Let's have a revolution

 

What constitutes a socialist revolution? When socialists say that we need a revolution, we are calling for a very big change. But we are not using the word as a sales gimmick. The eradication of capitalism entails a class war. In the sort of world, we want there will be no private or government ownership, no money and no countries. This kind of change indeed deserves the name “revolution.” The Socialist Party hold that the socialist revolution has to be majoritarian and must involve removing the capitalist class’s stranglehold on the machinery of government, thus denying them control over the state’s coercive apparatus and removing their claims to democratic legitimacy. When we use the term “majoritarian” this is not because we are obsessed with counting the number of individual socialists, but to show that we reject minority action to try to establish socialism. A "militant" minority cannot provoke a non-socialist-minded working class into carrying out a socialist revolution. That the socialist revolution (and subsequent operation of socialist society)requires the conscious political understanding and democratic action of the majority of the working class rather than an organisation by political leadership with a set of passive followers.

The Socialist Party does not believe in achieving socialism through coercion or through the violent seizure of power by a revolutionary vanguard. That's no basis upon which to build a fair and democratic society. No, the only way that socialism as we understand it could be set up and run is through the consent and cooperation of an overwhelming majority of the world's population. And the only way we will know once there is such a majority is when it says so via the ballot. It is then, and only then, that we will know that the time is ripe for the socialist revolution. It is then that we can start dismantling the coercive machinery of government and start taking control of the things we need to make society function in our own interests. That the socialist revolution can only be international, creating a worldwide society where production is carried out solely to meet the needs and desires of its inhabitants.

The SPGB argues that it is not enough to have thousands of demonstrators on the streets or even millions of workers occupying the factories. Above all the working class must have a clear understanding of what socialism entails and what methods are effective in overthrowing capitalism. A grasp of socialist principles by the vast majority of the workers is a minimal condition for going forward to socialism. The socialist revolution can only be democratic, in the sense of both being what the majority of people want and of being carried out by democratic methods of organisation and action. No minority revolution can lead to socialism, not even one that destroys the state (our case against certain anarchists). Hence our conclusion that the movement to establish socialism, and the methods it employs, must “prefigure” the democratic nature of socialism. 

Socialism is the ongoing task of the majority; it cannot work top-down; it cannot be imposed and cannot be legislated for by one or more leaders or vanguard movement, however well-intentioned. If populist, charismatic, paternalistic and concentrated in the most subordinate sectors, using anti-elitist discourse and re-distributive methods in a dependent client context with the aim of constructing a base to gain the support of the popular sector – then a socialist revolution it is not. The socialist revolution necessarily involves the active and conscious participation of the great majority of workers, thus excluding the role of leadership.

In considering the question of how realistic it is to expect a socialist revolution, it is important to consider the hidden history of events that most people are unaware of. It was in the Paris Commune of 1871 that French workers actually created organisations of mass control which challenged the old system for a brief space of time. In the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917, workers and peasants developed similar structures of direct workers' control such as the workers councils and factory committees. 

The Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 eventually destroyed this, and ushered in a system of state capitalism. Similarly, in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the workers set up workers' councils when they took on their so-called "communist" oppressors. During the May of 1968 in France, workplaces and universities were taken over and in many cases run in a way that is of immense inspiration to socialists.

What happened on these occasions? Not socialist revolutions, as some claim. But they were significant in the history of the struggles of our class. They are significant because the sort of people who dismiss the possibility of revolutionary upheavals were dismissing it seconds before these events blew up in their faces. No one is in any position to dismiss the prospect of revolution who has not carefully examined these movements. In none of these cases was a socialist revolution achieved, but in each case there was a fundamental interruption of the ruling order and the appearance of new forms and conceptions of everyday life. To ignore them because of their failure is to miss the point. Individual revolts are bound to fail until they are accompanied by a widespread and growing—and ultimately worldwide—socialist consciousness. Marx's analysis shows that the socialist revolution must be world-wide and cannot be achieved in one country alone. Because capitalism has become a world-wide system the society to replace it must also be world-wide. Class emancipation must mean the "freeing of the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggle . . ."

What we hope these brief examples show is that real change can be brought about by workers. Socialism is not a utopian dream. It is an ever-present undercurrent in working class practice. The task is to make it the main one. That these revolts did not go farther is hardly surprising. What is inspiring is that they went as far as they did. The socialist revolution is not likely to start from some strike over wages spreading to the whole of the working class. Certainly, workers can learn from the experience of industrial struggles against employers that socialism is the only way out and, in this sense, strikes can contribute to a growth of socialist consciousness. But so can the many other experiences of the way capitalism works against the interests of workers (bad housing, poor health care, pollution, wars and the threat of war, etc, etc). 99 percent of the socialist revolution consists of imbuing our class with the confidence and ambition to succeed, and a revulsion of living as wage slaves whether pampered or ill-fed: once we have this our numbers will carry the day. The productive powers have been increased to a vast degree, yet people are still idle, starving, poverty stricken, and homeless, while the machinery of production is misused or neglected. This must change. This will change. 

This, the 21st century, can be the true century of revolution, of true socialist revolution. A socialist revolution, a democratic revolution without leaders, is an urgent necessity.

Our Fight

 Trade unions co-operate in the exploitation of their members by accepting the premise that the international capitalist class has the unquestioned and legally enforceable ‘right’ to exploit the working class. Of vital importance is the mental conceptions of revolutionary change held by workers and without a change in what people think about the prospects for change, there can be no alternative other than a continuance of some form of capitalism. Socialists claim, that there is a way to reconcile our conflict with our masters, and it is to build on our economic and social power and organise collectively and politically to end the dangerous madness of the market system once and for all, rather than trying to beat the capitalists at their own game.  Any gains made in the class struggle for better pay and conditions are still open to being eroded by the inevitable capitalist counter-attack, and without a socialist understanding, the workers will not be able to climb out of the rut of capitalism. So the cycle would continue, with workers making some gains, but then the capitalist class launches a counteroffensive by either attacking the gain itself or attacking from some other direction.

A fundamental Marxian position is that class struggle is the motor that drives change. Built into capitalism is a class struggle between those who own the means of wealth production and those who don't and who are therefore forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work to those who do. The class war, between the owners of the means of production (the capitalists) and those compelled by the threat of poverty to sell their capacity to work (the workers), is an essential and continual feature of capitalist society. The class struggle is the irrefutable antagonism of interests in present society between the class that owns and profits from the means of production, and the class that creates the wealth but does not possess any means of producing a wealth of their own. Those who yearn for change are aware of some form of injustice or antagonism inherent in present-day society. This class struggle is not just over the price and conditions of sale of the commodity workers are selling. Ultimately, it's about control over the means of production. The strength of the argument is that it puts the power and potential for change back where it belongs and where it in fact really lies: in our own hands. The problem we have to face is that, in the class struggle, the odds are nearly always against us, and that to build a socialist future, we need a mass organisation of people who know what it is they want and are prepared to work to achieve it. As Engels put it, “The period for sudden onslaughts, of revolutions carried out by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where the question involves the complete transformation of the social organisation, there the masses must be consulted, must themselves have already grasped what the struggle is about, and what they stand for.”

Groups pursuing the tactic of trying to reform capitalism by concentrating on adjusting it is a wasted effort, since the entire system is based on a minority exploiting a majority. To expend all energy in demands for a more "friendly" capitalism is not what socialists should aim for, as, even in the event of success, the primary evils of capitalism would still remain i.e. production for profit and extraction of surplus-value. The main effort of socialists should be aiming for socialism itself. Socialists should get involved in industrial struggles but without illusions, in particular, the illusion that they can have a revolutionary outcome. The socialist revolution may start from some strike over wages spreading to the whole of the working class and certainly, workers can learn from the experience of industrial struggles against employers that socialism is the only way out so, in this sense, strikes can contribute to a growth of socialist consciousness. But so can the many other experiences of the way capitalism works against the interests of workers (bad housing, poor health care, pollution, wars, etc).

Which leads to the importance of who controls the state. At the moment, this is in the hands of people favourable to the continuation of capitalism, itself a reflection of the fact that most workers, too, don't see any alternative to capitalism. The state, therefore, upholds legal private property rights. The end of capitalism can only come as a result of a consciously socialist political movement winning control of political power with a view to abolishing all capitalist property rights and ushering in the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. The preconditions for ending capitalism are a majority socialist consciousness and workers democratically self-organised in a large-scale socialist party. Neither of which, unfortunately, exist. There is no way that an anti-capitalist social order can be constructed without seizing state power, radically transforming it the constitutional and institutional framework that currently supports the private property. To ignore the state is a ridiculous and dangerous idea for any anti-capitalist movement to accept.

Questioning the future of capitalism ought to be at the forefront of the current debate. Socialist ideas have to be communicated to other workers, but not from outside the working class as a whole. They have to be communicated by other workers who, from their own experience and/or from absorbing the past experience of the working class, have come to a socialist understanding. It is not a question of enlightened outsiders bringing socialist ideas to the benighted workers but of socialist-minded workers spreading socialist ideas amongst their fellow workers.  Our mission is to show clearly both how we are robbed and exploited by the system ruled by capital and how we can untap the wealth of our collective productive power by taking control of the means of production directly. Socialists recognise the necessity of workers' solidarity in the class struggle against the capitalist class and rejoice in every victory for the workers to assert their economic power. Both raising and defending workers' wages affects the amount of time and resources at the disposal of workers for control of their own lives. Romantic notions of class struggle – of battles on the barricades – concentrate on the exceptional forms, rather than the dull reality of the class struggle of everyday life. Workers do have to engage with the issues of pay and work conditions and pensions, but the main issue is the overthrow of capitalism, not picking away at it and then having our gains eroded sooner or later. In thinking of the class war as an actual war, the drive for a socialist understanding in the working class and the creation of a socialist society should be the main front, demanding the most effort, while everyday issues of pay and conditions and defending the gains that have been made would be a secondary front. We should never lose track of the actual aim of the socialist movement, the overthrow of capitalism and its replacement by a democratic association of peoples.

Socialist Administration

 There is a danger that plans produced today describing a socialist society will only bear the hallmark of the author’s own preference rather than how future socialists will democratically organise themselves. While it is of interest to speculate on a future socialist we are not obliged to produce detailed models to show how socialism will work, how it will solve the problems bequeathed by capitalism and the democratic administrative structure to ensure the rapid development of the forces of production once they are released from the constraints currently imposed by commodity production and exchange for profit.

A popular view is that it will involve centralisation, taking as its model the United Nations, a world central administration which will plan everything, everywhere and carry it out irrespective of the views of local people throughout the world. Socialists see this as both impractical and undemocratic.

There are also questions about the relationship between the community and individual industries. The view of the Socialist Party is that the community democratically decides what to produce not self-controlled industries as proposed by syndicalism. This does not mean that workers within these industries will not have a democratic say in how production takes place; the quality of the environment and health and safety, but it does not mean that they will have the sole say of what and how is produced and for whom. There will be disagreements and these will have to be dealt with democratically. The experts will also disagree as they often do now under capitalism such as over the choice of energy, e.g. nuclear power, coal, oil, gas, electricity, tidal, wind power and solar energy and decisions will have to be made committing labour and resources, but it will be for the community to democratically decide on the basis of transparent information, facts and reasonable argument, not the experts. The Socialist Party long ago rejected the technocrat view of administration.

 In a socialist society, the community will have to take major decisions about the allocation of labour and finite resources. While production will be much greater than it is now, labour and resources will not be unlimited. There are many people whole would like a return to manned moon missions. The cost of voluntary labour, much of it specialists, and the material resources required would be enormous, and if allocated to that project, it would mean that labour and resources cannot be allocated to other industries that other people favour. The community will have to democratically decide between them.

The advocates of centralisation say that as there will be one world community sharing a common interest, the decision-making about what shall be produced and where and how it shall be produced will be made by a world central administrative organisation, and they will carry it out. They will make the decisions and what they decide will apply all the way down to local levels. This appears unnecessary, undesirable and impracticable.

There is first the factor of size and complexity. As organisations become larger – larger in the number of people covered and larger geographically - their ability to handle centrally all the problems that arise decreases and because they are more remote from local needs their decisions and actions are more likely to be wrong.

We see in the multi-nationals, formed by amalgamations and takeovers, the experience led to the need to give greater autonomy to functional and geographical divisions. Rigid, top-down planning and direction was dismantled and given greater autonomy to their local boards.

But as regards socialist administration of things there is a more important criterion. People will not want their local issues to be settled by the dictates of some world administrative organisation. Such a bureaucracy would result in the destruction of many of local institutions and imitative. It seems likely, therefore, that socialist administration will not be decision making by a central world organisation, with people regionally and locally falling into line. Instead, people at a regional and local level will just get on with the task of ensuring production and distribution meets human needs in what form it takes where they live.

So what use would a world organisation of production and distribution have in a future socialist society?

There are four areas where a world administration would have a useful role; first, a clearing-house of information about production, transport and communications all over the world; second, a repository of expert technical information; third, that it would arrange co-ordination between surplus products in some areas and deficiencies in other areas; and fourth, they would extend some of the functions already existing at a world level, like health, energy, food and agricultural organisations and so on.

As an example, we can turn to the example of the Universal Postal Union. At present they handle three kinds of processes; financial, technical and organisational. The financial question will disappear, i.e. what the different organisations pay each other. Postal authorities in each country meet together and draw up conveyances which, when agreed, they all separately carry out. What the U.P.U does not do is to carry on the postal services themselves. They have no hand in it. But there is now and will continue to be an agreement of all the postal services about weights and sizes of what they send abroad. There is agreement about safety – exclusion of dangerous articles, and so on. There is agreement about forms of addresses, postal codes and evidence of parcels causing difficulties for workers on sorting work.

Chasing inflation.

Jerry Dias, the head of Canada's largest private-sector union, Unifor, which has a membership of 315,000, says the era of a 2 per cent rise is over, in view of runaway inflation.

 Most workers are bound to three-to-five-year contracts and, therefore, have no recourse to higher prices. 

Their bargaining teams have no idea how to handle the surging inflation. 

Dias said,'' Workers expect that their wages are at least going to pick up with the rate of inflation''. 

The WSM has always said the most unions can accomplish is to improve life for their members within capitalism, a system we seek to abolish.

S.P.C. Members

Promises, Promises!

In 2009, the developers Cadillac Fairview (CF), built an open-air shopping centre in Don Mills, Ontario. They also built condo towers that the local residents had opposed at the Ontario Municipal Board. 

However, CF promised the residents that if they dropped their opposition to the two condo towers, they would build a community centre. This would have a swimming pool, a fitness area, meeting rooms, gym and an indoor walking track. 

Twelve years have gone by, the promise has not been kept, but should anyone be surprised?

S.P.C. Members.

Socialist Organisation

 

As time and technology have moved on, I would suggest that an anarchistic decentralised form of socialist global organisation looks more and more feasible, while the 19th-century centralised model we have looks comparatively dated and inefficient. 

Consider the merits of a distributed peer-to-peer network over those of a hierarchy - a democratic hierarchy but a hierarchy nonetheless. 

- In a network, information can flow from anywhere to anywhere, taking any route, regardless of breakdowns or blockages. In a hierarchy, a blockage at just one or two key points can paralyse the whole structure. 

- In a network, information comes direct from the original source. In a hierarchy, it has to travel through multiple filters, risking data loss or corruption, so that the 'top' doesn't necessarily have a clear overall picture. 

- In a network, information travels fast through electronic media, in a hierarchy it is slow because it travels through people. 

- In a network, people's views and votes can be directly recorded, in a hierarchy they must be aggregated and to some extent unrepresentative. 

- In a network, any part can change independently if necessary, without involving the entire structure. In a hierarchy, a large part if not the entire structure has to be involved. 

- In a network, individual nodes contain comparatively low information content which means people can switch nodes with high adaptability. In a hierarchy, the higher up you go, the heavier the information load, and the less interchangeability, so people would tend to occupy positions for longer, creating the potential for factionalism, fiefdoms and structural sclerosis. 

- In a network, where previously it was hard for the right hand to know what the left hand was doing, now with blockchain technology, parts of a network can operate without the risk of resources being allocated (or the same vote being taken) twice in different places, a key advantage that only a centralised hierarchy could formerly boast. 

 Politically, a peer-to-peer network looks more like leaderless socialism, whereas a hierarchy still looks like a lot like class society except avowedly democratic, and with the question Quis custodes custodiat [Who watches the Watchmen?] left somewhat moot. 

Our de facto democratic model harks back to a historical period where communication was slow and limited by geography, it was impossible to disseminate information widely and efficiently, and no means existed to process mass decision-making except by reducing the number of decision-makers to a tiny minority who would attempt to fairly represent the majority.

Today, the only limiting factor in mass decision-making is the practical question of who should vote on what. I suggest the implementing of a rule of three: impact, information and interest. If it impacts on you, AND you are informed about it, AND you are interested enough to be involved, you should vote. If you can only claim two out of three, you can observe (and perhaps be a student or a consultant) but you should not vote. The decision rests solely with you, as is appropriate for a world based on the satisfaction of self-defined needs. But just as you are expected to show responsibility in other areas of your life, like not wasting resources, or not imposing on the liberty of others, you would be expected to uphold this democratic principle and would be the subject of social disapproval if you failed to do so.

Essentially this is a self-selection or opt-in model for democracy, and it has implications for how all structures could be formed and maintained, including everything from temporary and local social tasks to large and permanent institutions like health, emergency and other services. 

I think it would be interesting to explore this model, and indeed other models of how socialism might work in practice. There's no need to adopt any particular model as the definitive Party case, since it's not our decision to make, but we ought to be open to different possibilities, and certainly not fall back on easy assumptions based on century-old thinking.

Paddy

https://groups.io/g/spintcom/message/19709

This is socialism

For socialism to be established, there are two fundamental preconditions that must be met. 

Firstly, the productive potential of society must have been developed to the point where, generally speaking, we can produce enough for all. This is not now a problem as we have long since reached this point. However, this does require that we appreciate what is meant by "enough" and that we do not project onto socialism the insatiable consumerism of capitalism. 

Secondly, the establishment of socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on such a large scale, and the conscious understanding of what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Would they want to jeopardise the new society they had helped create? Of course not.

Humans behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in. Human behaviour reflects society. In a society such as capitalism, people's needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. If people didn't work society would obviously fall apart. To establish socialism the vast majority must consciously decide that they want socialism and that they are prepared to work in a socialist society. If people want too much? In a socialist society "too much" can only mean "more than is sustainably produced."

If people decide that they (individually and as a society) need to over-consume then socialism cannot possibly work. Under capitalism, there is a very large industry devoted to creating needs. Capitalism requires consumption, whether it improves our lives or not, and drives us to consume up to, and past, our ability to pay for that consumption. In a system of capitalist competition, there is a built-in tendency to stimulate demand to a maximum extent. Firms, for example, need to persuade customers to buy their products or they go out of business. They would not otherwise spend the vast amounts they do spend on advertising. There is also in capitalist society a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the accumulation of possessions. As Marx contended, the prevailing ideas of society are those of its ruling class then we can understand why, when the wealth of that class so preoccupies the minds of its members, such a notion of status should be so deep-rooted. It is this which helps to underpin the myth of infinite demand. It does not matter how modest one's real needs may be or how easily they may be met; capitalism's "consumer culture" leads one to want more than one may materially need since what the individual desires are to enhance his or her status within this hierarchal culture of consumerism and this is dependent upon acquiring more than others have got. But since others desire the same thing, the economic inequality inherent in a system of competitive capitalism must inevitably generate a pervasive sense of relative deprivation. What this amounts to is a kind of institutionalised envy and that will be unsustainable as more people are drawn into alienated capitalism.
In socialism, status based upon the material wealth at one's command would be a meaningless concept. The notion of status based upon the conspicuous consumption of wealth would be devoid of meaning because individuals would stand in equal relation to the means of production and have free access to the resultant goods and services. Why take more than you need when you can freely take what you need? In socialism, the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society, and the stronger the movement for socialism grows the more will it subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic notion of status, in particular.

The main features of Socialism are really quite simple:

Firstly, the new social system must be worldwide. The world must be regarded as one country and humanity as one people.

Secondly, all the people will co-operate to produce and distribute all the goods and services which are needed by mankind, each person willingly and freely, taking part in the way he feels he can do best.

Thirdly, all goods and services will be produced for use only, and having been produced, will be distributed, free, directly to the people so that each person's needs are fully satisfied.

Fourthly, the land, factories, machines, mines, roads, railways, ships, and all those things which mankind needs to carry on producing the means of life, will belong to the whole people.

The problem with a centrally-planned model of socialism was its inability to cope with change. It lacks any kind of feedback mechanism which allows for mutual adjustments between the different actors in such an economy. It is completely inflexible. Socialism does not necessarily involve the creation of new layers of administrations but simply the transformation of them.

 Socialism would inherit from capitalism a complex worldwide productive network linking all the millions of individual productive units in the world (farms, mines, factories and so on ) into a single system. The links we are talking about are physical in the sense that one unit is linked to another either as the physical users of the other's product or as the physical supplier of its materials, energy or equipment. Under capitalism such links are established in two ways: organisationally (as between different productive units forming part of the same private or state enterprise) and, above all, commercially (as when one enterprise contracts to buy something from, or to sell something to, another enterprise). In socialism, the links would be exclusively organisational. We should be very wary of rejecting the structures or lines of communication left by capitalism. Sure, the internal structures of many organisations reflect their origin, but the decision-making processes inherited should surely be our first concern. Rather than re-inventing the wheel or developing new decision-making structures separate to and different from those of capitalism, we should by default use the existing systems, unless an alternative is clearly better. We should view capitalism's decision-making structures as a social tool developed by humans and currently used to smooth the operation of capitalism. But in the hands of a socialist majority, a switch will be flicked in this machine, and - with some tweaking here and there - it will be available to help enable socialism.

Restaurants Survive But Unemployment for Restaurant Workers.

 Restaurants Survive. Inevitably Means Unemployment for Restaurant Workers.

Menu costs in restaurants in Canada are going up and will continue to since the cost of food is skyrocketing. According to Todd Barclay, CEO of Restaurants Canada,'' Consumers should know that it’s not driven by restaurants being greedy. It’s driven by restaurants trying to survive". Since September of 2020 and now, the cost of milk went up by 3.5 %, butter 6.3%, beef 13%, and edible fats and oils, a staple in many restaurants 21.5 %. When times are particularly hard folks, naturally, try to economize and eating out is one of the first things they can give up, which inevitably means unemployment for restaurant workers.

S.P.C. Members.

Wages Below Survival Rates

 Wages Well Below Survival Rates in Ontario.

The Ontario government has raised the minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour. Some may be able to squeak by in the sticks, but in a city like Toronto, it’s impossible. The Ontario Living Wage Network estimates it takes an hourly wage of $22.50 to merely survive. It allows rent for a one-bedroom apartment, $4,000 a year on food, plus $1,000 for internet and clothing and $3,000 a year on child care. For the working class it never gets easier.

S.P.C. Members.

Marx and Socialism

 

In an age where the internet provides us with unlimited access to direct sources, there appear to be no limits to the misunderstanding and distortion of Marx. In books and articles there is continuous reference to Marx, attacking him from all sides for claims that he never made. How can it be that the ideas of Marx can be so completely misunderstood and distorted? One reason is that Lenin and the Bolsheviks appropriated Marx's theory and tried to convince the world that their practice and theory follow his ideas that instead of the role of worker being abolished, it is extended to all men. Selectively quoted and out of context parts of Marx serve as the official ideology of the regime. Also the reformist social democrats, believed they were the enemies of capitalism but for them, socialism is not a society fundamentally different from capitalism, but rather, just a form of capitalism in which the working class has achieved a higher status. iI is, as Engels described it, "the present-day society without its defects."  They genuinely do believe in a better world – but they believe it can be achieved by a kinder, gentler capitalism and that profits can be used to  promote environmental, anti-poverty, and certain other noble causes. But they don’t dare to ask – or to admit – where these very profits come from: the unpaid labor of the entire working class. The compassionate capitalists believe that applying market principles to philanthropy, charity, and government will help lift the world out of poverty, cure all famine and disease. However, they fail to recognise that the exploitation at the core of capitalism is what engenders the very poverty, famine, and disease that their philanthropic and charitable efforts are attempting to relieve. They think that those who are “privileged” to enjoy great wealth should take up the responsibility of sharing a tiny slice of it with poor people – and don’t recognise that the wealth/poverty divide was created by capitalism itself. Marx and Engels explain in the Communist Manifesto: 

"The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best… [It requires] in reality that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie… It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class."

There is no greater misrepresentation of Marx than that which is to be found in the thought of the state-capitalists, the reformists, and the avowedly capitalist opponents of socialism alike, all of whom assume that Marx wanted only the economic improvement of the working class, and that he wanted to abolish private property so that the worker would own what the capitalist now has. The truth is that for Marx the situation of a worker in a Russian "socialist" factory, a British state-owned factory, or an American factory such as General Motors, would appear essentially the same. Marx's concept of socialism is not a society of regimented, automatized individuals, regardless of whether there is equality of income or not, and regardless of whether they are well fed and well clad. It is not a society in which the individual is subordinated to the state, to the machine, to the bureaucracy. Even if the state as an "abstract capitalist" were the employer, even if "the entire social capital were united in the hands either of a single capitalist or a single capitalist corporation," this would not be socialism. Socialism, for Marx, is a society which serves the needs of man. Socialism for Marx, meant neither the mere abolition of poverty nor the  abstract idea of fairness which he rejected so scathingly in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Least of all did Marx see socialism in which “representative” power and authority replaced individual power and authority over men.

It should be clear the popular idea of the nature of historical materialism is erroneous. Marx's "materialistic" or "economic" interpretation of history has nothing whatsoever to do with an alleged "materialistic" or "economic" striving as the most fundamental drive in man. Marx has  been criticised for presenting politics, culture, religion, etc. as simple effects of a one-way economic cause.  The popular view assumes that in Marx's opinion the strongest psychological motive in man is to gain money and to have more material comfort; if this is the main force within man, so continues this "interpretation" of historical materialism, the key to the understanding of history is the material desires of men; hence, the key to the explanation of history is man's belly, and his greed for material satisfaction. It is the understanding of history based on the fact that men are "the authors and actors of their history." Marx saw that political force cannot produce anything for which there has been no preparation in the social and political process. Hence that force, if at all necessary, can give, so to speak, only the last push to a development which has virtually already taken place, but it can never produce anything truly new. "Force," he said, "is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one."

Marx did not believe that there is no such thing as the nature of man; that man at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, on which the culture writes its text. Nor was Marx ever tempted to assume that "human nature" was identical with that particular expression of human nature prevalent in his own society. For Marx the aim of socialism was the emancipation of man, and the emancipation of man was the same as his self-realisation and development of the individual personality.

Capitalism has obviously changed in the hundred years since Marx and Engels wrote yet in the basic relations and structures which distinguish capitalism from feudalism and socialism, however, it has changed very little, and these are the main features of capitalism addressed in Marx's theories. The workers' relationship to their labour, products and capitalists are basically unchanged from Marx's day. Workers, for example, may earn more money now than they did in the last century, but so do the capitalists. Consequently, the wealth and income gaps between the two classes is as great or greater than ever.

Marx wrote no “Utopia” of the kind that earlier writers had produced – writings based only on the general idea of a society from which the more obvious evils of the society in which they lived had been removed. But from the general laws of social development Marx was able to outline the features of the new society and the way in which it would develop.

The capitalist class would love for class struggle to just be considered an old-fashioned notion from the past but the class struggle -- the conflict between the capitalists and the workers -- is at the very heart of the capitalist system. The majority of people would love to live in a world free of poverty, unemployment, racism and war. This kind of world is only possible under socialism. Most workers today would readily agree that this is the kind of world they would want for themselves and future generations. But they think it’s a pipedream yet it is the task of the working class to turn this vision into a reality. By learning the lessons of the class struggles that went before us and by applying our power workers develop revolutionary class consciousness. Our socialist perspective in no way means that we do not defend against the immediate attacks today. On the contrary, it is absolutely necessary, and socialists make good fighters for today’s struggle. But in order to fight most effectively, workers also have to understand that there can be no lasting concessions from the capitalist system. To achieve abundance for all, the working class will have to organise and build a genuine socialist revolution.

Will you credit it !!!

 

A number of reformists want to solve the problems of capitalism without changing its relations of production and instead find the flaws in some part of the monetary mechanism. For some with their roots in the Social Credit movement of Major Douglas, it is in the banker’s credit monopoly that is at fault. The currency reformers of the Social Credit type wish to save capitalism by making changes in the monetary system alone. While the Social Creditors exonerate the industrialist capitalists they concentrate their attacks upon the bankers and financiers. The Social Credit propose to socialise credit only and leave the capitalists in control of industry, and the proposed lever for this social transformation is an alteration in the monetary mechanism.

 Social Creditors had the merit of recognising that the productive forces of capitalist society are being strangled in an economic straitjacket: that poverty in the midst of potential plenty is shameful and unnecessary. They sincerely desire to abolish war, poverty, and the miseries of exploitation, but without upsetting the existing social relations of production and without compelling anyone but a handful of bankers to yield up their power and privileges.

They find the scapegoat in “the money power”, the credit monopoly of finance capital. They insinuate that bankers deliberately create panics and crises by contracting credits or withholding them. They do not know that the calling in and curtailment of credit is simply evidence that the crisis is already underway, instead of being the fundamental cause of its occurrence, and they pass over the fact that bankers, like other capitalists, can only invest money where there is the prospect of profit.

The problem before society today is not a financial problem. It is a property problem. The banks belong to the superstructure of capitalism. Private property is the foundation. The financial crises, consumption crises, credit crises and the like are nothing more than the reflections of the fundamental economic crisis arising from the anarchy of production. No amount of credit supply to manufacturers, no amount of currency manipulation which leaves the question of property ownership untouched, can do other than aggravate the crisis of capitalism.

They are mistaken in the belief that money is not (or should not be) a commodity, but a system of worthless tokens, fiat money. They mistake the superficial forms of modern money (its paper dress as currency or its phantom bookkeeping existence as checks) for its inner nature. They completely fail to comprehend the function of money in a commodity-producing society, and particularly under capitalism, the most developed form of commodity-producing society. As the general equivalent of value, money is not only a commodity but the king among commodities, destined to reign so long as capitalism endures.

Nor do the Social Creditors understand that money is also subject to all the laws of capitalism. Chief among these laws is the necessity of transforming money into capital and using capital to appropriate surplus-value. The financier accomplishes this by loaning money to the industrialist or the merchant, who, in their turn, appropriate their share of surplus value directly from the working class. The self-same capital is used for exploiting purposes by both groups of capitalists, and yet the Social Creditors condemn the bankers alone. Their position amounts to this: the capitalist may exploit the working class, but the finance capitalist must not exploit his fellow capitalists.
 Social Credit preys on the fear of the small businessman presenting the monster of finance capital which threatens to destroy them. Hence, the Social Creditor’s assault upon the credit monopoly,  which is merely a specialised extension of the monopoly of the means of production by the capitalist class. The credit monopoly is the means by which large aggregates of capital exploit the lesser capitalist groups, and through them, the working class. The credit monopoly at the apex of exploitation could be overthrown only by an overthrow of the general monopoly of the means of production in the hands of the capitalist class.

The Social Creditors, however, have no quarrel with any other form of the power of private property but “the money power”. They charge the banker with converting “the communal wealth into financial debt”, although that process is only a special case of the continuous transformation of social wealth into private property under capitalism. They speak of “the communal credit” as though such a thing existed in a social system based upon the institution of private property. Marx disposed of such nonsense once and for all with the remark that “the only thing which enters into the collective possession of the people under capitalism is the national debt”.

Douglas’ chief contribution to the science of economics is his discovery of a flaw in “the price system”. This flaw is formulated in an algebraic theorem, A over A plus B. According to Douglas, all purchasing power is distributed in the course of the productive process, as follows: Let A represent payments made to individuals..(whether workers or capitalists) in wages, salaries, and dividends. Let B represent payments made to other organizations for raw materials, bank charges, and other external costs. Then A, the rate of flow of purchasing power to individuals, must obviously be less than the rate of flow of prices, A plus B, by a proportion equivalent to B. This permanent deficiency in purchasing power is supposed to be bridged by the banker’s extension of credit against production. When the banks withdraw credits, the gap between prices and purchasing power grows wider and wider, until the crisis occurs.

This theory fails to explain why, if there exists a permanent deficiency in purchasing power, capitalist crises break out periodically. The Social Creditors attempt to get around this difficulty either by asserting that the present crisis is altogether unprecedented, a phenomenon peculiar to current times, or by accusing the bankers of anti-social conduct. Neither of these explanations will hold water. Fourier over a century ago described the first capitalist crisis in the same phrase used by the Social Creditors, “poverty in the midst of plenty”. The financial magnates are as helpless as any other capitalist group to start or stop a general capitalist crisis, although they have induced temporary credit stringencies for their private purposes.

But even as it stands, the fallacy in Douglas’ discovery is not difficult to detect. This lies in the fact that B payments (raw materials, bank charges, and other external costs) are A payments (wages, salaries, dividends) at a previous stage of production. So long as some other, more fundamental flaw does not interrupt the production and circulation of commodities, B payments will continue to be transformed indefinitely into A payments; banks will keep extending or renewing credits, and the industrialist will continue producing profitably. The fundamental cause of capitalist crises is to be found in the antagonisms of capitalist production, which generate all the relatively superficial flaws discovered by Douglas in “the price system”.

Except for scientific purposes, it does not much matter whether the reader grasps this part of the Douglas theory. His panacea does not necessarily follow from it, nor is it understood by most Social Creditors. They put their trust in the scientific attainments of this quack doctor of economics because his remedy is so cheap and palatable.

There are three proposals in the Social Credit program: the socialization of credit, the National Dividend, and the Adjusted Price. First, the power of creating credit is to be taken away from the private bankers and vested in the state. Then the state is to be incorporated and a National Credit Account set up. Out of the Social Credit, calculated from the excess of productive capacity over purchasing power, National Dividends will be periodically distributed to all eligible stockholders of the corporative state. The inflationary rise in prices which would follow the issuance of National Dividends (a fancy name for unsecured currency) will be prevented by the Adjusted Price. The Adjusted Price requires all retailers to sell their goods at a decreed discount and to be reimbursed at the average rate of profit by the government. Thus, Social Credit combines the best features of the dole, perpetual price-cutting, and a bull market.

The scheme is utterly Utopian. If credit was nationalised, as it is for all practical purposes in many capitalist countries today, it would simply put a more powerful weapon in the hands of the monopoly capitalists who control the state and be used, as it is in those countries, to protect the profits of national capitalists against foreign competition. The closest the workers will ever get to a National Dividend under capitalism is the national dole, a subsistence pittance to keep them alive until capitalist production or imperialist war needs them. To put the Adjusted Price into effect would entail the regulation of the .entire national economy, and, short of proletarian revolution, this could only be attempted by a dictatorship of monopoly capital. Credit could only be successfully socialised, however, after all the instruments of production had been socialized.

In the Draft Scheme for Scotland, Douglas proposed to reduce all wages in organized industries twenty-five percent, to deprive the membership of any trade union violating a wage agreement of the National Dividend, and to compel every worker to remain at his present trade for five years after the initiation of the scheme on penalty of losing his dividend. The National Dividend is supposed to compensate the worker for this loss of wages, freedom, and the right to strike.  Social Credit is radical in form and reactionary in substance. Its propaganda panders to all the confused pseudo-socialists covering for their outspoken hatred of finance capital. The Douglasites walk with their heads in the clouds, filled with rosy dreams of the future in which, by their financial feat, there is enough of everything for everybody, God’s in his heaven, and all’s right with their world. Social Credit propaganda has influenced certain sections of the labour movement, who substitute speeches about “holding the banker’s to account” and the nationalization of the banks of England for a revolution. The bankers won’t flinch from this “onslaught”, but people may be diverted from that which matters more than all else today, namely, the struggle to secure the social ownership of the means of production.

Social Credit has ruled two provinces in Canada for a number of years. In New Zealand, they had a number of MPs. In both countries they proved themselves to be loyal servants of the ruling class and ardent defenders of the capitalist system.

Revolution or a Coup

 

The insurrection that gave power to the Bolsheviks was strictly speaking the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. The Bolsheviks used this more subtle approach of disguising its seizure of power as an assumption of power by the Congress of Soviets and it was through the organ of the Military Revolutionary Council, NOT the Soviets. The storming of the Winter Palace was not done by a mass of politically aware workers, but by a few hundred pro-Bolshevik soldiers. Trotsky admitted that the insurrection was planned by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, of which he was the chair and which had a Bolshevik majority. Trotsky describes how this Committee took its orders directly from the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. So, although the Soviets had played a part in overthrowing Tsarism and opposing the Kerensky government, the events of 7 November were a Bolshevik take-over. Where was the mass of the Petrograd workers consciously involved in deciding on the revolution? No. On the morning of 7 November the workers of Petrograd woke up to find that in the night the Bolshevik Party had assumed power, the Bolsheviks had carried out a revolution while they were asleep.

The MRC was set up by the Soviets on the basis of defending Petrograd because it was rumoured of another potential Kornilov plot or an imminent invading German army. It was not set up on the basis that it would overthrow the provisional government. But then, under the pretext of organising the military defence of Petrograd from this phantom invading German army, Trotsky at the head of the Petrograd Soviet's Military Revolutionary Committee, took over the garrison unit by unit, through a system of commissars, first securing vital points like the train stations and telegraph office, then finally taking the Winter Palace:

"...even when the compromisers were in power, in the Petrograd Soviet, that the Soviet examined or amended decisions of the government. This was, as it were, part of the constitution under the regime named after Kerensky. When we Bolshevists got the upper hand in the Petrograd Soviet we only went on with the system of double power and widened its application. We took it on ourselves to revise the order sending the troops to the front, and so we disguised the actual fact of the insurrection of the Petrograd garrison under the tradition and precedents and technique of the constitutional duplication of authority” - Trotsky - Lessons of October

The explicit purpose was to present the 3rd Congress of Soviets opening the next morning with a fait accompli. Lenin was sure that only this way would the support of the Congress for immediate soviet power be assured. Once it had happened, workers and soldiers were enthusiastic. And they were part of making it happen, insofar as they obeyed the orders of the MRC. But it would be misleading to say that it was carried out by the proletariat organised in soviets as such. 

Were non-Bolshevik proletarians in District soviets aware this was coming? No. Were the Left-SR participants in the MRC? No. Was even the moderate wing of leading Bolsheviks supportive? No. This is not to say that Petrograd workers and soldiers didn't support the idea of a soviet government. They did. But that doesn't mean that they were consciously involved in the decision to go through with the October events in order to arrive at such a government.

The total lack of opposition to the Bolsheviks and the absence of support for the Provisional Government reflected the sympathies of the workers. The Provisional Government was utterly discredited, and Bolshevism's reactionary aspect had not been revealed. Support for the action came rushing in after the event from the Soviet of Petrograd Trade Unions and the All-Russian Soviet of Factory Committees amongst others. The factory committees rallied for the Bolsheviks because the latter appeared to support the workers' aspirations. The majority of the members of the Petrograd Soviet were in favour of the overthrow of the Kerensky government but did this mean they were in favour of the installation of a Bolshevik government. What they were in favour of was a coalition government formed by all the "workers" parties, ie the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs and others. This was in fact favoured by many within the Bolshevik Party itself, but they were over-ruled by Lenin's determination to seize power for the Bolshevik party alone. In other words, it wasn't the overthrow as such of the Kerensky government but its replacement by a Bolshevik government under Lenin. There was no mandate from the soviets for this, which was why Lenin went to great pains to disguise his party's coup as the formation of a soviet government, which it wasn't. Once they got governmental power the Bolsheviks sidelined the soviets almost straightaway. The soviets were always considered as a cover to secure Bolshevik power.

While they claimed that this was a spontaneous seizure of power by the workers, what can be seen is that it was timed to occur before the Soviet Congress could convene, and so guaranteeing Bolshevik supremacy in the soviets and little chance for a free democratic vote on the form any new government should take. It can be plausibly assumed that if the Soviet Congress had had a free vote, the Bolsheviks would have had to share power with their arch-rivals the Mensheviks. Martov called forward a resolution demanding that the Bolsheviks form a coalition government with other left-wing parties. The resolution was about to receive almost complete endorsement from the soviet representatives thus showing that the representatives in the soviet did NOT believe in all power to the Bolsheviks but then the majority of SR and Menshevik delegates unadvisedly left the congress in protest over the Bolshevik coup giving the Bolsheviks a majority of those who remained. ( We can also speculate it was possible that Lenin himself could have been kept out of office due to the mistrust that many of the Mensheviks and other anti-Tsarist revolutionaries justly held him in.)

On October 25th, the praesidium was elected on the basis of 14 Bolsheviks, 7 Social-Revolutionaries, three Mensheviks and one Internationalist. The Bolsheviks then trooped out their worker-candidates Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and so on. When it came to forming a government, Kamenev read out a Bolshevik Central Committee proposal for a Soviet of People's Commissars, whereby "control over the activities of the government is vested in the Congress of Soviets and its Central Executive Committee". Seven Bolsheviks from the party's central committee were nominated, and thus Lenin and Trotsky came to sit at the top. The "workers' government" was now composed of professional revolutionaries and members of the intelligentsia ranging from the aristocratic, like Chicherin, to the bureaucratic, like Lenin and Kollontai, via the landed bourgeois (Smilga), the commercial bourgeois (Yoffe) and the higher industrial bourgeois (Pyatakov). These were the sort of people who were used to being a ruling class. The management of production by the workers was one of the goals of the struggle, proclaimed by the Military Revolutionary Committee on 25 October 1917. That same day, the Second Congress of the Soviets solemnly approved the decision to establish workers control while specifying, however, that this meant controlling the capitalists and not confiscating their factories.

The Bolsheviks effectively re-defined "proletarian power" to mean the power of the party whose ideology was believed a priori to represent workers interests. "Who is to seize the power? That is now of no importance. Let the Military Revolutionary Committee take it, or 'some other institution', which will declare that it will surrender the power only to the genuine representatives of the interests of the people.''

Not "the people", not the "representatives of the people", but "the genuine representatives of the interests of the people" and that would be, of course, the Bolshevik Party led by Lenin.

Substitution of the party for the class. A take-over, not a revolution.