All for All

 

The Socialist Party states that society cannot be organised on some kind of wage-system. Most social reformers have built up their schemes on the supposition that their reforms must be merely directed towards some improvement of the present system of wage-payment, and it is usually supposed that this improvement would result from the State, either taking industry under their management or declaring a minimum wage. If the social revolution should follow this course, it would be doomed beforehand to be defeated. 

The Socialist Party explains that the abolition of private ownership of land, mines, machinery altogether, surely will be the distinctive feature of any movement worthy of the name of socialist; and we have said, moreover, that no Parliament, no Government can do this. The expropriation can be carried out only by the initiative and action of working people themselves. It is not enough to proclaim, "These factories are ours," and to put on them the inscription, "Public Property." They will become ours when we really set the machinery to work. We do not answer "The State will do that, and it will pay wages, either in money or in 'labour-time vouchers.' Production is, for us, the mere servant of consumption; it must mould itself on the wants of the consumer, not dictate conditions. The very first advance towards a socialist society will imply a thorough reorganisation of industry as to what we have to produce,  a transformation of industry so that it may be adapted to the needs of the consumer. That can be and will be reorganised in time not by the State,  but by the workers themselves.

We hold that the satisfaction of the wants of all must be the first consideration of the revolution, that in the very first days and weeks, there must not be one single family in want of food; not one single person reduced to sleep under a bridge or in a doorway. Our first object must be to care for providing this food and this shelter for those who are most in need of them, for those precisely who have been the outcasts of the old society.

Is it possible? Are we able immediately to provide everybody with food, shelter, and healthcare? None of those who know the richness of our modern society will doubt the possibility. We have plenty, and we have plenty of food in our stores to satisfy their first wants. And if we thus consider the satisfaction of everybody's first wants as the first duty of each social movement, we shall soon find out the best means of reorganising our production so as to supply everybody with, at least, the first necessaries of life.

The Socialist Party is prepared openly and avowedly to profess that the satisfaction of the needs of each individual must be its very first aim, and we must prepare public opinion to establish itself firmly at this standpoint.

One of the commonest objections to socialism is, that mankind is not good enough to live in a socialist society. Submission to authoritarianism has rendered it unfit for a society where everybody would be free and know no compulsion. We are told we are too slavish, too selfish, too greedy. We are told now. "You don't understand human nature”. Therefore, we are told, some intermediate transition state of society is necessary as a step towards socialism. We have heard such words before. They will see that history is nothing but a struggle between the rulers and the ruled, the oppressors and the oppressed, in which the practical camp always sides with the rulers and the oppressors, while the unpractical camp sides with the oppressed.

Never forget that the sole end of our campaign for socialism is that the people shall be ready to rely on their own revolutionary initiative and not be scared from it by the scruples and prejudices or the plausible pretences of leaders, either timid or self-interested. The end of the social revolution is not to make men and women obedient servants. of a re-structured state, but to set them free.

Socialism refers to humanity in relation to the production of social wealth. Socialists look at the wealth of a community as the result of the common labour of the working men and women of that community in the past and present, and therefore. the common possession of all of them.

Socialists are agreed that individuals ought not to be allowed to monopolise (to claim an absolute right to prevent others from using) the necessary means for the production of wealth, whether land and raw material or capital created by past labour, because this monopoly gives to the monopolists' dominion over the lives of all other people, who must, of course, work that they may live, and who cannot get at the means for doing so without the monopolists' permission. And we, very well know that this permission is not granted except in return for the lion's share of all the worker can produce. Hence the extremes of idle luxury and toil-worn misery which disgrace our civilisation. Socialists are, therefore, agreed upon the attempt to change the existing method of producing and distributing wealth.

Socialists would have society recognise no rights of private property at all (other than personal possessions). In the creation of all wealth, the united efforts of the brain and muscle of the whole community have home their part, and the exact fraction contributed by each is impossible to distinguish. In a society of workers, all the wealth consumed is in the broadest sense capital, since all is devoted to increasing and developing the resources and capacities of wealth producers. All wealth, therefore, is to be held in common and the principle upon which it must be shared among the members of the community is, To each according to needs (not deeds). The supply of our needs is the object of our labour. We associate ourselves with our work because thus we can supply our needs better and with less effort. Let us, therefore, share what we produce according to the needs which are the reason for our work and our association. 

The Coming Revolution

 

Society’s emancipation from the chaos of climate change, war, want-amid-waste and alienating mental stagnation, must await the socialist education of the working people, for which purpose the Socialist Party exists. Capitalist propaganda not only put forward the demonstrably false idea that revised capitalism could operate in the interests of the workers but also perpetuate the additional and even greater crime of tagging “socialism” to such proposals. Other parties manifest such inconsistencies that the worker, confused and disillusioned, loses any progressive urge, and either return to political apathy or else goes as far as active antagonism to any movement styling itself working-class. It should here be noted that widely extended education, improved health services and other public welfare measures—claimed as evidence of socialism—are in fact normal features of capitalist growth in many countries.

 

A knowledge of socialism enables man to command by knowledge these social forces and change society for the benefit of all. We need a new economic system. Capitalism is driving us towards disaster. This is because decisions are being motivated by the maximisation of profit rather than the goal of saving the future for human society and the environment. The mania for growth of capitalist economists is risking the stability of our planet.

 

 The wants of all must be the first guiding consideration of any revolutionary movement which has a socialist character. To leave nobody without food, shelter and healthcare, is the foremost goal of the workers’ movement inspired by socialist ideas. The only rule to guide us must be the wants of each family, each of them being equally entitled to enjoy the produce of the labour of generations past and present. If overthrowing the present rulers and proclaiming some great industrial undertakings, like railways and mines, the property of a State democratised a bit--everything beyond that remaining as it is--then, of course, there is no use in speaking about social revolution at all. It is no use to describe the aspirations of taking all great branches of industry under the management of the State as such a result would be utterly shabby in comparison with the great movement of ideas stirred up by socialism; and that it stands in very strange contradiction with the hopes that socialists seek to awaken. We do not argue about whether bankers are greedy or not, if masters are good or bad, if the State is paternal or despotic, if laws are just or unjust, if courts are fair or unfair, if the police are merciful or brutal. When we talk about banks, State, masters, government, laws, courts and police, we say only we don’t want any of them. These hopes are hopes of getting rid of capitalist oppression, of abolishing the rule of man by man, of Equality, of Freedom, of Socialism.

 

Private property - not the claim to use, but to a right to prevent others from using - enables individuals who have appropriated the means of production, to hold in subjection all those who possess nothing but their labour. and who must work that they may live? No work is possible without land, materials, and tools or machinery; thus the masters of these things are the masters also of the destitute workers and can live in idleness upon their labour, paying them in wages only enough of the produce to keep them alive, only employing so many of them as they find profitable and leaving the rest to their fate. Such a wrong is not innate in human nature. Socialism holds forth the principle that in the name of the common claim of all to a common share in the results of the common labour of all, each with an equal claim to satisfy as seems good to oneself, his or her natural needs from the stock of social wealth.  The means of production ought to be under the power of the workers, then they need have no fear of new technology. That we may soon witness the real emancipation of labour is the sincere wish of the wage slave.

 

The ruling classes understand what they must do and it is to maintain by every possible means their possession of power and the instruments of production. Therefore, they will try first to hinder the spread of socialist views. If unable to do this, they will try to take hold of the movement, and to give it a direction that is less threatening to their privileges. But if nevertheless, the movement still takes a socialist turn, if it continues to grow in political power, if it seriously endangers their ownership, then they will offer a few concessions more illusory than real, and by these concessions, they will try to divide the working people. And if the workers are not aware of the danger of accepting these illusory concessions, if they let themselves be divided into two camps, then the well-to-do, without distinction of opinions, will unite so as to re-establish, their power and privileges on a basis as solid as before.

 

Do our fellow workers share in a similar unity of purpose to act in their own interest?  Sadly, no.  Many workers have little hope in the possibility of even approaching such a socialist solution for many generations to come, and thus do not care at all about it. A few welfare reforms, some laws to protect women and children, some laws to reduce the hours of labour - their demands go no further. They have no consciousness of their own strength, no belief in the possibility of abolishing privileges sanctioned by centuries of misrule. They trust in the coming generations to reach a more equitable mode of organisation but have no faith in their own. Instead, they believe some fine day the people will reject the rulers who oppose the wishes of the people and nominate new ones in their place. But what will these new rulers do? Will they all be nominated for the purpose of expropriating the present proprietors? Will they all be inspired with the very same wishes as the masses reduced to misery under the grindstone of capital? Will they have the magic power of improving the position of the worker, if the workers themselves do not know what to do for the improvement of their own position? If the workmen themselves have not formulated their wants and concluded that nothing short of putting an end to the evils of our present economical organization, ff the workers themselves, do not find and point out the ways and means by which the restitution of capital to the producers can be accomplished so as to benefit all classes of the community, how can they rely upon new rulers who hold the very same old belief as of that in a Savior who will come someday and settle everything for the benefit of humanity?

Winning the class war

 

The ruling class pursue their own interests that are detrimental to the public well-being. They get away with this by falsely convincing working people that they share common interests with their employers. Working people are told ad nauseam that they are under constant threat from all manner of enemies and need to be protected. It’s a protection racket.

The reality of capitalism is that social problems are endemic to the system. They flow directly from its basis and in one form or another they will endure for as long as capitalism lasts. The reformist case is that capitalism need not be abolished (although some reformists profess this to be their eventual, distant, objective) just yet because it can be modified so as to be acceptable to people. All the evidence destroys this myth and points to the conclusion that socialism cannot be delayed. It points to the conclusion that reformism is not only futile but reactionary, since it aims to postpone socialism when this in fact means the abandonment of the aim of social revolution and therefore the continuation of capitalism with all the problems which so concern the reformists.We know that organisations that promises to run capitalism  in the interests of the working class while they reformed it out of existence, are attempting the impossible.  Many working people who  put their faith in such delusions are disillusioned.  Capitalism is still around in its repressive, destructive way. The problems of capitalism persist and prevail, indeed in many cases they can be said to worsen. We face devastating destruction of the environment with climate change. This is also the nuclear age, when war promises to be an instant, all-obliterating matter from which settled human life may not be able to recover. World-wide, hunger inflicts misery and suffering  tens of millions of people. In many countries there are refugees and migrants, homeless through the conflicts of capitalism and the system’s artificial, inhuman national barriers. Poverty in its simplest form, in which workers struggle day in and day out to make ends meet and to gain access to the most unremarkable of life’s needs, persists.

War, they say, can be eliminated by the capitalist powers agreeing not to behave like capitalist powers. The same can be said about nuclear weapons; the mighty states which have made them should simply agree that it has all been a waste of time and throw them away. Famine can be solved through charity, poverty by an adjustment of state benefits. And so on. A myth which needs to be dispelled is that the state—the government, the law, the judges, the police —is neutral. No government can make capitalism serve the interest of the wage and salary earning majority. The state must be the political defender of the ruling class. In any struggle between robbers and robbed the Socialist Party is unequivocally on the side of the robbed. In the class war no worker and no political party can be neutral. But in expressing solidarity with workers in struggle, we point out that our sympathy and their temporary gains will be meaningless unless victory involves winning the war and not just one battle. To win the class war workers must organise as a class for the conquest of the earth and all its resources. No lesser victory is worth settling for.

Economics under capitalism are concerned first and foremost with price and profit. Production is regarded as “uneconomic” when investment of capital shows little or no prospect of leading to profit for the investor. Being “uneconomic” is not at all the same as being “useless”. For example, dairy farming is currently “uneconomic” because more milk is produced than can be sold profitably. However, milk is desperately needed by the  children enduring malnutrition-caused diseases every single day.

In our present-day society—capitalism—the working class, the overwhelming majority, have no other way to scratch a living than to sell their physical and mental energies (labour power). Capital and labour thus face each other as buyers and sellers, those interests a priori must be antagonistic. Another angle on this conflict is to see it as a struggle over the division of the product of labour. The higher the share taken by the non-producing capitalists, the less is the portion left for the producers of the whole wealth of society, the working class.

We can concede that a capitalist investor is occasionally sometimes taking a calculated risk, with heavy losses on occasions taking the place of spectacular profits. But what have the capitalists as a class contributed to the actual productive process? In both cases, nothing. As for the stresses and strains of entrepreneurship, where they represent a real contribution they are now almost exclusively performed by salaried employees, members of the working class. All things being equal, the smaller the share of the total wealth accruing to the workers the greater the profits of the capitalist class. In some cases, by paying somewhat higher wages an employer may attract better workmen or women and so increase profits. Also, although it is difficult to express this in figures, a happier workforce on pay somewhat above the going rate may perform better and again produce more profits. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be “a desire to maximise profits”, but this is pretty well the same as minimising wages relative to profits.

The Socialist Party stands for socialism and for that alone and to insist that the revolution is an immediate possibility; the working class can and must understand socialism and opt for it. That is the continuing task of socialists everywhere and will carry on with it until socialism becomes reality.

When that happens, the role of the Socialist Party is at an end. A class-free, united society will have no need for any expression of class-divided society; there will be no privileges, no coercive machinery, no medium through which ownership on the one hand, and denial of access on the other, are expressed. Neither will there be political parties, which exist as proponents of class interests. The socialist parties alone represent the interests of the working class; when that class is abolished with the establishment of socialism the socialist parties, along with all others, will cease to exist.