all the products of labour belong to the capitalist.

The capitalist is the master; the worker his slave.

So long as the capitalists remain in possession of the reins of government all the powers of the state will be used to protect and defend their property rights in the means of wealth production and their control of the product of labour.

The capitalist system gives to the capitalist an ever-swelling stream of profits and to the worker an ever-increasing measure of misery and degradation.

The interests of the working class lie in the direction of setting itself free from capitalist exploitation by the abolition of the wage system. To accomplish this necessitates the transformation of capitalist property in the means of wealth production into collective property.

The irrepressible conflict of interests between the capitalist and the worker is rapidly culminating in a struggle for possession of the powers of government, the capitalist to hold; the worker to secure it by political action. This is the class struggle.

Therefore, we call upon all wage-earners to organise under the banner of the Socialist Party for the purpose of setting up and enforcing:

1. The transformation of capitalist property in the means of wealth production (natural resources, factories, transport, communications, etc.) into the collective property of the working class.

2. The democratic organisation and management of industry by the workers.

3. The establishment of production for use in lieu of production for profit.

4. The Socialist Party candidates, when elected, shall always and everywhere until the present system is utterly abolished, make the answer to this question its guiding rule of conduct: Will this legislation advance the interests of the working class and aid the workers in their class struggle against capitalism? If it will, the Socialist Party is for it; if it will not, the Socialist Party is absolutely opposed to it.

5. In accordance with this principle, the Socialist Party pledges itself to conduct all the public affairs placed in its hands in such a manner as to promote the interests of the working class alone.

Socialist Standard No. 1406 October 2021

OCTOBER 2021 PDF

• Editorial

• Pathfinders

• Letter

• Feeding Frenzies in the South China Sea

• Cooking the Books 1

• Taxing the Rich

• Material World

• Countdown to COP – Part Three

• Have the Tories gone socialist?

• Identity and the politics of scarcity

• After the Revolution: Managing the Environment

• What is the Kindness Test?

• Cooking the Books 2

• Liberation theology

• Proper Gander

• Book Reviews

• 50 Years Ago

• Obituary: Tim Hart

• Meetings

• Rear View