The Impossiblist's Way

 

“There are but three ways for people to escape their wretched lot. The first is via the liquor-store, the second is the path of the temple; but the third is by way of the social revolution.” – Bakunin

In a world of almost 8 billion, an organisation of a few hundred members claims the grandoise title of the World Socialist Movement, which appears absurd to many political commentators. An aspiration, perhaps but not a reflection of reality. But the dozen or so members would remind their critics of the British socialist, William Morris and his words:

“One man with an idea in his head is in danger of being considered a madman: two men with the same idea in common may be foolish, but can hardly be mad; ten men sharing an idea begin to act, a hundred draw attention as fanatics, a thousand and society begins to tremble, a hundred thousand and there is war abroad, and the cause has victories tangible and real; and why only a hundred thousand? Why not a hundred million and peace upon the earth? You and I who agree together, it is we who have to answer that question.”

The World Socialist Movement maintains that it is revolutionary, committed to class struggle as the means of achieving its ends. They do not advocate violent insurrection but view their task as to hasten the revolution by rousing class consciousness through education. They argue that the only way socialism will come about is for a majority of people, on a worldwide basis, to achieve this objective through the use of elections, although they are well aware at the present time the main function is to act as a propaganda group to try to raise political awareness. The WSM believe that it is possible to make the transition from capitalism to the complete abolition of the state immediately that the majority decides to do it.

Against its critics who disparage the democratic vote, the WSM cite Marx:

“The character of an election does not depend on this name but on the economics foundation, the economic interrelations of the voters, and as soon as the functions have ceased to be political, (1) government functions no longer exist, (2) distribution of general functions has become a routine matter which entails no domination, (3) elections loose their present political character… with collective ownership the so-called will of the people disappears and makes way for the genuine will of the co-operatives” (Notes on Bakunin’s Statehood and Anarchy)

The WSM has taken up a position asserting that workers are fully able, in fact, abler than the “leaders” to understand their own class interests if they are fully informed of their circumstances from local to global. And to be informed of what is happening around, and what has happened earlier, what they require is to meet in regular general assemblies, discuss and debate all that matters keeping ears and minds open and decide to take such steps as deemed useful. In case a strike is to be declared, they would need a strike committee to be formed of recallable delegates elected and mandated in the general assembly – thus retaining the ultimate control in their own hands. Where there are many rival trade union shops in a single factory or workplace operated by many capitalist political parties, a socialist worker can neither keep on supporting the one he or she is in, nor go on seeking membership of one after another or all at the same time, nor can they start their own “socialist” trade union instead. What one can and should do from an immediate perspective, is to try to form a “political group” with like-minded fellow workers and campaign for a class-wide democratic unity. The greater political awareness of the working class towards socialism, and the greater their control over trade union activities, the better might be their chances of retaining a larger proportion of the wealth (surplus product) they create. Socialist theory will then begin to be realised in socialist practice.

It is true that Marx did not draw up recipes for the cookshops of the future, but he did describe the basis of the society he thought was going to replace capitalism: “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common” (chapter 1 of Capital); “a co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production” (Critique of the Gotha Programme); “abolition of private property”, “the Communistic abolition of buying and selling”, “the conversion of the functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production” (Communist Manifesto); “abolition of the wages system” (Value, Price and Profit).

In short, a class-free, state-free, moneyless, wageless prices-free society based on the common ownership of the means of production and distribution – the end of the profit-system and the exchange economy.

In Wage, Labour and Capital, Marx encapsulated the condition of existence of capitalism:

“…capital presupposes wage labour; wage labour presupposes capital. They condition the existence of each other; they reciprocally bring forth each other.”

The key point to understand is that capitalism is a system based upon the ruthless exploitation and commodification of workers and the relentless rape of our planet. Working people are conditioned and are psychologically programmed to detest that which could potentially set them free. Workers are led to believe that economic servitude and wage slavery is freedom. Millions of human beings toil in the world’s sweat-shops. It is all done for the benefit of capitalists at the expense of society.

Workers still believe in myths and fairy tales. They have misplaced hope and faith in phoney leaders and bogus institutions that keep us servile and docile. Irrational faith requires nothing from us. Delusion has become the norm because too many of us are incapable of grappling with reality. We can and must do better or we are doomed.

The WSM possesses no charismatic leaders and those impressed by power are rarely critical and seldom of a revolutionary character.

Rosa Luxemburg wrote:
“Historically, the errors committed by a truly revolutionary movement are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the cleverest Central Committee.”

The WSM does not want you to follow it because if a political party can lead you to the “promised land”, another equally could as easily lead you out again. The role of the WSMis to persuade – better still – to help people persuade themselves. If workers seek to take part in the self-emancipation of their class, the basic requirement is that they should cease allowing others to teach them and should set about teaching themselves.

The WSP(India) in its principles promote the desirability, and above all, the possibility of a fundamentally different form of society in which men and women, freed from the pressures of scarcity and from the insecurity of everyday existence under capitalism, shape their own lives, collectively deciding who, how, when, and what shall be produced.

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. If those in charge of our society, the professional politicians, corporate bosses and media moguls can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power.

It is only when we have renounced our preoccupation with “I,” “me,” “mine,” that we can truly possess the world in which we live. It is the shift from the “I” method of looking at human affairs to the “we” method of observing and appreciating human relations. The person who retains the old “I” attitude stands in the way of human progress.

As Karl Liebknecht pointed out:

 “The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not you and I.”

Provided that we regard nothing as property, not only is everything ours; it is also everybody else’s.

Utopian Socialism

 Is it possible to mobilise people to fight oppression without fashioning models for a socialist economy for people to fasten on to? The capitalist slogan ‘There is No Alternative’ was answered by ‘Another World is Possible’. We need to know and say much more about this other world.

Socialist thought has to deal in prediction, but only in broad terms. We live in dark days.  One often has to aim at objectives that one can only very dimly see. Socialism is a vision of the future, while its advocates are actively at work in the present. Socialists have typically avoided the tactic of the utopian blueprint. One reason for this was that no matter what your utopian vision is, you won’t be able to achieve it under capitalism. The other reason was that after capitalism is overthrown, it will be up to the people to determine how to run their society. Some people may prefer a return to Nature. Others may want robots tending to their every need. Why should one person’s utopian preference determine how society should be run for everybody else?

Marx and Engels avoided "the politics of dreaming," yet scattered throughout their works are numerous references to life in a communist society. Marx and Engels differed from the utopian socialists not in terms of their visionary goals, but on the basis of how such goals might be achieved. The "utopian socialists" were "utopian"  in the way that they believed socialism might come about. For Marx capitalism does not collapse thereby necessarily bringing about socialism. Marx's breakthrough was to wed such utopian visions to a concrete, scientific analysis of the dynamics of capitalism and class struggle. As Marx observed, no society has imagined itself into existence, which is to say, women and men do not set out to build their society according to some pre-conceived blueprint. The social relations resulting from human action appear to us in later times as the preconceived ideas of the creators of those social relations when, in fact, the ideas never existed until the social relations had already come into being.

In their critique of Utopian Socialism, Marx and Engels made two charges. First, that the method was wrong: socialism imposed from above, reliant on altruistic benefactors. Second, that it was not sweeping enough, and it failed to recognise the need to replace the system as a whole.  They disagreed with Fourier that a new society could be broadly realized without class struggle, and those ideal projections could come real in capitalist society. In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels points out that early socialists were Enlightenment rationalists who sought not "to emancipate a particular class, but all humanity at once." Thus, the revolutionary theory of Charles Fourier is largely without a concrete revolutionary agent to carry out the revolution! Claude Henri Saint-Simon was explicitly counter-revolutionary. He did not want to "excite the poor to acts of violence against the rich and government." Most utopian philosophers differed greatly in their ideals, but they all strove to create a world that is utopian in its nature, a paradise for people to live in. For Marx and Engels, as worthy as such communal experiments might be, projections like Owen's New Lanark were doomed to eventual failure. They were propagators of political and economic fantasies. of the "wouldn't it be nice if..." type. 

Robert Owen wanted compassionate capitalism with some collectivity. He built a neighbourhood in and around New Lanark Mill, which had schools to train the young and a place where the older generation could retire.  Owen tried to set up small communities of workers’ cooperatives. Unfortunately, these co-operatives were not economically self-sufficient and were dependent on the rest of the world economy, which was still based on capitalism. The result was that the co-operatives either collapsed or abandoned their ideals. This same problem has his such movements as the kibbutz movement in Israel and the various hippie communes in the 60s. Marx socialism is very much a science, and he gives many guidelines to achieve the ultimate goal that he writes about. He teaches not only the happy ending but the work to be done in between. Socialism comes about through revolutionary struggles, not as the result of action inspired by flawless plans. The main difference between Marxism and Utopian Socialism is the 'getting there'. The utopians do not think of the long term, or how difficult it will be to create the worlds that they envision.

 The reason for the upsurge in utopian thought is in some ways similar to that of the early 19th century. There was a lot of change and a lot of societal growth. The utopian thinkers, for the most part, were responding to a social disconnect, and a society that no longer held traditional values. The industrial working-class was not a powerful actor in politics. Engels observed when Saint-Simon’s Geneva letters appeared in 1802 “the capitalist mode of production, and with it, the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat was still very incompletely developed.” The revolutionary capacity is not there to execute ideals that have been represented abstractly. Isn’t this in a way similar to the problem we face today? Even though the working-class makes up a larger percentage of the world’s population than ever before, we have not seen a radicalized working-class in the advanced capitalist countries. In the absence of a revolutionary working-class, utopian schemas are bound to surface. In the absence of genuine struggles, modern re-hashed utopian fantasies such as Parecon are seductive. They have to construct the outlines of a brave new world out of their own hearts and heads rather in the real world of real struggles.

While there are dangers in utopian thinking, there exists a danger is their absence. The truth is that we on the Left don’t "talk utopia" nearly enough. We need the attraction of a possible future as well as being repulsed by the actual present. If people are to make the sacrifices required by any struggle for social justice, then they need a compelling idea of the world they’re fighting for. Utopias provide a perspective from which the assumed limitations of the present can be scrutinised, from which familiar social arrangements are exposed as unjust and irrational. We need utopian thinking if we are to engage successfully in the critical battlefield of ideas over what is or is not possible if we are to challenge what is presented as immutable economic realities. Without a clear alternative – the outlines of a sustainable society – we are we cede the definition of the possible to those with a vested interest in shutting our eyes to a better future.

Utopias tend to be the target of derision. And yet, despite being subject to dismissals, utopia never goes away, partly because the criticism of the present draws on the notion of a future that has eliminated the conditions of the present that make life so difficult, sometimes impossible, and unfulfilling for so many. Here utopia operates in disguise, not going by its own name but providing a resource against which to measure a present that fails to match up, either to its own ideal expression of itself or to the inspiring visions of the future for which people have struggled throughout history.

You cannot simply interpret people's consciousness from their material conditions, or really understand people unless you understand their particular utopian projections -- because such projections, while they are not material, are a real component of people's lives, part of the "now" in which they live. The materialist philosopher Josef Dietzgen frequently stated ideas are concrete. The "utopian" tendency provides us with an understanding of those visions of a better world that people have been fighting for and will continue to fight for. We can draw on a rich tradition of history going back to the Diggers and Gerald Winstanley, William Morris and even John Lennon.

Utopian visions of communism are presented as powerful critiques of actually existing capitalism. Projecting the communist future from existing patterns and trends is an integral part of Marx's analysis of capitalism. Marx knew that something would come after capitalism and he made some projections about what it could be like, and those are very famous pieces but they're very small compared to the majority of his work, which is just about understanding capitalism. Marx constructed his vision of communism out of the human and technological possibilities already visible in his time

Marx never actually provided a blueprint for how a communist community was supposed to look like. He did not even impose some necessary model of the unfolding class struggle on the class struggle. He decried sects and sectarianism within the working-class movement, which he described as those who, “demanded that the class movement subordinate itself to a particular sect movement.” By not leaving a blueprint, Marx thought that people would be able to create a communist community free from the prescriptions of an antiquated era, that people would eventually evolve away from capitalism once it had reached its peak and instead search for a better way of living.

At this point in human history, (for the most part) communism cannot work -- people are greedy, desiring capital. Save for those various pockets of communalism around the world (such as traditional Inuit communalism), communism cannot efficiently and effectively be put into place as a viable economic system. For now, capitalism reigns, but a collective consciousness change things. In the past, some ideas seem far-fetched. The idea that civilization would reach a point where slavery was not commonplace may have seemed unlikely. The thought of having civil liberties and not living under a monarch was once far-fetched, but humanity evolved. The idea of basic civil rights for women and minorities was also unimaginable. But a gradual, historical shift in consciousness changed things. One of our last hopes for a better planet in the future may very well rest in a maturing, developing human consciousness. In light of changes in class consciousness, we may one day find a socialist society on the immediate agenda. What is important to see is that the fact that many of us prefer capitalism does not give capitalism any greater credibility.

"We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive." As Marx once wrote, "History is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims." The question then remains: After capitalism what will be the aims of humanity? Only time will tell. Marx intended to present his views on communism in a systematic manner in the final volume. The plan changed, in part because Marx never concluded his work on political economy proper, and what Engels in a letter to Marx refers to as "the famous 'positive,' what you 'really' want" was never written.

A socialist is of necessity social – hence the name. We wish to be social – that is, to live in a society formed of social beings like ourselves. Socialism means a reconstruction of society. It is a product of social evolution. We have slavery, feudalism, capitalism and – socialism in the next stage. Marx and Engels did not see revolution as the inevitable triumph of a would-be ascendant class. Sometimes revolutions issue in "the common ruin of the contending classes" whether it be by nuclear annihilation, ecological suicide or barbarism. Socialism, for Marx and Engels, was not inevitable but very possible. It's never over until it's over.

What would the genuinely socialist society of tomorrow look like? The utopia that any group of people project depends to some extent upon the exact material conditions in which they exist. Trying to predict what socialism would be like in the future to that of a serf on his Lord's manor in feudalistic times trying to think of what capitalism would be like. If we want to play the role of the serf on his lord's manor predicting what the next stage of history would be like, socialism could very well end up looking a lot like capitalism. We might see skyscrapers, helicopters, and mass-transit systems as we do today. This would be like how a late-feudal society might look a bit like an early-capitalist society. Later on, a socialist economy may look completely different from very different other structures, just like how our contemporary society looks very different from the 1600s in Great Britain. Just as the serf would have probably been unable to see highways, automobiles, and computers, there are, of course, probably other elements to the next epoch that we are missing.

 We lack a meaningful sense of the future, and as a result, we lack hope because hope demands a future envisioned as an achievable immediate possibility on which may be realized. Utopia is not the "no-place" of the word's Greek origins, but rather something present in the here and now, although available only in glimpses. The power of utopian images radiate. Urban industrial or office workers may be attracted by the escapist fantasy generated by peasant modes of life, even though they themselves certainly cannot simply take up a peasant life. The oft-derided pleasures as window-shopping provide people with fragmentary access to those greater pleasures and fulfillments only to be realized in a post-capitalist, post-scarcity world. In so far as these pleasures are enmeshed within capitalism, they are irrational. We need to find ways to connect to the utopian yearnings that move millions of people, and which the advertising industry know too well how to exploit. We have to offer something more participatory, that will be a process and a journey. By describing how people would live if everyone, utopian socialism does two things: it inspires the oppressed to struggle and sacrifice for a better life and it gives a clear meaning to the aim of socialism. However, the main difference between socialists and utopians is the getting there. The utopian socialists do not think of the long term, or how difficult it will be to create the worlds that they envision. The SPGB take a maximalist position accepting and understanding where the majority consciousness is now and trying to, as a magnet attracts iron filings, slowly attempt to draw the masses in our direction. It refuses to outline exactly how the revolutionary transformation would take place, or what the new society would be like because it was the workers who were the revolutionaries. They would create a socialist society themselves.

Reforms change little

Eugene Debs once said, “It's better to ask for what you want and not get it, than ask for what you don’t want and get it.” 

If you really want socialism, join the Socialist Party. Ask for what you do want.

After over a century of reform activity, and the sincere efforts of a multitude of reformers, the world is in a greater mess than ever it was. We, socialists, are often accused of being opposed to reforms, social legislation designed to ameliorate some intolerable situations. Not so. We of the World Socialist Movement are not opposed to reforms per se, any more than we advocate them. The really vital reforms of capitalism were won a long time ago, for instance, the vote that gave the working class the opportunity to take its fate into its own hands. The position of a revolutionary is to reject reformism - the advocacy of reforms - which is not the same thing as opposing reforms themselves. Reformism is the promotion of reforms and it is this that we revolutionaries should not be engaged in. Trying to mend capitalism is incompatible with trying to end capitalism. For ourselves, radicalisation entails the conscious propagandistic of the communist alternative under each and every circumstance thrown up by capitalism. It an interactive process between thought and practice are driven by a clear and unambiguous conception of what we are to replace capitalism with. Nothing less will do. Unless we know what to replace capitalism with, capitalism will not be replaced. We will be stuck with it. It is literally a case of one or the other

We make a very clear distinction between reformist struggle and other forms of struggle. We are 100 % behind the militant industrial struggle. fully support militant struggle by workers as a class and as individuals in the economic domain to resist the downward pressures of capital. In fact, in our view, the trade union movement has largely compromised and weakened itself by blurring this distinction as for example in the UK where many unions are affiliated with the capitalist Labour Party. Trade unions should stick to the economic domain where they work much better as militant organisations of the working class. Reformist struggles are qualitatively different in kind to industrial struggles since they are of a political nature and seek to impact the way capitalism is administered in terms of policies. What those who are essentially advocating is reformism in the belief that it entails some kind of progressive dynamic that will lead us somewhere closer to achieving a socialist society. In fact, all the historical evidence shows that your progressive changes lead to the abandonment of revolutionary socialism and the co-option of erstwhile revolutionary socialists into capitalism In any case it is nonsense to suggest that revolutionary socialism means "standing outside of the political process". This is a terribly mechanical not to say narrow-minded, concept of what the political process actually is.

Nor can we automatically assume that crises help to radicalise workers. In fact, there is strong empirical evidence to the contrary, recent studies show that a crisis tends to make some workers more fearful of the future, more conservative and more conformist even though it might well radicalise others. One must never forget the lessons of pre-war Germany and the depression which helped to fuel the growth of the Nazi movement. Revolutions are not simply the result of social crises and class struggle, they are mediated by consciousness. The ideas themselves don't stand alone but are drawn from the class struggle and in turn reciprocally influence the struggle. It's a two-way interactive process, not a one-way street. As far as a communist revolution is concerned while we may not know what shape the working class is in when it happens we do know that a significant majority must understand and want communism in order for a communist revolution to happen. Communism absolutely necessitates conscious majority support and therefore a revolution that does not have this conscious majority support will not be a communist revolution because the outcome will not be communism. The revolution is effected by the communist minded working class seizing power and declaring capitalism null and void. This is fully consistent, with the point about the seizure of political power by the proletariat being the precondition for the "historical process of revolutionary change". But in order for the proletariat to seize power and effect a revolutionary change, it has to be substantially communist-minded in the first place. This is absolutely essential and is integral to the Marxian perspective. Engels points this out in the introduction to Marx's Class struggles in France "Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul]."

Of course, socialist consciousness comes through struggle not just propagandising. This is not an either/or situation. It is actually mutually reinforcing. The struggle gives rise to the ideas and the ideas in turn help to clarify and strengthen the struggle. Part of my argument against reformism is that it actually weakens the position of workers. It doesn't radicalise them at all. It ties them politically to capitalism via capitalist political parties that aim to garner support through the advocacy of reforms. This is what workers need to reject. They will actually become much more militant in my view if they completely rejected the reformist illusion that capitalism can be moulded to accommodate their interests and if they came to recognise that the interests of workers are diametrically opposed to the capitalists. This is what revolutionaries should be doing - saying how it actually is not trying to dishonestly socially engineer workers into coming over to them by dangling reforms in front of them which they know full well are not going to modify the position of the exploited class. In the end, if you do not break with the logic of capital completely and in ideological terms, if you do not explicitly advocate a genuine alternative to capitalism, there is no way on earth that you will ever create an alternative to capitalism. You will remain forever stuck in the reformist treadmill going nowhere. Although the ultimate aim of the radical fighting for reform may be the self-emancipation of the working class, it will never ever come to self-emancipation of the working class precisely because fighting for reforms is a trap from which you will never ever escape unless you stop fighting for reforms and raise your sights higher. Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of workers so fighting for reforms in the interests of the workers is foredoomed. It is simply a treadmill that will never lead on to anything else. "Radicalisation" is the result of an interaction between material struggles - workers organising on the industrial and social terrain - and communist ideas. Above all, it involves the explicit and conscious embrace of the communist goal - a non-market non-statist alternative to capitalism. This is what truly constitutes radical in the sense of a root change.

There is no real evidence that it does lead to a communist outlook. Many radicals ultimately end up in the ghetto of worthy liberal causes which only serve to fragment working-class solidarity in a plethora of separate struggles each demanding attention at the expense of others. Or they become disillusioned old cynics in later life and join the establishment. We don't say socialists need to stand on the sidelines and tell workers to drop their illusions and follow us. Firstly we reject the whole principle of vanguardism and leadership. Secondly, we don't say we should stand on the sidelines. No revolutionary ever is on the sidelines anyway. This is a meaningless way of looking at this anyway. We are all involved in the class struggle whether we like it or not or whether we are aware of it or not. As workers, we will join with our fellow workers in a union to fight the bosses in the industrial field. We are simply members of the working class who has come to communist conclusions. We don't exist in some sense outside of the working class telling the working class what to do. This is an elitist Leninist perspective which we abjure. As communist workers, we will therefore put across communist ideas - about communism, about rejecting nationalism, racism and sexism and so on and so forth. Spreading ideas are essential. Everybody without exception believes their ideas are the right ones - otherwise, they would not hold or express them. Its got nothing to do with "leadership". It's what human beings do - talk, discuss, argue. If it is elitist in and of itself to express an idea then what you are trying to say is that we really should not express ideas at all. We should keep mum about our political views. That is quite absurd. If everyone followed that advice there would be a discussion about anything. People do develop their ideas as a result of hearing other ideas. This is not "idealist". Materialism does not deny the role of ideas, what it denies is the "independent" role of ideas, that social developments are completely explicable in terms of the impact of ideas alone. This is false but nevertheless, it is quite true that all social developments involve an exchange of ideas between historical actors and could not happen without that.

Radicals talk of the need to have the ear and confidence of the working class. They want to say to workers "yeah, great carry on with your reformist struggles. We're with you all the all way" even though in their heart of hearts they know that this is a recipe for failure. This is not honest and dishonesty does not pay in the end. It is far better to say what you really think and feel to be the case however unpopular or out of touch, it might make you seem at the time. Workers will not thank you for trying to lead them up the garden path and you will certainly not gain their confidence as a result. You stand to lose their confidence completely and this is in fact the story of the Left in general. It has marginalised itself precisely because of its opportunistic relationship with the working class.

Some on the Left have a kind of fetishised view of "action" that there is something latent or inherent in the acts one carries out that somehow drives one forward into becoming a communist. This is wrong. Strikes, protests demonstrations and all these sorts of activities don't carry any necessary communist implications whatsoever. It is the interaction of ideas and actions which is what is needed. This is the point we are trying to make about radicalisation. If you ignore the importance of ideas and the necessity for a clear and explicit alternative to capitalism you will never ever pose a serious threat to capitalism. Never. Reformist struggle does not necessarily imply a passive working class. This is the point. Workers can be actively engaged in reformist struggles to get governments to introduce measures that they perceive to be in their economic interests. But in the end, they actually help to weaken not strengthen the working class by tying it ideologically to capitalism, fostering the illusion that capitalism can be run in the interests of workers and entrenching their dependence on capitalist governments to do it for them.

Isn’t Capitalism Wonderful?

 

All of Canada’s six biggest banks have raised their dividends.  

The BMO Financial Group raised its dividend 25 per cent and beat expectations as it reported a fourth-quarter profit of nearly $2.2 billion, up from $1.6 billion in the same quarter last year. Analysts expected a profit of $3.21 a share, but it was $3.33 per share, isn't capitalism wonderful? 

All of Canada's six biggest banks have raised their dividends and announced plans to buy back large numbers of their shares as they reported their fourth-quarter results. 

Surely it would occur to anyone capable of reason, that there must be something fundamentally wrong with a society where so few could hoard so much wealth while the majority live in poverty. 

Reformers would argue that so much of that money could be used to help the poor while we socialists stand for a world of no money and no poor.

S.P.C. Members.

The Capitalists Ignore the Aboriginals Protests.

The Wet'suwet'en Indigenous nation of about 3,200 members have lived on their land in B.C. for thousands of years. They call it their yintah, which is 22,000 square kilometres in parts of the Nechako watershed and the headwaters of the Wedzin Kwah River. 

Now an Alberta based company, TransCanada Energy wants to lay the Coastal GasLink gas pipeline through their territory, including drilling under the river. 

This, not surprisingly, has met opposition from them and has provoked calls from hundreds of urban protesters in Montreal and Toronto.

 Already 30 Indigenous land defenders and their allies have been arrested while they were trying to block work on the pipeline.

 It never changes; if the capitalist class want land for whatever reason, they won’t give a shit about the aboriginals who've lived on it for an eternity.

S.P.C. Members.

A new road towards the future

 

It is rather disappointing to admit that working people still do not hold the slightest inkling about what to do to reverse the driving force behind their problems and plight, the inescapable consequences of capitalism’s harsh economic power. The politicians and intellectuals keep conjuring up their quack cures and our fellow workers keep falling for their trickery.

 

The propaganda of “freedom” and “democracy” makes a deep impression upon those Wilhelm Reich describe as the “Little Man”, although victims of the capitalists, they lend a receptive ear to the right-wing “crusaders” of liberty. They willingly conform to the economic interests of the ruling class that shaped their ideas, enthusiastically submitting to the “Fuhrer principle”, the hierarchy of leaders commanding them from the top. “Freedom” means to run society as the owning class sees fit and “democracy” is whatever method they deem applicable to impose their will.  If our fellow workers cannot break with the tainted past, its corrupted thinking and its poisoned practices, we will merely see working people sink deeper into the political swamp.

 

  The early demise of the Socialist Party was repeatedly and confidently predicted by its left-wing rivals but it has been the Independent Labour Party, the Socialist Labor Party and a host of Trotskyist parties that have disappeared from the political scene.

 The Socialist Party of Great Britain has survived because its ideas have passed the test of experience and events. Far from facing extinction the SPGB today is preparing for future growth. We may indeed be a tiny grouping but the heart of the socialist case we present remains to beat while the Left are the living dead, refusing their burial. Our record of longevity does not lull us into smugness nor offer any false satisfaction. We are confident of our ability to master the questions posed to us by our fellow workers and as in the past, confident of our progress as long as we remain committed to Marxism. That cannot be accomplished overnight, admittedly. We require political action, undertaken by us as a class entirely independent of the capitalist class and its politicians. We cannot be swayed by arrogant academic intellectuals strutting about pitifully confused, painfully ignorant and shamefully biased unable to lead themselves anywhere, let alone lead others, incapable of setting alight the minds of the youth but rather now repelling them by their debasement of the socialist ideal. This is not said in self-glorification. The capitalists find their political henchmen seek to paralyse the workers.

The capitalist ruling class is a brazen group of exploiters. They had their way during the pandemic and made billions in profits and distributed billions in dividends and interest to themselves. They get away with it too. They are successful. They succeed because they have a government of their own. They have a president or prime minister of their own choosing. They own the courts to protect them and theirs. They send their people into the Cabinet. Later they take their people out of the government and bring them back to the Corporations. 

Let there be no misunderstanding, the Socialist Party’s purpose is to reconstruct a global movement based on the ideas of Marxism, in opposition to others’ narrow, national limitations. Some people claim that to vote for a candidate representing the ideas of socialism means to throw away one’s vote. In actuality, the person who votes for a pro-capitalist lesser-evil is throwing his or her vote away, because this means preferring one corrupt political party as against another. A vote for socialism means that you protest against a system that utilizes its tremendous productive capacity only for profit, for war, for death and for destruction. Have the satisfaction of protesting against a system based on exploitation, greed and racial and national hatreds. Socialists will not be coerced or intimidated. There is no other road for workers other than socialism which leads to freedom and security.